25. read my fridge
Relishing the moment, lying in her bedroom alone, sunlight beaming
in, the cream white lace curtains occasionally moving on a wisp of a
breeze, she remembered. Her senses being heightened by passion. The
way his generic menthol cigarette protruded from his pursed lips when
they watched reruns of cartoons on television. The mysterious hair
growth he had found on her body. The warmth of a man sleeping next to
her. The sticky fingers, the bald head. The occasional sexual faux
pas. The smell of petunia oil on her sheets. The small change that
had fallen out of his pants pockets as he undressed.
Usually she was drawn to guys like Bill from the pool cleaning
service, always in swim gear and ready to ’take a dip,’ or men, like
her first husband Kurt, in uniform and ’ready to shoot.’ This one was
different. For one thing, he was a living artist, good storyteller
and funny. He was also somehow good-looking in a sickly sort of way.
He was more desert rat than artist rogue in her opinion, but she did
not mind. Most importantly, he was thoughtful and he took his time
when giving her pleasure.
She had warned him about her Spotting, a Jack Russell bred to hyper-
sensitivity, who attacked anyone who got close to her. After the
initial spasm of yelping and sneak attacks, nipping at shins, the
artist type did manage to calm down the household beast. He put the
dog in a trance by sticking his fingers in his ears, and then letting
Spotting lick up his own earwax. This act won her heart as well as
Spotting’s and the dog allowed himself to be coerced into solitary
laundry room confinement.
Spotting had, however, managed more than once to free himself and
arrive unexpectedly during their romps of foreplay. What at first was
annoying later became hilarious, especially for her. Finally,
Spotting got his way and forced the two to barricade themselves in
the privacy of her love chamber.
She chuckled when she remembered his reaction to the destruction of
his clothing this morning. During the night, Spotting had ripped them
to pieces and hidden them around the condo. Not only were the clothes
gone but only a few bits and shreds could testify to their previous
existence. She was lucky to have had enough remnants of male clothing
to replace the loss. Unfortunately, even his shoes had not been
spared. Luckily, the desert rat made light of his lack of footwear,
shrugging it off and stating that it was not the first time he had
been shoeless.
She slowly elevated herself to a sitting position and fluffed up the
pillows. She studied the space around her, noting its composition.
The bedroom had been torn apart in the heat of passion. Clothes,
sheets and blankets lay strewn about. Her refrigerator had been read,
and empty food containers dotted the floor around her bed. Beer cans
and a half-full green bottle of Gallon Blush Chablis were to the
right. A carton of Ben and Skippy’s gourmet vanilla ice cream with
spoon attached lay to the left. There were cellophane bags from
natural and hot ’n spicy potato chips and little brown plastic puffs
from the wrappings of bite-size Honey Nut bars randomly scattered
throughout the room. There was a box of Sarah Bee cheesecake with
crumbs trailing onto the red oriental throw rug, and on the
nightstand to her left a jar of peanut butter with a banana peel
carefully folded and placed on the top. Across the room, a pair of
altar candles continued to glimmer on the High Boy Commode, trying to
go out, almost consumed by their own wax. A modern still life, she
thought, cherishing the moment. Indeed, for a brief moment she was in
paradise.
This was her private life, a side of her life that few knew. A side
so long, she craved for it to be surveyed more than once every other
eclipse. She felt tinges of envy at the freedom he portrayed, and was
comforted by the thought that at least someone had guts enough to
preserve a lifestyle that had definition and purpose. She longed to
express herself creatively, as he did seemingly instinctively.
At the beginning of her life she had not been blessed. Born to
diametrically opposed human beings with whom she never shared a
communal existence. Her early life consisted of being shuttled
between hippie mother and christian right father. She married a man
of the military at a tender age and successfully spited both her
parental units with one blow. She left her man at the air force base
where he had taken her and moved back to sacramento. Her alimony
entitled her to a higher education but she was forced to work on the
side as a topless go-go dancer at Club 40 while getting her degree in
the humanities at a local city college.
As luck would have it, she later landed a job with the The Chosen
Ones when her cousin Sally, one of the singers in The Chosen Ones,
had suddenly changed her ways and publicly embraced the positive and
fun-loving california lifestyle. A replacement was needed quickly.
The Chosen Ones had been scheduled to appear at the Church of
Opportunity and were going to be broadcast statewide, an opportunity
not to be missed. Without much thought, she gave up her career
gyrating and pulsated instead to the missionary beat.
Of course, those who knew her were amazed at the transformation and
that she played the part so well. Having been dragged to religious
inoculations when visiting her father, she knew what to say and when
to say it, even occasionally quoting scriptures. She camouflaged her
sunlines with dabs of flesh-colored body paint and taped her boobs to
give them the illusion of first budding adolescence.
Subjectively, the life she entered was a mirror image of the one she
had left. Yet aspects of this new world of simplified superficiality
gave her the impression that somewhere a strain of deep-seated
perversity lurked. It did not take long before she had sniffed out
who stunk the most.
It seemed her boss had somehow gotten word of her former trade and
understood what women in her position had to do in order to survive.
Preacher Dan’s offers of guidance and salvation were of constant
annoyance to her. She was forever searching for ways to avoid his
direct intervention. Until now, she had been successful at keeping
him and his circle of similarly perverted male disciples at bay, but
she knew that, with or without her, sooner or later the truth would
be made public.
The thrill of performing before throngs of enthusiastic christians
had worn off. She was tired of the grueling schedule of appearances
up and down the valley, and dreamed of a sunday free from work. She
loathed playing the dumb tragic figure who had been around, and had
grown weary of pubescent babble about menstrual cycles and virginity.
She was sick of offering condolences to those who needed to know that
someone was worse off than they themselves.
The whimpering of her dog outside the bedroom door interrupted her
self-contented thoughts. Deciding to finally venture outside her
temple of pleasure, she slowly extended her legs out from beneath the
sheets. After pointing her toes, she touched the floor and got out of
bed. She stretched, rubbed her head and yawned so deeply that her
upper body slumped to the floor. She remained bent over for a few
moments letting the blood rush to her head. She slowly inhaled, rose
to her tip-toes and repeated the action two more times as the dog
continued to launch himself against the door.
She wrapped herself in an over-sized baby blue chenille bathrobe and
opened the door. Spotting jumped up onto her yapping with glee on
being reunited with his mistress, but his love was short-lived. His
attention turned immediately to the bedroom, and he ran in to search
frantically for any enemy material that might have polluted his
territory.
With Spotting occupied for a moment, she casually strolled through
the condominium, kicking food wrappings and shreds of clothing to the
side. In the making of The Chosen Ones, she had saved enough coins to
buy whatever she wanted, even though a considerable amount of money
was siphoned off by the reverend himself for devotional purposes.
She smiled at the accumulated success around her. A scattering of new
toys, where before there had been none. Lava lamps, fluffy couch,
oriental rugs, a home entertainment center in the living room, a
Jacuzzi in the bath, electric salad spinner, solar-powered carving
knife, and combination bread-maker and convection crockpot in the
kitchen. She found it hard to want more.
Spotting came running behind her with a torn green T-shirt clutched
in his mouth but, before she could retrieve it, had darted through
the kitchen and was out the doggy latch built into the back door. She
had momentarily hoped to save at least one article of clothing from
her artist friend but, alas, her male dog did still maintain a degree
of control over her life.
In previous apartments, Spotting had attacked neighbors, postal
workers, gardeners and pedestrians, making her an undesirable renter.
She loved her dog but living with Spotting had been a social
deterrent. It had gotten so bad that she was unable to invite a
single person to her home for fear that Spotting would maim.
Spotting was a victim of man’s neurotic world of fences and
automobiles. His inbreeding made him incapable of adapting to the
constant vibrations of modern life. Being over-trained as a puppy, as
a pet psychic on television had said, did not help a dog’s psyche.
Spotting, she had learned, probably suffered from what is called post-
dramatic stress disorder, even though she had previously thought that
this was exclusively a returning soldier’s condition. She allowed
herself to be convinced that it also occurred among domestic animals
and subscribed to monthly treatments. To her astonishment, the
medication actually did control the dog’s dramatic mood swings and
she was able to regain a tiny bit of life beyond Spotting’s vibrant
personality.
She opened the screen door and stepped out onto her patio. She made
a brief survey of the potted plants there, noting which needed watering
by sticking her finger into the soil. She carefully avoided eye
contact with her neighbors, most of whom had been victims of Spotting
before his affliction was diagnosed and medicated. She had even, on
more than one occasion, had to beg angry neighbors not to call the
pound to take her dog away. Those were the days before Doggy Downers.
She circled the condominium unit, walking barefoot across the lawn,
carefully avoiding the patches of crabgrass. At the mailbox, she
peered out through the mirage of heat waves emanating from the black-
tarred street running in front of the property. The daylight was
intense and she wished she had worn her sunglasses. She pulled out
the deposited junk and lowered the red metal flag of the american-
style mailbox. “Spotting!” she yelled in a faked english accent,
hence the name.
Her dog came racing around the unit at a torrential speed carrying a
green plastic garden hose nozzle. He did not stand still but ran
around in circles, until he finally dropped the object of his frenzy
at her feet and ran off. She picked it up, wondered which neighbor he
had nipped the nozzle from, and hoped that they would not
come knocking at her door looking for the stolen garden utensil. She
decided to leave it where it was and threw it onto the lawn.
Suddenly, almost out of nowhere, Spotting reappeared, picked it up
and ran quickly away in the opposite direction.
“Spotting!” she anglicized. “Spotting. You come right here, right
away!” But the mad dog paid no attention.
She returned to her condo and its air-conditioned comfort through the
front door, left unlocked after the desert rat had left. While
sorting the junk from the mail, she pulled out a postcard from her
mother. As usual, it contained little information other than the tree
motif on the front and a sketch of a candle with strokes emanating
from the flame representing heat on the back. She placed the mail art
piece on the fireplace mantel along with the others she had received.
Spotting came back in through the pet outlet in the kitchen and ran
through the house whimpering to be fed. Though frustrated by being
manipulated by her dog’s such primitive survival instincts, she threw
the pile of mail onto the fireplace mantle and went into the kitchen.
She opened the refrigerator and noticed that the can of Ruffina Dog
Chow was missing. Closing the refrigerator, she looked about the
kitchen and spotted a pink and green-labelled can near the microwave
that she knew to be empty. Spotting started darting between her legs
thus annoying her further. Lethargically, she went through the
cupboards hoping to find something that would temporarily appease her
penis substitute. In the hunt for dog food, she herself grew hungry
and went off on a tangent searching for bagels and cream cheese.
Spotting, instinctively knowing that food was soon to be lowered to
him, could not contain his excitement and started jumping from one
side of the kitchen to the other, barking out his insistence that his
meal be delivered immediately. She temporarily appeased herself and
her pet with bits of a spicy italian pepper sausage that she found
lying on the kitchen counter.
Finally, she remembered where she had put her recently purchased
groceries, still unpacked in plastic bags in the laundry room. She
retrieved the fresh supply of Ruffina and opened the meal with the
combo-electric can opener, knife sharpener and four-band radio. She
slopped the doggy chow into his bowl and inserted a Doggy Downer in
the middle of the processed animal by-product as the final flourish.
Her hungry pet had, in the meantime, become occupied with his burning
mouth and ran about, lapping up water from his food tray, shaking his
head and sneezing in order to rid himself of the pain.
She put the bowl on the floor while speaking to Spotting in no more
than five syllable sentences. She petted her Jack Russell as he bit into
the slimy luke-warm meat mass, almost searching for the one hard bit
that would bring joy to his world. Soon, her Spotting would be fast
asleep, his belly full, and with her help, leading an effective and
happy little life.
Standing up too fast, she became dizzy and leaned on the kitchen wall
for a moment to regain her equilibrium. When the spell had passed,
she went over to the kitchen counter to prepare herself a decent
breakfast. She nibbled on a dried bread stick while heating milk over
the electric range and waiting for the espresso to perk. When all was
done and whipped, she poured the brew into an oversized ceramic
coffee cup and dusted the milk froth with cinnamon and powdered
chocolate. Into a mixing bowl, she dumped a fourth of a box of
Special K-Lite, topped it with banana slices, and soaked it all with
a generous amount of fat free soya milk poured from a gallon-size
plastic container.
She placed her breakfast on a small plastic tray and, just as she was
about to re-enter her love chamber, she remembered the newspaper.
She put the tray down on a vinyl footrest next to the fluffy living room
sofa and darted outside once more. She found the morning edition of
the Sacramento Bee lying underneath the Camellia bush with ants
crawling over the newsprint. She brushed off the dirt and bugs from
the Bee, gave it an extra whack on the railing to make sure it was
insect free and went inside.
Breakfast in bed on a lazy weekday morning in summer. The sound of
blue jays and leaf blowers, the smell of grizzling bacon from the
neighbors’ kitchen and the scent of the blossoming orange trees
outside her bedroom window wafted through the air. She fluffed up the
pillows and repositioned herself in her throne.
As she spooned her breakfast into her mouth, she dreamed of the
moment when she would accidentally meet up again with the creative
artist type. He had not left a number where he could be reached,
explaining his situation as being out of touch with the world and
wanting to keep it that way. He mentioned that he lived in a Galaxy,
parked in the Grid, and gave a vague address of a friend with whom he
had occasional contact.
Perhaps soon, she would have a reason to go downtown and visit one of
those seedy cafes where drug addicts sat, and wannabe criminal
delinquents spoke coded english and exchanged hand signals. They
would sit outside underneath a Zitlantro umbrella, zinc oxide on
their noses, sipping freshly roasted Eritrean espresso in tiny
ceramic cups, served with a lemon peel twist. He would tell one of
his fabulous stories about nothing and everything, and they would
occasionally throw their heads back in unguarded laughter.
Her thoughts continued to linger on the artist rogue, a mysterious
type he was. He had given her meaningful looks as if he wanted to say
more than he was able. Perhaps he was in love with her. Perhaps she
was falling in love with him. She took a long pause in her thoughts
to sense her inner vibrations, but an icy ball of reality suddenly
knotted in her stomach.
I don’t know nothin’ about that love thang, she confessed to herself.
It’s just so crazy: women chasing men, men chasing women. As soon as
they catch up to what they want, they don’t want it anymore. I’m
either one step behind or one step ahead. Life would be easier, she
concluded, if I was born without hormones.
She distracted herself from her negative thoughts by humming the
words of a tune she was currently rehearsing. Thoughts of fame and
fortune started to percolate in her mind. She thought about her
future, about singing its tribulations and joys in the hits that she
would write.
Her time as a Chosen One was measured by the mediocre success she
had attained among certain men littered throughout the valley. Her fan
mail testified to the fact. She often received marriage proposals in
exchange for singing the faith and, as tempting as some of these rich
right wing christian male supremacists’ exhortations were, she knew
that they were really the same ones for whom she had shaken her booty
at Club 40.
Dubious thoughts often crossed her mind about how she could create a
scandal by denouncing the Church of Opportunity, First Christian as a
hoax, thought up long ago by some fast talker to capitalize on the
lack of spirituality that permeated the valleys. She knew sex had to
be involved somewhere, but with whom and to what degree she was still
unsure, for the decisive moment had not yet presented itself. She was
convinced that a scandal of a sexual nature would certainly be the
manipulative spring that would bounce her to national stardom. She
felt proud of herself for being so cunning.
While sipping her cappuccino, she mapped her career through its peaks
and valleys. She fantasized about taking the road of fate with the
artist type, who she would employ as her assistant and lover. This
thought caused her libido to tingle. But her road trip came to an end
when she realized again that he had departed practically without a
trace, except for that one vague location somewhere in the Grid. In
short, she had no way of getting in touch with him and it would be
only through chance that they would ever meet again.
We must meet again, she thought, and heard the barks of Spotting
approaching.
“Is anybody home?” It was her distant cousin, Sally, who was living
with her while she was in sacramento, just returning from a few days
in fresno.
“I’m in the bedroom.” Spotting appeared at her bed, scattering his
energy throughout the room.
“Hey, Crystal.” She appeared at the bedroom door and gave a wave.
“Well all right girl, you sure do look cozy. What happened here?” she
examined the still life and asked.
“Yeah.” She smiled. “I had a run in with a desert rat.”
“Me, too. Except mine was an auto mechanic a couple of nights ago.”
“I’m kinda glad that you weren’t here. It would of been embarrassing.”
“Yeah. Well. What can I say?” She shrugged her shoulders and held her
palms upward. “Your uncle says hello. I ran into him at a café in
downtown Fresno. Ain’t that a coincidence. Hey. There’s money on the
floor.” She bent over, picked up a penny and threw it onto Crystal’s
bed. “Look, I didn’t catch much sleep last night and I’m beat from
driving. I’m going to take a nap before I start writing the next
column for the Weekly. You mind if I take a shower first?”
“No. It’s okay. I’ll catch you when you wake up.”
Her cousin limped off to the spare bedroom and Spotting disappeared
along with her. Crystal sat for a good long moment feeling content,
wishing it could stay this way. Once again, she was distracted by
shouts of discouragement coming from a neighbor, who she suspected
was about to be attacked by her Jack Russell.
“Spotting!” she yelled in her faked english accent, “You come here
right away. Spotting. Spotting.”
“Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!” came the chants from the studio audience as
the camera panned them standing and shaking their upraised fists,
before swinging over to the talkshow host entering the studio.
Crystal had programmed her entertainment center to turn on
automatically when her favorite talk show was scheduled. She propped
herself up in bed and took a sip of coffee.
“Good life. Good life. Good life,” she sang out loud and made herself
comfortable to watch the televised verbal assault.
No comments:
Post a Comment