Red Wine

Cars with yellow headlights whoosh by this hundred-year-old house, briefly brightening the living room where I lay with an empty glass and purple teeth. The dog is lapping toilet water again, but I don't mind.

Red wine could cure the world, I write, my cursive slurring slightly. Who would start a war while feeling this way? I just want to lounge amongst pillows and drawstring pants, philosophizing peace. Red wine peace. You sure you want to rape and pillage that village? Wouldn't you rather relax in your living room while delicious red wine warms your torso, spreads through your green veins and tingles the tips of your toes? Sure you want to provoke a street side fist fight with that tailgating twit? Wouldn't you rather picnic in the park with plastic cups of warm wine, sharp cheddar cheese, guacamole and a freshly baked baguette? And are you sure you want to drop an atomic bomb on that city of civilian elders? Wouldn't you rather slow dance in your kitchen while towel drying your dinner party's dishes?

Of course, realistically, red wine could not cure the world. For if every malicious leader, mob boss, rapist, angry toll booth attendant, irrational sandwich shop employee and murderer were drunk on red wine, every problem would just be amplified the next morning when all were hungover with dried red-stained tongues, pounding heads and unstoppable diarrhea.



Tonight, I lay drinking alone in the living room of this hundred-year-old house, listening to the whoosh and the wheeze of the wind. Drinking alone? You ask with an awkward concern. Yes, but just one glass, one glass to save this night.

Moving

A set of dark old dressers (one low and long, one tall and narrow) stand naked on the grass, grasping FREE signs between the teeth of their emptied drawers like shy hookers posing for passing traffic. I was a young girl when my great-grandmother, Sunny, died and my parents inherited these bedroom bureaus, but I still remember how my mother wept beside me at the funeral: her shoulders shuddering; soft wails escaping; her cheeks wet and smeared.

Now a young woman, I am like an impatient rapist, stripping my great-grandmother's furniture of jewelry boxes, piles of old birthday cards and those photo booth pictures we took at that arcade in New York. Ravagingly, I rip, pull and pile their colorful cotton insides -my crumpled wardrobe- from their dinged and dented drawers, flinging everything into mounds to be dumped, donated or folded into suitcases.

Violently, it feels, I lighten the load of our vagabond lives, abandoning things and their heavy emotional attachments. Things are just things, I doubtfully repeat. I have not pimped my deceased great-grandmother out for FREE.

snooze

At the tender age of twenty-six, I feel an estrogen-powered clock nuzzling itself between my fallopian tubes and uterus, rattling repetitive alarums whenever I encounter the curious colossal eyes, the wee clenching fingers and the shiny pink gums of a baby. However despite these bodily reactions, I am not yet completely desperate for dimpled bottoms to diaper and doughy knees and cheeks to cradle. For baby powder clouds to float and fog around me as I snap footy pajamas and comb wet snarled hair. To spend my afternoons sitting in shallow sandboxes performing spontaneous puppet shows with super hero action figures, plastic red fire trucks and prettily painted porcelain dolls.

Today, I am sipping frothy four-dollar cappuccinos inside classy cafes where jazz music rumbles through ceilinged speakers and pretentiously hip baristas rattle on and on together about obscure bands, favorite tattoo parlors and recently found vintage cowboy boots. Over bar tops and through glass cases of chocolate chip vegan muffins, I observe these self-involved folk who fearlessly stitch unique personas onto their overpriced tee-shirt sleeves for all to see. They never fail to put themselves first. I do. I tend to misplace my existence like a set of car keys or pair of sunglasses, drifting lackadaisically in and out of obscurity while I quietly question my worth. But I don't want to be a young woman who shies from mirrors and manicures and all things pretty and selfish. For these pitiful tendencies will inevitably turn me into a plain, fat forty-something mother who wears stained sweatpants, wolf-patterned sweaters, thirteen-year-old maternity dresses and worn leather pocketbooks stuffed with regret.

Hi.

Hey.

May I have a small ego, a blueberry scone and a medium Me Time.

Here or to go.

To go.

I say, slapping my internal snooze button on the counter top.

I need to make a sturdier impression of myself on myself before I try raising another self.

I say, confidently.

The girl behind the counter stares back at me before wiping her long dark bangs from her eyes and saying,

That'll be $Invaluable.

I will, one day, pack lunch boxes with milk money, green apples and peanut butter/banana sandwiches wrapped inside LOVE YOU napkin notes. I will share Sesame Street jokes with teddy bears and velveteen rabbits over delicate cups of imaginary tea and rubber crumpets. I will tightly tuck bed covers; read bedtime stories and sing improvised lullabies. I will dab spit-up, catchup, poop, tears and muddied fingerprints from my new blue cardigan.

I will never wear wolf-patterned sweaters.

Days of Appreciation

Letters penned with stiff, concentrating fingers. Sloppy sticky notes scribbled, dry ink splotches exposing brief moments of thought. Envelopes licked and pressed and stuck with tongued stamps. Photographs in frames on sills and shelves; pinned onto refrigerator doors; wedged into vanity mirror corners and slipped into plastic wallet flaps. Books tilted and beckoned from their upright alphabetical positions. Soft, slightly yellowed pages flipped and fanned by thumbs while dust floats and disperses into the sunlight of tall, narrow library windows. Art hung amidst dry museum air, whispered articulations and tour guides dressed in black leggings or spotted blue bow ties. Above beer breathed rumblings and thrown piano key punches, stubbed cigarette smoke lingers like a threatening storm cloud. The sign on the window mustering dust reads "LIVE MUSIC TONIGHT". Paper bills delivered by mail trucks, glass bottles of warm milk by local dairy farmers. Bundled newspapers flung by boys on bicycles. Atop rickety town hall auditorium stages, spitting actors perform Richard III for spectacularly dressed spectators who fan their faces and applaud as the curtain falls. Everywhere voices overlap like tiered cakes -voluptuously voiced pig piles of sweet frosting, ripe fruit and flour. The days of appreciation. The days when dessert and strips of bacon were not so plentiful. Sweets after supper a delicacy, not an expectancy. The days when young men learned to shake hands while girls learned to dance. The days of "clean plate clubs" and picture books at bedtime. The days of handwritten recipes and homemade lemonade. The days when potatoes sat simmering only in stews and not on couches watching football.

Today pie, pork and pornography are plentiful and cheap. Push that button. Click that remote. Drive to that red and yellow window. NowNowNOW, we impatiently demand, while the belt buckles at our bellies expand.

One day, children will not learn cursive with dotted lines and fat pencils. They will never raise their hands; count on their fingers or write full sentences. They will not talk, but type. They will never need to wait patiently; walk to school; build or bake. They will have everything and therefore appreciate nothing. And our old raw American personality of dirt and gumption will be extinguished by their shy, frail incompetency.

Mum

When I think of my mum, the image of a large squishy pillow comes to mind and that is not to say that she is square or made of cotton balls and patterned fabric, but that she, to me, is comfort. And today, to understand this pillow effect she has over me, I am dissecting motherhood like I would a frog in a ninth grade Biology class, carefully with goggles, gloves and squeamish hesitation.

These are the steps as I know them.

FIRST: Spontaneous and/or strategic sex between a male and female where an escaped sperm awkwardly and somewhat forcefully introduces itself to an egg, creating a sesame seed sized speck, a wee white guppy.

SECOND: A missed menstrual cycle; a couple queasy mornings and frantic unexplainable mood swings precede the piddling on of positive pregnancy tests.

THIRD: Chocolate covered pickles and peanut buttered bacon substitute cups of coffee, cigarettes, whiskey and bottles of wine with dinner.

FOURTH: "We're having a baby." They say and write and say and write.

FIFTH: Doctors with cold clear jelly, clipboards and beeping ultrasound machines point to the floating fetus's genitals, saying "It's a boy!" or, "It's a girl!"

SIXTH: Beneath her thimble-shaped belly button, partially-developed limbs kick and punch, stretching her soft skin like pizza dough.

SEVENTH: The bubble in the belly pops, oozing water down her legs as she waddles with her overnight bag to the hospital.

EIGHTH: Refusing enemas with lies of bowel movements, she screams for the anesthesiologist.

NINTH: Florescent white lights shine onto her most private parts, while nurses chant instructions to "push" and "breath."

TENTH: The baby is born; the connected umbilical cord is cut and the female's damp, deflated body separates from one person to two, from woman to mother and child.

Since my birth, our bodies have grown farther and farther apart, drifting like ships with sleeping sea captains, and yet, twenty six years after the day we separated to become mother and child, I still sometimes feel like we are joined at the belly button. When we are apart for too long, breathing becomes panting; sleeping turns to jostling and a deep hollow ache growls in the deep end of my stomach.

My conclusion is this: though the umbilical cord is cut, the woman's womb drained, the baby's clothing outgrown, the child married and moved away: the comfort found within the presence of one's mother lingers forever.

Playing House

In my denim skirt, floral blouse and old olive-green flats, I sit beside Scott in a small glass bank office. We are applying for our first mortgage pre-approval. While I whisper my secret salary to the stranger across the desk, soccer moms kick carts of Diet Coke and Cool Ranch Doritos by, peering in on me as if my mortgage application were somehow a reminder of their fat lazy husbands at home who refuse to mow the lawn or take that shit in the basement to the dump like they promised last July. Our bank is inside a grocery store, a florescent, bleach-scented, super-sized grocery store.

"We're going to do what his brother did a few years ago when he bought his first house, which is, we are not going to pay a down payment. There's some special deal for Massachusetts public school teachers with good credit." I explain.

"Oh. I haven't heard of that. But I wouldn't be surprised if it existed." The teller typing our application says. The edges of his lips pointing down, his shoulders jolting upwards.

One week later, we receive the official call from the loan officer. We have been pre-approved for $175,000. A respectable amount of money for someone looking to buy a rare, refurbished 1937 Cadillac; a lot of cocaine; or a healthy Caucasian purebred baby boy. It is not, however, very much for a house.

Soon realtors are involved.

At one homestead, I sing these words to the tune of London Bridge.

This house is falling down, falling down, falling down, this house is falling down, we should leave.

The teacher plan does not exist, we come to find out, and the lowest possible downpayment percentage we could maybe muster would be for 3.5%, which sounds small and innocent, but actually amounts to thousands and thousands of dollars. We do not have thousands and thousands of dollars.

Pretty soon, parents are involved, generously offering to loan us the money for a down payment. We thank them, quietly punching the nerves that jump and flip on our digesting frozen pizza dinners like homeless kids on a floor model trampoline at Sears. And we continue searching and scrolling the internet for sweet little houses and funky downtown condos.

Buy before April 30th to get the first time home owners $8000 tax credit! (Rush, hurry and scurry so that you accidentally buy this dump yard house in this dangerous un-sellable neighborhood of foreclosed houses, which are currently sheltering scary squatting drug dealers and child molesting jailbreaks.) Selling as is. Needs TLC. (Needs Trampy Lady Cocottes to fully transform this pimp's dream into an illegal reality.)

On Saturday, I take $20 out of the ATM, but I nearly shove the bill back into the machine when I look at the receipt. It reads,

Balance: $YOU ARE BROKE.00.

The next day, we see three condos. Afterwards, I carry a bag of collected coins, equalling $6.76, into the grocery store.

"Is milk a necessity?" Scott asks, carrying a small red, plastic basket. 

"Many people would say it is. I want it for coffee."

"But coffee isn't a necessity."

"It is to me."

We buy a loaf of pumpernickel bread from the day old bakery shelf for $1.47, along with a mixed bag of bagels for $2.14. Luckily, we still have some butter and jelly at home from before I spontaneously quit my job, which I will explain... I spontaneously quit my job because I could no longer tolerate the squealing noise of my new manager. I was going to become a part time employee. She had said it would be fine, but a week later, after I accepted my new part time job, she changed her mind. I had to quit or stay a full time employee.

"Looks like you have a decision to make." She said in a pitch of pink and yellow polka dots.

"Ok...then I give my two weeks." I said in red, to clash.

Scott wasn't proud of me. I thought he might be. I hoped he would be, but he wasn't. He is far more a realist than an individual rights rallyer. "How are we going to live?" He asked me, flatly frowning.

"I don't know! But I can't work for her anymore!" I yelled to him across the backyard.

My resume and I often say that I cannot stay at one place of employment for very long. I get itchy and aggravated. I don't understand how people can stay at the same job doing the same thing for so many years.

"Ever been homeless?" A young man in the break room asked me after I explained to him my need for frequent flight.

"No." I told him.

"It keeps you from quitting your job."

After shopping, we crunch and crunch the numbers, but eventually we realize that even the smallest six-digit dollar sum is still too stubbornly stiff for us to swallow. What are we thinking? We can't buy a house right now. We can barely afford to buy day-old bread from the Big Ugly Grocery Store's sticky, dusty discounted shelves.

Boys Beer Club

I sit at the hearty bar; tapping my toes ticklishly into its sides and swinging on my barstool whenever anyone steps onto the spilled sunlight from the parking lot. Like a promiscuous widow, I compare all other bars to this one, my first true taproom. It is not yet four thirty on this Thursday afternoon and already the bar of red wine walls, handwritten chalkboard menus and hip music is additionally adorned with half-empty glasses; bodies bending over books and beer; discussions with resting elbows and moving hands; and the mumblings of the daily drinkers who wake up every morning, thirsty for dark lagers and pale ales.

I glance at my friend, Claire, the bartender, as she quietly and easily commands the counter. Pretty and slender, she carries the caliber of even the college professor beer connoisseur customers who enjoy slyly testing the sweet young barkeep with casual conversations about their present pints. She places a round cork coaster under my nose and stands my hard apple cider atop it. As I sip my cold cider; crack peanut shells and lick my salty fingertips, I listen, admiring Claire's honorary membership -hell, her presidential status- to this boys' beer club.