Cawabunga

Two 50's girls in the 90's

All Allisons have dirty blonde hair, stick-straight and shoulder-length.  They make lanyards and friendship bracelets and chain-read "The Babysitters Club."  This is a fact.  And all Staceys, Chelsea says, are a little bit older, have braces and boyfriends, and wear scrunchies. 

I say "peanuts" a lot because it sounds like "penis," and it's so funny and everyone laughs.  When Chelsea says it, she gets in trouble.

Chelsea and I collect stickers and our favorites are the oily ones.  And Pogs too, except we don't play pogs, we just collect the slammers.  Chelsea notes that for two weeks during the Summer of '94, jacks make a comeback.

Playground bullies named Kimberly with pigtails and spandex shorts befriend me.  I'm not sure why, but playground bullies always like me.  And why are all playground bullies named Kimberly, and bigger than everybody else?  But, I'm small and puny and don't speak much in the classroom.  I chase boys around the school yard and I watch too much Power Rangers for my own good and, like every other girl on the playground, I'm the Pink Ranger.  I like all the boy Rangers, especially Tommy because he has a ponytail.  My first kiss is caught on our VHS video camera, during my 4th birthday party.  His name is Alex and he always wears a pirate hat.  I'm eating pizza when he kisses me.

HeartThrob is our favorite game, although I'm pretty sure we never play it correctly because we never actually use the board.  We just look at the cardboard photos of, as the game alludes, 90's heartthrobs: there's Chad (I like him because he plays frisbee with his dog) and there's Chip (Chelsea likes him because he plays football and has a nice smile).  Our babysitter likes the muscle guy, who Chelsea says looks like a Brad, but he's not our type.

Chelsea has the hots for Macauley Culkin in Home Alone 2, "a big fan" she says, and JTT is a dreamboat and so is that boy from the Sandlot. 

Hopscotch and cat's cradle... what else?  Handball, the best game in the universe and your fists are red and smell like burnt rubber after.  And I'm the queen of sliceys.

Chelsea and I put our All4One cd into our boombox and blast "I swear" while playing the Nintendo game where you shoot ducks (hindsight, what a violent concept) and Sega Genesis, Sonic the Hedgehog of course.  And what about Fruit Roll-Ups and Gushers and Corn Nuts?  We get the variety pack of Corn Nuts and the ranch flavor is the best and the original is the worst, and for some reason, eating a package of Corn Nuts makes your mouth really warm.

For countless recess marriages, I am granted the privilege of being maid of honor.  There's one marriage in particular where Fawcett, the girl who's named after a household appliance, marries a chocolate bar.  The service is very emotional and the reception is out of this world. 

We raise villages of sea monkeys and, one day, my best friend spills one of our thriving communities all over herself.  As she stands outside in the sun, dead colonies of sea monkeys drying into her floral frock, she sobs uncontrollably.  (Chelsea and I still have yet to forgive the stupid bitch.)

And tamagotchis, where I realize that I'm cruel and press the punishment button a lot.  And furbies too, after years of abandonment in the garage, the batteries still work and the little creature opens its eyes and talks to you when you walk by.  Chia pets also.

And Sanrio, those flexible pencils and flavored erasers.  Sleep-overs where girls chant "Bloody Mary" in the bathroom, lights turned off, and then try to defy gravity with "light as a feather, stiff as a board."

And the funniest interactive joke in the world: Spell PIG backwards and then say funny.

Summer camp with counselors who have white sun-blocked noses.  Roller blades and hair wraps and turtlenecks with french braids.  Legends of the Hidden Temple and Salute Your Shorts and Strawberry Shortcake and Ninja Turtles.  In the hot sun, you suck Otter pops out of a narrow plastic tube and it makes you cough. 

Thailand

It's complete filth, complete infestation and grime, crawling with all sorts of microscopic creatures.  And you wallow in it because you don't really have a choice.  And the streets are lined with shit and pee and curry-paste and the pitter patter of tourists and locals alike.  And yes, I'm filth.  I rot into the background with all the others, somewhere in between pavement and ocean.  And it's raining again- and all that filth accumulates, grows, sucks in the moisture and it speaks to you.  And at first, it sounds like grumbling, a machine, a vacuum two houses down?  But, if you stop and it's quiet right after the rain, the heavy downfall, and then the silence that follows, you can hear it as it speaks to you, opening it's hot mouth, "Drink, sit."  And the shop-keeper glares at you, opens her wrinkled mouth and echoes, "Drink, sit."  And you do.

Kanchanaburi Tales: Peeing in the River Kwai

I'm sleeping on a boat that's floating on the River Kwai.  I'm a little star-struck because in Ms. Conner's high-school film class, I watched 2/3rds of David Lean's "The Bridge on the River Kwai."  It was segmented into three class sessions, but I played hooky one day.

The floorboards are damp and creaking and the toilet is a hole in the boat.  When I'm peeing, I think about Ms. Conner's film class and about how six years ago, I'd never guess that my urin would be spilling into this muddy river.  Life is funny that way.  It's weird to think that I'm now part of the Kwai, that somehow I raised that water level a milli-milli-milli- centimeter, if that, and part of that H20  is me. 

The boat is long and narrow with Christmas lights strung around the ledges, curling around columns like ivy.  Every day at around noon, food is served on deck.  It's chicken curry and white rice and steamed vegetables.   And for some reason, Michael Jackson always seems to be playing on the speakers.

One evening, after a very long day of getting lost and bus-taking, I meet the chef, a rusty old Thai sailor.  He chain-smokes and doesn't speak much.  Coughing, he wipes his mouth, and pushes a bowl of meat chunks towards me.  "Very good," he nods, then coughs again.  "Okay," I say and smile.  The cut of meat is slightly cold, but flavorful to the max.  I chew it for a couple minutes, then swallow.  "Very good" I reiterate, but he already knows this and he's too busy coughing.

There's the front desk clerk, a 30-something year old guy who's shaped like a box.  He sits in a wooden cubicle that's located in an isolated corner, transfixed on his glowing computer (apparently there's decent internet connection on the River Kwai).  He shows me pictures of himself dressed in uniform.  Border patrol between Thailand and Burma, he announces proudly.

Earlier in the day, before I get lost in the tourist-trap of Kanchanaburi and take three buses back to the boat, I'm standing on the bridge over the River Kwai.  Too many people stand on it at the same time and the iron-skeleton sways every which way.  It's too hot to bear and motor boats flurry past, but this is the same bridge that's in that movie I saw two-thirds of in my high school film class.

Chocolate, Beer, and Estrogen

I get there five minutes late.  He's pale-faced and and has a small pointy nose, and he walks to the left and drags his right because of a coma he had ten years back.  This isn't how I remember him being (actually, I don't remember him at all) and I feel sick when he approaches me, smiling, and says, "I didn't think you'd come."  And then a little bit later he asks, "Remember what I told you about our kids?"  No, I lie. 

There's something very womanly about his frame and demeanor (and it might be the female hormones that he injests once-a-day because his throat doesn't produce them).  Mostly, it's his feminine arms and stomach.

He shows me around his neighborhood and we eat doner kebabs and there's a slab of Berlin Wall preserved and displayed in the street.  I take a picture of it.  Later that night, I'm drinking Orval and he's drinking Diet Coke.  He talks a lot about himself, how he likes to sing and how he wants to move to Toronto in five years.  He stops talking and I ask him if he's had a drink since the accident and he says that the taste of alcohol makes him sad and I'm on my third beer.

Brussels is confusing.  It's metropolitanized and French and Flemish and German.  It's a conglomeration of cultures and with the E.U., it's difficult to decipher what Belgium actually is. 

It's good beer harvested by monks and great chocolate and too much of the two makes your cheeks tickle. 

I meet Andreas on the train from Brussels to Berlin.  It's very "Before Sunrise" and he's my Germanic Ethan Hawke, or so it seemed.  He schedules me into his digital planner while out-of-focus scenes of the green German country-side swish past his head.  In three weeks, at 2:05 PM, we'll meet at Place de Luxembourg.  He grabs his empty suitcase from the over-head, and beckons goodbye.  Before hopping off the train, he runs back to my seat, on a last-second whim, and, fucking everything up, whispers, "We're going to have three kids."  Just like that, and he disappears.  I wish he didn't come back and, although I'm willing to pretend that it never happened, it unnerves me. 

When you're all alone traveling, people you meet on the road become romanticized into warped perceptions, false realities.  It's not until later, after the initial rush of human interaction, that you sober up and realize that maybe you're just a little bit lonely.

The Majorcan and the Garden Shed

A portrait painted by the Majorcan

London's cool to the bone.  It's the trendy and the hip with posh accents and Top-Shop nonsense.

It's fun and cultured and somewhat pretentious with pub-crawl ambiance and bad British teeth and tea time (which probably contributes to bad British teeth) and distinction and colonization and Manifest Destiny and just a whole bunch of scrawl.

I take the Metro from Picadilly to Wimbledon, get off, Oyster card in hand.  There's a lot of young white people and there's the flower guy outside the station.  There's the expensive grocery store that I'm boycotting and the line of narrow houses, a kid on a scooter and a public bus.

It's the narrow house with the metal planters that Robert calls the "silver caskets."  Inside the house are a bunch of rocks in drawers and cats on prowl.  The Majorcan artist is in the garden (*side note: the Majorcan artist is always in the garden).  Albert has a twitch, smiles too wide, and smells like primer.  His work is strictly portrait and he's in the garden, painting.  I walk to the back of the yard, past the chicken coop to Albert's studio, a converted garden-shed.  I knock on the door just to say, "I'm here."  He shows me his masterwork in progress, naked clawing bodies desperately stretching across three large canvases.  The bodies have dark under eyes and ugly mouths and they look at you.

"Fantastic," I tell him and go inside the main house, open a cider and sit at the kitchen table, thinking about the ghosts in the house and what's for dinner.
Later that night, Albert and I make crepes, drunk on cider and white wine. 

An Allegory

On a black stage with black walls and a black floor:

Two people are sitting on wooden prop chairs.  They're facing the audience, sitting at an awkward distance from one another, so that it makes the audience uncomfortable.  (Without say, two separate lime-lights on the two separate chairs.)

"It's just peculiar," one audience member notes to another, "that two chairs should be so removed and distant from one another.  And on such a small stage for goodness sake!"  And she coughs and takes a breath mint.

So, back to these two chairs and the two people sitting on them, one boy and one girl.  And the dialogue begins with the boy.

I tried calling you.

You did? 

Yeah.

I didn't get a missed call. 

It went straight to voice-mail.

Why didn't you leave a message?


(Nothing.  A shrug at the very most.)


(Pause) I heard about what happened.  It's awful.

I know.

 Are you okay?


No.

(Pause)



You should have left a message.


I never know what to say.

Well, you should have left a message because then we would be speaking and I wouldn't have to stage a fake conversation we never had.

Next time, I promise.

Okay, good.

Calicatt

When she cusses, people cringe.  "It's just not right," they mutter.  And they're right, in a way.  It's because there's something so darn innocent about her, but if you really stare deep into her dark round eyes, there's something sad and wise and orange and a stripe of green, tiger-eyed, a silky luster, like a playing marble.

And poor girl (except she's not a girl, she's full-fledged and devastatingly breathtaking).  And you wouldn't guess it, but maybe you would, that she's been in the back of a vehicle with sirens screaming, all sorts of contraptions plugged into her, lying down, torso up a little, gasping.

And she's been on the brink of the very worst, and she's faced the very darkest, and, at times, she's prepared to accept the very empty.

But, there's this glimmer when she looks off into the distance in her romantic way, the wing-tips of her mouth rise up a little- and it's not smiling, and it's not smirking, but it's the beginning of something.