Pesto Pink Prose

In which I talk tediously of heartache, indecision, nausea and the all-important tummy ache.

To put it delicately -I’m sick- delightfully, disgustingly so. There’s a constant ache of a bad mood in the middle of my diaphragm. A three-day hurling, heaving, gasping, gagging awareness amounting to I can’t, I won’t, and I don’t want to.

Vomiting prose to alleviate my symptoms. Like a bottle of tequila, the bad decisions revisit me at 5:41 am.

I need to buy a lotto ticket with those numbers.

Because when I rollover from a sleepless night of indecision and indigestion, tequila ad nauseam, the skankin’ clock flashes it’s red neon limbs, drag-queening a digital disco display of 5:41.

Where’s my pepto?

The problem is the tempo has changed. My inner beat is an inner static radar blip, a hill of a hiccup, the dense thunking echo of a gospel good time. I’ve lost my rhythm, my moxie, my mo-ho-jo. The ball is a turning but the lights aren’t a flashing. The strap on my platform shoe is kaput, paper-bag plain broke, and there’s a blister on my big toe. I’m a ring-a-ding dull duck in my bell-bottom trunks.

Jesus, enough with the disco metaphors already.

I’m emotionally monotonic, monochromatic, and monotonous. The tinder’s damp and the spark’s not hot. My house ablaze is now a house abased.

I’m a cheap cracker jack toy, a lick-spit tattoo, a little flip-to-animate booklet. A stale pale chicklet, masticated and spackled to the bare ass butt side of a derelict diner table.

Yeah…that table.

You know the one, where you spent time between classes consuming the caffeine grounds to be found at the bottom of stained melamine coffee cups to jumpstart the combustion of your last two remaining brain cells. Back when you believed the secrets of life could be evinced in those moments between sipping burnt beans and staring at the rip-roaring tip of a half smoked cigarette.

I’m the rubbed out, scrubbed out butt of the joke under your boot when you gave up.

It’s a pity I gave up smoking. There was a time when cigarettes made me intelligent, when with a cigarette in one hand and a drink in the other (preferably alcoholic), I could expatiate and expound on the theory of existentialism.

Now, when I crave the nicotine rush, the yellow tinge to my fingers, the smoky smell of burnt tobacco, those once fleeting moments of intellectual competence, I chew my drugged up chicklet, bemoan my fate, and blame everyone else.

 

The Death of A Man

Osama Bin Laden is dead.

We celebrate the death of a man like we celebrate the birth of a child. Nine years of breathless existence in the darkened womb of terroristic oppression and suddenly we are born anew, through pain and bloodshed, filling the air with the lusty cry of freedom, justice and the American way.

The American way now sanctions premeditated murder.

“Vengeance is mine,” sayeth the Lord.

Premeditated murder becomes justifiable homicide when America needs revenge, when America cries for vengeance. Death becomes a commodity bought with a hollow tip bullet. Our symbol of freedom no longer the American flag, but the slaughtered body of a terrorist…long may freedom wave.

We demanded vengeance. We murdered a man. We played God.

And created a martyr.

Osama Bin Laden is dead.
Long live Osama Bin Laden.

 

Happy Easter!!

 

The Point at Which You Realize You May Have Had One to Many or “How Loren Got Her Groove On”

You know how it is. You tell yourself that one more glass won’t hurt, then you find yourself in the back of an ’81 mazda hatchback cuddled up to the spare tire promising it your first unborn child if it would just stop fucking spinning, while up in the front bucket seat driving to meet the devil is a hairy beary beast of a man named Leonard who insists you promised to introduce him to your baby brother and you’re apologizing and begging random obscure stone deities for forgiveness while you vomit up a lung into a 7/11 stryofoam big gulp.

 

“Coffee’s Cold.”

A white-faced clock ticked off the minutes with black hands from where it hung on the faded old-fashioned wallpaper in the kitchen.

Ellen had both elbows on the table. Her chin rested in the palm of her left hand as she watched her husband eat. The first finger of her right hand picked at a scratch in the fake marble Formica while a steady drip from the faucet pinged a rhythm against the bottom of the steel tub kitchen sink. A pile of paper napkins stood up in a wooden holder in the center of the table. Jim wiped away a layer of chicken grease from his chin with the back of his arm. Ellen’s romance novel laid, propped open with a butter knife, spread eagle on the last page she’d read before he had come in to dinner.

An untouched leg of fried chicken was cooling on her plate next to a mound of mashed potatoes and green bean casserole she had made for their dinner. Fried chicken was Jim’s second favorite meal.

Ellen hadn’t felt up to cooking ribs.

It was hot in the kitchen. Their air conditioner had sputtered once and coughed out a final fine mist of moisture five years ago and hadn’t worked a summer day since. The old oscillating fan in the corner half-heartedly whirred more noise than air. Sweat eased down the nape of Ellen’s neck wetting the collar of her shirt. She grabbed a paper napkin and wiped at her forehead. Frying chicken in July wasn’t the best way to keep the kitchen cool.

A sharp rapping noise made Ellen glance at Jim. He used his fork to motion at the plate of chicken on the kitchen table. Ellen picked up the serving tongs and added another fried breast to his plate. Jim grabbed the chipped porcelain gravy boat and covered every thing on his plate in a thick layer of Ellen’s grandmother’s recipe for mushroom gravy.

Ellen’s eyes drifted away from Jim. They noticed the hole in the screen door near the knob and the bent metal grille the cat used to climb. The black and white linoleum at the doorway peeled away to show part of the wooden subfloor. Clods of dirt cluttered the floor next to the jamb where Jim had banged the mud off his boots before sitting down at the table to eat.

The rest of the floor was spotlessly clean.

He cleared his throat. Ellen jerked from her contemplation of the floor and tipped her head just enough to watch Jim through her eyelashes. Jim didn’t look up as he ate, one fork full after the next. Ellen glanced over at the coffee pot on the stove then stirred her fork through the cold potatoes on her plate. Tick tick, drip drip, whirr whirr accompanied the scrape of Jim’s fork across the faded blue and white of his stoneware dinner plate.

Jim cleared his throat again. The noise exasperated, bordering on angry. Ellen shoved away from the table, her chair rearing up on its hind legs and threatening to tip over. She grabbed the coffee pot off the back of the stove and poured a cup of coffee before setting the cup down on the table next to her husband. She turned back to the sink, placed the plug in the drain and started filling the sink with soap and hot water. Running water and the low whine of the old hot water heater in the corner of the room replaced the sound of the drip.

“Coffee’s cold.”

Ellen’s hands dripped as she reached across to turn the knob on the kitchen stove for the back burner where the pot sat. The click of the pilot light stopped when the gas lit fire.

“Are you going to eat that?”

Ellen didn’t bother to turn around, just shook her head and shut off the water. The water heater hiccupped once and was silent. The air of the fan briefly touched her back and was gone again. Ellen could hear Jim scrapping the food off her plate on to his.

She hadn’t planned on eating anyway.

Ellen could hear Jim chewing. She looked out through the window over the sink. The woods behind their small house looked shady and cool. Inviting. She could taste the vomit in her throat. She swallowed hard. She washed and rinsed the square cast iron skillet her mother had passed down to her. Ellen knew if she turned around she’d find Jim hunched over his plate sheltering his food as though someone might steal it.

She didn’t turn around.

Ellen pulled a clean towel out from the drawer next to the sink and carefully dried the cast iron. She moved the coffee pot off the back burner and placed the skillet on it. She carried the pot to the table and refilled Jim’s cup.

Ellen took special care not to look directly at Jim.

She grabbed a paper napkin out of the holder and went back to the stove. In the center of the stove was an open can of Crisco. She dipped the napkin in the thick vegetable shortening and smeared it around the inside of her mother’s skillet. The skillet had been a gift on her wedding day. Ellen’s mother, with a smile, had told her she’d need it to keep her husband in line.

Ellen’s lips twitched for a moment before they settle back down into their familiar hard line. The cast iron was starting to smoke. She moved it to the front burner and turned the gas off.

“Coffee’s still fucking cold!”

The handle of the skillet was hot. It burned the palm of her hand as Ellen lifted it. Her mother’s gift was heavy and the muscles in her shoulder bunched and sweated in the summer heat as she drew back and swung. It hit Jim’s head with a suprisingly loud crunching noise. His head fell forward into his plate, grandma’s mushroom gravy splattering the table like taupe colored blood.

Ellen swung the skillet again.

And again.

Globs of gravy and blood clung to everything: the kitchen table, the clean floor, her shirt and the skillet. Ellen went back to the sink and washed and dried the pan again. For 5 seconds the click, click, click, click, click of the gas pilot light on the stove beat time with the tick, tick, tick, tick, tick of the wall clock. Ellen heated and greased the pan again. When finished she put it on its hook on the wall above the stove.

The phone hung under the wall clock. Ellen dialed 911. There was nothing for it now; she was going to end up in jail. She turned around and looked at the mess she’d made. Sometimes anger got the best of her.

Ellen shook her head. If only she had waited for the mushrooms to work.

 

Act 1 Law Unconstitutional

“Life ain’t fair,” she said.

I live in Arkansas.

Circuit court judge Chris Piazza is my hero. Yesterday he struck down the blatantly biased law, Act 1, banning unmarried adults from fostering or adopting children in the state of Arkansas. This law was unconstitutional. It denied a group of people the right to their pursuit of happiness (fostering or adopting a child) because of their marital status. The Family Council Action Committee even admitted that its main objective with initiating Act 1 was to ban gays from fostering or adopting children. “Jerry Cox, director of the Family Council, the conservative organization that spearheaded a drive to put the initiated (Gay Adoption Ban) act on the November 2008 general election ballot…said his group will definitely appeal.” – Times Record.

Act 1 took away a person’s right to privacy and used morality as a basis to judge a person’s fitness to foster or adopt. The problem with using morality to judge a person’s fitness is that morality is subjective and determined by individuals. My personal morality does not agree with the morality that set this law.

Laws should be based on equality and fairness. Leave your morality out of it. It is our responsibility as voters to not pass a law using our individual beliefs, but to be as unbiased as possible and to only vote yes to laws that are fair and equal to everyone -no matter their race, sex, or sexual orientation. If a law denies the rights of any one individual it is unconstitutional. This law basically said that you do not have the right to have children if you are single.

Okay – let’s remove the fact that this law was specifically targeted to prohibit gays from adopting or fostering –which is another reason why it’s unconstitutional. Laws are not to be created to oppress any individual or group. Instead let’s focus on the fact that it restricts all unmarried people from fostering or adopting. The state said: “children are better off raised in traditional family settings, with married parents, and that the law should be upheld because it protects children from abuse and neglect.” -Times Record.

Did the state just say that single parents are more likely to abuse or neglect their children? That’s what it sounds like to me.

Woah…hold on a minute…my mother was a single parent. She divorced my dad when I was 4 years old. My mother never abused or neglected me, or my six siblings.

Do I take this personally – yes.

But let’s just leave my feeling out this argument. The state has made it clear that fostered and adopted children are better off raised in “traditional family settings.” Does this mean that if a couple adopts a child and ten years down the road divorces they are no longer fit to be parents? Will the state now decide they are more likely to be abusive because they are currently single, and remove the adopted child?

I can almost see you shaking your head. You’re thinking I’m going to far with this analogy, right? But, when you let morality decide which laws to enact, then we are just one step away from using someone’s morality to enact a law that takes adopted children from single divorced parents – because the state specifically believes that single parents are more likely to abuse and neglect those children.

And your neighbor just might agree with the state and vote yes.

Are you currently a single parent? I don’t care about your sex or your sexual orientation. It’s none of my business what you do or don’t do in private. And that’s what it comes down to: your right to privacy, my right to privacy, and in all fairness everyone’s right to privacy.

We’ve forgotten what the word fair means.

 

Don’t sleep where you shit

Dog or Cat? Personality wise? I’m more of a cat type of person, self-absorbed until I want petting and totally out for myself. Unlike the SO who’s more of a dog, puppy really, always jumping and licking and desperately wanting to play fetch, and dumping his shit anywhere he feels like it, unlike a cat that likes to bury it in sand, and pretend it doesn’t exist…or is that ostriches?

Anyway it comes down to something my dad always says: Don’t shit where you sleep.

Which, unlike the usual meaning of this phrase, was his colorfully craptacular way of saying that when times get tough take care of the essential stuff, like food, clothing and a safe place to have sex sleep. Everything else is extraneous, and ultimately unnecessary.

Now why, you ask, am I talking about puppies and pussies and piles of shit? Well, let me tell you a story. It begins like every good fairy tale, a sleepless beauty, a horny handsome prince, one chaste not kiss, his castle in the sky, beautiful music, gorgeous children, everything flowing with red wine and honey.

Then Karma comes by, bitch that she is, sashaying her plump sexy ass, tempting you with hidden hurts and you end up ogling her heaving breasts, falling in love with that delicate swurve of skin on the inside of her elbow, the one on the inside of her ankle, the way she always smells of cinnamon, and you pray to god, the devil, that filthy talking deity - who only responds to your benedictions during the best fucking orgasms – that she never finds out that you don’t really believe in fate, or predestination, or the equivalent retribution of the masculine dog when it finds out about your newest kitty….

Not entirely the most appropriate type of nursery tale to recite to inquisitive 4 year olds at 9pm, but it doesn’t matter, because the plot’s a cliché, the ending sucks and no one’s learning a lesson from the moral: Sometimes Dad knows what he’s talking about, because when you go back to sleeping with dogs? Don’t bitch because you wake up chewed, flea-bitten and covered in shit.

Yeah, I know, I’m mixing up tails, but I’ve been doing it so long now it’s become a habit.

*shrugs*

Probably not a good one….

 

Waiting on the World to Change

In high-school, did you ever read the “Choose your Own Adventure” books? The ones where at some point in the story it would ask you what would happen next and the choice you made determined how the story would end?

Life is a bit like this.

I came to this eye-opening conclusion while driving to work the other morning listening to an older John Mayer song called “Waiting on the World to Change”.

The song’s main theme is about a generation that isn’t lazy and disinterested, but instead is one that doesn’t believe in their ability to make a change, so they will wait for one.  Makes me think they deserve the world they get. Because it’s easy, you don’t like the way the world is? Make a different choice next time.

I bet you’re thinking: it can’t be that simple. You’re wrong. What we do and say changes what happens next, just like when choosing what would happen next in the book changed the ending. If you want the world to change for the better – then you must make the choice to change for the better first.

Every choice we make has an effect, the butterfly flapping its wings. Simple everyday choices, like not cursing the guy who cuts you off in traffic helps teach your child to have patience – and better language, ideally making them a better person.

When I became old enough to vote, I chose to vote Democrat. Yesterday America proved my choice right.

When asked why I’m a Democrat, I always say “because I live on this planet, and I don’t live on it alone.”  I became a Democrat because I believe that we have a responsibility to treat each other the best we can and to try to put in place laws that are fair and equal for every individual that lives in this country, and on some level, this planet.

This all comes down to what happened today. Obama’s healthcare bill has passed. What this means is that health care will now be more accessible to every American, no matter their income level, and hopefully, more affordable.

My mother was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1986, when she was 37 years old. She was a single mother of seven, working a factory job barely above poverty level, with no insurance because she couldn’t afford it. Then could not afford the more than $800 a month for the Betaseron (experimental back then) that would have slowed the progress of the disease and allowed her a few more years of decent health. Couldn’t afford it, but was disqualified from the indigent program, which would have paid for the medicine, because she made too much money! Imagine that. Instead she went without so that she could feed us, and the multiple sclerosis flipped her off by becoming rapidly progressive, putting her in a wheelchair at 45 and turning her into what amounted to a quadra-paraplegic by her 50th birthday.

Almost everyone I’ve talked to seems to have a similar story – it happened to their brother, their grandmother,  their neighbor – yet so many of them didn’t want this bill to pass. My question is why? If someone in your life has suffered from a lack of decent health care, why wouldn’t you want them to have access to something better?

Is this perfect? No. Is there hope? Yes.

One choice at a time, if the last choice didn’t make a change in your world, make a different choice next time.

Yesterday America had a choice to make. And it chose a better one.

 

No Soul To Sell

I’m the last person that has a right to talk about God. I’m agnostic, much to my momma’s distress. Show me proof. That’s all I want, a bit of proof I can believe in. They say you have to take it on faith, but I have no faith.

Never have.

Is this a character flaw or just a plot device in a life that gets incredibly harder to live every day? Maybe this existence is just an act, a scene in a Broadway musical produced by God and directed by Satan. I’m just the understudy.

Or maybe I didn’t even make the cut. Yeah, that sounds about right. Because I’ve got no rhythm, no soul, can’t dance or carry a tune, so I’m in props now.

Regulated to the dark corners, adjusting the curtains, drawing them closed at the end of every climatic moment, seeing this divine comedy from the sidelines, getting a sideways view of life, where the lines aren’t as easy to hear.

Aren’t as easy to understand.

See- that’s why I make these mistakes. God has decided I don’t have enough talent for the final number and Satan just loves ordering his minions around. Go there, do this. Faster, slower. Right, left. Up, down. Never a dull moment. Never a moment of peace.

Confused.

I was raised Catholic. Absolution found in confession, penance, contrition and it sounds so simple. Confess your sins, act sorry for them and perform an act of contrition. Contrition takes away the sin and its consequences. Doesn’t it seem too easy? Can there really be confession, if there’s no one to hear it? Penitence if there’s no one to forgive it?

Because if you don’t believe, then there is no one to turn to.

You are your own accuser, the priest, jury and judge, the understudy of God. The sentence conferred is deliverance from the guilt of sin. But, and here’s the question, if you can’t forgive yourself, can you really be forgiven? Is there any sin to great? A sin that damns us no matter what Acts of Contrition we perform?

As a child I was always intimidated by communion, by the idea of eating God, because that is what metaphysically happens. That cheap tasteless wafer and that watered-down wine, represented the holiest of ideas: God in the form of flesh, Jesus pre-ascension. One in the same. When I was younger, confession was grievances against my brothers and sisters, apologies for being a disobedient daughter, lust after a certain toy, things of that nature, and it’s been years since I last took communion: Rip into his flesh, drink down his blood and live in him forever. Now when I think about it, I get all shivery inside. It seems like a sensual act; the eating, the feasting, the decadent gluttony of having God inside you. Filling you with his life, his spirit and I must read way too much porn.

I wonder what my priest would say if I confessed today.

For someone who doesn’t believe there is a God, I dedicate a lot of time to the contemplation of him. Maybe because deep inside I really want that proof.

 

Smoking his last cigarette

God took a smoke break at 3:55 Wednesday afternoon.

Gray ash hung from the tip of his Marlboro Light, burning red, as he inhaled. He watched it puff out like a chimney stack as he exhaled, upwards, spanning out and fading away.

He enjoyed this.

He ignored the sounds of the cities below, the horns, the yelling and the tire screech. He leaned his head back against the brick of the rooftop exit shaft, just around the corner and out of sight of the exit door, and brought his cigarette up to stare at the glowing tip.

He prayed for a day off.

He snorted and took another drag. Being in charge was all hype. Omnipotence just meant God got all the blame.

Gabriel was searching for him. The best worst thing about being God was instant knowledge. He only needed to think of someone, and he knew what he or she was doing or thinking. The trick was to try not to think of anyone in particular, unless he needed that person – or was hiding from them. Right now, Gabriel was going from office to office, folders tucked under his arm, glancing at his wristwatch and muttering “late, late, late” his appearance uncannily similar to a certain white wonderland rabbit.

Gabriel was muttering because God worked on a schedule – and there was a typhoon due off the coast of Japan today.

Typhoons made for great surfing. He’d planned this particular one last spring when he noticed an unusually high infestation of caterpillars on the planet below.

The schedule functioned to make heaven run smoothly. Gabriel’s job was to make sure God stuck to the schedule.  Let it rain for forty days, once, because you’re distracted by department wide budget cuts – and suddenly everyone’s a critic. So now there were budget meetings every Monday, life and death decisions on Tuesday, research and development meetings on Wednesday, natural disasters and environmental changes on Thursday, sales meetings on Friday, prayers answered -or not- on Saturday, and final judgments held on Sunday – and wasn’t limbo hell for all the people who died any other day of the week?

Bureaucracy sucked.

“Those things will kill you.” God glanced over, to find Satan leaning with his shoulder against the corner of the exit shaft, hands shoved deep in his pant’s pockets. Satan raised an eyebrow and glanced at the cigarette still burning in God’s hand.

“I wish.” Free time over with, God groaned and rubbed it out on the brick wall, then pocketed the butt in his coat. He’d throw it away when he got back to his office. He never littered – mainly because after spending half his current existence creating heaven and earth (not the six days fictitiously depicted in his unauthorized biography) he wasn’t about to spend the other half cleaning it up.

He’d also found guilt to be a strong motivator with the environmental groups, and he wasn’t above using it to his advantage.

“Making Gabriel hunt for you is cruel.” Satan held open the door to the roof exit.

“I’m a cruel god. Gabriel needs to learn patience is a virtue.” God sprinted down the stairs, grabbing the rail as he spun onto the landing of the 42nd floor, shoving through the stairwell access door into the upper offices’ hallway.

“Don’t tell me you’re starting to listen to your own publicity.”

“I think you should be more worried about me listening to yours.” God’s office was at the end of the hallway, double doors standing open. Gabriel sat at the desk outside; phone tucked between his shoulder and ear, while he pointed at his wristwatch and silently mouthed, “Late.” God walked right on by.

“The truth doesn’t worry me, I am evil.” Satan’s face distorted from the usual visage of nondescript brown hair, blue eyes and a smattering of freckles into a bald, red-skinned demon with horns and a flaming crown, before flickering back to normal.

“Only when I forget to turn in my expense report.” God picked up a folder off his desk and slapped it against Satan’s chest. It didn’t make quite the impact he wanted; it was pretty slim this month.

“You put me in charge of balancing the budget, this business of living and dying ain’t cheap.”

“The reason I put you in charge of the budget was because you were the worst assistant I ever had, and a total pain in my –bleep-.” God slapped his hand against the desk. Some supreme deity he was -couldn’t even say a curse word.

Satan shook his finger at him, “Uh uh uh,  that’s not allowed up here.”

God slouched down into the chair behind his desk. “Jesus, I need a day off.”

Gabriel stuck his head in the door, “Jesus? He’s at the Saints game. Do you want me to send someone to fetch him?”

Just what he needed, Gabriel to send an archangel to retrieve his son from a football game, like a dog fetching a stick, and then ten thousand Saints fans reporting tonight on the evening news they had witnessed the second ascension. God fell forward and banged his head against his desk, smack dab in the middle of his desk calendar, next to the words ‘typhoon 3pm’ written and circled in red.

“Gabriel,” God lifted his head and pointed at the circled words, “Is this 3pm our time, or does this equal some below time zone I can never keep track of.”

“Our time.”

God looked at the clock on the wall – 4:22 – then looked at his surfboard leaning against the bookshelves across the room.

“God – bleep – I missed it.”