All my assumptions broke into pieces:
sharp; slithery; and none-too-shiny.
Portland spoke through my ticklish in-step.
She pressed into the soles of my feet with
rose-and-tumble acceptance.
I skirted puddles known and unknown.
Restless possiblity swayed along my sides.
She steadied my stride—“It’s ok.”

Who knew that asphalt could be a tender touch,
that this patient, old-friend town of mine
would roll out padding and take me easy,
while the stuffing in my head blew ‘round.

I don’t know exactly why I bit her ankle. I hate ladies—I hate this lady: hate; hate; hate her. But I love having her ankle in my mouth. I’m so used to having this ankle in my mouth. I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t bite it anymore. Would life be as sweet? Would I have all those fantasies again about ankles?
Would I feel lonely? Would I long to have my mouth fill with her blood?

Do I even like blood? I don’t know–I’m a dog. I’m bred to hang on, so I do.

She was nice to me, once. She fed me, scratched my ear, but then I ran away. When I came back she said that she was “really quite allergic.” She felt better without me. But that’s not gonna work with me. NOBODY walks away from me. I’ll bite. That’s all there is to it. I’ll show her.

She’s wondering how she can get rid of me. But she can’t. She can’t cut off her foot. That’s not really a solution. I don’t think she’ll go for the old silver bullet. I mean she could wind up worse off than me. She thinks I’ll get tired and fall off, or maybe I’ll get hungry, or distracted.

I mean, what if we pass a really good Bar B Que? Oooo that smell…that smell might get me.

Oh look, a ball–a kid with a ball. I could go for a ball.

(catches himself almost distracted enough to let go) She is so frustrated; trapped by a dog this way. She really cannot believe this is happening to her. She’s busy. I know ‘cause she keep saying that to me after she stops screaming.

And she’s bleeding. Her strength is bleeding away. Yeah, right in my mouth.

She screams out ”Won’t someone please shoot this dog? Please, if I circle back around the block one more time, will you please have your gun ready and try to shoot the dog? Shoot the damn dog and don’t shoot me? Please.”

But she is panting so hard, nobody understands her. Just like a dog.

I try to sleep and find my legs wound and ready to spring. “Release” I tell them. One reminder doesn’t work anymore. Again and again I coax them to let go their useless grip, bit by bit. Since when do I collect anxiety in my thighs, my knees, my buttocks and calves?

I exhale aching sadness from the large muscular triangle of my upper back, both a storehouse and a fortress. My face contorts as if to cry, but the pain is too old and dry to make tears. My eye sockets fill with sand. My arms hang heavy at my sides.

Adrenaline has a harder grip as well. Caught on the edge of the meadow, my chest pounds, arms rattle against my rib cage.

“Still– be still” I repeat.

But long after the explanation, the precaution, the response, someone shakes me by the sternum and pounds me from the inside out.

I hear the stereo send blue ragtime piano keys to blunt the pounding in my temples and unwind my forehead. When the theme repeats it strokes my shoulders and reminds me:

“Exhale.”

Maybe it’s living alone, or feeling more vulnerable for any of the many reasons of this time in life. Maybe I just notice more, as I patrol against the wasted effort and the worthless stress. Remember when I used to cherish the illusion that stressful jolts and muscular efforts were exciting and powerful? They made me feel effective and alive. Now the throbbing in my chest, the knots in my stomach and shoulders, the pulse in my arms just make me feel old–older than any wrinkle or hotflash.

My skin and muscles miss a warm hand that would unlock them at the end of the day. Surely my nights are poorer without a body larger and warmer than mine to wrap around me as I sleep. I don’t yet crave love, but I do crave touch.

She’ll have all these feelings–like she’ll wish she had an email, or that he’d be next to her when she rolled over in the morning. She’ll worry about him, or she’ll get all lovey. So now I’m here—she can say “oh, that’s Tom. That’s him. He doesn’t always think to email” or “he had to leave early this morning.”

Talk about warm fuzzies—that’s what I get all the time. That’s the whole thing on my side. She seems to feel better and then she just goes about her business. Me? Well I guess I go about mine, too. I just wait until she might need me the next time.

What about when she’s done with me? Will I be sad? lonely? resentful? Naw. It’s not like that, at all. Don’t get me wrong—I’m no martyr. I’ll just fade away, maybe not even a memory. Just a name.

You know, you hear people fuss about “what’s in a name. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet” and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, but what if there was no rose, no flower, no girl named Rose, no nothing? Just an R and an O and then an S and an E. What’s that? Just a name. Like T O M

It’s sorta like if a tree falls in the forest and your name comes thundering out of the ground, shaking the birds and the worms and the little critters in the soil. Was it there a minute before? Prob’ly not. When did it get there—when the tree fell or in my case, when she felt a little winsome.

I’m just here as long as she thinks “That’s just Tom.” Then she’s happy to have me there—her sweet little figment. Whatever. That’s cool.

“Why do you sit at home, writing this shit? Why aren’t you going to street fairs or raising dahlias or riding a mountain bike to the top of the world, around the lake and home again? That’s fun. This? This is nothing. You know, you never did learn French.”

True, we all need a push sometimes, but not doubt, thank you. Most times, I’m comfortable here at home, with and without my friends. I do whatever seems to be most important to me, even the laundry. That’s pathetic—but I’m getting used to it.

You see, I’m no longer young enough to try everything, but I’m old enough to try anything. I’m probably allergic to knitting, mysteries, gardening and most organized fun. I’m too old and too young for some things anymore: too old to pretend I like those things I really don’t; too young to stop trying new things, even if they might not work for me.

It’s a devilment of opposites. I long for structure and I love spontaneity. I’ve no need to be boxed in, but I build boxes faster than I know what to do with them. Anything and nothing goes—me, them, it, elsewhere and likewise. It’s art versus laundry—sure that’s an old and easy battle. But now it’s also art in laundry, and hell, just laundry. It’s my joy, my fantasy, my passion. And when the worm unwinds, it’s my loneliness.

The fretful details—the small steps that build all the Romes—send me running, fearful of futility, threatened by brittleness and loneliness. The details might want hours, days even. They might seize control and swallow up all my time and creative bandwidth. “Tidy up, pay the bills, read the mail.”

Some do these things well, with graceful routines that leave time for brandy and laughter. Some avoid them altogether. I desire both and do neither. When I finally turn to the ledger and account them their due, that’s when I notice false, brittle orderliness. Then that corner slips away to avalanche.

Of course it’s all perspective. The very grandest matters are just a series of small tasks that take attention, routine, method. Great thoughts and dreams require accounting and attention to detail. But when this starts to feel like a cog-in-the-works process, I sigh out precursor-despair. Tasks may be delicious, with their well-crossed lists. They may offer a place to hide. But whether I’ve embraced them as a hiding place or as tasks well-done, the insularity of small matters whimpers with interstitial
loneliness. “Can’t he kiss away the fearsome details?” Instead, the powder cloud swirls around me and I’m lost in it.

Someday they’ll find me out, those people who never knew to wonder, but suddenly do because they saw the feature expose. They had been busy grilling wienies and tossing softballs, riding their mountain bikes and digging their dahlias. They kayaked, spoke French and made love—or thought they did. They sang “Hallelujah” and crocheted potholders, never giving me a thought, I know. But now, they’re a little curious.

“Who does that?” they wonder, in that distract-able moment of our collective ADD. They didn’t understand why I sat at home, quietly minding my own business or why I looked wildly for my own business, again and again, in the comfort and newness of my middle-ages. They didn’t need to ponder why I had dressers with someone else’s crap still in them.

Who will reveal me? The hungry writer, hunting down one of those delicious stories of the weird—I mean everyman—crawling brilliantly through the wormhole of obscurity? Or is it the archeologist coming to rescue me from the avalanche of loneliness in small matters.

The Bitch started to move in during the muddle of middle school. My mother groomed her. First, she was a frustrated teen: pushing, hiding, wisecracking, seething and getting by. That’s the girl who needed the theatre so much, who was afraid to speak and wanted someone else to write her lines, to ive her a way to expel the steam inside her—“Bill Starbuck, you’re a liar and a fake.”

She was fed by the confusions of suburban California in the late ‘60s. With her sarcastic tone and sneering style she polished me into a young woman. She could take on Mama-the bitch-of-survival.

And finally I was rid of that damnably shy little lost thing who could never say what she wanted, never trust that her legs could carry her fast enough or that her lungs would support anything like abandon.

That one? Even though she was a kid, she listened to cautionary tales, she saved and measured, she played alone, quietly, she listened to the adults. Don’t ask questions, don’t upset anyone. She stuffed away her big old, grand old self: no one could love her that way.

Oh forget about her; let’s go be The Professional Bitch. The Professional Bitch was the only way to approach the repetitive carelessness of a cruel workplace, of a viscous profession, of a narcissistic husband.

She could close every comment, every argument. Last words were her specialty: last words and stage whispers. She could keep a list a mile long. She could drink scotch and laugh with the men. And with the Bitch, I was funny and glib. With her, I had a context, a ‘tude, a style. With the Bitch boa wrapped around my shoulders, nothing could hurt me. My stride was, sexy, witty, and impermeable.

But … I was a bitch.

She was powerful. And a little toxic.

Really, I was a hollow milk chocolate bunny, the kind my mother was always disappointed to bite. Didn’t everyone know I was hollow inside?  I thought it was perfectly obvious.  If I let anyone get close they were sure to know, right off.  Empty!  Fraud! My biggest fear. I could listen for a cue, be ready to run, adopt passing dreams, directions, beliefs, mannerisms. But I couldn’t muster conviction. I didn’t follow through.

The anger must have been there all along, just waiting to be flung at some unrepentant shit-head. Oh, I wouldn’t dare. And I wouldn’t even think about it for another twenty years.

By then, the Bitch had mellowed considerably. She ran into the usual pumice of disappointment, exhaustion, love, empathy, indifference, time and uncertainty. Grain by grain the rock-face wore away; sometimes boulder by boulder. She didn’t become less exacting or critical. She just got tired and gave up more often.

And that damnably shy little lost thing? She grew, even shut away and abandoned like that.  She grew: silent; hidden; unknown. She wanted a turn. She finally grew strong enough to push the door ajar.

“H’lo?  Where did she go, that Bitch that ran my life?”

It was my daughter who discovered the surprising fact and told me—I wasn’t a bitch. Next thing I knew, a man told me I was sweet.

“Sweet?  Me? The Bitch? You’ve got to be kidding.”

“No—your essence is sweet.”

Now how can he know something like that?  How could he see inside when there’s nothing there to see?

But it just might be true. I can tell the story my way. I’m a grownup and I fill me all up from my toes to my fingers.  I feel the sun on my shoulders and it’s ok. Maybe I don’t need the bitch to protect me.

Shelley with Therapist Dr. Dopfelganger

Miriam as the first Shelley

Cindy Lyndin: the first Laine

SET: Shelley's Home

A glass of wine helps the reunion.

Finally, a woman who's Almost Normal.

Who could ask for anything more?

We barely knew each other, but it was time to celebrate his birthday. So I suggested a trip to the coast? What location held more promise, energy, escape?

I hadn’t checked into a hotel with a man other than my ex in over 20 years. The atmosphere was so charged I could barely sign. There was a king sized bed, a hot tub, and the two of us for hours and hours.

Just after midnight we finally dragged ourselves out of bed and down to the beach. I’d heard something about the Leonid meteor shower. No one would count on a clear sky at Cannon Beach, but there it was, black velvet sparkled with stars everywhere–and then they started to fly. They shot from the foreground to the background, across the sky in wild arcs, low to high and back again. They fired at Haystack Rock in the Pacific. The trusty monument was surprised to hand over its glory to the coastal sky, finally free of her shroud and busy staging the best light-show in the world.

The half-dozen of us strung across the wide beach bonded in ecstatic exclamations. We spun around dizzily to catch the action. The sky wasn’t still for a moment. My birthday boy knew all the constellations by name, distance, and location. He was a fabulous guide to our sparkled travels that evening: twisting, turning and gasping in the excitement of it all. Some hours later, we finally gave it up, although the show went on and on.

I learned since that nature does not speak in signs, metaphors, allegories or favorites. That brilliant display had nothing to do with our brilliance, suitability, or the destiny of our love, however much I wanted to believe it. Romance, like everything else, looks for confirmation. And what could be better than this amazing night with my star stud. It was fantastic and for awhile, it sparkled our shiniest points.

For information about producing this show contact Miriam at nochowfun@gmail.com

Thanks for bringing this group together year upon year, through marriages, visiting parents, babies, toddlers, widowed mothers, t’weens, divorces, rearrangements, and— for some time now— only one Grandma left. Maybe sometime we’ll be the grandmas. Will that add to or take away? Yes, well, don’t anyone hold their breath.Thanks for all the spills, the misses, and fine nights of charades.

This is what my Thanksgivings have looked like for most of thirty years. A tight and cozy table at a friend’s house with once-a-year linen and platters upon platters. It must have been a whole year between each one of these food-a-thons, but I’m surprised they add up so high.

Thanks for good fortune in our own lives. We’re fortunate that our sadnesses have been transitory: real but not chronic. Long suffering has stayed distant from this table. Death has come only for the older ones.  We’ve come to know that’s not always the case and so we’ve grown so very grateful.

Our children…they already grew up so fast. Now that we see the rate of spin, we know their lives will fly right by at an increasing rate. We know that the next ten years might have some harsh surprises for them—for us. No rush, no rush—but no slowing it down.

Take a few moments before dessert. Take a basket, choose teams and try to recollect the movies ofthe year, the book titles nobody read and the songs that separate the generations.  Let me hold onto this enormous good and gather in all the smells and tastes, the warmth and the story, the hopes, the disappointments and the familiar smiles. Let me taste them like another course, no matter how full I am. Four and twenty lifetimes baked in a pie. Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full.