Vignette

The kitchen walls are wallpapered. Oh, the soft violet, the eggshell cream bliss background. I've invited people over to come and look. I haven't said anything, of course; it's best if they notice it for themselves. The compliments are more genuine that way.

*****

John, Roberta, Marcus, Maya and Arthur came over for coffee and cake yesterday. No one said a thing about the wallpaper. Maya talked at length about her promotion, Arthur is in the midst of a midlife crisis and is therefore switching careers, and Roberta is pregnant again. Only Marcus commented on the decor -- on the drapes -- which are at least a year old. 

"Your place is looking wonderful, Jennifer. I just love your taste. Are those new drapes?" he asked. 

"Those old things? They're nothing really," I said. "We ought to replace them, if you want to know the truth," I said. I think I handled it fairly well. 

"Roberta, I'm just so excited for you. I can't even imagine having a third! And I'm sure you'll lose the baby weight in no more than a couple of years," Maya said. 

"I want to be fat and round like a goddess," Roberta said. "It's just that I've always been so conventionally attractive. You know, I saw a thing on Facebook that said -- get this -- 'Real women have curves.' And there was a picture of a fat woman doing yoga on the beach. I think there's something to that." 

"You're so wise," said Maya. 

I bit my lip. 

"Are you bleeding?" Maya asked. 

"No. It's regenerative lip color," I answered. I think I covered that pretty well. 

So I think it's safe to say that coffee and cake was a bust. And, besides, John and Roberta bought a boat. How can I compete with that?

"Well that was a bust," I told Tim after they had left. 

"What was? We served coffee and cake, the boys drank cognac, the girls drank liqueur; what went wrong?" he asked. 

"Well, I think you know, " I said. 

"No, I don't."

"Yes, you do. You know perfectly well."

"Yeah, you're right," said Tim. "I wish they had commented on it, too."

*****

It was all too much. I just had to do something. Tim's bonus bought us a nice new sofa - a bargain at 15,000 dollars. It's white and very impressive. 

Coffee and cake, round 2. 

*****

"I even have this beautiful baby bump," said Roberta. "I'm that much closer to goddesshood."

"Has your sofa always been this comfortable, Jennifer?" asked Marcus. 

"Well, actually, no, " I said, winking and nodding conspiratorially. Marcus looked at me like I'd told a joke he didn't get, but was chuckling along anyway. 

"She's lying, Marcus," Maya said. "She's always been modest about these sorts of things. Jennifer, tell him that it's always been comfortable as fuck." 

"It's been as comfortable as beep since I bought it," I said. 

"There you go, Marcus. What did I tell you. This is Chateau de Jennifer and Tim: eternally comfortable. Consistent. Reliable." 

"So, studying pedagogy is so much more rewarding than law," said Arthur. "I mean, I don't know why, at 20, I thought the paycheck was so important. It's the kids, man."

"It's new," I said. "It's a fucking new sofa from Italy."

"You were never one to swear, honey. Shame on you!" Maya said. 

Roberta rubbed her belly and smiled. "Yeah, it's not good for tiny ears."

"Your baby doesn't have ears yet," Tim said. "Now, who wants cognac? Ladies, I trust that you want something a little sweeter."

"I'll take a shot of Everclear," I said. 

Certainty

How do they do it?

I stumbled upon this blogpost. It discusses, with some amount of hubris, the fact of having beauty, and that having beauty affords certain privileges. The author mentions asking for and receiving free drinks as one such perk.

I wasn't appalled by her presumption, nor was I jealous of her pretty photo. I was deeply envious of her certainty.

Imagine asking a bartender, with a straight face and all the confidence that beauty imbues, for a free drink. Going into a place of business and requesting a nonessential service for exactly no return. What if the bartender laughs in your face and tells you to fuck off? What if he says, "You're not THAT pretty, honey." What if he enumerates your flaws for all to hear? How can you possibly assume - know for certain based on a reflection and your own perception - that you are beautiful? How can you know that?

The ones with this certainty - were they not knocked down sometimes? Were they always tucked in close, accepted consistently and unconditionally by their loved ones? It can't be. There must have been setbacks. Everyone, no matter how lovely, must have occasionally felt the sting of rejection. They must have moments of self-reflection in which they recall injurious words, indifference, ugliness reflected in their direction. In those moments, they must doubt the validity of their own assessment.

She does mention moments of neurosis; "morning pillow face" is the apocalypse, and the absence of catcalls is disappointing. No "nice guys" ever approach her, but that's only because of how intimidating her beauty is (God knows beauty and ''niceness" are like oil and water). But hubris has lent her truth, and she knows her place in the scheme of desire. Isn't there value in that? Can we really fault her for her certainty while the rest of us struggle to figure out what we are and how others see us? 

Untitled 2

marked down
a red sticker with a white border
take it out of the cupboard when in need of it
let it lie in disuse if you've nothing for it to do
there is no crime in this
because it is flawed
marred on the assembly line and slapped with the sticker
just as soon as someone noticed
it is desperate for a home
you'd be doing it a favor
take it, please
we can't stand to look at it anymore 

Untitled

Who am I?
 I am a what.
 I am a nurse lover, a roll of scotch tape over a gash in the gut
 I take sickness and eat it
 Belch in thanks and declare myself well-fed.

 The rot inside me smells of greenery
 They glimpse my fungus and kneel in praise of nature
 "Oh, you're real. You're like me. I never knew an ugly girl."
 But the insects nibble me dry.

Backlog

I have a backlog of stuff I've written in private journals. Some of it is fit for public consumption. Here we go.

How To Console Yourself

as the years of your life wear thinner

and the month of May is an instant

and the winter is still longer than the summer,

occasionally, when the winter of your heart rears in summer,

you must clasp it, warming the ventricles,

smoothing your palms over its surface,

without care for the blood that will stain your hands.

  

and the words of your father will ring in your ears as you console yourself,

or the wisdom imparted to you through the teachers, the priests, the wretched and destitute,

through your enemies and your elders,

they will be the assuagement through which you are salvaged.

6.9.2009

Numb

Hmm, I wonder why my leg has been asleep for so long. 

A familiar thought. It's quite similar to

Hmm, I wonder why my vision is blurry in one eye. 

The answer is as plain as the nose on some ugly motherfucker's face, and yet it does not occur to me immediately.

The tingling, the burning. That's normal, right? The thought frees my mind so that I'm able to ruminate on whether or not I'm dying of cancer.

Having MS really is, in a sense, like being a battered wife. You never know when the brute will backhand you across the face. I'm actually lucky, in that my ball-and-chain seems only to get violent every few years. And even then, all he does is burn me with a cigarette or punch me in the eye, just to remind me that he could, at any time, put me in a wheelchair.

Of course, there's always false hope. Maybe it really is asleep, or maybe I have a problem with my circulation. But, my experience is that, although this disease is a mealy-mouthed serpent with all kinds of sensory illusions up his sleeve, there are some symptoms that seem to bear his trademark. The tingling numbness, the fuzzy feeling of disappearing, the almost perceptible nerve damage -- it all just reeks of him.

I would, needless to say, love to dump him: serve him with divorce papers before strapping a pipe bomb to his car. He's inside me, though; he is me. He is my defect. He is why I ought to have been returned to the lot.

I know I should be grateful, and I am. I've spent nine years being grateful as fuck that it isn't worse. Sometimes, though, you've got to tell the truth about things, and take a break from suckling at the teet of positivity.

27.10 edit: I can still walk. Having thought about it, I'm doing pretty damn well.

Little Girls Are Messed Up

Lest you think otherwise.

I am 8. It is early in the school year, and I am at the dentist. As I sit in the wallpapered waiting room, awash in Top 40 radio, I pull a book from my bag to allay the boredom. The book is called Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones. I had begged for it until I was allowed to purchase it, yet I am among the last in class to get my hands on a copy. The badass, a-little-too-edgy-for-kids art by Stephen Gammell is just too glorious. It is sanctioned horror for children -- black and white, unsettling, and occasionally gross. These drawings have the ability to genuinely freak a kid out, or perhaps outright scare her to death.

So, I begin leafing through the book for the second or third time -- I must have gotten it at the school book fair shortly beforehand -- pleased as punch that I'm looking at something so creepy.

Ace of Base's "All That She Wants" comes on the radio. I've never heard it before, because the only top singles played in my household are by the Beatles, Elton John, Bob Dylan, and Bach. Such is childhood when one has boomer parents.

Then I see her. She isn't as dark or as skeletal as the others, but she hits me in the pit of my entrails with the sort of fright that all childhood boogeymen employ. Her beady black eyes, her wrinkled smirk, the wisps of her black hair -- I internalize all of her details instantly.

So, I'm deeply freaked out. All of a sudden, Ace of Base's state-of-the-art MIDI saxophone begins to sound kind of scary. I listen to the lyrics, and imagine that they refer to this pale, neckless abomination.

All that she wants / Is another baby / She's gone tomorrow. 

She's going to getcha!

Due to a fundamental misunderstanding of the word "baby" in this context (to be honest, I still don't know what the lyricist intended), I am pretty sure that this nightmare is going around trying to get pregnant by like, 6 different men at once so that she can spawn as many vile little boogeywomen as possible. Ew! I bet if you cut her, she bleeds black tar. What if she shows up in my bedroom? Understanding what I do about the science of human reproduction (I'm a big girl), I'm certainly not in any danger of giving her another baby. Still, she's gazing devilishly downward, as if over a child's bed. Does she lurk in the dark, after bedtime stories, when she's not out trying to get inseminated? This is not good. Must not let Mom know I'm scared. She'll confiscate this awesome book!

"Elena?" The dental hygienist with a clipboard is ready for me.

Days later, I'm in a friend's car, and her mother likes to listen to smooth jams while driving. I hear that plodding sax riff, and I shudder as they sing along and dance in their seats.