Deep Waters: My Last WordPress Blogpost January 24, 2024

Dear Readers, I am proud to have had this space to share my work and my writing prompts since 2009. And I thank you for following me here, for all of your wonderful comments and likes, and for taking the time to read my work.

I hope you will follow me to my Substack account, The Writing Catalyst, where I will continue to post my writing and the prompts that inspired them. I’ve subscribed you to the new newsletter free for three months. After that, you can continue to subscribe for free, or pay for a subscription; you can also unsubscribe. The new Substack site allows me to offer virtual writing workshops, podcasts, and so much more. I hope you’ll follow me there.

Thank you for being here with me all these years. Keep writing. Keep reading. And please, keep in touch.

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(The prompt: This piece was written in response to Adrienne Rich’s poem, “Diving into the Wreck”)

“Don’t write about her again,” my inner adolescent says, and he sounds like he’s almost pleading. “Nobody wants to hear about our dead mommy anymore. Especially me.”

It’s too early for a visit from this boy: 8:00 a.m. at the kitchen table. My journal is open in front of me, the pen is poised above the paper, my arthritic hand still stiff from sleep. Not you again, I think, with your full, dark eyebrows and your messy head of wavy hair.  

“Are you just going to ignore me?” he asks. He’s in that baby blue Disney sweatshirt, the one with the peeling white silkscreen of the castle on it. The sleeves are too short for him, but he never takes it off, even in the summer, because it brings out his eyes. Someday, I want to tell him, you’ll visit that castle in southern Germany, the one that inspired Walt Disney, and you’ll be so sick with food poisoning, and so filled with sorrow for the lonely gay king who built that place, you’ll never want to return. But at his age, it’s still a poster on his wall with a Hallmark cliché at the bottom; at his age, that castle is still a beautiful dream.

“I’m trying to write in my journal,” I say.

“I know,” he snaps back. “And I’m telling you not to write about her again.”

I’m remembering now the journal from our sophomore year in high school. Notebook paper bound by a simple green cover. We spent 15 minutes writing every period in my Psychology of Literature class. It was our private work; we didn’t have to share anything we didn’t want to share. I wrote a lot about John Lepsin, about his ice blue eyes and black hair, his big beautiful nose. I wrote tortured unrequited love poems that vacillated between raw desire and fantasies of revenge. But I never wrote about Mama. Only once. Something like, “Things have been pretty weird around the house. Mom has this memory disease and…I don’t want to write about this.” And so, I never did. Until my senior year, when I plagiarized the ending of a piece from the NYTimes Magazine my brother had shared with me. And then again in college, when I couldn’t write about anything else.

“I’m your scribe now,” I tell my younger self. “I’ve filled volumes of notebooks with sorrow and longing, with guilt and shame.”

“I know!” he’s says, slapping his pretty young hands down onto the table. “It’s too much! Stop already. Enough! Basta!” He sounds just like her when he says that, and I giggle a little. “What?” he says, suppressing a giggle himself. We are on the verge of busting up, like two kids in church.

“C’mon!” he says. “I mean it.”

But I am already writing. Mom would have been 100 today. He groans. If she would have lived this long, she probably would have been a mess.

“A beautiful mess,” he says out loud.

“Like you,” I say.

“Like you,” he says.

And then we dive down into the wreck together. It’s my job to shine a light for him. He closes his eyes, holds his breath, and down we go.

Still Wishing: Part Two October 3, 2023

Try not to play the same game you’ve always played: the swooning beauty in love with the butch guy. Try not to make up stories about who he is or who you are or who you could become together. Because that twenty-year gap and his job downtown are already working against any kind of a future, really.

Try not to think of the future. When are you happiest anyway? Is it when you look at the graph on your investments page and watch the line travel up and then down again? Is it when you think about ordering a turkey for Thanksgiving or imagine boarding the plane next week? No, it’s only when you are in the moment, when you look up at the floating clouds of fog, or sing along with Kylie’s new song, the gears on the car shifting with the beat, the wheels strong and smooth beneath you.

Try to be present today, when he is home with what you hope isn’t Covid, when he calls you gorgeous, when he sends an emoji of a little yellow face kissing a heart in your direction. Can you allow yourself to dream about feeling his skin again without worrying about what he wants, what fantasy you should try to be to deserve love and affection? Can you state what you want instead? Skin against skin, his a French vanilla, his lips like a split plum. Maybe you can find your way back to desire without thinking about traveling the world together or having romantic dinners downtown. Maybe you can do again what you have always been so good at doing: creating an island in the middle of all this chaos for the two of you. Maybe you can stop berating your silver hair or your softening neck and embody the body he sees, the one you still feel inside these older bones, these sore tendons, this stiff back. You don’t have to be Snow white singing into the well anymore; your handsome prince isn’t coming to find you. But maybe you can meet yourself and your lover somewhere in the middle of middle age, maybe you can be coconut cream with flecks of raspberry, maybe you can explore this delicious treat the way you explore a perfect piece of cake. Not chocolate this time, but French vanilla. Something sweeter than you’re used to.

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The writing prompt this time was the ice cream menu below, and a report from The Guardian that research shows ice cream makes you happy. You can also see the prompt from an earlier post, which is referenced in the title, here.

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· PEANUT BUTTER SUPREME—Three dips of peanut butter fudge ice cream covered with peanut butter topping, hot fudge, Reese’s Pieces, whipped cream and a cherry.

· MELTDOWN—Three dips of our creamy vanilla topped with hot fudge & warm caramel over a split banana

· DIETER’S REVENGE—Three dips of our creamy vanilla ice cream topped with hot fudge, chocolate chips, crushed Oreos, whipped cream and a cherry.

· MINT CHOCOLATE SUNDAE—For a cool treat, three dips of old-fashioned mint chocolate chip ice cream covered with hot fudge, crushed Oreo cookies, whipped cream and a cherry.

· GORILLA’S TREAT—Three dips of fresh banana ice cream over a split banana covered with chocolate sauce, whipped cream and a cherry.

· SOUTHERN TREAT—Three dips of our famous butter pecan ice cream (made the old-fashioned way) covered with butterscotch topping, chopped almonds, whipped cream and a cherry.

· NUTTY BUDDY—Three dips of our famous peanut butter fudge ice cream covered with hot fudge, peanuts, whipped cream and a cherry.

· CMP—Three dips of our creamy vanilla ice cream covered with chocolate syrup, marshmallow topping, peanuts, whipped cream and a cherry.

· TRIPLE CHOCOLATE SUNDAE—Three dips of rich chocolate ice cream (our own recipe) topped with hot fudge, chocolate chips, chocolate jimmies, whipped cream and a cherry.

· MOCHA MADNESS—Three dips of our homemade coffee ice cream topped with chocolate sauce, chocolate jimmies, whipped cream and a cherry.

· BANANA SPLIT —Vanilla, chocolate and strawberry ice cream over a split banana, topped with pineapple, chocolate sauce, strawberry sauce, whipped cream and a cherry.

: Still Wishing: Part Two

The Way Forward (A Prayer for the New Year) January 1, 2023

Tell me how to mother myself on the days when a young man in class won’t pay attention while I’m talking, and instead of rolling my eyes at his immaturity, I ask myself if anything I’ve ever done in my long career as a teacher has ever really made a difference. Show me how to make the list of ingredients from memory for Pop’s lasagna, even though I’m not eating cheese or wheat or beef right now, show me how to find a way to recreate something warm and comforting that would somehow be equivalent without confusing my gut. Let me see red sauce instead of simply seeing red. Help me find a cashew cheese that actually melts, lead the way to the boxes of red lentil noodles, remind me to add a splash of balsamic instead of red wine. Sit me down in time to enjoy this meal.

Remind me what it was about San Francisco that I fell in love with all those years ago, when I was a teenager with a wild cloud of wavy chestnut hair and I had my whole life ahead of me. How we traveled by car across the country and arrived at that sparkling bay and that fantastic old bridge. How we ate from little paper cups on Fisherman’s Wharf, bay shrimp and crab cocktail, little oyster crackers, warm sourdough bread with butter. Take me back to Ghirardelli Square that first time, the golden lights spelling out the Italian name above the old brick structure, remind me that buildings, like lives, can be rebuilt, renovated, reborn.

Tell me the story again of how my parents fell in love with this city fifty years ago, the clang clang clang of the trolly, the bells ringing out over the Stanford Court with the Tiffany dome at the crest of Nob Hill, where the view in all directions looked like a postcard. Remind me that it still does, even on the days when I am driving in my sensible purple car past tent cities, or slamming on the brakes because someone on a scooter has decided that stop signs don’t matter anymore. When I feel like the air controlled bubble I am floating in could break down any day now after nine years and 70,000 miles, and it seems impossible to imagine buying a new car in this economy, in this historical time in our troubled lives.

Don’t let me yearn for the old days, like a wizened old man, let me accept that they are gone. And teach me, someone, some ancestor—Mama, Merijane, some good ghost—please teach me how to see the way forward with the same light and hope I had looking for my first job thirty years ago, when I was twenty-seven, trudging through a rain-soaked SOMA in secondhand clothes. Don’t let me cling to these three decades of loss and change. Instead, shine a light on the path ahead, even if you don’t come with me, shine a light, please, so I can find my way through.

I want to be able to hold the memories like something precious, a sleeping baby or a favorite old book, and at the same time, I want to look ahead, not constantly behind. I work so hard not to feel regret, to instill hope in others, even that boy today in class with his stupid smirk. Even him. Help me find the way to see the path ahead, just a little of it, and to not be so afraid of the dark.

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The writing prompt that inspired this piece was 4 x 4:

Generate four lists:

1. Four cities you are familiar with (they do not have to be cities you love)

2. Four colors

3. Four people you love or have loved

4. Four favorite foods

After you’ve generated the lists, take one word from each list, and create four new combinations. 

Choose one of the combinations that interests you the most, and come up with a few descriptive words or sensory details that you associate with each of words in that list. Don’t think too hard or write too much. This is your prompt.

Now write for 20 minutes: anything that comes to mind. Don’t worry if the writing takes you somewhere unexpected.

Magical Thinking June 20, 2022

My sister recently shared a modern version of Disney’s Cinderella trailer from 1950. What I imagine was originally a corny 1950’s soundtrack for the two minute trailer was replaced by a modern remix, no doubt to reach a more contemporary audience. “They ruined it,” she said. Earlier, we had serenaded her fiancé with an a capella version of “I know you (I’ve walked with you once upon a dream)” doing our best to harmonize. “Very nice!” he said.

If you’re not familiar with it, the narrative of the song is love at first sight, with a kind of 1950’s emo set of lyrics that confirm the person of your dreams can literally appear before your eyes, and so you should trust your gut when it comes to that first hello.

After another glass of wine, I soothed my sister’s soul by finding the original version of the trailer, complete with a late 1940’s choir singing that very song and nailing the crescendos, as only those hired to sing on a Disney soundtrack can. “That’s more like it!” my sister said, then busied herself with the dishes.

I watched it again, with the volume turned down, and remembered how fantastic that film was to me when I was just a little baby gay boy. The magic of the fairy godmother, the rags-to-gorgeous-gown transformation, the sweet mice as friends, all that pink and blue, and the gleaming white castle in the distance. It’s the prince of course, who steals the movie, with his broad shoulders and thick dark hair. The prince, who really says nothing except, “May I have this dance?” and then literally sweeps old Cindy off her feet.

You know how it ends: the glass slipper, the evil stepmother and selfish stepsisters outdone by kindness and courage, and of course, happily ever after. Boy was I stuck on that one my entire life. My sister—who is planning her third wedding—doesn’t like it when I get academic and psychoanalyze fairytales. She detests the violence of the brothers Grimm, and prefers the sanitization of Disney to the real thing. Any argument I might have made in the past about the meaning of the story—that sleeping Beauty and Cinderella are allegories about young women growing into sexual beings, who can only be awakened by handsome young men—were dismissed as too serious or no fun. And she’s right, of course. I am too serious, and sometimes, at least when analyzing narratives, I am not much fun at all.

I’m still waiting for a Disney movie about a same sex crush and ends with the main characters going off to separate colleges in the end (like real life). But no matter how much Disney disagrees with Florida’s conservative governor, I don’t think that’s going to happen.

What I want to say is this: Cinderella fucked me up. It fucked me up. Because I grew up believing in love at first sight, and happily ever after, and that big one: a man will come along and sweep you off your feet and take care of you for the rest of your life. I spent my 40’s with someone completely ill-suited for me because we were both convinced that fate kept bringing us together (and maybe it did, but now I know it was trying to teach me something very different from what Cinderella taught me).

I much prefer films like Pixar’s Up . At least that one is more like real life: grief and broken dreams and the willingness to love again, to keep your heart open, to go on another adventure. To not become a bitter old man because you have loved and lost. Let’s sing the theme song to that movie, shall we? Let’s all harmonize to that one instead.

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The prompt that inspired this piece was a music prompt: Orla Gartland singing, “Why am I Like This?”

Our Hero in Red May 5, 2021

It’s too violent, I think, watching them waterboard June, then threaten to tear her nails out. It’s gratuitous, this 4th season of the Handmaid’s Tale. But something about her journey, and knowing as I do, because of Margaret Atwood’s sequel, that she is going to survive, is enthralling, like a high. Maybe it’s just a familiar sense of hope and the desire for power that I struggled to find during the Trump era, when the orange sky and the spiking graphs of the pandemic left me wondering what was left to fight for. (Everything, the voice inside me says now. Everything.)

Oh, June! A soldier, a warrior, the one that cannot be broken. I know the story is an allegory, a metaphor for misogyny and slavery, or war and the battle for justice. But I still find it delicious when she smirks, when she tells the commander to go fuck himself. When she presses the electric cattle prod against Aunt Lydia’s neck, and I surprise myself in the silence of my living room by screaming, “Get her!” As if I can join the handmaids in their revolt, as if I am part of a group of rag tag femmes finally cornering a now helpless bully.

Too violent, I think, wondering about how Americans have become immune to this, video gamers blowing up cars, even commercials crashing and exploding. Such a violent culture. Callous. But I binge another episode because they’ve gotten out of the van now, and they are running, even with their hands tied, even with one of the Eyes dressed all in black, shooting at them, striking one of them in the back, their red capes and white hats disappearing behind the long, loud train cars. “Run!” I say out loud, “Run!” It’s terrifying and elating.

Who is this middle aged man alone in his apartment, the little belly, the silver hair at the temples? Wasn’t it just yesterday that he was a scared teenage boy who fantasized about escaping? Wasn’t it just last month that he was the twenty-four-year-old finally leaving for college? He’s still here in this shell, rooting for rebellion, joyous in seeing someone beaten down but never broken. June is back for another wild ride, and he’s already bought his ticket. He’s right there with her.

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The prompt this time was the list exercise (see an explanation of that prompt here). The titles of the two lists this time were: What brought me joy/What brought me sorrow.

Happier Times June 22, 2020

 

The prompt this time was Sinead O’Connor’s song, “In this Heart.” You can click on the YouTube link above to hear it.

What I wrote is below.

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I arrive for dinner, and he’s a gentleman, as always, his face lit up like a child.

“Some wine?”

We sit on the sectional, and in about three minutes, I’m climbing on him like a puppy, some fire ignited that’s impossible to control now.

He’s so long. His thigh is longer than my entire arm; when we’re lying together, I trail my hand down, down, down, and I still can’t reach his knee. I feel like I’m climbing a mountain, or trying to stretch the canvas sails on a huge boat.

“I know,” he says. “It’s a lot.”

We’re two men in our fifties, but when his glasses come off, and I look into his eyes, we’re both fifteen again, all limbs and hormones.

“I thought you wanted to talk,” he says, while I’m lying on top of him.

“I did,” I say, “but I can’t keep my hands off you.”

I keep thinking he’s going to have bad breath or stinky armpits, but like a grownup, he has always showered, and he’s rinsed with mouthwash before I arrive. Wiped down the counters, straightened the throw pillows on the couch. Even his beard smells like soap. “You shampoo it, of course,” he says in his soft Egyptian accent, and then we’re kissing again.

I’m lost in his limbs in a way that’s unfamiliar, yet strangely comfortable. It’s easy in a way I don’t question. The little mole on his left side, the dusting of soft hair on his shoulder blades, the curls of silver in a cloud of black at his hairline. You would think I’d be humping him like a chihuahua, but I’m content rolling onto my back, or having him pull me on top, simply because I’m flooded with Oxytocin. Pillow talk, solid, wet kisses. I dare not tell him I’m trying to get as much as I can in case this ends soon, fizzles out. Tomorrow’s boytoy could easily distract this hairy, hunky giant lying beneath me.

I tell him it’s so good, but I won’t say that I’ve been starving for years now. That erotic massages and cheap sauna sex can’t fill this chasm I carry around, this nagging ache to be touched. I’m at the buffet now, loading up plate after plate, filling my mouth with everything delicious. I feel insatiable. I’m not moving, except for the occasional breath, or long sweet gaze, then I’m back again, back again, I’m back again for more.

 

My Life in Flowers March 11, 2020

The prompt this time was the flower prompt: everyone in the workshop is given a flower that has recently bloomed in San Francisco, and we write in response. For a detailed description of the prompt, see this earlier post.

And just to give you some context for the tone of the following piece, which I wrote last week: we do this exercise every year (and I often do it on my international and Hawaiian retreats as well). So for me, this is a reminder of another year passing. I’ve posted several pieces on this blog in response to this prompt. See those links—as well as what I recently wrote—below.

https://lagunawriters.wordpress.com/2013/03/29/flower-fanatic/

https://lagunawriters.wordpress.com/2014/07/11/flower-fanatic-part-ii/   ____________________________________________________________________

Nobody sees a flower—really—it is so small it takes time—we haven’t time —and to see takes time, like having a friend takes time.

-Georgia O’Keeffe

World, I am your slow guest,
one of the common things
that move in the sun and have
close, reliable friends
in the earth, in the air, in the rock.               

-William Stafford 

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I want to tell you a story I haven’t told you before, but I fear I’m all out of stories now. No, really. Perhaps my head is just so filled with news about pandemics and Democratic presidential candidates that there’s little room left for stories that involve flowers, but I think it’s more likely that I’ve told you all of my stories already.

How I drove across the country with my parents on our big move and got stuck in a blizzard in Wyoming. How when we arrived in California at the end of January there were pink blossoms on the trees and mustard flowers growing waist high between the Live Oaks. How my next door neighbors grew orange roses that smelled like citrus, and in early April, the purple irises grew tall and opened lilac colored petals every year: dependable, elegant, the one small joy in my mother’s monotonous days.

Later, I discovered gardenias in Los Angeles—entire paths lined with bushes—so fragrant, they produced a near trance state, and how later, my one big love floated them in a bowl next to the bed we slept in together. In California, I learned that wisteria, with their old and snarled branches, thrive every spring, drooping under the weight of their blossoms, buzzing with bumble bees.

I learned about the Dahlia Garden in Golden Gate Park —about as close to Oz as I was ever going to get—how they came from Mexico originally, how tubers were different from bulbs, how jonquils and narcissus could bloom even in the rainiest February. I want to tell you why lilacs make me melancholy, and why Cecil Brunner roses—tiny pink and candy sweet—remind me of permanence, though flowers are the very epitome of impermanence, and no matter how many babies come into my life, and friends and relatives die, I still have to learn that nothing lasts forever over and over again. Frankly, I’m tired of that lesson, just like I’m tired of telling the same stories over and over again.

What irony, I think now, as I put this pen to paper, that the flowers come back year after year, the cloud of lemon-scented acacia blooming along the back driveway, the Japanese cherry blossoms on 19th Street between Castro and Hartford, the Victoria Box clusters dangling over Sanchez Street near Duboce Park, even the tulips below the 1960’s sign that marks the aging development I live in  (“Vista San Francisco”); they will burst back to life year after year only to die again. Still, I keep loving them. Every. Single. Year. And I keep telling these stories over and over again, with these flowers, these old companions, as my backdrop.

Wise Guy September 2, 2019

The prompt this time was to begin with a list of five cities you are familiar with, then to write about one of them.

First on my list was Mexico City, but I also had my inner adolescent on my mind. What I wrote is below.

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My inner adolescent is on the couch reading when I arrive. He looks up as I struggle through the door with my gym bag, school bag, and lunch bag. “Hey, bag lady,” he says. “Need some help?” He’s wearing white socks, tight Levi’s, and a red tank top; with his 30-inch waist and bulging crotch, he looks like a Blue Boy Magazine model: oozing sex and yet totally unsure what to do with it. I ignore his offer, knowing he’s only being polite, and heave my book bag into the corner by the printer. 

“What are you reading?” I ask, bracing myself for his naive criticism. He only likes National Geographic or Vanity Fair. Quite frankly, I’m not in the mood for him today.

“Something called Saveur,” he says, surprising me. “A special edition on Mexican cuisine. Pretty delicious.” His eyes are darker blue, more like Mom’s, and the whites are bright and clear. Young eyes. His hair is curlier than I remember, from getting caught in the rain, perhaps, or a working up a good sweat.

“I’m just wondering why you’re here,” I say, heading to the kitchen to put a kettle on.

“Beats me,” he says, leafing through the magazine, “I figured you needed to see me.”

“Tea?” I ask.

“Gross,” he says, then catches himself. “I mean, no thank you.”

We volley this way sometimes. That lovely boy I once was who plays cynical now, but really lived in a world with a sense of wonder and spontaneity, two things I have to get high or travel 1000’s of miles to tap into now.

“Actually,” he says, “I was wondering when you were going to buy that ticket to Mexico City.”

“You want me to go, is that it?”

“You’re awfully bitchy today,” he says. “I mean, more so than usual.”

I sigh. He sighs.

He looks so earnest. I want to tell him that forty years from now he will sometimes be driving home in the rain so filled with a sense of melancholy that he will want to drive to a bar instead and get good and drunk. That some days, his work will feel like helping countless young people with their whole lives ahead of them, while he feels stuck in his own life, fearful of chronic illness. That he will feel bone-tired.

“Anyway,” he says, “have you bought your ticket yet?”

“I don’t know about Mexico City,” I say.

“Why not? You’ve always wanted to go there: Casa Azul, the museums, and now this hot guy you’ve met online—”

“I don’t think living in a fantasy world is healthy for either of us,” I say. He laughs then, that shotgun laugh we get from Mom.

“Oh, please!” he says. “You’re a writer. We’ve always lived in a fantasy world.”

What could I say in response? He claimed me as a writer, and the kid had a point. Has always had a big heart too. Had no qualms about saying no to dissecting a fetal pig in Biology class because it was “disrespectful to the poor, dead, baby piglet.” (His words exactly.) I knew his love for flowers—roses, jasmine, violets—was a reflection of this big heart, and an attachment to romance.

“What do you have to lose by going to Mexico City?” he asked.

“About $1000,” I said.

“Just charge it then.”

“And my dignity, if I contact that beautiful young man.”

“Your dignity?”

“Yeah,” I say, taking the screaming kettle off the burner. “Once he sees what I actually look like in the flesh, he’ll run for the hills.”

“You underestimate how beautiful you are,” he says.

“So do you,” I say.

“You’re better looking than I am,” he says.

“You just have low self-esteem.”

“I’m serious,” he says. “You need to own it.”

I want to tell him that I only feel beautiful when I put eyedrops in my eyes, when I haven’t eaten very much, when someone I love looks at me and I can see myself through his eyes. Or when I am dancing. But I don’t dare. I don’t want him to feel this kind of sorrow yet. I feel protective of him.

“Oh, I know sorrow,” he says, reading my mind. “I stayed home and took care of our dying mother, remember?”

He’s right, of course. Back then I didn’t have the mindfulness I have now. I didn’t have the vocabulary or the lifelong friendships to talk my way through a bad day, a big worry, or the tug of grief when it came in waves. I have options now; I have the freedom to make my own choices.

“If I meet him in Mexico City,” I say, “it’s probably just going to be a sexual thing. Nothing more.”

“Sounds good to me,” he says. “It’s only $366 round trip if you buy the ticket today.”

We look at each other for a moment, and then he just smiles that big white smile. I want to smack him, but I also want to thank him. Instead, I just smile back.

A Brilliant Idea May 3, 2019

This time the prompt was a tried and true one: “5 x 5,” which uses a list exercise to generate five lists of five words. The words are then used to fill in the blanks in this phrase:  ________________is/are like _____________________. (To see a detailed explanation of this prompt, see an earlier post here.)

My phrase was “Puppies are like ice cream.” What I wrote is below.

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He got a business license, an LLC, because he was sure he had an idea that would make him rich: a puppy farm with scheduled visits. For $25, each person would get ten minutes to lie on the soft green grass and be overrun by a litter of puppies.

“That’s amazing!” his nephew said. “It’s a classic example of how to sell childlike joy.”

They were brunching at a new San Francisco eatery after waiting forty minutes in a line that wrapped around the block. His nephew’s fiancé, however, a bottle blonde from Hayward—whom he detested, if he could be totally honest—didn’t agree.

“Aren’t there going to be some serious liability issues?” she asked, sipping her decaf macha cashew milk latte. “I mean, the puppies could get hurt.” His nephew took a gigantic blood orange vegan biscuit out of the ceramic bowl in the center of the table and looked around for the ramekin of olallieberry coconut spread.

“You can get liability insurance to cover that kind of stuff, can’t you?” his nephew asked, mercifully.

“I would do that, of course,” he said, nodding toward his nephew. “And I’d have monitors to protect the puppies at all times.”

“Monitors?”

“Yes, Bri-ANNE. I would have human monitors specifically hired to protect the pups.”

“And what about vaccinations?” Brianne added. “Aren’t puppies supposed to limit their exposure to humans until they’ve had a series of vaccinations?”

He frowned.

“Dude,” his nephew said to Brianne, “you’re kinda raining on his parade.”

The uncomfortable silence was broken by the waiter, who was just a little too cheerful. He arrived with steaming plates of micro-servings and called out each item. “Okaaaay,” he said, swinging his head to one side so his long bangs flipped over and then fell promptly back into his eyes. “You have the red and yellow kale hash with wild duck yolks, and the chickpea and green marmalade pancakes for you, sir.”

He hated being called “sir.” Did he really look that old? “They’re just being respectful,” his colleagues counter-argued when he complained about students on campus doing this. He also complained about them holding the door for him and letting him pass in front of them. “You complain when they’re rude, you complain when they’re polite—”

“I can get the damn door myself!” he snapped. “Do I look like I’m ninety-years-old? Am I shuffling?” His colleagues usually just clucked in response.

Now the three of them sat in silence again, eating joylessly. Finally, Brianne said, “I didn’t mean to sound so discouraging. I actually think it sounds like a lot of fun, your puppy farm idea. It sounds joyful.”

“Thank you.”

“Once you work out all the kinks and everything—”

“Uncle Bob,” his nephew interrupted, “you could totally make a living doing this. It’s fucking brilliant.”

He wanted to believe them both, he really did, but he was full of self-doubt now. These kids could spoil all your dreams. That’s what you get when you have Generation Xers for parents: cynicism. But he didn’t say anything. He just smiled his tight-lipped smile, sipped his purple Rooibos lavender tea, and imagined being under a pile of squirming puppies.

For Merijane February 28, 2019

The prompt this time was the poem, “Corrida,” by Elizabeth Haukass       

(See the poem below what I wrote).

________________

Girl, you are such a good teacher. Remember the day I asked, “Someone recently told me that after surgery you’re never the same. Do you think that’s true?” I was still sore from having those long ports slid deep between my ribs, and you said, “I prefer to say, ‘After surgery, you’re simply different.'”

You always had a way with words.

And you knew about surgery too, your back like a zipper with the metal cage there just under the skin, the little holes where they took out your ovaries, the terrible surgery on your palate, and of course, the flat space where your breast used to be, where your whole, long journey really began.

Today, while meditating, I thought about your acupuncturist, how you always wanted to introduce us. You said he had a beautiful soul. A healer. I imagined meeting him and saying, “She loved you so much.” The knowledge that he had brought you pain relief made me cry.

Crying silent tears while meditating is so strange, because you’re invited to sit still, to not wipe them away, and I really felt them. I really felt how much I love you. Marianne Williamson once said that relationships never end, they just change form, so that’s how I think of us now. You still come around sometimes, though your body has been in the ground for two years.

When I saw you the night before you died, you couldn’t open your eyes, and the darkness in your mouth frightened me, but you were trying so hard to tell me something. It was my first time that close to death. Your hair was wild on the pillowcase, and your hand was cool and rubbery. I told you that you didn’t have to speak. I could read your thoughts: You loved me; you didn’t want to stay, but you felt sad leaving us. That lesson you taught me was like a bright summer day. So clear. And I knew I had to give you permission to let go when I couldn’t bear the thought of this world without you.

“You are a great teacher,” you once wrote to me, after coming home from one of the many nights that we wrote together. It was a midnight email; we were night owls, staying up late at sleepovers, like two school girls on your bed, watching a movie or talking about lost love.

Who can I be melancholy with now? Everyone just wants to comfort me, but you knew how to let me be sad, to just sit with the sadness and the longing. “You are MY teacher!” you wrote next. A two line email. One I treasure. Oh, girl! You’re my teacher too. Even now, writing this, I can imagine you here, just letting me be sad.

Corrida

… all stories if continued far enough end in death…
-Ernest Hemingway

It was for the novilladas, the beginners,
The matador, the flourishes,
And the backs turned on death
That I begged my father to take me to the bullfight
The summer we spent in Ciudad de Mexico
As far from the influences of drugs and sex
As he could remove me when I was seventeen
The last summer before I got pregnant.
He went with me everywhere: to the plaza
Bargaining for the silver trinkets for my sister and mother
To the bodega for the cigarettes
He let me smoke in front of him
To the pool where he sat upright, reading,
In hard shoes in the shade as I sunned myself, bored.
For the corrida we had sombra seats, the best,
Sparsely filled. As the sun’s orange deepened
Town boys from the gradas came down,
Sat around us, sometimes reaching out
To touch my gringo hair. In the ring, I expected
The pirouettes with the muleta, color against dust.
Not the other red, cascading down the beast’s black flanks —
To see the splattered velvets, matador, and hide,
To smell the pinkish foam, the bull’s droplets mixed with sweat
When he shook his enormous neck,
The banderillas sinking deep, lodging in muscle,
fluttering vibrantly — I didn’t expect.
One of the boys put an arm around me: No mires, no mires
He whispered into the air. My father stood
Scattering the boys like pigeons.
He smoothed the creases in his pants, appeared to stretch his legs,
Sat again, closer in the swelter,
Draped his arm across my shoulders.
The bull, front legs collapsed, shimmered,
Silenced, as my father and I were,
By the merciful, now, puntilla.
My father refused to let me accept an amputated ear,
Still warm, held up first to me, then to him,
The gesture for bravery, for not looking away

-by Elizabeth Haukaas, from Leap