Tweak, leaps on the bed and pins me in: “Why aren’t you petting me?”
Me: “I’m tired.”
Tweak: “But I’m pretty.”
Me: “Tweak, it doesn’t work that way. Both people have to want to.”
Tweak: “But I always want to.”
Me: “You only have to lay there!”
Tweak: “Lie.”
Me: “I am lying.”
Tweak stomps over my chest, flips her tail in air. Her ass reminds me that it’s an ass.
Tweak: “You should pet me.”
Me: “Tweak, I’m trying to sleep.”
She flips her body into an S-shape like a magic trick. Her impossibly blue eyes stare at me upside down.
Tweak: “Pet me.”
Me: “You’re giving me the bends.”
She stretches long and stabs my arm with a talon, then bashes her forehead into my ribs. Again. And again.
Tweak: “I. Am. Very. Pretty.”
So I pet her.
Tweak: “Learn from me.”
Me: “Kiss my ass.”
Tweak: “Exactly.”
I pull up the eHarmony website. I fill out what feels like the same survey that I filled out on LoveAndSeek.com, but eHarmony is going to “analyze” my answers and “scientifically” match me with people who are “compatible” with my “personality.” I just hope that I don’t end up with a “man” in “air quotes.”
The questionnaire is long, but I’m sure it’s worth it because “each compatible match is pre-screened across 29 dimensions.” I hum through 29 keys of “I Love Technology” and answer their questions. eHarmony offers declarative statements for me to evaluate like “I work better if people follow my lead.” I answer “strongly agree” only because there’s no option for “fuck, yeah.”
29 coffees later, I finish the questionnaire, and now eHarmony wants my money for the privilege of using their science. Holy romance on a printing press – why is love so expensive? For one month’s worth of eHarmony matches I could buy a bushel of zucchini and all three “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies. But, this is science! So I agree to their usury and give them my credit card number. I submit my data, my pics, and my “personality.” I’m kind of excited. Who will the passion geeks pair me up with? Johnny Depp? Dave Barry? Neil DeGrasse Tyson? The anticipation gives me a small girl hard-on. I hit ENTER, sit back, and wait for the matches to roll in.
And I wait. And I wait some more. One day, two days go by. I’m imagining some massive Cray computer in Texas just churning away, rejecting applicant after applicant. Angry white lab coats whipping scraps of paper to the floor. “No! He’s not good enough for her. Have you seen her thighs? Try again!”
Finally, three days later, I receive an email telling me to log back on to eHarmony.
Congratulations! Chris from Lake Orion, Michigan, has reviewed your basic information and would like to start the process of getting to know you better.
Hot damn. Let the science begin!
I log on to see my new match. The eHarmony nerds must be really good, because Chris lives right here in Lake Orion, my home town, Where Living is a Vacation. (It says so on the sign.)
I read his bio. Chris is a Christian man, about my age, about my height, and he does not smoke. A great beginning! I pull up his picture; there is only one. (I sent in 29.) It’s a close-up of a rather large, rather round head. The head has a lot less hair than I’d like, and the eyes are sort of crooked and half-closed. Maybe it’s just a bad pic? Not everybody adores the lens like I do. I press on. This is science.
Christopher passionate about:
Relating to others, their opinions, staying healthy and being there for family and friends.
Okay. Generic and uninspired, but not offensive. I’m very fond of health.
Chris’s friends describe him as:
Affectionate, easy-going, a good listener, optimistic.
Boring, but it would be refreshing to meet someone who’s not a walking stress fracture.
The most important thing Christopher is looking for in a person is: Being a Christian! I need truth and honesty, love and respect, but NO SEX BEFORE MARRIAGE SO DON’T EVEN ASK!!
Whoa. Women must be all over this dude for him to write it in all caps like that.
The first thing you’ll notice about Christopher when you meet him is: My smile, laughter, and jovial good humor.
Excellent! Make me laugh, dammit. MAKE ME LAUGH!!
Some additional information Christopher wanted you to know is:
I do not have a “victim mentality,”
but my health may concern some women.
Well, okay. Maybe this is no big deal. After all, Farmer Bob from LoveAndSeek had a reconstructed esophagus, but it didn’t impede his ability to swallow my tongue. What little imperfection do you have, Chris?
I am on disability, unemployed, and my peripheral vision is shot.
Wait… what…? Not even hair and a job?
I have recently been declared “legally blind.”
But… how are you even typing this…?
I am a double amputee below the knees. I had a triple bypass in ’97 and a kidney/pancreas transplant in ’99.
No. This is…No. I’m being pranked. This is who the scientific ass-punks of eHarmony think is my ideal mate?? An overweight, unemployed bald man who can’t see, can’t walk, and can’t breathe?
I just had a stent put in my heart where there was 90% occlusion, and alas, my weight has crept up as the skin on the stumps break down when I exercise. I have no kids, I have never been married.
A man with someone else’s kidney but his own bloody stumps? What. The. Science.
I sip my coffee to recover my composure. I push my chair back from the desk and stretch my legs (I have legs!), and I accidentally run the caster over my purse reminding me that… THEY CHARGED ME FOR THIS MISTER POTATO HEAD!!
An ideal mate for me? Me, who takes her dog out running every day? Me, who puts an unnaturally high value on hair and the outdoors and the ability to create one’s own urine?
And hold on one more god-fearing minute there, FrankenStumpy. “The first thing you’ll notice about Christopher is his smile?” Not his mother-fucking wheelchair??
And did he really yell in ALL CAPS that there would be no sex before marriage? Has this been a serious problem for you, Short Pants? Not trying to be mean, but rooting around in the untrimmed cleft between Colonel Sanders’ white meats searching for your raggedy pope’s nose sounds like… Okay, I’m mean.
Dammit, eHarmony… This FAIL is so loud it hurts my ears. I am deafened by eDissonance.
Screw this. I turn off the lights and turn on Captain Jack Sparrow. Bring me some veggies.
From the chapter “Why Do I Need a Man Anyway?”
“eDissonance” by Erin Waugh
Friday, 13 March – I take my car to Belle Tire where a tech plugs his own majigger into my kerswilly. He does not charge me for the privilege of verifying that I do, indeed, have “a code,” but further detail will cost me “a child.” He narrows the problem down to cats.
Friday, 13 March – I call my local Chevy dealer to find out whether my old catalytic converter is still under warranty.
Friday, 13 March – It is not.
Friday, 13 March – HAHA!
Saturday, 14 March – I write a note to Chevy Customer Care and plead mercy. (The catalytic converters [there are two – Cat 1 and Cat B, I think] are 2,000 miles out of warranty.) I beseech Chevy Customer Care for help. I hardly use any swears.
Saturday, 14 March – They write back to me.
Saturday, 14 March – Chevy Customer Care and I are married in a civil ceremony.
Saturday, 14 March – I’m kidding! They say “maybe.”
Monday, 16 March – I call my local Chevy Dealer and ask them about my cats. “Stan” tells me to bring my kerswilly down to the shop where he will plug in his… I stop him and tell him I am sore. We agree that this joke has been played out.
Tuesday, 17 March – The engine light shuts off. The gas mileage shoots up to where it was before the decay. God laughs.
Friday, 20 March – I take my car into the Chevy Dealer where Stan tells me that my cat is in bad shape. I slap him.
Friday, 20 March – Stan and I are married in a civil ceremony.
Coda: Nothing has actually been repaired yet, although my kerswilly has been majiggered three times in the last eight days. The Chevy Dealer has ordered me a new Cat B. This shiny and much younger (probably) replacement part will be delivered and installed sometime next week for $250 instead of the original estimate of a Brazilian dollars$, due all or in part to my whining on Chevy Customer Care’s public Facebook page, using polite (honey-coated) words and hardly any inflammatory (vinegar) blames.
Stay tuned for next week’s exciting conclusion where I thrust my vehicle repeatedly into a service tunnel, and then broadcast the turgid victory of my euphemism.
Now don’t ask me any more questions. I need a nap. Somebody hold me.
Let me explain: a thousand years ago I had a job – a job that provided health insurance. (What a charming trifle that was!). Anyway, I was visiting a doctor for some routine girl-thing (remember that quaint curtsy?), and the doctor found a small lump. On my thyroid.
The thyroid is a gland at the front of your throat. It sits just underneath the larynx, and its main job is to frighten you into thinking you’re going to die. If a doctor roots around in your junk long enough, he will find a lump. Give a physician enough time and a solid reach, and he will find a bulge on SOMETHING. And this guy had a good six inches on me. (Rimshot!) I’m kidding. Where was I…
Anyway, this First Lump doc sent me to a Second Lump doc, an endocrinologist. Endocrinologists are doctors who specialize in paying off their student loans, so they absolutely adore insured women with shit in their throats.
I walked into Second Lump’s office with what we called in those days “a referral” which we carried in “on paper” that we had “impaled upon the end of our spears.” I’m kidding! Women weren’t allowed to carry spears until Britney. (Oops! I did it again.)
I waited in the lobby for a season. Finally I was called into an intake room by a nurse. Or a nurse’s assistant. Or a troll of some sort with a stethoscope around her neck and a death wish over her head, apparently. See, here’s what happened: this Second Lump triage nurse weighed me, measured me, and took my blood pressure. She peered over her glasses at my chart, looked me up and down, and said “So you’re here to follow up after your mastectomy?”
I glanced at my smooth sweater and said, “No, I’m here because you’re a retard. “ Then I hit her with my penis.
No I didn’t. I stabbed her with my Britney spears.
Nah. What I actually did (because this really happened) is went dry-mouthed and pathetic for the space of about two beats. I pointed weakly at my throat. I began to stutter. Then I straightened up all 5-foot-9 inches, 125 pounds of me (I know because it was on the chart), and said, “I hope your children survive the chlamydia you gave them.”
Actually, I have no idea what happened next because I’ve blocked out everything after the S.W.A.T. team arrived.
The point is, I’m fabulous, and so are my boobs. Two perfect miniatures, unscarred and arrogant. They are twin heroic effigies of a life lived upright against the relentless pull of both gravity and scorn. Perky. (Yeah, I said it.)
Also, the lump was nothing. Kind of like that intake nurse. I bet her burning and itching are almost gone.
Bowie-dog leaps up into the car. I close the hatch and climb behind the wheel.
“I’ll drive,” I tell her.
“I’ll pretend you’re doing a good job.” She crosses her legs.
We head to the bark park. The bark park is a place to run leash-free and sniff anything attractive. The dogs can do the same.
It is a sunny spring afternoon in April. It is, in fact, Good Friday. My wheels crunch the gravel as I pull into the parking lot, and at the far end I can see two sheriffs’ cars parked side by side, window to window, one facing in and one facing out. The cars appear to be whispering. Or mating, like earthworms. The cops could be swapping anything: launch codes, secrets, bodily fluids. It is both intimate and terrifying. A shaved organ-grinder could do this job of patrolling the park for windshields without stickers, but no, there are TWO Oakland County Sheriffs parked here in the cop-car equivalent of a sixty-nine, scanning the lot for the winner of today’s crucifixion. Those aren’t night sticks, they’re hammers.
I am not terribly alarmed by the ménage à cop because I have a park pass, but still I keep an eye out, in the same way a baby seal watches a killer whale. Just because a predator is well-fed does not mean he won’t bite. Just because he can. Or because his hammer slipped.
I have a park pass because I bought a park pass. There are three previous years’ worth of stickers pasted vertically up the left edge of my windshield parading my allegiance. I am a veteran. These are my flags.
I have a park pass, but… But it’s in the glove box. It is red, it is valid, but it is not stuck to anything except a few stray dog hairs.
See, my windshield is cracked. By applying simple logic, I assume I can just temporarily tape this red sticker to the inside of my windshield until I get the windshield replaced. Windshields in Southeast Michigan crack all the time. Driving through gravel-hauling country is not unlike driving through the Gaza Strip. Stoning is common. So is getting hit with rocks. And since the crack is way down below my field of vision, replacing the windshield is on my “Round To It” list. I’ll get around to it. And in the meantime, I’ll tape this (current, paid-for, red) sticker to the cracked windshield.
But logic, as it turns out, is silly of me.
I pull into a parking space well away from the cop cars, (no reason to poke the orca, I figure), and I tape the red sticker to the inside of my windshield at the top of the column of retired flags. (Of course I have cellophane tape. All law-breakers carry office supplies.)
I open my car door, and before I can even walk around to release Bowie-dog, one of the deputies, a female officer, hustles out of her car and hails me. She waves a flipper from 50 feet away and swims towards me.
“Do you have a pass?” She asks, approaching me in big brown horse strides. I was wrong. They’re not flippers, they’re hooves.
“I sure do.” I smile without rancor. I am righteous and in compliance. I’ve got my sticker. I can’t wait to show her. I lift my sunglasses up off my eyes so she can peer deeply into my innocence.
“I didn’t see any sticker,” she says, her mouth a slit of baleen. Obviously she was watching for my red park pass, or as I’m beginning to think of it, my bullfighter’s cape. She leans in and jangles something, possibly her bridle.
“It’s right here.” My eyes narrow, but I keep smiling. I am virtuous. I point to the sticker I just taped to the windshield. The red one. The one that’s valid for this whole year.
“Oh, no. That won’t do,” the officer shakes her head. Her blowhole shudders. “You have to take off the backing and affix it to the inside of your windshield.” She loves this word.
“But look here,” I say, rubbing my finger over the crack, still pretending she’s a rational person. “My windshield is broken and I need to replace it, so I don’t want to permanently affix the sticker.” When in Rome.
“You have to. You have to affix it to the windshield. Those are the rules.” Her tail flicks. A fly buzzes.
“Um, it’s cracked…” I try again and caress the wounded glass in case she missed it the first time. “And if I put the sticker on permanently, and then I get my windshield replaced…” I let the thought trail off, hoping that she at least graduated in the middle of her class.
“No.” She shakes her head and paws the ground with her hoof. Shoe. She’s probably wearing shoes.
She tilts toward me, breathing too hard. “You have to affix it to the inside of the windshield.” She tinks the jagged break with a raptor’s claw. I flinch. “Then when you replace the windshield, just scrape the sticker off with a razor blade and take the handful of slivers with you to the park office, and they’ll give you a new sticker.” She holds her hand in a little cup-shape, offering me an imaginary handful of insane sticker shards.
I look at her now, really look at her. Her hair is pulled back in a severe red ponytail. She’s about my age and about my height, but she’s “been rode hard.” I doubt she was ever “put away wet,” though, since this bitch has not been moist since the 1980s. I am trying hard not to think of her as the B-word, because in fact she’s rapidly moving down the alphabet to the C-word.
I tip my head and lower my voice.
“Does this make sense to you?” I say softly, and I rub my finger over the crack again, showing it tenderness after her late hit. “I paid for the sticker. If I just tape it now, then I don’t have to go through all that scraping. Later. During the abortion.” Okay, I don’t say that last part.
“Those are the rules. That’s what the park wants. For you to affix the sticker to your windshield. Those are the rules.” She again taps the fingers of one hand into the cupped palm of the other where the extruded fragments of a sticker miscarriage will weep. I want to offer her a sugar cube.
I’m thinking that she’s wrong, that’s not what the park wants. What the park wants is for me to buy a sticker. I did that. I’m thinking that she’s victim hunting. I’m thinking that she pees standing up.
I say one more time, very quietly, “And this makes sense to you?”
“Those are the rules.”
I want to tell her that segregation used to be a rule, that shoving Jews into ovens used to be a rule, that cunts like her couldn’t even have her job 30 years ago, because those were the rules. (Oh, she made it big-time to the C-word.) I want to tell this dried-up piece of horse crotch to stop waggling her dick at me, but she is wearing a badge, a nightstick, and a gun, and I am out-numbered by her phallic symbols.
I look down very obviously at her name tag: Officer Sexton.
Of course it is.
I nod, put my sunglasses back down over my eyes, and swallow my venom. I turn back to my car, open the door, peel the backing off the red park pass, and af-fucking-fix it to the inside of my cracked windshield. Officer SexTongue snorts and cantors back to her car, her gait made more difficult by her erection. She greets the other deputy, a pink balding male, with a whinny. They hitch up their belts and share a “We nailed one!!” high-five. I slam the door too loudly which fuels their “Crucify-Him!” fever.
I am sucking air in my car, a raped baby seal. The predators don’t move. If I leave, I look guilty. If I stay, I look guilty.
I came here to walk my dog, dammit, and I’m gonna walk my dog.
I get out and open the hatch where Bowie-dog has been silent during my humiliation by Officer SexTaunt. I briefly wish Bowie were a rabid pit bull to whom I could whisper: “That one. Leave no trace.” But no, Bowie is lovely and even-tempered. Useless.
We walk around the park. Well, she walks and I stomp around trying to burn off the adrenalin. It’s not working. Two or three laps do not even begin to dilute the toxic build-up from recent combat. This outing has been poisoned.
“We have to go,” I tell her, and I head for the gate.
“Already? Why??”
“Because killer whales blow!”
“Your metaphors are inconsistent!!”
“Don’t. Test. Me.”
I leash Bowie and put her back in the car. I have to drive by the killing field in order to escape the park. The cops are still leaning against their vehicles. I remotely wonder whether the Brillo Pads on their hairy ass cheeks ever scratch the paint. Officer SexTaint is awkwardly hand-jiving her fat partner, Deputy Pink-Blubber, an absurd sea horse throwing gang signs at a manatee. And as she lifts her left hand with a gesture straight out of “Vanilla Ice Runs the Derby,” I see the glint of a gold ring.
Just kill me. Officer Secretariat has a husband.
I bet he’s a rodeo clown. When he’s not blowing seals.
We leave. I drive. I am simmering with insults about Clydesdales and sperm whales. Half-way home Bowie says, “Don’t be hating.”
“It’s my birthright.”
Bowie-dog scratches her ear, smug with a secret.
“Did you ever put your new registration sticker on your license plate?”
I whip around at her. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Aren’t you driving with expired plates? Hasn’t your registration sticker been sitting in your glove box for six months now because ‘it’s cold outside’?”
I laugh. I laugh hard. I may have whinnied. I want to high-five Bowie-dog but she doesn’t have any thumbs.
“I owe you a high-four,” I tell her in the rear-view mirror.
“Giddy up.”
“Yippee-ki-yay…”
And we finish the swear together.
———
18 January 2015, “True Stories in the Key of E-flat”
(This was a wildly magical moment, even by Disney standards.)
We were nearing the end of our voyage to the bottom of the wallet. It was the 14th hour of the 3rd day, or possibly the 200th. Our little family was Dopey and Sleepy and Alertness-Challenged despite the relentless bombardment of joy. (“Magic” is the Latin word for “crack,” and “Kingdom” means “You’re gonna need a bigger spending limit.”) Our feet were screaming from all the happiness, and we limped the final furlong of the hundred-aching woods, uphill, both ways.
Our little family had SQUEEEED! through seven dwarfs, two ducks, and a fairy (not that there’s anything wrong with that.) We had haunted a mansion and spaced a mountain. At least one of us had peed her pants in front of a princess (not that there’s anything wrong with that), and we had eaten our weight in funnel cakes. We were now hauling precious Mouse swag in gift bags the approximate size and shape of Dumbo, uphill, both ways. We. Were. Tired.
The final show of the day was about to begin, the title of which was spoken in an impossible combination of whispers and all caps: THE LIGHTING OF THE CASTLE! (Shhh…) I didn’t know whether this meant candles or arson, but at this point it didn’t matter. We were either going to finish this giddy marathon or die. THIS! IS! DISNEY!
We sit. Well, two of us sit. Kelsey and I miraculously find an unoccupied bench some distance from the final show. We can see the castle, but it’s on the horizon over a sea of bodies, like an electric Mayflower. We collapse and sip our coffee. (It is almost 10:00 p.m. This coffee tastes like the reason Moses left the Promised Land. It is MANNA, in all caps and a whisper.) We have been shooting up Disney heroin for three days. (Drink the Kool-Aid! It’s so happy!) Even the young people are hobbling after snorting this much excitement. We sit, and Vincent and Molly stumble off toward THE CASTLE (Shhh…) still holding hands and a ferocious belief in miracles. My adrenal glands can’t endure anymore anticipation, but the lovers want to be closer to the show so that they can hear the music. And the tourists’ heads exploding.
Kelsey and I are quiet, examining our phones as if they contained salvation, or, as an alternative, Motrin. We are almost peaceful despite being surrounded by 90,000 of our closest friends. We breathe in the lights and ignore the sound of whimpering (which is mostly coming from our feet.) The calm is shattered when Vince parts the crowd, his face fierce. An angry prophet.
“Open your bag,” he says. His voice is low, panicked.
“Da fu…?” I don’t enunciate the final consonant because of little Mouse ears.
“Da fu…?” Kelsey echoes, and opens her bag. Consonants fly everywhere.
“What are you looking for?” I scowl and tilt my head, a cartoon.
Vincent jams his hand impolitely into his cousin’s belongings. His face is a ruined mask.
“Molly lost her gift bag.”
Oh no.
If Disney does one thing very well, it’s making it easy to spend your money. There are shops at the beginning and end of every adventure. There are stores for dreams and stores for nightmares, and at every check-out they will take both your AmEx and your dignity with the same flawless smile. And Molly has spent a small college fortune on irreplaceable dangly things.
Oh no.
“We don’t have it.”
Vince runs back through the crowd to collect Molly, who I imagine is huddled at the base of THE CASTLE in a Biblical puddle of tears. Not knowing how to react (and not having nearly enough coffee to formulate an emotion), Kelsey and I stay on the bench and watch the LIGHTING OF THE CASTLE. No matter what disaster has just befallen us, this castle show has earned all of its whispers and capital letters. It is complex. It is astonishing. We sip our coffees and toast the Disney genius.
Vince and Molly break through the crowd toward us. Orphans at Ellis Island were not this miserable.
If Vincent’s face was ruined, Molly’s is a land mine. My guess is that she has cried throughout the LIGHTING OF THE CASTLE, possibly destroying several of the Magic Algorithms.
“We need to go to Guest Relations,” Vincent urges us, trying not to grieve.
“I want some guest relations.” I am an ass.
We get up and walk, or, more accurately, swim. We are schooling both with and against a million-mouse-eared crowd towards the exit of the park, Vince holding Molly’s hand, Kelsey and I holding our coffee cups. We carom back and forth, banging into shoulders and defeat. We are jostled by expectation. Liquids are jettisoned. We are zombie salmon. We may die.
“Let’s stop at the last store we were in,” Vince says, suggesting a miracle. “We’ll just check.”
Yeah, sure. And maybe there’s a burning bush in there, says my inner Detroiter.
We swim out of the throng and into Mickey’s Rugby Scrum, or whatever the shop is called, and three smiling Disney employees greet us.
“Welcome!”
“Welcome!”
“Welcome!”
Despite the fact that Vince and Molly look like they’ve just been waterboarded, the pressed-on happy paint of the Disney cast members never falter. (They are “cast members” not “employees.” And, after today’s performance, they are Oscar-worthy. Except… I’m not sure it’s an act.)
“What can I help you with?” the cast members chorus.
“This is probably a lost cause,” Vince begins, “but my girlfriend lost a gift bag.”
Molly breaks into fresh tears.
“And what was in it?” A cast member named Sarah glides to the front, unsinkable.
Molly bursts, rapid-fire: “A haunted mansion t-shirt, a bracelet with Tinker Bell danglies, a stuffed Sven, and an official Red Ryder carbine-action 200-shot Mulan slingshot!”
“You’ll shoot your eye out, kid.” I am an ass.
“I will check in the back,” Sarah smiles and floats away.
This is a waste of time, says my inner White Trash.
“Couldn’t we just get some guest relations?” says my outer White Trash.
We pace in front of the glass displays awaiting the return of our sentence – death or life without a reason to live. We don’t buy anything, because now that seems dangerous. Anyone setting a bag down in a store might just as well have thrown it off a cliff. In Sparta. It is g-o-n-e.
I swallow the last cold dregs of my coffee and toss the cup in a nearby trash bin. (Littering here would be a war crime.) I turn around just in time to see Sarah Smiles opening a door in the back and carrying… a gift bag.
No.
Sarah holds the plastic blue gift bag aloft in two hands — Mufasa presenting Simba. “Is this it?” She almost sings it.
Molly’s eyes grow as big as tea cups.
No way.
Sarah lowers the bag. Molly’s tiny frame is shaking. She opens the bag slowly like it might contain either oxygen or terror.
“It’s here…. IT’S ALL HERE!” Molly inhales the fairytale.
Molly’s face falls apart, but in the good way, in the way of elation and miracles. It is wet and pained and happy, like a birth. Molly hugs Sarah Smiles. Sarah Smiles hugs Vince. A lot of people are crying, and most of them are us. A male Disney cast member wearing a right smart vest steps out from around the cash register.
“Hey, are we giving out free hugs?” His face wears the ‘aw-shucks, t’weren’t nothing’ glee of someone who found a baby in the well. “I saw you set the bag down.”
The young man opens his arms, and Molly crumples into them. Tears don’t even stain a Disney costume.
His name tag says “Scott” but it might as well say “Hero.” My inner skeptic goes quiet, and for just a moment, there is such a thing as magic.
“Someone found the gift bag,” I whisper to Vince.
“Yep,” he says, holding on to Molly to keep from floating to the ceiling.
“And they hung on to it.”
“Yep. Cast members.”
“And nobody stole it.”
“Nope.”
“And Tinker Bell is real.”
“Clap your hands if you believe.”
“I can’t. They’re full of tissues.”
We finish crying and hugging and wiping our faces. Magic is very salty.
We walk out to the car. I have been converted. I am humming, “Let it go, let it go…”
23 December 2014, Erin Waugh
“Disney World and the Magic Bag,” from “True Stories in the Key of E-flat.”
I had packages to mail. The postage was paid, the boxes were sealed. I had printed the address labels at my house, stuck them to flat-rate boxes with strapping tape (one cat hair per package! I don’t play favorites!), and driven to the post office.
It’s always a crap shoot at the post office, sometimes literally. You walk in and people shoot crap at you. This particular post office was in Pontiac, Michigan. Pontiac – that beat-down city whose motto is: “We used to make cars. Now it’s just enemies and tacos.”
The post office building sat too close to a busy and broken thoroughfare. I would not have found it except for Google Maps. The architecture was vintage “bullet-proof.” The building stood invisible and disinterested between pawn shops and liquor stores and specialty businesses like “STD Contracting” (that’s a real name). Sometimes a post office is staffed by the nicest people. Sometimes it’s an episode of Thunderdome. At Christmas, a trip to the post office is like visiting the DMV with a pack of rabid toddlers.
I was in a cheery holiday mood. My packages were labeled and paid for. They were ready. I SHOULD have been able to just drop them in a big blue bin somewhere. Murrica! I walked into the post office with a smile. I looked around. No blue bin. No self-service kiosk. Huh. The room was dark. It was echo-y. It smelled like crying.
I wasn’t sure what to do. I assessed the ground troops and gauged the readiness of their ordnance. There were seven customers in line and two “workers” behind the counter. Everyone in line had boxes with blank labels and incomplete envelopes. I stood behind all these unprepared soldiers, which didn’t make any sense because my weapons were READY, but I didn’t see another option.
“Well this is dumb,” I thought to myself, but the whole sentence rhymed with “suck.”
One minute. Three. The line moved up when one woman stepped to the counter and BEGAN to fill out her forms. I rattled my VERY READY packages. I breathed a yoga breath. I made up new limericks.
Finally, in an audible but well-modulated voice, I asked the room, “Is there a place I could drop off my packages? They’re ready.”
The “workers” behind the counter didn’t even flinch. They never even moved, never looked up. It’s possible they were made of some NASA-grade polymer designed primarily to be deaf. The customers in line, however, began to jostle. The first customer, a bearded man in a Carhartt jacket, tried to calm the ranks. He turned to me kindly.
“You could set them there,” he pointed to an empty counter. “They will mail them later, as long as you get their attention.”
“Get their attention? With what?” I held up my boxes like they were orphans. Or bombs.
The line people grew more agitated. The second woman whipped her braids around at me. “You SAID it, sister. It’s like we don’t even exist.” She flapped her mail at a water stain in the ceiling. The squirrels outside ran away.
Customers #3 and #4 flicked their eyes at me and nodded, prisoners about to break. Woman #5 did that neck thing and sing-song’d, “Um hmm.” The rabble was rousing, but the two post office workers did not acknowledge us. They were highly focused on the very important task of ignorance. Zoo animals with pensions.
I pointed toward the slow loris twins and whispered to my fellow inmates: “If we poked them with sticks, would they bite?”
The general population giggled a little, backing down from “disgruntled.” Woman #2 crossed her arms and muttered “Customer service, my Aunt Fanny.” She stomped her foot and made the sign of Wayne Brady.
We outnumbered them, yet we were helpless. Our shared struggle made us teammates, but our impotence made us useless. We shrugged and gave in as a village. We tucked away our pitchforks.
“I’ll take them,” said the man directly in front of me.
“I don’t know, I think they’ll fight back. The one on the left looks scrappy.”
“No, your packages. I’ll take them up to the counter with me when it’s my turn.”
He was young, serious, maybe 30. Beat-up blue parka, work boots, good hair slicked back with Dippity-Do. White skin, almost translucent from rare outdoor time. Not a hipster, poor.
“You’ll carry these?” I looked down at my packages. “Up there?” I looked up at the sluggish feeding frenzy.
“I will. When it’s my turn.” His grin was lopsided, his teeth were perfect.
I should have tipped him, but I was delirious from renewed holiday cheer, so I grabbed his arm and knocked his package to the floor. It’s how we show joy in the city.
“Thank you!” I beamed and handed him my boxes. “I hope you’re not a terrorist!”
“Me too!” His really good hair fell into his eyes despite the gel.
The townsfolk smiled.The slow lorises scratched their necks with their hind legs.
“Merry Christmas, everybody!” I waved to my new, freed, family.
“Merry Christmas!” They gestured with their packages, not even jealous, and not even a euphemism.
In conclusion, I have a favor in my pocket. And it is ready.
“True Stories in the Key of E-flat” 14 December 2014
Is that pre-paid postage, or are you just happy to see me?
I open the kitchen trash. It’s Waste Manage-y, but not critical.
Me: “Bowie-dog?”
I scan the litter box and the carpets to make sure no one exploded.
Me: “Tweak?”
I check the fridger. The milk is old but not sour. There are eight kinds of cheese in the drawer, but even the pungent ones are on purpose. No rotting veggies, no meat papers. The oldest suspects are a handful of genetically-modified cherries from three months ago. I open the Tupperware and sniff. Probably still edible if you don’t mind Ebola.
Me: “Come on, Tweak. Life is just Ebola cherries. Where are you…?”
Tweak materializes.
Me: “Something died in here.”
Tweak yawns.
Me: “And why didn’t you take care of it before it went, you know, dead?”
Tweak squints, folds in half, tends to a personal hygiene emergency.
Tweak: “Mice are the devil’s hemorrhoid.”
Me: “AHA! I never said it was a mouse. How do you know it’s a mouse??”
Tweak uncoils from her work in the down-under.
Tweak: “What are the choices – badgers? Birds? You think this house is lucky enough to be infested by baby pandas?”
Me: “Eww. Especially if they crawl under something and die.”
Tweak: “What’s black and white and red all over?”
Me: “Tweak, no.”
Tweak: “A bamboo spork.”
Me: “You’ve crossed the line. Help me look for the smell.”
Tweak: “I’d rather eat Ebola cherries.”
Me: “That’s my joke! You can’t take my joke just because you deliver it better.”
Tweak jumps up onto the back of the couch.
Me: “Everybody in this house is useless.”
Bowie-dog slides into the dining room, nails scrabbling on the wood floor. She wags her tail and knocks over a bottle of Motrin.
I am standing at the kitchen sink slitting open a package of meat.
Tweak: “What’s an oxtail?”
Me: “A tail from an ox? Or maybe a Lady Gaga costume.”
Inside the package are six latitudinal one-inch slices of… something. Bone surrounded by meat, surrounded by entitlement.
Tweak: “Are you going to cook it?”
Me: “Are you going to try comedy?”
I remove one of the raw slices and throw it out the back door. Bowie-dog dashes out from her very important job of holding down the living room rug. She hunts the oxtail all the way to the patio.
Tweak: “There are kids in Ethiopia who just starved in front of their computers.”
Me: “I will be gone for a long time today. This gives the dog something to do.”
Tweak: “You never give me something to do.”
Me: “Why would I give you something to do? So you could sleep on it?”
Tweak: “You have no idea what I do while you’re gone.”
Me: “Tweak, I have left for work at 8:00 in the morning, come home at 8:00 at night, and you’ve been in the exact same position except for somehow having armed yourself with the breath of a thousand tunas.”
I drain the meat juice from the package into the sink.
Tweak: “You can tune a piano but you can’t tuna meat.”
Me: “’Tuna Meet’ sounds like a great name for an online service.”
Tweak: “You really need a date.”
Me: “You want an oxtail?”
Tweak: “That’s an even better name.”
Me: “’Tuna Meat or Oxtail.’ It’s all a matter of taste, isn’t it?”
Tweak: “Or desperation.”
I seal up the remaining oxtails in a Ziploc.
Me: “My meat is dolphin-safe.”
Tweak: “Lady Gaga called. She wants her innuendo back.”
Me: “Tweak, did you know that there are cats who live outside?”
Tweak: “Live? Out… there?”
Me: “Yes. Outdoors. On the other side of doors.”
Tweak cocks her head toward me from the windowsill where she’s been tracking the mating ritual of two robins.
Tweak: “Someone has to go outside to pour nurdles in their bowl? Why would you do that to yourselves?”
Me: “No, no. These cats don’t have a ‘someone.’ They have never eaten nurdles.”
Tweak: “This is bullshit.”
Tweak turns back to the robins in the bush. The male leaps up one branch higher, the female down.
Me: “I would not lie to you, Tweak. I tell the truth so I don’t have to keep track.”
The male has brought the female a gift in his beak – a leaf. Or a maggot.
Tweak: “So they’re homeless?”
Me: “They’re not homeless, they’re house-less. They live between things.”
Tweak: “Were they born in barns??”
Me: “Sometimes. Certainly they were not nuzzled into the world by the kiss of a midwife onto a bed of Valium-filled Krispy Kremes like you, princess. No, feral kittens are born mewling and twisted, wrenched from the uteri of cat rapes, dropped wet and kicking behind dumpsters and under front porches all across this great land, raised on a steady diet of Taco Bell, locusts, and intimidation.”
Tweak: “What happens when it rains?”
Me: “Then we forget about them.”
The male robin leans over to present his squirming gift. The female lets the maggot fall to the earth.
Tweak: “Are outdoor cats… special? Inbred? Got one eye in between the other three?”
Me: “They are typically very healthy, although they tend to cuss like sailors.”
Tweak: “Your mother was a bilge rat.”
Me: “Your father had the pox.”
Tweak tucks her feet under her and watches for the next bird show.
