anarchy

(i wrote this many years ago)

The William is attempting sleep on a plywood plank under the rock overhang . Crude four-poster bed in our pseudo-cave, protection from the sun's murderous glare. I'm careful to be quiet. I want him to sleep. I want to be alone.

There's no silence in the desert, but the closest you'll get is at noon. No wonder they dueled to the death at High Noon in the Old West. What more suitable time to die out there. What more likely time. Me, I don't need a siesta. I welcome the time to myself and, like a lizard, bask in the sun. Sit with thighs sticking sweatily to a faded blue plastic 60's chair by the cooking grate. Must remember to disengage slowly or I will yelp in pain, wake him, lose my solitude. He never mentioned a cooking grate or I would have brought hotdogs. Instead we're surviving on raisins and pull-top cans of beans. My appetite has abandoned me anyway. The act of eating performed only to fuel the body. I've slipped into some subsistence state in which the food I love has become meaningless. The growling of my stomach perplexes me. Doesn't it realize my mind has rejected food as unnecessary? Water is all I need. My body has become the desert.

We are on BLM (Bureau of Land Management) land just over the Arizona border in Utah. We crossed thirty-five miles of nothingness to get here. I think wistfully of the azure expanse of Lake Powell not so far away. But we are isolated. It's what we wanted. The road out was hardly more than dried up river bed winding between forbidding buttes the color of decaying ship's hulls long sunken in this arid sea. One cloudburst and we'd be cut off. But the pristine sky above breeds no clouds and that danger is only my fantasy.

This is Church Camp. The Zen Anarchist Sanctuary. A bizarre cove of vague toothpick civilization in the infinite desert. And it feels as infinite as the sky. I feel so small. The silver underbellies of planes glint occasionally and I think in a small voice, "Hello. I am down here. No one knows I am here. You can't see me from your cockpit I am so small. You look down here and you think 'there couldn't possibly be anyone down there.' But I am here."

The William found this place quite by accident during his wanderings in the Flying Skull, his midnight blue Jeep. The top of which has never come off. And I can't understand that. To me, a Jeep in the desert screams to be topless (as do I, come to think of it). We should have been caged only by the gut-spattered windshield and rollbars. But he has his CD player and his gear to protect, not to mention his fair skin, and so he's never unscrewed the lid and just driven with the wind in his hair. No need to tell me to fasten my seatbelt on the trip out. The manic jouncing of the Jeep left me feeling so vulnerable that I wanted to be battened down. His driving is demented. He is a show off and for that I spent two hours jerking like a marionette in my seat, nails pinching my thighs as he spun donuts in soft sand.

Ranchers (where do they live?) lease vast tracts of land out here to graze cattle (what do they eat?). Invisible creatures, bread crumb trail of dung to the creek that's long since gone underground. I had a vague fear of crashing head on into the grill of some pickup truck as we rounded a boulder out of control, but the chances of that were minimal, considering the desolation. The William had temporary squatter's rights at the makeshift camp. He recounted an ominous story of men arriving at the camp one time months back, demanding to know what he and his friend were doing there. (They were tripping their brains out). Did they work for the rancher? (I had a secret laugh at anyone mistaking the William for a cowpoke) and making threatening noises about tourists being unwanted in these parts. The William made it sound like we could be killed by these modern-day outlaws for trespassing. Images of my skull bleaching in the Utah sun gave me pause. I'd learned to take his truth and cut it in half, however, and then I'd have something closer to fact. At least I counted on that when it came to sinister ranchers. In the worst case scenario, I figured I could rely upon my charms to spare my life and to hell with the William.

The camp comes up like some wished-for truck stop. A stand of ancient cottonwoods sponging off the creekbed, home to four owls that swoop from limb to limb, mystified by the humans. Just beyond the trees, an incongruous swamp in miniature, complete with reeds and bullfrogs, encircled by a fence to keep cow and horse dung out of the fresh water source. Beside it is a giant's step of rock, waterfall gone dry. I look at it and picture the Flying Skull airborne as the William wonders where the road has gone.

The site is inviting to humans. It's surrounded by rock ledges and one of the blue retro plastic chairs perches up there like a throne. The Birth Canal is behind the cheap throne, where the William had once shoved his head in drug-addled curiosity and got stuck for a time in the tight crevasse of rock. Fool. I figured one trip through a birth canal is enough for anyone in a lifetime and besides, it was strewn with dried mouse droppings. No Hanta Virus for me, thank you. I sometimes wonder how he's survived. Below the ledge is a corral spattered with horse droppings and strewn with old straw. A long pipe from the mini-marsh feeds the horse trough and spills in a lackadaisical trickle onto the thirsty ground. The trough could fit two humans easily in its depth, provided you don't mind the layer of rusty silt and algae on the bottom. And in this sun, you won't. Hunched amid the bushy sage sits a plastic port-a-potty. It's got toilet paper. Someone didn't think much of squatting in the bushes, ass bared to passing rattlesnakes. I love them for it.

When we arrived, the William parked the Skull in front of a small trailer which surrenders its paint to the harsh environs. Stovepipe jutting from its round airplane hangar body. Not even fit for a trailer park, this thing's about as homegrown as they come. But the trailer does have a sad charm. We declared it home and tossed our belongings on the bunkbed inside, stashing our meager food supply atop the stove. The William insists upon closing the split wooden door tight between visits, oddly convinced that the trailer is inpenetrable to vermin. I point out mouse shit on the mattress. The ceiling is a planetarium of frightening psychedelic verse and scrawled names. This could have been home to Jim Morrison, Charlie Manson.

Outside, in the silty dust shaded by the rock overhang and the trailer, we set up the tent. A space-age thing I'd seen only in outdoorsman magazines. A trained monkey could have set it up. We'd forgotten to level the ground beneath it, or clear it of foreign objects that would later wreak havoc on our spines. At first I wasn't sure I liked the site. I inspected the area thinking it might be nicer beneath the cottonwoods (although no doubt spattered with owl shit). However, that meant setting up in the creek bed and even if a sudden flood seemed ludicrous, it wasn't totally out of the question. I preferred not to drown in the desert. The William spoke of moving camp later into the open desert but I balked, preferring even these shreds of civilization.

As he sleeps, I abandon my chair for the huge boulder that has enticing hollows. I'm certain I can find comfort on it. The curve of my ass fits neatly into one hollow, the spread of my shoulders in another. A small lizard, subtle iridescent beauty, skitters over my brown belly. It doesn't know me from the rock and has no fear. I'm at a luxurious lounge chair angle and bask in the sunlight, flicking pellets of dried grey mud off my legs, ecstatic to be a living highway to a small creature. He cocks his head amusingly, pinhead eyes examining my movement. But I realize it's not me who holds his attention, it's a careless beetle flying spasmotically in our small rock realm. Too close to the earth. I'm captive to the lizard's predatory grace. With psychic accuracy, he knows where the beetle will dip in flight, and swallows it whole.

I'm already so dirty and it will be days before a shower. Earlier we'd gone on an excursion out to some pillars of mud and caves of mud. Desert sexuality, dried and cracked like geriatric genitalia. Touch the pillar and its crust crumbles beneath your fingers. Mother Earth has a sense of humor, giving birth to this erect phallus that dwarfs us in dimension. I offer it a Lilliputian embrace, paying perverse comic homage to the penis. The William leads me to the cave. A slit almost invisible in the haunch of a butte until you're on top of it. I eye it dubiously. He's already inserted his body into its mouth with gymnastic flexibility. He insists I am no bigger than he is and can fit without a problem. He forgets, I have breasts and hips. I watch his luminous white skin swallowed by the crumbly grey mud cave, shimmery white-blond head plunging into a womb of darkness. I'm really not so sure I want to go in there. I look up at the rocky mass overhead and imagine it choosing the moment of my exploration to cave in. The William is persistent, however, and to prove I am no coward, I gingerly thrust a leg into the jagged mouth of the cave, twisting gracelessly and struggling for footholds.

--You know, this looks like the perfect home for rattlesnakes.

--Well I've never seen one in here.

--It only takes one time.

--We'd hear it rattle before we got to it.

I'm not particularly reassured. But at least he's in the lead. He'd disturb the venomous resident, after all, not me. As my fingers bite into talcum walls and my feet test and cling to dried outcroppings of mud, my imagination invents a scenario where we hear the tell-tale rattle, amplified in the small space, and he screams and plunges into the narrow slit. Pinned. Twin pricks oozing blood. How do I drag him out when I can barely maneuver my own body? And if I get him out, will he remain conscious to guide me out of these confusing look-alike canyons? My mind divides, dwelling on these ominous visions while contemplating the best route through the curving rainwater spout, dry as chalk and crumbling as my body scrapes its walls. It is a thankfully short cave, opening into a chalice of rock. I crawl out with relief, yet immensely pleased with myself for daring. However, there's one more challenge. We're still in a pit about six feet deep. In a moment, it's just me. He's scrambled out with land crab mobility and peers down at me from the lip, offering a hand. I'm completely unconvinced that he could tug me out. He may be agile, but still appears somewhat frail and I am a solid woman. Over and over I attempt to use my upper body to pull myself out but I lack the power and my muscles are shaky from the cave-crawl. It's just beyond my capacity. My foothold never seems sure enough and it would be a hard fall. Now I know how it feels to be trapped and a vague panic begins to curl round my throat. I could exit the same way I entered, I suppose, through the mud cave. But that's not appealing either. And so I grab and hold and stretch and pull and climb and scrape and finally, every muscle and sinew singing, I breach the rock lip. God, it feels good. Twin escapees, we survey the hole, and I see how the cave was formed. We'd traversed ancient depths, the drainpipe of a mountain. Perhaps the path of least resistance for water, but not so for humans. Exhilerating to have wriggled its length and be born again into sunlight.

No wonder the William is beat. We didn't slept much last night and we'd driven north from Flagstaff the day before. I insisted on opening my window despite his complaint that the Jeep didn't drive well when catching air. Upright square vehicles are just not aerodynamic, open windows or not. Deal with it. Besides, we had two jugs of gasoline in the back and I figured a little air circulation would be useful. And it just wouldn't do to smoke a cigarette in an enclosed space with gasoline, would it? An open window only made sense and he had little choice but to bend to my will. I needed the window open to see anything. He thought that never washing the windshield would make the Jeep look somehow more 'rugged', like it had been places. Frankly, I found splattered bug guts at close range vaguely nauseating and spent many miles pondering why he didn't go cross-eyed. We had the CD player cranked on the trip up but the rugged roads had Beck's Stereopathetic Soulmanure skipping so insanely we had to make do with conversation.

--I'm tempted to find out where Beck lives and knock on his door and tell him 'I'm Beck too! Don't you get it?'

I didn't get it, but I nodded as if I did. I'm sure Beck would be delighted. Everyone loves a stalker. Particularly one with the apparent delusion that he too is you.

As he slept, looking like some crumpled angel with scuffed up knees, I rose from my rock and sought shelter from the sun beneath the gnarled cottonwoods, alighting between dried owlshit splatter on a ledge of rock. A jackrabbit rustled behind me and the owl posse exchanged tree limb perches above. Glorious solitude. I will him to sleep for a very long time.

My canteen smells bad. Backwash, I suppose, or mildew taking hold of the insulated pouch that is never quite dry. I slosh the water thoughtfully in my plastic Army canteen. It's one of the favorite things I own, the best four dollar investment ever made. A small pocket on the front of the olive drab pouch holds a small brown bottle of water purification tablets which I regret never having occasion to use. It's got metal hooks that I clamp the the back pocket of my low-slung jean shorts and if I get any skinnier the weight of the water will drag the pants right off me. There was a time when I had no idea how to properly drink from a canteen and would sip in a ladylike manner. But then an Army vet set me straight. I had to wrap my lips completely around the mouth of the bottle, he said. I tried it. Problem solved, no longer would I suffer water-spattered breasts. I guzzle now like a good ole boy tipping back a cold one. The William brought along several odd black canvas pouches he calls 'Ant Babies' (and to his dismay, I bastardize it into Beanie Babies). I declare their inventor an idiot. What sense does it make to color a water pouch black so it can suck up all the sun's heat? The water inside is rude, hot and noxious. I decided that the Ant Babies made better pillows and we needn't use them since he's also brought a huge plastic, spiggoted jug of the stuff. If nothing else, the William is an ample supplier of water and although I may starve, I shall not die of thirst.

Something rustles behind my rock perch and I turn to find our Friendly Neighborhood Jackrabbit. He'd spent the last evening near the Skull grazing off a shrub of sage, one big dark eye fixed and unblinking in our direction. We were transfixed by the rabbit's eye. How long we sat there staring silently back at it, who knows. For him, we were apparently some novel dinner show and he seemed quite unfazed by our presence. I thought perhaps he'd like a change of pace from the sage diet and crept forward with offerings of bread and Wheat Thins only to find he was unmoved by my gifts and let them go stale in the dust overnight. He has ears of Mule dimension, perhaps more alert than those jet bead eyes, and it's hard to believe he's a rabbit as he hops - no, you can't even call it a hop - he very nearly lopes like a coyote.

The lizards investigate me more thoroughly and fearlessly than any other creature and I begin to recognize and identify them. One by his crooked tail, another by half moon mark in black round his throat. I love the way they bob their heads in puppetlike greeting. They appear territorial and menace one another until diverted by a possible meal of bird. Restless, I walk to the bottom of the dry falls where a green rivulet feeds a small pool and strange small wriggling creatures fight for survival. Some, I am astounded to see, are tadpoles and I imagine the others mosquito or some bug larvae. There are other small alkaline pools in the ruts of the road. How long do they have, I wonder? Who knows when it rained last and when it will rain again? They valiantly try to reach adulthood before their tire track world goes dry. And I guess they pray that another tire doesn't roll over them.

There is only one creature in this wilderness that I resent. Or one flock of creatures, rather. The crows.- or are they ravens? I never get close enough to distinguish the tell-tale difference in beak. Monstrous in size, they have vocal chords to match, and I awoke at some hellish dawn hour to their rusty shovel cries. Toss and turn, sandwich my head with an Ant Baby and a balled up sweatshirt, I could not muffle the godawful racket. No choice but to get up and make instant coffee by balancing the camper's pock-marked tea kettle atop the propane flame. The birds simply traded fence posts, never halting their demented symphony until I began to believe that their sole purpose in haunting the corral was to let the humans know we were not welcome. Only when I strode through the dust toward them did they relent and flap off in a Hitchcock show of menace.

I'd somehow managed to exit the tent without waking the William, despite the loud rip of the zipper. The clothes I'd worn to bed the night before and wriggled out of in the heat of daybreak were too filthy to consider again. I balanced at the mouth of the tent and inserted my feet into my Nike hiking boots (or sneakers, I've never quite figured out what they are) for it's unwise to tramp unshod in the desert. With no audience in the world, I rose like Venus. Utterly and magnificently nude. With an exquisite thrill, I shook loose my hair and gathered up a towel and toothbrush and strolled through the camp wearing nothing but my boots. I imagined myself the original homo sapiens sapiens, feral and primitive, unaware that any other such creatures existed besides ourselves in this vast sunlit world. The morning sun was gentle on my skin, unthreatening to the pale moons of my buttocks and breasts. The silence (now that the crows had flown the coop) absolutely breathtaking. For that time nothing else existed, all had been stripped away. Well except for my boots. I was Eve, Lady Godiva, Mother Earth. I unraveled my hair like Rapunzel, studied the tranquil water of the horse trough like the Lady of Shallot. And I pondered if a Prince or a Frog lay slumbering in the tent. I had not yet reached a conclusion.

Fucking the William had been a curious and novel experience. If you're looking for the Big O, sex is better approached sober because a DXM hallucination is serious competition for an orgasm. And it doesn't discriminate between the sexes. One can and will fuck for hours with no resolution, but fortunately it's only vaguely frustrating at the time. There's so much else going on inside your head it's hard to care about the gratification of your clit. Even when I concentrated on coming it was irritatingly elusive, so I would console myself with the impossible length of time we were able to fuck. I confess to more amusement than compassion for the William's lot - a penis that would forget its purpose, hang its head in confusion, then rise back up to the challenge repeatedly.

We were sprawled on a blanket on the plywood platform. When I sent him into the tent for condoms he forgot why he was in there and I had to stifle my laughter. The only reason I knew why he was there was because I'd secretly halved my dose. I couldn't fully surrender in this wilderness. Still, I can't be sure how long it was before I even noticed he was missing. I wanted to say hey, this is next to impossible, let's just forget it. But he was so intent upon fucking. That is, when he remembered that was what he wanted to be doing. Me, I didn't care. The night sky teeming with stars and the bats swooping for bugs above our guttering candle were as captivating to me as a good round of sex. When I was alone on my back on my personal boulder I took huge delight in the exquisite close encounters I was having with my beloved bats. I could see their mud colored underbellies and hear the magnificent flap of their wings millimeters from my ear. No fear that they would become hopelessly entangled in my hair. The black sky was encrusted with more diamonds than a Romanov's crown. I watched in childlike delight as they'd take turns falling, arching past Orion's Belt and then fizzling into nothingness.

When the drug took absolute hold and I was again entangled with the William, I became the night sky.He lay on his back beneath me and I rose over him. Stars fell from my fingers. I became infinite and celestial. He was the desert below me and I spread out over his expanse, my fingers deconstructing into the wind that caressed every arroyo and and boney crag of his wilderness. In slow motion I swooped like a freetail bat over my world with nothing nothing nothing tying me to the earth. He seemed so solid and grounded below me while I seemed to have shed any human form. I was nothing, insubstantial, and yet I was everything. I fucked him. Amazing to be so big and know no limits. Entranced, I fell in love with the sensation. And I fucked him. Before, the very concept of infinity frightened me. Too big, too inconceivable to grasp. How can there be no boundaries? How can something never ever end? Yet, when I was infinite it was achingly beautiful. No fear. Only delirious and endless fucking. But eventually even infinity had to end. The world telescoped again into our small place. Where our inept bodies struggled to come together. When there was no hope that we ever could.

the cat whisperer

i almost lost my standing as the Cat Whisperer tonight.

a friend of mine told me yesterday that his house had been over-run with fleas and immediately my skin crawled. although i have not seen a flea in my house of 6 cats, i was taking no chances. i flew to the Cat Hospital after work and purchased a 6-pack of flea killer for kitties. i will have none of those insect vermin invading my house. my Fear stems from childhood. i don't think my parents had any idea about flea control. after all, they had no idea litterboxes existed. when i was about 9, getting ready for school one morning, i pulled on my kneesocks and could literally see the fleas jumping on and off them. That sight is burned unpleasantly into my memory.

so i rounded up the herd one by one and squirted Vectra on the backs of their necks. most of them were easy to catch and treat, although Big (the 20 pounder) was uncannily suspicious when i sweetly sing-songed his name, hanging out of reach under the kitchen table until i tricked him. food is the trick. he's a sucker for food.

but Mosby was the hold-out. Mosby, if you know your civil war history, is named after major mosby, otherwise known as the "grey ghost". alot more appropriate the Mister Kitty, the name he came with from the shelter. Mister Kitty and his sister, Miss Kitty, lost their home when a foolish woman gave up her cats for the sake of a boyfriend. no human, in my opinion, is worth abandoning your pet. but abandon them she did. they were unceremoniously returned at age 3 to the shelter where they'd come from originally. victims of a woman's insecurity and the ultimatum of a selfish boyfriend. Mister and Miss Kitty had been caught in the wild as kittens, right on the cusp of becoming feral. perhaps Mister Kitty never shed his feral kittenhood entirely, or perhaps he was mistreated by The Boyfriend before he came to the shelter. all i know is that he was unreasonably terrified of people, clinging to his sister and never coming out of the shelter of a cat house during the day. since i volunteered at the shelter, i made him my project.

they dubbed me 'the cat whisperer' at the shelter because i was somehow able to bond with even the most antisocial and frightened cats. even the cats with "STAFF ONLY - Vicious" posted in orange on their cages. i had the time to spend with them, the staff did not. and so i was consistently pleased to report back to them that so-and-so was now approachable. it only took patience, quiet tones, and knowing when it was finally OK to pet. i was only attacked once in all my 7 years there, and that was by a cat in the front room who'd been cleared for adoption! i shudder to think what his fate was after that. once they draw blood there's no telling.

on every visit i would try to assuage Mister Kitty's terror, reaching behind his sister to gently pet him after i'd allowed him to sniff my hand. but every time he acted as though he'd never seen me before and i had to start all over again. as i stroked his fur he lay rigid, eyes huge and dilated. because it was a No-Kill shelter he was allowed to live. for six months i visited him, sometimes dismayed by my inability to bring him around. he obviously could not tolerate the constant comings and goings of people and other cats. the shelter tried to offer the two of them together - two for the price of one, convinced he could not survive on his own without the comfort of his sister. one week, to my delight, they were adopted. the next week they were back. rejected.

finally there was talk of euthanasia. there seemed to be no hope for Mister and Miss Kitty. the shelter could not afford to keep them on indefinitely. i pleaded with my husband, please at least come meet Mister Kitty. they're going to kill him. bob relented and accompanied me to the shelter. the siblings were sequestered this time in a large metal cage and Mister Kitty was, as usual, hidden in a box, peering out of a round hole. bob took one look at those eyes, so full of pathos, and said 'oh OK, bring him home, goddammit.' and so with much difficulty we tugged the frightened cat out of his box and stuffed him into a carrier. Miss Kitty was left to fend for herself and was adopted within the week.

all day i sat at work pondering names. what to call him? mouse? he was timid and grey after all. then i hit upon Mosby. when i got home bob announced, "i know what to call him - Mosby!" we'd independently come up with the same name. Mosby lived for several days locked in my computer room alone with food, a litterbox, and only my visits for company. cats respond to this treatment. suddenly you are their only living link in the world and they decide you're not so bad after all. i cried with happiness when Mosby sat beside me on the couch and suddenly trusted me so much he laid on his back, baring his belly. almost smiling. within a week we gave him free range of the house and he was soon adopted by Mattie, the big brother cat of the house, who licked him and bonded. we thought it was a milestone when he allowed us to walk by him and he didn't run. we were astonished when he'd rub up against our legs. years went by and he came around of his own accord. everything had to be on his terms, but that was OK. sometimes i could even catch and hold him and eventually his stiff body would relax and he'd purr.

nowadays Mosby has decided i am safest approached while on the toilet. i don't know how he figured out that i couldn't easily catch him from that seat, but he did. so every morning we have the love ritual on the toilet. sometimes on a chilly morning he will leap onto the couch to head butt me and allows me to pet him. on those mornings my heart swells. he trusts me. i've never shown him any reason not to. but old habits die hard in a cat that once clearly had a hard life. he is still far more comfortable in the company of his fellow cats, still a baby enjoying the head-lickings Big gives him since Mattie died. but i've been his accepted human for 5 years now and i've considered it an honor. bob was too when he was alive. but he plied Mosby with bits of steak from his dinner, so he cheated.

getting Mosby to the vet is a once a year chore i don't relish. tonight i just realized that flea treatment is too. like Big, he suspected something was up when i sing-songed his name and tried to corner him. he was having none of it. plump as he now is, he hurdled upstairs and vanished into the spare bedroom. not a sign of him. i closed the door, certain he was in there, and looked under the bed from all sides. i suddenly realized the fabric of the mattress was hanging like a hammock and staring out at me were those big round terrified eyes. i used my best calm-a-cat voice but something about being that cornered made him turn like i've never seen before. i've heard the plaintive howls, but never before were they accompanied by hissing and spitting. and that's what i now faced. i couldn't really take him seriously. after all he's spent his life as a gentle and timid ghost. but when i reached into his dark hammock i discovered a whole new side of him. as if the feral ghost had risen. he lashed out at me with teeth and claws. i stood my ground, however taken aback, and pulled him out by the scruff of the neck and plunked him on the bed. i might as well have been handling a hellcat. only a blanket over his head stilled him and he realized his battle was lost. i still don't understand why there was a battle. flea treatment squirted onto his neck, i let him go. he just lay there looking at me, hurt and betrayal in his eyes it seemed. then i left the room.

Mosby rushed to the safety of the outdoor cat cage where he lay like a meatloaf in a hay box. he wasn't over the ordeal and i knew i had to regain his confidence. i crept into the cage and used my softest cat whispering voice. it's OK, Mosey, i would never hurt you. i didn't mean to scare you. it's just me, Mose. his ears were back and his nose buried in his paws, obviously hoping i'd get lost. as a hummingbird whirred in the trumpet vines nearby i tenderly stroked between his ears. ran my hand over his back over and over, talking quietly. as his ears relented and came forward i tickled under his chin. then i heard it. the purr. i had won his heart and trust again. we sat there in the big cage and i ignored mosquito bites so that a sudden slap on skin wouldn't set him off again. my half-feral childcat came around and looked up at me, his eyes soft now and almost apologetic. his velvety body relaxed under my hand and after i knew he remembered i am "safe" i carefully took my leave. he watched after me and i told him he was very brave. for years he has associated "very brave" with something good.

pink Hello Kitty bandaids now cover my various bite wounds and an impressive scratch runs down the tender inside of my arm. i have a lot more respect for the grey ghost now and i think it would be best if i practiced more togetherness with him so we don't have a repeat performance of terror and pain in two weeks when he's due for a trip to the vet. perhaps i have neglected the velveteen cat and though i won't lick his head, i will bond more with him in the days to come. i have learned the lesson of Siegfried & Roy. the title of Cat Whisperer is a tenuous one.

i'm sorry

i'm sorry. those are the words you find yourself screaming and sobbing sooner or later when you lose someone or some thing precious to you. it may make no sense whatsoever. you may have done nothing to cause their death, you may have done everything to prevent it, you may have taken the very best care of them. somehow, though, deep in your psyche you feel responsible. sometimes. not always. but when it comes it's devastating.

that's how i've felt.

i can't say i'm sorry enough.

when bob first complained of a gagging sensation and inability to swallow i can look back and reassure myself that i did urge him right then to go to the doctor. but he wouldn't. he was TOO BUSY. maybe that's why i hate those words now. they are such bullshit words. i hate people who are too busy. they're too busy running away, whether it be from emotions or illness. if you stay busy enough you can keep pain at bay. so you think. but in the end it will get you. so spare yourself, be brave and make time for it now. while it counts. in bob's case we missed the chance to find out he had cancer 3 months earlier. maybe it would have made a difference. i'll never know now.

i urged him to go to the doctor every time it happened, but he wouldn't go. maybe he was scared to find out why. maybe he knew it was bad and didn't want to know for sure. he used to say "if you go to a doctor they'll find something wrong with you". as if you'd always be fine...as long as you never went to that doctor. why didn't i make him go? i tried, i know i did, but you can't make a grown and stubborn man do anything. and he was, after all, too busy. he had a job he felt responsible for reporting to every day on time, just like he had at every job before that. he never took an extended lunch hour. sometimes he reported back for work before he was even due.

i didn't know it, but he was actually going to lunch that summer more than he ever had before at any time in his history. i know why now. he was trying to eat as much as he could to battle the way the cancer was whittling his body away. candy, potato chips, fried chicken. after his death i found candy wrappers and empty chip bags in his truck. he was battling cancer with junk food. he should have spent one lunch hour in the doctor's office instead of Zee Mart's parking lot, enjoying their fried chicken. the doctor would have sent him in for an endoscopy right then. maybe before the cancer had the chance to network its way down to his liver.

i stupidly waited the marina season out and cancer had that much more feeding time. he would not agree to go until late october, even delaying one appointment by one week. but by then it was too late. i used to yell at him in a rage when he'd be incapable of finishing his dinner. when he'd dart into the bathroom as it came up immediately. i'd yell "do you want to end up talking through a hole in your throat with a computer voice?" obviously, i had the wrong tube, and may have known it, but i wanted to make some impact, however crass. i actually think that was the very thing that got him to finally agree to a doctor. that and the fact that by then his knees and his back hurt too.on halloween eve he told me the doctor didn't seem to care much about his swallowing, she was more concerned with the fact that his liver felt enlarged. "don't tell my daughter", he said. she was heading over to the house with the children for halloween. "she'll worry."

that was our last night of innocence. blissful ignorance.

when his blood test results came in he was impossibly anemic and soon a CT scan showed 3 tumors in his liver, one six inches in diameter. and then an endoscopy showed esophageal cancer. stage four cancer. and ten weeks later bob was dead.

why didn't i take better care of him? i am not sure why we do it, why we blame ourselves sooner or later. i am sure i am not alone. other 'survivors' must feel this way too. i know so. you can't explain it to a shrink much less a friend or family. in fact, i feel certain others must blame me too. as much as i blame myself. why didn't she take better care of him? how did she not notice all the weight he was losing or his abrupt and odd appetite for high calorie food? anybody else would have gotten him to a doctor sooner. he wouldn't have died. i guess it's easier to blame myself than it is to blame bob because he already suffered the ultimate price. and it's hard to comprehend that maybe no one is to blame. doesn't it have to be someone's fault?

but the 'i'm sorry" isn't just for failing to keep him alive. it's for every single wrong i ever committed. it's just that the worst was that i couldnt save him.

sometimes, crying, you need something to say. something that means something, something you can blurt between gasps for air. "i'm sorry" is perfect and, like the tears, relieves some of the pain.

until next time.

that's HOT

TV is rife with shows about tough men these days. "tougher in alaska", "ice road truckers", "deadliest catch". but i'll tell you who the toughest men are, and they'll never get a TV show. they are the men laying and repairing highways in nevada. that's right. even the folks (who are sometimes women) holding the STOP and GO signs near the road work are tougher than crab fishermen or ice road truckers. for one thing, we don't need crabs. so those fishermen are putting their lives at risk for your fancy dinner, not so our country can function. so while it would definitely suck to get swept into the bering sea and it can't be fun working in frigid, icy conditions, they can all put on protective gear, can't they? they can make some attempt to stay semi-bearlably-warm in the wintry conditions. what can road workers in nevada in temperatures over 115 degrees fahrenheit do? they can't work naked, for sure (though frankly i wouldn't mind seeing some of those hard-hatted fellas in the raw). in fact, if anything, they have to wear more clothes to protect them from the sun as they work with steaming, stinking tar in the brutal heat of the day. no siestas for these guys. no flowing arab robes to catch whatever breeze might exist. there isn't a tree in sight to rest under in that vast, fearsome desert. they can't flip a switch for the relief of AC until whatever time they get home that night. and if the desert heat wasn't enough to kill them, there's also you and me and the 18-wheelers motoring by and taking them for granted, if not cursing the traffic inconvenience their work incurs. so while America sits on its ass, enthralled by how 'tougher in alaska' it is, it's even tougher on route 15 outside las vegas. when those ice road truckers take off their parkas and work in the elements without protection, then i'll be impressed.

the blair duck project

bob was doing laundry one night. god bless him, he liked to do laundry. but that might have been because he knew he'd have nothing to wear if he waited for me to do it. i was sitting in the living room when he passed through, laundry basket on his hip, and i heard him open the basement door, flick the light switch. and then roar "What the FUCK is a DUCK doing in the basement?" abruptly the door slammed shut as if he'd seen a ghost. and in a way he had.

naturally, the idea of a duck in the basement was curious to me and so i got off the couch to go see what the raving and ranting was all about. bob stood there in the kitchen, laundry basket toppled over on the floor, gesticulating wildly. "there's a dead fucking duck at the bottom of the stairs!" naturally, the idea of a DEAD duck in the basement piqued my interest even more. i opened the basement door and peered down and, sure enough, there at the base of the stairs, posing as if left as a sinister message by some duck-killing Godfather, was a dead duck. sure enough. it was incongruous, puzzling, baffling, mystifying. i remember that night like a film reel whirring in my head. bob, usually the Big Brave Man of the House, was quite unnerved by this duck while i thought it was the most hilarious and bizarre thing i'd ever seen.


we have CATS for god's sake! FIVE CATS and not one of them noticed a duck in the basement? and how did we not hear so much as a quack? bob wracked his brain. we'd been in the basement several times in the past week doing laundry and never suspected the presence of Dark Wing Duck haunting an already spooky cellar. the windows are not only all closed but sealed with plastic to keep out the cold and the damp. the vent for the dryer was quite intact. there was no conceivable way for a duck to wriggle into our basement that we could see. sure, bob had the hatchway open about 2 weeks before....but we've never even seen a duck overhead much less in the yard, so how could one have waddled its way down the steps unnoticed as he did whatever it was he'd done with the hatch open? there was no good reason for a duck to be on the ground, in the weeds, near our house much less in it.

but there it was. dead at the bottom of the stairs. bob was convinced someone had broken in and left the duck as a warning of some kind. yeah, the mafia is using ducks these days, bob. sure. and what could we have possibly done to deserve an incomprehensible message in the form of a dead duck anyway?

bob had the heebie-jeebies something fierce and found my uncontrolled laughter very disturbing. but come on! it was the craziest thing i've ever seen! i wasn't terribly concerned about how it got there, nor did i believe it was some evil prank, i was just insanely amused. but bob. he was not.



he got a snow shovel and scooped the pretty iridescent and speckled duck up off the cement floor and really, about then it did take on a certain "blair witch project' element. i opened the hatchway and followed him, still giggling uncontrollably, out to the woods out back, guiding his way with a flashlight.



then bob got a pitchfork and i must say he was looking a tad deranged at this point, scratching his head in the flashlight's beam and digging a shallow grave for a duck. he wanted to banish it from his life. it was too disturbing for him to wrap his mind around.

we never solved the mystery of the dead basement duck, though he spent the next hour examining every nook and cranny of the cobwebby realm where a duck had, apparently, waddled around for what may be days quacking amid the heater and the rusty paint cans and the washer and dryer. and we and five cats never suspected a thing.

lazy bones

i was a scrawny, homely kid. hell, i was a violet baby so it's no surprise that a couple years didn't improve my looks. mom posed with me as an infant in a lavender dress and there i lay, a sorry excuse for a baby, my skin color matching her dress. meanwhile, there is mom, looking like a 60's beauty queen. we lived in brooklyn, NY and when she'd (proudly?) stroll me in my baby carriage the old neighborhood ladies would peer in, shake their heads and tsk-tsk. no wonder. i was 6 pounds when i was born then shrank to 5! failure to thrive, i guess they'd call it nowadays. but i had an excuse. i projectile vomited every time milk was introduced to my gullet. eventually, before i shrank away to nothing, my parents sold their car to pay for my return to the hospital to figure out just what is wrong with this child. and it was the milk. i couldn't tolerate it. and so i got Soy before Soy got cool. it was 1960, after all. no one was thinking edamame or tofu-pups or soy burgers back then. and now, at 48, you couldn't get me to ingest tofu even if i became the incredible shrinking person yet again.

a few years later i was diagnosed with a Lazy Eye. there is something vaguely accusatory about that term. that eye is just not pulling its weight. punish it! wait....no....punish the other eye. patch the good eye and make that Lazy Eye work. and so i became the Eyepatch Kid for about a year. maybe it wasn't that long but in my memory it was, and that's all that counts. they stuck some eyecup on my face, pasted it on with a bandaid. i was a sight to behold. and the bitch of it was, i couldn't see worth a damn with it on. the middle of every page of a book was missing. half of the face i looked at in the mirror was missing. the world around me appeared in some warped version of tunnel vision. weeks went by, months, and my Lazy Eye did not submit, refused to improve. i would be interested to see my school grades from that time because i can only imagine that they'd suffer since reading tediously took twice as long. i'd cock my head like a bird, shift my head back and forth as i followed the line on the page. in fact, it's rathering amazing i remained an avid reader, despite it all. this may be the only picture that exists of me during that time and i look pretty happy, despite the What Not To Wear bikini of the times and the ever present eyepatch. i'm sure i got mocked for my fashion accessory. kids are mean. i was a walking target. bull's eye, so to speak. but i'm lucky. i can't remember any of that particular torture. i can't remember much from that time of my youth at all. sometimes i wonder if i have memory from that time, or just a photograph that's become a stand-in for memory. i just have a feeling, and the feeling isn't good.

the doctors may have been right about my projectile vomiting and cured me with soy, but they got the eye wrong and needlessly tormented an already homely kid for a year. when the patch failed to achieve the goal it simply came off. only years later did an eye doctor peer into that eye and declare it "incurable". the damn thing was missing a patch of rods and cones in the back and there was and is nothing that could ever improve my sight. a defect, never to be overcome. even as i type these words i can close my left (good) eye and half the screen disappears. i can't even finish this sentence assured of proper spelling. obviously, punctuation and capitalization went out my literary window years ago. i guess it isn't just the eye that's "Lazy".

spidey sense

today in the truck i noticed a gossamer spider web in the corner of the open window. i did not see the resident spider, but assume he was holed up in the space the window rolls up into. therefore, i cannot roll the window up entirely because i would destroy the web and possibly kill the itsy bitsy spider. even if the forecast says rain. the little well in the armrest will fill up with rainwater, but it wouldn't be the first time. and maybe a spider needs a drink sometime too.

there used to be a much larger spider web on the back of my Jeep Wrangler, spun from the roll bar. every morning when i'd get in to drive to work i'd silently apologize to the spider, knowing the wind of my drive would destroy it's careful web. and it did. but every morning, there it was again. until one day it wasn't. i had come to look forward to my spider's daily web, new and fresh and glistening with dew and i always wondered where it's maker crept off to.

or did the spider take one too many chances and fly off as i sped down the road?