The Day the Universe Looked Up My Dress
BAM
Happiness and misery strike anyone anytime. Bam. One example, the fits of hostility from my neighbor, a cake decorator, after I take my foot off the brake and run over his cat. Later I hear him weeping. I leave buttered scones with an urn containing the cat’s ashes on his doorstep. He cries:
Leave me alone.
My world turns like a soap opera binge. I know gravity holds us to the surface of Earth. A sure thing. Like old wet photographs. A bathrobe held tightly. Peanut butter on the roof of my mouth. What if the world slams on the brakes and ceases to spin? Bam. Panic. And to keep both feet on the ground, all the angel-heads, unshaven, ambitious, the downright stupid misplaced men and women grab onto pine trees, alleyways, headstones, waking nightmares, vigilance, anything. Humanity hangs on, refusing to let go.
Unable to defy zero gravity, the sky chases after itself, snowflakes revisit the clouds, the rain reverses. The pursuit of knowledge ceases. Cars, trucks, hearses rise up as if boosted by a tornado. Mugs follow cappuccinos following froth and cinnamon into the sky. The sea, the turtles, dolphins, whales, schools of fish float into outer space, which as it turns out, is not what it’s cracked up to be.
Earth drains of brilliance, coming apart at the seams, the air too thick to breathe, all that ironing piled up in the laundry, a couple of dead bees on the window ledge and the dog retching in sympathy. I dangle vertically from the balcony. My cotton frock whooshes up revealing the safety pin attached to cottontails, a size too large, the flab and my breasts, which a man once described as edible balloons. My toes curl, stilettos slipping, and my long black hair stands on end. Soap bubbles rise beside the loss of decorum. I feel enormous embarrassment as the entire universe looks up my dress. Welcome to my struggle.
Some advice. Have faith in the power of glue. At Sip & Guzzle, I superglue my bottom to a bar stool and order an overpriced Stoli straight up, laughing about the irony of a straight-up drink, and the barman clinging to an elaborate light fitting on the ceiling. No point in paying, oh right, I do have to pay. As always. A man walks into the bar.
Here, let me get that.
And he picks up the check. This man, a retired radio executive with a fake tan, bleached teeth, dimples, and a dead wife. The world begins to spin. Again. He gives me the key to his ha ha heart, to his burning violin, to his belly, to his apartment. Bland, I think. And out loud:
Nice.
He shows me where he keeps his mop and bucket. After a stroll around his meadow, under his crumpled linen duvet, listening to the blues, the man leers at my extremities and slices a slab of meat, yes, rare, opens a Cabernet. He says:
Sweetheart.
As in a wanton bit on the side. Spinning sugar around myself to appear enticing. Sweetheart, the good time tiger doesn’t give a toss about his neon socks or if chopped nuts fall into my cleavage or if I wear a blouse as a pair of shorts, my legs pushing through the sleeves.
I whisper, Hey your hair is slipping to the right.
Bam. Right at the end of spring, right this disappearing warmth, right he wants the pink of me. And we peel figs. Together. Scoffing toffee apples making our tongues red and sticky. Sweetheart, the monster cook, slathers butter on fritters, burns bacon, swilling cream with heavy hands, mixing borsht, deep frying potatoes, bread, whacks of stodge make him fatter, hurling into the toilet. I light a candle for his roly poly and ask:
Have you ever killed anyone?
Fatso smashes my lollypop, pushes a Polly Waffle up my . . . these melting moments. Fatso shouts:
I can’t stand all this sweetness. You are ruining my sheets.
But it was your idea to . . .
He packs a suitcase with polo shirts, pointy boots, various toupees, a jar of hair serum, his seductive eau de toilette, and a bottle of Malibu rum. Hey ho a bottle of white man. In the prime of his life, sniffing:
I’m going to stay at Mother’s.
Lust has such a short lifespan. His misery as a big shot and I think about a gun firing bullets at zero gravity. How they keep going in the wrong direction, into ouch reality tastes horrible, but the man and his exertions proves easily forgotten. A puff of whatever.
Of course this is not about him. It’s all about me, billowing sometimes in the park, in love with trees, blushing at everything, wincing at what, the rhapsodic episode of setting fire to my hair, flaunting the animal vitality of a swamp, jubilant at the sound of bells. I am the surrounding contradiction, as predictable as lamb’s wool, anxious about mysterious mists, the crust appearing on a fork in the road, leaning on my own horn, undecided about screaming and honking nonstop. I need to plant honeysuckle, I do not enjoy bloodshed, I am incapable of chuckling, I suffer from the heights of dignity, I need a break. So, I take my foot off the brake. Bam.
