Straight No Chaser

Quenched

that hateful woman. i wrote her a miniature masterpiece,

"I bought the kids this bucket of sidewalk chalk on my way home from bridge club. They'll be over this evening after dinner, hopefully while there's still enough light out for them to decorate the driveway. I got the biggest bucket at the store, a mix of boy and girl colors. The neon-lettered sticker said there wouldn't be much dust, thank goodness. Not that that kind of thing matters to the children, necessarily. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. Maybe they prefer it the messy way. Seven-year-olds do love a mess.

I've never liked the feel of chalk dust on my fingers. I suffered that for twenty-seven years, before they supplied all the high schools with dry erase boards, and traded chalk dust for marker fumes. My daughter, Jessica, her asthma was at its worst during her high school years. I arranged to have her in my classes for as many semesters as possible, just in case of emergency. Because I knew the school nurse didn't know how to run the nebulizer.

Jessica hated that. She and my husband tried to talk me out of it every year. He said I was going to stifle her, keep her from developing socially. She put it less eloquently: Mom, you're messing up my life. I can't even talk my friends with you around all the time. That was an unexpected bonus, actually--her friends were bottom-dwellers, the kids who sat along the back row and never finished assignments on time. If she had to spend time around them, I wanted it to be under my supervision, if then.

And wasn't I right? I was never off, not about a single one of them. The Collins boys, whose parties I didn't let her attend, racked up seven suspensions between them before the older one graduated. Olivia, who I caught copying Jessica's notes in the girls' bathroom, she was a teenaged mother by her senior year. I meant well, of course. I wanted to keep Jessica's record as clear as her sinuses.

My husband always said what happened was my fault, that she ran off because she needed to learn to steer her own ship. I say one of those Collins boys talked her into it. I warned her about those boys, over and over.

She's coming this evening after dinner, and bringing my grandchildren. I've never seen them in person, and the only photo I've got was taken years ago, when they were infants in the jumpers I sent them, one pink, one blue. The toy store cashier looked confused when I bought the sidewalk chalk. There hasn't been a child in the house since Jessica, and now that my husband's gone, I only buy the essentials, produce and paper products. Survey my bridge club, and most wouldn't remember my daughter, much less know she's got twins now. She didn't bring them to her father's funeral, and left straight afterward to be home by their bedtime.

She'll be here after dinner, not for dinner but after. The children asked for McDonald's, she said, so they won't be by till after. I've wrapped the chalk for them, a surprise. On the phone, she said they love to draw."

wove that from very little, a prompt that simply said to choose an object and pull a monologue from it, and i produced that flawless opus of a monologue, and she still picked on my technique. and i was pissed, till i realize what a snob i've become. can't nobody tell me nothin to convince me i haven't got talent. the compliments need to stop, because my ego is swelling beyond recognition.

i do really value her opinion, though. she's pretty widely published, and she has gray in her dreads, and although i don't particularly like her poetry, i hear it renders the universal and ordinary in a way that is magic. everything i write in that class, i write expressly to impress her. the second day, i think, was when that happened, when it stopped being about trying to actually develop my craft. i impress her a lot. she's asked if i've had formalized training, and i've told her no, repeatedly, and she takes me seriously, and exempts me from some of the more bullshit exercises. not all. today we had to take two random pieces of overheard speech, taken from divergent sources, and somehow weave them together into a twenty-line dialogue. mine was between a political science professor (based not-so-loosely on my current one) and the student he was evidently fucking. see, i'm not even that creative. i always overshoot, just a little. my layups go through the glass backboard. i could really stand to be taken down a peg.

and, what else. what else what else what else. question mark.

ha HA.

1. does your dentist ask you questions with his/her fingers in your mouth?
doesn't everybody's? i'm having reservations already.

2. do you get depressed in the winter?
generally, no. that's when christmas is, and winter break, and snow, and my birthday. last winter, yes, i got depressed, because that's when the world ended for seven weeks. and when i had the worst birthday of my life, and when christmas didn't matter, besides for the obvious overarching spiritual reasons. but generally, no, because i really like snow, and i'm always cold, even in the summer, so the weather doesn't bother me.

3. have you ever given anyone a haircut?
myself, 1992, when i got an elastic band stuck in a knot. this was pre-relaxer and even pre-straightening comb, when stuff routinely got stuck in my braids, and when i cried for the full twenty minutes it took my mom to do my hair every morning. i thought i'd save her the trouble of taking me into hand for my misstep, so i cut the lock out myself. she noticed later that night at my piano lesson. she was not pleased.

4. what part of your body can you not stand people touching?
my eyeballs. anywhere else, evaluate our relationship and use your judgment.

5. what do you do with the cotton from pill bottles?
i've never seen a pill bottle that had cotton in it.

6. do you believe in miss cleo?
that she exists? yes. that she sees the future and accurately reports it in that horrible farce of a west indian accent? psssht.

7. do you swear in front of elderly people?
never.

8. do you swear in front of children?
never.

9. what's the best thing about your best friend?
his penis. just kidding! his unparalleled passion for everything he takes interest in, his amazing listening skills, his intelligence and the magnitude of his love. that's four things, and there are more.

10. what would you change about your body?
objectification of women through physical evaluation should be a crime punishable by death.

11. what do you like about your body?
my hips are pretty groovy and i've got very nice eyes.

12. what's the most attractive physical feature in a person?
the eyes are the windows to the soul. no, seriously. i catch weird possessed people trying to pass for normal all the time. no pupils and stuff. good people, they'll look you straight in the eye and try to seek out the goodness in you, and if nobody gets anxious and blinks/turns away, you know you've got something special.

13. do you ever do things repeatedly that you know are not going to work?
yes, and that's my mom's oft-articulated definition of insanity, and i'm sorry. but there's always that chance that if you bang hard enough, the square pegs will smooth out on the edges, thereby turning round and solving all your problems.

14. do you hang up on people when they call and you get mad?
i would never hang up on anyone. that is an inexcusable display of utter disrespect.

15. any tattoos?
low pain threshold. but i wouldn't get one anyway.

16. do you like hot wax?
i like to gouge burning candles with my fingers, yes. do i like waxing? 'tis torture, and men should thank their girlfriends for it daily.

17. do you like incense?
no, my olfactory glands are too sensitive for me to enjoy anything that strong.

18. do you like the taste of blood?
yes, and i vant to suck yours. (no.)

19. biggest turn on?
overall: INTELLIGENCE. mindfuck me over and over, i'll never get tired. physical: fingertips.

20. what song is stuck in your head right now?
"two step," penned and performed by david j. matthews.

21. if you could get away with it and murder anyone, who and for what reason?
my answer came the instant i read the question, and i'm not telling, because you'd think me a horrible person, certainly, and probably not understand. the ideal answer, of course, is that i wouldn't kill anyone, and i'd like to say i really wouldn't. but that's hard to reconcile with the fact that i instantly had an answer, and felt rather strongly about it.

22. person you wish you could be with right now?
if you don't know, you should be ashamed to call yourself a reader.

23. what/who is next to you?
my television set, which is 4,203 times too large for my tiny dorm room, and which is currently displaying the opening credits to "secret window." also my printer, on which are stacked several "o!!!!!" magazines and a few caseless dvds. on the other side, melony, stretched out on my bed, pretending that studying and sleeping are the same activity. and my folded pajamas, a giant box of crayons and a cup of iced tea.

24. do you believe in love?
yes.

25. do you believe in heaven?
yes, kind of. hard to explain.

26. do you believe in hell?
see above.

27. in the past twenty-four hours, have you...
a. flashed someone? yes
b. mooned someone? not in the past twenty-four hours or ever before that
c. tried to kill yourself? no
d. tried to kill someone else? no
e. told someone you hated them? no
f. told someone you loved them and didn't mean it? no
g. taken a shower? two of them
h. hugged someone? no
i. kissed someone? yes
j. had sex? no
k. been drunk? no
l. been high? no
m. been in a fight? no
n. sang? like a canary
o. danced? yes
p. made someone laugh? repeatedly
q. had someone else made you laugh? sort of, but i was sort of faking
r. wished on a star? wished for a star, maybe...

28.

a is for age: twenty years, seven months and two days
b is for booze: i don't drink, i promise
c is for career: full-time student in the fall and spring, intern in the summer, couch potato in the winter
d is for dad's name: bruce
e is for essential items to bring to a party: my car keys, so i can leave
f is for favorite song at the moment:
g is for girlfriend: um, krystle?
h is for hometown: silver spring, maryland
i is for instruments you play: piano, guitar, violin (in that order)
j is for jam or jelly you like: peach polaner all-fruit
k is for kids: not in 2005, for sheezy
l is for living arrangements: dorm room with melony
m is for mom's name: monice
n is for name of your best friend: marcus
o is for overnight hospital stays: birth
p is for phobias: the ocean
q is for quote you like: "love hurts, and so do long surveys"
r is for relationship that lasted the longest: depends on your definition; if we're being lax, this one
s is for sexual position: missionary, in theory; it's also the best for everything-but
t is for time you wake up: generally about four minutes before my first engagement of the day
u is for unique trait: not applicable
v is for favorite vegetable: broccoli
w is for worst trait: crippling overanalysis of all ridiculous minutiae
x is for x-rays: teeth, about a million times, meaning i'm going to die tomorrow
y is for yummy food you make: leftovers
z is for zodiac sign: aquarius

29. firsts

job: camp counselor, western massachusetts
screen name: can't tell because it's currently in use by a shy friend
funeral: granddad
pet: angelfish the angelfish
piercing: earlobes
tattoo: none
credit card: visa
french kiss: randy
enemy: tie: elizabeth fisher and her stepsister annie, kindergarten
favorite musician: raffi!

30. lasts

car ride: hardee's to the school parking lot
kiss: marcus
movie watched: "steel magnolias"
beverage drank: raspberry lemonade
food consumed: sweet gooey fried dough in a circle oh yes oh YES
phone call: mom
showered: sixish
cd played: "erroll garner's greatest hits"
website visited: writing.com

31. and:

single or taken? fuck you
sex? hermaphrodite
siblings? three sisters: brittany, jeanette and eleanor, all adopted
hair color? ash blond, like all black people. duh
eye color? fire engine red
shoe size? seven. seriously
height? five-something, possibly five and a half?
wearing? tiffany diamonds and a smile
drinking? paint thinner