girls drink stout too

“01/01/2017 is not a magic number,” he says, “Start now. You know what to do. Write your truth now. Now, before its illegal, before it’s all punishable by death, before we all lose.”

 But I didn’t hear him so well after the first bit about 1 1 2017 not being a magic number. There are magic numbers. I know there are. Three, three is a magic number – or so the song goes anyway. What was it that he said? Write my truth? If only it were that easy. Too many truths to choose from. That’s all I’ve got. Too may truths.

 In one of them I live high up in a mountain with a bunch of cats and I never talk to anyone. In another, I live in a penthouse floating above the park and watch the tiny dots of ordinary people move around down on the dirty sidewalks. I want to go down and join them but something stops me. Probably, maybe I don’t have working legs and I think they’d laugh.

 But that’s not it. No. No one would really care if my legs worked or not. Just me. I’d be the one who cared the most.

 I’m taking a class on how not to care. The class is super popular. I had to wait months to get in. People are weary of caring, weary of fighting. We need someone to remind us why, to remind us that it might all be ok again.

 Even if we won’t believe it.

 Somewhere still, there is a little girl with pigtails, wearing blue, white, and purple plaid pajamas sitting cross-legged on a lime green couch. She’s watching School House Rock on the television, singing along. She knows three is a magic number. She remembers. No one else is in the house though they should be. She thinks they’re all just sleeping but they aren’t. They got up early and went to work and football practice or just down the street for a walk.

 In another place, you are pacing in front of a big picture window. Rain is falling outside. You don’t hear me come in. I stand at the front door shaking the water from my hair and helmet and jacket. Finally, you turn.

“Oh thank god,” you say, “I was worried, so worried.” I laugh and tell you I’m fine, I ride in the rain all the time.

 I wanted a house in the canyon but you told me it was impractical, too many long winding roads and we’d never get anywhere fast. How about the mountains, then, I asked and you smiled and said, ‘Someday, someday’, as if we had all the days in the world.

 The day we met rain fell in sheets from the heavens but I didn’t feel it, couldn’t taste it. We were on an island in the Mediterranean riding bicycles up mountains and I thought I could touch the sky. We huddled together under the awing of a closed coffee shop, shivering though I don’t remember the cold. You suddenly reached over and pulled me into your arms. “We’ll be warmer like this,” you said. And I certainly couldn’t argue but I was so afraid my crazy beating heart would frighten you.

 But it didn’t. You sang softly in my ear, “Three is a magic number.” I laughed, “Why that song?” You shrugged and said you didn’t know and pulled me even closer and I couldn’t help but wonder if you somehow saw that little girl with pigtails on the green couch by herself. I didn’t know how that could be possible but I was sure it was.

Maybe that’s what people mean when they say that someone looked right into their soul.

 1 1 2017 isn’t a magic number, that’s for sure. And my truth is wonky and tired and worn. Time is never a straight line that I can make sense of. When the storms come I can’t always make it down from this mountain.

 But that doorway in front of the coffee shop on Mallorca with your arms around me, with the rain falling and you singing in my ear, that doorway – I’m right there, I’m standing right there.

 In all this time, I still haven’t moved.

What is it they say? Practice anything for 10,000 hours and you’ll be an expert at that thing? How do you keep track of 10,000 hours? I bet there’s an app for that, an app for most anything these days.

I bet, anyway.

Do you think there might be an app to measure heartache? Then, when you reached 10,000 hours of a heart breaking, you’d know you were an expert so it wouldn’t be quite so devastating because then, then, you’d really be able to say, “It’s ok. It’s ok. I got this. I mean, I really got this.”

“I’m an expert now. I know what to do with a cracked heart. My heart has cracked enough to add up to 10,000 hours.”

The real miracle though, perhaps, is that somehow the heart managed to patch itself up enough to keep beating even after 10,000 hours of being hit with a sledgehammer, or a tap hammer, or maybe even the smallest pinprick (cause sometimes that’s all it takes: just a succession of tiny little piercings until they create a fissure, a crack, and – splat, it’s apart again, a big bloody mess, something you think you won’t be able to put back together. But you do. You do.).

And maybe that’s the miracle.

But also, maybe, after 10,000 hours, you might say, “I’ve had enough now. Really really enough and I won’t let any of you get close enough to wield that hammer.” And you instead build a wall, the biggest one you can, all around the silly beating thing but you’re not yet that good of a wall builder and it keeps toppling and toppling and you build it over and over until finally you’ve spent 10,000 hours building it and you can no longer build it wrong but only, always, right. And then you think you’ve won.

Finally, now you’ve won.

But nothing is ever that easy. Ever. And one morning in early November you get up before the sun to walk through the darkness and cool air around the corner to the rec center in the park behind your building. You stand in the line with your neighbors, all up waiting for the polls to open, for the chance, the privilege, to vote for a leader.

The line in your neighborhood is diverse and everyone chats and says, “Morning” and some people take selfies and no one, no one, (as you learn later when results are published precinct by precinct,) votes for the big scary loud-mouthed one.

But then the next day you wake up into a surreal version of some dystopian world you’re certain you’ve read about in a book before. Your wall is down and your heart is in a million zillion immeasurable pieces along with a bunch of other hearts. And your city is thrown into some weird version of chaos with barricades and heightened police and military presence that, among many other things, keeps people from shopping at the Gucci on 5th Avenue.

No one knows how to put the pieces back together –or even which pieces belong to them. They’re all just mixed up in a big pile the wind keeps blowing around.

Everyone wants to know why, why. And there is so much news and so much opinion and so much anger. “I didn’t see this coming,” they say. “How could this have ever happened here,” they say.

But you know, you know. And that’s the most devastating thing of the whole mess. Because that’s how it is: fear and the seeds that blame every other thing one can find for all the wrongs, sprouts quietly among us so that it seems as if its always been there and we don’t notice how big and ominous its gotten. Like when you look at picture of someone from two or more years ago and think, “Wow, your hair was so short back then, it’s gotten so very long now.”

That’s how it grows. Under our noses and right next to us and you would have thought we’d know.

And they say, “No, its ok. We’re not racist. We just want our way of life protected. That’s all. Not to worry, everything will be ok.”

But you know its going to take a really really long time for everything to be ok. Because none of us, none of us, have even close to 10,000 hours of doing this.

And then you start. And you don’t stop.

There is so very much work to do.

If I disappear, I’ll end up running the whole fang dangled show, I just know it. I won’t want to, not really but someone, probably Jonsie with insist on it. I’ll tell him no and then no and then no absolutely not under any circumstances no. But he won’t listen and I’ll shuffle my feet and put on that top hat Aunt Elsa sent back when she was still kicking and trolling through vintage shops in tiny towns in rural Georgia.

She sent the hat to me, a collapsible top hat with its mechanism still in perfect working order, with a note. She wrote the note on a yellow lined 3 x 5 card. It said, “For all your beautiful inner workings that no one can see. May you always be able to collapse and pop back up when needed.” 

 Have you ever looked at the inner metal frame of a collapsible top hat? They really are ingenious. Metal hinges and rods and springs joined by tiny pins all working together. Some collapsible top hats get rusty and don’t function so well anymore. But mine works perfectly, even after almost 100 years. I’m always impressed when things last long. So much doesn’t these days.

 I didn’t mean to be the one who would become invisible. It just sort of happened. Everyone was talking about it. Some people wanted it desperately. Some couldn’t fathom not looking in a mirror and seeing their own face staring back. I was sort of indifferent and, honestly, a bit sick of this face. I would have asked for a new face but those were all spoken for – for at least the next 7 or 10 years so I thought having none at all, or at least the illusion of none at all for a while might be the way to go for me. Maybe I could get more done if people weren’t always trying to look in my eyes and convince me that their cause, their passion, their way, was superior to my own.

 I always found avoiding other peoples’ eyes difficult. I lock on to them, become mesmerized, and forget everything I think is true. Silly, right? Maybe when there are new faces available I might get one. I suppose I should sign up for one now. But it’s hard to know what kind. I mean, who will I want to be after my invisible years? I guess I could just let them pick, the people down at the Face Replacement Center. That’s probably the best plan. I think I’ll go there tomorrow. I hope there won’t be a line. People spend hours sometimes at the service windows, pouring over the brochures. So many kinds of faces are possible.

 Aunt Elsa went through a slew of faces in her lifetime. The one she died with was the one of a beautiful young Asian girl with coal black eyes. The face never seemed to quite fit and looked most often as if it were floating above her body rather than being attached to it.  I would turn off the video part of chat whenever she called. I just wanted to hear her voice: low and cracked but with a slight lilt whenever she was excited or talking about a recent thrift store find.

In the short run we are responsible. In the short run we are all dead.

           Walt Richardson

  In the short run, I always carried something that was just a little bit too unwieldy, never overwhelmingly so, just a little so that I had to keep shifting it around, changing position, moving my hands and arms so I wouldn’t drop it. I walked blocks and blocks, miles and miles, still…always…carrying something. I passed an older man on the street once. He wore a soft, faded, grey felt fedora, and a canvas parka with a hem shaped like two triangles in the back.

           “Put that down, young lady,” he said, “Put that down. You don’t have to keep carrying that. It’s still a long way, a long way to go.”

           I ignored him, brushing past him, leaning over just enough so that my shoulder touched his, showing him just how much in the way he was.

           “Watch where you’re going,” I said, “Watch where you’re going.”

           I didn’t look back but I could feel his eyes watching me leave. The back of my neck felt hot, even though my hair was pulled up in a pony tail and the wind coming from the East River was cold and spikey. I couldn’t stop. I was afraid to put anything down for fear I wouldn’t be able to pick it back up again.

           I just kept carrying everything.

           “In the long run, what are you going to do?” Mary asked me. She pushed her new, round, clear glasses back up her nose. “You can’t just set all of this down in the middle of gods know where and expect everything to be ok. What will you do? How will you live?”

           “I don’t know,” I said, “Maybe I don’t need all these things. Maybe I’m not supposed to carry them. Maybe someone lied along the way. Maybe this isn’t living the dream. Maybe it’s just a sham. And maybe my arms hurt.”

           “Hmmpth,” said Mary. She stooped to pick up something shiny from the dirty sidewalk. She stuffed it into the pocket of her expensive, brown leather coat.

           “Might come in handy,” she said.

           I nodded because that’s what friends do and walked beside her. I tried to ignore my gut, my stomach, my arms, everything. I walked beside her and when she stopped again, on the corner of 76th and Lex to pick another shiny object, I helped her find a place to wedge it into her arms.

           “I really have to go,” Mary said then, “I have so much to do today. And I’ve got to get all of this stuff back home so I can go out again.”

           “Okay. Sure.” I said.

           Mary leapt out onto Lexington Ave, balancing her load with one arm while swinging the other high. A yellow tax cab pulled up next her and she and her load shimmied into the back seat.

           I watched her go. After the cab pulled away, I stood there on the edge of the sidewalk watching the cars stream by. People bumped into me or my load and, suddenly, for no discernable reason, I just set everything down on the sidewalk, right next to one of those metal paper boxes for the New York Post. I wasn’t even sure what was in that load anymore, not really. I stared at it there on the ground, leaning against the paper box.

A girl in sweat pants and high heels came careening by me. She lost her balance because the thing she was carrying was so wide. She teetered for a second on the tip of her right spiked heel, then fell right into the pile of stuff I had set on the ground.

           “Ooof,” she said. She never let go of what was in her arms. She wouldn’t put anything down. She tried to get up but didn’t have enough leverage because her arms were full and she didn’t want to empty them. I reached down and pulled her up by her elbows.

           “Oh thank you. Thank you so much,” she said. She started to smile then stopped. Her eyes widened in what looked like horror but I couldn’t be sure. “Oh my god,” she said, “I had no idea. No idea.”

           “What?” I asked her.

           “Your arms,” she said, “Your arms are so devastatingly empty.”

           I opened my mouth as if to say something. Then I closed it again. I looked once more at my discarded pile of stuff and at the girl, pursing her lips at me. People rushed by us with their arms chock full of every single thing they could possibly carry, some of it so old they probably didn’t even remember what it was, or that it was there. I swung my arms from side to side, strong and free.

           “In the long run, I think I like them this way,” I said and walked away, empty arms and all.

In the short run we are responsible. In the short run we are all dead.

Walt Richardson

In the short run, I always carried something that was just a little bit too unwieldy, never overwhelmingly so, just a little so that I had to keep shifting it around, changing position, moving my hands and arms so I wouldn’t drop it. I walked block and blocks, miles and miles, still…always…carrying something. I passed an older man on the street once. He wore a soft, worn, grey felt fedora, and a canvas parka with a hem shaped like two triangles in the back.

“Put that down, young lady,” he said, “Put that down. You don’t have to keep carrying that. It’s still a long way, a long way to go.”

I ignored him, brushing past him, leaning over just enough so that my shoulder touched his, showing him just how much in the way he was.

“Watch where you’re going,” I said, “Watch where you’re going.”

I didn’t look back but I could feel his eyes watching me leave. The back of my neck felt hot, even though my hair was pulled up in a pony tail and the wind coming from the East River was cold and spikey. I couldn’t stop. I was afraid to put anything down for fear I wouldn’t be able to pick it back up again.

I just kept carrying everything.

“In the long run, what are you going to do?” Mary asked me. She pushed her new, round, clear glasses back up her nose. “You can’t just set all of this down in the middle of gods know where and expect everything to be ok. What will you do? How will you live?”

“I don’t know,” I said, “Maybe I don’t need all these things. Maybe I’m not supposed to carry them. Maybe someone lied along the way. Maybe this isn’t living the dream. Maybe it’s just a sham. And maybe my arms hurt.”

“Hmmpth,” said Mary. She stooped to pick up something shiny from the dirty sidewalk. She stuffed it into the pocket of her expensive, brown leather coat.

“Might come in handy,” she said.

I nodded because that’s what friends do and walked beside her. I tried to ignore my gut, my stomach, my arms, everything. I walked beside her and when she stopped again, on the corner of 76th and Lex to pick up another shiny object, I helped her find a place to wedge it into her arms.

“I really have to go,” Mary said then, “I have so much to do today. And I’ve got to get all of this stuff back home so I can go out again.”

“Okay. Sure.” I said.

Mary leapt out onto Lexington Ave, balancing her load with one arm while swinging the other high. A yellow tax cab pulled up next to her and she and her load shimmied into the back seat.

I watched her go. After the cab pulled away, I stood there on the edge of the sidewalk watching the cars stream by. People bumped into me or my load and, suddenly, for no discernable reason, I just set everything down on the sidewalk, right next to one of those metal paper boxes for the New York Post. I wasn’t even sure what was in that load anymore, not really. I stared at it there on the ground, leaning against the paper box.

A girl in sweat pants and high heels came careening by me. She lost her balance because the thing she was carrying was so wide. She teetered for a second on the tip of her right spiked heel, then fell right into the pile of stuff I had set on the ground.

“Ooof,” she said. She never let go of what was in her arms. She wouldn’t put anything down. She tried to get up but didn’t have enough leverage because her arms were full and she didn’t want to empty them. I reached down and pulled her up by her elbows.

“Oh thank you. Thank you so much,” she said. She started to smile then stopped. Her eyes widened in what looked like horror but I couldn’t be sure. “Oh my god,” she said, “I had no idea. No idea.”

“What?” I asked her.

“Your arms,” she said, “Your arms are so devastatingly empty.”

I opened my mouth as if to say something. Then I closed it again. I looked once more at my discarded pile of stuff and at the girl, pursing her lips at me. People rushed by us with their arms chock full of every single thing they could possibly carry, some of it so old they probably didn’t even remember what it was, or that it was there. I swung my arms from side to side, strong and free.

I can hardly see the sun is so bright. I have salt in my right eye because I just ate some salty peanut snacks then foolishly rubbed my eye with the same fingers I had used to pop the peanuts into my mouth. I could have done things differently and never ended up here in the first place.

But I love peanuts. I’m always very sad when I hear that someone is allergic to the peanut and sort of wonder how it is that people can go through life without the simple most amazing pleasure of a peanut butter and grape jelly on wheat and a tall glass of milk.

Most adults aren’t too hip on drinking milk but I can go through a half gallon in a day easy. I’m always having to go down to the corner store and buy more. I bet the owner, who greets me in Spanish, thinks I have a parcel of kids at home that are drinking all that milk. But it’s just me.

I’m almost an old lady. I can tell because young men have started giving up their seats to me on the subway. I usually take them, not because I’m that tired or can’t stand, but because I think maybe I’d be rude not too. I used to wear fancier shoes but now I just wear my Renegade Lowa hiking boots every day, even when I’m riding my bicycle. Most days I cycle through three boroughs; Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn then back again. I take a lot of photos from the 59th Street and Pulaski Bridges. Things always look so beautiful from a bridge.

I never wanted to have children and I suspect that I’m fast approaching the time when I will no longer actually be capable of having any. I’m good with that. I can’t imagine what I would do with a small person that was completely my responsibility. I fear I wouldn’t have been any good at keeping him or her safe. I do have nieces and nephews though, and they are the absolute best. My brothers all turned out to be good fathers. I’m not sure I saw that one coming though I probably should have.

All three of them spent a good amount of time protecting me when we were growing up. I wasn’t even the youngest but I was the only girl so that’s how it was. At the same time though, when all four of us were out in the backyard playing football, they didn’t go any easier on me. I know how to run a good block to protect the quarterback. Sometimes I find myself automatically putting my elbow out and arm up while running in the park when I see people heading toward me from the opposite direction, especially when they’re running three or four abreast and taking up both directions of lane space. If my elbow connects as I run past, I feel strangely satisfied. I have no idea what this means. Perhaps I have inner aggression issues I need to deal with or maybe I’m just sometimes a jerk. Hard to tell.

I worry that I haven’t made enough of a mark in this world. I worry that my time here will be over and I’ll find that I’ve done nothing, nothing at all that makes any difference. I worry that I picked the wrong career, then tried to change careers too late. Some days, I have a really hard time figuring out why any thing matters at all.

That sounds pretty dire, I know, but I can’t fully shake the feeling that all of this ‘normal’ life stuff is a ruse. I mean, how can it be that this is all I am supposed to do? I worked so hard to ‘make it’ in the film and television business but, now that I have, I can’t say that I care that much. I think I used to imagine that I was helping create ‘art’ or at least things of mild importance. I don’t think that anymore.

I also finally realized that, no matter how hard I worked and how much I sacrificed, nobody really cared. What I do isn’t far enough up in the film hierarchy for anyone to pay that much attention. I’m just a cog in the wheel and easily replaceable. Once, I worked on a major period television show for four years. I was in charge of making all the clothes for the show, often from scratch. I had a team of people to help me and I cared so very very much that sometimes I didn’t sleep very well at night and I never ever made plans to do anything with anyone. At the end, the Costume Designer gave me (and every single other person on the crew) a bottle of whiskey that said, “Thank you! Love____”.  

Which circles me back again to the question of whether or not I care. Like so many things in life, it’s a vicious cycle.

You don’t get many perfect days. You don’t. You may get quite a few perfect moments, or even hours but days, full on so-amazing-you-can-hardly-breath perfect days; you don’t get many of them. For a time, in my thirties, I thought that I had used up my allotment of perfect days, that I would never get another, that I had been too lucky in my youth, that I had stopped, one too many times, in awe at the overwhelming perfection of a day, to get anymore. But I don’t think I believe that anymore, or at least, I don’t want to.

I’m afraid I’m going to end up alone, which is silly because, basically, I’m already alone. Sometimes I think I should have married that nice young man with the curly hair when he asked so many years ago - or maybe that tall Spanish one with fire in his eyes who asked that rainy night in Barcelona when we couldn’t get a cab. But I didn’t. I always just kept moving because that’s the thing that makes me happy. I could never imagine my feet rooted the ground anywhere.

I bought an apartment in New York City. Even so, I can’t seem to stay in one place for too long. I scour the internet daily in search of cheap flights to anywhere. My backpack is always right next to the front door.

Last night, while out running in the park, I found myself in the path of a wayward football pass. I caught the ball, did a little hop, a turn, a few backward steps, and threw the ball back to the kid (who caught it) and kept right on running. I heard the kids cheering behind me. My brothers would be so proud.

I know where I want to spend the prime years of my old-lady-dom. I’m searching for just the right piece of property to buy in the Spanish Pyrenees. I’ll be one of those elderly ladies you encounter tooling up the mountain on the heaviest steel bike you’ve ever seen with a basket full of vegetables, passing all the spandex clad people clipped into light as a feather carbon bikes almost as if they were standing still, sipping from her stainless steel water bottle that may, or may not, contain whiskey.