A Series Of Unfortunate Events, and Happy Christmas, Y'all

Yesterday I took to my bed. It started last Sunday when my apartment, over the course of a matter of hours, turned into a hellswamp. I'd been at my father's house participating in the annual tree trimming song singing extravaganza and I'd left all my windows open.It had been very cold, and then it began to rain, and then it got very warm, and the weathers collided in such a way to make Tallahassee resemble the inside of a mouth. My apartment was one of those terrariums you build in sixth grade science class to explain how a rain forest works and it's all very exciting in sixth grade science to discover that you, like God, can create rain, but it is not very exciting when you discover that God, like you, can move into your apartment and say "HA". "ONLY I CAN CREATE RAIN. NOW MOP YOUR CEILING, BITCH."
I was very adult. I covered my laptop, hid my journal, and mopped the ceiling. Then I mopped the floor. Then I did it again. I ate some soup on my couch that is actually a twin bed, huddled on the damp sheets like an Katrina puppy on a raft, and went to bed.
No, wait, it started Sunday morning, when I decided to make a Christmas tree. I have a history of making my own tree. Who doesn't remember the futon frame I folded and leaned against the wall and decorated all those years ago? (Much to the chagrin of my then boyfriend because it stayed up for about two years.) Last year and the year before I actually had REAL trees and they were WONDERFUL and they stayed up till February (real trees die, so you have to throw them out eventually). This year money is tight, and I no longer have a futon frame, so I cast my mind about my possessions until it settled on a wrought iron plant stand that Mama gave me a while back. It's a lovely little three tiered thing that looks like a spiral staircase you might find inside a cathouse in New Orleans. When I look at it I can easily see tiny hopeful men ascending, with their hats in their sweaty little hands, their mouths slightly open. In other words, ideal for fake Christmas tree making.
So Sunday morning I made coffee, retrieved the plant stand from the front stoop, gave it a cursory swipe with a rag (that unbeknownst to me I would later use as one of the many things I would mop my ceiling with), and looked for my Christmas cd. I have one, and I could not find it. I did however, find a mix of love songs that was made for me back when I was sweet and pretty, and that seemed to do just as well. Al Green, Dinah Washington, Etta James, thank you and yes. It was lovely my friends, the music sultry, the rain falling soft, my hands and mind busy in the task of carefully twining multicolored twinkle lights around each and every intricate twirl of brothel-ornate iron- until I finished (it took me an hour) and plugged the damn things in and discovered that only half the strand lit up. Not even the good half. (There was a good half.) Don't you dare say that I should have checked it first! I did! I did check it first! This is not my first rodeo! Remember the futon frame! That took me hours and many many strands of lights! So, I sighed. I turned off the cd, which was really making me depressed anyway, unplugged the lights, and cut the bitches off with some wire clippers. They now fill my tiny desk waste basket, tangled and bitter like chains cast off the ghost of Christmas past.
Then the tree trimming song singing father's house extravaganza, then the fetid Godsfault terrarium hellswamp debacle.
Monday was a day of respite. I woke up, called my sweet Mama, and followed her advice of closing up the house and turning the ac on. Worked like a charm. I have an old apartment and I do not have central ac, but I do have three window units. THREE! I am richer by far than many of my peers. Two, of course, weren't working. The one that was, fortunately, is the one in the living room (and so the one most centrally located) and it's a giant rattling thing that hums and spits and curses, but damn does it make the air cold. There was a feeling of Christmas as the great humping beast tharumped it's croupy wintry breath into the air and sucked the moisture from the room, all but pouring water onto the ground outside. My coffee steamed, the music swelled, and we went round two on the decorating, and all was as it should be.
I worked Monday night and came home filled with a strange lighted energy to make Christmas presents. Here is my favorite part of Christmas- that time when the inspiration to make pretty shit to give to my family fills me up and overflows out my nimble fingers. It only happens once a year and by God it is a Christmas miracle and though late this year, I'll take what I can get, so in a frenzy of glitter and glue and gratitude (the three "G"s of Christmas) I pulled out my supplies and set to work. It was a gorgeous night and I stayed up until 2:AM in happy construction, like an elf with a 401k and a dental plan.
Tuesday morning I woke to discover that the glue I had used the night before was, of course, the wrong kind of glue. I can't tell you exactly what went wrong, because that would be giving away the secret of what I'm giving people for Christmas (and really, the secret is the best part of it, this year is pretty weak. No pajamas this year, people!) but suffice to say, everything I had done needed to be scrapped. I did not cry. I went to work.
The details of the next few days are unimportant. Here are the highlights: Work. Cold. 100% Chance of rain (I wish the weather man would say something like "I bet you a Million Dollars it is going to rain", it sounds so much more fun that way). Premenstrual. Bone pain to the point of crippling. Serving a table of twelve peevish viragoes. Nausea. Which brings me to yesterday after work when I came home, put my purse on a chair, took off my bra, and got in bed. Done, I say! I am done! I was ready to hang up my apron and live in my car.
But today, after fourteen hours of uninterrupted sleep, everything feels much better. I know that all this is just spoiled child's blues, I know that most of you out there have children and it is a luxury I have that I can just lay my pathetic burdens down and go to bed, but oh babies, I needed it. I needed a temporary oblivion, a thick sweet dream state, I needed blankets pulled up to my nose and the world going by without me for a while. Christmas Day is one week away, and I don't want to hate it.
I love Christmas. I love the excuse to make silly things. I love the madness that comes over everyone once a year that infects them to drape their houses with tiny lights and bring trees inside. I love the smell of cinnamon and peppermint and orange peel. I love the absurdity of it, the way we hang giant socks from our fireplaces and bake cookies for imaginary men. I love that we make everything so pretty.
I love beauty, I need beauty. I don't understand why beauty seems unimportant or unnecessary in everyday life. We have these marvelous bodies that are able to touch and taste and see and hear and why not see color and light? Why not smell fir and vanilla? Why not hear Etta James and Otis Redding? When you reach out to touch, touch velvet, touch silk, touch the oily mottled smoothness of an orange, the prickle of a pine, the warmth of a cheek. And mistletoe? The succulent poison of its fat fleshy leaves and waxy berries, hanging in doorways for promises of stolen kisses. Ginger. Clove. The stab of holly so green and glossy and red berries that fall and make a mess and we don't even care we love them so. Golden globes hung from branches heavy with the burden of family history and each cardboard box of ornaments a treasure you open once a year.
When I went to buy the correct glue the other day I had a moment of panic in the craft store. All around me there were the things that make me happy- ribbons, paper, new pens, paints (that smell of alcohol, that smell of rot, that smell of sulphur), crayons, jewels, beads, sequins, bells, needles, and thread. And all around me were people red faced and angry, brandishing advertising circulars like weapons and shouting at other people who I promise you were not getting paid nearly enough to get shouted at. Behind the cacophony of voices ran the tinny sounds of insipid carols that have been done and redone by both celebrities and dogs and everything in between and played only because the words "Christmas" and "Holiday" and "Snow" are mentioned somewhere in them. This is not my Christmas. I wanted to bolt, and bolt I did as soon as I bought the glue.
My mother hates Christmas, but she has never passed hate of anything on to her children. I am so lucky for that. I am so lucky to have the family I have that lets me be me, and pick and choose the Christmas I want to have. Each year they let me make my misshapen handcrafted things and pass them off as presents. They let me ignore the mall and get all starry eyed over the sparkly bits, the twinkle lights and glitter trees and red bows that people, in their madness tie onto just about anything that will let them. When I was growing up we drank cocoa out of mugs shaped like Santa's head and felt special, even as we rubbed his cherry cheeks white year after year, and we put out cookies, and we put out carrots. Mama, who does not like Christmas read us "Twas the Night Before Christmas" on Christmas Eve every year until one year we lost the book and my brother spoke up in his tiny child's voice and recited the whole thing from memory. As children we clutched our stomachs in despair at having to eat raspberry strudel BEFORE we could even look at the tree to see what Santa brought us! When we are children it is all magic, even if the "tree" is actually only a branch that dad cut off a pine tree behind the house and our stockings are mostly filled with tangerines and walnuts. As children we do not have to fulfill Christmas wishes and bargain shop and fight tooth and nail for the last Xbox on the shelf. We can sit next to the tree and push our faces up so close so that all we can see is a forest filled with lights and magic, with colored glass so delicate you could crush it in your hand and yet survives year after year because we are careful with our magic, and we wrap it in paper to keep it safe.
I try to keep my Christmas a child's Christmas as much as I can. Like fourteen hours of sleep, I know that it is a luxury I have because I don't have children of my own. But I do envy you mothers and fathers. Even if the light is gone from your own tired eyes by the time Christmas Day arrives and you are worn out and you have tape in your hair and cuts on your hands and you feel sick from eating Santa's cookies at midnight to keep the babies believing in make-believe one more year. I envy you, that you will be there to watch the light in your children's eyes. You will watch them grin their gap-toothed grins and wriggle in their nightgowns. You will be able to pass on pretty, you will make beauty for your little beasts, and they will love it, oh they will love it. And when they grow up, maybe they will keep that in their hearts and still get excited each year, because you gave them that.
And now, sweet friends, my house is dry, my stomach is settled, and I am well rested. The proper glue is sitting on the table next to me and the scissors are calling out. It is only one week till Christmas. I must get busy. Christmas waits for no man. God says "HA". I may not finish my gifts in time, but it really doesn't matter. I wish I could kiss all your pretty faces. If it gets too stressful, put on some Lady Day, take time to breathe.

Children and Mad Men Think I'm Pretty

Today at work an older gentleman dressed in various shades of plaid and drab told me that he would come back to eat sometime, but only if I was working. He would have to call, he said. He told me that he was getting over a heart condition, that is, a woman had just broken his heart, and that it didn't hurt to see a pretty girl. I assured him that we have other pretty waitresses and he waved his hand dismissively and said, "They aren't hags or anything, but..." and proceeded to give me a long and dubious metaphor involving double-bagged groceries and how you don't really need two bags but it's good to have them in case the primary one bursts. I believe I was the primary bag. At some point he also wandered to the rear of the restaurant to commend the chef.
A few weeks ago I met a man named Jimbo who lives on the streets in my fair town. I met him on the street, actually, walking from the health food store to my apartment. He was carrot haired and beet faced and swayed a bit as he walked. Approaching him I could not help but admire the way he owned the sidewalk. We said hello in passing and he called me Sunshine and asked me for some change to help a brother out. I told him I'd just spent all my cash money at the grocery store, and after he assured me that was alright I moved on and he paused to let me get ahead before he continued his walk. Later that same day I ran into Jimbo again, on a different street some miles from our earlier encounter. "Sunshine!" he hailed me, a grand bellow full of gravel and oboe, "Marry me! You are beautiful!" "Not today!" I returned, feeling every bit a Sunshine.
The day after Halloween I had the pleasure of serving a fairy princess, a Harry Potter, and their beautiful mama, who was herself dressed as herself. They ordered chocolate chip pancakes, sourdough french toast, eggs over-easy, fruit, and grits. The fairy princess ate only bacon and did so with tiny bites from baby teeth and pinkies out, like a lady. As I asked if they needed anthing else, the fairy princess hid her face in her mama's tummy and her mama said, "It's alright, you can tell her." The little girl looked up at me, her eyes like sugared gumdrops in her berry face and whispered, "I think you're pretty!" and then quick! back to the safe dark hide-away of mama's blouse. I blushed and cut my eyes at Harry Potter, who gave me a wicked chocolate grin.
People's eyes are as variable and unreliable as shop-store windows. In some we are tall and thin and young forever, and some cast every awful angle in sharp and haggard relief. I was once told by a manager that if I could not be cute, I would have to be good to cut it in the serving world, and I took that to heart. It's true, I'm not cute. I wear black framed glasses and have severe hair, which I call my Frida Kahlo hair. My bosom is small and my bras perpetually ill-fitting with straps that tend to slide off my shoulders and peek out my short sleeved black t-shirts. When I am thinking of a lot of things at once (which I am always doing while serving) I scrunch my lips and furrow my brow. However. Children and madmen think I am beautiful, and if anyone in this world can speak the truth as it springs flashing from the mind to the mouth it is the insane and the very very young. And if the man is not only mad but also drunk? Oh my, then it must be true.

The Fabulous Sex I Am Not Having

The girl in the apartment across (or as we in my family say, acrost) the courtyard from me is having spectacular sex. She and her boyfriend moved in about a year ago and all I heard from them was the boy's boorish voice in heavy and pontificating discourse, warped by walls and distance to where I could only make out the occasional word. Words like "halo" and "xbox". He moved out one day in August, one van and a buddy, his clothes and face wrinkled and worn, his hair distraught. He hailed me as I went to enter my foyer and told me he was leaving, the first words he ever spoke to me. "Off to better and brighter things!" I said. "Maybe" he said. The sex started soon after.
At first I thought she was weeping, and I put my earphones in. The walls here are very thin, and to give privacy one must do more sometimes than close a window. The weeping went on and on and I took my earphones off, concerned. Ahhhh, I thought, that's not weeping.... and back to book on tape.
Perhaps she is not having spectacular sex. Perhaps she is doing many very frightening, very exciting somersaults. Perhaps she is faking. If she is faking she is dedicated to the fraud, committing herself to the act sometimes several times a day. Somehow, I don't think this is the case. I almost feel sorry for the boy who left. Sorry you Shlub, you treestump of a man, sorry you big toe in trousers, you brown haired tousle, you shrimphook, you fat thighed monocle! You didn't do it for her! And now someone else is! All the time! Many times! I hope you're doing well! Don't worry, your girl is fine!!
I don't mind hearing the sex. They aren't right next door or above me, there is some muffling involved. From other apartments sometimes I do hear weeping, sometimes I hear fights or screaming or drunken girls in piercing hilarity. From my apartment I imagine other people hear the occasional burp, or me yelling at my cat, or both- making it sound like I am yelling at the cat for burping. Or sometimes I will sing my cat's theme song while she is furiously biting my arm Craaaazy on you! Craa-aaazy on you! Let me go crazy crazy on you! which is what I imagine she is singing in her own head but because she doesn't have words I have to vocalize for her.
I ran into a friend yesterday and I told him about the fabulous sex I am not having. He brushed aside my story like cheezit crumbs off a beautiful woman's bosom. You could be having sex.... "That's not the point! I'm not jealous, I'm just relating a story!" he didn't let me finish. You could be having sex. Lots of guys would have sex with you, but you're all "I'm May, I'm crazy!" He said this while flailing his arms in the air and running around. I would've given him five to the two if he wasn't so spot on. I arched my brow admiringly. "Oh, you're good, my friend. You're good."
I had a dream the other night that I was in a store that sold only chocolate covered banana products. Chocolate covered banana cereal, chocolate covered banana chips, chocolate covered banana bananas... They claimed to have more chocolate covered banana products than anywhere in the whole world. I related this to Mama and she said, Hmmm, I wonder what Freud would have to say about that? I hadn't even thought about it like that. I'm glad that I didn't mention that in the dream I was in the store because I was looking for someone. He wasn't there. I thought I don't even LIKE chocolate covered bananas! Now if this place sold mustard...
Petit Fleur writes about the marvelous brain and it's electric pathways, it's firesnap magic and I have to concur. While I am wandering around my days, wheeling through shifts at work and laundry and money and mold in the bathroom, my brain is doing the jizzy math of my basest instincts. My age plus my solitude multiplied by the moaning thumps across (acrost) the courtyard and divided by the heft and holler of my nephew in my arms = Chocolate Covered Bananas! You don't even like chocolate covered bananas?! says my brain How do you know if you haven't had one in a while? Look at the variety! So many kinds to choose from!
My brain may have to wait. In my head there are many kinds of brain (I'm May! I'm crazy!) and the primal sex monkey part is not the one with the keys to the kingdom. I am sober, you know. So very very very sober. It's not like I can go out with friends, get a couple of drinks in me and loosen up enough to sit back in my chair, much less let the hair down and peek over the glasses with that look that means come hither, that means maybe, I take the glasses off. No, I avoid all such situations. The compliments on my appearance I get are from old ladies at the grocery store. They like my buns, and they are not referring to my ass.
Today is the fifteenth anniversary of my car accident and I have to mention that here because it is on my mind. I do not recommend getting hit by a car, but I will say that for the first few years after the accident it imbued me with a great courage and confidence. After seeing my bones come through my skin, after watching my wounds weep red stained yellow tears, after waking up each morning crying before I even opened my eyes, falling on my hop-step way to the bathroom and waiting for someone to come along to pick me up, after all that normal life seemed so sweetly tame. The girls who intimidated me no longer had tigers in their eyes, the boys who would not give me the time of day were whitewashed selfish and preening. If I wanted to do something, like get in my truck and drive west alone with no map and no phone, I did it. If I wanted a job I just went to the place where I wanted to work and asked for a job. If I needed a cheap place to live I called a man I'd never met who I heard charged only $111 a month for one side of a duplex and instead ended up living with him, for free. Why not? But now it's been fifteen years and life has stepped in. At some point a few years ago I realized I was afraid again, and that scared the hell out of me. When I got sober, I made my life very very safe.
Part of getting sober in AA is doing a sexual inventory. You write down every sex thing you have ever done and you read it to someone. The point of this is to figure out where you have harmed others, where you've been selfish or destructive, so you can break your patterns and make amends when necessary. I thought it was great. I would go to meetings and say "So, I'm doing my sex inventory and I was thinking about the time when I was in bed with two of my coworkers..." not knowing that most people do not talk about their sex inventory at meetings. Cancer, yes. Bad haircut, yes. Sex inventory? Not so much. They'll listen, oh yes, they will listen, but talking about it seems to make everyone shy. I wasn't ashamed of my sexual behavior as much as I was ashamed of my regular drunken convivaling and besides, it wasn't nearly so interesting as I've heard through the rumor mill that it was. Three-way with the coworkers? Never happened. I enjoyed the moment but hopped out of bed before the deed was done, shouting thank yous for a lovely evening and stealing three Newcastles out of the fridge before sneaking off into the night. I'm a story whore, a make-out slut, but I get as twisted and tight as my professional hair when faced with actual promiscuity. Sigh.
So now what's a girl to do? I'm getting wrinkles around my eyes and sag around the back. If my 31 year old breasts are perky but there is no one around to see them, do they still perk? How does one go from talking about kazoos and the weather to slipping off the skivvies? I don't think it will happen at the coffeeshop, or good lord, at the Publix.
And I'm not crazy, I'm waiting to fall in love. I'm waiting for that moment of head rush, for my neck to prickle and my stomach to heave. Sex for sex sake is a young woman's game. One who believes that a tumble bump means she's beautiful, or that a warm body keeps the cold out of her own. I have showers. I have a lovely cat. Besides, I have a lot to do. I need to clean out the refrigerator and learn to cartwheel on the left side. Busy busy.
Amanda Ziller once said "Birth, copulation and death. One day I was born, someday I shall die, today I will copulate." Today, I will probably not copulate. Today I will walk to the intersection that knocked my bones out and cross the road, and then cross back. I will go to the grocery store. I will get chocolate and I will get bananas. I will stick one of those things in the freezer and one on the stove, and tonight when the cold comes in the windows and the moaning ululations reach with sticky fingers to my ears, I'll sidestep my wicked tender brain's dreamplan by distracting it with cool and sweet. You want chocolate covered bananas, you psuedo-Freudian charlatan? Here you go. You can have chocolate covered bananas. All. night. long.

From The Diary of Miss May E. Thigpen Upon Meeting Her Nephew

I saw my baby nephew for the first time yesterday.
He is beautiful. We all say he is beautiful! He is perfect. He looks like a changeling, with his very serious face, those hooded eyes and very important eyebrows. His nose is like a cupcake turned upside down and his little mouth is full on top and tucked lower lip that gets dragged into the tiny knob of his chin by his heavy, dewy cheeks. He is pink, and has long, long fingers. His legs are long as well like a jumping frog with the same narrow hips and his feet have prominent heels and monkey toes. His ears make me think of shells cut crossways, or maybe just one perfect nautilus in half because they match of course and are on either sides of his noggin in just the right places. They are soft and have good lobes. Mama says he bleats like a goat when he is squalling, but I think he sounds like a boy. I have not looked overmuch at his tummy but I suspect it too, is perfect.
It was the strangest feeling to hold him. He is not my boy, but he is my blood, and it was more like looking into my sister's face than just any other baby. Jason said when he first saw him, his heart just dropped. I was not so much aware of my heart but more like I'd been missing something and here he was. Sometimes we talk about Jessie, and how she was an accident, but we can't imagine our lives without her- that yawning space she would leave without us ever knowing how empty we were. Here it is again. Hello. Here you are. We've been waiting for you, little man.
To speak of him in the clumsy words we have and to give the full weight of how I feel about him I would have to say I am in love with this boy. Then if you were to say Well, if you love him so much why don't you marry him? I'd say, Shut up, You Stupid Fool. I already have.