family – Wanderthoughts

I was cutting up nearly frozen chicken thighs with a pair of orange school scissors. They were crusted in permafrost, so my thumb started losing sensation as I padded around the tense marbled fat. Ran it under water. Snip, took off a colossal hunk. The graveyard of pink and white was growing on the board.

I had on a chess game in the background. Caruana vs. Kasparov, a classic. My phone sat on the toaster, the tiny screen almost impossible to watch. I couldn’t look up, lest I cut a finger. I just listened to the wooden “plunk” on the gameboard when they moved, a small cough, nose breathing in concentration. I squinted up, but couldn’t tell who was winning.

My mind wandered to a girl I used to work with. A southern beauty, deep blue eyes, curvy figure with ancestral hips. Little gap tooth that made me almost believe in a creator. She had that wild head-toss laugh, had to touch you when she did it. She got real serious about energies, alignments and moon signs. I imagined we were out at a get together, a bunch of people from work went to the lake one summer afternoon.

5 of us on an overgrown grass patch, blankets, phones, wilting strawberries, bodies splayed wide to hope for evaporation. The drone of the speedboats playing in the middle of the lake. By the shore the hot brown water is lapping at the rocks, squelching Tevas sneak through the mud. A fat man struggles to get in a deflating tube nearby, his daughter laughs. The sun is finally taking less of a beating on our little group.

She’d get up, ask me to help her with something in her car, flash the beer breath smile. I’d follow her to the parking lot. She’d lean on the frame of her corolla, door open, the alarm croaking softly in the humidity while we scanned each other. I’d peek in, see the starry roof liner, some rubber ducks on the dashboard. She’d ask me if I like her bathing suit.

Plunk. Kasparov goes g6.

In the fluorescent kitchen light, I can only see their hunched figures with the tiny gameboard overlay in front. Audience member whispers. Camera clicks. I lean over to get a view, chicken grease drips off my hands. Plunk.

She’d push up off the car, step closer. I do the lightest touch on her skin, testing. She gives the eyes, I put my hand on the wonderful little pouch of fat on her waist, feel the sweat, pull her in. I’d look towards the lake; nobody is paying attention. Grab a handful of ass. She gasps, smacks my stomach, tilts her head to the side.

Plunk, plunk. They’re onto the endgame; the pace is starting to pick up. I peak up for a moment, sense them breathing heavier, thinking harder. My pace quickens in turn. The scrap pile is now the carnage of Mongol horde, unceremonious, teetering, wasteful. Pink and white. Plunk, pause. Plunk, plunk. I squint my eyes, see if I can tell who’s up. My stomach grumbles.

After a moment I’d pull back from her, knees bent awkwardly to hide a half chub. Couldn’t look down, she’s a swirling mirage of smile, tan skin and bikini. I breathe in deep, hold her hips for stability. I’d suggest we just get a room somewhere close; we shouldn’t drive too far. She pulls my hat down over my eyes. Oh really? Where?

Plunkplunkplunkplunk. Plunk. Their chair shuffle, they stand up and shake hands. Game over. I can’t tell who won, they’re the types who look angry no matter the outcome. My eyes itch from the baseboard dust, I blink furiously to moisten them, holding t-rex arms above my plate of carnage.

I toss the cutlets in Tupperware and stir them with barbecue sauce, onions, peppers. A random winter draft creeps around the apartment, hits unexpectedly. I turtle my neck down. An ad automatically plays on my phone, colorectal screening. Loud acoustic music, mixed race doctor, happy looking old couple, Perspelimanga… I lost track of what it was called.

The image of her blue eyes come back. We’d sway for a few more minutes, then she’d go back to the group, I’d stay put. I’d let her walk first so I could see those bouncy castles reanimate under her little shawl dress, swishing across the pavement, flip flops clacking. Orange sun would start lighting the thicket, insects getting louder. She’d reach the group again, strewn about like bronze Muppets, didn’t even notice we’d left.

I’d lean against her car, feel the warmth, fish in my pocket for my vape, forgot I don’t do it anymore. Look down and inhale the patchouli beer lavender scent on my chest hair, send her a quick text.

The ad is over on my phone. Now it’s silent, with the two men’s side profiles staring at each other on the loading screen. I have garlic wedged between my fingers, I keep kneading the shloppy cold thighs, air pocket farts as I twist, I hope to not smell anything.

The apartment is still cold, or I’m anemic. My feet never defrost, unless I put on thick ass socks, which don’t fit in shoes, and make me feel house bound, like I’m forfeiting to winter. I can’t give up, yet. Another nose itch comes in from the hot air. I sneeze and accidentally touch chicken grease to my nose. Motherfucker.

I try to picture her again, the lazy heavy heat of ideas. It’s fading quick, her laugh blends in with crickets and humidity, floats over the lake with an exhale. The hot pavement cools into dead yellow tile. My tan skin is gone.

Look at my sickly white, cracked knuckles. I’m in a down jacket filled with little holes that puff out feathers around the apartment. If I cook too hard, move too emphatically, it looks like a pheasant was processed in here. Feathers on the floor, marbled fat stack, the orange scissors in the sink, slimy and ashamed.

I can’t get her back. The body odor, cackle, the flop of her sandals on the grass. I’m grateful for the small trance while it lasted.

Grateful for whatever machinery my brain needed to teleport away from my cold fluorescent dissection, to keep itself alive and awake. Anything but the present.

Quiet internal desperation to displace the external, in the form of mutilating a chicken in a tiny box room under a squeaky light, in winter. No snow. Bare everything.

I take that split moment of escape and run with it as far as I can.

I’ll put on another chess video, maybe a longer one this time, hope that rhythmic plunk conjures up another dream. Winter is long.

Kroger grocery store midday on a Tuesday. Winter still around in Nashville, you feel it most in the parking lot. The people who normally stroll through the parking lot like kings on parade are actually putting up a brisk pace. Trash tumbleweed and cold cigarette smoke hit you right before the sliding doors open. I started hearing a child shrieking behind me.

It’s the nervous high-pitched yelps a child might make on Christmas, mixed with some anxiety. It immediately sours my mood as I walk in the warm lobby. Why didn’t I hear a soothing mother’s voice hushing him? I head to the carrots, perturbed.

“Ah… Ahh Ah!” Little rapid fire blurts, then silence. They follow in behind me. Now it can be heard in the whole store. I turn around to see a little kid sitting in a cart. He can’t be more than 3 or 4, swinging legs dangling through the holes. His mother is overweight, looks like they’re struggling a bit, but she has a huge smile on her face. You can tell undefeatable energy when you see it. “AH, ahh”.. he bleats on.

She stands next to a man near the entrance. They’re beaming at each other for a moment, and she rapidly moves her hands to start talking in sign language. He nods and signs back.

They carry on, with the little child smoke alarm still going off. People skirt around them, confused. The two are locked in, their faces and hands show two friends catching up at a coffee shop. The child continues. I stood by the produce and watched for a beat too long.

I’m a sensitive person, I will fully admit I suffer more from sounds, textures, and spatially and spiritually unaware people than others do. This odd little family juxtaposition entertained and annoyed me. I wonder what everyone else briskly moving by thought.

Does the mother know or simply not care? Is this child responding to never speaking out loud with anyone by just yelling out? Is this the rhino and the little bird on the savanna living in symbiosis to help each other? God smiled on this Deaf mother and her Siren son pairing.

Her warm, unconcerned smile could be a rare time he sees that reaction, this pairing couldn’t be out of randomness. The cosmic balance walking around Kroger looking at bananas.

We all go about our lives tumbling and yelling and butting heads or melding in with others, circling in orbit hoping to find our gravitation counterpoint. The romantic in me hopes I can find this partner by luck or action, the calm deaf person to my wailing boy. The antidote to occasional genius or madness with a warm, calm demeanor.

Meanwhile I’m strolling through Kroger head down, working, going to the gym. No drastic bends to the fabric of normality, trying to present as cool and collected.

Maybe I have to get so hot and uncomfortable that I let the steam out at the grocery store, or Twitter? I plow forward with everything on my sleeve. Everybody is broadcasting something; has some frequency that can complement and balance another. The mother and son some odd reminder that maybe there is a point to it. I try to pick up alterations in the daily life, later that day on the same busy road I saw another kind of shift.

Coffee Shop

That afternoon at the coffee shop. Homeless and drunks and hipsters all working away at something. It’s a place of quiet conversations and politeness, political correctness and funky couches that have their own Instagram account. I saw another glitch. A homeless lady walked into shop slamming the door behind her. She ignored every hello; how can I help you?

I looked up to see her, huge backpack slouching off the shoulder, burnt from head to toe and layered in heavy coats. She went to the counter, grabbed the bathroom key and strolled to the back to lock herself in. Some murmurs from the workers, a subtle smile to each other.

After a couple minutes, as simply as she came in, she walked out of the bathroom with the key, again ignoring the barista calling after her. This time all eyes left their bible studies group and almond lattes to follow her on her march. Like the aforementioned kings of the parking lot, she strolled right past everyone. “Ma’am!” She swung open the front door, stepped off the curb and onto the busy street. The barista charged after. He intercepted her as she was about to Frogger her way through traffic.

She was unaware of every person, custom, traffic law. She said nothing but had everyone’s attention for that brief period. We all sat in brief discomfort of her signal, slapped physically and olfactorily.

There was nobody there to offset her heavy presence, but she could have been on her way to meet her counterpoint on the other side of the road. She could be bulldozing normality and serving looks to wake us up from our mundane discomforts. Eventually she’ll run into traffic or a life changing opportunity.

Or do you just go down the middle and not need the balance? Be palatable. Work, drink, weather, football, complaints and aspirations that won’t turn any heads in the grocery store.

There’s people at grocery stores and coffee shops and street corners who are heavy walking billboards of harsh truths. Autistic infants, patient mothers, homeless women plowing into traffic. We’ll scramble to avoid looking at ugly realities.

The more fortunate polish their billboard every day, online and in real life. Annoyed by the yelling infant, buying craft beer, curating the same sheen in mind, body, and status.

The harsher your truth the more drastic the balance.

I have to figure out where my weight goes. All the dogshit humanity beneath my Republican haircut wants to breathe. It’ll pull and repel rather than just cling to a false self-image. I’m not an algorithm, despite how much optimization seems to build your prestige.

My ideas or sadness or joy will only matter if seen unfiltered. When I walk into a room with only the weight of my presence and not my baggage, I’ll find a genuine conversation. Be the squealing infant when you need to say it, rather than burying it with dopamine hits. Grab the key and walk into traffic instead of pruning your eyebrows. No more diet coke friendships that feel good on the surface and make you sick. No more hiding the dark, let the light find it.

Tag: family

Plunk

Gravity Shifts and Grocery Stores