What I Know Despite Myself

I am not, I repeat, NOT joining eHarmony. Nor may you expect to see me on Match.com
Those websites are for desperate people looking desperately for someone to fill a desperate little void in their desperately hopeful little lives. And I refuse to be desperate. Whiney and totally obnoxious, maybe. But I intend to have a bit more spunk, a bit more kick, a bit more spice to my attitude, desperate or otherwise. Therefore I am not desperate.
And these are the things I know despite myself:

I know you're out there somewhere. You don't know who I am and I don't know who you are either. But despite myself, despite all the sick, gutwrenching drama of the last couple of months, and all the years leading up to the last couple of months, and all the years that will succeed the last couple of months, I KNOW for a fact that you are out there.

Because I'm sure we haven't met yet.
(Don't get cocky, Michael Buble, I would never use your song title in my far-superior-to-you blog)

Even though we are totally and completely compatible, we haven't met yet. Perhaps we were staring at the same Latin Pop section at Walmart, looking for the same Carlos Baute cd that always freakin flies off the shelves. Or maybe we were both at Melrose and your order was the one that made them forget to make my extra cheesy quesadilla. Or you could have been the one who stole the last purple Norcom comp book at the Office Max so that I had to drive to flippin Cool Springs to look for another one. Or maybe you don't even live here. Maybe I need to move, because you live in Atlanta or New York City or... Spain (Sergio Ramos) I don't know.

All I know right now is that I have to chill. Because when you come along, you're not going to wait for me to get my shizz together. It'll be BOOM, SONIC BLAST, EXPLOSIONS OF LIGHT, SUB ATOMIC PARTICLE SPLIT. It'll be intense. And I don't want to be preoccupied with myself and how crappy my life is and how I'm not really ready for this or perhaps I'm SO ready for it that I throw myself on you and freak you out. I want to be cool, yo. I want to be so cool you can't resist me.

Though. Of course. That's not hard. I'm too cool to resist already. I have to make sure I have a squirt bottle full of unflattering things to say so that I can spray them on unsuspecting suitors at the mall or the Walmart or the... office cafeteria (Mazatlan).

I'm thinking about you the whole time, though. I'm trying to. I wish you would just show up and rock my world already. I'm impatient, and I don't want you to miss me in my prime. Hurry up, okay? I'll keep hanging tight over here, and you keep doing whatever it is you do. But please don't forget about me. Its hard to remember what you're supposed to look like, but I think I'll know you when I see you.

Maybe I won't be surprised at all when we meet. Maybe you'll just walk up and I'll say "Hello, other-half. Where have you been all this time?" And we'll exchange awkward stories of how long its taken us to find each other, and how ridiculous it's all been, what with the boobie traps and dead ends and do-not-pass-go's, do-not-collect-200-dollars's. And we'll hold hands and walk out into the rest of our lives like old friends.

Maybe, anyway.

Soy Tu Duena at the Mapco

I get in my car. Its raining this morning. I'm wearing a pink and teal button up shirt that looks like it was meant for summer. But it's November, and its raining, and I really don't care. It looks good on me, and I did my makeup carefully for once.

I feel my eyelid and realize that the anti-aging serum stuff I bought on 75%-off clearance has worked. My skin is smooth and soft. My eyelids are always getting flaky these days. Probably because I, myself, am also getting flaky.

"I'm running out of time! I'm on a schedule here, people!" I told my dad the previous night on the phone. I laughed when I said it.
"Whats so funny about that?" Again with the deadpan. God, Dad, you're gonna have to lighten up.
"I'M GETTING OLD! That's why its funny!" I laughed again. "I'm like those horrible girls who consider harvesting their eggs! I'm gonna get old and nobody will have ever been able to stand me long enough to procreate with me, much less marry me and doom themselves to forever being my sidekick."

Yes, I think, now driving to work in my car, I am also getting flaky. Sidekick? Seriously?
My windshield wipers make a squeaky noise when they scrape against the window. I really shouldn't have used them to help me defrost the window last year when I lived in that apartment.

I pull into a gas station and get out. I get water in my shoes because of the puddle that has most conveniently placed itself under my car. Again, its November, and I'm wearing grey open-toed shoes. Whatever, I did my nails all cute and french-like.

"Seis noventa y nueve." The cashier is an overweight white girl with bleached blonde hair. She is speaking Spanish to the All-Pro Lawncare workers who have entered the Mapco to buy coffee that they doctor with too much sugar. America has been bad to them, I muse, giving them all sweet tooths when it comes to a product that is most likely grown and harvested in their own native countries.

One of them cocks an eyebrow at me as I head for the energy drinks. I'm a sucker for energy drinks. One day my heart may explode. And it won't even be a man's fault. It certainly won't be your fault, I think to myself, side stepping around Pedro and his paint covered pals. Apparently there is more than one vanload of Latin men in the Mapco today.

I grab the drink and wait in line behind a guy with tattoos, peeking around his shoulder at the bleach-blonde cashier. She's really speaking Spanish! Like fluently. And its funny, because I look at her, and she does NOT look like a person who went to college, or a person who graduated top of their class, or a person who could even interview for a desk job, and yet she has learned another language to the point where she is completely fluent! And here I am, Miss 13th-out-of-three-hundred-twenty-five, Miss college graduate, Miss 7th grade teacher, and I can't do that. I mean, I could. I almost did.

But when I think about it, the bleach blonde cashier lady has probably married some Latino dude and now has two kids named Julio and Renber, and her last name is probably Pineda, and she probably goes home to her crappy apartment and drinks Tampico while watching Soy Tu Duena on Telemundo.
I don't live in that environment. Now, I think, if I did, I might end up being able to facilitate cash transactions in a gas station while speaking two languages. Hm.

She rings up my can o' energy and tells me to have a good day in perfect English, and I think to myself on the way out the door that we both have okay lives.

I kind of hate Tampico anyway, and the girls on Soy Tu Duena make me feel like a fat cow just looking at them. Which, by the way, is very un-stereotypical of Spanish tv. Usually those girls have crazy curves. Like me. But whatever, the point is that I think it would be cool to speak another language. And the fact that bleached-blondie with the GED has been able to do it gives me hope.

Besides. Instead of learning Spanish while popping out half-illegal children, drinking a juice-flavored fruit drink, and working at a gas station, maybe I should just move to Spain.

I slam the door to my car and my mouth waters just long enough thinking about a Spanish rendezvous with Sergio Ramos before I pop the top on my energy drink and wash it all down.

I turn out of the Mapco parking lot and merge back into the stream of traffic funneling its way toward the heart of the city.

Sour and Soot and Rot (Fictional Short Part II)

It was the size of a marble, a black spot on the fuzzy looking screen. It looked like radar, Brynn thought. Like underwater radar on a boat. Like a torpedo should be in there making little echo noises, headed straight for her insides.
"Do you want to keep the printout?" The nurse was all smiles, drawing little lines through the black circle on her computer screen.
"...No. That's okay."
"You're not even five weeks along, you know."
Brynn was staring at her feet, swinging them back against the post of the examining table. "You probably conceived three-ish weeks ago."
"What does that mean? Like. Whats in that black bubble?"
"Blood." The nurse ripped the picture prints out of the machine and tore one off. "Its just blood, really. It's like a yolk sack. Everything will happen inside that bubble. Just give it a few weeks, and you'll really be able to see stuff."
Just give it a few weeks, huh. Brynn thought.
"You sure you don't want the print out?" She held out the picture with the little black bubble.
"No." Did she? It would just be something else she'd have to hide. "I don't want it."


How deep are the secrets that lurk beneath the surface.
How dark is the human heart.
With what hope do we crush all the things we won't say,
And smash them and tear them apart.
I am perfect, the lamb says, though lamb he is not.
I am faulty, the wolf says, truth teller, forgot.
And all of us swirl in the Land of the Not,
Swallow sour and soot and rot.


"They asked you if you wanted a picture of it?" Leo was driving her back to work.
"Yeah. She kept asking me all these questions. She said it probably happened three weeks ago. But you know, they count back from the first day of your last cycle. I thought it was further along than that."
"I wanted to come back in the room with you, you know. I just wasn't sure. Was it scary?"
"No... it was okay. This whole thing is scary."
"I told you, though. I'm here for you."
They were stopped at a redlight, and Brynn leaned forward, her head between her hands. There were little bits of dirt in the floor board of Leo's Honda. They were dancing along the side panel, where the door connected.
"You're here NOW, though. How do I know you'll be here later?"
"You think I would leave you?"
"But just because of this, or because of me? We can't predict the future, Leo. If we could this never would have happened."
"What are you saying, that you think I'll end up leaving you?"
"This is you and me in here, you know? Nobody can change that. No matter what happens for the rest of our lives. This happened. Its a fact, and its always going to be there. No one else will ever take this from us. And I don't want... I just... I don't think I'm strong enough without you anymore. I don't want to ever be without you. Not now, and not a year from now. Not ever."
He looked over at her and gripped her hand. She squeezed it between her palms on her lap.
"I will never do that to you. I will never hurt you. This is it. Okay? You and me."

Irony (A Fictional Short)

Whatever, she thought. I'll just take it and get the suspense over with. There is no use in worrying about something that isn't even happening. She pulled one of the cylindrical foil wrappers out of the box and stuck it in the waist band of her pajama bottoms. Sleepily, she padded to the bathroom and shut the door.

*******

Three minutes later, the boxes lit up with vertical blue lines, little minus signs, and Brynn breathed a heavy sigh of relief. Geez, I'm such a dumbass, she thought, stepping into the shower. I'm never letting this happen again. Lesson learned.

Steam filled the room. But... she thought. It's a little sad to think that I acted THIS stupid and I still didn't get pregnant. Maybe I'm incapable of getting pregnant. Maybe I'm barren. I mean, it only happened those two times, but the timing! She started freaking herself out, thinking about it. What if she married Leo, like she wanted to someday, and then she couldn't have children. She'd be devastated. Adoption just wouldn't be the same. She wanted the whole shebang. The whole experience. She wanted it to be a part of her and Leo, swimming around inside her gut like nature intended to create it. Getting out of the shower, she stared at herself in the mirror and touched her stomach, just once. Its just you and me, you dusty ole uterus. We're all alone.

She dried her reddish hair, thinking about what she would wear to work. She'd had to move home to her father's house after a breakin at her apartment complex conventiently coincided with the bottoming out of her bank account. She had blamed it on the breakin.

She straightened her hair, put on makeup, and just before she walked out the bathroom door, she picked up the test stick off the counter. It was still laying face up, looking at her, no blue plus sign in sight. She held it up and noticed that she couldn't even see where the other line to complete the plus was, down in there. It was just two lines. Two little minus signs.

“Thank god,” Brynn mumbled, and she tucked it inside her wet towel, walked back down the hall and shut the door to her room. Her feet made little moisture impressions on the hardwood floor.

*******

The only thing she could reach for was her phone. Her hands were shaking and it took her three tries to dial the number. It rang once, twice, three times, four times, voice mail. She tried again. She was shaking all over, pure shock. The phone pressed to her ear, she stepped out into the hall then realized she wasn’t dressed and stepped back into her room. She put the phone on the bed, threw on a blue dress from her closet, and picked the phone back up.
“Hello?” But it was still ringing.

“Are you okay in there?” Her father was knocking on the door. She glanced at the clock. She needed to keep getting ready or something would look wrong.
“Uh… yeah. Yeah, I’m just—I have a… problem. Everything’s fine!”
“Well, I’m leaving for work, okay? I’ll see you this afternoon.”
She could hear her father’s shoes on the linoleum, headed for the back door, and she felt this sudden pang of homesickness like when she rode the bus to school for the first time in fourth grade and cried the whole way.
“Have a good day at work, honey!” And she heard the door shut.

Brynn walked into the hallway and stared down the length of the house at the back door her father had just left through.
What the hell was she going to do?

*******

“What the hell am I going to do?” She was laying on the bed, fifteen minutes until she should leave for work. Leo had finally answered.
“I don’t know… I don’t know.”
“I mean, congrats, you know. Your junk works. And so does mine. Who knew.”
“Brynn, you’ve gotta calm down. Everything will be okay.”
“Leo, everything will not be okay.”
“How could you have misread the test?”
“I don’t know. I thought it was supposed to make a plus sign.” She picked up the box and read the side panel for the tenth time. One line, not pregnant. Two lines, pregnant. “The outside of the box is very explicit, Leo, it’s got little two line tests all over it. It’s obviously geared toward women who are praying for this to happen. It’s desensitizing, it’s romantic, it’s SICK.”
“Brynn…” Leo sighed on his end of the phone. “I just knew that’s what it was.” He chuckled, suddenly. “I just knew you were going to call and say you were pregnant. I woke up and realized you’d been calling three times in a row and I knew, right then.”
“You woke up real fast, huh.”
“Yeah.”
Brynn was looking around the room, at her kid-sized room for a twenty-three-year-old. The stuffed animals on shelves, the Little Mermaid comic books still stacked on the top of her bookcase. And that’s when it hit her. She couldn’t do this any more than those girls on MTV. She couldn’t do it. She wasn’t financially stable. Her parents hadn’t even met Leo. She was as good as sixteen years old.
“Oh, God, Leo… I can’t do this.” She realized she was crying. “I can’t do this to them. I can’t do this at all.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t… this can’t… I can’t do this. I can’t take care of this. We made a freakin baby, and I can’t do this. I can’t do this to my family, because they’d be the ones--”
“--Brynn…”
She wished he was there. She wanted someone to hold her and let her cry it all out for the sheer tragedy of crying into the shoulder of someone who could now be called the father of her child.
“Brynn, I’m here, okay. I’m here no matter what you do.”

*******

She left for work in a fog. She and Leo would meet on their lunch breaks. She’d have to hold it in until then. She was surprised how fast she could compose herself. And she drove to work like nothing was wrong. She made the right turn, the left, the right, and the radio played the same songs. And the traffic was just as bad as always. And a tiny part of her and Leo was still swimming around in her gut like nature intended to create it.

No Mas on the Salsa Club

Heels clicking across the wet pavement, I made my way around the side of the strip mall containing what I considered at the time to be the only non-scummy Salsa club in Nashville. It was late, and a large crowd of people were also leaving at the same time as me. They clicked their heels or shuffled their too-pointy-to-be-masculine shoes across the parking lot to their cars.

I found myself right behind a couple of younger guys. One was Dominican, and was ushering his friend quickly around the length of the building. His friend, the other guy, looked white, complete with blonde hair and blue eyes, but was actually Cuban. His Cuban-ness was hard to miss, especially from my close proximity, because he he kept babbling on and on about how he was "Cubano, Loco! Estoy Cubano! No preoccupes, Loco! Estoy Cubano, Loco!"

Everyone around us was looking at them, and it was hard not to. The Cubano continued babbling angrily, like he was about to bust a cap in somebody or something.

Still. Something about me has never assumed the worst about people. Especially Latin people. I look at him thinking about his family somewhere, whether it be here or in Cuba. About his little sister and his mama who probably saw him as protector though he clearly had a problem with alcohol that could potentially escalate if he didn't put it down within the next couple of years. Thinking about his crap job and the crap apartment he shared with friends. Thinking about how he was young and homesick, but knew he had a job to do.

We rounded the corner, and then Cubano, most obviously drunk at this point, was near flailing with the intensity of his rambling. The Dominican turned around to me, almost for help, like "I can't do anything with this guy..." So I stepped up on a whim.

"Hey. Are you okay?" Cubano turned to me and barely looked at me. He pushed the Dominican, who spoke to him in English.
"You're not gonna fight anybody tonight, man. This is the wrong time, wrong place."
"--Yeah, you don't wanna get yourself arrested." I added.
The blonde Cuban was still pacing, almost rocking back and forth, as we had reached the end of the building and it was then a bit darker without the overhanging lights.
"No me importa! I don't care, man. Estoy Cubano, Loco, I do what I want."
"Chill out, dude." I touched him on the arm. For no reason, really. Because I think women sometimes help put things into perspective. We're supposed to be soft, right? "You sound like Scarface right before he gets shot, man. Be careful, okay."

He laughed at that, and then stepped off the sidewalk. The Dominican smiled at me, and I started to walk in the direction of my car. But I stopped short.

On the other side of the corner, there were five guys waiting for Cubano and his Dominican friend.
"Mira, mira!!!! I told you, man!"

The five guys were moving forward in a half circle around the two friends, and the last thing I saw was the seven of them bobbing around at each other like giant chickens. "Posturing," my mind blurted, as I remembered a zero-tolerance rule from the alternative school where I'd taught. But in the time it took my mind to pop with the word, Cubano was reeling backward with his whole body weight thrown into his right fist, ready to land on somebody.
I turned and ran, click click click, toward my car. Punching the unlock button on my keys before dodging into it.
"Fine, kids, get your dumbass selves arrested! I don't care! I'm legal! I freakin live here!"

And that was the last time I ever went to the salsa club. I'm never going back. And its not necessarily because I feel unsafe there. Its just that I realized suddenly that I am a terrible judge of character and that I should probably not put myself in a position to get shot by people who may or may not be able to dance well.

The Waiting

Its like when the power goes out during the championship
game.

Its like falling and falling and falling off the swingset, and
bracing for a violent impact before jerking awake only to
realize it was a dream.

Its like someone who doesn't complete their conversations.
"So I saw Tina yesterday."
"Oh my god, what did she say?"
"Nothing. I just saw her."

Its like somebody who doesn't complete their sentences.
"Saw tina yesterday."
"What? Wait-- Who saw Tina yesterday?"

It's like when Katie Couric goes and interrupts a brand new
episode of your favorite show with Breaking News.

It's like when a hot guy reaches out for his receipt and you're
standing behind a bunch of tall people, craning your neck to
see if he's got a ring on his left hand.

Its like trying to hit those stupid moles with the padded
hammer at the arcade.

Its like waiting to catch a ball that's never thrown.

Its like temping at a company for three years, waiting for
them to declare they're transitioning you to a permanent
position.

Its like a climax that doesn't seem to resolve itself.

Its the end of the movie Lost in Translation.

Its the end of the book The Giver.

Its where you go through a huge maze of Indiana Jones
puzzles and boobie traps only to find out that the holy grail is a piece-of-crap tumbler from McDonalds.

Its that part of the fight where your muscles tense because
you know, any second, Brock Lesner really should be able to
beat the junk out of that Mexican guy.

Its going to the mail box every day for two months, looking
for your college acceptance letter.

Its the waiting.
Thats what I can't stand.
The waiting.
With my muscles tensed.
Staring at the blank, black screen.
Waiting impatiently for it to light up with your name.

"Like the Deserts Miss the Rain"

When I was in the fourth grade I had a huge crush on a popular boy in my class who already had a girlfriend.

We were nine.

Still, his girlfriend's name was Rose. She was a lot taller than me, and in a different class. She came by my table at lunch one day so she could talk to some of the other girls. I sat with some girly girls who all talked about boys and clothes and what movies they were going to see. My mom wouldn't let me watch half of the stuff they always talked about. And she still laid out my clothes sometimes.

"Hey Rose, aren't you going to say Hi to Danny?" "Yeah, isn't he your boyfriend?" Rose ran one hand through her perfectly poufy hair and let out an upward breath so that her equally poufy bangs danced in the air before coming to rest, perfectly, yet again, against her forehead.
"He IS my boyfriend," Rose said, smiling. "I'll say Hi later, after school." And she walked off, back to her own class's cafeteria table.

Ooooh, I hated her so much right then. She had two little moles on the side of her face, and I stared at them from across the room and imagined burning them off, and what she would look like without them. I stared at Danny, too. He was drinking two cartons of milk and belching the ABC's with his buddies to see how far they could go without almost puking.

When the lunch lady waved my table toward the clean-up station, I made sure I took an extra long time throwing my paper bag lunch away. I threw away the plastic fork, the empty jello cup, the wrapper from my fudge round, and the sandwich bag, all separately. By the time I was finished, the boys would end up right behind me in the line. I stood close to Danny and listened to his voice. I watched the way his mouth crinkled in the corners of his smiles. I watched his eyes light up at funny jokes, all warm and brown.

By the end of the year, Danny was my imaginary boyfriend. I hated Rose, but she wasn't around that much. Our class was together all the time, and Rose wasn't in it. I reasoned with myself that I was actually with Danny for a significantly longer time than Rose EVER was. Even if she knew him from before, or from church or something. And Danny was my imaginary boyfriend. When my mom took me grocery shopping with her, I walked around with my right hand in a fist. I did this because I was holding Danny's hand. When we sat down for story time at the end of the day, sometimes, I pictured his arm around me, and I tilted my head to the side. It was resting on his shoulder.

"Mom, Dad, I want to go to a magnet school." It was May, and Danny had raised his hand when Ms. Moore asked us if anyone wanted a Magnet School packet so they could be put in the lottery for admissions.
"I want to go here." I handed over the packet I'd picked up thirty seconds after Danny raised his hand.

But I didn't go to magnet school. I don't really remember why. I think it was too far away, or maybe the reasons I gave weren't convincing. I didn't care about going to a magnet school anymore than I cared about who won the mid-term elections. I cared about Danny. He was the first person I'd ever loved.

A song came out the next year, when I was in fifth grade. It was called Miss You, and I can't remember who sang it. But the chorus repeated "Like the deserts miss the rain," over and over. Sometimes at night, when I was laying in bed, listening to my clock radio I'd gotten for my eighth birthday, I would stick my hands in the air, above me, and stretch them out toward the popcorn ceiling. It's actually kinda funny when I think about it now, but I'd stick them up so they looked like the were touching the ceiling, and I'd sing the song with my radio and think of Danny. And I pretended I could push the ceiling away, and he'd be right there, waiting for me somewhere. Like if I could just conquer something, whatever it was, I could have him the way I wanted him.

Sometimes to this day, I'm like that. Like I just need to get past something, and everything I want will be staring me in the face again.

"Come back." I would plead to my bedroom ceiling. "Come back. Oh, please, come back."