Finish this sentence for yourself:
“Wouldn’t it be interesting if…”

People sometimes ask where I work. Do I have an office? Do I work in bed? Yes, and yes, but I do my most productive work A) drunk-ish and B) sober, in cafes. My most favorite place in the world, the bookstore, is another work spot. While there, I do what I do best: eavesdrop.

One afternoon, two men in ties sat with their Fourbucks, interviewing candidates on the hour. One of my favorite job interview topics: “So, what do you do for fun?”

The woman who slips into the chair across from the suits is a widow, an employee at USA Mortgage, and a nudist. Her second husband introduced her to it.

“So, what kinds of things do you do, exactly?” These men are straighter than arrows. They don’t know what to do with themselves as they fidget and exchange glances, all eyebrows.

“Normal stuff. We have dances.”

“And everyone’s naked?” He’s whispering.

She’s not. “Oh, sure, yeah. That is the point.”

“What kind of music?”

“Forties music, Frank Sinatra, big band.” Swing. All I can think is swing. “Any song you want to hear. We have a DJ.”

“Can you say, what kind of people belong to this club?”

“We have judges, military, nurses from Bastrop. It’s such a diverse group, and hey, no tan lines. My husband is on board of directors. I was on the counsel. If you want, I can get you a visitor pass… we go every week. They do a background check on everyone, and there’s no sexual exploration. This is a family club. You want to do sex stuff, you do it in a private cabin, if you have a cabin, but this is not that type of place.”

“What kinds of things do you do there, other than dancing?”

“Everything. Chili cook-offs, volleyball, holiday potlucks. Ooh, and we have Bare Buns Runs. Though some women wear jog bras for that one.”

“How far is the race?”

“It’s a 5k racing series.”

“With shoes?”

“Uh huh.” I can’t even imagine the chafing situation.

“What does the winner get?”

“An anatomically correct statue.”

“What’s it made of?”

“Wood.” (The men are choking down their laughs at this point)

“Made of wood, hand carved. Well, isn’t that something?”

“When you’re not naked, what do you do for fun?”

“Cross stitch.”

“Does your current job know that you’re a nudist?”

“You kiddin’? My nickname at USA Mortgage is ‘Buffy’.”

“Well, wow. Thanks.”

“Sure, sure. And, so you know, I don’t do casual Fridays. That’s just too confusing for me.”

THE END

And, my day is made.

Pork Jowels with Polenta at Parkside

At first smell: it’s as if apple pie had a one night stand with Wilbur
At first bite: Wilbur has been one lazy porker, sunning and snacking on Fern’s corn

The pork is soft, as it should be. Not ropey, not spreadable. Appropriate. The accompanying molehill of polenta lacks seasoning, but the sauce is vibrant—a dinner companion of a sauce, one you’d imagine is comfortable asking for a table of one, reading a book, smiling at the people who shoot glances of “party for one” pity. It stands on its own with wisdom, technique and a sense of history.

The meat feathers, like an outstretched wing. All the flavor is in the glossy wine sauce, a reduction of veal and chicken stock, mirepoix, thyme, fete (a Moroccan spice?), and to my surprise, chardonnay.

The polenta is a good ole country girl with farm values, who can drink the milk from a cob of corn, milking everything for what it’s worth. Appropriately toothsome—each grain easily separated, garnished with celery leaves.

No one likes to talk about it, but there’s something to be said for fat. It’s round. It’s soft, it’s basically the womb. And it’s safe to say, it’s comfort. This dish tastes like the kind of home you see in happy cartoons with red barns and roosters. It’s home, not mine, not yours, but a universal home built around the communal table, where people gather, hold hands, bow heads in prayer, and recite blessings, not rote, but gloriously sung out in praise of the bounty.

scad art

A short at the Savannah Film Festival, Girls Named Pinky has stayed with me. Not so much the actual film, but the Q&A session with the director afterward. Before I go there, here’s how the notes I’d scribbled in the dark read (a drip-feed of information):

Irish bar. Hermit asks for another dark one.
Ominous music, everyone checks out woman, hear the sound of her skirt.

* Scenes in bars invite us into the world of possibility—of a stranger walking into your life—of the illicit—no one will know. THIS, this moment, this afternoon, this can become a part of who I am, what I know about me, for me alone. A secret me that no one who knows me has to know.

A dance with a stranger
Rock so softly with you
Well, aren’t you just full of surprises?
A disco ball.

We’re warned, when a bartender tells a handsome customer that the woman at the bar is with a different guy every night, not to mention that she has a husband. A hermit at the end of the bar drinks another dark one.

Woman returns to bar from bathroom, smoothing her skirt. It’s the first time we see her. We hear ominous music, the fabric as it rubs against her thighs. Watch out.

Handsome customer makes his move, gets too aggressive, and our hermit saves the day, taking a right hook, landing on his back, but still driving handsome customer off.

Hermit offers to buy her a drink. She tells him she’s the one who should be thanking him. They agree to a quick one, even though, he admits, he shouldn’t be drinking either… he’s diabetic. You know this is as close as he’s gotten to a woman this striking. She tells him over a quick game of darts that tonight’s a special occasion: she’s leaving her husband Danny. She shares with our hermit that she heard her husband whispering on the phone. “Pinky” she whispers. He looks confused. “That’s her name. She’s probably from Texas.” Audience laughs.

She drinks some more. He offers to drive her. Wait, in the parking lot she swears she sees his car. Oh, God. Danny ain’t out of town. Oh, shit. Now what… ahh, car, wrong car. Whew.

Because she’s still afraid Danny is in town, hermit offers to help her sober up at his motel room. Ha ha.

Diabetic. Again. Should have taken insulin two hours ago. Makes me think something bad will happen to HIM.

She gets naked. Sex is shown in silhouettes against a wall. Moaning.

You’re kind. Hope I get home now before he does.

Morris. Mr. DeBruno. Yeah, it’s done.

We then see that hermit guy’s tattoo says PINKIE.

Kills her. Falls asleep on her.
Dead in hotel.

Gives money to handsome customer from earlier on his way out… handsome guy goes up the motel steps with cleaning supplies.

END

What I loved most was this, a question that sat with me long after the Q&A session: What makes an effective twist—and, more specifically, what elements make up the art of misdirection? Topics like this fascinate me and make me want to fill out a school application. I LOVE learning techniques like these. The director didn’t get into any of this, only commented on how he kept tuning and tweaking the film with this in mind. Here’s what stands out to me when I examine my notes above:

1. Make the victim seem like the bad guy. She’s danger. Ominous music. Other characters warning others (and us the audience) to watch out.
2. And this is why I wish there were a class, or maybe why I need to watch more movies, looking for this misdirection… when they throw in the random person, and you think, aha, must be him… to mix things up. In the above, it was the missing husband. Would he show up? Would he catch them? Is he following her up to his motel room? See how the questions come? That’s built, that’s technique. That’s what I wish someone could just hand over to me and say, HERE. I’ve got instinct, but I adore techniques.
 

Pregnant at least 13 weeks. The doctor tells me she doesn’t think… “Well, I suspect your sac is light.” I ask that my husband come in to see. We just want to see all these moments, every chance we can. “No,” she says, not a good idea. But I feel it. There’s something here. I point to a knot in my stomach, like a hard ball. There are too many nurses around me. I never get to see the ultrasound screen.

One nurse with dark hair sees my razor burn crotch, coming in late, and says, WHAT’S THAT?! as if that’s the reason I’m there. As if that is what we’re dealing with. I get angry, tell her to shut the fuck up. She yells back at me. Then the doctor interrupts. I still can’t believe they won’t let Phil in.

The doctor stops looking, sits back, leaning on the radiator as she says something. I say, stillbirth? No, not that. Then she says she wasn’t going to tell me the sex, a boy, but I won’t be able to have him. “I’m that far along?!” I say.

“Oh, yes, yes,” she says. “But, he won’t survive the seasons.”

I get very frustrated with her, yell that I don’t need metaphors. I need ENGLISH. She has red hair, short, straight, with ugly clear, wide glasses. The white coat. She says, “He’s gotten good at mimicking this stage of pregnancy but won’t survive the rest of it.” She keeps saying “I’ll need to patch,” which to me sounds like D&R. I still don’t understand, tell her I once had a blighted ovum. Is that this? No, there is a heartbeat. There is a sex. She finally says she thinks it’s neo-natal SOMETHING. And I feel like it’s a type of cancer. She says they’ll biopsy the fetus once he’s out. I wake up. Dream over.

I try to figure out if I’m pregnant at all. I’m not. I remember the life I’m living, with my children running around downstairs, I hear them. My lower back hurts, like I’ll have my period soon. I don’t remember what day it is, what the schedule is. I just know that today will feel different, somehow.

I feel angry, boxed out, like someone’s not doing a good job explaining things to me, no matter how many times I ask. I want a second opinion on something, but I can’t figure out what it is. Why do we have dreams like this? What’s it telling me?

The dream just before this one? I was working in some office, on a computer. Movies kept cropping up on my screen, and as much as I tried, I couldn’t figure out a way to mute them without pressing three different buttons. I worried I’d get fired, that they’d think I was goofing off.

Before that, I was in an office that burned down, the whole thing, all the computers. Then I’m at the headhunter being placed for a job I don’t even want. It’s as if I were stuck with a bunch of things I didn’t want, but the one thing I wanted I couldn’t have.

I can’t remember ever yelling at someone the way I did at that nurse who was commenting on my crotch. Asshole never had red ingrown hairs of her own, clearly not a redhead.

CAPTION: End of Summer – A Mindmap

All good things begin with a breakup. Now, we’re supposedly breaking up with summer and moving onto our next rebound with a fall. Someone needs to tell this to my pits. They’re in severe denial. Though it might have to do with the bewitching Texas heat.

When I think of summer’s end, I don’t think in the arrival of tweeds and burgundy velvets, but in the details of goodbyes. Of camp buses pulling into parking lots, of a farewell to ballpark frankfurters and fireworks. Bunting. 

But it’s really here. Texas tailgating. My birthday’s approach. Goblins and food served in miniature gourds. Tablescapes. November issues promising modern interpretations of classic sides. And, lest we forget, football hell. 

Hell to the hell to the witch’s tit, no. I can get behind tailgating because it’s food and drink centric, but the whole, “Well, we can’t go on that family road trip today because there’s a game on” I can do without. This is the best:

“There’s this game I want to see. It starts at 1pm.” Smack dab in the middle of our day. Fine. I get it. You can’t DVR it.  Sure. Then 5pm rolls around, and wouldn’t you know, “Well, that first 1pm game was fine, but the game I really wanted to watch starts in a half hour.” Fcuk off.

Ah, marital (foot)balls.