I read this whole blog by Scout Prime, then I went to Habitat for Humanity online (see the sidebar) and gave them a donation. It was either that hop a plane, find Scout and carry her through the streets. Since I don’t own a wheelbarrow.

Siobhan is so selfish!

Tata: When do you want to go shopping?
Siobhan: I don’t. Since 6:30 this morning, I’ve been to the gym, the bookstore, the manicurist, the tire place and picked up take-out Chinese. Now I’m going to the hair salon.
Tata: Since 9:30 this morning, I’ve cleaned the catbox, changed my sheets, done two loads of laundry, made yogurt, had a long talk with Mom and opened all my windows for a good breeze. Yes, I’ve done a lot for Me. But you haven’t. What are you doing for Me?
Siobhan: Hanging up before I kill myself from shame?

You can tell she really cares. This cleaning spree in my tiny apartment means I have vacuuming, sweeping, mopping, scouring and some folding left to do. Thus, the shopping so I can mop and scour with mopping and scouring tools and cleaning fluids. Cleaning is not my favorite thing to do but doing my favorite things to do in a clean apartment really is.

Larry, the little black cat bent on stealing your soul, is not so sure. He fought me for the black and gold foil bedspread, while I complained, “Do not – do not bite Mama! Do not!” which I assure you I never said to the toothsome Miss Sasha. You just have to trust me on that. Later, a small glass bowl fell out of the dish drain and shattered on the floor in a foreseeable bit of dumb bad luck that’s really bad because the cat is always barefoot. Damn it. So then I spent half an hour on my hands and knees picking almost invisible pieces of shattered glass out of my kitchen rug and off the floor. My apartment is imperfectly clean, and usually that’s the best a person can do.

In comments for the previous post, where I – of course – brilliantly describe the situation in terms so effusive you’ve told your friends you can never adore Me with sufficient numbers of shinyshiny gifts, Mimus Pauly says something startling:

Haven’t sent anything yet. I will in the coming days, it’s just that I’m still floored by the stupidity of this whole thing. These lands belong to everyone, including those yet to be born — how disconnected from common decency, common sense, and simple, basic respect do you have to be to not see that?

And in my case, it doesn’t help that my two Senators and one Rep in D.C. are Republicans — all of whom usually toe the party line. But they’ll hear from me soon. I just have to figure out how to say what I want to say. This is harder for me than it appears…

If you’ve never visited Mimus Pauly’s totally worthy blog A Mockingbird’s Medley or read his posts on the uber-source Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, you might not know how startling it is to hear him say he’s at a loss for words. Mimus Pauly’s seldom at a loss for words. Hmm.

Okay, baby. Take a seat. Even the cat’s quit fighting. Mama’s gonna show it to you.

Perfection is not the issue. You can write a letter in crayon to your senator, if that’s all you have. You can call your town council and promise to stand on Main Street whistling Dixie until they pay attention. Your government in all its forms doesn’t have to listen to any one person’s protest, so what you say individually isn’t all that important. A letter to the National Forest Service doesn’t have to perfectly articulate your problem with the land sale because what matters is you the citizen, not that silly letter. For instance, get out your crayon, an envelope and a $.39 stamp. On construction paper, have your youngest child pen an opus:

Dear NFS,
Your land sale is full of poop. I’ll remember and run for president and you’ll remember me when I fire your sorry ass, too.
Love,
Aretha, age 7

Done, and done, my darling. Your child is on her way to a career of righteous activism and barely legal threats. That’s practically vocational training here in New Jersey. You are Parent of the Year!

Suppose your child already wrote letters because she’s not afflicted with your perfectionist tendencies. You don’t want to feel left out!

What she said!
Aretha’s Dad

My pet, your inadequacies don’t matter a whit in this case. To paraphrase a colorful storybook: Make a joyful noise unto the Forest Service. I mean, unless you can’t sing. Here’s the letter I wrote. You can pick and choose and steal freely from what you see:

To Whom It Concerns:

The list of parcels of land is impressive. I’ve gone over it half a dozen times, knowing there’s probably not much I can do to stop you from selling the land to developers. After all: America needs more condos and WalMarts. I don’t know how you will sleep at night.

This land does not belong to us. It is in trust for our children and grandchildren. We may have the legal right to fiddle while Rome burns but that doesn’t mean we have the moral luxury to applaud the arsonist: the ill-conceived plan to finance the rural schools program with the land sales will not pay for them. It’s not a secret. You can repeat this story as often as you wish, and it will still be a lie.

Yes, our children deserve a genuine commitment from the administration. Our forests are not a nuisance; they are a resource we should safeguard and treasure, possibly from the National Forest Service, if the newspapers have been quoting this guy correctly:

“Is selling off Bitterroot National Forest or the Sierra National Forest or Yellowstone National Park a good idea? No, not in general,” said Under Secretary Mark Rey. “But I challenge these people who are engaging in this flowery rhetoric … to take a hard look at these specific parcels and tell me they belong in national forest ownership.”

The answer is still: we don’t own them. We are their caretakers and their guardians. It is our duty to protect them from craven attempts to turn them into strip malls.

Go back to the drawing board. If schools need funding let’s restructure our budget so children’s needs are paid for, not the Pentagon’s.

Sincerely yours,

Princess Tata
Highland Park, NJ

…Only where it says “Princess Tata” I typed the name I vote with and you should too because if you vote with my name that’s a felony.

Lots of times, daily life piles – excuse me – crap on us up to our swan-like or rugged necks and we feel weighted down with the import of what we don’t do or don’t know or can’t figure out. This is simple. See? Our imaginary seven-year-old figured out how to avoid a harassment charge – you can figure out how to plagiarize my letter and email it to the NFS. You can do it. And when you’re done, call your senator. Who cares if he’s – as Mimus Pauly’s are – doing the Locomotion with Karl Rove? Sing along: call up. Call back. Yes, I think you’ve got the knack.

Now, I’ve got a second verse, same as the first, for later but now I’m going shopping.

Day 3 – 27 To Go.

A quick Google survey of citations related to the National Forest Service’s proposed sale of forest land reveals something really interesting: almost nobody’s talking about it. Sure, there are dozens of isolated newspaper articles, mostly on the west coast. A friend in Seattle says this story is the big time, while here in the east, most people yawn and move on.

This moment is what the Blogosphere is all about: millions of people, upset about the same thing, take action to fix it. Right now, the Eeeeeeeeeevil is so retcherously thick and omnipresent, you couldn’t be blamed for thinking, ‘It’s too much, screw it, I’m going back to the couch and reruns of Starting Over.‘ Sure, you can do that. In fact, go right ahead. Later today and tomorrow, you can pick up where we left off. I’ll wait.

Feelings…nothing more than feelings…trying to forget my…

Welcome back! Had a nice nap? Warm soup? Ready to rumble? Good. Let’s rumble!

Over at Blanton’s and Ashton’s, where I lie on the piano, nibble grapes and sing My Funny Valentine everytime Mr. Blackwell stares at Nicole Kidman and considers going straight, and at Running Scared, where I hope Georg will let me lick the bowl before Jazz and I close the bar, you may find a series of posts about the land sale. Cue the voiceover!

Previously on Tata’s mind: the Bush Administration tried funding its rural school program with logging money but the logging’s – begging your pardon – petered out so the National Forest Service is selling off 300,000 acres all over the country that belong to all of us to raise money for the rural schools. Funny thing: the sales will not pay for the schools program no matter how you slice it and we lose 300,000 acres of public forest land FOR ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. The kids deserve a real commitment to their schools from President No Child Left Behind, not this hollow, dangerous lie and our complicity in the theft of their natural resources.

…And we’re back in the present, where the public – that’s you – has 30 days from 28 February to comment on the tracts for sale and the sale itself. Yesterday, the above-mentioned friend in Seattle reminded me of a monstrous evil tucked inside this story. Yes, the National Forest Service has charted and mapped out parcels of forest land for you – the public – to give a good look-see, but the NFS has reserved the right to play bait-and-switch with this sale. In other words: suppose you look at the map and think, ‘This looks okay to me – a bit large, but okay. Perhaps Colorado could use twenty more WalMarts.’ Hey, it’s your brain. You’re entitled to think it. In this case, what it looks like doesn’t matter because the NFS may not be selling these particular lands at all – but other lands they haven’t told us about, possibly because we’d show up with court orders.

I’m not saying we can stop this sale. I’m not certain what’s actually possible, but we can’t sit here nursing our middle-aged spreads and telling our kids to clip coupons, avoid credit cards and save for retirement while our government sells off what truly belongs to our children and their children. Don’t have kids? It doesn’t matter. When was the last time you breathed? Did you just? Well, damn it, you can’t breathe without trees. Like it or not, you need that open space to remain open.

It would be easy to do nothing. Plenty of people are doing it right now. Once again, I’ll wait.

Michelle…ma belle…french french french french french french french french french…french french french french…

Tuesday, I connected the dots for you, here and here. Those posts are exactly the same, so one read will do. The key is this paragraph:

DATES: You should submit your comments by March 30, 2006 to be assured of consideration. Comments received after that date will be considered only to the extent practicable.
ADDRESSES: You may submit comments by e-mail to SRS_Land_Sales@fs.fed.us, by facsimile to (202) 205-1604, or by mail to USDA Forest Service, SRS Comments, Lands 4S, 1400 Independence Ave., SW., Mailstop 1124, Washington, DC 20250-0003. Electronic submission is preferred. If you submit your comments by e-mail or fax, you do not need to send a paper copy by mail.

Write the NSA. Call your congresscritters. We have 27 days.

Anya’s delicate, bell-like voice has taken on a shocking jet-propelled baritone.

Anya: I’m in paperwork hell, not to mention the trade shows, and I haven’t slept much and the result is I’m telling you now Sunny’s baptism is this Sunday and –
Tata: OH SWEET JESUS! ARE WE GOING TO CHURCH?
Anya: I hate to bother you on short notice but –
Tata: Who’s minding the store?
Anya: I haven’t thought of anyone to call yet but –
Tata: I’ll do it! What time?
Anya: The store’s hours are noon to five but the ceremony is at 9:30 a.m. I know early on Sundays isn’t your thing but –
Tata: I’ll mind the store so you can have a lovely, relaxing ceremony where none of your sisters burst into flames! You’ll take lots of pictures. It’ll be wonderful. You’ll be so happy and the store will be open and I’ll gift-wrap all of downtown…
Anya: Could I ask you about one more date?
Tata: Sure. When? I’m getting my datebook…
Anya: Wednesday. Can you work Wednesday between five and seven?
Tata: Wednesday…that’s…your birthday. Damn it!
Anya: My mother wants to take us out to dinner.
Tata: Absolutely. Wednesday, it is!
Anya: But you don’t want to go to the baptism?
Tata: Start without me! You’ll have a touching ceremony while increasing the Gross National Product!

Isn’t that just like me – thinking of others? Of course it is, and I know you can barely refrain from tearing up. Fret not, my darling! I’m thinking of you, too, and by you I mean you with the contagious stomach virus everyone’s got and goes to work with. Please, my pet. Stay the hell home!

If there’s anything new in the air since the corporate revolution of the eighties it’s the diabolical directive that employees should be at work no matter what, in sickness and in health, as long as employees shall live or until their jobs are outsourced, whichever. Before this, people went to work. I distinctly recall people going to work on their own power in the sixties and seventies so this diabolical directive meant something else: the yank on the chain of a well-behaved dog by a cruel, overbearing master. In the meantime, sick time has decreased, employees are castigated for having children with normal childhood maladies while public policy makes birth control options even less palatable, and more of us work in buildings where air recirculates until eternity. Forget bird flus: if we’re going to suffer some sort of cataclysmic plague it will waft through corporate air ducts.

Sharkey was in the bar on Saturday night, at a basketball game Monday night and puked all day yesterday. While someone else’s vomiting is inherently funny unless you’re cleaning it up, I can’t help but think someone wasn’t feeling well, went out anyway and crossed his path. When Daria told me her husband Tyler came home from Atlantic City with the stomach flu I thought he might’ve gone there with it and waited to feel queasy myself. It never happened, but Daria’s still weak and asking herself what day it is. The kids have ear infections. I hope they’re not going to school and sharing their good fortune.

American companies could do themselves, their employees, society and productivity a good turn by offering Keep Your Damn Germs To Yourself days. We don’t get enough rest and we nourish ourselves with pre-packaged food glop. In January and February, when you wake up green and gluey, stay home, drink juice and suck broth through a straw – regardless of whether or not you could, at Death’s door, sit upright and stare at your jumbled quarterly report. Nobody wants to see you at your desk – at least nobody in his or her right mind. Let’s call that a basic IQ test for management trainees: candidates who want you to report for work, *then* to quarantine, aren’t mature enough to supervise real humans.

Since I seem to be well and unafflicted by bacteria and lightning strikes, I will continue hoping our corporate masters will see things my way. Until then, at least I have two dates with the basil- and verbena-scented store that works wonders on my morale.

Yesterday, I was boiling milk for yogurt, setting up the washing machine, scrubbing dishes and airing out my little throw rugs but felt like I wasn’t doing enough so I rung up Daria.

Tata: Whatcha doin’?
Daria: You called me because you thought I’d be at the wedding?
Tata: What wedding? Whose wedding?
Daria: Our cousin Browne. You remember Browne. Tall guy, same age as you, stands next to you in decades’ worth of family pictures…?
Tata: Right. Sent my regrets. Forgot all about it. Why are you at home, then?
Daria: My husband came home from Atlantic City with the stomach flu.
Tata: You’d think an insurance agent would pick out the healthy hookers.
Daria: I’ve finally stopped puking but I’ll make an exception for you. Can you hop on over?
Tata: Can’t. Gotta read up. Roe v. Wade is going to be overturned and we have to be ready.
Daria: Never happen.
Tata: What? Have you read about South Dakota?
Daria: It will never happen. Never happen.

Bless her heart, Daria is very bright, diligent, well-informed and every bit the feminist pinko I am, yet she’s married to an Ann Coulter fan. We love him dearly but the first rule of getting along with Tyler is never, ever discuss politics with him if you want to finish lunch. Or keep down lunch. Or refrain from throwing lunch at your beloved in-law. So Daria’s deeply invested in cognitive dissonance as a useful tool in day-to-day life. I get that. I don’t like it, but I get it. It is too much and too hard to imagine being the parent of three very young children in a time when one’s and one’s children’s reproductive rights are endangered, especially if a person feels there’s nothing to be done about it.

I work in a library. For years, I handed out reserve materials to undergrads. In that capacity, I met some astounding, gifted people but I also bumped into some of the most willfully stupid human beings it has ever been my nauseated displeasure to encounter.

Tata: Can I help you?
Dumbi!: My professor left something here.
Tata: Look up your professor’s name, write down what you want and I’ll be happy to find it for you.
Dumbi!: I don’t know my professor’s name.
Tata: What’s the class, then?
Dumbi!: I don’t know.
Tata: Okay, what’s the subject?
Dumbi!: I don’t know that, either.
Tata: Is your class in English?
Dumbi!: I think so.
Tata: Do you…talk about money?
Dumbi!: Sometimes.
Tata: (Retrieving a slim paperback from the stacks) Your professor wants you to read this.
Dumbi!: Thanks!

Sometimes Good and Evil look exactly alike, and may in fact be exactly the same, and if I’d never taken matters into my own hands there’s no way in Hell that idiot would’ve read The Communist Manifesto. I wasn’t trying to turn this mouthbreather into a bomb-thrower and I’m certain she failed her exam – or even to find her exam in, like, a classroom – but there was one chance, just one, to crack a window and get a breeze through that musty little mind, and I took it.

Bless him, Lance Mannion, that smart cookie, has a little problem with uncertainty about abortion, like when and who and why. Maybe not.

We know it isn’t during the first three months, which is why a sane country would allow an unrestricted right to abortion during the first trimester, but we don’t know what’s going on in the second trimester. Exactly when does the fetus start paying attention to its surroundings? When does it start to learn?

Some pro-choice people are content to think and act and argue as if it really is the very first day of the third trimester. Before that day, the fetus is a thing. A growth. And the woman who finds that thing growing inside her has every right to decide all on her own, without any interference from the thing’s male co-planter, the state, and certainly not anti-abortion zealots, to keep it and see what comes of it or have it excised, just as she is free to have a burst appendix or an impacted wisdom tooth or unsightly mole removed.

Maybe.

But besides this, the third trimester date is arbitrary. Babies outside the womb develop at different rates; so do fetuses within the womb. One fetus can become a baby a few days shy of entering its third trimester, another might need another week in. We don’t know.

On top of this it often can’t be said for sure when the third trimester begins. Some women know exactly what day they conceived. Others have to guess. A woman who think she’s in her second trimester may be a few days, even a couple of weeks, into her third. What if she has her abortion too late?

Alright, he has a problem.

But because I believe that most people advocating other restrictions are arguing in bad faith doesn’t mean that I can’t see the point in certain restrictions, including parental notification, waiting periods, and mandatory instructions on how to put an unwanted baby up for adoption and why it might be a good idea to consider.

And if the Supreme Court were to decide or Congress were to pass a law stating that except in cases where the mother’s health was at risk, abortions should be banned, or severely restricted, after the fourth month instead of the sixth, I wouldn’t be outraged.

The Court would still be guessing, Congress would be guessing, but as it is we’re all just guessing.

Lance, darling, you’re killing me. Well, not me. I can’t have children. Women who can get pregnant – you’re killing them. In fact, everyone participating in this debate, however well-intentioned, is killing women. I’m not saying this lightly. I’m completely serious, and I mean exactly what I’m saying: the time for debate about abortion was thirty years ago, and what is happening now in South Dakota and Africa is precisely the result of waffling and bad bargaining on the part of people of good faith.

Stop it. I mean it: stop debating abortion. This is democratic, free speech and lefty sacrilege, I know. I doubt this is going to make sense on the first go-round but I hope you’ll give what I’m saying a good think. You’re looking at a big picture. Take a giant step back and look at an even bigger one.

The time to say “I’m pro-choice but…” is so, so indescribably over I find it hard to discuss. Before the ink dried on Roe and Griswold v. Connecticut, their opponents were already strategizing about how to mitigate their effects and eventually overturn these decisions. Perhaps, like I was, you were young when these events took place. Perhaps you weren’t even born yet. The learning curve is steep, but you must, must, must learn the history and realize the opponents of reproductive freedom are organized, well-funded, and they have political clout. You know this, right? Then why are you acting like talking about the issue is going to change anyone’s mind? The religious right has controlled the tone and the language of the conversation for decades. You cannot change the situation without reworking the language to describe what’s happening. Nothing but experience changes opinions on abortion – though sometimes experiences that should change minds fail to let in a little fresh air.

Each time you say, “I’m pro-choice but…” you create room to be bargained out of some seemingly insignificant aspect of repro freedom that you personally won’t miss. Your opponents take advantage of this by accepting what doubts permit you to give away. Perhaps this bargaining gives you a brief respite from the constant arguing. You get tired. You say, “Well, you’re right, I’m pro-choice but I don’t want the federal government to pay for abortions…” Your opponent will help you not pay for the abortions poor women now can’t have. Then you agree this condition bothers you and that situation is troubling and thirty years pass, and you don’t even notice that your waffling and ethical considerations and general theatrics have given your opponent not just the game, but the board, the pieces, and you. This from the comments section is unbearable:

“Who in their right mind gleefully gets an abortion no matter how beneficial the procedure might be to their current situation? I doubt few people take it lightly.”

You know – I’m not sure about this. You automatically think it’s the rape victim, the incest victim – the horrible cases, that drag themselves to get an abortion – but, I bet there are plenty of women – while not going “gleefully” to the abortion clinic – they choose it because it’s there to choose…another problem out of the way.

There is no excuse for this airheaded viciousness. There is no excuse for believing your dime store tin foil conscience matters a whit when a woman 1500 miles or thirty feet away has an unplanned pregnancy and wants an abortion. It’s none of your business why unless she makes it so, and even then, it’s still not up to you to foist your judgments onto her. Having an opinion does not entitle you to fix her wagon for being sexually active, or whatever your ridiculous problem with her is. It’s not your body. When it’s your body you can waffle all you want.

You’re pro-choice. No buts. No arguments. No concessions. No cowardly “I don’t know.” Nobody knows – deal with it. If we wait until we know absolutely everything we will be sitting here not-knowing into willful ignorance, unbearable public policy and suffering on a scale you won’t believe you had a hand in creating, and by that I mean you will deny its existence rather than permit yourself to know it.

Isn’t that what you’re doing now?

As if on cue, a letter arrived yesterday from an academic poetry journal that published three of my pieces in 1992.

In the movie Top Secret, Val Kilmer’s character Nick Rivers arrives at a restaurant and finds a note from another character, Nick’s manager. We hear the manager’s voice read the note to us, strong and echoing. Then the manager steps into the frame, talking through a megaphone, and continues, “I’ve ordered your favorite ripple blanc…” At least, that’s how I remember it. And that’s the important thing, really.

This letter from the academic poetry journal says – well, read it yourself:

[Journal name] has been honored to publish your writing in the past. Now we are updating our web site for podcasting, so our readers can have the pleasure of actually hearing you read that work.

We would love to feature a podcast recording of you reading the poetry or fiction that you published in [journal name]. You can record your [journal initials] selection in its entirety or, if your work is long fiction, and you just want to record and excerpt, we also welcome that.

I read this letter over and over. I handed it to other people to read, just to find out if this could possibly be real. My stomach is in knots. Ladies and gentlemen, please note the delivery of an oil drum-size can o’ worms and an industrial can opener.

Boring back story:
I don’t write poetry anymore, but what I was was a Biblical Revisionary performance poet. This means my Jewish Bible has very dogeared pages and pieces of paper with little notes and dust on it from when I realized I wasn’t working anymore. This means I channeled poems out of the ether, edited and edited, memorized them, worked up very stylized choreography, and did these pieces in front of all kinds of audiences. Drunks, students, the Dodge Festival. I seldom stayed on the stage and almost always worked in the audience, in faces, touching their backs. It took years, but I ran out of Biblical characters I wanted to write into the twentieth century, and the stage fright – which was always bad – got worse. By the end of 1995, I couldn’t write poetry at all and had moved into a more prose-based form that worked differently on stage. A year later, I fell into that depression I come back to like a broken record and the comfortable understanding – this is what I am – became an uncomfortable memory – this is what I was. During the early nineties, I was also a member of Hub City Spoke Repair, a college radio comedy whatsis, where I learned to hate recording with a fiery passion. Every so often, I go down to Sean Carolan’s studio and record a thing here and there for Altrok Radio. I put in a cameo appearance on a radio show every Tuesday, and yes, that is a joke. The sound of my own voice gives me the heebie-jeebies.
End/Boring back story

The poem I would record is twelve tight pages long, with accents, screaming, a biker gang, murders, a North Jersey trucking company, and one delicate Jewish princess whose rape starts a war. I love this poem. I loved doing this poem in front of audiences but it’s physically exhausting and one little mistake can wreck the impact of a whole section. Recording this could take all day, wreck my voice, and produce nothing but garbage. The idea of recording this piece is not without its risks – one being that I feel like a one-hit wonder in a blue velour suit singing in a Holiday Inn lounge for losers. I loathe nostalgia. I’m starting to wonder if I should skip this whole exercise and simply hate myself for considering it. Another risk involves the rights to the piece. I can’t republish excerpts from my own writing without written permission, which to me feels like this journal owns me. If I – step one – record this piece I can’t publish anywhere else anyway and – step two – give it the recording, am I giving the journal all of me that’s left?

The idea of having a good sound recording of my best piece turn up on the net fourteen years after the poem was published appeals to me. It might be a good career move, if I still had an art career. Is this all vanity, then?

What would you do?

A pussycat’s job is to instruct the human in pussycat care, by which I mean that Larry, the little black cat bent on stealing your soul, occasionally kicks a superball to the middle of the living room floor and stares at me. I stare back at those luminous green eyes. One of my uncles told me the warden glared at him and said, “Green-eyed people are the most devious. I’ll be keeping my eye on you.” The cat, every muscle taut, makes a noise that indicates I am slow to catch on. I march over and kick the ball to him. He kicks it back. I kick it to him. He kicks it back. By now he is already bored. I am not the world’s best cat playmate, apparently. If he could have actual playmates I could unlock the front door without stage fright and feelings of failure.

This morning, the cat, every muscle in his tiny cat-person rippling, attempted to teach me another game. I think the object of this game was to get me to stay home with him. It’s hard to tell though because I put on my coat and left. Someone has to go out and earn the tuna.

Larry, the little black cat bent on stealing your soul, glances around, nervous. I gave up on trying to bribe him with fishes, treats, cold cuts, hunks of chicken, bowls of gravy, saucy cat food and went straight for a dirty. low down trick: I pounce on him while he’s sleeping and give him yucky medicine from the dropper. It hasn’t been a popular move but it has been effective. After a few more days, I’ll return to sweet-talking My Little Predator, when I feel sure he’s steadier and plotting my demise.

Sweet fancy Moses, someone left the cap off the glue at Casa Johnny:

I’ve been a Gillette man as long as I’ve been shaving. My cousin Bubba, who worked there, recommended whatever their new razor was, twenty years ago, to me. I tried it and, sure enough, it was a quantum leap forward in shaving technology. It had a futuristic name. Quantum or something. So when I saw their new five-blade battery-powered vibrating shaver at Target, I bought one immediately. I took it home and shaved with it and, sure enough, another quantum leap. It felt so smooth on my face, diaphanous, even, that I took off all my clothes and shaved myself all the way down to my feet. Even my most intimate areas, which you would think would be difficult to work with, never mind even reach, are now baby’s-bottom smooth. I feel like an anatomically correct, if not politically correct, mannequin.

Cough! Cough! Smooth! Dude, have you met my cat? He’s covered with fur.

From our Santa Fe newsdesk:

G. and C. from work came to pick me up at the drugstore after my wreck. Fortunately G. had her camera. I was so kited I couldn’t feel my head. Details follow.

I’d beg your pardon but neither of us has one. What?

Oh, right. The accident. So, the Village itself is essentially a retirement community, especially for the sheriff. Since there’s no crime, he just sits in his jeep next to the convenience store and waits for speeders, so of course everyone goes about twenty-five. I went through town and turned out onto the road, where you can speed up a little. I reached down to put my seat belt on. I guess it took a little longer than I anticipated, because I looked up and there were trees in front of me. I said to myself oh shit, great, now I crash my fucking car. It felt to me like I hit some greenery and got hung up on some bushes and the car came to a stop. I got out thinking I could push it free and get back on the road. I was surprised to find the windshield shattered and the front end stove in like a beer can. I called Mini roadside service to tow me. After a few minutes a bunch of cars started pulling over. I had crashed right at the entrance to Cochiti Pueblo, so the first responders were all Indians. I told them I was fine, but I looked a little shocky to them, so they had me sit down until the ambulance came. By then my neck hurt a little. The ambulance guys strapped me to a stretcher, wedged my head into some kind of brace, and took me to the hospital. The nurse gave me some pills, percs or something, hooked up an iv line for fluids, and they took me to x-ray. I told them I had been there about two weeks before for films of my neck, and they could compare today’s to those. They came back after a while. No new damage, they said, but man, your neck is really fucked up. They decided to send me home. The nurse pumped a needle full of dilaudid through my line. I felt the back of my neck go slack and warm, then all sensation disappeared from my head as I felt a burst of sweet familiar joy. They handed me a script for some kind of pills. I didn’t know what kind. I couldn’t focus my eyes on the script. I took a taxi to the drugstore, got my pills, ate about seven, and called work to update them. I don’t know how I must have sounded. They said sit still. A few minutes later C. and G. showed up and drove me home. I read the pill bottle again and thought it said oxycontin, so I crushed up a few pills and snorted them. I thought shit, that experience is overrated. The next day, when I could read, I discovered they were only oxycodone, generic for percocets. Good thing. I might have developed a drug problem.

No hillbilly heroin! Armani Johnny’s not buying any rope belts, so help me, Calvin.

So I’m lying in the ambulance with my head in the neck brace, able to talk only through clenched teeth, while the officer is giving me my citations, one for driver inattention and one for driving on a suspended license. I said what a minute, my license isn’t suspended. I discover a few days later that I ran a red light in January and the camera mounted above the traffic light caught me. You’re supposed to get notification in the mail that you’re bagged and tagged. I hadn’t gotten it. I paid the ticket on their automated phone line last week. So this morning I go to court with my license reinstated and ready to take my lumps in terms of fines or driver school or lashes or whatever they do. I’d looked when I got home from the hospital at the tickets, and I couldn’t focus my drug-soaked eyes very well, but I could make out MONTOYA. I got to the Montoya Building in Santa Fe this morning and couldn’t find traffic court. I looked at my citations. They said Montoya *Street* in Bernalillo. Out in Cochiti, we’re outside Santa Fe County. They lump us in with Albuquerque. I had driven half an hour into Santa Fe. I now had to drive that half hour back and an additional half hour back the other way to Bernalillo. I went a hundred the whole way and made it in about forty. I followed the signs to the Sandoval County Judicial Complex. I ran in and asked the security guard where traffic court was. He told me no, I was in the wrong building. I drove back, the way I had come, of course, to the other building and ran in there.

I burst into the courtroom just in time to catch the last few minutes in session. I said this your honor, that your honor, just like on teevee. That and my suit, though sweaty by then but worn out of respect for the court, seemed to work. She decided to let me off on the reckless driving charge. I just had to come back next week with proof that my license was reinstated, because on the DMV’s computer they have up on the podium, I’m still suspended. I was confused by all the legal rigamarole, which made me feel like I was a property at a slave auction, but I think I get out of this for about a hundred bucks. That and the hundred copay at the Emergency. And the thousand for my share of the ambulance. And the five hundred deductible for front end repairs and a new windshield on my car. And the hundred fifty for my share of the rental car. My neck still hurts, but shit, here I thought I was going to have to pay a bunch of money.

Thank Christ, you’re a bobblehead man with an inflatable sports car. Wait, what’s with your neck?

Oh, right, my neck. Yeah, the x-ray technicians who looked at me after the wreck were surprised I wasn’t paralyzed. Over the last, I don’t know, five to seven years, I’ve been rear-ended three or four times. X-rays, pills, neck braces, days in bed. It’s become routine. I once hurtled into a guy’s rear end myself, at speed, on the highway, and that was no laughing party either, I’m here to tell you, though just barely. This is much more involvement with plunging into rear ends than is moral or a wise idea. Of course that’s never stopped me before.

Nothing moral or wise ever stopped him before. He’s got me there. As for the rear ends – if you’re waiting for me to say He’s got me there, too you will keep waiting – apparently you can go just a little faster than the driver in front of you – briefly.

It sure can cost ya. Has a handsome man ever looked so Capote?

When I opened those boxes and crates in the living room I could only take so much before I had to quit. One of the objects that made me wish I could scour myself with a wire brush inside and out was a giant print of a photograph Damiana took of me after bar closing time one night. I’d worked that night and finally sat down to my first bottle of Bud, wrapped in a giant crimson wool jacket on a cold, cold night. Damiana had followed me downstairs into the bar’s basement with the camera, which I was avoiding. I was too tired to argue with her. She said, “I want to photograph you in your natural environment.”

“Fine,” I said. “I’ll bring a brilliant blue baby pool, hot pink Lolita glasses, my 1950s Barbie bathing suit and a tropical fruit beverage to your basement at night. We’ll fill the pool with water. We’ll dangle the uninflated swimmies over the edge of the pool and polish my toenails Hypoxia Blue. I have a perfect carnelian lipstick. We’ll use a couple of garage drop lights and leave the basement dark and threatening. It’s the image of a lifetime.”

“No,” she said. “This is your natural environment.”

I lay my head on the bar and waited for her to get bored. It was already obvious that she didn’t know me; I should have realized then the only original thing she would ever do was have unprotected sex with Morgan and get pregnant – which isn’t all that original, is it? She knew the only reason she and I were ever friends was that she’d had a fling with Morgan before she and I met, and it was over. I knew and know him well. He moved out for the third time almost ten years ago but I always know where he is. It’s a small town. She and I were friends in that she was about fifteen years younger than me, Italian and with Mommy problems; she played at being an artist but none of it mattered. It was apparent to me she was looking for someone to solve her problems and take care of her. Then one day Siobhan broke down and told me Damiana and Morgan had done something really stupid. Later there was talk of some quicky marriage that never took place. Damiana had an abortion, then suffered complications. It ended very badly for everyone. Essentially, this tore my social circle in half. For a long time, I had to be very clear with friends that if I saw her I wouldn’t be able to control my rage; we could not be in the same places. Since I never saw Morgan anyway rage wasn’t much of an issue between us. She left New Brunswick, later she came back but doesn’t work or live in town.

So here is this photograph. All the dark, blurred edges, the much-too-much booze, corrosive lies, the false friends and lost loves, the pain that is never far from mind, a small spotlight and a blind eye – these things, much as I wish these things drifted away with other lost memories, they do not. I walk by the pile of artifacts, catch a glimpse of the photograph, and wish it had all never happened. My breath catches again. These are my options then: throw away this picture and pretend I’ve forgotten or keep it and wonder if I’m glad I didn’t break every bone in her face.

I’m leaning toward keeping it as a sign that I have more control over anger than I think.