Johnny’s gunning the engine.

Driving in this state is like riding in a miniature Day of the Dead parade. The highways, even my little country road, are littered with votivos, little crosses, usually white plastic, with gaily colored plastic flowers, commemorating the death in an automobile accident of this person or that person, usually Spanish-surnamed persons. Every onramp. Every offramp. Every mile. And you can’t look away, because you have to keep an eye out for dogs and coyotes and roadrunners, and animals you may die if you hit, like elk and cows. Driving as fast as I do requires a grim determination in the face of certain death, albeit someone else’s. I always found that a beer in the beverage holder helped steady my nerves. An alcohol-free beer isn’t quite the same, although it does have a certain totemic power. And I have less to worry about if I get pulled over for speeding. I hope, anyway. My worst case scenario is that a cop bags me for speeding while drinking a near beer and figures out what I’m doing, that it’s a replacement for the real beer I’ve been drinking all the times he didn’t pull me over, and makes an executive decision to punish me retroactively by blowing into the breathalyzer himself, which will probably render a pretty high reading. These are real concerns. It’s, uh, sobering.

I had to read that a few times because like most Americans born after 1949, when I read the words “coyotes and roadrunners” my brain says, “Meep! Meep!”

I mean this, thank you for putting my rants in your blog, it’s the treat of my day, I really enjoy reading them up on the screen like they’re real writing. I read in Slate or the Smoking Gun about that fool and his million pieces. Not having teevee I missed the whole controversy, but is anyone talking about the fact that the guy is a simply awful writer? This seems to have been skipped over, I assume on the assumption that you Americans wouldn’t know the difference. I’m surprised only because I’ve read some of those Oprah choices and they’re not bad, although they’re of course no Amateur Hour.* She should have known better, even though she’s black.

He’s teasing me, so don’t you go crazy. For one thing, though Johnny’s lived in Europe he’s from Boston, which has been an American city for a couple of centuries. I used to visit him. We were a two-person riot when he lived in the Fenway. He said we were the only two straight men in the whole neighborhood, which was mirth-inducing since from Johnny’s apartment I used to literally follow the trail of sausage and peppers to my car.

For another, he mentions Oprah’s complexion because it leads to a little ritual between us:

Tata: I love you! Shut up!
Johnny: For a polock, you’re only mildly stupid.
Tata: Zip it, Nancy.
Johnny: Hey dago, got any soap?
Tata: Hush, fool!
Johnny: What, are you going to call a dumb mick flatfoot?
Tata: Hear that? It’s the sound of your knuckles dragging.
Johnny: Okay, Princess.

When I first moved away from the Fabulous Ex-Husband(tm), I was completely lost. Miss Sasha stayed where she was and went to the same schools, which was simply our best option. I didn’t know how to function as a single person. Many nights, I sat up with Johnny in Boston without any idea what we were doing or talking about. One night, I saw rage in his eyes.

Johnny: What’re you looking at?
Tata: I…don’t know.
Johnny: The answer is, “Nothing,” and you look away.
Tata: What do you mean? Why are you angry?
Johnny: When someone says, “What are you looking at?” the answer is “Nothing,” and you look away slowly.

This lesson, which I long resisted learning, has served me well for the most part. I had never had to fight my own battles before and I was lousy at it. It took me a long time to learn the difference between the words and what was being said. For instance, despite the thunk-on-the-noggin transparency of the above conversation, the feeling I walked away with was that Johnny was having mood swings – not that I was a little soft for real life.

At Shakespeare’s Sister, Toast posted Your Media: Objectively Pro-GOP and I agree with most of what Toast posted. Except there’s a problem with the basic assumption that the media works for the people and not corporate masters. The vast majority of journalists work for the interests of the people who pay them. Do not expect objectivity and certainly don’t assume it exists. No one should be surprised that we have a Fox News problem when we have a profit motive, Rupert Murdoch and a desire on the part of any mob to take up pitchforks and storm a castle.

It is important to watch the news – though not Fox News – and to listen carefully to what is not being said. Even more important: listen to what is moving in the background. Feel the presence and movement of money. Though I am a terrible judge of whom I should date, I have never believed a word George W. Bush said. If you can’t feel the presence and movement of money as a backdrop for everything he says you’re listening to the words.

Stop listening to his words, and stop expecting people who are paid to tell you your opinion to help you think for yourself. Toast:

I feel like the dude in They Live who puts on the specially-treated sunglasses and suddenly sees that aliens are walking among us. Creepy, malign, right-wing aliens, bereft of humanity and intent on world-wide domination. Any day now, I expect the Post to reveal their new masthead complete with the GOP elephant, the Times to disclose that it was acquired in 2001 by the American Enterprise Institute, and Chris Matthews to show up on the air doing shots of Dubya juice through which he will gargle the notes of “Hail To The Chief”.

I’d feel like Roddy Piper every day, except I hate plaid and I’m allergic to wool.

Get over your desire to have the media on your side. Unless you write the checks, you don’t own the message. And the media has every right to lie to you, distort facts and try to convince you to act against your own best interest. You have every right to dismiss reporters as charlatans, liars and idiots. Call them on their factual errors but don’t expect them to take your side, as Katie Couric’s flawed interview with Howard Dean this morning demonstrated. Separate the words from what is being said. Do not absorb the language your enemy has chosen to manipulate you.

Let’s try it again: What are you looking at?

*Johnny’s novel; in progress. I’m reading it, too.

Blogger warns that today there’ll be a scheduled outage at 4 p.m. PST. Because I’m sitting in New Brunswick, New Jersey and seethe with resentment half the time, I read that notice as “scheduled outrage” and wondered who took breaks in between.

After I organized his kitchen Monday while he blathered on and on about how nice someone else was, Aaron explained last night why I was wrong to put dishes near the dishwasher. I explained to him that it wasn’t my kitchen, and I didn’t care where he put the dishes but if he put the spices at the other end of a kitchen he had no intention of cooking in anyway he was going to make Paulie’s life miserable. This did not stop him from criticizing me; neither did it stop me from wishing I could call on a vengeful goddess of the hearth for some balled lightning and a fireproof jai alai basket. I didn’t even tell him to fuck off.

Maybe I’m coming down with something.

Early yesterday, Siobhan expressed shock that I was going back last night.

Tata: By the way, I left a lot out of the blog story I might throw in if I have a “Listen, old man -” conversation with him.
Siobhan: Those are the exact words I used when I told my trainer Jerry what I would have said. My hypothetical declaration began, “Listen, old man,” and went on to describe that now was the time to start having some actual consideration for someone else, already.
Tata: He didn’t bother feeding his children. It’s too late for consideration. I should poison his Maalox.
Siobhan: Now we should speak in code, to avoid potential prosecution.
Tata: Isn’t it already too late for that, too?
Siobhan: Not for your co-defendants.
Tata: The monkey has been discovered.
Siobhan: What?
Tata: I glued a rubber monkey to John’s barcode gun and the monkey has been discovered.
Siobhan: So your code is to tell the truth?

In that case: WINK WINK nothing is happening here. WINK! Everyone’s FINE. Nobody’s being harmed in the ridiculous Hollywood production that is this move. WINK! I need eyedrops. I’m taking tonight off. Aaron expects his daughter to clean the apartment in an hour tomorrow, so he says. I told him in no uncertain terms that apartment would be spotless and in good condition when the keys were handed over because my name is on the lease. He tried telling me it’s not that important.

And then I said, “Listen, old man -“

I feel so MATURE.

I get into more trouble over the phone than any other way. When it rings, I should climb under my desk and cower.

Paulie: I need a favor.

When your ex says, “I need a favor,” maybe you change the locks. I’m all ears and nerves. Most of my exes are very good to me. Paulie often drops everything to help. If I have to say no, I’m going to feel low, so low.

Tata: What can I do for you?
Paulie: I’m at the airport. My Uncle Tony was here over the weekend, helping us move. Today, he didn’t show. Can you call the phone company and get the phone service moved?
Tata: Sure. No sweat. What else?
Paulie: I’m going to Dallas for the week. Can you make sure Dad gets everything out of the apartment?

Inwardly, my inner brat wants nothing to do with this particular unselfish unselfishness – you know, deep inside. No! No! No! Nonononononono!

Tata: I’ll call him and find out what he needs. Don’t worry about it.
Paulie: Oh, thank you.
Tata: Please, get some rest and I’ll try to get things set up so you don’t have to kill him.

WHAT is with my MOUTH? I get on the phone and my mouth talks like I’m a nice person. What the hell?

Paulie: Thank you. Thank you!

Damn it! Three phone calls later, phone service was on its way to the new house Paulie Gonzalez shares with his recently widowed father Aaron. Aaron and I didn’t meet until well after Paulie and I broke up. Paulie doesn’t say Aaron doesn’t like me; Paulie says Aaron doesn’t like anybody. When I arrive, Aaron doesn’t answer right away. I keep knocking. Finally, he lets me in. He needs my help but he doesn’t want me there. Aaron offers a tour but never gets to the here-and-now.

Aaron: Sheila was the nicest person I ever met. Her children gave her coffee mugs. Oh, we had coffee mugs. Her kids gave her mugs about how much they loved her. “World’s Greatest Grandmom” like that one. See?
Tata: Mmm.
Aaron: That rug in the hallway was her favorite. We had it everywhere. I’m not sure where to put it. Paulie and I are going to fight about what we put up for display. Everything I have was picked by a woman and Paulie hates every bit of it.
Tata: He’s a Sinatra man through and through. He likes clean lines and interesting color combinations.
Aaron: He likes the sixties styles and I’ve got a a tan corduroy sectional sofa and rose accents.
Tata: Mmm hmm!

The house is a disaster and Aaron is a roadblock in my path. The living room is large but I can already tell it’s Home Decor Dodge City. Aaron’s set up the giant screen television, intent on making the whole room into a home theater. Paulie hates TV. We turn left into a room that must’ve been added on by a homeowner who didn’t know when to stop building: there are built-in book shelves and cabinets over paneling. The effect would make Bob Villa beg for a crowbar. The bedrooms are spacious and thank your favorite deity there are three of them and two bathrooms. The kitchen is sticky. Everything about the kitchen is sticky except for cardboard boxes and packing paper, which are strewn about everywhere, in every room. One thing that cannot be overstated is that previous owners had hideous taste in – well – everything and were generous enough to leave samples. Disgusting taste. Vomitrocious taste.

Tata: Are those your window treatments?
Aaron: No.
Tata: Have them burned. Let no swatch remain. It must be as if they never existed.
Aaron: We might keep them.
Tata: For what? As a sacrifice to appease the Miami Vice gods?

He walks in circles, complaining, describing his efforts. I survey the disaster. The giant moving boxes are in my way. Boxes empty of everything but packing paper I gather in the living room. He wants to talk about crystal and formal glassware and his wife. He says the same thing over and over.

Aaron: She was the nicest person I ever met. You never met her, but she was great. She was slim and beautiful and had wonderful taste in everything.

He holds up a goblet I wouldn’t throw at a burglar, no matter what its employee discount price was.

Aaron: Did you ever see pictures of her?

I’m here to work. As much as I hate to see anyone hurt, I’m so selfish and petty I’m going to finish the job I agreed to do.

Tata: These lovely pieces, all this stemware and all that, and those over there, and this all over the counter are in the way of setting up a kitchen you can use every day. Let’s move this into the room with the shelves and put all this there for safekeeping.
Aaron: I want to display them. They’re all so beautiful. Did you ever see pictures of her?
Tata: Aaron, you can’t display them if they’re broken. Let’s move them to where they’ll be safe.
Aaron: Okay.

When he agrees, I’m home free. It takes about half an hour to move glassware, crystal and tchotchkes into the room I’m sure Paulie never sets foot in again until he sells the house. After I’ve started cleaning the kitchen, Aaron takes control of the situation.

Aaron: You do that, and I’ll open this box.

I hang up pans, put away casserole dishes, find places for teas. Every cabinet I open offers a new, sticky surprise. The shelf paper is filthy. I don’t even ask before tearing it out and scrubbing the shelves. Aaron bursts into tears and tells me he’s going to his room. This may sound like a terrible, shallow, beastly thing to say (but why stop now?): once he leaves the room, it’s like dark clouds depart and I wish he’d lose interest in helping. Two hours after I knocked on the door, I give him no-nonsense instructions and tell him I’ll call tomorrow. I know at once I’m in Nice Person trouble again.

Tata: Now, about tomorrow…

Damn it! It might not be the phone!

I am prowling my apartment, fixing things that bother me. Because the words I hear in my head are I am mighty! the theme music is from The Tick. Sing along with me: bah da dee bah da da dee DOW! Earlier, I talked to Miss Sasha, who was sick this week. When I got home from work three hours later than usual on Thursday, Miss Sasha had left a message.

Miss Sasha: Mommy! I’ve got a fever and an infection and I keep puking. Call me! I have to go to work tomorrow and I need ideas. I love you!

I can take direction.

Tata: Sweetie, whassamatta?
Miss Sasha: Monday morning, I woke up with projectile vomiting and Sunday night I ate the last of the chili Gramma gave me the recipe for New Year’s and there was expired sour cream so when I puked Monday morning, and then a second time, so I drank some tea and that didn’t stay either and some Pepto Bismal burned all the way down, and on the way to the doctor was great for the car behind me –

Miss Sasha has never been handy with cause and effect, nor events in sequence. I recommended Pedialyte, tea and applesauce. Yogurt. Broth. Unexpired foods in general. They’re rumored to be nutritious and are seldom the cause of pink traffic impediments. So I called her this morning to find out how she’s doing.

Miss Sasha: I started feeling a whole lot better yesterday, lots less pukey and pass-y out-y –
Tata: “Pass-y out-y”? That’s brilliant!
Miss Sasha: Did you know people could feel that way?
Tata: I didn’t, but now I’ve pictured it on a NyQuil label. While the idea of you flopping to the ground is mildly alarming, as problems go it’s not like spontaneous combustion. I worry about those people.
Miss Sasha: Is that real?
Tata: Like food poisoning? You tell me.
Miss Sasha: I’ll think that over. How are you?
Tata: Better everytime I don’t have to wash my clothes in the common laundry room. It was like Lord of the Flies down there – only without outdoor charm and attention to etiquette.

This afternoon, I determined the track lighting Dad bought for me in September would have to be hard-wired into my bedroom ceiling and in an apartment setting, that’s bad juju. I can change fixtures but unless I’m going to be here for the rest of my natural life I’d rather not sink mollies into poorly and repeatedly repaired plaster. I’ve got to think this over. Maybe the track lighting would be a glamorous addition to the bathroom. It might be dazzling way to highlight the disco ball.

His name is Johnny and he’s an alcoholic:

The scales have fallen from my eyes, princess. I feel so much better, so much more myself, the happy rock I was meant to be. The black cloud of anger that hovered over me is gone. I have energy untold. As a young man I had dreams, like anyone, none of which came true, and none of which will, but I can do something with what’s left of my life if I remember that like a magnet that grabs all the coins around it, drinking will eat my focus, my will, my mood, my marriage. My life is a good one, and I don’t need to rely on a substance to be okay. Granted, it’s nerve-racking. Thank Christ I have a shitload of painkillers and tranquilizers and muscle relaxants.

When we were teenagers, Johnny’s family seemed mysteriously functional. I didn’t really know others like it: a mom, a dad, six boys. They smiled a lot and liked each other. They went to art shows in Manhattan and watched PBS. In our town, people didn’t go to art shows in Manhattan. They went to the drive-in in East Brunswick, and nobody went to the mall. As well as I thought I knew Johnny, I didn’t notice his anger for more than a decade, and didn’t see it for myself until we were in our thirties, when he was messing around with smack and we both thought he was going to die. My relationship with his parents became a little complex when I told them if he wanted to kill himself I wouldn’t stop him. Come to think of it, they should’ve murdered me.

I feel ridiculous in AA, surrounded by cholos covered with jailhouse tattoos, hulking with huge weight room muscles, telling stories of beating their wives and doing time, one of these monsters shared a story of killing a man. In my Italian suit and tassel loafers and a pink shirt with my initials embroidered on the pocket, I’m thinking maybe I should switch to the gay group that meets at seven.

Is it me, or does an image of gay ex-cons with jailhouse tattoos spring instantly to mind? I love Johnny madly, and I wonder if he’s getting out of this one with his cufflinks.

One thing I really miss is the taste of beer. Alcohol-free beer tastes all right, but it doesn’t have the bite of real beer, which I guess is the alcohol. I suppose pouring a shot of vodka into my alcohol-free beer would be cheating.

John (no relation) appears in my cubicle doorway.

John: What do you think about the fuss over A Million Little Pieces?
Tata: I don’t. It’s not important.
John: Fiction? Non-fiction?
Tata: Memoirs depend on the memory of the writer, not to mention his delusions. They’re all fiction-y.
John: Oh.
Tata: The weird thing is the strange behavior of the Oprah People. What are they upset about?
John: They feel betrayed. He told them a story and they believed it.
Tata: Yeah, so? Have you read the book? How is that important?
John: I haven’t read the book. I’ve read reviews and writings about it.
Tata: Are you going to read it?
John: I don’t think so. The reviews all mention a superior attitude like, If I could get out of this level of shit you other addicts should get ahold of your whiney little problems.
Tata: And the Oprah People bought it?
John: Sounds like it.
Tata: That is a problem.

Any high horse we climb onto about addiction is going to throw us. It’s too late in history to not know this, and yet Americans think same sex marriage is a greater danger to them than crystal meth. Let’s hope we sober up soon.

You may have noticed I have a little temper. It’s not like it used to be. I’ve matured. I’ve grown. I haven’t had a barfight in years. And I’m not gonna. For instance, my recently born-again cousin is getting remarried in late February. I have to decline the wedding invitation because if I have to listen to my beloved cousin give even one more condescending grace that ends with, “Go, Jesus, Go!” like if there was or is a Jesus He might need a pep talk before the Big Game, I’m going to grab my dear cousin by his gospels and punch him in his Pentecostal vision. Which I’m not gonna do. As I said, I’ve matured.

Even so, nothing makes my head pound like the hypocrite who takes advantage of an opportunity, then ensures no one else can have it. Clarence Thomas can shove his internalized racism and his loathing of the very programs that parked his rear on the Supreme Court up his ass. Women who make a career of telling other women to get back in the kitchen should expect that karma to come back and bite them with a full set of overbleached canines and incisors. The worst – the very worst – are anti-choice activists who get abortions, then punish other women for getting the same procedures.

I saw red when I found all that. How does a person of good will hang up her cleats and contemplate a life of non-violence in the face of that bullshit?

Count to ten. Then take action. Perhaps some good can come of all this bad, bad behavior – even mine.

My Little Predator has exciting taste in textiles.

This week, Larry, the little black cat bent on stealing your soul, has refused all medicine-laced bribes of shimp, sliced honey ham, milk, chicken in broth and beefy catfood in beefy catfood gravy. If I thought for a minute he’d hold still and just take the disgusting medicine, I could quit trying to outwit my cat, and I’d like to because I’m failing, you know, to outwit a cat.

Anyway, he looks pretty sharp and passes the sniff test, which is one of those expectations you might have for someone you share a one-bedroom apartment with, be it man, beast or man-beast.

When he is not busy stealing souls, Larry schemes. Siobhan gave up wearing socks years ago after her cats purloined them all.

Tata: What are you talking about? You said you quit wearing socks because they curtailed the freedom of your individual toes.
Siobhan: I’d be reading a book on the couch and a cat would run by with a sock.
Tata: Did you give chase? How far could they go?
Siobhan: Apparently to Mars, because I have no socks.
Tata: You’re helpless in the face of sock-thieving pussycats? What, you couldn’t shut your dresser drawer? Close your bedroom door?
Siobhan: Not since 1998, no.
Tata: At least one of your cats is no larger than your shoe. She cannot possibly wrangle objects of that size.
Siobhan: She’s my prime suspect in the disappearance of the socks, though according to Law & Order, testimony of her co-conspirator is not enough to convict.

There is no stealing at our house – I think. Behind my zebra print futon sits a bag of wrapping paper and bows. Wadded up paper accumulates now behind the futon. At least once a day, Larry, the little black cat bent on jungle adventure, climbs down off my lap, shoots me a look that says, “You there! Watch me! Watch me!” and slinks under the TV desk. From the general direction of behind the futon emanate strange sounds. Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. Crunch crunch. Crunch crunch crunch crunch. Crunch. I suspect there is prowling. Exhausted from his hair-raising romp, the King of Behind the Futon slinks out from under the desk, says, “Cool, huh? Huh?” and plunks down on something cushiony for a nap.

I set the microwave for 3:30 because my soup only has to be so hot and by 3:45, I could be dead already. Life is short. There’s no need for me to burn the roof of my mouth unless the part of the food touching my tastebuds is going to make me wish I had two tongues.

This morning, I was ready to leave my house well before I had to but every nervous glance out the window made something inside my apartment unbearably attractive. I read the toothpaste label. I folded things that were already folded. I changed my socks twice. I caught me at this game and had a stern discussion with her.

Tata: Stop dicking around with that sponge. Scour the stovetop a fourth time later! Put your coat on and go to work! Do you know how fortunate you are? You have a job. Lots of people would love to have your job. And look at your apartment! It looks like a snowglobe exploded in a tinsel factory. And how about your cat, huh? Think you’re going to get a NEA grant to cover that disgusting medicine? Go to work!
Tata: I don’t want to go!
Tata: You’re going!
Tata: Where’ve I heard that before?

Outside, it was raining fitfully and even with the wind the temperature was a lot higher than I expected. To cheer myself, I tossed another four grocery bags’ worth of my old life into the dumpster. Joy! The road out of my complex was littered with small and not so small sticks. I crossed the Raritan River at the Albany Street Bridge and noticed hunks of stuff flying way above traffic in the stiff winds. On Johnson Drive, I recognized that flying stuff as construction materials when some landed behind me. At the intersection of Hamilton and George, where I turn, a university truck was making what looked like a labored K-turn. Then the driver parked. I shouted at him, then saw behind him one of the huge trees in front of Ballantine Hall broken into huge, woody florets, if you will, and blocking the road. Crews were just arriving with chainsaws. I later told Daria.

Tata: Suddenly there’s this concrete demonstration of precisely how fortunate I am.
Daria: Good lookin’ out with the stalling tactic.
Tata: Thanks! I was surprised my tantrum paid off. How will I know from now on whether I’m being bratty or having a danger-averting psychic vision?
Daria: Your dosage.
Tata: Yeah, so on Hamilton Street, one of those public garbage can lids – one of those big metal ones – was sitting in the middle of the street.
Daria: Get out! Like a dumpster?
Tata: No, no, like a public trash thing. They’re on every city corner.
Daria: Yeah yeah, the middle of the street?
Tata: Yup, and on College Avenue, trash bags and plastic garbage cans were thrown all over the place. Where I parked my car, traffic department sawhorses were blown down and aluminum siding panels lay on the ground. The walk from my car to the front door seemed very, very long.
Daria: You were perfectly safe, what with flying monkeys.
Tata: If you see the bottom of a house: duck!

In point of fact, no one’s dropping a house on my sister. Luz, the woman who sometimes babysits her kids is the mother of one of Daria’s many ex-fiances. Between Daria and Anya, I bought four bridesmaid dresses I never wore to weddings. Anyway, Luz was really sick and needed to see a doctor and the doctor was on one of those corners in New Brunswick where you don’t slow down even if the light’s red. Daria and her three kids dropped Luz at the doctor’s office and waited two and a half hours for Luz in the Ford Expostulator. If anyone else I knew did that, I’d put DYFS on speed dial.

Anyway, my soup’s slurped, my lunchtime’s over and my coffee’s cold. Evidence of my good fortune is everywhere, when I look for it. My co-workers and I went to Piscataway for a meeting and got blown about some in the rain, but even so we were wildly lucky when a passerby stopped his Jeep to retrieve our crooked umbrella. My new assistant, who speaks five languages and could snap me like a twig intellectually, finds me leafing through a dictionary. “You know many words,” she says, one hand on my shoulder. I am wearing a ruby-red velvet shirt. My Magic 8 Ball refuses requests.

Auntie InExcelsisDeo’s got my number, and she calls, too.

Tata: My horoscope this morning can be paraphrased to read, “Call your aunt.”
Auntie I.: It can? Well, here I am now. Did I mention you should save the 29th?
Tata: What? No…
Auntie I.: I’m telling you two weeks ago to save the 29th of next month for Monday’s bridal shower.
Tata: I’ll just tell you I’m not going to any bridal showers.
Auntie I.: You’re going. I will hunt you down like a dog!
Tata: I know you will.
Auntie I.: Your uncle will put up the tent and our big lie is we’re celebrating your birthday, so you have to be there. Besides, I threw your daughter’s bridal shower so you have to come to my daughter’s. And then my other daughter’s. And maybe someday, my future daughter-in-law’s. Then you’re done.
Tata: Damn it! Okay, so…we’ll drink! The 29th is not my birthday, and there’s no way in the world Monday travels three states when she can call me up and tell me off on my special day. And wait – outside, under a tent on the last day of February, and did you know this isn’t leap year?
Auntie I.: You can rest quietly under a table somewhere and –
Tata: – try not to yak on the gifts, got it.
Auntie I.: You’re going! I will hunt you down like a dog!
Tata: Should I act surprised?

So it appears the wedding/hostage drama starts again. On Christmas Eve, which I will write about in all its sparkly, gory joy in the fullness of time, Monday was already showing signs of being our budding bridezilla, by which I mean Daria restrained me from clubbing Monday like a baby seal. Or maybe Dad threatened to send me to my room, technically located in the next county. I forget – anyway, I’m going to call Miss Sasha twice a day and tell her this is all her fault, and though I laugh as Auntie InExcelsisDeo threatens my life, I know she loves me enough to do it.

My only hope may lie in a lengthy prison sentence. I gotta think up some crimes.

Dom: What are you doing?
Tata: I’m going to open one of those dusty boxes.
Dom: You always say that.
Tata: This time I’m going to do it! I’m inspired!
Dom: Open a bottle of wine first. There’s gotta be something in that box you can use as a funnel.
Tata: What, so when I find Morgan’s handwriting I pour the whole bottle down my throat at once and forget to set fire to my papers?
Dom: I hear wine’s not very flammable. You’re never going to see your living room floor unless you get tanked on pinot grigio and decongestant and open the fucking box!
Tata: I’m going to do it!
Dom: What’s to stop me from getting in my truck and coming to help you?
Tata; You hate winter and your truck hates driving. See you Friday, dahhhhhlink!

Dom’s right, and I have a sippy cup full of white wine. In the box, I found folders full of 1997, as if my life stopped when I moved back into a house we all called the Heartbreak Hotel because to move in, you had to have a bad breakup of Biblical proportions. Everyone knew I had the credentials. Here they are, alphabetized, date stamped, carefully sorted. The most intense period of my life came to a screeching halt when I put files, folders and the metal rack into boxes and sealed them with stylish purple duct tape.

A good portion of the box I picked is folders labeled with names I don’t recognize. I used to attend and hold writing workshops, and writers of all skill levels asked me to critique their work along the way because I see into the words. In daily life, this is not an asset. Try reading a computer manual when you feel through the words the writer knows her boyfriend is leaving her for the boy at the copy shop. I drop these folders into plastic grocery bags for the trash.

There’s a photograph reader Mark Wintle gave me once of a copper sea and a copper yacht under a copper sun and blessed by a copper sky. Postcards from people I know and people I don’t remember and a box of Picasso bath salts puzzle me; CMJ CDs, posters from poetry readings, handbills from events I remember and don’t, stationery I still like tickle me. I stuff the bags with extra stuff I’ll never recall and never miss. Then I fold up the cardboard box.

It’s done. Hey, it’s done! So I opened the second box. It started all over with folders of my own work I barely recognized, old event photos, publicity photos I laughed about now. People took pictures of me because they had crazy ideas of what I was. What did I think I was doing? What was I doing?

Two boxes are empty and folded in a doorway. I’m relieved but relief is tempered by the pile of papers, photos and artwork drafts I can’t bear to look at; principly: the piece I was working on in 1997 when details of my life fell out of my brain like so many teardrops – there were so many tears. Winnie the Good Witch told me recently when she turned cards for me in 1996 after Morgan moved out, the cards were so bad she shuffled the deck and changed the subject. I wish it sounded familiar.

At issue: does the weight of what I was and did carry me forward or drag me to the bottom? Can I draw a mustache on that self-serious self-portrait or can I toss all that crap and design a new me? I started Poor Impulse Control to conjure a new life, but no spell will take hold until I take out the trash. My past proves the future doesn’t wait. The new life I wanted arrives every day, whether or not I’m ready for it. I’m elated. I feel light. I still don’t know what to do with myself.

Just a few more boxes to go.