Relics

My father and his bride stopped by the Billy pad on an extended road trip. They carried with them boxes of Things. Things, like my dad's Depression-era toy collection. Like my mother's hats, shoes, purses. I was encouraged to paw through the boxes and choose what Things I want to keep.

Dad and the bride are starting a new life together, one that involves years of travel, so they are shedding excess weight. I picture them moving from offspring to offspring, sloughing off heavy layers of memory, leaving the glistening shells in our hands.

They don't need any of it anymore. Lightened, nearly naked, they will lift up and out of our world.

I dug through the box of my mother's things. I chose one hat, one evening bag. As I plunged deeper, stranger things emerged. This is what I kept:

- Her wallet, from when we lived in London. It contains her Tube pass, other ID. A tiny notebook full of her wobbly handwriting. Notes for stories or poems. Ragged narratives of her brain's increasingly convoluted journeys.
- Her eyeglass case.
- The screws from when she broke her ankle. She had them framed after they were removed. Mom had an odd sense of humor.
- A tiny pair of moccasins. When my mother was born, her feet were too small for shoes, so the neighboring tribe -- or as Dad puts it, "the Indians" -- made these for her.
- Wrapped in tissue in two boxes: Her bridal veil, the bride and groom from the wedding cake, the marzipan roses from the wedding cake. This last astonishes me. I never knew she kept any of these things, and I have no idea how, in the chaos of our house, she was able to preserve them so perfectly.

The last thing I pulled out of the depths of the box was a bundle wrapped in plastic. Inside, a hairbrush, a mouth guard, and several vials labeled with my mother's name.

I held up one of the vials. There was a substance in it. It had separated. Dark red, nearly black, at the bottom. Whitish and almost solid - like fat - in the middle. Yellowish and liquid at the top.

"Dad," I said, hesitating, not sure I wanted to know the answer, "Is this...blood?"

"Oh, yeah," said Dad, "For a DNA test. Turned out they couldn't use the blood, though. The hair from the hairbrush did the trick."

Dad is interested in genealogy, so I understood the impulse.

But I can't forget about the blood. About my Dad and his bride driving across the country with vials of my mother's blood rolling around in the car.

I wonder, if I sprinkle three drops on a handkerchief, will they protect me, like the goose girl?

Or would she haunt me, instead?

Burnout

Those few of you who still visit this cobweb-strewn corner of the Internets will not be surprised to learn I've been suffering from blog burnout.

This is my attempt at repentance. I gain a great deal from this dialogue with you, so if you will give me another chance, I will pay you back with new content.

Deal?

Not just another holiday

Martin Luther King

It wasn't even New Year's Eve, and I wasn't the one smashed

There are three separate, distinct sounds. One, a sliding, like something rubbing against the wall. Two, a dull impact. Three, shattering glass. Just like that: one, two, three. Mr. Billy sits up in time to see the cat streaking out of the room at light speed. I'm still working it out, my eyes closed. Shattering glass. Shit. It was the mirror, the full-length mirror leaning against the wall. Or, not leaning anymore. In pieces on the bedroom floor. I haven't opened my eyes yet, but I can picture exactly where it landed, I could hear it spreading out across the floor.



Mr. Billy turns on the light, hops out of bed. "Don't do that," I say.

"No, no, my shoes are right here," Mr. Billy says, slipping them on. "I'll be okay."

I'm holding onto the footboard, looking down at the broken glass. I put my hands over my face. It creeps me out, a broken mirror. I know it's ridiculous, but I can't help it. Seven years' bad luck.

"What is it?" asks Mr. Billy.

I laugh through my fingers, nervously. "I'm trying not to be superstitious," I say.

The last time I broke a mirror was during a move nearly fifteen years ago. It was a big, old wooden framed thing that sat in my bedroom since I was a little girl. A curved top. It was gorgeous.

This mirror was just a cheap Ikea jobbie, nothing to get upset about.

I take my hands away from my face and look down. It's lovely, the pieces of mirror sparkling in the light, reflecting back shards of the room.

"While you're getting the broom," I say to Mr. Billy, "bring me the camera."

We'll be closed for Christmas

It's Christmas Eve and pretty quiet in the city. People are away seeing relatives or hiding from it all in Tahoe or Mexico or tucked deep inside their houses. At the grocery store a middle-aged Asian man is wearing a propeller beanie striped in candy colors, gravely reading a label as the propeller slowly turns. It may be his wife in another part of the store, in full elf regalia, green stockings to tall, peaked hat.

We've had three small earthquakes in two days here. The first one rolls slowly under us as Mr. Billy & I sit on the couch, talking. We stop and look at each other, both of us thinking Earthquake earthquake, is this only the beginning, the leading edge of a bigger one, of The Big One? But it tails off, leaving us dizzy for ten minutes after. Another the next evening, and we watch our bookcases creak and rattle. The third on Saturday morning, as we come slowly awake, Mr. Billy eyeing the glass block that sits on top of the bookshelf beside the bed, tracing a trajectory from bookshelf to bed, while I wonder What does it mean, three earthquakes in a row? and for the first time, I'm afraid. Were we dreaming, we wonder, wandering into the living room in stocking feet, checking ourselves on Did you feel it.

Finding ourselves still alive on Christmas eve, we amble down to Howard's Café for breakfast. The waitress waves at us while we find our seat; a smaller than usual weekend crowd. It suits us just fine. An old man walks through the door, and half a dozen voices say, "Sheldon!" Without even pausing, he turns around and goes out, only to come in again. The waitress in the reindeer horns sits to talk with him, her skirt riding up just a bit to show red tights. I ask our waitress if I can take her picture, and she runs to the back to get her own camera. The three waitresses pose for me. They're beautiful, smiling and laughing, their arms around each other, and I wonder, for just a second, if the ground is shifting beneath my feet.

Pink coat

(It's been far too long since I've exercised my scratch fiction muscles.)

Her face was delicate; small nose, fine lines around her eyes. Filigree earrings dropped from dainty earlobes, a tiny pearl suspended, quivering. Her body seemed to belong to someone else, grossly overweight beneath her petal-pink coat, tiny feet planted wide to balance all those pounds tossed back and forth with the lurching of the bus.

Rom couldn't look away. There was something morbidly fascinating about her, as though her body had swelled suddenly, while she was looking the other way; her face, lips pink and soft, was plainly used to admiration.

When she moved toward the door at her stop, Rom felt himself pulled after. If someone had asked him why, he wouldn't have been able to say. It was dinnertime, he should be on his way home, just three more stops on this line, but even as he thought it, following this woman around the corner, her weight shifting ponderously from foot to foot in the cow-like shuffle of the obese, even as he thought of his wife glancing at the clock while she dialled their favorite Chinese takeout, he knew it was too late. He wouldn't be home in time for dinner.

The woman turned her head, her strawberry blond hair swept gracefully back, and tossed him a flirtatious glance before disappearing behind a new townhouse, into an empty lot.

Rom followed, the clash of traffic in the street behind dipping into silence, he could still make out the glimmer of pink in the dark ahead, this lot larger than it seemed from the street, stretching deep between blind, windowless buildings on either side, the sky boxed in as they seemed to grow taller, Rom stumbling now on gravel, the ground cold, even through the soles of his Timberlands.

A voice whispered, almost inaudible, pushing out from the dark at his shoulder, "What is it you want?"

Her voice as meltingly sweet as her face.

"Do you know?" she asked, Rom turning now to face her.

"Is it this?" she asked, unbuttoning her pink coat, Rom feeling a sudden shame, a sickness at the thought of her body, while, like a separate being, his cock stirred.

Rom stood, dumbly, his hands at his sides, while she pulled open her coat, light pouring out from inside, blinding him, the last thing he remembered the distant sound of ocean waves, the call of seagulls.

Yuma

At the gas station, we're behind a black SUV with Arizona plates. Gothic lettering across the back window reads "So Cal." Much smaller, tucked into a corner of the window it says, "One love."

The driver gets out, a shave-headed kid with tattoos creeping down his calves. His wife dismounts from the passenger side. She's blond, taller than him, her hair in a ponytail. As she unfolds, I see she is pregnant. They don't speak, pointedly looking anywhere but into each other's faces.

We go to IHOP for lunch, the International House of Pancakes. Behind us sits a cowboy, hat shadowing his eyes, talking on a cell phone. The place is crowded. Near the wall sit three people and a baby. The young man reminds me of one of my brothers, thin and buzzing with energy. Across the table is the young mother, her mouth in a voluptuous pout, leftover pregnancy fat still pushing her belly out. She looks fourteen. She's eating like she hasn't seen food in months, jiggling her foot beneath the table. Beside her is her mother, no older than forty-two. She and the young man are talking earnestly in Spanish. The young mother looks bored. She puts the baby into a carrier on the floor, rocking it with her foot. She pulls the young man's plate over and tucks in.

To my right is a freckled girl with her family. She cinches her hood down around her face, hiding from her family, from everyone. In front of her is a dark-eyed girl who looks like she is just now beginning to realize how beautiful she is. Her smile is brilliant, blinding.

"Those aren't clouds..."

Driving home through the Arizona desert, long stretches of hard empty. Disintegrating garages and drive-ins eaten away by sun and wind; ruins, like ancient Roman roads in odd corners of Britain. Cockeyed trailers with stripped or rusted cars out front, half-shielded from the highway by palm trees.

I point out clouds lying low over the distant mountains before Yuma. We watch giant saguaros roll by, dancing in couples, arms reaching for the wide blue sky.

Further down the road, Mr. Billy squints through the windshield. "Those aren't clouds," he says.


It looks more like smoke.

Before long, traffic comes to a stop. A firetruck passes on the shoulder.

Finally, we can see the lights flashing ahead, orange cones marking off the scene.


I'm clicking away, furiously.



I'm thrilled. I can see the wreck is just beyond the firetruck. Traffic speeds up.


No, no, no, we're going too fast.


I didn't have time to zoom out; I've fucked the money shot.

"Shit," I say, twisting around in my seat as we leave the burning skeleton behind, winding up to speed. "Shit, fuck, fuck!"

I'm scrolling back through the photos, foaming with frustration. Dammit, I need more practice with this thing, I could've had a great shot.

Then I stop at this photo.


There was no ambulance. Was anyone in there? We couldn't even tell what kind of vehicle it was, before. Was it an RV? Were they on their way home after Thanksgiving, like us? I shield my eyes, looking closely at the picture. I can't read their faces.

I'm quiet for a long while after.

Long Beach

"Hey, look...!"

Billy in the desert

I'm off for a week in Arizona. Will bring back stories and pictures.

...in god's eye

Salt flats

Contact

My laptop is back, finally finally, purring warmly on my lap, glowing in the dim light of the living room.

I've missed you all.

Tonight, waiting at the bus stop, an old black man, bent at the waist, holding on to the signpost with both hands. A car passes, and he reaches out a hand, hailing it, watching it down the road.

"I need a cab..." he says.

A younger man with gray black skin, missing several front teeth walks by. "You need a cab?" he asks loudly. "I'll find you a cab."

The younger man stands on the corner, eyes open for cabs. It's a busy corner, surely one will come by soon.

The old man thinks every car is a cab.

"Cab!" he says, cranky now. "I need a cab."

Finally one stops on the opposite side of the street. I wave to the cabbie, then ask the man if he needs help crossing the street.

"Wha-?" he says, eyes looking wide into mine, tightening his grasp on the signpost. "I'm not going over there, no. No." He braces his feet against whoever is surely determined to drag him away. His irises are ringed with blue.

The younger man yells at the cabbie to turn around. The cab pulls around the corner, slows, then drives away up the street.

The younger man walks away, shaking his head, frustrated. "If he won't take a cab when I find him one..." I think I see another cab on the opposite side of the street. I ask the old man if he could cross the street with my help. He seems to be considering it when he spies another car.

"CAB!" he cries.

I watch for a taxi on my side of the street, when a bus pulls up. "Cab..." the old man says, then climbs the stairs onto the bus.

The younger man reappears. "He find a cab?"

"Got on the bus."

"Well, good. I figger, I hope someone helps me out when I'm old, you know?"

I nod and thank him. My bus is arriving. Time to go home.

Laptop down

To my charming, attractive and terrifyingly intelligent readers: my laptop is bollixed, screwed, mangled and nearly ashcanned. Normally, this would only be an inconvenience, as Mr. Billy is generous enough to share his with me; but as Fate likes to have a laugh now & then, Mr. Billy's laptop is similarly kaput.

So, my digital umbilical severed, I have to cadge lunch-hour time on the day job computer to let you all know this: I haven't forgotten you.

Full moon on Haight

The bus is late. I've been standing here for twenty minutes, while the bus stop fills up with people. A woman with a cane found a transfer on the sidewalk, still good for another hour. There are no takers; we all have passes.

Taxis troll by. One slows as it passes, the driver looking hard at me. I shake my head. Do I look like I want a taxi?

Still no bus. The moon is hanging just over the Walgreen's across the street, looking like a bright piece of candy. I'd like to reach up and pop it into my mouth, moonlight dribbling down my chin.

The taxi from before comes around again, stopping in the bus lane. The driver leans across the seat.

"You fightin' the feelin'? Don't fight the feelin', girl."

He's looking at me. Why me? I look around at the other people at the bus stop. Do I look like I can afford a taxi? I want to turn my pockets out to show how empty they are, but I don't have pockets.

"C'mon baby. I'll give you a discount of...twenty-five cents."

I have to laugh at that. He's getting into it.

"Fifty cents, then, whaddya say? Don't fight the feelin'."

He notices the woman standing next to me.

"Hey, I know you. I used to wash the windows in your neighborhood. Remember me?"

"Oh yeah," the woman's voice is deeper than his, like it's rising out of a tin pail of rocks, "I remember you. Didn' know you washed windows, though. I'm on disability now. Got a bus pass."

A couple comes out of the diner behind me.

"You're welcome to call me if you like," says the woman, "although it isn't a requirement."

She kisses his cheek, and walks away. Was it a date, or a job interview? Who the hell says it isn't a "requirement" to call?

The bus, finally. Two buses, one right behind the other. The one behind is empty, but I'm grooving on the people. I take the one in front.

I sit next to a woman covered with freckles, so deep and beautifully dense, it's like alien skin, like brocade, like a decorative tattoo. Her eyebrow is pierced.

In front sits a white man with a service dog at his feet, so blond he's almost albino. Beside him is a blue black man. The white man asks the black man if the dog bothers him. He says no.

The white man rocks in his seat, an extended nodding, constantly renewed assent. Beside him, his neighbor rocks in counterpoint. His movement is impatient; at any minute he'll rock himself onto his feet and off the bus. The blond man places one thumb on his knee, spreads his hand, measuring the distance from his own knee to the knee of his neighbor, his pinky hovering a naked millimeter above the other man's knee, until he can feel the electrons bouncing off the stranger's legs. He retracts his hand sharply.

Out the window, I see a poster for America's Next Top Model. A collection of arms, legs, breasts, blank faces. All these girls smashed and reshaped like playdough; I can't tell one from the other. Is this beautiful? I'd rather look at the people on the bus, the men rocking back and forth, the freckled woman next to me.

I think I'm in love with her. She's talking on the phone.

"Yeah, well I think she's still trying to deal with her mother's death, you know? She's seeing - she's Catholic, right? - so she's seeing this nun, like once a week, and this nun told her about a big cross in Burlingame. It's like this big cross, and you leave your problems at its foot, you know? So that's happening tonight, and I thought I'd go with her..."

Or the old woman across the aisle. Skin wrinkled and creased like a foil gum wrapper. High, proud crook to her nose. Well dressed. She could be a duchess, riding the bus. A button on her purse enjoins me to "Be Green."

My stop. I pull myself away from the freckled woman, the duchess, the rocking men. I wave at the bus driver, stepping off. The bus pullls away into the night, lit up inside like a rolling living room, like another person's life, warm and alive, glimpsed for a minute, then moving on.

Road trip

Gold N Silver Inn, Reno, NV.



Hal the Pilot. Women's room in Wendover, NV.


Basque breakfast at the Toki Ona Bar in Elko, NV.

"Legalizing tyranny in the United States"

When I began Chemical Billy, less than two years ago, I had an idea of being a political blogger. I soon realized, however, that I had neither the time, the contacts, nor the expertise to add anything new to the discussion. I decided instead to stay with the type of writing I know best, my own twisted view of my corner of the world. But this is a time when, as a citizen of this country, I feel it is necessary to climb onto my tiny soapbox and add my little voice to the chorus.

I've just returned from a road trip across the desert to the town where I grew up. Any trip to the desert is emotional for me. John Updike described the experience well, in reference to his own hometown: "I loved Shillington...as one loves one's own body and consciousness, because they are synonymous with being." I love the sun-blasted emptiness of the desert deeply; when I lived abroad, curled up with homesickness, it was the savage desert that I pined for, that for me represented America and all I love about it.

While I was gone, I didn't read the news. No internet connection, no newspaper, no television. So when I returned, full of love for this wide and ragged country - for slot machine jockeys and maternal waitresses, for transplanted Basques and long-lost relatives and old friends - I was shocked to see how completely we have betrayed ourselves, and so quietly, with barely a whimper in protest.

I can see I've buried the lede, but it's hard to know how to approach such a brazen abandonment of the ideals that make us Americans, of the very foundations of our democracy. I'm talking about the detainee bill that is virtually guaranteed to pass the senate today. I'll let Glenn Greenwald explain what is contained in this bill, with far more clarity than I can:

Unclaimed Territory - by Glenn Greenwald: The legalization of torture and permanent detention

And the Rude Pundit brings it down to essentials (the Rude Pundit is known for being, well, rude, but the only obscene word in this post is "evil"):

Regarding Evil and American Identity

Any parent of a wayward kid will tell you that it hurts most to see one you love doing wrong. It hurts me, right to my core, to see fear eating away our national morality. I love this country, all of it, and more than anything, I want it to do right. No idea of "safety" is worth trading our souls for.

And just how "safe" does this bill make us? It makes it legal for the president to decide that anyone, citizen or not, is an "enemy combatant," and can be held, without charge, forever. It will now be legal for the president to decide, say, that because of this post, I am a threat to the safety of Americans. He could then throw me in prison in Syria, and have me tortured, for the rest of my life. I would never get a trial. Sound extreme? Maybe it would never happen - I sure hope it doesn't. But there is nothing to keep such extreme things from happening now, except the good will and conscience of the president. It's all up to him, now.

I hope with all my heart that we can turn this around. I hope that we can vote in some people who will stand up for the America I love. I will not believe that it's too late for us, not yet.

I could go on and on, but it's all been said, and much better, by many others (though clearly, not enough). Back to my regularly scheduled programming, and pictures from the desert, soon.

Billy on SFist

Readers who have been with me awhile know about my long-running love affair with Muni. But, as in all relationships, we have our spats. And since I've adopted San Francisco as my home city, Muni service seems to have been on a long downhill spiral, eliminating and reducing routes, pink-slipping hundreds of drivers, not to mention municide. SFist has done a grand job of keeping editorial focus on the continuing problems, and several weeks of a bad commute finally prompted me to write to their Dear Mr. Ford column (as well as to Muni itself) under my meat world name. Imagine how tickled I was to see that SFist had published my letter while I was off in Utah-land. Thanks, SFist!

Billy on the road

Mr. Billy and I are off on a road trip to dance at my dad's wedding. I'll miss the city: the woman I pass on the way to work who stands out front of her dry cleaners, grimly hula hooping; an Indian woman in a lush gold sari, grooving to her iPod; the man on the bus with great loops of skin for earlobes, carefully cultivated; but Utah offers its own attractions.

I fall in love too easily

I fall in love every day, sometimes twice.

Today it's two women at Trader Joe's. I first see them in the parking lot, talking with each other and gesturing so emphatically that I initially think they're speaking in sign language.

One is a skyscraper, the tallest woman I've ever seen. Dressed conservatively, in a below-the-knee skirt, black pumps and nylons. Long straight hair, parted in the middle. Legs like lampposts. Her companion (of course, of course) is tiny; maybe five feet tall. Messy red hair, fierce freckles, thrift-store chic.

Inside, they park their cart directly between me and the shelf I'm scrutinizing. I forgive them this minor transgression; I'm ready to forgive them almost anything. Skyscraper Girl's neck is ridiculously long, her head bobbing bewildered far above her shoulders; she looks just like Alice after a bottle coyly tempted her: "Drink me."

Her face is smooth, unlined, girlish. She may not even be done growing yet. She can look right over the top shelves to see what's in the next aisle, and the next.

I'm dizzy standing next to her.

In the checkout line, I peek through my eyelashes at their cart: two cartons of soy milk, soy ice cream, cheap champagne.

I picture them in front of the fireplace in their apartment, empty cartons of dairy-free treats and champagne glasses tumbled on the rug, Skyscraper Girl's head pillowed in Red's lap, like Alice dreaming of Wonderland.