u s e y o u r h a n d s

Night had falled hours ago on his dreary cow town. The smell of manure, which had been so oppressive at noon, embued the air with sweetness. A smell of nostalgia. It seemed like everyone in Hanford had disappeared, with only dirty stucco houses sighing relief to mark their existence. It was this desolation that Steve longed to escape. And tonight was the night.

Just a small town immigrant boy, Steve took a tip from the movies his Portugese grandma took him to every Saturday. He’d pack a bag and hop a train. And this midnight train — well, it might just take him anywhere. The only sound he heard was the crunch of his Chuck Taylors against railyard gravel. But lo, in the distance, a train whistle.

Little Steve’s legs sprang into action. He skittered across the yard and stood near the tracks. The train’s lights pierced through the night and slowly grew larger. From behind piles of ties and old machinery, other railriders emerged. These men and women, smelling of wine and cheap perfume, gathered with him to grab hold of destiny.

It seemed hours before the train pulled into the Hanford station. With the help of a good-natured hobo, Steve scrambled into the train with the rest of his down-at-heel bretheren. He dangled his legs off the edge of the boxcar and waited. Up in the sky, the stars twinkled down at him, veritably screaming, “Steve Perry, you’ll join us here someday. You, Steve Perry, will be a star!” He winked at the sky and his heart jumped.

But little Steve was not prepared for the lurch when the train moved on. Before he could brace himself, he tumbled to the ground. Steve landed with a thud in deep gravel. It was over. He wasn’t going to leave Hanford — at least not tonight. Although he was still set on stardom, it seemed that fame wasn’t ready for Steve yet. He picked himself up and as he dusted off, he heard the crunching of footsteps behind him. Steve turned and saw a disheveled man who sort of resembled Steve himself.

“Steve?” the man asked tentatively. He held a grimy hat in his hands and twisted the brim.

Steve knew he shouldn’t talk to strangers, but he felt like he knew this man. He cleared his throat, “Um, yes?”

The man extended a hand to shake, “I’m your father, Steve. I haven’t seen you since you were four.”

Steve was 10. He barely remembered the father who just disappered one day. He didn’t feel mad or happy. He was glad his father was alive. Steve took his hand and shook it gravely.

Mr. Perry’s eyes filled with tears and he tried to speak several times before the words flowed with any ease. “Steve, never run. If you choose to leave this town, your family, do it with pride. Don’t be like me.” And then he stood, turned his back on Steve again, and walked away. Steve’s eyes followed his father’s figure until the darkness swallowed him up.

On his trek home, Steve considered his father’s words. He wasn’t going to stop believing. He’d hold on to the feeling that one day he’d be famous. But Steve decided to wait. The time would come.

Someone was leaving. I forgot my soup. I think that’s the way the group co-worker lunch often begins. It’s the first time I’ve ever been to lunch with people I work with. I didn’t even get invited anywhere for the first day, which I might say, is a first. But, yes, let’s go to Bennigan’s. Let’s all go to Bennigan’s!

So we go to Bennigan’s. And who doesn’t like to see their culture misappropriated in the name of shitty chain food? Boy, I sure do. Bring on the Irish Nachos! But my little group gets stuck at this side table. And it’s fun. I don’t talk that often at work. This place is a weird political minefield and I’m having issues with that and other things. So I don’t talk a lot. But there’s a few people I feel comfortable around and I sat with them.

And then, off in the distance, I saw something that made me take pause over my chicken sammitch. Bennigan’s employees had gathered round some poor son of a bitch and had begun singing their weird version of Happy Birthday. They were clapping. They were pointing at the birthday boy’s head.

That is my own personal picture of hell.

Do not do this for me on my birthday (Nov. 25). I will not enjoy it and neither will you, your family, your pets, or your neighbors. In other news, I just sent out the invite for the Turkey Deb Ball. I need to purchase a) food for party, but that’s some distance away b) a ball gown, the more lurid the better and c) chairs.

Wendy has promised Alize.

THERE WILL BE A NEW ENTRY TODAY! I DEEM IT SO! ALSO, MAKE ME A GRILLED CHEESE!

The phone rang four times then the machine picked up. I can still feel the sound bouncing off the walls. It stings like an insect bite, scratchy even. I am not concerned about who has called. My, the ceiling is moving! Look at that mother swirl. Once, I had this girlfriend break up with me on the phone — and you know what? Fuck it. That was gonna be a lie too. Fuck it and fuck you.

You know what my problem is? I’m stuck. Not just in this chair, and not just because of the feet. It’s me. It’s what I tend to do over and over. The sherry, plus the feet. I chose not to move. My feet are paper-white and will probably fall off soon. Let me break the sherry bottle against the desk and spear them with broken glass to make sure they can still bleed. God– damn– it– This fucking sherry bottle! Break, you mother!

It seems that the sherry bottle will not cooperate.

“Phew, for a minute there, I lost myself, I lost myself”

Turn to the side to vomit, baby, turn to the side.
Punt on the floor and keep on floating, baby, keep on floating.
Lose your balance, baby, lose your balance.
Crash down, down, down.
Crash down down.

I’m not passed out but now I’m prone. I can feel the blood trickle back into those frigid whore feet of mine. I might be drunk, but the pins keep pricking. The pain is going to make me …. The pain is making me …. Oh, golly, I want to marry this feeling. And there it goes, slowly, slowly away. Sign. And here are these feet again and I’m still on the floor.

I’m very, very warm now and the sherry which seemed so warm before now feels like ice. It’s a mercurial beverage but I’m growing fonder of it. There goes the body, relaxing so deeply into the chair that I feel constructed from wood and industrial upholstery and not blood. I give the toes a wiggle; nada. A lethargic little shake. Wind blows through the open window sort of erotically, but my feet are nunnish, not simply ignoring advances but not seeing them at all. I hate my blind, priggish feet.

But the rest of me is divine! It’s lovely - decadent! - to drink sherry in the morning on a work day. There’s still this sense of guilt about not being there; it’s manifesting in olfactory retardation. Instead of the trees outside or whisps of fireplace smoke, I’m smelling freshly copied paper and dusty cubicle walls. Somewhere, my boss is circling like a shark, but I’m away from her whirlpool.

I was correct. My forehead is slightly damp. I do not like sweat, although my own is fairly benign. My husband, his smile grinning like a joker six inches above my face, radiates an odor of lettuce. Iceberg lettuce is not sexy. The first time this ocurred, I thought it was a fluke, the mind playing tricks. But it’s a regular association. And like a radio dial tuning in a station, the scent is becoming more rounded, now with carrots and a hint of radish. I take thee, Salad, to fuck and to hold.

You can never completely drain a glass. There will always be some liquid clinging on any small cliff. (I did it again, the lying. No husband.) What else remains? Bits of lip. Flakes. How many sips equals one complete lip?

My feet smell. They are totally numb but I’m still being assaulted - no, assaulted is too much - massaged? Bothered. Bothered by the smell of my own disembodied feet. It’s an earthy smell, moss and dirt, but I prefer that my body parts smell like one or all of the following 1) baby powder 2) fresh rain or 3) tropical mist. However, the feet, my only two contacts with the earth, resist chemical enhancement. It’s odd how the feeling has fallen away but this smell continues, beating all the others, like a schoolyard bully.

A year ago today, I put my ten-year-old on a plane with the rest of his fifth-grade class. They were on their way to Washington, D.C. to tour innumerable museums and cause commotion. I waved, relieved, hoping he would remember to take a bath at least once in the ten day trip. Three hours after I dropped him off at the school, after they’d travelled to the airport and just after the plane lifted off the comfort of ashphalt, he disappeared in a ball of fire and noise. The plane tumbled down the runway and blew apart into a billion pieces with such force that a shoe, my son’s shoe, was found five miles away. And when I see my feet, I see his, without a shoe, floating in the sky, ringed by pale yellow light.

The kitchen floor is in need of a washing. Where tiles meet each other, they peel back and the material (That part, about my son? I made it up.) is stained black. The kitchen looks dirty; I am not a dirty person, though I did just slop a bit of sherry down my front. More sherry will forget this incident. The cup reads “Blood Drive ‘96.” I have no idea how it showed up in my cabinet. I glance from my veins to the cup. My blushing virgin veins had yet to be penetrated by anything so gauche as a needle. Mine was mine. It was a rule and a mantra.

I am out of water again, but I won’t get up to get more. And I need to brush my teeth. My mouth tastes like old coffee and my teeth still have that nighttime scum on them. But I’m not getting up. My feet are numb, propped up on the windowsill for too long, and I prefer not to experience that hateful pins-and-needles feeling. So I plan to sit here until I fall asleep and tumble from my chair to the ground where my legs will fill with blood without inconvenince.

Two cars, I think, just crashed outside. It sounded like two cars. Sets of squealing tired ending with a metallic thud and now hissing. It smells like rubber. There’s yelling. The phone is over there, out of my reach. I should probably get up to see if I can help. The yelling doesn’t sound bloody. I think everything’s ok.

I remember my father would do this sometimes. Not necessarily because of napping limbs, but to win some personal contest we weren’t let in on. He’d drink gallons of whatever and then sit perched in a chair, staring at the clock and the bathroom door. Sometimes he made it to the bathroom; often, he did not. He broke his record, three hours, 15 minutes with four gallons hidden inside him unexpectedly. It was his custom to meditate until his bladder changed it’s call from a throat clearing to a scream and pounding. But that day, a snatch of Paul McCartney singing “Blackbird” floated out of my room. My dad heard it, was hit by its beauty, and was held spellbound for two minutes beyond his old record. Later that day, he gassed himself in the oven.

I’ve never listened to the Beatles since.

Within my reach is a computer and printer, the liquor cabinet, and a bowl of edamame left out since last night. I have no need for the technology. It’s ugly and other than tracing my finger through the dust on the monitor, I have no need for it at all. The liquor cabinet is fully stocked. I know because I stocked it myself. Somewhere, the list I used when I shopped is inside it, with careful tick marks next to each item put in the cart. The liquor store didn’t have bleu cheese-stuffed olives. Note: there is nothing more divine at 9 a.m. than a coffee cup full of dry sherry.

As for the edamame, they’ve gone waxy and limp and I can’t even imagine the taste treat that is sherry washing over soybean stuck in the molars. I play with them, stacking them and letting them fall and scatter. A few edamame skitch over the floor and gather dust. They will be rolled into paste when I fall out of this chair.

Bethany had a friend who knew a judge. There was a one-day waiting period in their state, so he would be unable to marry them.

“But, you know,” he said over the cell phone, the sound of honking distorting his words, “the next state over doesn’t have a waiting period at all. But you shouldn’t do that. Take the day, Bethany.”

She thanked him and hung up. Cliff’s chin was propped up on the top of the pay phone box. He couldn’t tell from her face what the judge had said, but he hoped the news had been good. His stomach relayed to his brain that he didn’t regret his question.

“Do you have a car? We’ll need to drive,” she said.

Cliff did not like to drive at night. The ambient light from passing cars and his own headlights cast ghoulish light on the roadside trees. Bethany reclined her seat slightly and stared out the window. Occasionally, she leaned toward it and blew on the glass then drew hearts. Cool condensation being cut by a warm fingertip.

The highway narrowed from four lanes, to two, then widened back again according to local and regional necessity. They only required one straight lane into the next state. Cliff drove steadily, not speeding or swerving. He wanted to arrive safely in order to complete the task. He wanted to marry her. And because he would never quit or reconsider once he’d made up his mind, she wanted him as well. The easy silence predicted a lovely history.

Fifty miles from their destination, Cliff pulled in to a well-lit truck stop for coffee. Bethany came in with him. She wandered around the gift shop and let her fingers drift over tacky figurines, forgotten books, and racks of postcards. He poured a tall cup of coffee and watched her eye the candy display. They had not had dinner.

He appeared at her side and she finally looked up. Where Cliff’s face should have been, Bethany only saw bright candy wrappers, “Crunchy!” “Chewy!”

“Choose my favorite,” she asked and she closed her eyes to erase the image.

Cliff took a few seconds to think and then selected an item from the bottom rack. Plain chocolate studded with toffee. He held it out toward her.

“How did you know?” she asked shakily with brimming eyes.

“I didn’t, but I hoped,” he replied.

Bethany held it in her hands like the candy was made of gold. “I love you,” she whispered. She walked to the counter and paid for her chocolate bar.

“But it’s just chocolate,” his mind screamed. “It was a guess and it’s just a candy bar.”

She waited patiently as he paid for his coffee. He reached into his pocket and pulled out several bills and a few coins. A balled-up bill rolled from his pocket and under the counter. He knelt down to brush it out. A crumpled piece of folded paper came out instead.

Bethany reached down to pick it up and snatched it up first. She unfolded the paper and surveyed it quickly. Her eyes were wide. Cliff took the paper from her and forced himself to look at its contents. Between looking in her eyes and down at the writing, he prayed that whatever he read would not change their plan.

The had was his. The folds were his. But the words were not. When he looked down, he saw a single sentence. “Take the day, Bethany.” He felt like he’d been shot. And in the moment it took him to look up and search for her eyes, he felt so alone and lost again.

But her eyes weren’t there. She still stood in front of him, but bowed her head so low it nearly touched her chest. Cliff shoved the note into his pocket. He took the candy bar from her hand and unwrapped it. He took a bite, then broke off a piece and knelt in front of her, like he’d done when he’d bandaged her.

Her face was blank, her eyes shut. But her lips were parted slightly. Cliff slid the piece of chocolate in her mouth. She let it melt there at first, but began to chew. She opened her eyes after swallowing. His heart demanded she speak.

“Please,” she whispered, “let’s keep driving.”

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