Inspiration?

[blueerica]

“Miss Tilden?”

“Miss Tilden…?” the young cabana boy asked.

“Oh! Yes?” Mary returned, slightly alarmed.

“Would you like another mai tai?”

“Oh no, thank you though. Could I trouble you for a glass of ice water?”

“Certainly.”

“The hot sun, and recent arrival to St. Lucia made Mary’s head swoon. She pushed her feet into the hot grains until her toes hit the cool, damp, tightly-packed sand underneath. She was away at last!

Mary never thought she’d get there soon enough. Things just got too crazy back in Chicago. Work; her fiancé, Stanley; family; friends; they never could have understood. She no longer needed anyone to understand. Maybe I can start over… A permanent vacation!

She slathered her fair skin with a liberal dose of SPF 50, and pulled her straw hat down until it reached her sunglasses. The waves lulled her to sleep…

… and the waves woke her up.

She saw the glass next to her chair, filled to the brim, beads of sweat clinging to the side, but long melted-away was the ice. Have I been asleep that long? Is that my stomach growling?

Mary stood up, brushed off some sand, and walked toward the resort café as the day’s last sun hit her across the shoulders. A few vacationers were inside, drinking iced tea, and taking dinners. Some were having beer; some were just nodding off in the corners. She ordered her favorite: tuna melt with a tomato inside. Nice, golden, toasted. As she sat and ate, she pondered her last days in the city.

Stan was a bore. Satisfied and smug with his 9 to 5 job at Chicago’s First Bank. When she moved to the Windy City back in ’02, she applied for a teller position at the bank and Stan asked her out on a date, promptly after interviewing her. She thought he was cute, and that he’d do, but three years later, here she is, and Mary wasn’t sure if the southern Caribbean islands were far enough away. A cute local sidled up next to her at the bar.

“Honey, why are you alone here, now?” he asked. “What is your name?”

“Elizabeth,” she replied, “and I’m taking a break from things.”

He stared at her modest chest, just a bit red from the sun, and nicely pushed up by her underwire top. “Well Lizzie, honey, would you like to go dancing wit’ me later?”

“What is your name?”

“Terence”

“Well, Terence, I think it was rather bold of you, asking a strange woman for drinks so quickly, when you hadn’t even introduced yourself. What if I told you I wasn’t interested?”

“I wouldn’t believe you.”

“Hmmm... I’ll meet you here at 8:00.”

With a wink, Terence walked away. Mary looked at her watch. She had two hours to get ready. She settled her tab with the elderly man behind the counter, and walked back to her cabin.

As she sat on her bed she considered checking her cell phone voicemail. It would cost a lot, but she had to know. She explained to the operator that no one was going to answer the phone number she was calling, and that it was a call to check messages.

Message 1
May 25, 2005 7:15PM
“Mary, this is your mother. Call me!”

Message 2
May 25, 2005 9:15PM
“This is Stan. Call me at home, baby.”

Message 3
May 26, 2005 7:15AM
“Call me back, this is urgent. Call the cell. Bye.”

Message 4
May 26, 2005 8:30AM
“Sarah! Where are you? You didn’t show up for work, and I can’t find you anywhere. Crazy sh!t’s been going on, and I can’t find you anywhere! Sutherland box got broke into and everything’s fvcking gone. Cops everywhere, detectives! It’s been non-stop and where the fvck are you? I miss you baby --- “

Mary slammed the phone down. She didn’t need to hear anymore; she knew what she needed to do next. Fvck, fvck, fvck! She let her head fall onto the pillow, closed her eyes, and planned her next move.

One phone call to the airlines later, and she learned she could get to Venezuela pretty cheaply tomorrow morning. Damn.

She changed into a white linen dress, and opened her safe. She removed a gold necklace with a large star sapphire dangling on a pendant. This should sell for enough. She stared into the box. All the gems, the diamonds, the gold! Then slammed it shut.

Tonight, fun. Then I can run.

[blueerica]

my bags are packed
tightly
with every thing
i might need
passports, monies exchanged,
ticket to ride
we're off to somewhere new
exciting!
what fun we'll have
walking along strange avenues,
riding in wild taxicabs!
new sights!
new sounds!
an adventure to be had,
if only in my dreams.

[Eliza Hodgkins 1812]

Lovely, E. Snappity-snap-snap.

I cannot mojo you, however. Believe me, I tried.

We need a new topic!

[Cadaverous Pallor]

Oops, I kinda dropped the ball, eh? Things have been insane at both my jobs this week and I had almost no time to visit here.

I just visited the San Diego Zoo, so how about

The Zoo

[Not Afraid]

All the monkey's in the Zoo
they go crazy over you
They go wild, simply wild, over you.

[blueerica]

I wrote a poem a while back, that started with "Those will be someone's last words, for sure..." and it originated off a conversation about someone in a zoo standing in front of a lion cage with a broken lock saying "Look at dee liooonn!" while having his picture taken...

[SacTown Chronic]

I'm in a cage. The
animals stroll by with their
children. I amuse.

See the humans eat.
Look honey, that one's pooping.
Ha! Funny human.

Daddy, are humans
happy in those cages? Yes,
my curious one.

They couldn't survive
in the wild. They are weak and
stupid. Need our care.

Thanks for the zoo trip,
daddy. The humans are cute.
In my dreams tonight.

[Eliza Hodgkins 1812]

“Who wants to go to the zoo?”

Babysitters. I hate them. I hate them almost as much as I hate my actual parents, and that’s saying something. Maybe that makes me a heartless little bastard, but I don’t care. Maybe my heart’s just hardened, like the Pharoh’s, and if that’s the case, your beef is with God and not with me. I just live here, and not by choice, if you haven’t already been able to guess that.

My parents work all day and all week and all month and all year and the years pile up until here I am, 9, hostage to a 17 year-old black hole named Kelly, and the only think giving me pleasure is imagining Chompers chomping her to death with his canine incisors. Nobody knows the dog’s real name is Chompers, or that he has a killer’s instinct, just like me. My parents and siblings call him Muffin, but they are just a bunch of stupid losers who can’t see a dog’s true soul. They know nothing of dogs and their greatness. I don’t think any one of them even knows what the Dog Star’s name is. It’s Sirius. Sounds like serious. I like it. I say the name over and over again under my breath and it makes me feel calm and protected. I think of it as my secret name. Sirius and Chompers.

Chompers is domestic, of course, but he’s got a wild free spirit and when we’re alone together he shows it to me. We run with each other, over the wet dewy grass in the early morning on Saturdays, and it’s like there is no great divide between us; boy and dog are one. There’s no better relationship. My older brother, Stuart, says that the best thing in the world is sex. “Just you wait, man,” he says, forgetting that I was only 8 at the time, “when you’re my age you won’t be able to get enough of it. Women are hot. I don’t just mean their looks. When you’re touching them their skin gets hot, and when you feel below, it’s even hotter, like melted caramel.”

“So they’re sticky," I ask.

“Yeah, man. Totally.”

I left his room disgusted. I know lots of kids who like eating all kinds of messy sticky sweet foods, but those guys are revolting. I don’t know how they can stand their sticky mouths and hands. If girls are anything like that then I want nothing to do with girls. Not even when I’m old enough. My dog’s fur is warm and that’s the kind of warmth I like. His fur is coated with dust and it’s the dirt and mud of the ground that I don’t mind at all. We’ll wrestle in the park until we’re covered in the same mess and I feel more close to him than any other living thing. The dirt becomes our coat of arms, identifying us as family.

I was glad when Stuart left for college. Now there's my sister and me, and Jen will be leaving soon, too. Good riddance.

People are okay, I guess, even if I do hate them. They buy me gifts for my birthday and call me “Rascal” which I pretend to hate but kind of like. But they don’t get it. You know. IT. This whole life business. They’re older than me and but only I seem to understand what’s really important. It’s making time for the people and things you love. And since Mom and Dad are always working, that tells me all I need to know. We love work. We love time away from home. We don’t love kids and we don’t love you. We just had you because we are supposed to because it’s what married people do.

Jen once said she overheard our parents say I was an accident. I don't exactly know what she meant by that, but I thought of the time Chompers slammed into a table knocking Mom's favorite vase onto the floor. She cried over a silly vase as if a vase could ever be of any real importance. If I'm an accident, I'm the kind of accident that makes people cry over silly things, even if that makes me the silly thing. That way Chomper and I are even more alike than I realized.

I’ll never get married. I want to become a famous dog trainer but I don’t want my dogs to be in movies. Movies sap out my energy and make my eyes feel dull and dead. I don’t like playing pretend, either.

I wonder what the babysitter loves. Obviously not animals if her idea of a good time is going to see a bunch of sad creatures locked up in cages, ripped from whatever happiness they’d known before. Obviously she doesn’t love me, if she’s stupid enough to think an obvious animal lover like myself would have anything to do with those pour lost souls. My father says my hatred for zoos is unfounded. He called me “supercilious”, which I had to look up. I think it’s supercilious of a teacher in his 40’s to call a 9 year old boy supercilious. I was just being honest. It’s often what kids do best, though we usually get called heartless for it.

But I don’t think I’m heartless, really, just observant, and based on my observations I come to certain conclusions. Lately I’ve come to the conclusion that babysitters are stupid and useless, and they derive their greatest pleasure from forcing their young charges to do things they don’t want to do, like watch talk shows and make origami animals. They don’t even look like real animals. It’s stupid. Chompers destroyed all of Kelly’s oragami pigs and cranes and I laughed a lot - another happy accident - but the babysitter got mad and made me go to my room. That was cool. I read a book on crocodiles. I’d like to go to Florida someday. Maybe they would sense my love for them and allow Chompers and me to swim alongside of them. We would be covered in the same scummy water and eat the same fish, and they’d keep me out of harm’s way. Eventually my teeth could grow sharp and my body green and rough. We would become a family.

Maybe I do like to play pretend.

Now Kelly is feeling guilty and wants to take me to the zoo. I just look at her with a blank expression I’ve spent hours trying to perfect. My jaw is slack and I'm swallowing the air like I'm eating it while Kelly shuffles her feet and turns an ugly shade of red. She can wait until the end of time for my answer for all I care.

[Cadaverous Pallor]

What a fun story, Aud.

The other day I spent what seemed like forever searching online for a cool piece of photography to use as inspiration and found diddly squat. Today I actually found something.

Click here. As I'm supposed to be doing some other project, I might not participate in this one. Have at it!

[Ghoulish Delight]

That's the hotel I stayed at on my recent business trip to San Fran.