Category: verbal

karen’s driving me through her old neighborhood, taking me to see where she lived before—we’ve got a photograph of a big white house and her stories of all the people who lived there, but now there’s only an empty lot and I find it hard to believe that whole house fit there.

when I get into the driver’s seat, I have to reset all the adjustments she’s made.

I lose my car in a parking ramp.

I look into the eyes of an ill-shorn guy and say, wow.

I show up at a party everyone’s been planning, and it turns out it’s for me, and I’m ashamed and embarrassed and start backing out of the room. I say to sue ann, you really should write a book of comedic essays, and she gives me a funny look and pulls out her book which has just been published earlier in the year and which I should have known about.

I dig a little ways into the hillside behind my house and open up a whole underground system of tunnels and dirt-carved paths—a rabbit warren, I think at first, but it quickly becomes clear that george has been going down the tunnels and making use of it—first I notice the size of the dug paths, george-sized rather than rabbit-sized—and then I start to notice the corruption—it’s full of piles of dog shit, just everywhere, and worse, the stink and moisture have collected and compounded, and an evil-looking red mold has begun to grow and spread—so at first what looks like a cool, mysterious underground world to explore becomes something I loathe the very idea of stepping into, a problem to solve, a mess to clean up, which I hadn’t even realized was there, somehow.

the pair of mean ex-friends have decided to become hairdressers and go to spy on the competition—they’re hip and fancy, and I tag along, drag along—they get seated in the window in their matching smocks, and I’m chatting with the woman next to me when she makes some comment about people’s nasty cattiness—I point over at one of the two in the window say, I’m sure that’s going on there. then I decide to get my hair cut, since I’m there, and go slick it down and sign in as a walk-in—the haughty guy seats my unfashionable ass in the back room out of sight from the street—I’m irritated about different treatment, even though I know it’s all poser bullshit, so I walk into the front room and take myself a seat near the windows—and suddenly she’s sitting down near me, looking me in the eye, saying something conciliatory after all this time, maybe even I’m sorry—and I explode. I bend down over her, my hands on the arms of her chair and am yelling in her face, I hate you! I hate you! – and then stop. and collect myself and back up—and say, sadly, and I love you, too.

I’m on the roof of one of the pine river boathouses calling down to tiff, who’s in the river below—possibly in a boat, but I think swimming in that glorious clear water—and I call down and realize my voice is too loud, I’m shouting, and sound carries here like crystal—so I call out again more quietly.

I’m standing inside a wooden structure and talking with an older woman whom I admire a great deal—she’s an artist and very solid and kind—also fond of me, too—that is, until her son shows up, who’s only 20, and falls in love with me—and I think it’ll be okay—she likes me, right?—only when I look over at her, I realize she’s tight-lipped and ask, is this okay? and she sort of bursts out, definitely not!—and I hightail it out of there, angry and embarrassed and feeling confused and betrayed and generally disappointed.

I’m in a pretraining session for a job for which they’re only going to hire one person—I’m just certain it’s going to be me even though its’ not really what I want to be doing—and then the manager trainer keeps slipping up and almost giving away who they’re leaning toward until, finally, with half a day’s session still to go, he gives it right away—and it’s another girl I used to go to middle school with—and I know she deserves it, and I really do like her, but I’m still bitter and resentful and leave the room for a break, considering staying gone—but I can hear the rest of them continuing, so I go back to sit through the rest of it with the others. later, after work, I ask a little toy why it didn’t work out, why I failed, and it bleeps and bloops and spits out the answer, and I’m expecting something very generic and Magic 8-Ball-like—but when I read the ticker tape, it says, You just gotta do what you gotta do and get on out of there.

my father takes me down to the basement to show me the “multipurpose room”—which turns out to be the space under the stairs completely converted for utility storage—it’s been brilliantly and perfectly organized, and I ask him how he’s managed it, and he gives me the name of some organization consulting company. then he’s telling me how my mother hadn’t wanted to get rid of her something-or-other and so there are gallons and gallons of what looks like whole wheat flour in plastic milk jugs, which she’ll doubtless never use—but still I feel sorry for her in the face of my father’s rage for order— it seems so ruthless, steamrolling everything in its path. we go into the laundry room, which has also been completely transformed, and I say, hang on, how many laundry machines do you have in here? and he looks smug and smiles and says, just wait—and it’s clear he has several set up for specific purposes and plans to give me a demonstration—they’re all professional grade, and everything’s neat and shiny, and somehow I’m just disgusted by the excess and single-mindedness.

I’m hang-gliding—or somehow not actually me hang-gliding, but virtually, like watching as if I’m right there a demonstration of what not to do—he’s hot-dogging—an expert, so he can get away with it—but the commentator’s pointing out how foolhardy and dangerous his maneuvers are, letting go of the handles and swinging free in space—and he’s clowning and looks so happy, and we swoop along with him—then he’s low over the water when he regains control, never seeming to worry, and swoops it up and inland over the roofs of the houses, just clearing them—and I ask, isn’t that kind of close? and the commentator tut-tuts and says, that’s what happens when you goof around and cut it close—but really all I can see is how fun it looked and how he made it look so easy.

I’m visiting a couple who are friends— actually more hanging out with him while she’s off doing something in another part of the apartment—and it’s friendly and easy until he walks me out to the driveway and then leans close to me and I startle and back up fast and say, no, no way, I’m not going down that road. but, too, my pulse has picked up in spite of me—I didn’t realize I was the least bit attracted until that moment, but afterwards I can’t help playing out scenarios in my imagination—and I rush around trying to gather up my stuff, a little pile of my jewelry scattered across the bed, in order to get out fast— though, too, I’m not in fact getting out very fast—and outside at first it seems my car’s missing, that it must have gotten towed, but then I see it mired in mud—along come the authorities who start grilling me on how it got there, seemingly determined to think the worst. back inside the couple’s house, he and a bunch of other guys are rearranging computer equipment—I try to help but quickly understand they just want me to get out of their way. so I’m loitering in the hallway, looking through the shelves at the couple’s books and feeling envious and wondering if I could after all be involved with him if she weren’t in the picture.

I’m trying to help bonnie get settled in a new office on the campus of a boarding school—and she’s decided she wants a room on the ground floor of the freshman dorm, and she’s working with the facilities coordinator, a young woman not long in her job who’s doing her best to accommodate the tenured faculty member—and I feel obligated to speak up on behalf of… the students? tradition? inertia? in any case, I feel it would be wrong for her to go in there and displace freshman girls and make structural renovations to the internal architecture of the old building—so I’m making arguments—and I know the dream really bothers me because I’m tossing and turning, going over the lines of argument half-consciously.

there are burrs in the cat’s fur, all through it, deep up against its tender belly skin, and I’m trying to work them out with my fingers, careful not to hurt it more.

I’m racing up a steep hill on the tail of a pickup truck, stuck to their bumper without really meaning to be—having trouble locating the brakes, and then even once I do, still we seem to accelerate—we’re going faster and faster up the hill, flying over moguls in the road.

I’m climbing back up a hill I walked down earlier—crawling up the steep slope doggedly—and it’s really, really steep and, I realize in dismay, long, and I’m nowhere near the top—and I feel like I have no energy whatsoever and despair of making it—but I also know I can’t just stop and sit there, I need to get up and over and through it.

there’s a tidy little house, almost like a doll’s house, perched at the top of a hill in the middle of nowhere—a spiffy gay couple lives there, and I’m admiring the pianos, and the self-described missus asks me if I play, and I say, no, I used to try, and I loved to tinker around with it—and as I say it, I realize the truth of it.

I discover gaps in the side of the big stone and wood fireplace where flames have escaped and are beginning to spread—there’s a hanging cloth that’s bound to go up if I leave the fire to its own devices, so I reach out with my bare hand and smack the fiery patches to put them out—but they’re so hot I switch to stomping on them with my shoe—and then I run to get my bother and father to help—I show them the problem area, and my brother far too casually says he’ll take care of caulking it up.

the bike boy rides past my house, all bundled up in cold weather clothes, and calls out to me by name—and my stomach flips to know he’s taken the trouble to find out what it is.

I’m living—more like squatting—in a big old house with my stuff all piled around and old sawdust and debris all over the floor when a group of friends comes in—I try to keep them out, embarrassed by the state of things, but I can’t be outright rude—and bit by bit they start sorting things out for me—maybe it begins by my asking for their help in hanging a large framed picture—and then they all get into the project and set to work transforming my space. a couple of times I begin to disagree with their placement of things but then see their logic, which makes far more sense than I’d realized at first and surrender to the process. the very best, most delicious part is my tall friend from college who has returned from travels prepared to love me for real and heading up this transformation crew—he sets to work up on the bedroom, hanging vermilion and gold and vivid red tapestries around and over the bed until it resembles a jewel-toned cocoon in a bright room with large, wide-open windows, sunlight streaming in—and I discover another little room I didn’t know existed up some steps: a square, mission-style turret space with windows all around, glowing wood floors and window frames, and I think, here is my study, it’s perfect—it had been the daughter’s room, my sister’s friend’s, and some of her things are still there—the deal is that I’ll look after them until she can come pick them up—and I can easily work around the stuff for the great pleasure of using this space where I feel I belong.

I’m part of a group lesson in how to lower our shoulders—the charming woman at the front of the room says, ladies, you could even shimmy a little bit and, who knows, maybe you’ll get yourself a date, and smiles and demonstrates most delicately, and the group breaks into delighted laughter.

I’m driving with laura, and she starts to give me a hard time about how darn slow I am, how because I’ve taken a wrong turn I’ve basically wasted her valuable time that could be better spent elsewhere—and I start to stew and finally say to her, well, what’s the big hurry anyway? getting more and more steamed—but she won’t back down, she feels entirely justified in her position—and then suddenly we’re at a border crossing in Israel where the authorities are shutting down the road and telling the traffic from both directions to turn back—and a spoiled housewife in a camper is complaining loudly and asking just what she’s supposed to do now—and we all feel for the poor guys in uniforms who are dealing very patiently and professionally with a much bigger problem than this silly woman’s spoiled vacation plans.