That was one of the more awkward blind double dates of my life. Turns out we’d all been on a blind double date with each other just a day earlier… and we’d all gone home with each other. I excused myself and crept out of the restaurant. Feeling ashamed, I called my mother to tell her about the date. Found myself in front of a friend’s apartment building and thought I’d stop in to say hello. My friend was on her way out and didn’t have time to chat and my mother, who occasionally astral-projects herself wherever I am, started to follow her out until I reminded her that her body was still in Pennsylvania and she should probably get back to it.
I was about to ask my friend if I could crash at her place since I was exhausted but now things were awkward, what with my mom’s astral projection wandering around in just a t-shirt, so I walked off and ran into another friend, D, in a big empty warehouse. D tells me he’s off to meet up with our mutual friend A, who is cooking a large meal and that I should come with him. I’m pretty tired and D reminds me that it’s Friday night and tomorrow is New Year’s Eve. I decline anyway and continue my walk home when a busload of teenage tourists pull up next to me and start catcalling at me. I duck down a side alley and find myself in Chinatown. I start climbing up the huge hill of dirt in front of me and when the dirt suddenly crumbles away, leaving me clinging to the top, certain I’m about to fall to my death, an old Chinese woman catches my hands. She starts to pull me up while telling me a joke and then stops because she can’t get the punchline right. I realize I’m probably going to die unless she remembers the goddamn punchline.
Dad harrumphed into the room as I lay sleeping on the pullout couch. I knew he was looking for the half-and-half and as he poked around under a chair, I surreptitiously removed it from the side-table and hid it under my pillow.
Across the rolling prairie I could see craggy mountain rising under thunderous-looking clouds. As I got closer, I could make out a large cave at the foot of the mountain and stopped dead. Bears. Sure enough, I could see the enormous creatures milling about in front of the cave. I turned to get away before they saw me and realized I’d already been spotted by the bears I hadn’t noticed on either side of me. They came lumbering at me and I flung myself on the ground on my stomach. Heavy paws thumped me meatily in the head and back and tore my shirt. I lay still as death, hoping they’d lose interest. But then I felt a claw flip up my bra clasp and another slid the straps off my shoulder. I felt my jeans tugged down. Paws gripped my hips and jerked them up into the air. And… I was okay with this.
I found it impossibly awkward to carry two buckets up a ladder. One bucket filled with asphalt, the other with granulated sweat. Somehow, I reached the top and poured the buckets out into the bin. An angry voice yelled behind me, “DON’T MIX THEM!” Too late.
How in the world am I supposed to escort my date carefully home to Brooklyn with this bag full of used lightbulbs and still make it back to work by 5:30 a.m.?
I knew he was around somewhere as I paced the hallway. Suddenly one of the doors flung open and there he was, zinging his little buzzing flashlight do-hickey around, aiming at something unseen up in the corners of the doorway. He was prattling aloud about who knows what, paying me absolutely no heed, not taking his eyes off of the ceiling, skinny pin-striped arms and legs wind-milling about, tongue lodged firmly in the corner of his mouth. I kept trying to catch his eye as I followed him this way and that but he never looked at me. He stopped suddenly and gasped, staring at his hands and arms wildly. Suddenly his entire body arched like he’d been hit by an electrical shock and he fell right into my arms. I staggered and helped him to lie down. He was so afraid which made me far more afraid than I’ve ever felt around him. He kept looking at his hands and saying he could see “them” (and I don’t think “them” was referring to his fingers). His head was heavy on my thighs and he went abruptly quiet. I whispered into his hair “Help me, I don’t know what to do!” over and over. I really didn’t. Surely someone more clever would know what to do, how to save him, how to do anything but I was frozen. I started crying and shaking him and kissing his forehead. All of a sudden, I was also aware that I was acting. And I was very worried I was doing a terrible job of it. Completely overdid it with the kissing and, oh God, I’m sure I have no idea how to cry prettily.
Well, it’s official. I’m the worst house-sitter ever. My friends go away and what do I do? Lose their Spanish Galleon. Like, almost immediately. When I went out, it was parked out back, anchored ohhh 500 yards off the back of the house. And now? Gone. Totally gone. They’re gonna kill me. They even have a little wooden replica of it by the pool. Shit. Shit. What am I going to do? They’re going to notice, right? Do I tell them now or wait for them to notice? Play dumb? “What? Your Spanish Galleon? Gosh. ::shrug:: It was there a minute ago. Yikes. Pirates?” Fuck. I am so screwed.
The sign clickity-clacked as the names, numbers and times flipped forward, another execution having taken place. My name was getting closer to the top. They made us watch - small, grainy televisions showing another young woman led into a cell, a pink pillowcase thrown awkwardly over her face. This cannot be happening. I closed my eyes, waiting and waiting through the unbearable pause until the gunshot rang out – almost a relief. I looked back up at the sign, the names and numbers flipped and clicked upwards like the most horrible arrivals/departures sign ever. Only 3 people ahead of me now and I still didn’t know what my crime was. I turned desperately to my friend. “Please help me, I don’t know what I did! How can they kill me if they won’t even tell me what I did?” My friend tells me she’ll see what she can find out. I thought I had hours, maybe days but now my time read 49 minutes. 49 minutes to live. What can you do with 49 minutes? My friend returns. She has no answers for me except to tell me that the woman ahead of me was a traffic cop who accepted bribes. However, she wasn’t handing the bribes over to the government and was caught with two sets of books – one with fake figures for the government and one for her family. “But I haven’t accepted bribes, I haven’t done anything wrong.” 48 minutes. Outside, the city was brightly lit with screaming neon signs but empty of people. Silver buses with no lights and no passengers …or drivers… silently rolled by.
I was in the library when the second earthquake rolled through. I really had nowhere to go as the ground rumbled and rolled and the shelves started falling, spitting books onto me. I grabbed a couch cushion and strapped it over my head as my father appeared and beckoned me to follow him. My mother was waiting outside, she wanted to go to a movie. I had some coupons but they were for the other day and I didn’t have any for the current day.
I’d recently discovered that not only is a woman’s uterus a fantastic baby-holder, when not in use, it also prints coupons. I said I could probably get some new coupons but I’d need a little privacy.
As I moved towards the bathroom, I heard a kerfluffle. Morrissey was hollaring at a young woman, brandishing some papers in his hand and squawking that he could absolutely NOT accept the coupons she’d given him because they had come from her vagina and that is absolutely disgusting.
I calmly informed him that the coupons he held do not come directly from the vagina— you have to use the code on the vagina coupons to print out the actual vendor-accepted coupons, such as the papers he was holding. Those have the barcodes. “I mean, look at all that paper! That all can’t come out of a vagina! Don’t be ridiculous. Just because you’re squicky about vaginas doesn’t mean they’re bad. They are excellent printers.” Morrissey looked angry, tossed the papers away and started huffing off down the street. I followed behind him, mockingly singing “This Charming Man” at him until I realized I really didn’t know the lyrics all that well, which just ended up being embarrassing for both of us.
First day on the job and a little scared. She tells me not to worry, it’s really quite easy. All we do is watch for the dragons that exit and return to the caves. She opens a door behind us to a long corridor stretching in both directions, with matching doors on the other side of the hall. We are in charge of one set of doors and one Dragon. Currently our dragon is out. Dragons enter the caves, go through both sets of doors to their lair beyond. I look down the corridor to the left and see an open door on the far side. Fire licks out from the lair. She takes my arm, “A dragon is coming out. Quickly!” We duck out of the corridor and back to our watch post, a nook in the wall facing out of the cave. She pulls some sort of flame-retardant black curtain down. I hear a monstrous crashing noise, something screaming and spitting fire. It’s suddenly incredibly hot, I feel like the hairs on my arms are singeing. And then it’s gone and the cave’s temperature goes back to normal. We lift the curtain. “Oh, our dragon is coming back.” I can’t see anything but take her word for it, again pulling the curtain down as a shadow fills the cave entrance. Our dragon passes us and enters its lair, slamming the door behind it. Bad day? She shrugs at me and we raise the curtain again.
