Anastasia just passed and nobody knows why yet. I had just been chatting with her. It was like we saw each other just last week, though , in fact, the last time I saw her was in San Francisco 29 years ago. She was leaving on the back of some guy’s motorcycle.
I had been meaning to tell her that all the joking about L being gay and in love with F was actually true. I was going to dm her after wishing her a happy birthday. I had just decided which photo to post on her page for the occasion when I read she was gone.
I met her 30 years ago when she was dating my friend and roommate and she discovered a hidden stone staircase leading to our apartment on Barracks street in the quarter which she told us she had dreamt about. She was charming and beautiful and somewhat crazy, I thought.
A year later, when I was tending bar at The Abbey, I started dating a handsome but boring guy named F with magnificent hair who I was surprised to learn was already dating another bartender at the Abbey. We both dropped him and I began seeing his less attractive but much more interesting roommate, L. Shortly after, Anastasia began dating F. L was obsessed with the whereabouts of his roommate and Anastasia and F both complained it was hard to be alone together. I also thought it was odd that L seemed uninterested in spending time with me without F. People at the Abbey joked about L being in love with F. They called him “Latent”. Nobody took it seriously. L couldn’t be gay. He wore flannel shirts and had bad skin and messy hair. Finally, I broke up with L and moved to San Francisco and Anastasia broke up with F and followed me out there.
Over 20 years later, the bartender who had been dating F when I went out with him told me L had finally come out and was living with his Native American lover on a reservation. She had dated him after me which seemed appropriate. Anastasia would have appreciated that piece of gossip. No word on what happened to F or his beautiful hair.

This morning I woke up wrapped in a sheet like a mummy. Nothing odd about that but my bedclothes, a t shirt and boxers, were in a pile next to me and they were wet. I turned on the light and little bits of what looked like jello glistened in a pool of a phlegm like substance. Next to that was some crumpled Mylar. It was as if some sorority birthday girl had broken into my room and vomited a night’s worth of Jell-O shots onto my clothes. However, on examination, the Mylar was not a balloon but an emptied gel pack and I was able quite quickly to deduce what had happened.
Last night was very hot and being down to one poorly working air conditioner that I left in the living room for Dan because he is ill, I must have gotten up and gone to the freezer in the middle of the night in search of a frozen turkey with which to sleep. I’m basically vegan but once had a frozen turkey stored in my freezer but I don’t want to talk about that. Anyway, finding no frozen turkey, I grabbed the next best thing, a frozen gel pack. Unfortunately, it somehow sustained a hole and, upon thawing some time later, evacuated its contents all over my body. I was able to rouse myself enough to remove my bedclothes. It’s a shame I finally buried the juvenile raccoon I had in the freezer for so long.

As Sidonia pointed out, I have now reached an age where I can no longer discern the difference between 30 something year old men and teenagers. Not by sight anyway. Perhaps by behavior.
Today on my run, I slipped on some moss, skinning my knee. This happens frequently but this time, I attracted the attention of a red headed boy with alabaster skin who ran to my aid, asking if I were hurt. I assume he is a teenager because I often see him, from the vantage point of my dilapidated porch, visiting my neighbor’s son who I know is a teenager. He looked concerned, no doubt fearing I had broken my hip, and offered to help me up, asking if I lived far. I hypothesize that, for him, I evoked a grandmotherly presence, someone who thought he was the smartest and handsomest boy in the whole world, who baked his favorite cookies and who happily sacrificed her Judge Judy Meet And Great ticket money to send him to Coachella.
Several years ago, back when I could still differentiate between children and those approaching middle age, I tripped on a root and fell, breaking my front teeth. I walked back home, holding my mouth, blood and saliva pouring from my hands down my arms to my elbows. I passed several 30 something year old men on their phones and not a one seemed to notice. To them I was invisible, just a barren spinster whose desiccated ovaries have ceased to produce and whose breasts hang on each side of her sternum like spent wine bladders. If one of them actually were to see me at all, he would be reminded of his mother who, when last seen at Easter dinner, mentioned to his date, his first failed attempt at the Bar exam, how, before this, she had given up a trip to Paris to pay for his LSAT tutor and how, as a teenager, he had cystic acne.

30 something year old men are so obnoxious. I mean obviously 20 something year old men are, as well, but I just see them as children now so it’s not the same. By 30, they’ve put down the bong and stopped going to keg parties. They’ve graduated college and started a career. They’ve decided to get in shape and it’s really easy for them because they are only 30 something. They can run a seven minute mile with little effort. I’ll be doing interval training, running as fast as I can and two of them just breeze by me casually having a conversation about a new mountain bike or how one of them saw Aidan Quinn at the co op and he drives the same Prius. Just a couple of masses of gleaming rippling muscles with no fat flying past me like I’m a fucking sloth. I hope to see one of them when they’re 50 something. He’ll be sitting there at the Rosendale Café with his crotch goblins and his still good looking wife because she’s 10 years younger than him and does Pilates or whatever is trendy then. His hair will be thinning and he’ll have a big paunch and I’ll sneak up to him and whisper in his ear, “Not so fast anymore are you, plump boy!” and then I’ll take off cackling on my Rascal.

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4 th place NY Times Pulp Fiction contest

Trouble with a capital T. That was Trixie. She had the big guns. She had the ammo, too. And if none of that worked, she also had a pink 38 special tucked into her garter belt. “Give me a whiskey and some fire,” she said, putting a cigarette between two scarlet lips. She knew how to bring on the heat, alright. “For the gentleman?”, I asked nodding toward the goon she had brought as muscle. “Some raw meat if you have it.”  She slipped off her jacket revealing a tiny yellow halter top, too tiny for its heavy burden. Yeah, that dame knew how to bring it on. So did I . She wasn’t the only one in the joint packing heat. You wouldn’t know it to look at me but I had a garter myself. And right then, it was chafing the Hell out of me.”

CULTURAL AFFAIRS

You, the Jury: Vote for a Pulp Fiction Contest Winner

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ANDY NEWMAN

DECEMBER 17, 2014 2:02 PMDecember 17, 2014 2:02 pm

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Gretchen M

Rosendale, NY December 17, 2014

Trouble with a capital T. That was Trixie. She had the big guns. She had the ammo, too. And if none of that worked, she also had a pink .38 special tucked into her garter belt. “Give me a whiskey and some fire,” she said, putting a cigarette between two scarlet lips. She knew how to bring on the heat, alright. “For the gentleman?” I asked, nodding toward the goon she had brought as muscle. “Some raw meat if you have it.” She slipped off her jacket revealing a tiny yellow halter top, too tiny for its heavy burden. Yeah, that dame knew how to bring it on. So did I. She wasn’t the only one in the joint packing heat. You wouldn’t know it to look at me but I had a garter myself. And right then, it was chafing the hell out of me.

“Trouble with a capital T. That was Trixie. She had the big guns. She had the ammo, too. And if none of that worked, she also had a pink 38 special tucked into her garter belt. “Give me a whiskey and some fire,” she said, putting a cigarette between two scarlet lips. She knew how to bring on the heat, alright. “For the gentleman?”, I asked nodding toward the goon she had brought as muscle. “Some raw meat if you have it.”  She slipped off her jacket revealing a tiny yellow halter top, too tiny for its heavy burden. Yeah, that dame knew how to bring it on. So did I . She wasn’t the only one in the joint packing heat. You wouldn’t know it to look at me but I had a garter myself. And right then, it was chafing the Hell out of me.”

So I had a ton of laundry to do and I packed it all in the car and got to the laundromat and this couple is using all the big load machines. Two double loaders and three triple loaders.  Every fucking one of them. Like they hadn’t done laundry in a month and thought, “Oh let’s just make a fucking day of it!  We’ll do all OUR laundry all at once and who cares if anyone else has to do any??” So half the machines are out of order but I managed to find two single loaders and stuffed them as full as I could which was still just maybe a quarter of my laundry since I haven’t done any in three weeks. I’ve been busy.

People sometimes leave stuff at my airbnb apartment. Usually it’s something I have no use for like milk or human insulin but a while ago, someone left a really nice grey slouchy hat. The guest was wearing it when she arrived and I noticed and thought it would look really good on me. So when she left it behind a few days later I tried it on and I was right. It looked really good on me, way better than it did on her. A few days later she texted me and told me she was pretty sure she had left her hat at my place. I texted her back to say I was pretty sure the guests who came after her had taken it.
I knew today was going to be beautiful and I was looking forward to going for a really good hike so, of course, I managed to slip on the wet mossy rock at the top of peak, twisting my ankle. It hurt like Hell and that surprised me because my childhood friend, Tawn Edwards, used to twist hers all the time and she said it hurt but she was mousy and flat chested and didn’t even kiss a guy til she was like 24 and I figured she just wanted the attention. Now I feel kind of bad but her parents must have thought the same thing because they never took her to the doctor. It took me an hour dragging myself down on my butt til I got to the barn. When I got there, there were people riding but nobody could hear me because a chain saw was going. It took me 8 tries throwing a rock before I was able to hit one of the horses. It bolted and threw its rider. Finally, the chain saw stopped and I was able to get help but I had to wait like 20 minutes while they made sure the rider had no concussion and they caught the horse. On the good side, the twisted ankle gave me a good excuse to try one of the other things left at my place.
We’ve all heard the horror stories about OxyContin. I read this one where this figure skater broke her pelvis. Apparently she been on the road to the Olympics, a future star. She got so hooked on Oxy, she started stealing from her grand dad and then almost killed him when he confronted her because she was jonesing so bad. What a fucking nightmare. Naturally, I was eager to try it out.
A younger me would have chopped it up and snorted it but, at my age, that just seems tacky. I haven’t snorted anything since the 80’s. Some of my friends were snorting cocaine even in the early 2000’s but it always looked sad and pathetic to me, like someone with thick calves trying to get away with ankle boots. It’s one thing to humiliate yourself but do you really need to embarrass the rest of us? So I washed a pill down with a glass of wine and set myself up with a heating pad and a bunch of NY Times magazines that I hadn’t gotten to yet. I did a Ken Ken first because, I figured, once it took effect, I wouldn’t be able to solve any. Then I started an article about Dupont knowingly poisoning everyone in West Virginia where Dan’s daughter works as a surgery nurse. That’s about the time I started feeling pretty nice. I put down the magazine and noticed Dan had left the tv on. and a movie called Racing Stripes was coming on. In it, this travelling circus gets caught in a big storm and somehow loses a baby zebra in a basket. That was the ‘stripes’ part of the title. This adorable baby zebra in a basket was stuck in the middle of the road during a huge thunderstorm. I was really very relieved when some guy came along in a pick up truck and took the baby zebra to his barn on a farm in Kentucky which of course had race horses. Hence, Racing Stripes.
So I figured I knew where this was headed but I was only partially right. Of course, the zebra ends up racing the thoroughbreds but what I didn’t anticipate was that I would be riding! The NY Times sent out some goggles a few months ago that you hooked up to your phone. You downloaded an app and watched a video in virtual reality. That was cool but what was going on now was much more sophisticated. I had no idea we even had it with our cable subscription. We were flying past the competition and then we were literally flying. It was wonderful and warm and peaceful and it stayed like that for quite a while until I began to feel the zebra’s hairs scratching the inside of my thighs. The zebra was hot and scratchy and uncomfortable but we were over the French Quarter by then so we descended and landed near the Abbey my favorite dive bar where I used to tend bar. I went in to get the zebra a bucket of water from the pump but it wasn’t the Abbey anymore. It was a brightly lit chicken place. That’s when I realized I was dreaming. I often go to the Abbey when I am dreaming and it is always a chicken joint. I knew pretty soon my teeth would start falling out and, when I reached into my mouth, I pulled out a large metal retainer that had cob webs on it. Then my teeth were coming out and I tried to keep track of them so I could have them put back in but they kept falling to the ground and rolling away. Meanwhile, the towel, the only thing I had on, started shrinking and the zebra hairs stuck to the inside of my legs had sprouted and I had black and white hair that I began to pull out in clumps leaving raw oozing skin with pustules. I pulled out clump after clump until I remembered the zebra and realized it was gone.
I searched the nearby French Market and then went to the river thinking maybe it had found the Mississippi but it wasn’t there and I felt nervous and guilty. Finally, I found the zebra just up the block from the Abbey at Kagan’s but, through my neglect, it had turned into a desiccated black rat laying in the shadows and panting from the heat.. I went to the bar to get water but no bartender was there, just a tv. On it a woman about my age in an acid washed denim mini skirt and fringed vest was telling a man that she dressed sexy to get attention from other men because her husband ignored her. The man responded by telling her, “I am not a Hassidic hillbilly with a snoot full of honey bees!” The woman opened her mouth to respond but the man tapped her on the knee and said “Just a minute”. He turned to me and I saw that his eyes had no irises, just red pupils, and his wide mouth was full of long yellow biege rodent teeth. It was Dr. Phil who also happens to be Satan. I don’t mean he is Satan because he is an exploiting whore but because I was in Hell and he was there. Years ago in Norway, I spent three weeks alone in the darkest part of winter in a tiny dismal apartment with almost no money, while my then boyfriend, Thomas Felberg, was recording an album in Sweden. I had no computer and no cable. I was so homesick and depressed that I actually looked forward every day to the one hour when the local tv channel would show Dr. Phil in English. Only Satan could make me look forward to watching that show. He put his face close to mine, so close I could smell his breath. It smelled surprisingly fresh, not at all like sulfur as I had expected. His red pupils went from my toothless mouth to my fist fulls of sticky hot zebra hair and broken teeth and then in his best most midwest chicken pot pie accent, Satan said to me, “How’s that werking fer ya??”

I love fall but not for the changing foliage which I find gaudy and even ostentatious, really.  It’s as if the trees, having been perfectly content to remain a tasteful green for almost half the year suddenly turn into the arboreal equivalent of middle aged Miami trophy wives competing for attention.   Only the Evergreens keep their dignity, though I did see a youngish Juniperus virginiana trying to accessorize with a magentaParthenocissus quinquefolia, or Virginia Creeper.    .  I was embarrassed for it.   There is a German word for that feeling of embarrassment for others.  It’s called  Fremdschämen

Even though one of my best friends is German, she, Ina Kleinsimlinghaus, did not teach it to me.  I had to learn it from a post on Facebook.  All Ina ever taught me to say is “Has Du Einen grossen doodle?”. I’m sure I’m not spelling it correctly but doodle is a term for a penis. .  As you can imagine, Cheez Doodles, or cheese dicks are not a popular item in Germany.   They are even brighter orange than Parthenocissus quinquefolia or California Creepers.

Jesus and Hector from down the street are hanging out under the trestle with the cholos, drinking beer and singing Charlie Daniels Band songs. My old landlord payed for them to come here to be bellhops in his hotel, basically slave labor, but they have other duties to perform as well. They just shrugged when he told them. They knew being bellhop slaves was too good to be true. Anyway, their other chores led them to meet the cholos and now they are drunk and teaching the cholos English by teaching them Charlie Daniels songs. When they were traveling through Oklahoma with all its wind and dust, they had taken refuge in a rusted out 1976 Chevy Nova. You could barely tell it had been turqoise. In the 8 track tape player was the Charlie Daniel’s Band, Fire on the Mountain. Hector pulled at it and, surprisingly, it slid right out. He fell asleep staring at the flowers, river and robust looking raccoons on the cover and took it as a good sign of things to come in America. He wasn’t very surprised to find out he was wrong. Now John has to make coffee for all of them while they sober up..

Gracie Finch

I was looking for batteries in the dollar store when Gracie Finch burst in with two guys who would have had mullets if they had any sense of style at all.  She’d been eating Cheetos and was chugging down a Big Gulp Mountain Dew.  I knew about the Cheetos because her hands and half her face were orange and, if that weren’t enough,  there was an orange dusting on her bare white stomach that fell out of her halter top over her skin tight spandex shorts.  Her eyes frantically searched the aisles  and  then she saw me.  I said, “Hi Gracie.  How are you?”  She adjusted her glasses which had fallen down her nose, blinked  a few times  and then  recognized me.  She rolled her eyes.  I had just wasted her time. “I don’t have time to talk now.”  and she plunged noisily  down the snack aisle, resurfacing moments later with a bag of Ruffles and a can of onion dip.  “If you are having chips, you gotta have you some fucking dip!”  she had told me once before passing out snoring in a sugar and carb coma on my couch.  That was down on Main street.  Stuff like that never happens up  here next to the trestle.