Things You Might Not Know About Me

I began riding horses when I was six.  We had friends who had a dairy farm just north of Salt Lake.  When the adults got together the kids went riding. We rode bareback with simple rope halters.  In the morning after milking, we herded the cows back to pasture.  In the late afternoon we rounded them up and herded them back to the barn.  We helped with milking in the days long before milking machines.  I would sit on a stool and lean my forehead into the fragrant warmth of a cow who seemed grateful to have her udder emptied.  I was proud of my strong hands and the feeling of competence I got knowing that my help was welcome and praised.  Barn cats would line up to get a squirt straight from the teat.

I learned to ski when I was six and I got very good at it.  There was never a ski season that I didn't sprain a knee or ankle getting in one last run on a dying day.

 I played softball at school when I was seven, eight, nine.  I was the pitcher on my team and my best friend, Mary Dorsche was the first baseman.  We vied for home-run champ honors at bat.  She lived on a horse farm down the road and across the highway to town from our house in Redmond, Oregon.  After school and on the weekends we took turns riding horses and practiced pitching and batting.  I was a grubby little jock.  And then hormones flooded my little body making nipples tender and swollen, making pubic hair sprout.  And in the space of a couple of months I could no longer slide into home-plate on my belly.  Mary and I were now in a race to a freakishly early puberty.  But gone was the wild freedom of our fearless athleticism on the playground.

Throughout my long life I have kept riding horses. I had a girlfriend who ran the Equestrian Classes for the University of Utah.  She always had at least thirty or so well behaved horses for classes.  I taught beginning western riding and took kids out on trail rides up Corner Canyon in Draper, Utah.  Now and then we would take a group on an overnight camp-out carrying provisions on pack horses.  We crewed in the Park City Ride and Tie.  I crewed for Terry on National Endurance Races.  We would begin the very early morning with a joint and a beer.  Now that's the breakfast of champions!

In my early fifties I was helping a male friend condition his polo ponies during the winter months and very early spring.  In exchange for this help he taught me to play polo.  There is hardly anything more exhilarating than galloping down a polo field on a great horse, reigns in left hand and polo mallet in the other, leaning far forward and making contact with the ball to out maneuver an opponent.

I wrecked my knees skiing.  In my late forties I had to have my anterior cruciate repaired and gave up downhill skiing.  But in all my long life of riding horses, I had only one fall, landing on my tailbone in winter on the frozen ground.  It was the final insult to my sacrum.  I have suffered back pain ever since, but I can't blame it all on that fall.  And if I had the chance to ride a great horse on a good trail, I'd fly like the wind grinning from ear to ear.   Only one of my friends shared my love of the wild ride, the power of well conditioned horseflesh between my legs, the feel of strength and competence I felt in my skill as a rider.

In the early 1990s they closed Corner Canyon and developed the land my friend's riding stable was located on, forcing her to move to Greenriver. I miss her and her great horses.  Now I only dream of riding.

Who, Me?

Once in awhile things get wacky on twitter.  I was recently called a "rich bitch ex-fashion model who has no right to call (myself) a progressive."  Aside from the fact that I have never been rich, the statement shows the bias so many have against women who were able to support themselves by their looks.  I suppose if I were telling everyone I'd made my living as a high priced hooker, they might not feel quite the same way.  But still, it is probably true that women with the certain set of appearance qualifications to make a modest living modeling are not exactly beloved by the rest of the population.  Certain assumptions are made about us.  I'd like to dispel a few of them now:

1. All models are anorexic
No, most models are born with the genetic goods and eat like pigs. We come from families where almost every member of the clan is tall and thin throughout all their lives.  It's in the bones, not the diet.

2. All models are narcissists
Quite the contrary.  All the models I knew were deeply insecure and none of them felt "beautiful."  It's one thing to be told you're beautiful all your life; it's quite another to see yourself as beautiful.  We were a bunch of women who knew we were tall enough, thin enough, but beautiful?  Maybe passably pretty, but certainly not beautiful.  And no amount of reassurance and constant bookings can make a woman see herself as a beauty.

3. All models are rich bitchs
Some models marry rich men, but most do not.  And the few who do, don't generally marry nice guys, since nice guys aren't usually brave enough to ask a model out.  Few models make enough over their life as a model to save for retirement.  Most models have self-esteem problems just like most women in this culture.  Modeling is an expensive and usually short-lived career: they have to keep up with trends in fashion and look the part; they have to buy a new shoe wardrobe each season; they have to purchase the exact undergarments the people who hire them want them to wear to fittings and in shows; all models are contract labor, which means they pay for all the things an employer would pay for any employee.  Models need a tax accountant; they pay their agents 15% of their bookings; they have to keep a portfolio updated; they have to get a new headshot or model's card made ever year or as often as they change anything in their appearances, such as haircut or color.  As to the bitch part of that statement? I suspect that models are no more or less likely to be bitches than women in the general population.

Any questions?

Things Have Changed

I began blogging as a political writer.  In the beginning that's all I wrote about in this space.  Once I began getting awards for my blog, I had to write pieces that were more personal, since so often awards come with conditions, and those conditions are often of a very personal nature.  And yes, I do believe that the personal is political, but telling you about the minute details of my daily life led me to writing about the interior monologue of an aging solitary woman.  Some of you found that interesting.  Some of you stopped dropping by, probably disappointed that I was no longer sticking to the script.

I am in many respects a diarist.  I write about what's happening in my daily life.  And in truth, nothing much is happening.  I shop for groceries, do the laundry, clean the house, feed the dogs, but other than these mundane matters, I don't do much but think and read and watch the news and write about the politics of our time.  And for a long while that was enough.  I began to be part of a larger blogging community; I visited most of you daily and left a comment.  Then Twitter happened.  And what had been the maim focus of my blog (politics) was satisfied in a far more immediate form on twitter.  I began to gain a following there, and the conversation there is in the minute, moment by moment, following political events as they happen.  During the healthcare debate over this past year those of us on twitter spent days doing little else but watching events unfold on CSpan and talking about it.  It was in this time that I lost most of you.  There are very few of you who got the twitter bug quite in the same way it infected me.  For an isolated person twitter gives me the illusion that I'm part of a very large community.  I had no idea how starved I was for this sense of community, this passionate and immediate camaraderie.

Then I committed the sin of writing a couple of chapters of a new work that is an examination of eroticism.  I have a stat-counter like all of you.  And though traffic has remained relatively steady, comments ceased altogether.  There seemed to be a stunned silence.  I'm not entirely sure why.  As one of a group of female writers who seemed pretty fearless in talking about the most intimate aspects of our lives, I thought I was in the company of women who could say anything and get away with it.  But it seems I crossed some invisible line and delved into forbidden territory.  I have removed the offending stories from this blog and put them where they really belong ~ in the short story blog.

But things have changed for me.  I now spend most of my day tweeting my life away.  The reason I don't make the rounds of blogs with the consistency I once did, is that twitter satisfies my need for a community of like minded politicos.  Twitter is raucous and outrageous and immediately satisfying.  The character limitations was at first a challenge for this long winded broad, but now seems perfect.  At first I thought it was impossible to say anything meaningful in 140 characters, but now I see it as the art of getting to the point.

There will be times when what I find on twitter makes the blog a place to more fully express my passion about this or that issue.  This is not the end of my blog; this is just the beginning of a different phase of my writing life.

To those of you I offended enough to make the silent statement of dropping me, of no long following me, I apologize.  To those of you who kept reading, even if you felt unwilling to comment, I say gird your loins, it's going to be a new, and in my opinion intersting, journey into uncharted waters.  If you enjoyed the erotica despite yourself, you'll be able to find it in the short story blog.

Madame Z, You Were Right

I can't remember if it was the day before I went in the hospital or the day I got out, but I got a call from the female part of the New Kids.  I'm not a nice sick person, ask Bambie.  Some people are patient and kind even when their sick. I'm almost never that way (sick or well) and this probably accounts for the small number of friends who still speak to me. If you put your foot in your mouth in my presence, I'm likely to point it out to you.  Nice people will probably pretend they didn't notice, and go right on with the civil conversation and reasonable tone of voice.  Not me.

The female part of the New Kids called to tell me they would be moving in April or May. This means they will no longer be making the slightest effort to help out, since they now have no incentive to stay on my good side.  They were trying to at least stay out of my way before, since there have been problems from the start.  I should have listened to Madam Z who left a comment to my post about the New Kids when they first moved in.  Here is her comment in full:

Madam Z said...

Hmmm...they're both writers and they have two dogs. This does not bode well for the continued cleanliness of the house. But for now, everything is adorable and I'm happy for you.

I was happy to have the New Kids move into the main house.  I thought that would allow me to concentrate on my little part of this little slice of a moderately good life.  I also thought that their both being writers we'd understand each other.  Oh dream on, ancient one.

I don't know why I always assume that an adult male will know how to screw in a lightbulb. When I grew up men were either taught things by their fathers or they learned how to do things during their time in the Military.  Those were the days.  Now it seems men don't even know how to empty an ashtray or take out the garbage.  This particular one doesn't seem to know how to use a rake either.  I blame their parents, but that doesn't get them off the hook entirely.  If no one taught you how to empty an ashtray and you are the only smoker in your household, pick up the ashtray that looks like a bristling porcupine, so overstuffed with brown butts it is, and walk the ten feet to the garbage can outside, lift the lid, and dump the goddamned contents in the trash.  How hard can it be?  I know six year olds who could handle a chore that simple.

The female part of the New Kids had unfortunate timing in calling me either they day I went into the hospital or the day I got home.  Neither day was very pleasant for me.  But hearing that they were going to move after only staying here a couple of months really pissed me off.  What is it with young people who move every few months?  My guess is they bit off more than they can chew, economically speaking.  And I think they thought they could leave their two dogs outside all the time they were gone and their dogs would behave themselves and not piss off the neighbors.  If you have an untrained border collie who doesn't get much attention, it will find some fairly negative and destructive way to complain.

Yesterday when I got home from my doctor appointment I checked the mail before heading back to my cottage.  There was a gas bill.  Since I did not have them put the utilities in their names (just in case) I was curious to see if they paid the past month's bill.  They had not.  I was already pissed off and not feeling very good, physically.  Then when I walked through the gate into the back of the property, I noticed the three ashtrays lined up on the side of the grill all stuffed with butts.  Torque that temper a little tighter.

I needed to change my sheets and do laundry so I opened the door to the laundry room to discover that the door to their house was open.  Hot air was blasting out of their house, since the laundry room isn't terribly well insulated and airtight.  I find this after discovering that they didn't pay last month's gas bill.  I snap!  No one is home so I just walk in and turn down the thermostat which is set at 70 degrees on day that's sunny and balmy.  I'm sure their dogs, barking from one of the bedrooms upstairs, are hot. Heat rises and it's hot downstairs.  I'm guessing they might have windows cracked upstairs and the sucking sound is gas being wasted.  I object to this on so many levels, but is it really any of my business?  It is now.

Here's That Rainy Day

Pain in the Postpartum Ward (not for the squeamish)

Once the ER decided to admit me to the hospital it was determined I'd be going into "overflow." I was wheeled into the "Postpartum Ward" and down the hall, far, far away from the nurses station.  I later learned the four elderly patients in the Postpartum ward were there so we could have private rooms.  I didn't ask for a private room, nor did I care whether or not I had one.  There were two things I did care about;  I needed to stay on my bipolar drugs and I needed the nurses to stay ahead of the pain.  And here might be the clues to some of the very bad care I got there.

I'm allergic to narcotics.  In order for me to be able to take a narcotic, it's introduction into my system must be preceded by a good anti-nausea drug.  If not given an anti-nausea drug, I vomit until the narcotic is out of my system.  That's just the way I roll. This in itself should alert the nurses administering my pain medication that if I'm screaming in pain, I'm not faking it so I can get more narcotics. I am not fond of narcotics.

Once taken out of the ER and into the Postpartum Ward nurses would give me a pill for anti-nausea and within seconds of my swallowing the pill they would inject the Dilaudid directly into the IV port.  So the narcotic would hit my system immediately while the anti-nausea drug had to be digested.  In my opinion this is a very bad policy since it cause unnecessary vomiting.  In the ER they injected the anti-nausea drug into my IV port prior to injecting the Dilaudid.  So when I was wheeled onto the Postpartum Ward I wasn't in pain.  This gave me a moment's lucidity to notice my surroundings.  I had a private room.  I hadn't asked for a private room, so I asked about that.  Why a private room?  I was told that the hospital was making an effort to turn every room into a private room.  Nice, fine, but now I have questions about billing.  Will I be charged for a private room I didn't request?  Is that a cockroach crawling across the dirty squares of the acoustical tile ceiling above my bed?  I checked the drawers in the bedside chest.  In the old days, there would have been a little stainless steel kidney shaped pan to vomit in.  There would also be a cheap tooth brush, a small tube of toothpaste, and a low-rent comb.  All three drawers were empty.  I asked for something to vomit into and was given a big pink plastic tub (much like the tub I use at home to scrub floors with).  There was no washcloth, no towel in the bathroom.  Since I'd come into the ER dehydrated as well as having an abscess in my colon there was a little container in the toilet to capture urine so my "output" could be measured and charted.  Several times the nurses neglected to measure my "output" resulting in the shocking experience of sitting on the toilet and finding myself actually sitting in my own urine. I just dumped the "output" into the toilet water and then replaced the empty container so I could pee.  Best medical care in the world, my ass.

There were times during my two night / two day stay when I was in such excruciating pain I was delirious and screaming for help.  I pushed the call button, waited a few minutes, pushed the call button again and eventually had a nurse answer the call with something like mild annoyance, saying "What do you need?"  "I'm in terrible pain."  " You aren't due for another shot for an hour."  "Somethings very wrong.  If you gave me the right dose of  painkiller I would be able to make it through to the next shot."  "Sorry.  Just try and relax."  And then speaker would click off.

A word about the Postpartum Ward: Changes in the insurance industry have probably made the Postpartum Ward obsolete.  These days you might as well have your baby in a turnip patch, because once that baby is out of your womb the hospital will be under pressure to get you home as fast as possible.  If you have postpartum problems they are more than likely going to be considered "a pre-existing condition," and you'll be given a pill to get you through it.  Hopefully you won't kill hubby and the five children you already have.  But since there is no postpartum care these days that requires an entire ward, the hospital has a ward it isn't using.  So, lucky me; I was "overflow" and sent to the Postpartum Ward, where the rooms at the far end of the ward were private rooms, probably reserved for the lucky wives of wealthy men who could afford a private room to keep their batty wives in until the "baby blues" were over.

My second night I had a pain crisis at shift change.  I don't know if the day nurse had given me a dose of dilaudid before she left, but the poor night nurse had to face a screaming, sobbing me, hanging doubled over on the medical device from which my IV bags were hanging, to show up in front of the nurses station.  The aid was reading a book with his feet propped up on a chair.  I was upset that I was in so much pain, but I was also worried that they weren't giving me my bipolar medications in accurate doses or on time. To the night nurses credit, she did not snap back at me.  She remained calm as I screamed at her, tears of pain and frustration running down my face.  I had a major melt down that I believe was entirely unnecessary, avoidable, and detrimental to my health.  Had they controlled my pain, none of that would have happened.  But I think that went in my medical record in a way that allowed then to consider my cries of pain as the ravings of a drug seeking lunatic.

I survived the night; the next morning I was feeling better.  The antibiotics and flagyl were working and the night nurse had kept my pain under control.  But with the arrival of my clear liquid diet (more on that in another piece) came the new Day Nurse.  Let's call her Bambie.  First time I noticed her in my room was when she came in to take my vitals.  I had MSNBC on the tube.  Nancy Pelosi was being interviewed.  Bambie wrinkled her lovely nose and said, "Who is she?"  I said, "That's Nancy Pelosi."  She asked, "What does she do?"  I said, "She's the Speaker of the House."  She asked, "What's that?"
While I was pondering whether or not to attempt to educate Bambie on the workings of the United States Congress, a tall, thin, redheaded, freckled faced man walked into my room.  He said, "Hi, I'm Chris Rock from Risk Assessment.  How are we treating you?"  I burst out laughing and asked for his businness card.  While I was glancing at his card I saw Bambie take my medical history and covertly, but not very expertly, draw Chris Rock's attention to the malady listed top of the page.  She pointed to it with one hand as she held it with the other.  They both raised their eyebrows at the same times as if they were saying, "Well, that explains a lot."  I said, "Bambie, what is that paper in your hand and why are you showing it to him?"
"It's just your medical record."
"Is bipolar listed at the top of that page?"
Silence
Chris Rock says, "Why would that matter?"
"It might make you think, 'No need to take her seriously, she's just crazy.'  If you want to know why I'm in the hospital, ask me!  If you want permission to take a peek at my medical records ask me; you're in my room (My volume is rising). And you, Bambie, you have just broken the law. You have shown someone my medical records without my permission,  That, you stupid bitch, is against the law.  Get the fuck out of my room."  They both stand in stunned silence.

I stand up.  Once again I say, "Get the fuck out of my room!"  This time I add, "Both of you!"  Neither of them moves, but they do look at each other and then back at me.  "If you don't leave my room instantly I'm ripping this god damn IV port out of my arm and calling a cab."  I start peeling the tape off my arm.  Chris Rock says, "That will really hurt."  I say, "I don't give a shit."  Get out of my way.  By now Bambie is backing out of my room.  But Chris Rock is holding steady.  I advance on him, and the last thing he says before he backs out of my room is, "Insurance won't pay if you leave before you're discharged."  That was the only helpful thing he said.  I shouted "Where is my doctor?  Call him now."

I called the hospital operator and ask for the hospital Ombudsman.  She asks "what's that?"  But then puts me through to a number.  The phone rings about five times and then a mans voice answers.  I say "Is this the Ombudsman?"  He says, "What's that?"  I ask, "Is this Chris Rock?"  

I grab my the thingy my IV bags are hanging from and start stomping down the hall to go outside and have a smoke.  Up ahead of me I see Bambie coming out of a room and I call out, "Run Bambie. Run!"

Referred Pain

Tuesday was the day it dawned on me that something I thought of as referred pain from my back was a whole new problem.  For awhile now my friend up the street has been telling me I didn't look good.  She'd say things like, "You don't look like yourself." And yes, I did have deep bruised looking circles under my eyes; back pain can wear you out.  But Tuesday the back pain turned into gut pain.  Every step hurt my gut.  I found myself holding my breath or breathing like a woman in labor.  I had a doctor appointment scheduled for Thursday, and I thought I should just take it easy and wait for my appointment with her, but by 5 PM I was in a whole new kind of agony and feeling like I had a fever as well as unbearable gut pain. I have gall stones that have never hurt me, but I thought maybe it was the gall stones finally come to really do me harm.  Since I'd spent the day on twitter I threw the question out there and several people chimed in with questions and suggestions but eventually all the advise was saying "Get thee to an ER, STAT!"

I'm one of those cold blooded people with an abnormally low body temperature. 98.6 is a fever for me.  I took my temperature and it was 99.7.  I waited a half an hour and it was 100.1.  Just before I called my neighbor to ask her what she thought I should do, my gut started to hurt so bad I was doubled over with agonizing pain.  She heard the panic in my voice and said, "grab you purse; I'm coming to get you."  I'd been taking 800mgs of Ibuprofen to deal with the pain but forgot that it should have lowered my temperature as well.  When we got to the closest ER, which is the old St Marks Hospital where my grandfather had been Chief of Staff and is now the new Salt Lake Regional Hospital, the pain had started to localize to the lower part of my gut on the right side.  My friend said, "That's where your appendix is" so when we got inside the ER I was sure that was going to be the diagnosis.  On the way to the ER in her car I was gripping my hands together and holding my breath trying to cope with the pain.  When we got inside my friend noticed that I'd burst a blood vessel in the middle finger of my left hand; the finger was a deep blue/purple and the bruise was spreading.

Fortunately as I was getting ready to leave home with my neighbor I grabbed all my prescription drugs because I knew I wouldn't be able to remember them all.  I'm on a lot of prescription drugs.  Don't do it. Do not lecture me on the horrors of pharmaceuticals.  I'm bipolar. Without those drugs I'd be dead, a suicide. It is the leading cause of death among those of us with bipolar disorder.  Then there is the atrial fibrillation.  That's another three drugs including the Warfarin.  There is a blood pressure drug, a baby aspirin, and a double dose of a statin drug for my high cholesterol which is genetic and can't be controlled with diet.  Let me think, is there anything else?  Well, yes, yes there is. There is the diazepam I take for the occasional panic attack or chronic anxiety. I take three 800mg Ibuprofen a day, I take one of either of two drugs for the kind of headaches I get.  Then there is the Triazolam I take when I can't get to sleep.  I know it 's a lot of drugs, but all my seven doctors have my list of RXs and the pharmacy checks for drug interactions whenever anything gets called in, so get off my back about it.  Are you a doctor?  Well then do not lecture me.  In the olden days I'd have died in my teens or twenties.  I think I'm a fucking medical miracle, and I do not abuse any of these drugs.  My doctors would know very fast.  I never exceed dosage and I don't use the diazepam every day.  In fact some months I don't use it at all. I'm a very compliant patient.  I know my life depends on it.

We waited in the empty ER waiting room for fifteen minutes before they came and got me (very fast by any ER standards).  By now I'm moaning and doubled over.  They took my vital signs and my fever was starting to come down.  But it sure didn't feel like it to me.  They drew blood and took a urine sample.  It was only minutes when the ER doc on call came in and told me they needed to do a CT scan of my gut.  I thought "groovy" until they brought in the quart of lime green liquid I was supposed to guzzle.  I have no idea what it is because by now I'm delirious with pain and unable to actually track a conversation.  I do know it was vile tasting and as I was drinking it I thought I might vomit.  Once in the CT room they inject a dye in the IV line taped to my arm.  I don't even remember when they inserted the IV line I was in such pain.  But it was in the crook of my left arm, the only half way decent vein I have (I've been told a million times by lab techs who have to draw blood from me that I have terrible veins; they are tiny and they roll).  I've had lab techs try over and over to insert a needle into one of my veins and fail over and over.  That I don't remember the nurse in the ER inserting an IV port in my arm amazes me; it's usually such a trauma. Not for me so much as it is for the frustrated lab tech.

When they come with the results of the CT scan, I'm fully expecting them to say it's either my gallbladder or my appendix.  But no, it's my colon.  I have an abscess and diverticulitis or diverticulosis.  I'm still not sure what's the difference, but I do know that the pain is killing me.  The pain is unbearable.

While we wait for the surgeon to arrive and decide if they're going to drain the abscess or take nine inches off my colon, they ask me if I'm allergic to anything.  I tell them I'm allergic to two things: Celebrex and all narcotics. They ask me what happens if I'm given a narcotic.  I say I start vomiting and don't stop until the drug is out of my system.  (This has probably saved me from heroin addiction). I tell them that the only way I can take a narcotic is if I'm given an anti-nausea drug first and that the anti-nausea drug has to last as long as the narcotic.  So they inject an anti-nausea drug into the IV port; then they inject Dilaudid.  Even with the anti-nausea drug on board I still get nauseated, my mouth fills with saliva like it does just before you puke, but I do not start vomiting.

At this point it's clear they're going to admit me to the hospital.  The surgeon says they'll treat me with Levaquin, Flagyl and IV fluids since I am severely dehydrated, and then depending on how that goes, they will or will not either drain it or remove it.  (Honestly, I've never been big on water since it doesn't have caffein in it).  Juices and soft drinks are okay, but really they're mostly too sweet.  So I drink coffee in the morning and tea the rest of the day.  Some of you may judge me, but I drink really good coffee and very good tea.  What I lack in variety, I make up for in quality.  At least I think so.  Interestingly no one's giving me a lecture on my dehydration except my neighbor who always asks me if I've had any water whenever she sees me.  So what water I drink is mainly to placate her or take my handfull of pills with. If I were outside working in the yard I'd get thirsty for water.  There are plenty of things I could do that would make me sweat and crave water.  But during the winter and being so reclusive and all, it just slips my mind most of the time.

At this point, while we're waiting to find out what room they're putting me in, I ask if I can go outside and have a smoke.  The Dilaudid has taken the edge off the pain and that reminds me that my nicotine level is low.  A nurse volunteers to take me out to the smoking area.  Turns out she was jonesing for a smoke too.  See, there are very many medical professionals who smoke cigarettes.  I know this in part because Ms M works in the University Hospital ER. A lot of EMTs smoke too.  It's stressful work.

When we go back inside they've decided where to put me.  I'm going to "overflow" which turns out to be a section of the maternity ward that is no longer needed.  It's called the Postpartum Ward.

(to be continued)

Every Time We Say Goodbye

If I Should Lose You

Pain: Part 2. Renovation Begins

I'm now in so much back pain that every step hurts.  Each step sends an intensified jolt of pain into my lower back and, oddly, to my gut as well.  I have gall stones that have been asymptomatic so far, but now I'm wondering if this pain could be related.  I have a doctor appointment Thursday.  I'm making notes and writing down questions.

When I left you at the end of the first chapter in my pain saga, I had dug a utility trench, leveled an area for a gazebo, and then mixed the cement for the floor of the gazebo wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow.

 Once the garage had been emptied of all it's stored furniture and antique wood working tools, I started making measurements and drawings of what I wanted.  The garage itself is just 20 by 20.  But the ceiling/roof is made up of four triangles which make the interior space seen airy and bigger than it actually is.  The ceiling is pyramidal.  I love it.  The one thing I didn't remove from the garage the first couple of years was the army camp stove that sat in the west quadrant of the room and had a chimney that exited the roof in the west triangle.  And in the coldest days, the camp stove warmed the space in minutes once a crackling fire was going.  I could also use the flat top of the camp stove to heat water for coffee or tea, I could cook on it.  And in the beginning it was very helpful.  Plus I liked the primitive quality of it.  I liked waking up to stir the coals and stoke the fire and go back to bed to wait for the room to become toasty warm.

Once I had my drawings of the things I wanted to do to garage to turn it into a cottage, I had to find someone willing to do the construction and do it without permits.  The garage was so far at the back of the property and construction was not going to be the kind that neighbors or anyone driving by the property in the front would notice.  But I did need someone with good enough contacts that we could get the concrete guys to pour the foundation for the bathroom/solarium addition.  Amazingly I found two guy with just those qualifications.  What I didn't want to pay them for was the work I could do. So before the foundation could be poured, I did the digging out and leveling the earth.  More backbreaking hard labor.  I had to dig up the root system for a big wild yellow rose bush probably as old as the garage.  I was amazed at the rocks I found in my digging.  I found more slate as well as big chunks of coal buried in the hard clay dirt on the south side of the garage.  I found big round river rocks. I found blue glass bottles and shards of china.  I found ancient marbles that I have kept as trophies of that work.  This site must have been the old garbage dump for the main house in its early days.

While I was digging out the foundation for the extension, the two guys I hired were taking out the garage door and putting in a wall with a window.  They knocked out a door that would lead to the new room where only a window had existed.  They framed the interior, insulated, built a largish walk-in closet for my massive wardrobe and a small utility closet for the water heater.

So all the first spring and summer I dug and moved stones while the two guys worked inside.  At the end of that season I had the foundation poured for the extension and the interior was sheet-rocked and ready for the kitchen to go in.  The 400 sq ft interior was now not just a big square.  It was still open but for the two closets.  That fall I had the exterior cement block sides of the structure stuccoed.  I had a tool shed built along the exterior north wall and a deck built across the west wall that wraps around the cottage.  By the end of that season I had a toilet, tub, and sink in the bathroom portion of the addition.  Once that was in, I laid the tile floor myself.  I was very proud of all the labor I contributed to making the cottage not only livable but lovely.  I did all of this while still working as a model and department manager at Nordstroms.  I had never been in better shape.  I was muscled and strong.  I think the word is not just toned, but ripped.  I was stronger than I'd ever been and I was in my forties.  And I thought I was invincible.

All that first winter living in the cottage I woke up at 5 AM to stoke the fire and got back in bed for a delicious half hour of drifting in and out of sleep.  When I came home from work in the dark I chopped kindling.  I didn't have a fridge that first winter so I kept a cooler on the porch and kept milk, cheese, and eggs there.  I was living like a pioneer at home and a fashionista at work.  It was an intersting year.

Women in Art

For All We Know

Here

Here at the pulse where the blood brings a blush
Here at this tender spot
Here is the heat, the scent
Here the flesh awaits your
tongue
Here is where I want your
lips
Here at the beginning
Here

A Case of You

Black Rock 1992

After Santa Barbara
First photo shoot
I was forty eight
Location: Black Rock, Great Salt Lake
I like the strength of the gaze
The curvy body, the hair cut
I like the contrast of flesh and rock
The grainy quality of this proof
cropped from the original
I can't remember the photographer's name.

My Foolish Heart

For LBR

My Foolish Heart

The Talent

I've sealed myself away from love and ceased
To live with passion, hiding where once I wore
Cobalt silk and saffron, where once I stood
In hot white light and stayed up late to have
Martinis.  Eating mussels at the cool club with
The fashionista girls in full throated laughter
Heads thrown back, necks exposed, lips glistening red
We were the ones, the last of the smalltime superstars
In this cozy little world in the good times when money
Flowed like Champagne at midnight, and then one day
It flew apart, and one after another, life took us by the throat, the lovely
Pulsing throat, the long neck, exposed just when it all comes
crashing down, and one by one disappears to babies or booze,
One gets her PhD, another a divorce, one checks her bottom line
And makes a marriage deal worked out by lawyers in a conference room.
In agents terms we were the talent,
We seemed to have it all out there on the
Catwalk in the blinding light, bright women
With talent and brains and appetites flying
Smoking through the evening on the phone
As we drove to the next booking for a big
Show wielding a mascara brush in the dying light,
A flash of red lips and cobalt silk.
You see us in your rearview mirror gaining on you
As the sun sets just behind the island we flash by
We are laughing and oblivious to any danger
We lived on credit like the rest of you waiting
For the good times to return.
And then in resignation get on with living alone in a small house
Kept company, protected by three dogs
Existing only as a cyber link to an outer world I will never likely
Enter again with anything but words typed on a keyboard late at night
In anything but a naked face and beige at the grocery store or the bank

© 2010 Peggy Pendleton

A Few Thoughts On the Orgasm and Men

I've never been turned on by pornography.  I know plenty of women say they like it, but I have never seen porn that didn't embarrass me.  And more than one man has tried to share his love of the porn with me, believing that if he found just the right film, it would change my mind.  But no, all pornography does for me is make me dislike the men in the films and the man who wants me to watch that crap.  What turns me on happens between my ears, and I'm not speaking of the mouth orifice or throat.  If my brain is not engaged or is repulsed by the content of something I'm supposed to be watching, my clit will be repulsed too.

It's also a problem for me if too much is going on at one time in the actual in the flesh (not porn) sex department. For instance I'm not a fan of cunnilingus and especially not a fan of 69 though I should be since the numbers typed like that resemble my astrological sign, but it's too much stimulation for me and has never ever brought me to orgasm.  I could never come home from a stressful day and decompress with a little hot steamy 69 or really any sex.  I couldn't get my mind to shut off that fast and distraction is the enemy of the female orgasm or at least this female's orgasm.

This is not to say I haven't tried damn near everything that came my way, sexually speaking.  I've had so many lovers over this long life span that I can't count them.  Hell, I can't even remember half of them; that's how significant they were.  Nameless, faceless young or older men moved through my life in a way that left me unmoved and incapable of either remembering or sometimes preferring not to remember.  That's not to say there weren't some astounding standouts I'll never forget. Tom was such a man.  But his taste for porn turned me off and he isn't really a relationship guy.  In 1965 there was Nino Cerruti.  He was my favorite Italian lover.  God was he wonderful.  He was so wonderful I refused to continue seeing him.  That's how much love scares me.  But I'm not talking about love.  I'm talking about sex.  Not to say they're mutually exclusive; to the contrary, love might be the only way for some women to feel secure enough to relax enough for orgasm to happen.  I'm not one of those women.  I was sexually objectified too young, for too long, to put sex and love on equal footing.  Love had very little to do with it. But orgasmic sex with little effort on my part has always been my preferred way to go.  Too much need or too many expectations or too much fear and orgasm is impossible for me.

And then I gave up on men.  I was through with men.  Men tend to want to control me.  Men seem want to tell me what to do.  I'd rather they just do it and pay for it and not bother me with the details.  For a brief while I had an affair with a Salt Lake doctor who despite the fact that I not only found him repulsive and rather stupid, made the claim that if I'd just look him in the eyes as we were having sex he could guarantee the worlds best orgasm.  I know, I laughed too.  But I'm a wee bit evil and a good sport, so I let him have this test of his powers.  What I proved was that I can look a man in the eyes during sex and convincingly fake an orgasm.  And I'm not nice enough not to tell him afterwards.

There was a Sculptor in Costa Rica who made quite a nice gallant civilized effort to get me in his bed.  I knew he'd be wonderful in bed.  I found him sexually attractive in the extreme.  I spent the night at his house.  But I would not have sex with him and I would not sleep in his bed.  I knew I could fall in love with him.  I didn't want to fall in love with anyone.  Sometimes sex means a great deal.  Sometimes it means nothing or next to nothing.

It's been four years since I had the slightest interest in a man.  The last man to turn me on at all walked into my backyard to give me an estimate on a new roof for the little house.  I didn't really notice him all that much until he started calling me at night.  Then there were months of cheeky email chats.  He wanted to show me his house.  But it wasn't really his house he wanted to show me.  I stayed home and gave him shit about hitting on a woman a year older than his own mother.  This didn't seem to cool his ardor much until a real estate woman with lots of tats and piercings started hitting on him.  I was relieved.  I did find him very appealing.  But he was forty something and had his twelve year old daughter and twenty something son staying with him.  And I didn't want any complications or distractions in my life.  So I turned myself off.

Readers of my blog will remember my blooming romance with Cal and how badly it turned out. There was the idea of the very young Peggy and the very young Cal.  That memory was lovely until I invited him over for dinner. And the very old Peggy was not only not sexually attracted to the very old Cal she was mean to him, and told every little detail on the blog.   It was then I decided to stop thinking I'd ever have a sex life again.  I'm not looking for a companion.  I never want to live with a man again. That's never worked out well for me.  So I turned the sex spiggot off.  My clit might as well have dried up and blown away.  I even forgot where I'd put my vibrator.  I thought I might have thrown it away, that's how serious I was about not having an interest in sex anymore.  And then a man I don't know at all said something interesting to me on twitter and now I've found my vibrator and have used it enough to make the muscles of my inner thighs and my butt sore.  Don't let anybody tell you the female orgasm isn't good exercise.  It may not burn many calories but it sure can tone muscle.

The Judith Blue Stories: #3. Black and Blue

Judith realized even before she decided to let him ride with her that Junior was useless.  He couldn't drive her car.  She always thought being able to drive anything was an asset in a man or a woman, but a man's inability to drive a car with a stick shift was pathetic.  Out of the blue she asks him, "How did you evade the draft?"  The moment the words are out of her mouth she realizes that her assumption may be all wrong.  Maybe his fondness for heroin is a habit brought back from Vietnam.  But he has a softness about him that does not speak to any kind of military service, and could a man make it through basic training without learning how to drive a stick shift?  She can always leave him in a truck stop men's room and take off without him if he becomes a problem.
"I drew number two in the first lottery."
"And yet, I'm betting you did not go."
"You would win that bet."
"Do you find it difficult to carry on a conversation?"
"Not with you.  Ask me anything."
"Tell me something.  Anything.  Make it true and then elaborate.  Kind of like telling a story.  That's right up your alley isn't it?  Verse?  Anything.  I'm having to do all the driving so you can do the talking."

"I was a scholarship student at the University of Arkansas, in Fayetteville.  I got married to keep me out of Vietnam and when that wasn't enough we got the child.  You read about that.  She thought the baby would get me a deferment,  Then they changed the rules again and went with the lottery, no deferments, no exemptions.  So when I came up with a two, I starved myself, fast, the hard way.  I had to get as close to death as possible.  They were taking everyone.  So I did some research and found how many calories I'd need to consume to stay alive but lose weight the fastest way possible. Along with the starvation diet, I took speed with my speed-freak wife and ran obsessively while she doodled the days away.  The day I got on the bus to Little Rock for my physical I was eighty nine pounds and I was speeding and on acid.  They didn't even bother to weigh me.  When I got off the bus I winked at a Sergeant and asked if I could suck his cock.  We all had to undress to get our vitals checked.  When I stripped for some reason I had an erection.  My heart rate and behavior was so alarming, they took me out of line, helped me get dressed and turned me loose.  I found the nearest cafe, bought a donut and a coke, and stepped in the phone booth outside to call my wife.  I shoved the donut in my mouth, started to dial and passed out.  I came to in the emergency ward on IV fluids."
"Any lasting health problems?"
"Not that I know of."

It's almost midnight but they're not far from Fort Collins, Colorado.  They've been snacking on the food Judith packed for herself when she left her lunch shift at the Beanery in Salt Lake. If Junior could drive her car they could have taken turns driving and not had to stop for the night.  Judith has a fondness for road trips.  But she can only drive so long without a relief driver.  She says, "We'll find a motel outside of Fort Collins.  You get your own room."
"I have a friend in Fort Collins.  A novelist.  James Crumley.  I'm sure he'll put us up."
"It's kind of late to call him don't you think?"
"Maybe your right.  I think he got married.  He teaches here."

She finds a Motel 6 just off the interstate and they pull into the parking lot.  And just as he's getting out of the car she says, "What's your real name?"
"Junior Lee Black"
"Is your first name really Junior?"
"It is now.  Why are you asking me about my name?"
"I don't know.  It's just that I've gone to school with you and worked with you and to everybody you're Junior.  But guys called Junior are usually guys with the misfortune to be named for their fathers."
"Why misfortune?"
"Because the men who insist their sons carry their names usually want their sons to be an extension of themselves.  It seems so narcissistic.  Is your father a dick?"
"No, he's a great guy."
"Does he know you do heroin?"
"Yea he does and he still loves me."
"Did you have a happy childhood?
"It was perfect."
"Then why are you such a fuck-up?"

Strange Episodes

 
First I'll give you a description of what the first three or four of these episodes felt like:  At first it only happened if I'd been sitting at my typing chair or on the edge of my bed watching TV.  I'd stand up and feel an intense gathering of the muscles of my pelvic girdle.  The muscles would all bunch or begin to feel as if they were in a spasm or cramp.  It was instantaneous and though not exactly painful, it was the strangest sensation I've ever had.  Not exactly a cramp but a more like a muscle seizure, as if they were grabbing my hips tightly, so tightly that the next sensation I felt was the loss of mobility of my legs.  I felt my legs go useless and floppy.  I had to hold on to something just to stay upright.  I leaned on a desk or the back of a chair to hold myself upright while my legs were useless.  First the knees buckled and then my feet went floppy.  It wasn't just the muscles surrounding my hips and buttocks that were seized this way; it was the interior muscles as well as if my bladder and bowel were also in a gathered, spasmed state.  And in each case I felt I needed to head to the bathroom pronto, but had to help my legs by picking them up with my hands and helping them move forward.  My feet would flop out and then hold.  And within a few seconds my pelvic girdle would uncramp and my legs would come back online.

In the recent past I took a couple of falls.  Both falls were easy to explain.  When the first on happened I was trying to find out what was wrong with the clothes dryer (loaded with clothing fresh from the washing machine and so adding considerable weight to the dryer) so I muscled the dryer away from the back wall and then wedged myself around the side of the dryer to peer at the place where the vent hose attaches to the back of the dryer close to the floor.  It was a tight fit, me between the dryer and the short wall beside it.  I was both bending over and stretching to reach the back of the dryer when my feet lost contact with the floor and I tipped forward onto my head, neck, and shoulder.  Even to me, struggling to get my feet on the floor, it had a comic aspect.  Just tip me over and pour me out.  The other fall was my flight from the end of the movie Crazy Heart which was a kind of mad dash from my past.  I tripped and fell on my side, all the way down, from head to toe.  It knocked the wind out of my and I lay there stunned for a moment in the still dark theater.  I don't think the falling and the odd loss of the use of my legs and feet are related.  I don't think the falling was much more than clumsiness.  But I've been experiencing sever lower back pain.  This is nothing new, and it doesn't take much to tweak the muscles in my lower back.  I spent more than a year in the grip of sciatica in 2003.  Often the pain was so intense I could do nothing but weep and wait for the pain to lessen so I could climb the rest of the stairs.

But three days ago I was standing at the kitchen counter fixing myself a chicken sandwich and it happened.  I wish I'd watched the kitchen clock as it happened, so I'd know how long it lasts.  It's probably only seconds, but seems much longer since the sensation is so intense and goes through a very specific progression.  This time I was standing up.  This time I did lose control of my bladder, this time I realized whatever it is it's serious.  Leda keeps coming to mind.
                                
Leda and the Swan

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still

Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
    By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
    He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

    How can those terrified vague fingers push
    The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
    And how can body, laid in that white rush,
    But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

    A shudder in the loins engenders there
    The broken wall, the burning roof and tower[20]
    And Agamemnon dead.

                        Being so caught up,

    So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
    Did she put on his knowledge with his power
    Before the indifferent beak could let her drop? 

And Now for the Second Act: Ralph Lauren Spring 2010

Dust Bowl Chic from Ralph Lauren

 This thrills me because I can put this together for about $30 from my favorite thrift store.  Half of it is at the back of my closet. Oh joy it's going to be an easy Spring.

Pain: Part 1

I did it to myself when I decided to turn the garage into a cottage/studio.  It had gone through many incarnations since my parents bought this piece of property in the mid 1950s.  It was a double garage back then, very modern for the time due to its size.  Most garages in those days were single garages in this neighborhood, unless they also contained a "workshop."  But since the entry of our garage was off the ally behind the property and you actually had to walk farther from the garage to the back door of the house than from the street in front of the house to the front door, my parents always parked on the street.  Laziness won out and the garage began its incarnation as very big storage shed.

In the late 1960s after my parents divorce and my mother's taking a lover who was a friend of my current husband's and only a three years older than I, the garage began to be used as a workshop and hideout for asshole men who had been temporarily been asked to go drink somewhere else by their long suffering female partners.  The garage had electricity so the boys could have a huge old fridge and a TV to watch sporting events while they drank beer or "Crybaby" wine. When the gang of drunks began to move away with new women (suckers) to other parts of the state or country, and my mother's very young lover died of a brain tumor, the garage again languished as a big storage pod.

When Tom and I had one of our many falling-outs I decided to remodel the garage and turn it into a cottage/art studio ( I was painting in those days).  I wish I had pictures of the transition.  It was a huge undertaking.  For one thing the garage and the entire back third of the property was situated on a gradual rise full of rocks and deep tree-roots.  There were plantings of antique lilacs and thorny  shrubs.  There are two huge pines back here.  And to complicate things a bit, huge slabs of slate had been deposited by my ex-father when he tore out the original antique mantel and fireplace and made the whole fireplace-room dark as a cave and butt ugly.  The slate hearth  he built was nothing more than a tripping hazard.  When my mother's young lover took up residence, he tore out my ex-father's hidious low acoustical tile ceiling and opened up the bay windows again.  He also tore out the slate fireplace and replaced it with a mantle he and my mother found at a garage sale.  It wasn't as pretty as the original, but it is a huge improvement on the slate slabs which my mother's young lover stashed in random sections of the back of the property (as if they were naturally occurring in this soil).

So when I began the excavation for the bathroom/solarium addition to the garage I had to do several very big jobs with very little help and even less money.  A girlfriend and I dug the utility trench from the main house to the garage.  In a climate like this utility lines (gas and water) are buried six feet under.  And these particular six feet run under a pathway that has been used since the late 1800s.  They also run beside the biggest Green Ash tree in the Salt Lake Valley.  So not only did we have to dig that trench, we had to dig around roots as big as a weight lifter's thigh.  We used shovels until we got to the tree roots and then we used coffee cans.  So we dug a trench three feet wide and six feet underground and roughly eighty five feet long.  We worked from dawn to dusk for two weeks.  If Tom had been doing this remodel he'd have rented a backhoe and dug the trench in a day.

Then my friend and I made the gazebo from a kit she bought ages ago and never used.  The kit itself was simple, but preparing the ground for it was not.  More digging was required along with moving slabs of slate.  Then, once the area had been leveled and the beams in place, we mixed concrete in a wheelbarrow and made five triangular sections of floor.  Putting the kit together was simple compared to the mixing and pouring of concrete one wheelbarrow at a time.  It took three wheelbarrows full for each triangular section.  You do the math.  Just writing this is making my back ache a little more.

It took most of one summer to do this much, and as winter was approaching we used particle board and my friend's table saw to make the fourteen triangular sides of the structure and then wrestle them into place(leaving one side open as a door) and hammer them securely enough to weather the winter and protect all the tools and antiques that had been stored in the garage so the actual remodel could begin. 

To be continued...

We're Number Thirty-Seven!

The Judith Blue Stories: #2. Junior

While Judith is finishes waiting on the two stragglers from the lunch shift, Junior "borrows" her car keys from her purse in the Beanery basement.  He unlocks the trunk, peers in, and then chickens out.  He closes the trunk and opens the back door on the passenger side.  There's a blanket over some suitcases on the seat behind the driver.  He quickly slips back into the Beanery and heads down the stairs hoping he beats her to it.  No one's there so he dumps her keys in her purse.  He retraces his steps and ends up on the back floor of her old Chevy sedan with the blanket pulled over his shoulder.

When Judith leaves the restaurant she doesn't say goodbye to anyone.  She lights a cigarette as she leaves the backdoor and strides across the parking lot toward her car.  She fishes around in her purse for her keys and comes up with the wad of them in her hand.  The cigarette dangles from her lips and a breeze sends a stream of smoke into her eye.  She's blinking back tears as she unlocks the driver's side door.  She flings her purse in the passenger seat, climbs behind the steering wheel and pulls the door shut.  She backs smoothly out of her parking place and edges into traffic on 7th South then turns right and then left to take the drive-through at the Capitol Credit Union to cash her check.  Then she turns right and right again to ease into the left lane of State Street where she'll  catch the one-way traffic of westbound 5th South onto the freeway heading north toward Ogden, then Logan, and who knows where from there.

She pulls into a 7 Eleven just off the freeway in South Ogden to fill her tank and get snacks.  When she comes out of the store after pre-paying her gas she sees a man sitting in her car.  She stops in her tracks and yells, "Get the fuck out of my car!" He opens the passenger door, leans out and says, "It's me, Junior."
"I don't care if it's Jesus Christ himself, I'm not taking passengers.  How did you find me?"
"I was on the floor in the back."
"Of my car?"
"Yes."
"Well, I'm not taking passengers.  So get out.  You can hitch a ride back to Salt Lake."
"I'm going with you."
"No you're not!"
"Yes I am!"
"You don't even know where I'm going.  Do you have any money?"
"I have my paycheck and I don't care where you're going.  I'm going with you."
"What about school?"
"I'm their star pupil, they'll let me finish my degree from anywhere so long as I publish something."
"I'm not taking you back and I'm not taking in strays."
"I'm the guy who loves you.  I don't treat you like shit.  I'm going to be famous and rich.  I'll take good care of you."
"Oh Christ!  Why are all the men who insist on being in my life such fucking babies?  You said you'd never had a job before the Beanery dishwashing job.  And in the Beanery case your sole motivation getting that job was potential pussy?  How old did you say you are?  I don't want to raise you.  I chose not to have adolescent kids."
"Wow!  Have any of the men in your past been feminists?  I don't have a great opinion of my gender either, but I'm not those guys.  Gimme a chance to prove it."
"That's what they all say in the beginning."
"No they don't."
"Open the glove box and pull out the maps, will you?"
"I have contacts in Boston."
"Do you now? What kind of contacts?  Are we just talking drugs?  What's with you and the smack?"
"Most of the time I'm bored.  Heroine lets me drift, peacefully.  I feel normal then."
"Normal, huh.  Pump $10 worth of gas and then let me know the next time you feel normal so I can dump you on the side of the road."  She takes the maps and sits in the back seat looking for an easy route east.  There isn't one.  And why is she considering taking him with her she wonders.  And what's in Boston for her?  And why not?  Her hand is massaging the tight knot of muscles between her eyebrows. She has the beginning of a headache.

The Judith Blue Stories: #1. The Contessa

Junior saw her the first day of the seminar on the plays of Harold Pinter, and made sure to get a seat directly across from her. Junior was the English Department's only Woodrow Wilson Scholar. He also had a special grant from the Creative Writing Department, so he didn't really need to work. He could be a TA, but why? It cut into his free time. He had a William Morris agent--had since he was eighteen. First story he wrote got published in a collection of the Best Short Fiction, 1966. He's been trying to find a better place to sleep. He doesn't worry about the deadline for a collection of stories, he writes fast. But he does need a place to flop. He also needs some blow.

Junior doesn't have to say a word in this seminar. The famous playwright is teaching. They drink beer together in the afternoon. They laugh together at the foolish things these Mormon kids say in class. They dish babes. The famous playwright has a new lover every semester. He's been married to the same woman almost thirty years. Imagine that. He has a son he doesn't talk about much. The famous playwright likes to gamble.  Junior knows way too much to worry about his grade in the famous playwright's class.

Junior starts to think of the beauty across from him two nights a week for three hours a night as The Contessa. He starts referring to her as The Contessa. Pretty soon other men are calling her The Contessa. She is the most vocal and confident of the students even through she's auditing the seminar. She is always prepared and perfectly willing to take on the Mormon grad students. The Contessa makes it easy on the famous Playwright. He only has to get her started and she runs the seminar for him. Soon there is a regular Tuesday night beer drinking group that takes the seminar into the late night. She is often there, sitting beside the famous playwright. Her name is Judith, but he finds himself still talking about her when she isn't there, as The Contessa. Judith doesn't seem to see him. He wonders if she's this semester's lover. He also finds out that Judith is married.

One early afternoon Junior pops his head into the famous professor's office on his way out for an afternoon of shooting smack. But his famous friend invites him to go have lunch with him, "My treat," he says. Junior is disappointed that his high will have to be postponed, but smiles and says, "Sure, thanks."

Strangely the famous playwright takes them downtown to a nice little hole in the wall restaurant called, "The Beanery." It's packed. They stand outside and chain smoke, waiting for a table to open up. It takes almost twenty minutes. But once seated he sees The Contessa walking toward them smiling, with menus in hand. Her hair is twisted into a loose chignon at the nape of her gorgeous neck. She is tall, willowy, graceful.  She has pale olive skin, dark hair; she has big almond shaped hazel eyes She's wearing a long skirt and sandals with straps that wrap around her ankles. She has beautiful feet. Is she wearing a bra or not? He's not sure, and so makes a study of watching her across the room. She is flawless and usually a bit aloof, yet now, oddly warm. When she approaches a table she smiles, she seems patient, bends over a menu to point things out. She makes notes, smiles, turns away, and the smile is gone. What remains is a fierce, strong, beautiful woman in rapid, meaningful, fluid motion. Focus is what you see when she's not smiling. She comes back to take their order and calls them by name, "Junior, Henry, who let you boys out?" The famous playwright beams and says, "It's like a visit to Greece, and then having Melina Mercouri wait on you at a small cafe." She smiles and says, "I think more Anna Magnani, but then, who am I?" Junior blurts out, "You're The Contessa." She looks at him then and says, "Junior have you decided what you want?" He leers at her and says, "I'll have a Rose Tattoo." She turns and says over the shoulder, "Play amongst yourselves, and when you're ready to order food, let me know." The smile is gone.

 Junior starts hanging out at the Beanery. She is not playful when he's with Whitlock. She smiles perfunctorily and takes their order. States plainly that she gets paid to work here and can't hang out and chit chat with them. Whitlock has a part time dishwashing job at The Beanery and deals drugs a little on the side. Whitlock has heard Junior call her The Contessa, but when Whitlock says it, it becomes The Cuntessa. So now, around the Beanery, she's called The Cuntessa by all the male help. One day when he and Whitlock come in for lunch, she walks to the table to take their order, Whitlock says, "Hi, Cuntessa," and she turns to look Junior straight in the eye and say, 'Thanks Junior, you little prick. Whadda you assholes want?" She smiles without any warmth at all. Junior tips her a twenty on a five dollar lunch.

Junior takes over Whitlock's job suddenly. Now he's working Whitlock's shifts and trading shifts with the other dishwasher to work all Judith's shifts. He does a much better job washing dishes than Whitlock did. He buses her tables and resets them, too. 

Sonnets start to appear on the Beanery bulletin board. It's in a public area, and is used mostly as a notice board of rooms for rent, dogs lost, cars for sale. That kind of thing. But when the poems start appearing addressed to The Contessa, she knows who wrote them, and as soon as they appear she takes them down, reads them, and tears them up.

One night in August they were closing up The Beanery, when Junior asks the cook, who has just finished the last order of the night, "Want to take a little break downstairs? I've got smack or blow." Kirby doesn't hesitate, "How much, man?" "My treat." And Kirby is gone for a half an hour. Which leaves Junior and The Contessa alone for fifteen minutes once the last customer is gone and the door closed and locked. So Junior asks her "What do you like?"

"What do you mean what do I like? What kind of a question is that!"
"I brought you a present, and wanted to know what you preferred, heroin or coke?"
"Presumptive, aren't you?"
"I see you step out back to smoke your joints. I know you're no virgin."
"What the fuck do you think you know about me!" This is not so much a question, as an accusation, almost shouted. When Kirby opens the basement door he asks, "Is it safe to come upstairs? Judith shouts, "Why the hell wouldn't it be, Kirby! And don't you ever call me The Cuntessa again! My goddamned name is Judith. Do you both understand? If I ever hear another male employee of this place call me The Cuntessa or Contessa, I'll get both your asses fired."

It was a week before she came back to work. She and her husband, Jack, had gone camping. She didn't seem like the camping type. Junior asked and was told she was taking a scheduled vacation. But still he worked two shifts--almost eighty hours a week. He gave up going to classes. He slept in the basement of The Beanery.  This first job in his life was now paying for the blow he was doing in the basement.  And his coke supply was making him one very meticulous and fast dishwasher.

Junior was built like Judith. They were about the same height; he weighed a little more, but not much. Junior had a mane of curly black hair that he usually kept in a pony tail when he worked. His face was angular. He had hazel eyes like Judith's, nice eyebrows, too. But his beard grew fast and very black, so even though he shaved every day, the lower half of his face always had a bluish cast to it. He was slight and pale skinned.

When Judith returned to work, he gifted her with an ounce of pretty good pot. She took the gift and said, "Thanks Junior, is this an apology?"
"What did I do I need to apologize for?"
"You got every man in town to start calling me Contessa. I hate it. I want it to stop."
"Didn't you ever see the movie The Barefoot Contessa?"
"Yes. So what?"
"Just take it as a compliment. Ava Gardner is the star, and it's a great story. I think it might have won some Oscars. Anyway, I think you look like Ava Gardner, and you have beautiful feet. It just came to me in a flash of inspiration."
"What are your intentions, with all the flattery and the gifts of drugs, the poems, the busing my tables, the working two shifts to work with me? See, I did notice. But what is it you want?"
"I thought fathers were supposed to ask that question."
"Well, since I'm married, I have to ask this question myself. Or would you rather I have Jack ask you?"
"I want to spend the rest of my life with you."
"And what are your prospects, young man?"
"I'm a talented writer, and I have a William Morris Agent."
"Bring me a story. I want to find out how talented you are."
"At your service.  And as long as your sampling my talents, I have others."  She lifts one eyebrow and slits her eyes at him and she turns to walk out the backdoor.

The next day Junior arrives with a story. It's called The Gates of Oxford.
Judith reads it on her break as she smokes a joint. It's funny in a dark kind of way. She thinks the main character is based on Junior, but the character is married to a real nut case, and she wants to know if Junior has been married.

When she comes up from the basement where she was smoking her joint and reading, Junior is in the dish room working like crazy getting ready for the lunch rush. As Judith gets to the dish room, Junior turns and says, "Well?"

"I have some questions." Junior puts his hands on his hips and sings, "I'm a little teapot short and stout, just tip me over and pour me out." He does the whole routine with the gestures and coyness of a kid performing for a grown up. She is delighted with this bit of childish spontaneity. She laughs and then says, "Well for starters, what would you call your style."
"Autobiographical Realism."
"That's a real literary style?"
"Yup."
"Are you married?"
"Not anymore."
"Did the cat live?"
"Nope."
"Was that your child?"
"Nope. She informally adopted the baby from an Indian girl who was going to jail."
"So, she stole the kid."
"Pretty much."
"And you went along with this program?"
"Well... I guess."
"What does, I guess mean?"
"It means, I guess I loved her, so I guess it didn't matter what she did. She was a speed freak. That didn't bother me either."
"Are you ethically challenged?"
"Not when it comes to love."
"Then why are you no longer with this crazy woman?"
"She left me for another man."

Later that afternoon, Judith's husband and three of his drinking buddies show up at The Beanery, and they're drunk on home brew and irritably hungry. She and Junior haven't set the tables for dinner yet, and are just getting ready to start when this quartet of drunks arrives and loudly demands service. Benny, a friend of her husband's, who spends more time at her house than she does, and never fails to piss all over the bathroom, shouts, "Where's The Contessa?" All four men have a fit of sniggering that isn't quite under control when Judith arrives with the menus and the cutlery. Jack demands water. There are no glasses on the table, and just as she turns to get glasses, Junior comes up behind her with glasses and a pitcher of ice water on a tray for the table. "Oooh, what have we got here, a waiter?" This from Paul, who is almost too drunk to talk. Junior ignores the taunt and goes about his business. Then he disappears into the dish room.  Judith says, "You boys have the menu memorized, what do you want to eat?" Jack orders an omelet. This will piss Kirby off, and ruin his end of shift buzz. The other three order sandwiches and fries.

When Judith walks into the kitchen, Kirby is already bitching. He's cleaned up and is planning on leaving the second the evening shift comes on, which was due to happen in ten minutes. "Fuck! Man!"
"I didn't invite them Kirby. I'm not exactly thrilled myself."

When she takes the rowdy group of drunks their late lunch or early supper, they grouse about how long it took to get their food. Benny says, nastily, "Tardiness doesn't help get you a big fat tip."
"Benny, you cheap bastard, since when have you ever tipped?" Judith turns from the table and heads for the back door to await her replacement and have a smoke.

As she passes through the dish room, she says to Junior, "Sorry for the assholes." Then she pushes the back door open, and heads outside to suck down a quick cigarette. Her lighter doesn't work. "Shit!" She turns to head back inside as the door opens and Junior comes out to join her for a cigarette. He has kitchen matches in his apron. He whips one out and strikes it with his thumb nail close to the end of her cigarette.  It explodes in her face and the burning tip hits her open, startled eye. She drops her unlit cigarette and puts both hands to her eye. It burns wickedly. He is horrified and tries to get her hands away from her eye so he can see it, but it hurts too much, and her eye is streaming tears. "We need to get you to an emergency room."
"That would be a good idea, but I can't see to drive."
"I'll drive. Got your keys?"
"No, they're in my purse in the basement. Grab my coat, too."

He's back in seconds with her coat and her bag and they head to her old Chevy sedan in the parking lot behind The Beanery. He opens the passenger door for her, and she gets in. He rounds the front of the car and is seated behind the steering wheel in a couple of seconds. She's still rummaging around in her bag for her keys. She grabs the wad of keys and finds the Chevy's ignition key. She hands the keys to Junior and puts her head back against the head rest. He can't find the keyhole. She grabs them out of his hand and inserts the key in its slot. He turns the key and the car lurches forward and dies. She say, "Put the clutch in, and try it again." He says, "I don't know how to drive a stick shift."

"Fuck. Get out and go back inside and tell Jack I injured my eye. Tell him I did it with an exploding kitchen match. I'll be home later. And then just ignore those assholes, they never tip anyway."

Holy Cross is close, and it's a hospital where her grandfather used to be Chief of Staff. She drives mostly one handed, with the other hand covering her injured eye. She comes to a stop in a parking slot outside the emergency room. When she gets inside, the waiting room is empty. This is a good sign that she won't have to wait long. When she checks in, she drops her grandfather's name. She only has to wait a half hour. They check her eye, rinse it over and over, then put some ointment in it, put a patch over it, and write her a prescription for more ointment. She thanks them and heads out to the parking lot. Jack is leaning against her car. "Well, how's your eye?"
"Not too bad. I have a prescription. Will you take me by the pharmacy to fill it?"
"Sure, I'll drive you. Benny dropped me off."
"Why does Benny have to treat me like shit?"
"Benny likes you, you know that. He's just teasing."
"Benny's an asshole."
"Well, I'm not that crazy about some of your friends, either."
"My friends don't spend all their time at our house, pissing all over the bathroom. Next time Benny pisses all over, I'm banning him from using our toilet."
"Where's he going to piss?"
"In the gutter, for all I care. Maybe he should piss before he gets to our place, and not stay so damn long."
"You're sure being a bitch."
" My eye hurts. My feet hurt too. I'm tired, and you knew I was a bitch when you married me. And just for the record, I don't like being called the Cuntessa or the Contessa, so tell your fucking friends to knock it off."
"What bug crawled up your ass?"
"Maybe you and your friends and your drunkenness, have crawled up my ass, as you so poetically put it."

Judith uses the burned eye as an excuse to stay home a day and sleep. She sleeps a deep cottony sleep round the clock.  A sleep like she imagines death. A nothing. A nowhere. She knows this absence of feeling. She has finally detached and drifted off. In her dreamless sleep, she has come to the understanding that she can take no more. Next time she wakes to pee, she eats some yogurt and a slice of toast, sips a cup of tea. Then she starts packing. When she has the essentials in her two bags, she takes them to her car and locks them in the trunk.

Next day is payday at The Beanery. She goes in and works her shift as if nothing has changed. Junior is already there. He asks how she is and she says, "I'm fed up, that's how I am."
"What are you fed up with?"
"Are you shitting me?"
"What?"
"Well, for starters, my asshole husband and his posse of drunks, this place, this town. I'm leaving tonight after my shift."
"What do you mean, leaving?"
"I'm packed and leaving, at 4:00. And keep your damn mouth shut about it." She pushes past him and down the stairs into the basement, puts her crap in her locker and heads upstairs with her apron.

After her shift, when she thinks Junior and Kirby are downstairs getting hammered, she calmly walks to her car.  She decides to head north toward the Idaho border. She figures she'll stop for the night in some small Idaho town and then make her decision whether to head East or West.
 

©2009 Peggy Pendleton

Tom's Oldest Son

(In order to understand this post you will need to read the comments from my last post, Crazy Heart)

I first saw Tom's oldest son when he was an infant.  Tom and his first wife were living on the Avenues in Salt Lake in a lovely old house that Tom was remodeling.  Tom's first wife and I had been friends in Junior High and High School.  We had  much in common, but the most striking thing we had in common was bad daddies who used us for their sexual pleasure.  Odd isn't it that two of the first women in Tom's early life had that in common?  We were smart girls, talented girls, pretty girls.  We were very barely holding it together to keep our craziness from being our undoing.  She was a dancer and a very talented one.  So Tom's oldest son got his father's musical genes and his mother's musical genes.  Is madness passed in the blood?  It depends on the madness.  I'm guessing not in this case.  But what might have been passed to Tom's oldest son is great sorrow that his father left him (when he was still a very young boy) and his mother in a small northern California town to go to LA and make is fortune as a Rock n Roll musician.  I call that abandonment.  I don't know what Tom calls it.

Tom moved into an apartment building in LA next door to Pamela Courson's sister.  Pamela was Jim Morrison's wife.  That's a pretty good contact for an ambitious rock n roll musician looking to make his fortune and a name for himself.  Tom told me that he fell in love with her and in very short order had built a door in a wall to make their apartments adjoining.  He was pretty handy with all his tools.

Remember that during all this time he was still married to his first son's mother and they were still living in a little town north of San Francisco, waiting for Tom to come home or send for them.  Who knows what anyone wanted, expected, imagined, longed for, but Pamela's sister got pregnant.  Jim Morrison got dead, then Pamela got dead, and Tom divorced his old wife to marry a new, pregnant wife.  So Tom's oldest son might very well have begun to feel like "the forgotten one" very early in his life. 

That second child of Tom's was a daughter.  Then there was another pregnancy and another son was born.  Were any of these children planned?  Maybe by Tom's second wife.  I don't know.  I know the first pregnancy was not planned.  They were nineteen when Tom's first son was born.  They were unmarried until the boy was born.  Tom proposed in the hospital where his first boy was born, just after the birth.  I don't know the exact details of any of this.  I only know what Tom told me.  But I can see damage in children.  I can recognize the psychic wounds of children who feel used and/or abandoned.  So can certain kinds of men.

By the time Tom and I were together again in the early '80s living in Tom's house up Emigration  Canyon,  he was divorced from his second wife and I was divorcing my third husband.  He had summer and Christmas holiday visitation with his two youngest children, a six year old girl who seemed very sullen and sad, a girl who read obsessively (a girl I recognized, since I had been that kind of girl) and a four year old boy (a robust and good natured little boy).  We took them to baseball games in the summer and skiing in the winter.  And most nights Tom went off to honkytonks to play Country Western music and I stayed with the kids.

There were a few years when Tom's oldest son joined us during ski season.  He was a delight.  He was so smart and funny and talented.  He did bring his own pot.  He always offered to share a joint with me when we were outside away from the little kids and Tom.  Did I wrestle with myself over the inappropriateness of smoking dope with Tom's teenaged son?  Probably not enough.  Was I a good role model or mother substitute for any of Tom's children while they were visiting us?  Probably not. But I was kind to them.  I did love them.  I still love them more than I ever loved Tom. I had made the choice early in my life that I was not going to have children of my own.  I didn't want to pass the crazy on.  I didn't want to be tied to a man because I'd carried his child to term.  My parents were crazy.  They'd done terrible things to me.  How could I know how to be a good parent?  How would I know who the bad men were?  They all seemed pretty bad to me, in one way or another.

There was the occasional year when Tom didn't exercise his parental rights to visitation.  But not only did he not see his kids, he didn't call them or write them or send them Christmas presents.  This seemed cruel and selfish in a way I couldn't comprehend.  Whatever Tom wanted, Tom got for Tom.  New skis?  Sure, why not. A new and better guitar?  You bet.  A Christmas card or call for his kids?  Not a chance.  I told him how I believed this neglect might make his children feel.  I'd felt that way.  My mother and my biological father divorced when I was five.  I never saw or heard from him again.  No birthday card, no Christmas call, nothing, ever.  I hardened my heart against the man who had no use for me.  I know how a father's neglect and abandonment affects a daughter.  I can only imagine how it affects a son.

Will Tom hate me for writing this?  Probably.  He will have rewritten his memory of his personal history.  Don't we all do that?  He will have forgotten certain details.  Like I forgot the detail of having his oldest son drive me home from Park City after one of Tom's gigs and my needing to pee befor we made it back to the house.  It made a very bad impression on Tom's oldest son to have this woman, this drunken woman pissing on her shoes as she squatted beside the car.  I was taking antidepressants even that long ago, and my nightly antidepressant knocked me out.  That would have been the "sleeping pill" he remembers me taking.  Did I force him to smoke pot with me?  If he believes I did, I must have.  We did smoke pot, but I don't recall ever having to talk him into it. Was my behavior appalling?  If Toms children remember it that way, then it was appalling.  And I'm very sorry I wasn't a better person, a better role model, a better example of how grown-ups behave.

Crazy Heart

Nick took me to see Crazy Heart last week. It was a weekday matinee, the only time I'll go to a movie. I like the empty theater at a midweek midday matinee. Nick and I usually talk politics, but for some reason neither of us had much to say. Politics is making me sad these days. I feel very sorry for our President. The country is weary. War weary, sad and losing heart along with the good job and the new house. No one can afford to get sick. Even if you have insurance, you can't afford to use it. I'm almost afraid to talk politics for fear I'll just breakdown in tears. I was in the mood for a good movie, a distraction from one reality to take me into another reality.

But Crazy Heart took me into the one of the saddest failures of my life; it took me back to the days of living with and loving Tom. When I first met him, when we were teenage kids, he was just learning to play the bass. He was into Jazz then. But when we got together in midlife, after our divorces, he was playing Country/Western music which I didn't entirely appreciate since I was still into Jazz. When I first knew him he played an acoustic bass. When we were in midlife, he was playing electric bass and guitar. I'm not a big fan of amplified, electrified instruments. But I fell hard again for Tom and since I had run from him the first go round when we were kids, I maintained in midlife that I didn't want to be a couple, I just wanted us to have fun. But when you've always been in love with the man and he gives you the key to his house, it's hard not to become a couple.

When the band he was playing in rehearsed, they did it mostly at Tom's house and I was there. I don't know why so many musicians are hard drinkers, which seems to lead them into all sorts of other bad behavior, but in the bands Tom played with, that seemed to be pretty universal.

Tom's two youngest children were age four and six. They were lovely kids and I did enjoy their visits when it was his turn to have them. And because Tom always had gigs during the holidays and on New Years Eve it was I who took care of making Christmas away from their mother and their real home as much like a real Christmas as possible, with a tree and shopping trips and presents under the tree and hot chocolate and popcorn at night watching a rented movie. I was home with them when he was gone every night playing in some honkytonk or toilet in BFE. And I quickly grew to love his kids. And I grew to see him as a neglectful and insensitive father. He became a man who drank too much almost all the time. I know he had his reasons. I know they all did.

And in truth, I was much too crazy to really work out the other problems in our life together. I knew the root cause of my craziness, but Tom didn't want to hear about it, wanted me to get over it and move on without having to talk about it and the way the present reminded me of the past.

Crazy Heart reminded me of the past and the only man I really ever tried to love. Crazy Heart was a little too close to home, a little too real. And near the end of the movie I wanted to get up and run. I wanted to flee my past again, like I did when things got too bad with Tom. I used to decide in an instant that I couldn't take it anymore and throw all my things in garbage bags and leave without a word. The only real sound I made was when my tires were squealing out of the driveway and I was headed down the canyon road away from Tom and his insensitivity to my needs.

So when the movie ended I was ready to cut and run; before the credits even rolled I was trying to exit the darkened theater as fast as I could and I fell in the dark, hard. I didn't really hurt myself, but it all hurt, and I couldn't hold back the tears. And even now, even all this time later, I still can't think of Tom without getting a lump in my throat and fighting back tears.

Play it Miles

And for those great lyrics, Sting does it very nicely.