Take Out

 
The light lit up the room in a queer way. Things glinted, they shone, they were infused with a shimmering beige-gold glow that bounced gaily off the chandeliers above and suffused the plush carpeting below.

People get married in that room, and in that light. They celebrate bah mitzvahs and have work parties. And when I was there, they were, also, selling reptiles.

Imagine that!

Because when I say that “I went to a Reptile Expo”, it was in this light, this glittering haze that I wandered the rented ballroom, eventually aimlessly, and which brought on yet another small, but not insignificant existential fit.

Reptiles in take out trays.

Snake to Go

Everywhere!  The makeshift aisles brimmed with them, they were piled high and spilled under tables, even.

.

.

.

    S

        T

    A

        C

    K

E

    D

.

.

.

Chow mien displaced by corn snakes. Bearded dragons instead of vindaloo. Tiny chameleons in otherwise empty humus containers, with a few holes punched in the lid, for air. Vendors with names like DragonsONE, Tails & Scales, Oddball Exotics, Slime Beards: Designer Boas & Pythons and, my favourite, Gecko Brothel.

Word.

A man in a ponytail bought his four-year-old son a little gecko. The boy shook it as he jumped around excitedly, examining it in that wonderful light. A woman offered to set up an axolotl[1] tank “anywhere in the house” for me, complete with a carefully selected axolotl.  They were, in her words, “very unique”. They came in various colours.

And this:

I saw a man pay a brick of tens and twenties for an albino python, specially bred. The breeder placed it in a brown sack for him, and in a just a slight tick of the mind’s eye, I swear I saw him throw the sack over his shoulder like he did it all the time.

Who knows?

And of course it all made a kind of undeniable sense.

I recently acquired a tarantula, and it is basically like having an alien in my house, not exactly living with me but existing alongside my daily comings and goings.  It is very, very silent and feeds only once a week – a of diet 3 to 4 live crickets. I’ve seen Ivan kill dozens of times.

That’s the tarantula’s name, Ivan.

I got Ivan from someone who was moving and could not take her along. I bought a book to help me learn how to care for Ivan. There was a warning printed on the insert. On tarantulas and keeping tarantulas as pets, it could not be more clear:
 

• Even though they may appear to be merely large, gentle spiders, they [tarantulas] are still venomous animals, and enthusiast keeping them as pets must acknowledge this fact. Even if the pet is well known to be gentle and harmless, the enthusiast must assume that the potential for a serious reaction always exists, and must be prepared to take appropriate action.

• In addition, many of these animals are known to have urticating or irritating bristles. Even if the pet’s bristles are known to be relatively benign and inoffensive the enthusiast must assume that, upon exposure to them, the potential exists for a serious reaction. Of particularly grave consequence is the trauma caused by the bristles in the human eye…

• Tarantulas have been kept as pets for only a few decades. There is much that is still not known about them…The keeper of a pet tarantula must acknowledge that these creatures are still wild animals and must treat them as such. Keeping any animal as a pet requires a great deal of responsibility. Keeping a wild animal as a pet absolutely commands that responsibility (Schultz and Schultz 2009 emphasis mine).

 
I have a friend who has a brother who has snakes.  “They don’t need much,” she said. “Lots of people collect them and keep them in drawers, even. There are collectors who have walls of drawers.”

Reptiles in take out trays.

Animals so different from people, in ways completely different from how other animals are very different from people, wild and biblical, the stuff of legend and nightmares and evolutionary wonder, all carefully coiled and secured and immobilized and handy.

They probably don’t mind it; in fact, given the chance, they’d probably appreciate the care shown to their particular tastes for small spaces and special feedings.  But it’s weird, really weird, having them available like that and ranging in value from like $20 bucks to $2500 dollars.

More than the reptiles themselves that’s what really got to me about the Reptile Expo, that day when the snakes and turtles and dragons bathed in that pretty light before me: the reptiles, being there and being extremely manageable and terribly convenient.

Enthusiast. Collector. Keeper.

I think there is a word for this, this kind of devotion.

I think it would be OK to call it unrequited love. I think that would be close to something approaching it.

Here is something that is also included in the warning on the insert of my book:
 
 
UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES IS THE TARANTULA TO BE TURNED LOOSE INTO THE WILD!
 
 
 
References

Schultz, Stanley A. and Schultz, Marguerite J. (2009) The Tarantula Keeper’s Guide: Comprehensive Information on Care, Housing and Feeding (revised edition). Barron’s: Hauppauge, New York.
 

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[1] A Mexican salamander whose name means, among other things, “water monster”.

 

That Old Hometown Spirit

 
There are really only two places to go in the old Hometown: The One Mall and The Mall at the Other End of Town.

Twins of the tri-cities, tethered by a limp and listless parkway, each place either place the place to be for wont of being anywhere.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

I have always found malls uniformly depressing, not unlike the way carnivals and reunions are distracting in a sad kind of way. But there’s something about the mall that makes it just a little bit more worse. Something in the air of the place of having tenuous purpose, of filling time and space and your compulsion, therefore, to be there.

So much of my time in Hometown was spent at the Mall.

It’s the place to be.

The day The One Mall opened a Cinnabon was an event. The day The Mall at the Other End of Town got an Old Navy was a goddamn riot.

(Word is, when the Apple Store held its grand opening in The Mall at the Other End of Town, a lady waiting in line exploded.)

(Hand to god.)

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Why not be someplace else, you ask? Why not be in, say, the Downtown?

Let me tell you about the Downtown.

One time, when my sister and I were opening my parents’ housewares store in the Downtown, I stepped right into what was otherwise a very neat pile of human vomit on our WELCOME mat.

It was full of undigested hotdogs.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Who goes to the mall?

The dumpy couple with the mouse-haired, bored faced girl. Old people (Old People. Love. The mall.). The big lady in the red-and-yellow stripped tubetop with the really tall boyfriend who is really in love with his haircut. Acquaintances. Jerks from work. Unsupervised children. Deadly roaming gangs of teenage girls for whom the mall is one of the only places they can roam freely.

My family has always been absolutely gob-smacked by the Mall. Immigrants, boat people, strangers in a land made strange by scope and scale as much as by culture and custom, the Mall was the epitome of something for them. It was evolutionary – natural selection for the survival of the fittest!

You think that would have made Things better.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

I am a grown-up now, and the Mall haunts me still. I avoid malls as much as possible, will go out of my way to walk or drive or run whole city blocks just to get around them, just in order to deny the presence of their existence and maintain, maintain, maintain.

But when I’m back in the old Hometown, the Mall becomes somehow totally unavoidable. I end up there despite myself, not knowing fully how I got there and a little mystified as to why, exactly, I’m there.

So like a kid again.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The Hometown Malls have changed considerably from the malls they used to be – renovations and such. Decorative pillars and mouldings removed, open spaces created, book stores closed down, parking lots opened up. Chain restaurants. A WalMart. A Winners. No more pet shops.

There are, nevertheless, remnants; reminders of Times Gone Bye.

Familiar faces that resurface from the undertow of memory and which, given the briefest moments of mutual recognition, force into being encounters both dreadful and absurd.

“Heeey! Hello! How have you been?”

“Heeey! Hello! I’m good. Good and you?”

Over and over, again and again, each time absolutely being the time we absolutely couldn’t have less to say to each other.  Perhaps this is not the best way to live, although I’m not sure if it’s better than nothing.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“Heeey! Hello! How have you been?”

“Heeey! Hello! I’m good. Good and you?”

We had been friends in middle school, but she had to tell me her name because I did not remember what it even could have been. She knew who I was, though, and so of course despite everything I was mostly flattered. I did remember, once I remembered who she was, going to a party at her house at the end of 8^th grade. Her mom bought us wine coolers from the supermarket. We drank them all in the basement then started a fire in the backyard. Her mom bought out marshmallows and asked if we needed more wine coolers.

In fact, we remembered the party together, she and me, and I took the end of our remembering as the cue to begin extricating myself from herself, taking that first tentative step backward and turning my back to her ever-so-slightly to let her know that I, too, knew it was over.

She hinted for a ride before I could take that very necessary second step backward – “Yeah…I’ve got a long bus ride home from here…” – and looked at me expectedly. I stupidly admitted I had a car.

On the way to her place, another question.

“Can we stop for KFC? I promised. It’s on the way. If you don’t mind.”

The only car in a parking lot sandwiched between two larger though equally barren parking lots, I waited for her while she waited for her order. It was well past 8:00PM, Saturday night.  I debated turning the engine on, so I could fiddle with the radio.

She got back into the passenger seat, bucket and bags in hand. The smell of fried chicken invaded the car. We drove on, she giving me directions as I squinted at street signs.

“Did you say a left here or the next street ov…”

“I’m pregnant.”

“…”

“…”

“Con-grat-u-lations. You’ll be a mother!”

“My boyfriend doesn’t know. I don’t know if he’s ready. I’m not sure if he’ll want it. Should I tell him?”

“…”

“…”

“Tonight? Ready tonight? You want to tell him tonight?”

“I don’t know!”

“I don’t know!”

And in the silence that filled the car, she gathered her bags, holding them close to her chest.  The bucket remained where it was, wedged firmly in the three protective walls formed by her inner thighs and crotch. I mumbled questions about street names and she murmured their whereabouts. When I finally dropped her off in front of her apartment – a tiny triplex at the end of a tiny street I never would have guessed was there – we exchanged vague promises of keeping in touch as she moved to close the door behind her.  Apologies were in the air all around us.

I watched her until she unlocked the door and went inside. I pulled out of the driveway and started for home, grateful that she had never looked back.

“Well, that was messed up,” said my sister, Angela, who was sitting in the backseat the whole time.
 

No Buts But Butts About It (Except Of Course Butte)

 
… in the meantime, I often find myself having to find ways to amuse myself.

So, OK.

A silent “t” added to every “but” I say aloud! 

It is great fun and economical to boot (“But, he’s getting it done” v. “Butt, he’s getting it done!”), although of course saying that it is cost-free is another thing almost entirely.

There are hazards to a-skew-ing the language. Meaning and definition conflating, oral and auditory flung into wicked identity crisis. Brain farts. Diarrhea of the mouth. Tongues tied, hands wrung, etc.

“But” –> Butt

Butt= Good.

It falls apart at Butte, Montana.

Darn.

That e doesn’t not make “but” butt but “Butte”.

So that when I say “Butte” I’ve got to know what I’m saying.

But good!

Butt nothing.
 

The Meatloaf

 
In my dream, I made Stephen a meatloaf.

“I am going to make Stephen a meatloaf!”

That was the thought that echoed inside my head inside the dream that I was having, and if I was struck – inside the dream, inside my head – by the banality of the situation, I didn’t mind it.

I was going to make Stephen a meatloaf!

I was in a kitchen. It was my kitchen, but it wasn’t my kitchen – far too many familiar Things slightly askew and all manner of angles and proportions totally off or absent. Yet, it was a near perfect square of a space – four walls, but only three that I could see. I never turned around, but I remember feeling the fourth wall at my back even as I looked in from above, in the dream, to see myself facing walls 1, 2 and 3.

Everything was yellow and blue, I think. The floor was blue, I’m sure of it. The oven was yellow, dated: a 1970s-ish nightmare with an opaque, greased-over-from-a-million-uses cube of a window protruding from its exact centre.

Yellow or yellowed?

I watched myself toss, throw, hurl and dump all manner of ingredients into the silver mixing bowl that I bought in Chinatown and that I keep in a cupboard by the sink. Into the bowl went globs of indiscernible brown-bridge goo, torrents of indistinct liquid, clouds of indistinguishable powder.

Meatloaf into meatloaf tray –> meatloaf tray into oven –> oven turned on high-highest.

The meatloaf started to raise, immediately (I did not know they rose. That was a dream surprise for me). It soon over took the tray and threatened to very quickly overwhelm the inside of the greasy-1970s-yellow-cube-oven.

But I waited.

I waited and I waited and I waited for it to get big, big, B-I-G enough!

A stephen meatloaf had to be big, big, big B-I-G, or it couldn’t be Stephen Meatloaf!

When it was done, it too was an almost perfect cube. I pried it out of the oven with two thick black plastic spatulas.  I plopped the Thing on the table by the sliding door that, I knew, wasn’t just there before.  And then, looking down at the meatloaf, I was wreaked with a kind horrific epiphany.

Even though I knew exactly what I was doing, it came out completely wrong.

The meatloaf was too messy; stuff was mixed and blended everywhere. There was no separating them; no hope of returning to basic elements.

No going back to the time before the meatloaf. Before I made Stephen a meatloaf.

The puzzle had been pulped.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

I remember gasping myself awake. Then being awake and staring at an empty ceiling in the near dark of the early morning, listening to the blood rush in my ears.

Stephen was sleeping soundly beside me, totally unaffected.

I reached over and poked and squeezed him.  He was all there, intact and snoring lightly. He was turned towards the wall with his back to me. Rather loaf-like, if I had to admit it.

Eventually, I tried to fall back asleep again, with the hope that I would not finish the possibly unfinished dream.

Still, I wonder…if I had gone just a bit further, in the dream, what could have been.

Possibly, it would have been delicious?

“Interesting” is not the word.
 
 

Actually Getting to Ride That Pony After All

 
I was SO MAD I gave myself a rage headache and that made me very sleepy so I feel asleep but then I woke up SO MAD again.

What to do?

Ride the pony until it dies. Stay indoors. Hydrate!

Any beating this?

Is there a rainbow at the end of the pony ride? A light at the end of the pony tunnel? A sliver lining to this clip-clopping cloud?

HA, HA, HA!

No.

Noooooooo!  
 

Apocalypse Later

 
So the apocalypse didn’t happen?

It seems, then, that I’ve now got a bit more time to continue on with my hobby: drafting my epitaph.

Keep on Truckin’

It keeps me busy.  And it’s F-R-E-E!

Here, so far, are the contenders:
 

1. “Enough Already.”
2. “This is Absolutely Not Me at My Best.”
3. “LOLZ!”
4. “Excuse Me. For Living.”
5. “Poopsicle = Poo Popsicle.”
6. “Probably.”
7. NO ROBERT FROST
8. “I’m NOT a Feminist. But…”
9. “Wait. Wait, wait, wait!”
10. “Grateful to Have Lived in the Golden Age of Injectable Soft-Tissue Fillers.”
11. “It’s Not You. It’s Me.”
12. “Tiger Balm Cures (almost) Everything.”
13. “I’m Hungry.”
14. “Chemistry was the worst!! Have a nice summer!”
15. “Kony 2012.”
16. “And I Never Got to Ride That Pony.”
17. “Wish You Were Here.”
18. “iDied”

 
The final draft, though!

That.

That will be the tricky bit.
 

From Beneath Me, They Below

 
I don’t know who my downstairs neighbours are, but every now and then I get clues. Sounds that waft up from beneath, pricking the hairs on the back of my neck, altering me to an otherworldly presence as I go about with my own daily business.

Voices, muffled thumping, the creaking of imaginary furniture.

His cough, her laugh.

Sometimes glimpses of blurry faces passing me in the foyer of the house we share, where the separate entrances of our apartments meet.

That’s how I know my downstairs neighbours.

I think they have a baby, way down, way down, down under there. Or maybe they are periodically torturing a cat, skinning it alive with crooked razor blades at 2:00AM in the morning – an easy joke to make when you dislike hearing the disembodied crying of a baby at 2:00AM in the morning.

Blink and you could miss them

Who are these people?

I fell asleep the other night to the sounds of the downstairs neighbours having not-so-great sex. It was kind of like being haunted by the laboured moaning of determined, yet defeated spirits.

I feel like the baby should have been crying that night.

But it wasn’t.