Thu, 19 May 2005

the stomach of the ostrich
Jason and I hadn’t seen each other since high school, and he must have heard from someone that I was in a bad way, as he showed up completely out of the blue to see how I was. At first he pretended that he was just passing through town, and halfassed a story to that effect, but it became obvious that this wasn’t a casual visit. Jason was on point for a group of people that all hung out when I was younger, and apparently still did, moving into houses next door and carpooling to PTA and all that, and for a year or so I ran in that circle in order to get to this girl that I can’t even remember what she looks like any more. We had our ten year graduation aniversary a while back, and obviously I didn’t go, because I don’t go anywhere, but this gang of adults apparently got to talking about me, and that had led to this quasi-intervention in my living room, Jason asking me if I was paying my bills, how long it had been since I’d slept with someone. I was surprised enough to answer, for a little while, until I wised up enough to be insulted and showed him the door.

The next day I go to work and see a sign in my front yard reading WE LOVE YOU! with balloons on it. Luckily this was still about five in the morning, so I don’t think anybody saw it before I could kick it over and throw it under the deck, but I had a suspicion this was just the start, and when I found a giant bouquet with a sash reading FRIENDS FOREVER! sitting next to my locker at work I knew I would have to take action. I didn’t know where Jason was, but it wasn’t long until I saw him again. Apparently he called this gang of his and told them I was in desperate shape and they all found babysitters and formed a SUV convoy to my trailer. I pulled up and tried to pull out but Suzanne (that’s what she said her name is) knocked on the window, grinning and gesturing to roll down the window. The driver’s side window in my car doesn’t go down, so I pulled into my driveway and got out and then it was all hugs and statements of support and whatnot and I tried to usher everyone inside before my neighbors called the cops. Most of these people looked vaguely familiar, morphed faces from high school recollections, but one of these people was much older and unfamiliar. You ever notice on commercials for weird medicines that you have no idea what they do, how whenever there’s a group of people gathered together looking confident and in control of their mystery affliction that there’s always one gray-haired smiling yet stern older woman at the center of a gaggle of younger traditionally pretty women? That’s what this woman looked like, and I knew this was her idea, but I had no idea why she would take such an interest in a person she had never met.

“Why did you all come here? What exactly do you want?” I said, trying to weave between them to reach the fridge vodka.

“Listen, you are obviously too damaged to appreciate the outpouring of love we have for you, but I assure you, we have nothing but the best in mind for you”, the older eagle-looking woman said. “We are not here to judge.”

“I should damn well fucking hope not!” I said, drinking from the bottle.

“You should come with us to Charles City. You can stay with Jason and Suzanne until we find you an apartment. I’m sure there’s plenty of businesses which will overlook your academic failings.”

“Academic failings? God damn it, I’m almost graduated!”

“Of course you are! And you can pursue your higher learning at our local community college. You might even meet a special someone there who appreciates you for you!”

I had heard this phrase before, and suddenly I felt a wave of dread and nausea. “You’re not just bored suburbanites! You’re CANNIBALS!”

“Oh that’s ridiculous,” the eagle-woman said, but I saw the others twitch at the word.

“I heard a thing about this on Morning Edition! You’re those suburb cannibals that keep eating failed ambitionless drifters! I’ll have you know I’m writing a book!”

“Book schmook!” the eagle-woman said, dropping the facade. “We’ll take good care of you! You’ll learn about equity and get a cellphone! Maybe we’ll just eat the skin from the bottom of your feet, and you don’t even need that skin!”

It’s a good thing that I wired explosives to the bottom of the trailer just in case such a thing happened (which would get written off as just another meth lab explosion), but as I tried to dive through the kitchen window I forgot about the storm windows and the insulation wrap and did little more than give myself a nasty concussion just before the suburb cannibals got to me.

Now I live in Charles City, with a nice blonde actuarian who is into yoga and skin-eating, and our new house has two and a half baths and three hundred square feet of crawlspace. I work from home, writing ad copy for a local winery and the occasional letter to Salon. Sometimes I think that I should leave, go back to my old life as a shifty layabout and mooch, but it’s hard to walk away when you have bloody stumps for feet.
(12:26.05.19.2005) [/scrytch] #