Is it for Me?

Have you ever looked through Facebook’s “People You May Know” listings?  There are multiple levels of connections that come up: everything from people you may not know at all, but who have a singular “friend” connection to someone you have a hundred social media friends in common with to someone that you actually know in person.  Ed found these suggestions fascinating as he would peruse through them, surprised to occasionally see musicians from bands that he was a huge fan of as a kid being suggested, because of mutual friends.  Who would’ve thought?  He might get a suggestion for someone that he went to high school with, who is already connected to all the same former classmates that he is.  Makes him wonder why he didn’t get the friend request nod from that old acquaintance.  Did he do something wrong all those years ago?  Are they still holding onto a grudge?  He wonders why he doesn’t send the friend request himself.  Probably out of stubbornness. 

Every so often, he’ll see someone on the list that he had forgotten about and memories crash his thoughts. 

Seeing Susan hit him like a ton of bricks.  Her profile picture was mostly unrecognizable from how he remembered her.  Her style had changed significantly.  For a short period of time, she had been the center of his social world.  Now, she was a cartoonist/satirist, who also made short lo-fi indie solo recordings, AND worked as a software engineer in the Bay Area.  What he found most interesting is that she hit his “you may know” list – not because of mutual friends from their brief shared past, but because of more current shared music circles.

Ed remembered her as tall, broad shouldered, and always in control of the chaos around her.  Susan was a force of nature!  An art major who grew up on a small farm not too far from the university they both attended.  She was more forward and outgoing than anyone he had ever met, a truly magnetic individual.  Everything seemed fun for her, and she was fun to be around.  She was one of those rare people that could effortlessly connect with just about anyone.  Ed felt comfortable around her and immediately opened up to her.  He was rarely that at ease with most of his longtime friends and family.  He recalled sharing an early morning Illustration class with her one semester, and even though, he generally slept in and often missed the class, she always seemed to like him, and thankfully adopted him into her circle of friends.

Susan had lived on campus in a four-person room.  Her and her roommates: Stacy, Tina and Marcy were the best of friends. They were freshmen, and new to the school, except for Tina, but it felt like those four had all known each other for years.  Stacy, a business major, was a stunning blond girl who took an immediate dislike to Ed and completely ignored his presence, other than naming him “chump.”  He kept his distance, despite Susan’s invitations.  Tina was an art major, very reclusive, and a massive fan of both Bauhaus and The Cure.  Ed shared her music tastes, but Tina did not appreciate his penchant for singing along with her beloved songs, especially when he changed the words.  The music was all very serious to her.  She taught him that ‘Tina’ was short for ‘Christina,’ and that it could be short for a variety of names.  He had never thought about this before, always assuming ‘Tina’ was a stand-alone name.  It reminded him that he never liked being called ‘Ed,’ because no one took it seriously.  It was always treated like a joke name.  He half-heartedly tried to get people at his new school to call him ‘Edward,’ but no one did, except for Marcy.  Susan told him that she went from being a ‘Sue’ in high school, to ‘Susan’ now.  She pulled it off.  No one ever called her ‘Sue.’  Ed especially hated the nickname of ‘Eddy,’ but when Susan started calling him ‘Eddy,’ his heart would skip a beat and imaginary butterflies would spin around his head.  Marcy reminded him of Marcie from Peanuts.  It was a lazy comparison, but they kind of looked the same.  She was a care-taker.  If someone in the group was sick, she took care of them.  She took care of the group all the time.  In retrospect, Ed could see how she was incredibly underappreciated and he felt bad about that.  Most of his regrets in life stemmed from not fully appreciating people from his past.  Taking them for granted.  He wanted to be more like Susan, and always leave a positive impression on people.  Maybe more of them would him a friend request.

 

Being friends with Susan always meant you were going to be part of a group.  She grew up the youngest of many siblings.  Ed could not identify.  He had one much older brother, and craved isolation.  There were always guys hanging around this group of four young women. Because they both were incredibly attractive, Susan and Stacy drew young men like bees to honey, or moths to light.  He wondered what that would be like - constantly being sought out and getting attention.  It would seem annoying to Ed, but Susan always welcomed the attention.  Stacy did not like it at all.  She often complained about it, but she didn’t try very hard to stop it, as her audience were the guys who always hung around her.  Tina drew her own admirers, who wore black and wrote poetry, but she had a boyfriend named Jarrod.  Marcy was always busy taking care of the group.  I was not the only person who took her for granted.

Besides Ed, the usual visitors to what became known as “the Room,” were the two Dave’s, James, Dan and John, and, of course, Jarrod who took no time before essentially moving into “the room.”  Both Dave’s were tall and handsome and seemed older.  Dave B. was an outgoing black man, who had a quick wit and a gregarious personality.  Dave D. had a similar personality, was white, had long dreadlocks, and wore tie-dye shirts and ragged ropes as bracelets around his thick wrists.  Ed did not know what brought the Dave’s to college, other than to be campus legends.  James had a goatee, always wore a sweater, had an impressive deep bass of a voice, a talent for writing, and knew Susan from their theatre class.  Jarrod was a loud, opinionated, quick witted, pop culture wizard, who was a creative writing major.  Ed liked these guys, but never liked Dan and John.  He found them both off-putting.  He didn’t trust them. Ed had met them in a few of his classes that first semester.  They had all been business majors.  In fact, by the urging one of their professors, they all shared a subscription to the Wall Street Journal.  He quickly learned that he had no business being a business major, so he adjusted his academic schedule beyond that first semester.  He wasn’t sure what he disliked more – the classes or his classmates. 

Ed had always been a conscientious student growing up.  He always did his homework and tried his best, eschewing any kind of social life in favor of studying and being alone.  He didn’t like the unpredictability of other people.  He felt safe at home.  His older brother was the opposite, always out with his friends and his endless amount of girlfriends.  If he wasn’t out, girls were climbing into his second story bedroom window on a nightly basis.  Ed couldn’t figure it out, because he couldn’t get himself to talk to the girls at school.  There was one girl, named Tracy, who lived nearby, and clearly had a crush on Ed’s brother.  She somehow had the nerve to come to his home and talk to him.  He was never home, so Ed’s mom would invite her in, and she would sit uncomfortably in silence with Ed, while he did his homework, and his mom, while she did whatever the hell she did – balance the checkbook, or whatever.  His mom would ask Tracy questions about her life, and then eventually, Ed would finish his homework and he and Tracy would hang out and listen to music or watch TV. 

The thing is, he found he could talk with her.  It was easy.  She was only a few years older than him, but Ed thought of Tracy as an adult.  She was still a kid to his brother, who had no time for her.  Tracy became a constant companion for Ed.  He really liked hanging out with her.  He and his small group of neighborhood friends would stop by and visit Tracy in her apartment on summer afternoons.  They would watch those teenage slasher movies from the early 80s – the ones their parents wouldn’t let them watch.  They would all be as obnoxious as they could, because they could get away with it, and Tracy would pretend to be outraged.  Ed never really thought much about those short-lived interactions with Tracy.  Never realized that she was always alone – that a parent was never around.  That there was only a trashed couch and a TV on the floor as furnishings.  He never really noticed that his mom would always cook her food when Tracy would come to see his brother.  He really didn’t notice when she stopped coming over once the next school year began.  He just remembered how fun she was to be around and how easy she was to get along with.

After sophomore year of college, almost everyone in Ed’s social circle - everyone who lived in or constantly hung around “the room” - were either gone, planning to move out of the dorms, or away.  The living on campus thing was no longer a requirement, so moving out felt like an obligation to most students.  Ed applied to become a Resident Assistant as a work study job and for free room.  He wasn’t ready to share a big home or dingy apartment with a bunch of other people.  As an RA, he would get a private dorm room.  He was used to dorm life.  Both of the Dave’s had already disappeared from school – truly becoming legends.  Tina graduated.  Stacy was from the area, so she would begin to commute to school from home.  Marcy decided to attend school closer to her home in the Midwest.  James had disappeared after freshman year.  Jarrod had set up life with some friends of his in a tiny apartment near campus and Dan and John joined a fraternity and moved into that house.  Susan, was planning on moving in to an old farmhouse on her parents’ property that summer and talked about commuting the 45 minutes to school.

That summer, Ed went back home to the small coastal town he grew up.  Went back to work his old high school job and to forget about his crumbling school life that hovered less than two hours away.  In August, he received a letter with no return address.  The purple envelope was full of funny little pictures and squiggly drawings.  Curious, he tore into the envelope.  It was a short note from Susan.  She was moving into the farmhouse on her parents’ property outside of McMinnville.  Would he be interested in helping her move?  She went on to write about her adventures (lots of rivers and lakes and campsites) and how excited she was to finally have a place of her own.  She offered that there would be beer and BBQ as encouragement to help her move.  There was a silly looking map and drawing of her new home.  She closed by letting him know that he was missed and loved.  Ed read that note over and over again. 

A week later, he was driving his parent’s car toward the valley.  It was still early, but the heat was already quite intense.  He thought about Susan.  He didn’t know when he had developed such a massive crush on her.  His previous crushes had developed quickly and he would agonize over them for long periods – beating himself up for his inability to communicate.  Susan simply started talking to him one day in class, and he surprisingly kept his end of the conversation.  Ever since then, he found himself following her around as often as he could.  She seemed to like him, which confused and confounded him.  He was not adept at reading signals.  During his high school years, he was friends with a girl from his Spanish Class.  They rode the same bus home from school most days.  They bonded over music and began to hang out a lot.  He considered her one of his best friends, but then after they went to see a movie one evening, she seemed upset with him, and from then on they stopped hanging out.  He began to wonder, if they had been dating, without his knowledge.  Had it been a real life version of Some Kind of Wonderful?  Whatever the case, his realization was too late, not that he would have known how to address it anyway.

 

Susan was different.  Not only did he feel more relaxed and at ease with her than anyone prior, but he thought she was the prettiest person he’d ever met, and he was drawn to her.  Her casual nature was contagious.  It inspired her uncluttered style.  Ed began to feel sad and disappointed when he wasn’t around her.  Now, he was on his way to visit her.  Would they be alone, or would the usual entourage be there?  Butterflies flapped intensely in his gut.  He leaned back and tried to lose himself in the music on the mix tape he had made her, and ended up flying by the turn he needed to make to get to her place.

Ed slammed on the brakes and skidded to a stop.  Then he simply started up again along the empty two-lane highway.  He was embarrassed, even though no one was around on the country highway.  He continued forward until he found a place to turn around and go back. 

The side road to Susan’s house was gravel.  There was an incline up the road for about a half mile with brown cut fields on both sides.  For the next half mile, the road descended into a valley of giant oak trees, and the road curved around these before going back uphill.  Finally, the road crested a final slope into another open field.  A dilapidated one story house sat ahead under a pair of huge oaks.  An unmown brown field lay directly behind the house, followed by more trees and a forested hillside.  There were four cars parked in front of the house.  He saw someone who looked like James carrying a box from a pick-up truck to the house.

Ed pulled into the circle shaped space, trying not to block anyone in.  He climbed out and felt the hot sun on his skin and recoiled for a second.  It was so bright that even his tightly squinted eyes couldn’t keep his pupils protected.  He stretched and turned toward the house.  Standing on the porch to the old dilapidated and peeling house was Susan.  She stood tall in front of the open entrance.  She was wearing pale blue overalls, with a tight bright yellow t-shirt underneath.  Her long, straight, light brown hair was blowing smalls strands across her freckled nose and big toothy grin.  She waved and called out to him.  He stumbled his way up the two steps onto the porch and she put her arms out to accept a hug.  He obliged and held her uncomfortably tight and perhaps a beat too long.  He had recently developed a habit of leaning his head onto the shoulder of whomever he was embracing.  He did this and he did not want it to end.  She smelled like vanilla.  

She broke his embrace and directed him to the open front door.  “Come inside!  The gang’s all here!”

Inside, James was standing near the entryway over the box he had been carrying.  He waved at Ed; with a smirk on his face.  To the right was a living space that had two old couches pushed together to form on ‘L,’ framing a very large stone fireplace.  On each couch sat one of the two Dave’s.  Both were strumming and picking away at acoustic guitars.  Ed could not tell what they were playing, if anything, nor could he decide if they had each brought their instruments, which he thought was a little over the top. 

“Sup?” both Dave’s groaned in unison.  Dave B. gave him a smile and a creepy wink, before re-engaging with the fretboard.  Ed, nodded, and turned back to Susan standing in the doorway.  “What can I do?”

Susan asked James to put the box at his feet in the kitchen, which was situated behind the big fireplace.

“All that’s left is a few more boxes in the pick-up, and another truckload at my parents’ place,” she replied, before adding, “Thank you for coming!” 

Ed turned to grab a box from the pick-up outside.  He felt eager and energetic.  He and James took turns carrying the boxes into the house, and exchanging friendly quips.  Susan directed them to various locations in the two-bedroom house to put the boxes, and the two Dave’s squealed a terrible rendition of Janes Addiction’s signature song: “Jane Says” from the couches.

 

After the boxes had all been unloaded, Susan offered everyone a beer.  She had two large ice chests full of bottles of Henry Weinhard’s beer.  Before he accepted one, he trotted outside into the sunshine to grab the mix-tape he had put together for her.  She yelped with joy when he held it out for her, and then, immediately put it into a cassette player she had already set up in the kitchen.  He had designed the tape to start out fairly quiet and then slowly build in intensity and volume.  The intensity was meant to reflect his loneliness and his internal war against his own crushing shyness, as well as his growing feelings for her.  As soon as the first song hit, the two Dave’s both started to protest and complain about the dourness of Ed’s musical tastes.  They both grabbed another beer and Dave B. began mimicking and mocking the vocals of the first song.  Ed kept his mouth shut, feeling a tinge of embarrassment, and took a long pull on the cold bottle in his hand.  Most of its contents were taken in that first drink.  He was done with being there.  He wished that she would save the tape for another time. 

Susan giggled a soft protest to the Dave’s, and then began putting together a plan for everyone to go up to her parents’ place and retrieve the remainder of her things and bring them back to unload.  She figured one more pick-up load would be enough.  After that she would BBQ up some beef patties and chicken. 

James and Ed slid into the cab of Susan’s pick-up and she drove further up the gravel drive past a big field with what looked like grape vines and toward a huge house behind them.  She pointed out that her parents were going into the wine business.  They all went inside.  There were about twelve boxes stacked up and ready just inside the door, and two big lamps with their shades lying next to them.  No one else seemed to be around.  The house was dark and very cool.  Ed liked the chill of the air.  None of the boxes were heavy and they quickly hauled everything out to the back of the pick-up.  Ed and James tried their best to tightly wedge the lamps in so they would stay upright along the bumpy gravel drive.  Susan seemed to be comfortable with their effort. 

Back at Susan’s much smaller home, Ed was relieved that the lamps survived the journey unscathed.  He grabbed the necks of each, and carefully walked them into the front room.  He noticed the Dave’s had shut off the mixtape, opened more beer, and were murdering some song that he couldn’t quite place from their off-tone acoustics.  The remainder of the boxes were brought in by Ed, James and Susan upon her direction for which room.  The Dave’s each had slowly stumbled outside, each fully adorned in work attire – Dave D. even had put on gloves – and brought in the remaining two lamp shades. 

“Thanks a lot, you turds!  I mean, my heroes,” Susan shouted at the Dave’s.  “Appreciate the help!” she exclaimed, shaking her head with a big smile on her face.  “I’ll start the coals.”  She walked out onto a back patio from a door off of the kitchen.  There was a round table out there, a few white plastic chairs, and a small charcoal cooker outside.  Ed followed her out there and asked what else she needed done.  She asked him to pour some charcoal from the giant red, white, and blue bag into the black grill.  Several of the briquettes bounced around on the ground beneath the grill.  

“I think I’m gonna head home,” Ed summoned up the nerve to tell her.  He wasn’t feeling good about being there.

“Aw, man, you don’t want to stay and hang out?” she pleaded with him, as she motioned to the grill and towards the music emanating from inside the house.  She smiled, and angled her lips to blow a strand of hair out of her face.  She looked a little exasperated and mumbled “take me with you,” as she ducked back into the house – her home. 

Ed would’ve gladly taken her with him.  Absolutely, anywhere she wanted to go.  Instead, she returned with a plate with beef patties and a couple of boneless chicken breast fillets on a plate.  She set the plate down and turned to stand in front of him.  She put both of her hands on his slumped shoulders and looked him in the eyes and said, “thank you for helping, and for the tape.”  Then she put both of her hands on his cheeks and closed in for a big sloppy kiss on his lips.  He was surprised and a little alarmed.  It was over before he knew what was going on.  Her kiss tasted like candy blueberries – not like the salty kisses he had previously experienced.  He stood there dumbfounded for a moment and then reached in to hug her tightly, before turning to head through the house.  “Take care of yourself Eddy.”

Ed felt weak at the knees, and a little blind, as he navigated his way from the bright sun of the patio to the darkness inside.  

“Catch you guys later,” he shouted as he hit the front doorway.  He heard a few voices respond with a resounding group “Yo!” 

He numbly drove back home.  It was a quiet 45 minutes or so, as he decided not to turn on any music.  He felt overwhelmingly sad and wasn’t sure why. 

 When he returned to the small beach community he grew up, he drove to a beach access, got out of the car, and huddled into a pile of driftwood bunched up as far from the ocean as possible while still being on the beach.  He hid there, protected from the vicious and chilly north wind.  He liked the beach for his meditative moments; because the beach was its own environment.  The roaring of the waves and the constant wind overwhelmed his senses.  Sometimes Ed would feel a little beaten up after hitting the beach.  It was its own world.  The fact, that he could only hear and feel the sea and its contained ecosystem, helped him focus. 

He brought a pad of paper and a pen.  He considered writing a letter to Susan, but no words came to mind.  He thought the world of her, and ached for her attention.  She was almost always in his thoughts.  Everything reminded him of her.  Ed felt inspired to be a better person in her honor.  He thought a lot about this.  He admired the way she treated people, seemingly without prejudgment, and so welcomingly.  He strove for this.  He always felt very good around her – very comfortable, but he was never sure, if this was just how she treated everyone.  Was there a chance that she liked him in a way that he liked her?  Ed was pretty sure that he was unlikeable.  He could not fathom how someone so vibrant, smart, funny and pretty could ever be interested him beyond being a portion of her constant entourage.

After the beach stop, Ed began mentally beating himself up for not writing, or even starting the letter.  He drove up and down Highway 101 cranking music as loudly as he could.  He cruised by the old high school hot hang out spots and wasted as much time as he could in an effort to squeeze out every bit of angst he was feeling, or until he was tired, whichever came first. 

That night, when he got back to his childhood home.  No one was there.  His parents were out.  He didn’t turn on any lights, and instead turned on the old television before flopping face first onto the old orange couch – the one he’d grown up watching TV from.  He turned the channel to WTBS for their weekend video show Night Tracks.

 

Robyn Hitchcock & the Egyptians "So You Think You're in Love"

The first video he saw was a very generic music video for Robyn Hitchcock’s “So You Think You’re in Love.”  The song was okay, he thought, but didn’t hold a candle to the previous year’s acoustic marvel Eye, or even his pseudo commercial breakthrough Queen Elvis prior to that.  The second video was from Toad the Wet Sprocket.  It was a video for a song named “Is it for Me?”  The video featured super saturated sun-drenched images – bright for the eyes.  For some reason, he always liked that technique.  The video also seemed to depict the band as a rag tag bunch doing stuff around an old farmhouse.  The singer, Glen Phillips, is dressed very much the same way as Susan had been earlier.  He was fully enthralled in the music video for a song that he had zero interest.  It all felt very familiar and now he was pretty sure that he had developed a crush on the singer for Toad the Wet Sprocket as well.

 

Toad the Wet Sprocket "Is it for Me?"

Recovering from his trip down memory lane, which had been brought on from looking at Susan’s Facebook profile picture, Ed tried to interpret how she was doing now after all these years.  Not easy from a small picture.  She looked so different, but not so much due to the passage of time.  Her hair was now styled carefully with bangs, and she wore a lot of eyeliner.  He remembered her not wearing make-up when they were at school together, or the last time he saw her at the farmhouse.  

Ed opened up Susan’s Bandcamp page to listen to her musical offerings.  He wanted so much to like her acoustic indie pop sketches, but he decidedly did not.  He listened to most of them, which were all under two minutes each.  He wanted to become a fan and supporter of her music in the worst way, but it was not going to happen.  He went back to her Facebook profile to look at some of her cartoons.  These were interesting, thought-provoking and occasionally scathing towards her intended target.  

Nervously he clicked on the “Add Friend” button. 

Thank you to Ken Grandlund for help unscrambling my writing.

 

Just Wait

Here is a piece I wrote years ago in about a 20 minute stretch while away at college. It was a spurred on by a combination of not being able to access an empty washing machine in the dorm's laundry room and from wrestling with an assigned paper about the dangers of dehumanization for a Holocaust course.  It was later published by a website named Unlikely Stories (http://www.unlikelystories.org/old/).

I have always hated muggy days. The kind of day where the humidity enhances the already hot air and creates an incessant and irritating film of sweat that clings to one's body even during complete inactivity. Today is one of those days.


I wandered around campus trying to find something to do besides schoolwork. This term I managed to schedule all of my classes on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, so I could have four days a week without lecture and boredom. Enjoying the bustling energy of students coming and going and rushing around, I feel relieved not to be in any hurry to get anything done. I should get some homework done, but with this humidity and stuffiness there is no way I can possibly get anything done. Maybe my dorm-mate, Jeff and I, can head downtown this afternoon and check out some record shops, and grab some food other than the greasy grilled cheese that we’ll inevitably order at the cafeteria. He’ll still be in class for another couple of hours however. I should get something done. There is always laundry to do. I haven’t done a load of laundry since getting back to school and I think people may be noticing. Fuck it. I’ll take care of it. I truly need to get something halfway productive done today. I can’t let this stifling heat shut me down completely.

No elevator. Every time I walk up these flights of stairs to my room, I think about the thousands and thousands of dollars my parents and I are paying for this school. And here I am climbing stairs. Sometimes the building reminds me of summer camp. It’s like they don’t want us to have any modern luxuries. There are no screens on our windows and Jeff and I are attacked nightly by giant mosquitoes thirsty for blood, yet we keep the windows open, because without a fan or air conditioning the room gets so unbearably hot that a little bloodletting seems worth it for a smidgen of fresh air. It’s somewhat surprising that we have running water in the bathrooms, or bathrooms at all. This must be a life lesson they’re trying to teach us - a survival technique. By the time I reach the room, I am covered with a clammy sweat created by the dense air permeating the inside of the mildew-ridden walls of the ancient dormitory. Soon the weather will be changing, but for now the autumn is bringing heat that rivals summer. I cannot wait 'til winter.

Underwear, socks, jeans, and concert t-shirts make up my daily uniform and they are all well worn. I stuff a huge pile of them into my brand new laundry basket, along with a box of unopened laundry detergent. I manage to dig out some quarters from various corners of the room and head back downstairs for the laundry room in the basement of the building. Considering that most people will be in class at the moment, this should be an opportune time to do the wash. I should have my pick of the machines down there.

I hit the laundry room door with a thud from the momentum of running down the stairs. The lightweight door slams into the wall and stops dead against it. The pungent odor of the laundry room strikes me. A smell that can only be described as “classic basement.” A smell comprised of dirt and hot, wet air. I can feel my face cringe. Not being one who likes to make a scene, I do not expect anyone to be in the room. Unfortunately, I am wrong. A giant woman stands looking at my dramatic entry from the center row of washing machines. I have never seen her before. She has dirty hair dangling loosely about her misshapen head. While keeping my cringing expression, I focus in on the woman’s large bumpy nose and what looks like missing teeth. She reminds me of a giant witch, save for the hideous flower print dress dangling over her hulking form. A form which closely resembles the purple mass that is the curious shake sucking oddity of McDonalds’ Grimace. I believe that she has a wad of chewing tobacco stuffed into her cheek as well. The unbearably loud roar of the washing machines puts me in a momentary trance as I stare at this intruder.

The creature shouts at me over the din as I begin my trek around the room looking for an empty washer amongst the lint balls wafting above the cracked charcoal cement floor. The booming, yet hoarse voice pierces my head, making my ears buzz from the concussion.

BOY! WHAT’CHA DOIN’?

I pretend that I didn’t hear anything and rush for the only empty washer placed, unfortunately, next to this monster. I sit the basket down on the front edge of the empty machine, balancing it with my hip. The gargantuan size of this woman makes the maneuver of getting my stuff loaded difficult. Her huge sandbag breasts are sitting atop a shelf-like stomach that seems to be at my eye level and is partially blocking the empty washer. I reach for a handful of my clothes to begin loading the machine.

WAIT BOY! THAT’S MA MACHINE! I THINK THIS ‘UN IS DONE THO, she blurts and spits as she lifts the lid to a machine on her opposite side, only to reveal brown water swishing around. NOPE! I GUESS NOT!

What is going on? This woman doesn’t belong here. She doesn’t live in this dormitory. Why is she doing laundry here? Somehow her sheer size and volume shut me down. I back away slowly with my basket shielding me. She has taken the last available washer from me and I am at a loss about what to do. I retreat confused, sweaty and shaken from what is happening. I pound my feet up the stairs again and head back to my room on the top floor, unwashed laundry in tow.

In the room, I throw on some music and try to reassess the situation. I can head over to a neighboring dorm and throw in my load. It’s too hot out for that long trip. Besides, I have access to a laundry room in my own building. That monstrosity does not belong down there using those machines! All I need is one fucking washer! I shouldn’t have to wait for clean clothes because of this intruder!

With a renewed courage, I storm back down to the boiling laundry room. I kick open the loosely hinged door with even more force than earlier. I shout out to the woman, again looking over at me from the smash of the door against the wall. She stands hunched over a helpless machine, reminding me of that fucked up Muppet thing that used to hang out with Big Bird on Sesame Street.

“I want to wash my clothes now,” I sternly state from the doorway.

I DON’ KNOW WHAT’S STOPPIN’ YA BOY! THEYS ‘UN RIGHT HERE! She roars back with a sinister grin splayed across her patchy toothless face.

Undaunted, I move over to the now vacant machine, whose white surface is dusted with a brown film. I quickly throw all of the clothes packed in my basket into the washer, along with a cup of detergent. I shove a couple of quarters into the slot and feel fortunate that the machine starts to hum and shake and fill with water. Success.

WHAT’S YER NAME BOY?

I stare at the source of this question blankly.

“Cleet,” I reply flatly, with no intention of her getting to know anything about me. I turn to leave, having accomplished part one of my goal. In my periphery, I see her hawk up some gunk and spit it out onto the unsuspecting floor. A string of goo remains on her chin for a moment before swinging itself into the oblivion of her flowery massive front side. I wince and begin heading towards the dangling door of this rotten basement.

CLEET, EH? MA BRUTHA IS NAMED CLEET! ME-N-CLEET HAD SOME LAUGHS! She shouts. Her head leans back as if she can see those laughs on the dry-rotted ceiling above amongst the cobwebs.

I begin to cough and choke loudly to interrupt the eminent story about incest and “coon huntin’” that I can sense coming my way.

PLEASED TO MEET ‘CHA! MY NAME IS MYRTLE! HA! HA!

I make no reply and bolt out the door and run up the several flights of stairs to the safety of my room.

I had to forget that horrible woman downstairs. The vision of her is imprinted in my mind’s eye, despite doing all I could to avert my eyes when I was down there. What the hell was she doing there?

At least the clothes were being cleaned.

I lay down on my bed, suddenly feeling overcome by the heavy air and the disorienting activities from the basement. I shut my eyes hoping for sleep. I actively slow down my breathing. I begin to feel almost claustrophobic. My skin starts to itch. Relax. Breathing as deeply as possible, I begin choking on what seems to be dry dirt. The dirt has me surrounded completely. Frantically, I begin to turn and toss and spin digging through loose impediments of gravel and earth, never-ending. It fills my eyes and mouth, suffocating me. Panic sets in.

I jump up off of my bed, shaken by the horror of being buried alive. My eyes now open, trying to regain a sense of my surroundings. What just happened? I set my gaze at the clock. Its familiar red digits tell me that nearly an hour has passed since I had returned to my room. My eyelids feel heavy and my face numb as I pace the small room. All I need to do is head back downstairs, transfer the clothes to a dryer and hope that the crazy woman is gone. An evening trip into town later would be a welcome event after encountering the monster in the basement. I’ve got to relax.

I feel calm as I make my way down the stairs to the laundry room. I carefully open the door and poke my head into the room before fully entering.

WHERE YA BEEN BOY?

She’s still here. Great. Ignoring her foul inquiry, I stay silent as I peruse the room for an empty dryer. Every dryer is full, as I suspected.

“Are there any open dryers,” I ask as politely as possible, hoping for some sort of cooperation.

NO WAY BOY! THEYS ALL FULL! HA! HA! She screams as she slaps some wet things into a dryer.

Was I the only one having to deal with this shit? She has every dryer in use and I have but one load to dry. She is no student. I am not asking for much: just one dryer.

BOY! YOU TALK TOO MUCH! HA! HA! She spews interrupting my thoughts. YOU OUGHTA MEET UP WITH MY DAUGHTERS! THEY'S GETTING PRETTY! MY OLDEST SHOULD BE ABOUT YOUR AGE! WHADDYA SAY, BOY?

I begin to shut her out as best I can. I focus on the dryer that she is currently loading. It isn’t being used yet. My body moves towards that dryer. The woman is leaning down to the dryer door putting in another fistful of the eternally filthy garments, continuing to babble. The girth of her backside blocks my intent focus on the precious machine.

I now stand directly behind her. She leans in further. Her head now just about level with the top of the dryer. My hand grabs at a greasy wad of her stringy mane and slams her head into the metal box. Her head cracks and bounces back into my grip. With a stronger hold, I pound her forehead repeatedly into the machine. Each blow feels firmer than the last. Blood appears on the white box. I can hear some shrieking, but it seems somehow muted. The huge body attached to the head in my hand slumps over pulling my arm with it. I put my knee down to the ground next to the body, my fist still entangled in the strings. The foul body lay in a heap against the cool floor. I can still hear noise. I pound more, this time against the cement surface of the ground. The head turns soft in my hand. Blood rushes toward the drain in the floor nearby. I am now pretty sure that the shrieking has stopped. My hand slips free after a while - pieces of its head still stuck inside my fist. I toss the strings away from me and reach over the carcass to throw the shit in the dryer onto the floor.

I walk to the washer that has my clothes. Quietly and efficiently, I transfer the load into the now free dryer, and stick my last two quarters inside and press the start button.

The room seems very calm now. All sound is now gone, save for the quiet hum of one single dryer. I can feel its warmth on my leg. It’s really hot today, so damn uncomfortable.

Why Why Why

A warm day sometime in 1990



I ran down the patchy grass slope toward the downstairs MPR entrance to the Commons. I started to dance around by swinging my arms around with my elbows held upright in an imaginary slam pit circle. I kicked my knees high in the air and circled back towards the basement double doors. Various misquoted lyrics from the Dead Kennedys “I Kill Children” flew from my mouth as Ian (inexplicably pronounced as ION) charged and tackled me. Julie was standing off to the side with her arms folded across her chest watching the display.

Owen stepped out from the doorway and shouted for us to all gather inside. Owen was the boss for one of my work study jobs. One was as a “manager” of the campus radio station and one was being part of the set-up crew. The set-up crew consisted of me, Brian, Ian and Owen. We were charged with transporting and setting up equipment for events all over campus. If there was to be a speech given by the University President in Marsh Hall, then we’d wheel the special fancy presidential podium over there along with the sound equipment. Whoever was the one actually wheeling the podium around would have no choice but to give an impromptu mobile lecture to all the unwilling audience members who were passing by. Since there was rarely any kind of actual event happening on campus, we spent most of our work time screwing screws into broken chairs that littered the MPR storage closet or checking on the raw meat sacrifice laid out on the floor of the boiler room for the giant beast that allegedly lived there and not in my mind. This day, however, was a different story. The Dharma Bums, a Portland band that was getting some national underground notice, were performing in the Commons on a Friday night and we had to set up staging and move all of the tables and chairs out of the cafeteria. This was a big score for this little college out in the middle of nowhere. This also meant that Owen was all business. He had asked us to recruit as many people as possible to help us out with this major project. We were only able to gather a few. Julie, who I had recently been spending time with, agreed to help out. As did “Dula” Dave, the dreadlocked mellow man I had befriended the prior year through the radio station. Unfortunately, he had already disappeared (we had also coined him “Dead Air” Dave because of his penchant for leaving during the middle of his radio show). Brian had recruited the mostly deaf Dungeons and Dragons playing Nate, and Ian had brought along Cynthia, who was a freshman who I always assumed Ian was seeing, but was never sure, and who always reminded me of The Pixies’ Kim Deal. Instead she was a fan of Paula Abdul and her plastic sounds.

As we all noisily gathered in the MPR scattered around Owen, who was inside waiting for us, I spotted the piano in the corner and raced toward it. Immediately, I began pounding the keys with authority and allowing the ringing discordance to linger in the low-ceilinged, wide open, sterile basement room. Ian followed me over and we began to bark out the sinister words to Swans’ early stand against fascism “I Crawled.” At that moment, I had a flash of déjà vu, because I had once before hammered out this, one of my greatest hits, on the piano at the church for Baccalaureate a year or so earlier with a different Ian from high school. That time we were shouted at for disrupting the proceedings. This time, Owen simply watched silent until we petered out, gave up our performance, and wandered over to join the rest of the group. This method of dealing with disruption was much more effective. His lack of intervention somehow sucked all the fun out of it.

Owen spoke to us about our game plan for the evening. I thought back to that weird Baccalaureate evening. I remember unwittingly sitting down when we were supposed to stand. I remember Andy, sitting next to me in the pews, dropping his freshly emptied can of Coke onto the floor, interrupting the proceedings and causing everyone to stop what they were doing, and focus their attention in our direction, until the rolling can finally came to rest all the way down near the front. I remembered Watson’s dad’s strange sermon about how we should all be praying for specific things in life. It sounded different than what I’d always heard, but whatever, right? Who needs to make a wish for world peace? If I want more of those short little extra crunchy French Fries in my large sized order, when I make my way through the drive-thru, then I had to go ahead and pray for such a thing. Then I found my thoughts drifting to the Dharma Bums. How many times had we all seen them open for some band at the Pine Street Theater? It had become so ridiculous that when they entered the MPR to meet with all of us in the set-up crew at that moment, they recognized me as the floppy haired guy who always stands stage left at shows. I asked the drummer who they were opening for that night. He did not respond.

Owen had stopped his huge list of instructions and the entire hubbub of meeting the band died down. We had been instructed about what our goals were and how much time we had to complete them in with far too few people, so we were dispersed back outside. I had missed everything having been lost in thought. I grabbed Ian as we headed out and asked him what we were supposed to do. He seemed annoyed. I figured it was because Nate was shouting to Brian something that should only have been shared between them, if at all, but Nate was never very good about keeping his voice down. Julie was standing away from the rest of us, though she was supposedly here with me and was good friends with Cynthia. I kept looking around for her attention and she kept avoiding me.

Earlier that day, I had told her that I loved her. Now, I had to track her down to join in on this group job. She looked at me with sympathy. She continued to watch from a distance and lit a cigarette. This surprised the hell out of me, because I didn’t know she smoked. I approached her and asked her what was wrong. She said that she didn’t want to talk with me. She was only there because she had already agreed to be there and because she needed the money – however minimal. She told me that I would never understand her. She told me that we would never work. She told me that she was sorry for me. She felt bad for me, because of what I had said to her. She said that because of it, she couldn’t believe a word I would ever say.

I was devastated, as she told me all of these things in front of everyone else. She continued on. She said that I did not treat her with respect - instead I was only in love with the idea of her. She pointed out that I rarely spent time with her and that I did not know her. Looking into her eyes, maybe for the first time, I could see the words: “Why did you have to say it” scroll across them over and over like a mantra. She clearly had lost all of that initial attraction and respect for me. She could only manage a mothering look of sympathy, hoping that I would learn from this lesson. I felt like a child in that moment that had just touched the hot burner on the stove despite warnings to not do so. I was that child and I knew she was right.





Story inspired by the 1995 song by Containe