Category: Writing

When opportunity lands on my doorstep, I have to seize the moment. In this case, I went out onto my balcony to retrieve something from the storage closet and saw this intriguing scene in the parking lot. How could the fiction writer in me resist? Everyone has a history, comprised of many “remember when moments.” The key is to make the story as entertaining as possible.

I don’t know the gentleman sleeping in the car, which may or may not be his, with the detached bumper,  discarded beer on the ground, open driver’s door for ventilation, and parked skewed onto the handicapped ramp, but I’d like to come up with the parameters of his story, based on the early Sunday morning evidence.

The Bumper: Starting with what appears to be the most obvious, the bumper detached after he careened the driver’s side front tire into the curb and the car bounced back. Since the passenger’s side front tire is propped up, the driver’s side front tire is even lower than usual. That’s merely a consequence of Newton’s Third Law of Motion: Every action has an equal but opposite reaction.

Yet a more interesting explanation would be that he pulled into the parking space, not realizing the passenger’s front tire rode up on the handicap ramp and braked gently, not causing the bumper to fall off. Instead, an angry woman, who was riding shotgun, abruptly got out of the car, slamming the door. When he yelled at her, she responded by telling him to go fuck himself, kicked the bumper, causing it to fall off and ran into her apartment when he hopped out of his car.

He swaggered to the front of the car, saw the bumper on the ground, raised his hands to the heavens, cursed her name once more, sat back in his car to finish the last of his beer and passed out.

The Beer: Alcohol is a must-have in just about any series of miscalculated risks and bad decisions. This guy bought a 24-pack of bottled beer; so he, and perhaps a friend or two could have good time. He may have been tailgating somewhere on the outskirts of a game or, better yet, at a nearby park where one of many free festivals or happenings were taking place.

A twist on the obvious is if this guy actually has very little alcohol in his system due to the presence of some other drug. The beer may have merely whet his whistle in between smoking a combination of recreational drugs.

The Car: Despite its outward appearances, this car is his pride and joy. This guy has experienced a lot of highs and lows that life has thrown his way, but for the past six years, this car has seen him through it all. He will be devastated when he awakes and discovers “Preciosa” with her front bumper off. His eyes will tear up as he lovingly works her bumper back on with the care a parent takes rotating his child’s shoulder back into its socket.

Alternatively, this guy wakes up, rubs his eyes, scratches his balls, belches a stale beer mini-cloud and when he’s awake enough, he’ll wonder where he is, how he wound up here, and most important, why he’s sitting in the driver’s seat of someone else’s car.

The Guy: This is the most challenging aspect of this writing exercise because he could be virtually any guy, especially if this isn’t his car–an idea I really like since it has more possibilities.  Otherwise, this car shows that he’s working class to middle class at best. Since drugs and alcohol are the great equalizers among men, this guy may have found himself in this situation as a fluke or it may be habitual.

Going with the odds, at least one woman is part of how he wound up passed out in a slightly damaged car that may or may not be his. Did she lock him out? Did he mistakenly drive to the wrong apartment complex? Was his intention to stay with a relative who lives here, but he made it as far as the parking lot and figured that was close enough?

The only thing I know for sure, when I returned from my yoga class around 12:15, the car, its bumper and the guy were gone–the discarded bottle of beer remained in the parking space.

Welcome to the Land of Milk and Honey. Home of the Brave. Land of the Free. Where the streets are paved in gold. The sun’s always shining unless we’re dancing in the rain. So turn that frown upside down. This is no place for any Ned Negatives or Debbie Downers.

This is Par-a-dise, baby! Unlike Fantasy Island, all your dreams come true here. You can have any and everything you want. And you can have it now. That’s right, no waiting. This is where everyone is number one. You just have to want it and you can have it. You can have it all ‘cause you deserve it all.

And bigger is always better. Why settle for fun size when you can supersize it? Why take it slow when you can have fast? You should’ve had it already. You should‘ve had it yesterday.

Now I know what you’re thinking. You were born poor or brown or gay or disabled. I’m here to tell you, there’s no need to dwell in the land of disenfranchisement. You can still have it all if you want it all.

You wanna know what the great equalizer is? You wanna know what all the rich, beautiful, sophisticated, upwardly mobile Americans do? They live on CREDIT! Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover…these are the golden tickets to paradise! You allergic to gold? Well, you can get your ticket in platinum, silver, honors, advantage, preferred, premier, select, and DIAMOND. They’re not just a girl’s best friend no mo’!

Nobody who’s anybody slaves away for paradise. When you got all these credit cards, why they’re just as good as money. You pay off some shit and buy mo’ shit. It’s all about taking shortcuts, leveraging loans, zero percent financing, floating checks, robbing Peter to pay Paul, taking the financial leap, braving the freefall. Y’know it’s not the fall that’ll kill you. It’s the sudden stop! So you gotta spread your credit card wings and fly.

SOAR. And buy more and more and more. You don’t keep up with the Joneses. You own those bitches! And buy more and more and more until you’re so massive the gravity of your possessions sucks in everything else. And it grows and spirals outta of control and it consumes your soul. And then you become too big to fail.

Can’t you see it? Heaven on Earth. As far as the eye can see. Everything is yours…for the fleeting moment, before BOOM.

All that remains is silence, the clothes on your back and what you can carry.

Act now, and you can start living in paradise for a special price. Just sign on the dotted line. Don’t worry about the fine print. And tell ‘em The Fool sent ya! (wink)

Strutting my way to Bikram yoga one day, I noticed a quarter lying on the sidewalk. Barely breaking my stride, I swooped down to pick it up. To my dismay, it was a nickel. Now, was this just a case of objects appearing bigger from a distance? Or the sign of the financial times that money didn’t seem to go as far as it used to?

Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have bothered to pick up a mere nickel, with a dime being the smallest amount of money worth slowing my roll to retrieve. On the other hand, I have a sister who breaks for any amount of money, even pennies. She justifies this nonsense with the rationale, “That could be a wheat penny!”

Ah, yes, the infamous wheat penny. Minted from 1909 to 1956, wheat pennies have two stalks of wheat on the tails side. Wheat pennies value anywhere from 3 or 4 cents if in poor condition to around $10 in excellent condition. Most are made of copper, but steel wheat pennies were minted during WWII.

My ever optimistic, perpetually broke sister, who excitedly swoops up every stray red cent for the Holy Grail of coins, lives in a quixotic world of seeking something for nothing. Whereas I, the proverbial penny pincher whose time a penny is not worth picking up, am never broke. Even the rare times where I have incurred a debt to study or buy a new car, those loans were paid off well in advance, much to the lender’s chagrin.

Isn’t if funny how some people will waste a lot of time dreaming and scheming to discover treasure in plain sight or win big through state-sponsored gambling, such as lotteries and scratch-off tickets, but turn up their noses disdainfully at the thought of getting a temporary job so they can stop borrowing money to put gas in their car?

A penny for MY thoughts? You’d better put ten of them together. Better yet, toss me a quarter!

The energy shifted

Her expression contorted

Pointed finger wagged in my face

Words shot out of her mouth

As I sat confused

Then the magic word

RETARDED

Slowly

Fresh oxygen circulated

I took a deep breath

Explained I’d said the R-word

In reference to

An assbackwards TX educational policy

Not a person

Never would I say it

About a person

Yet

I’d stepped onto

An IED

Invisible Emotional Detonator

I shrank as she

Towered over my

Educated fool’s ignorance

Schooled me that the R-word

Was the bully’s go-to word

Years of parental advocacy

Had finally changed ‘mentally retarded’

To ‘intellectually disabled’

How dare I use the R-word

EVER

 

Sitting in awe of the

Human explosion

My creative mind

Failed to conjure

A peaceful resolution

An olive branch to

Make this

Less painful

Not all right

Not all equal

Not all better

My apology

Disintegrated

Amongst the flames of her words

I was the umpteenth

Insensitive person

How many more

Would she have to

Clue in

Through verbal attack

To penetrate the

Thick skull of ignorance

The privilege of intellectual

Wellness

Tossing around the R-word

Reminding her of all

The closed doors

The low expectations

The lack of funding

The lack of services

The lack of understanding

The lack of empathy

 

IF YOU EVER MET MY SON

YOU’D SEE HE’S

THE NICEST GUY

 

Once she’d stormed away

A sympathetic woman

Beside me

Confessed her use

Of the R-word

Only in reference

To things

Such as

Flame-retardant

Silently I nodded

In agreement

I’d needed a flame retardant

 

 

 

The pursuit of seeking logic behind anything the women’s fashion industry does is foolhardy since its sole purpose is to convince as many women as possible that she’s not wonderful the way she is, but can come closer to achieving the ideal beauty if she buys into their nonsense through buying their overpriced, sweatshop-produced clothing and accessories. Of course, ideal beauty is an ever-changing target that fashion-conscious sheeple perpetually hunt.

Becoming a Peace Corps Volunteer straight after graduating from college cured me from the nonsense of women’s fashion. As a matter of fact, I now wear secondhand clothing, except for shoes and underwear, and blend in just fine within the crowds where I normally find myself—for a fraction of the disposable income spent on such depreciable goods.

Yet, there’s an even more sinister fashion trend afoot. No, I’m not referring to the Cinderella glass-heeled stilettos since those have been around for a while. Nor the rise of the “plus-size” model being a size 8, which, by the way is my size. I could be a plus-size model if I wasn’t so short, according to the fashion industry, at a mere 5’5”.

What I’m referring to has no size nor height restrictions and lies beneath all the overpriced, sweatshopped-produced fashionista clothing. Yes, that’s right, I’m talking about pubic hair.

I’ve long known that we American women feel compelled to shave underarms, arms, legs and up until the last couple of years a mere waxing around the bikini area. Oh, sure, we all joked about the Brazilian bikini wax for years, but now that has become the new fashionable pubic hair normal.

A trend, which is my latest afflatus: my pubic hair prediction is now that all the fashionable women have lasered or waxed it all away, the pendulum will swing the other way. You see the fashion industry won’t sit still and allow all women to denude their nether region. Cutting-edge, trend-setting fashion means that the new thing has to be what most women don’t already have.

Hence, I proclaim that the next nether fashion will be pubic hair cornrows! That’s right. It won’t be good enough just to grow a natural tangle of pubic hair. Why, that doesn’t cost any money. No, in order to cornrow pubes, women must buy extensions. Some women may need pubic hair implants since all that waxing and lasering has left them permanently deforested.

So fashionable women can go into a salon to get her eyebrow, eyelash and pubic hair implants. This will be the season of hair reforestation!

And since men have pubic hair too, there’s no need for them to be left out in the fashion cold. After all, men and women are both mammals. With matching cornrows couples can do it better than they do it on the animal channel. They can caress each other between the cornrows. Add more sensual hairy friction to the bump and grind. The possibilities are as endless as the fashion industry’s craziness. Get your southern route cornrows today!

Her scream startled me awake. I listened. More noise meant I had to get up. Silence, I could linger in bed. Regardless, I closed my eyes again. I held the irrational belief my mosquito net protected me from all danger and hullabaloo.

Hullabaloo defined by my Merriam-Webster word-a-day calendar as “a very noisy and confused situation.” Of all the frivolous words that calendar had displayed, hullabaloo was the most applicable. Unlike many of the things Mom sent in her care packages.

No matter how detailed my longhand written letters described my life in this developing country, nothing seemed to penetrate Mom’s gargantuan happy bubble. She meant well. If nothing else, my letters provided her with exotic entertainment and bragging rights. Her smart, worldly daughter doing good in the world.

Far more useful would have been a Swahili word-a-day calendar. At least hullabaloo sounded as lyrical as Swahili. I bought green peppers at the market every week just to say, pilipili hoho. Beyond musical attributes, hullabaloo accurately described daily life.

The volume level of my rural, local neighbors equaled the noise of suburbs in the States. Lively, energetic conversations in sing-songy Swahili, regardless of happiness or anger. Lethargic packs of dogs during the day transformed into growling, barking mongrels at night. Roosters crowing all times of the day. Cows in labor. Bats flapping wings in the crawl space against our corrugated iron roof. And three distinct sounds of beating: the hoe against the earth, the machete against the crops and the small child-size wooden pestle against food held in its mortar.

Fully awake, my eyes refused to remain closed. The frantic shuffling of my roommate’s cheap plastic sandals against the concrete floor traveled into the kitchen. The clang of pots. Opening of drawers.

No need to get out of bed. I heard it all. Even through a closed door.

I’m an analytical thinker. A real problem solver, if you will. That could be a dangerous personality trait. Foreigners like me tended to rush into a country like this, roll up their sleeves and try to fix everything. Making a bigger mess than the original situation.

First thing we were taught in training: “Don’t just do something. Stand there!”

My roommate walked among us as if she was smarter than everyone else. Myself included. And the way she condescended to our local neighbors. I marveled at how they could still address her with such warmth and glowing smiles in their sing-songy accented English. Perhaps another cultural difference was their inability to pick up on condescension, as was the case with sarcasm.

However, her elitist attitude worked in my favor in this case. She’d try several solutions before conceding and knocking on my door for help. For my part, I gave her the time to resolve it. Whatever it was.

Whatever it was, ground zero was not in the kitchen. The shuffling had just traveled into the bathroom. Seconds later, clang-banging wrenched me from a supine position swifter than the most obnoxious alarm clock. Blood-drained induced stars dazzled before my eyes. If ever there was a time to do much of nothing, now was precisely that moment.

I leaned in closer to my mosquito net. Not that it improved my hearing. It just felt a little more comforting to be slumped to the side. My muscles relaxed into a sitting sloth’s position. My heartbeat slowed down. I continued my descent, hugging my knees and resting my chin on them.

She tapped out an erratic rhythm accompanied by guttural unintelligible chanting. My best guess: a long wooden spoon against the porcelain, Westernized toilet basin. Minus the toilet lid. Minus the toilet seat. Usually minus the running water through the pipes to flush it. With such a lack of comfort and utility of a true Western toilet, we didn’t even refer to it by its English name. No, the Swahili name was more appropriate: choo.

Short, quick and efficient. As one’s trip to a developing country’s bathroom usually was. If questionable food hadn’t caused harisha (doesn’t that sound more beautiful than saying “diarrhea”?), then the high oil content most locals used in their food meant it slid out as fast as it had slid in. Depending on the quality of the bathroom situation, one learned not to linger too long, especially when not using one’s own substandard choo at home. Some foreigners even became anal retentive about where they deposited their waste. After a while, their nervous system no longer supported such hyper vigilance and they went practically anywhere.

The arrhythmic beating stopped. I hoped that was a good sign. Now that I was up, I needed to go. The shuffling advanced in the direction of my bedroom. It stopped in front of my door. Illogically, I held my breath, willing her away. Yet, she knocked. At first hesitant, but a few seconds later, a little louder.

I sighed, reluctant to give the verbal cue for her to enter. “Karibu.”

The door squeaked open.

“We have a rat in our choo!”

By the time I resigned from teaching full time at the end of March 2014, I still had stars in my eyes. I’d dutifully paid off all debt, saved up six months’ worth of money and had big dreams of launching my freelance writing/editing career.  Although I’d landed a couple of lucrative writing/editing contracts, there was always some delay in receiving payment, which turned out to be par for the course.

I analyzed what to do more efficiently with invoicing.  I became more proactive when searching for more work before one contract ended.  Yet those lucrative writing/editing contract jobs trickled by.

My reality check came when my dependable freelance work ended the first week in December 2014. There were some minor-issue payment delays. By then, I had started looking into part-time teaching jobs and entered the new year with three interviews lined up.

After the first two interviews, I landed the job I’d wanted the most out of the three, teaching adult basic education in the evenings. Although I knew I’d have no social life, I figured since I’d nearly flatlined financially, I’d save money from teaching in the evenings Monday through Thursday.

Call me optimistic, but much later than I should have, I stopped throwing away all those valuable coupon-containing “junk” mail. I hadn’t needed to maintain a strict budget since my early days of teaching and grad school debt. Even though I watched my savings slowly deplete, I kept telling myself that since I wasn’t extravagant with my money and had some income, I’d be OK. The first week I sorted through that “junk” mail to retrieve valuable coupons, I saved nearly $20! I could’ve kicked myself for not doing this months earlier.

I also changed my cooking habit. I’ve always known that eating at home was more economical than dining out, but I was still under the illusion that I could go through my recipe books, choose a recipe for the week, and write out the needed groceries to make it. While that scheme had served me well in the past, being chronically underemployed did not cater to such middle class luxuries.

The best strategy to use when so dependent on coupons is to build a meal around the available coupons. No matter if the best deal is a 16 oz can of flavored beans, EVERYTHING will taste delicious when fresh, sautéed vegetables and freshly ground spices are added.

I used to boast about being a “guerrilla cook” when I lived in developing countries, then a “blender chef” when I discovered how time-saving using a blender to make dry spice powders and pastes as a base for a meal. Now, I’m the “coupon culinary artist.” The challenge is to save the most money through buying and cooking meals based on the available coupons, bulk items, fresh produce and spices, and my cooking creativity.

My delicious coupon meals remind me with every savory bite I’m not a poor starving artist.

“Redemption” means “being saved from sin, error or evil” and it also means “getting the possession of something in exchange for payment or clearing a debt.” So thanks to the craziness of the English language, Jesus redeemed all Christian souls through his sacrificial blood in a related manner that customers redeem coupons. Granted, one deal was far more tremendous than the other. Or, if you’re an atheist, one deal exists and the other doesn’t.

Yet “redemption” transcends religious belief in all people who are willing to act in return for the possession of something. People work to possess everlasting life, a clear conscious or a depreciable good. But, what good does any of it do?

Given the fact that the sense of “redemption” is a human construct, it’s no wonder the religious and atheist alike share this notion. Part of being human is to inevitably make mistakes. And it’s also human nature to love getting something for less than what we usually pay.

Now let’s say, you’re a stand up, normal person aware of his or her faults. Your first impulse is to right the wrong or at least provide some semblance of “paying for your sins.” Does that smack too much of religion? Then let’s say, you want to “make it up” to someone. That’s merely swapping one monetary analogy for another.

And to extend that analogy, what I’m suggesting are redemption coupons. I’m not talking about some prefabricated, Hallmark greeting card “Oh I’m so sorry” type thing. Nor something that’s legally binding and “take it to the judge” kind of thing because if you’ve done something that bad, the law’s eventually gonna catch up with you anyway. Neither am I talking about a ritualistic ceremony where you must consult with a holy person to perform a symbolic redemption.

Envision, if you will, those colorful enticing coupons that come within the Sunday paper. They’re written in bold, simple words and usually they have an attractive image printed on them. That’s how your redemption coupons should be, figuratively speaking. Now, you can actually make a coupon if you want, but the spirit in which you offer someone a redemption coupon should be a declaration in bold simple words of how the recipient can redeem it and obtain the attractive possession, which is what you’ll do to clear the debt of your wrongdoing.

When you offer someone a redemption coupon, you must honor it or else you’re guilty of false advertising. On the other hand, if they refuse to accept your coupon, then it’s time for negotiation. The first rule to negotiating is to listen to what the other side wants. Depending on your situation, you may discover that all the other person wanted was to be heard.

You must never offer a coupon that has a greater value than the possession. Think about it: even when a business offers a coupon for something free with no purchase necessary, in the long run, they will still make a profit. The profit you make off your redemption coupon will be a clear conscious.

Your coupon should never expire. Putting an expiration date on your redemption coupon signals to others that they must forgive you on your time rather than theirs. Any manipulative, ultimatum strings just invalidates your coupon. For redemption to work, you must offer your amends, then step back. Everyone has his or her own time frame. Even those businesses that publish their coupons in the Sunday paper know that not every customer will rush out to redeem them at the same time. Most businesses even show how good they are by honoring expired coupons.

Finally, the most important person who must accept your redemption coupon is yourself. If you deem yourself unworthy of forgiveness, then you have no reasonable expectation that anyone else will. Past transgressions cannot be undone just like harsh words cannot be unsaid. What you can do is take a deep breath and begin again.