attack of the chicken!

I’m writing again.
Thinking about how to build an audience, enthusiasm, interest.
Divulging more of myself.
What am I protecting? Or whom? My little self, I think. The young girl who endured so much. Instinct taught me to curl inward, to hide, to secret important things away. So, unfurling, opening up, revealing myself, well that’s all terrifying. I want to be brave. Not a coward. Not a chicken.

*

What else is terrifying. Walking along a narrow sidewalk looking for a thrift store, hearing a brass band and looking for the source of the music when suddenly a loud cluck and a giant chicken bursts from overgrown foliage, wings flapping, talons extended. First my pal, then me, dodging toward the street, trying not to get run over by a car or clawed by an angry bird. It was scary and then funny, but we got out of there real quick.

*

Also, a restaurant to revisit.

yummers

I’m eating well. Both healthfully and not.

 

finally, time. and ushering

It has been a tremendously chaotic several weeks. Packing, re-packing, traveling, waiting, rushing, schlepping, filling out paperwork, paying deposits and bills and fees, working all the while.

Today finally a moment to take a breath.

*

I volunteer-ushered yesterday, a wildly rainy day, windy, unsettled. The way the seating at the venue works is first-come first-serve, and a few people always get anxious, even though there are plenty of seats. There's jostling, unsubtle posturing as I set up my station and everyone waits for the doors to open. There’s always an old guy with a cane edging to the front a few minutes before it's time. Yesterday's o.g was droning on about his job with Walgreen's, while snotty space-savers, well-fed citizens in expensive casual gear, set down umbrellas and coats as if their pricey fleeces lent some kind of right to go in first.

Finally, an employee opens the doors and people surge forward. I count off each eager body with a silver clicker. Then the surge slows to a trickle, and the show starts and I close the venue door. Once all seats are taken, I have to deliver the bad news to would-be entrants, and some take it well, sitting down to wait in case someone leaves. An hairy old guy goes in anyway with a snide smile. A younger man challenges me -- can’t we just peek in? -- as his three women companions urge him to stop. While I’m talking to the foursome, another man charges up behind me to the other door to the venue, actually reaches past a table to open it, a woman and three kids close behind him. I bolt over. Can I help you? He’s incredulous that they can’t just go in. The show has started, I say. It’s a full house and that door goes onstage. Please. Finally they leave (the man muttering a half-hearted sorry on his way downstairs) and everyone else sits down to wait. A gorgeous couple. A family with two toddlers and a baby. A daughter with her boyfriend, translates the delay for her parents and little sister. Eventually everyone gets in. A guy walks up, breathless. He needs to go in. His friends are inside. I’m sorry, there are no seats right now, I say. There’s even a family of seven standing up in the back. Then how are my friends sitting down, he says nastily. I assume because they got here awhile ago? I say, confused. Well tell them I’ll be outside, he says. But I don’t know your friends, I say. I’ll show you a picture of them! he snaps, and shows me a grainy video of two women. I realize he’s mad and a little off so I just say, Okay, if I see them I’ll tell them. He stalks out. I hear sirens. People exit, and I can let a few more in (sadly, not the angry guy because he’s gone). A guard walks by, unusually stony.

Finally the show ends and I put everything away and exit the building. Outside I find a half-dozen polic cars, blue lights flashing, and yellow tape cordoning off a few blocks. A shopkeeper is excitedly talking about guns drawn and being barricaded inside. I consider asking what happened but instead I cross the street and head for home.

the moon

After a night of music (the Shotgun Jazz Band, finishing their set with a soulful "Basin Street Blues"), my pal and I stopped on our walk home at a quickie mart for a snack.
I stood around outside. A young woman exited. Did you see the moon? she said, excited.
She pointed. I looked. The moon hung low in the sky like a chunk of nibbled cheese.
How had I not seen it?
A guy exited the store so we showed him too.
My pal and I enjoyed our snacks later on, standing on a rooftop balcony in the warm evening, looking at the moon in wonder.

f.l.u.id.i.t.y

Even as cynical, hard-hearted right-wingers ramp up their anti-gay and anti-trans attacks, some of my dearest pals are exploring their sexuality. Both have alluded to fluidity over the past months and years. Have sent me evocative, gorgeous photos and assumed feminine names.

One went through a time in their earliest phases of questioning of experiencing temporary blindness first thing every morning. They were unable to see for long minutes. It seemed so telling. The new name is also their mother’s.

The other assumed a feminine identity first in performance art, fully realizing a powerful, sexy shape with sculpted legs and a mop of tossable hair, but silent in each video, unable to find a voice they found palatable. I don’t know how to talk in her voice, they said, and this seemed deeply metaphorical. (They’d also put away one of her wigs, twisted it up tight and put it away in a drawer and couldn’t find it for a week.) On the apps as Her, they're taken aback at experiencing men’s vileness and capriciousness toward women.

I’m excited for my friends. Worried. Protective.

I know how wonderfully freeing it is to say yes to that inner voice, the one saying, go, do, be.

You.

its been a week yes it has

It's been a week of making moves. 

Of cleaning out storage containers, schlepping, driving, packing, re-packing, schlepping some more. Dodging hail and snow, a closed Hood Canal Bridge and cancelled ferry.

Of cancelling one internet provider and starting up with another and saying no to any and all sales pitches.

Of signing things, thinking up new passwords, nervously checking bank account balances and imagining balmier days ahead. 

In the meantime, this made me laugh (no sound the narration is cringe).

 

@blaaackone #monkey #monkeyingaround #fall #lol #clumsy #trickster #apple #friends #fruit #nature #green #caring #aww ♬ Coffee - XIANZ

And I love this series. "Take me to your favorite place and keep the meter running."

@keepthemeterrunning “ROMAN” PART 1 // Kareem’s hails a cab and takes a ride with Roman, a Russian who’s been driving a cab for 29 years. They travel to Queens to Romans favorite restaurant. COMMENT FOR PART TWO 🚕 🚖 created by @kareem.rahma  #nyc #newyork #taxi #cab #queens #russia #food #anthonybourdain #conversation ♬ original sound - KEEP THE METER RUNNING

 

a man hit me today and a man hit me on some other days too

A man hit me today. A stranger. Less than an hour ago.

I made it home and am sitting here feeling numb. Wondering why I’m not angry or crying.

Mostly I’m just weary. I don’t think of myself as more or less of a target than anyone else.

Walking with my sibling a couple months ago in another city, a man was weaving around on the sidewalk approaching us, then lunged and hit me in the leg. He kept going. I yelled something, I can’t remember what. He disappeared into the crowd. Then I felt outrage. Nauseated. Violated once again. Touched without my permission.

*

It happened in DC in September. I sat on a bus with family and a man was waiting to exit, talked to me, tried to shake my hand. I politely said I’d prefer not to and he began screaming at me, calling me a stuck-up bitch. My family did nothing. The bus driver. The other passengers. Everyone just sat. I was frozen in fear and anxiety until he stepped off the bus. Later I wept, feeling so unprotected, so undefended. So vulnerable.

*

Today, as I walked home from a bakery run, I dodged some squirrelly-looking characters on a corner, and took a right onto a busy street. Saw a man approaching on the sidewalk. It was nine a.m. Lots of cars. I heard a shout. Was it the man who was now just a few yards away? He wasn’t tall, but compact, young, fit-looking. Normally if I had even a sliver of worry I’d cross the street, but there was orange construction netting blocking the opposite sidewalk. So I kept going. It was broad daylight. Rainy.

As we passed each other I moved to the left, saw a baton in the man’s hand, thought Surely he wouldn’t hit me, instinctively brought the umbrella up to shield myself and WHACK, down came the baton. Hard. It rattled the umbrella. My elbow wavered.

I said nothing. Felt a surge of fear. Walked as fast as I could away from him. Do I call someone? Did the construction workers across the street see anything? I vowed long ago never to call the cops on a black man. But this one just struck me.

I looked back. He was walking away. Yelled something.

I hurried home.

Over the weekend at a support group a man was ranting about a woman who shared too much information, in his opinion, in another venue. She’s opening herself up to all kinds of pervs or weird men attacking her, he sputtered. I said, You’re entitled to your opinion but all a woman has to do to be attacked in this world is simply exist.

I don’t have a neat wrap-up or insight. These things happen and happen. No one is punished or even admonished except me for daring to exist, I guess. For daring to be in public, getting ice cream or walking to a bakery.