Very Short Stories: Witnesses were impressed by the incredible amounts of blood


When I was twenty years old, I lived in a big house with five roommates on a park. Our house was the center of our universe. My bedroom was the annex, a redone garage with no internal door connecting it to the rest of the house. This meant, of course, that you had to go outside to get to my room. I had my own key. Why, when we were first moving in, I felt the need to claim this room was and still is a mystery, because I have to go to the bathroom at least twice every night. It felt a lot like camping.

The Brat House
One evening, I was in my room organizing tank tops by color, when my roommates called me on my phone to inform me that dinner was ready. It was spaghetti. I was starving, and I got so excited that I dashed straight out the door and broke off the top part of my finger.

The door, because it was a door to the outside, was a big, solid, metal fire door. Now, I used to have a particular way of closing a door. Instead of simply stepping outside, grabbing the door knob and pulling it shut, I'd make it more of a challenge. I would grab the inside door knob, pull open the door, step outside, and then I'd pull the door shut behind me with my hand still on the inside knob, if you can imagine, and at the last minute I'd whip my hand outside and the door would click shut.

It was like a game that I played every time I left the house, and I wasn't even aware I was playing it until I lost.

For some reason, probably because I was in such a food panic, I did not get my hand out in time as I slammed the door. My little finger got left behind, and when the door clicked shut it clipped the bone right in two. What I did now, was I flung the door back open and ran wildly around my room, gripping my left pinkie in my right fist. The erratic circles I spun around the carpet bore an incomprehensible similarity to a freshly beheaded chicken. I opened my mouth but I couldn't make any noise.

And then, the voice from deep within began to speak. It was the same voice that later instructed me to stay alive for one hour when I was drowning. Count to ten, the voice instructed. It's a system I've develop to deal with the many explosions of pain I've endured as a result of many a strange accident. I can survive anything for ten seconds, and after that, the pain is usually a little better.  So I counted to ten. Nothing had changed. I counted to twenty.

I've slammed my hand in a car door before. What kids hasn't?  You cry, you get hugged by your mom, then you get to have a bottomless slurpee to keep the swelling down: it's almost worth it. But this was different- this pain was rocking me. I counted to thirty. Forty. The pulsing was not subsiding. I knew I had to take stock of the situation, so with great trepidation I opened my fist and was appalled to see blood, weird flaps of skin, and bone. Aw, Shit. I thought. And it's Cookies night.

Thursdays during that miraculous year meant milk and cookies night at the Frat house next door. It wasn't really a frat house, that was just its name. Don't you remember, in college, when every house had to have a name? Our next door neighbors were five of our best friends who played on the same elite ultimate teams that we did. Gender divided, of course. One of the boys, Andrew, hosted the weekly get together and absolutely everyone would come. For me, it was social bliss. I'd go over casually, in my (carefully picked for the occasion) pajamas. I'd bake six batches of cookies. I was living in the social hub of the Ultimate Frisbee World.  And I wouldn't miss one Cookies night for anything, not even for my own finger.

Our Two Houses had a Dodgeball Team: The Knarr Shipwrecked Social Club
When I had a fraction of my mind back, I ran upstairs to my roommates and yelped something to Miranda, who helped me unclench the finger and hold it under running water. Susan discreetly toweled  up the trail of blood that I'd left all the way to the sink. The stream of cold water onto the broken bone made me howl. Miranda and Susan wrapped my finger in a dish cloth and laid me on the couch, then discussed what to do with me.

By this time, friends were arriving for Cookies. Most of them found me and my finger pretty funny. I was bleeding all over the place and in a little bit of shock, but I kept proclaiming, loudly, that I wanted to get off the couch and go to COOKIES. My roommates wouldn't let me move. Finally Will, the exceptionally nice boy who lived in the Frat house, pointed out that the dish towel wrapped around my finger was saturated in blood and ought'n I be getting to the Emergency Room for a stitch?

I went to the Emergency Room. Miranda and Danny took me. They did not stitch me up, but they did feed me very strong pain pills, and shot a very long needle right into the pulp of the finger to numb it. It worked, but only for two hours, during which nothing happened. A doctor came in, inspected the thing, said something to a nurse, then left. After two hours, the pain was back, and they shot me again. Two more hours past, and nothing happened, so they shot me a third time. By this point, after much convincing on my part, Miranda had reluctantly called my sorta boyfriend Ben and told him to leave Cookies and come see his sorry sorta girlfriend in the hospital. 

Ben was not impressed to hear I was in the ER, nor was he thrilled that I was requesting him bedside. I can't blame him. I was a complete disaster that year, attracting a truly laudable amount of strange accidents and vile illnesses. I can't tell you the number of times I showed up at his house limping, bleeding, barfing, or in the midst of a migraine that would only go away if he stroked me hair for three hours! Please!!

This is Sam, by the way.
I know I could be a bit of a loon, and I brought a lot of it on myself, but still, if I was looking for a partner who specialized in compassion, I was gassing up at the wrong pump.  Ben even famously broke up with me while I was in the emergency room. Way up in Bellingham. Loopy on kidney medication. (It wasn't our last breakup, nor was it the worst.)


My midnight, I was in a Vicodin fog. I referred to notoriously non-committal Ben as my husband, and repeatedly called the female doctor a nurse. By the time they released me, having bandaged and x-rayed, shot me thrice but not stitched me, neither doctor nor boyfriend liked me very much.

That night, I fell asleep in my own bed with Ben next to me. I had managed to put on pajamas. Ben positioned my hand above my head on a pillow and instructed me not to STAY STILL.  I awoke a few hours later in a blood bath. The bandage had fallen off, and there was blood everywhere. It was squirting out of my finger. There was blood all over the bed, all over me, all over Ben. I sat up, wondering where in the world all the friggin blood was from- how could it possibly have come from my finger? My little finger? My pinkie? That little thing?

Then I had to shake Ben awake. Can you imagine? The boy that didn't even want to deal with breakfast the next morning. Wake up honey! Wake up and deal with your psycho 20 year old girlfriend who is calling you husband and soaking you in her blood!  Ahh ha ha ha ha!!


Ben, by all accounts, acted nobly. He had me stand in the middle of the room, cupping the injured finger, while he ran inside the house to get paper towels. However by the time he got back, I was holding a coagulating handful of blood that was seeping down my arm and pooling onto the carpet, looking up at him wide help-me eyes.  So instead of trying to soak up the blood, he lead me to the bathroom and held my finger, again, under a running faucet. The stream of cold water hitting the bone made me howl. Again.

Really, the only thing that makes this story worth telling is the unbelievable amount of blood there was.

Ben said if it was still bleeding in the morning, he'd bring me back to the Emergency Room again. It was. Sheets ruined, clothes ruined, carpet ruined. He dropped me off outside the ER and went to work, having slept a maximum of four hours. I walked up to the front desk, held up my claw, and said, Hello.

Unfortunately, it was Doctor Frank's shift. I hated Doctor Frank. We'd had to deal with each other on a few occasions. Doctor Frank was a jerk. He came in to the room and looked at my finger. I said, "It's bleeding quite a bit, don't you think?" And Doctor Frank looked at me, looked at his clipboard and then said, "Well, it's not a bullet wound or anything." Then he left.

My nurse that morning was a big black lady from Georgia, and she was everything you'd hope she'd be, and above all, she was comforting. Unfortunately, she was a big believer in Doctor Frank. "Mr. Frank, he'll take good care of you." She said as she rearranged the two thin pillows behind me. "I'm not so sure about that." I said.

Doctor Frank's solution was to sit me upright in the room and bleed me dry. Just keep bleeding the thing until it eventually stopped on its own. Nobody would stitch it up and I have no idea why. I sat there alone and used the hospital phone to call people. I called Miranda and Danny. Then I called Ben. "Are you still bleeding?" He asked. He was at work. "Yes." I answered. He sighed loudly into the phone. "So," I said, "Are you still driving me to the airport tonight?"

Wasn't I just a cupcake?

Finally, the big nurse came in and said, "Honey, have you ever had a problem with your blood before?" I told her I didn't understand. "Like, have you ever had a cut that wouldn't heal? Have you ever bled profusely like this before?"

I thought for a moment. "No."

"Well, we're not sure going on here, but Doctor Frank is going to come in here and cauterize it if it doesn't stop soon."

At the time, I didn't know what cauterize was. It sounded like a jumble of cut (bad) and coddle (good.) I weighed my options. "Okay." I said.

I called Ben. "What does cauterize mean?"

Just then, the nurse came back, holding a steel blowtorch.

"You know what?" I said, "I think the bleeding has stopped. I don't need to be coddlized."

"Well let's just see," she said, and unwound the gauze. And, amazingly, it had stopped bleeding. My finger was surrounded on all sides by what looked like red gummy worm eating its tail. I was discharged, with some prescription slips for pain medication which Doctor Frank conveniently forgot to sign. Which rendered them useless.

That night I took a red eye home to Vermont for the holidays. I was very displeased to find I had an aisle seat. I only do window.

Then, sitting in a terminal chair with my giant, swollen, bandaged, oozing claw, I spotted an opportunity.  I went up to the front desk and waved my hand around in the air. "Help me!" I said. "I'm just a child!" I looked the part, too. I look at least six years younger than I am, and whenever I fly I wear my hair in two braids which knocks off another year or two. "Help me!" I cried. "Look at my horrible hand! I must have a window seat!"

The flight was full. The seats were fully arranged, the plane about to be boarded, but the kind Jet Blue employee took pity on my decrepit, sad self. She ran a bell, made an announcement. In a flash, a woman switched seats with me. "You poor thing." She said. "You're very brave, flying with that."

"I know," I answered earnestly. "I just want to go home."

The flight from Seattle to Boston is long, but the window seat was very pleasant. Back at home, I went directly to Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, which was covered in tinsel and red Christmas bows. They made me wear a face mask (I'm here for my finger, I said, We see that but you're coughing, they replied,) and then the doctor stitched the open wound shut. "You know," he said as he sewed, "you should have gone to the hospital right away when you broke your finger and gotten it stitched up. It would have healed a lot easier. This will probably leave a scar."

For the love of radio


I have a new friend. We were brought together by our mutual love of radio: Ira Glass, Stewart McLean, Radio Lab, Selected Shorts, Prairie Home Companion. (Well, as for the latter, I love it, he doesn't, what can I say.)  The radio is gold. Audio candy. Once, in the quagmire of the college break up, I clung to the radio like a life raft. (A melodramatic simile for a melodramatic time, trust me.) One night, I was pacing my room thinking about how treacherous life was and wondering why god hated me. I was listening to a story about girls raised by wolves. Then, in the midst of all the self-imposed chaos in my brain, a thought floated through like a big cloud on a blue day: at least I have my radio. I'll always have the radio. At that exact moment, my radio died. It made a satisfying little pop! sound.

This prompted me to start my incredibly angst-y fiction blog, Then the radio died.

Last Tuesday, this new friend and I went together to the MothUP, the Seattle version of the radio show The Moth. It has nothing to do with live insects and everything to do with live storytelling. Every show is based around a theme, and people from the audience come up and perform personal stories based on that theme.
Most of the people who came up from the audience to tell stories were incredible story tellers. They had their story dialed. The theme of the evening was "courage." We both stood there, open mouthed at the things we heard: from being shot at in Afghanistan to being held up at gunpoint at the dildo store and everything in between.

In the middle of all this storytelling, I began to feel a slight discomfort creep up my spine. I bounced from foot to foot and tried to shake it off.  Just stand here and listen, Melina, enjoy yourself. But the creeping feeling only intensified, coiled up my spine until a voice hissed at my eardrum from the inside. (Picture the big snake in Harry Potter.)  You can do that, you know. You have stories.

The truth is, as much as I love listening to stories, I love telling stories even more.

Nah, I shouldn't. I haven't prepared one. I'm just going to drink this second beer....

and...

Nope, sorry. If there's anything I'm completely incapable of, it's melting into the background. Before I knew it, I was climbing up onto the stage to tell a story I hadn't prepared. I had a good idea of what story to tell, but not the vaguest idea of how to tell it.  There were a lot of people looking at me. I smiled at them. I had to stand on tip toes to reach the microphone. I was in the right place.


I don't know if it was the two Irish oatmeal stouts or my natural inclination to grab the spotlight and shove it over to my side of the room, but I told my story flawlessly. My style was conversational, not the splendid performance style of some of the others, but it worked.

It was a turning point. It was the first time I realized that I could take story telling out from behind the computer, that other people could set it all up and all I had to do was get up there and speak.

Story telling is so so so much easier (and much more fun) than writing (which can downright suck), because you can read the audience and work with them. If they laugh, keep going. If they're looking down at their Iphone, switch directions, fast. A good crowd is like a cheap shampoo that can be worked into a real lather. And nothing is more fun than a lathered up crowd.

My performance was nowhere near as talented as the others who spoke that night. But I would call it the beginning. Of something.

The Curry

My brother in law, Brooks, has this great cookbook that he cooks out of nearly every night.


I don't use it because I already have a couple of recipes under my belt. I cook them from memory. Also I made them up. One is Black beans and 'stuff' served straight, the other is black beans and 'stuff' over quinoa.  I call it Mexican Mash 1 and Mexican Mash 2, and I eat them every day on an alternating schedule.

But then Brooks got an Ipad from his parents as a birthday present. He downloaded this app which is an interactive Mark Bittman cookbook with a picture of Mark himself on it. It was cool. Actually, it was baller. I started playing with it.


I found a recipe for a winter squash curry. It was easy and turned out to be such a success that I made it the very next day for my cousins. I had Lisa over the next night, and I made it for her, too. I served it to three different friends in four days. They all thought I was brilliant. They didn't know that it had taken over my life.

All of this cooking had me running back and forth to the grocery store, always for the same ingredients: onions, peas, squash, coconut milk, green beans and chard. I'd lap the produce section, then float towards checkout, making direct eye contact with my fellow shoppers. Have a look in my cart, I dared them. Just look at my vegetables. I am better than you.
 

For two weeks straight I made the curry every night. Then one day at work, I realized mid-chew that I couldn't swallow another bite of it. I was done. And instead of listening to my body, I soldiered through and took down what was already in my mouth. Then I put the lid back on the Tupperware, and put it back into my lunch bag. Then I threw up.

 

I knew I'd have to throw the rest of the curry out. But each day when I come home from work, I throw everything onto the floor and I run away. I run away to my bed, or to the bathroom, or to the fridge or the computer to check the Internet in case someone extraordinary has emailed me with some life changing news. I do this every day. So, that day, I threw my lunch bag on the floor and left it there. Then, because I am so busy and important, I forgot about it.


Five days later, I tripped over that bag where it was still sitting in the living room. I'd better tidy up, I thought. I picked up the bag. It was heavy. So I reached inside of it.

 

 

The curry. It lives.

Horrified, I put the curry on the kitchen counter and decided to deal with it later.


But that night I went climbing. I was out late, and when I got home I was very tired. I decided to deal with the curry on Monday.  Stop me if you see where this is going.

Monday
Tuesday, I began to really dread dealing with the curry. I thought about how it would smell when I removed the lid. Part of me just wanted to chuck the whole container,  which would be so easy, and so wrong. I really, really, really, really didn't want to deal with it. I decided to put it off till Wednesday.

Tuesday
But by Wednesday, I had literally forgotten all about it.

Wednesday
Thursday, I was also extremely busy.

Thursday
  And then, one day,  I got home and it was gone.


Brooks had dealt with it! He'd thrown it away! I was so happy!


 But later that night, I went to the fridge for a string cheese.


And guess what I found in the fridge.




It was the curry!

Brooks had put it in the fridge, thinking it was still good!

It was not over.  

The right thing to do, the grown up thing to do, would be to remove it from the fridge and dispose of it properly. But then I realized, you know, I could just leave it in there. It's only a matter of time before my sister happens upon it. Then, hungry and unknowing, she'll reheat it and try to eat it.

This could work.

Leave it in the fridge and wait for this all to play out. Or throw it out myself now and move on with my life. I wish I could say it was over. But it's a debate that rages on inside my head to this day.


Imposters

I used to think that I was chronically inflexible, but I'm not. It's just my legs. My hamstrings. Ham strings. What a funny term, anyway, for a part of your body. Ham Strings. I'd like to know who thought that up, and whether or not they were surprised when the term stuck.

It is because of these tightly wound hamstrings that I can't even touch my damn toes. And that yoga classes are a cause for suffering and self loathing, instead of the soothing soul balm the lady at the front desk promises me when I clank in out of the rain to the studio on Market St, in search of self-betterment and weight loss and enlightenment and everything else yoga is supposed to do for you. But it doesn't. Not for me, anyway. All sorts of anger and rage and thoughts of violence exude from my being when I can't do the friggin forward fold and everyone else is bent over with their foreheads on their mats. Even the old dudes. The competitive asshole inside of me dies a painful death, every time.

On top of that, let's get real, I can't afford no yoga class. It would be highly foolish of me to become invested yet in another activity that compromises the integrity of one's bank account, (especially when the waiting room of said activity is adorned with 65.00$ tank tops that whisper ones name so loudly one fears one will go deaf).  Add in the post traumatic stress syndrome I'm still wrestling with, and there's no question about it: I really can't take a yoga class. But, son of a bitch, how I yearn for that long, lean yoga body. Climbing makes one strong, no doubt. But yoga makes one slim. Sliiiimmmmm. I've never been slim. It looks like fun.

 One evening at a little dinner party, my friends and I cooked up a scheme to make yoga accessible 'for the rest us.' Bring us your poor, your inflexible, your inexperienced, your weak.  We decided to meet up one evening per week and teach ourselves. And we do, every Wednesday. We down/up dog it up for an hour, then we Om then we eat.  It started off a little clumsy; we tried tapes, podcasts and videos, they were confusing, then we realized that there were those amongst us who actually knew a thing our two about yoga, and they became the teachers. As we began to improve, more people heard about our Wednesday gatherings and started to join. In fact it became so popular we completely ran out of room.

 But we tried to accommodate. The more people you include in such things, the more connections you gain, the more food you get to eat, the more poses and styles you get to learn, and the more opportunities are presented to you.  Which is how, somehow, we ended up this past Wednesday in our own private studio.

The studio had gold wood floors and plenty of windows; it was well heated and gently lit, a refuge from an unusually clear and frigid evening. Outside the glass doors, a quarter acre of land, neatly segregated into separate and specific gardens, led to a gorgeous two level home filled with drawers of spices, shelves of books, rows of neatly stacked matching coffee cups, a chrome espresso machine, marble topped counters, balconies, sun porches, and a long ladder on which one could climb up through the skylight onto the sloping rooftop deck.

None of us live here, of course, but one of us just happens to be staying here right now.

On this particular Wednesday there were only five us, which was fortunate because the little room would not have fit anyone else. It was just girls, for the first time. (Girlfriends are both a staple and a luxury in life, don't you think?) We sure as hell felt like impostors in such a clean, beautiful little spot. We're all scraping and struggling for money and jobs and all that, digging through laundry piles on the floor to find a jacket to go with the dress for a date we hope works out better than the last, already twenty minutes late, scouring the help wanted and taking care of other people's children and then finding out we're going to have children of our own, and cleaning other people's houses then arguing with roommates because we don't have time to clean the dishes, climbing  up mountains because we can't afford lift tickets- and yet here we were, doing inversions in our private backyard yoga studio.

Sure we're impostors, we're tourists, we're just borrowing. But for now, it's all ours. And it's free.

It was a good reminder that sometimes, your scrappy efforts to be frugal, to it yourself, to pull it together and pull it off, can yield some actual success. We're poor, but we're creative. We might be inflexible as hell but we're resourceful, and I think that's what has gotten us this far. 

My life as a bat

Small Melina on her first Lead Climb Evah
I ate eleven tacos tonight. That's Eleven Tacos, son! I only wanted ten but I pushed on to eleven in honor of the 5.11d I climbed today: my first 5.11d ever. Boys and girls, I think I'm actually getting better at this. It sure has taken a decidedly long time: I mean, I started getting on rocks when I was just a wee one (in fact, I was eleven.) Hell yeah, eleven.

And since we're discussing new records: post-climbing Taco Tuesday saw higher numbers than ever before,  with all of us squeezed into the booth, and folding chairs brought out for the rest. We raised our beer glasses every few minutes for a new toast:

Here's to Ian! He's getting up at 2:30am tomorrow to go skiing and he still came out with us!
Here's to Melina! She knows what AT stands for!
Here's to Jeremy! He...did something cool involving ice and tools!
Here's to Lisa! She climbed her first 5.10 today!
Here's to Katie, she looks really good in that halter top and she was on campus 15 hours today!
Here's to Brian! He's a guide on the gauley woah dangerous and he's had shingles before! AAAAHH!!

That's how it started, pretty soon we were raising foaming glasses to anything that was said that we found funny, which was woah, everything, we're hilarious all of a sudden! I didn't even hear what you just said and I'm still laughing! Yeah, we were that table, constantly clinking and hollering, and tacos kept magically appearing and disappearing, and the beer was amber and pretty and instantly refilled. Don't worry, I brought my camera. But for those of you tired of seeing photos of the inside of the climbing gym and the inside of different eating and drinking establishments in Seattle, wince not, because I forgot the camera battery.

Ah, but that's life in this rainy city, isn't it, in this season: inside and warm with plenty of friends, plastic molded rocks and drinks named after famous ships. Beats the hell out of what it's been like in the past.

It's all very exciting, this climbing thing, and it keeps me very happy and energized....although apparently not all the time? Check out this photo that Koko took of me, I appear to be upside down on my very favorite train for-the-roof problem, fast asleep:
 

Ascent and Ascent

 
It was my friend Yonton who introduced me to the concept of Ascent and Descent, or A&D. A summertime A&D is defined as such: a single day wherein you go climbing and then you go kayaking. Based on the amount of driving, shuttles, equipment, and energy required for both these sports, A&D is a real feat. Yesterday, Sunday, I had my own A&D, only it was the Winter version, and it felt more like an A&A, Ascent and Ascent.

Technically skiing is more of a downhill operation, but this was my first time on my AT (All Terrain) set up. I skinned up and walked straight up the mountain, and it takes a while. The way down is just swish swish and it's over. Really, it felt like an Ascent to me.

But if I want to be truly accurate about the day, it looked more like this:

Ascent.  Getting up the mountain. I skinned. Jenny Stepped:


Descent- my summit sandwich going down:

Descent. The classic kind:

Ascent. A few hours later, back in the city, on one of our favorite problems:


Descent. Coming down:


Descent. Self explanatory. Down the hatch:

****
Jenny got a panic stricken message from me late on Saturday night: "Jenny! It's me....so, as you know, I know how to downhill, but I've  never been on AT's before and I imagine you dress different?....um....I don't know what to wear so, how about this- I'll just bring everything to your house tomorrow. Okay, see you then. Also, how necessary are poles?"
Oh, man.
A few hours later, "Hi Jenny, it's me. Just want you to know that I went to bed early and everything, but then I was woken up by a party next door, and there was no way I was going to sleep so I had to sleep somewhere else, so I'm farther away now and I'll be later than I said I would. Also, do you have any extra snowpants? Mine are too big all of a sudden. Bye!"

Jenny is a natural morning person. She wakes up at 6:30 every day without an alarm. I, on the other hand.....do not.

Long story short, Jenny is extremely patient and it doesn't phase her a bit when, after finally getting my boots on, I go- "Wait, wait, I think I have too many pairs of socks on. Let's start over."  And another stop on the way to the mountain to get more coffee? She's all about it! I think I love her.


When we made it to the summit, we sat down to eat some food and celebrated having an entire mountain to ourselves.   
 
While we were chilling out, a couple of men came skinning up the face. The first thing the lead guy said to us? "Woah! You guys part of the blond army or something?" And without hesitation we replied, "Why, yes, yes we are."   Then the other guys came gliding up to us. There were three of them. "Well," said the third, "now you're outnumbered."
Jenny tossed her head back and responded, "We're not worried. There are more of us hiding in the woods." Then she turned back to her pasta.
It was a strange conversation.

And then the fog and the ice and the snow came. And the map didn't seem to make sense.


Probably because it a map of Alpine trails. We were not interested in alpine trails.

But don't worry, the blond army made it down no sweat. I have to say, Jenny is one hell of an athlete.  And the whole concept of skinning, AT bindings and the promise of back country almost made those countless, insufferable, ubiquitous Facebook statuses of Earn your Turns, Bro!  Free Your Heals Free your Mind or Whatever! Shredding Some Gnar up at Whistler this weekend! and anything with the word "pow"....bearable. (I said Almost.) (I'm looking at you, large majority of my friends.)

  ****
 Ten o'clock, after eating an entire pizza, working on endurance, last soldier at the gym.

And finally, Prost on Phinney Ridge, for somebody's birthday, where I literally stopped all conversation when I ordered a margarita instead of a beer. Relax, haters- that's just how it is.


So, that's about it for Sunday.  We don't have any money, we don't have kids, we're confused about careers, we're halfheartedly employed. But we do have snow, and friends with sail boats, and there are 36 places to drink beer in Ballard alone. So I guess we're doing alright. 

My Final Confection


I thought I'd give you a glimpse into the ridiculous, ubiquitous dialog that streams through my head at all times, during all occasions. The dialog that doesn't really ever stop unless the music is turned up very loud, the medicine is very strong, or I'm upside down on a bouldering problem.

This particular discourse occurred recently, because of the guilt I felt after eating cake. The voice on the other side of my manic-panic-conversations varies greatly; on this occasion, it was the father-figure-slash-catholic priest- guy-on-the-other-side-of-the-confession-booth who just smacks of judgment and likes to pop out of the old psyche after I spend money, eat, become particularly lazy or otherwise unwisely indulge.

For the record, I've never been a Catholic.

*******
Melina: Bless me father, for I have spent.
Father/Priest Figure in my Head: Tell me, my child, how long has it been since your last confection?
M: Since last night, father. I had a cupcake.
F: Tell me about the cupcake.
M: It was called an Elvis something. A velvet Elvis, maybe. Banana bread with some peanut butter chocolaty frosting, well, that's what they said but I didn't taste any chocolate. It had a banana chip on top.
F: A banana chip?
M: I did not eateth of the banana chip, father. I disposed of it.
F: I'm glad to hear that. Certainly you remember what happened to the last time you consumed of the banana chip.
M: I remember, father. My whole family remembers. I'll never get that Christmas back. Father, the cupcake put me back $7.25
F: That seems steep.
M: Yes, well, I also drank a hot chocolate.
F: A hot chocolate?
M: .....
F: Don't you think that's overkill?
M: Looking back, yes, but at the time it felt like a nice pairing.
F: Alright. We can work through this. Is there anything else you need to tell me?
M: Yes. That's not all of it. Last Friday, I had a slice of cake.
F: Tell me about the slice of cake.
M: It was a big fancy four layer dealy. Mocha, praline maybe. I don't know. There was a lot of chocolate and a lot of textures. I couldn't eat all of it. I gave most of it away.
F: Go on.
M: The cake set me back $66.00
F: What?
M: I know.
F:  ....
F: How did you let that happen?
M: I parked on capitol hill, near Broadway. It's impossible to park around there. I met some girls at that super dark place that's got a chocolate martini bar. We ordered cake. Well, one girl wouldn't touch the cake, but I'm not that girl, you know, the girl who goes to the dessert place and drinks nothing but water. So I had some cake. And a glass of white wine. It was kind of expensive, but not terrible.
F: Go on.
M: But then, I got a parking ticket for being 2 feet two close to a stop sign at ten o'clock at night. $42.00. All because I was up on capitol hill because of that stupid piece of cake. Now the evening's cost about $56.00.
F: And does this get worse?
M: Well, so, I'm driving home and thinking, this is terrible. I really could have used that money for something else.  And I don't even like sugar that much any more. I just had the cake because in the moment it seemed like the right thing to do. What a waste! So I'm driving and I've got the ticket next to me, and it's been raining so the ticket is in like, five separate pieces, and I'm feeling so bad about everything that I have to stop at a bar in Ravenna and have a beer. To console myself. But I can't just settle for a 2 dollar PBR, I have to have a microbrew. Because this is the type of person I've become.
So I'm sitting there, alone, at the bar, drinking away my sorrows in a lovely amber something or other, and I'm pissed off at myself, and at the the whole city because I really can't afford to give away $42.00 right now, and all of a sudden, it just dawns on me, that this could be the future. Me sitting at a bar somewhere on a Friday night, with a tv broadcasting some sports thing, and all my friends are either not there anymore, or they're all sleeping to get up bright and early for some skiing adventure that I'm not going on. Because probably I'm working on the weekend and I've got no saving because it's all gone to cake or pie or something. And while I'm thinking about this, it's pretty grim, some guy comes over and asks my name and tells me that his grandmother had the same name, whadaya know. And it seems really funny to me, because nobody has my name, and this guy is lying but for what purpose? To talk to me? Why would anyone want to talk to me right now?
F:  How much did the microbrew set you back?
M: Probably about 10 dollars after I left a tip, I mean it brought the evening up to $66.00 and I didn't even want any of it. And on to of that, I'm stuck with all those calories, and I need to run around the lake to get rid of them, but I don't have running shoes, I lost them somehow. The shoes I wanted to buy cost about $66.00, so you can see why that just sucks, in light of everything.
F: I'm afraid to ask, My child, did you ever pay your parking ticket? 
M: But that's the upshot of all of this. I payed it right away. Signed the check, but it in the envelope, sent it right along. It was like a litmus test, you know, because I used to get parking tickets all the time and not pay them, and then the collectors would call? So I did a good job, I am getting better.
F: Very good.
M: And then I was so proud of myself I bought that cupcake as a congratulations. That peanut butter elvis   thing.  I feel like, I might be in a bad cycle right now.

Very Short Stories: Keanan

Quincy and Keenan in Rotorua, New Zealand. Photo by Bethany Davidson-Widby
I went to boarding school with two brothers. Their names were Kyle and Keenan, and they were from Montana. They were intense boys, prone to helpless fits of moodiness, but they were kind and for the most part I got along with them very well. We all called Kyle 'Smiley.' We went to Europe together for our first semester, this was with Adventure Quest. It was an unusual group of teenagers to say the least. Kyle didn't make it through the first semester- he was caught drinking alcohol in France and throwing the bottles into a river from a footbridge. Two weeks later, after we traveled to Spain, he went home. It was too bad he missed the rest of Spain. We had a lot of freedom and spent our time traveling to and from Barcelona on the train. We were allowed to go to parties in the local town till late at night, and we stayed in a strange warehouse in the middle of a bunch of lime trees.

The next year was my final year of high school. Kyle had graduated, but Keenan was just a sophomore and was still enrolled in the school. We spent the first semester in the American Southwest living out of one van. We had other plans but they fell through because that was the year of 9/11. Alex and I were the only girls,  but during that trip, the whole group of us- nine or so in total- really enjoyed each other. We walked through canyons, climbed all day and hung out in a town inhabited by real life polygamists.

In January, the start of my last semester of  high school, we flew to New Zealand. I slept outside every night as I had since the start of the Southwest trip. My tent-mate Alex was an incredible snorer and I slept outside as means of refuge. But after a few nights under the stars, it became a habit and I never wanted to sleep inside again. One night in the first few weeks of the trip, I was woken up to someone shaking me. It was Keenan. He shook me just barely awake and said, "Melina, I'm leaving. Good bye." Then he hugged me. Confused, I rolled over and fell back to sleep. A few hours later I woke up again, this time I for real. Some of the other boys were knocking on the door of the staff's cabin. "He told us he was going to leave," they were saying, "but we didn't believe him."

Keenan had decided he didn't want to be where he was anymore,  so he had packed his things and left. He was fifteen year old. On his first escape attempt, he didn't get too far. The staff took the van and found him waiting at a bus stop in the sulfurous town of Roturua a few miles away. They took him home and confined to him to his cabin. They talked to his parents and agreed to let like Keenan stay if he never tried that again. He'd never been a bad kid or caused any problems before.

Things were alright for a week or two. We were paddling on the Kaituna river every day, going to class, walking to the store in the afternoon. A boy named Quincy nearly drowned, but he didn't. It was spring and warm and misty. Then we drove down to the South Island to a town called Wanaka, where they served iced coffee with vanilla ice cream and chocolate shavings. We pulled into the house where we'd be staying late at night. I found a nearby tree fort, climbed to the top, congratulated myself for finding such a nice spot (I never spent a night in the same place twice) and fell asleep.  During that night, Keenan ran away again. I've never understood why someone would run away from Adventure Quest. I lived for that place. I had begged my parents for six months to send me back there after I got lost, and they'd finally relented.

In the morning he was gone, and all his things. Again. Frustrated, the staff called his parents who said not to bother looking for him. He'd find his way home eventually.

I've never seen or heard from Keenan since. That was a decade ago. Last year around this time, I heard that Kyle was dead. From reading his obituary I saw that he had spent a lot of time after high school in Africa and that he'd been relatively happy and at home there. I also saw that he was survived by his brother, Keenan. So that means Keenan's still alive, he's out there somewhere.

At the base of La Meije: Andy, Tim, Me, Keanan

They weren't exactly suited for me

Let's talk about the coffee.

The coffee you made a big show of pouring for yourself and you didn't ask me if I wanted any. I've been sitting here for five hours. I've gotten a little sleepy. I would have really enjoyed a cup of coffee.

What's that now, a styrofoam cup? Where did you even find one of those in this city? Don't you know that every time you drink out of one styrofoam cup, you kill one whale? One sweet, innocent, intelligent, cute, endangered baby whale?

But you're not really drinking out of the cup, are you. I've noticed that. You ask me a question and as I struggle to answer you'll take the cup up to your enormous mouth and sort of dab it against your lips. When the cup returns to the table there will be another ring of lipstick on its rim but the coffee level remains the same.

Let's talk about that lipstick. What's it called- Dusky rose? Chocolate valentine? Ebony Blush? I'm curious. But then again, I'm not the one allowed to ask the questions here, am I.

Lady, this is not how normal people drink coffee. Most of us have figured out how to, by a complicated-yet-not-unattainable process of tipping the cup, relaxing the jaw and swallowing, get the stuff out of the cup and into the system where it belongs. Just what is your deal that you haven't picked up on that yet?

You ask me what my proudest moment is. We're about 3/5 of the way through the interview. Sorry-through your portion of the interview. The interview is seven hours long. But before this there was three months- THREE MONTHS- of phone screening. Writing tests. Applications. Forms. And now here we are.

What is my proudest moment. 'Like, ever? In all of life?' I dare to ask. You look at me for a calculated second. One brick short of a load, is what you're thinking. You purse your lips. "Please just tell me your proudest moment."  (I VILL DO ZE QVESTIONING!!!) Your hand reaches for the styrofoam cup. Dab. Dab.

I have many proudest moments! I'm quite accomplished, a real self starter, a go-getter, my nose has practically been whittled off my face from being on the grindstone, I've never missed the forest for the trees and I have never, not once, not ever thrown the baby out with the bath water.

Ah, here's one! I relate to you my proudest moment. My voice is what I call confident powerhouse with the appropriate amount of wistful. I silently congratulate myself for nailing it.

You are unimpressed. My GOD but you are unimpressed. You fold you hands in front of you on the table. Blink slowly. Lady your robotic engineer did an excellent job this morning of programming you with equal parts exasperation and patience. My compliments. "Why don't we find another example." Is what you say.

Yes. Why don't we.

My proudest moment, in nearly twenty six years, is having somehow developed the iron will that is keeping me right now from telling you how incredibly ugly you are. That maybe if you'd pressurewash some of that make-up off or chisel a half pound or so of those rocks from your fingers maybe I'd be able to stomach you. I am very, extremely, exceptionally proud that I can sit here and not reach across the table and throw that cup of coffee into your face.

What? Oh come now. It's not scalding. It'd get the message across without those nasty assault charges.

You know what. Perhaps I feel differently. Actually, the fact that I continue to sit here, straight spine, wielding a smile and not doing any of these things, this is in fact the least pride I've ever taken in myself, ever.

Essay on Everything (3)


[find your bearings. hang up your coat. stay for a little while.]

In your respective city far away from the place you were raised, you are a floating point. A dot amongst thousands of other dots working very hard to grab on and hold on. That's how I've felt lately. Like a little dot. A little point that keeps trying and trying but, like an archaic computer game, keeps getting deflected off of walls.

This is all that they see. A little dot with not enough management experience to take the 90k a year job they hung out before me for three months like a carrot. And after three months of interviews they turned me away with the flick of their wrist.

A little dot who is not pretty enough, or thin enough, is not enough.

After a while it starts to get to you. Each morning you wake up and run your hands up and down your body. I'm sure I have dimensions. I can feel them. But I must be wrong. They know better than I do. Little by little, I lose my dimension and my orientation. The space that I take up begins to diminish. I start to bounce around off of walls.


I'm a total heathen, with very little interest in thinking, researching, even discussing or the idea of God. I'd rather discuss books, or the weather, or anything really, with the exception of sports teams. Such little dialog I've had with 'God' that I know, should by some great trick it turns out he's been there all along, I'll show up at the finish line and he'll be there with his great Book and he'll look at me and say, "And who are you?" And then, after a  pause- "I'm sorry, but I just can't place you."


Despite this, when one is a bouncing little dot, or feels, at any rate, that they have been reduced to this, one does begin to question what the point of it it all is.




***
At first the soft, deep powder of the backyard was bearable on bare feet, a refreshing sting, but the packed-down crust of the driveway was torture. We exploded back in through the door and dashed back to the stove where we hopped back and forth from leg to leg, laughing a sort of crying laugh. Just as the blood was beginning to drain away from our feet, Teal's husband Mark, a solid Bostonian with a heavy New England Accent and tattoos running up his arm, decided to have another lap. The rest of them soon followed. Everyone but me. I have frostbite scars. I'm Chicken Shit. However you want to spell it out.  I stayed put.

 

They returned howling.

  

***

You are so much more than a little point. You are a long ribbon of color and light. You have been here for a while now, and you will keep going like this, unwinding and unwinding. The trick is to be find the people and the occasions who can recognize this. (And get rid of the rest.)



***

Listen, I know what you're thinking. But there is a difference in those who think that life is built for our pleasure and convenience and joy, and those who know that with any sort of joy there is equal parts suffering. Everyone in that beautiful house on that perfect night was familiar, some intimately so, with wrecking tragedy. The kind that saves us from melting into the delusion that everything in life is clean and pretty, or that we are entitled. To anything. The pieces of that tragedy have been lodged inside my body ever since, keeping me wildly alert, hyper-questioning and unwilling to accept anything at face value. 

So when I start to think about it, this is the only conclusion I can draw:


That the whole of life is a mystery. A hard, complicated mystery.

But if nights like this are the height of what the whole world can provide, in my lifetime- if this is all I ever get in terms of answers regarding purpose and intention and fulfillment- then I'll settle for that. I'll settle for that gratefully.

Essay on Everything (2)


[that all sounds like a very good time]


I stepped out of the car onto the driveway, and looked up at the house in disbelief. It was a big, classic Vermont farmhouse, a main house attached to a smaller house. (We used to sing a song in elementary school about such houses that was called "Big house middle house back house barn." I don't remember much about the rest of the lyrics but I'm sure they were equally thrilling.) The house was well lit from the inside and just a few steps away from the road, which in New England means it must have been very old.

During my near-decade of on and off (but mostly on) living in Seattle, I'd been suckered into the thinking that if you dared commit to and make a life out of art or creativity, you'd be committing financial suicide.  If you didn't work 60 hours a week for the holy trilogy of employment- Amazon, Microsoft of Boeing, than you'd better get used to working a host of food service and child care jobs just to pay the rent on your interstate-adjacent grey carpeted apartment.

Both Grace and Evan are professional potters, and very talented ones.  One of the very few things that I brought out with me to the West coast that I still have today is a mug that Grace made, her signature etched into the bottom. She'd given it to me as a graduation present. It's gorgeous and I could only imagine what an additional nine years has done to her work. Still, I was awed that they were able to live, with a six month old baby, in the kind of house that I'd decided was completely unobtainable if I was going to try this writing thing.  (Unless I lived as a kept woman. Which I'll admit right now, I have given some thought to.)


 Nate, Emma, Shane and I stepped inside into a flood of lamplight which bounced into the corners of the spacious front room and illuminated the dark wooden beams of the ceiling.  I greeted Grace and Evan and immediately remarked on the beauty and size of the house. They both raised their eyebrows in bemusement. "We've been working on it nonstop," said Evan. "You should have seen it when we first got it."

I spotted Joanna, Grace's little sister who is one year older than me, standing by the stove in a dress and a long sweater. Joanna and I were best friends through high school. She was my first hiking partner. We used to go up to the White Mountains in wool sweaters and hand-me down long underwear. She went to college for glass blowing and photography and got engaged and I hadn't ever even seen her ring. When I saw her now from across the room, I ran into her full speed, knocked her on the couch with the force of a linebacker. (I like friendship, particularly of the long-lost variety, to be a very physical thing.)

She took me into the  kitchen, in the beginning, plaster and sheets state of renovation, and poured us each a huge glass of white wine. Then she gave me a tour of the house, up the steep,  narrow stair case leading up to Elias's room. A master bedroom with a tall window that we both agreed was a photographer's dream.

The whole place was a photographer's dream, especially with  baby Elias being passed around from person to person like a football. A very good natured football in little courdaroys and a small wool sweater.





Evan fed the stove and more friends arrived in a flurry of activity. I mostly sat on the couch and watched and drank wine. I used to melt into the background like this when I was younger. Because my parents worked outside of Vermont,  my sister and I lived alone together for the majority of each week. That meant that wherever Anna went, I went. She is four years older than me. There was a lot of late night, winter driving, dark sledding hills, warm living rooms just like this only we were all more than a decade younger. And I'd sit there and feel lucky, wide eyed and eager to make idols out of all of them. (I blush to think of myself back then, those early teenage years, flat chested and more than a bit compulsive, taking myself quite seriously. Thankfully, most of these things have settled themselves out with time, including, thank god, the flat chest. By the time the braces came off at, what was it, 15, maybe a bit younger, I can safely say that the elements of irony and humor had began to appear on my periodic table of being. )

We did a lot of theater and performing and touring around New Engalnd. We were all incredibly dramatic. Everything was a production in one way or another.  I've always found that certain things come easier to me than to others. Things involving interacting with people. Social things. Choosing exactly who to be at exactly what time and occaion.)  I can trace it back those years. And having excellent role models. They were such good sports.



 Things started to swirl together as I got lightly drunk very quickly. Next thing I knew I was back in my coat and mittens and running with Nate up a steep driveway, both of us nearly breathless, the rest of the group on our heals. The snow had a dry, grainy quality to it, useless for snowballs or other such weaponry but perfect for speed.  The air was so warm that it had a certain, spring-like viscosity to it;  it felt as if you could tilt back your chin and swim upwards into the millions of stars above.

Using only the thin light of stars and headlamps, we sled down the hill one after another, running back up for another run with the sudden energy of six year olds. We doubled up in sleds and raced each other, usually ending in the ditch, off of the bank or in violent collisions cushioned by down and wool. To start us off, runners put hands on shoulders and ran, pushing us until they couldn't keep up and were face down in the snow.

One by one people got spent and wet and cold until just a few of us remained up on the hill.

Shane dared us to race down the steep bank which was heavily forested and tangled with sharp dead blackberry shrubs. I was lying on a sled on my back and told him that he was just asking to have a "smash-up," as Edith Wharton put it, just like Ethan Frome. But I told him and Nate that I'd race them anyway. They said ONE TWO THREE and took off down the bank into the trees. I continued to lay there on my back, unmoving. I heard a shhhhhsss of plastic picking up speed, then a Thunk! and a shout. I skated down on my stomach to find the two brothers in a pile, twisted up, laughing, Shane bleeding from the mouth. They'd managed to go five whole feet, missing the trees but colliding with each other.

That was the end of the sledding. We limped back to the house and found the others, waiting barefoot around the stove, ready for the traditional new years barefoot run. I'd never heard of such a tradition but I knew that my feet, badly scarred from frostbite, could suffer some heavy damage through direct exposure to snow.
I took off my ridiculously insulated mountaineering boots and the expensive wool socks my parents had kept me supplied with for the past decade since the I got lost, and ran out the door with the rest of them.

Essay on Everything (1)


[Thirteen years later, tape decks are obsolete, and I don't feel so young]
[as I used to] 
[although they tell me I still look quite the same]

The weather became unseasonably warm after Christmas passed, but still the land lay quiet under two feet of snow.  As I steered the car out of one small New England town and into another, a powdery mist hovered above the snow and held there in the last of the light.  The road cut through swaths of pale fields, past glowing white house fronts and their adjacent darkened barns. Occasionally the headlights would fall onto a more significant structure, like the tall windows of church, but it being neither Sunday nor Christmas, the building stood vacant and the wreathed door was shut. The panes of stained glass reflected back as dark and thick as river ice.

In the passenger seat, at my right elbow, sat Nate, five years older than myself. He is, and others would agree, a person of tremendous importance. 

If any two people alive could have fully appreciated the deep, superlative power of the surrounding landscape, it was the two of us. We were both raised here in Pomfret, a town in South-Central Vermont whose meager population of 970 is widespread over 35 square miles.  I could have given the names of one hundred different people who would have provided excellent companionship on the road out to Grace and Evan's house, who would have gazed out the window and remarked on the exquisite, tranquil beauty of the country gliding by. But the true nature of a Vermont winter is as paradoxical as it is paradisaical. Like wind against earth or dropping water on stone,  it slowly shapes the person that you grow to become.  Cold, dry memories form inside you like hoar ice, and they never leave.

To be intimately familiar with the frozen world, you must understand its two sides. Imagine examining a stretch of ice on a lake from above, where you can breathe, and from beneath the water, where you can't. Winter is idyllic and joyful, but also tedious and punishing. The polish of new snow and days spent hurdling downhill on ski and sled under a bright sun were matched by week upon week of grueling dark, steel grey skies spitting mouthfuls of snow in hard little points. For months, we trudged pale under the humming light of our high school hallways; numbers and languages, equations and Shakespeare were all made more difficult to comprehend under the crush of heavy clouds and the sting of subzero temperatures. We drove back and forth on dangerous roads in ice-laden cars whose windshield took forever to scrape off.

Seventeen, eighteen winters. And then we got to leave. But I wouldn't say it leaves us, exactly.

Winter is depression pressed upon ecstasy. This dichotomy has been the bone structure for the most prominent (and exhausting) pattern of my life, since as far back as I can remember. I've never been a level person. Never learned to average things out and proceed slowly, evenly.

***

We drove Northwest on the road that splits Pomfret from Bethel, swooped beneath railroad bridges on narrow, one lane underpasses, swung around tight corners. Neither one of us had ever been to Grace and Evan's new house, and I kept my eyes fixed on the car in front of me: Nate's twin brother Shane and his wife Emma. High school sweethearts who somehow- since the time I last saw them- got married and had three babies. A little girl and twin boys whose names were those of famous Green Mountain Boys.


****

I remember being with Nate in the car when I was thirteen years old. It was late March but certainly not spring. We'd been out in Brownsville recording a Speak Chorus- some performance thing we used to do all around New England- and our director let us out after midnight.  Because we were neighbors, Nate drove me back to his house where my father was waiting for me. I remember listening to a tape deck, the whirring sound it made when the tape turned over, and resting my head against the cold window, half asleep. Potholes throughout the frost-heaved road kept rattling me awake.

I don't feel like such a little kid anymore. Time has a way of evening things out. 

Although our paths had rarely crossed after we both moved out of town (I remember only one instance, in New York) Nate has been a role model to me my whole life. I was just a kid and he was always older and so talented. Excruciatingly talented. His theatrics and writing abilities are indescribable.

Nate ought to be famous by now, and I'm sure very soon he will be.


And being with him now, really for the first time since I left all of childhood behind, I felt keenly aware of my surroundings, present in a way I hardly ever felt. I found it comforting. It was the same content, connected feeling you can get when you walk into the forest and pay attention to the trees. They already know everything.  For once, there is little left for you to explain about yourself.