Mirage Sale
It looks like a typical Sunday afternoon garage sale: card tables littered with disposable belongings, people standing around with baby strollers and dogs on leashes counting their change. But this is not a typical garage sale. I want everything they’re selling and I can buy it for cheap.
There is the sterling silver baby rattle my grandmother gave me when I was born: sixty four cents. The ratty, musty smelling stuffed animal I slept with until I was eighteen and then lost in a move: forty two cents. The beaded necklace my best friend gave to me in the third grade which my mother accidentally threw away: ninety seven cents. The first journal I ever wrote in: thirty three cents.
I watch the people rummage through these precious things. “The price tag says $1.96 but it’s all faded and worn. I’ll give you fifty seven cents.” A woman bargains for my prom dress with the pink taffeta and sequined collar.
“Daddy, I want this one!” A sticky-faced little girl pulls on her father’s shirt. He brings out his wallet and pays for my very first bicycle—the one with the training wheels and flower basket. Two dollars and three cents.
I start to panic as I watch these strangers leaving with my things. “Wait!” I shout, reaching for my purse. “I’ll give you whatever you want for all of it! I have plenty of money.” I fumble for cash, credit cards, checkbook, but all I find are receipts.
The woman behind the card table looks at me impatiently. “Looks like you’re out of luck,” she says.
A young boy pulls the crank on my old jack-in-the-box, the one that terrified me when I was young. The clown pops out and the boy starts to cry.
I can’t buy back my misplaced things. I can only stand back and watch as these people, these strangers, touch them and bargain for them, not knowing what anything is really worth. It’s painful but I can’t turn away.
The woman behind the card table counts the change in front of her. It isn’t much, but she appears satisfied. She looks at me again, suspiciously, as if I might try and steal something.
More people come up from behind me and push me away from the table, greedy for a sale. There’s nothing I can do now but watch, caught in the shuffle of these lazy Sunday afternoon shoppers.
Reminders
My teacher can’t read Bukowski—
The lines in his poems are a bathroom with
a stained toilet seat and dead wasps behind the sink.
Open-mouthed musicians with
yellow fingertips and sour breath.
I can’t go to the drive-thru car wash and
watch soapy water pound my windshield.
I can’t use green shampoo that smells of
cheap cologne and is meant for people with dandruff.
I can’t accept a gift when the giver tells me,
No strings attached as I untie the bow.
I can’t date a man who thinks Docksiders and
white athletic socks are a suitable combination.
My teacher gets her car washed without
ever unbuckling her seatbelt.
She accepts gifts freely and writes brief
thank you notes on cards she buys at the drug store.
Green shampoo doesn’t bother her
as long as it makes her hair shine.
Footwear isn’t an important factor for her
when it comes to choosing a mate.
Bukowski is my favorite poet—
his words always mean what they say.
If he was there when I brought home
report cards, all C- and D, he would have
smiled and said only, Don’t try.
Then he’d turn back to his broken down typewriter
and drain his last sip of red wine.
Ars Poetica
The voice on the other end of the line
was a frightening echo of my own, my
mirrored reflection in a crowded room
where glimpses are all you need.
The echo asked for Dad, by the wrong
name, the wrong age, but it was not
the echo’s mistake.
I struggled with the lock on my bedroom door
that I had never learned how to use.
In their bedroom I heard Mom struggle too,
with words she had never learned how to use.
After the locks and words had served
their purpose, I left my room, every floorboard
sweating beneath my slow, bare feet.
My glasses forgotten beneath my bed, all I saw
of Dad descending those carpeted steps for
the very last time was unremarkable hair and flesh,
no eyes pointed in any direction at all.
Terror Shorts
Kitty McFarlane, a 38 year old actress and resident of Bel Air, went in for her weekly botox injection, only to find that her usual doctor, Dr. Raymond, had flown to Australia for his aunt’s funeral. In his place was Dr. Mulrooney, a stocky, red-faced fellow with two days of sobriety, and a right hand that trembled unpredictably as he attempted to prep a needle.
Mindy Hathaway, 22, drove her Volkswagen Cabrio down Melrose Avenue at 11pm on a Saturday night, nine days after moving to Hollywood from Madison, Wisconsin. She heard a loud pop, and after continuing on for half a mile or so, realized that one of her tires had gone flat. She pulled over into an empty Winchell’s parking lot, rolled up her windows, locked her doors, and sat in her car with the engine running. Cursing the fact that she had ignored her mother’s insistence to get AAA, she dialed 411 on her rhinestone-encrusted Sidekick, and was connected with a tow truck company. Fifteen minutes later, a Hispanic man tapped lightly on her driver’s side window, and shocked into a state of paralysis at the sight of a Latino, Mindy clenched her eyes shut and squeezed the alarm button on her keychain. Ernesto, the man at her window, waited a few minutes for the girl to calm down, but when he felt there was nothing left for him to do, he got back in his tow truck and drove away.
Randy Paulson, 18, during his first week at college, was invited by his roommate and a few other boys to smoke pot in the group bathroom. Wanting to fit in and appear cool, Randy refrained from telling the others that he had never so much as seen a joint in his life. Four and a half minutes after taking his first hit, while the other boys laughed, talked about the girls they planned on banging before the end of the first semester, and quoted lines from Will Ferrell movies, Randy felt a stirring in his pants as his penis became engorged with blood.
Dr. Newman Bindle, 53, was admitted to the split risk ward of the very same psychiatric hospital where he had worked as Chief Psychiatrist for 26 years. Two days later, his first roommate was transferred to outpatient, and on his third night, Dr. Bindle woke to find the familiar face of Calvin Putman, 32, looming over him. “Remember me, Doc?” Calvin said. “You promised me the nightmares would stop,” he added before pressing a pillow against Bindle’s face, muffling his cries and pressing his body weight against Bindle’s flailing limbs only seven minutes before the night nurses began making their rounds.
Rebecca Colby, 27, was deathly afraid of dogs. The underlying reason for her phobia had become acutely repressed over the years, and she would have been happy to leave it that way was it not for the fact that she had recently fallen in love with Truman Welby, 29, a handsome and charming real estate broker whose love for Rebecca was matched only by his love for Ramona, his standard poodle. So as not to surrender her love, Rebecca began seeing a hypnotism therapist who had come highly recommended by friends who were able to quit smoking under his care. Five sessions into her therapy, Rebecca had a breakthrough on the therapist’s couch. In a hypnotic state, Rebecca took on the voice of her four year old self, and told the story of a family friend’s Christmas party, and how when all the other guests were occupied in the living room with Christmas carols and eggnog, Rebecca had wandered off to another room of the house, where she was cornered by Fritz, the family’s 120 pound Saint Bernard, who pinned little Rebecca down and made love to her stomach before falling asleep atop her. Unable to move under the massive dog’s weight, Rebecca’s cries for help went unanswered until the party died down two and a half hours later and the guests came into the room to retrieve their coats.
