Hittin' the snooze....

The sheets are orange. 1970's orange. Burnt and frayed sunflowers. 300 count. Crinkled from being dried in the Saturday sun. Clean. I flop in crumpled, legs and arms landing in a random stack of comfy~cozy pick~up sticks. Pop the alarm. I'm out for the night. Exhausted.

He leans in. Voice husky and smokey, protecting his words with hand cusped, as if they might fly away in the noise, and whispers , near. I scooch in. Listen better. Stare at my knees. Nod in agreement. In cahoots. Never look into his eyes. Burn a hole in the leg of my jeans. He leans in closer and is suddenly quiet. Done. I look up, catching his eyes in a butterfly net. And he kisses me.

I wake up startled. His face just as surprised, freeze~framed in a dream. I crunk the sheets one more time, the pillows....and drift away again. It's a six hour night. I'm determined to sleep through it....

And he leans in again...

Deja Vue. In dreamland.

And again.

The alarm screams at me. Blasts fuzzy half music, half talk radio gib gab across the room and I stretch, lean, teeter off the bed to bop it. Good morning, real world.....

I'd rather be dreaming....

Barefoot in the Backyard....

We met in the kitchen. Half moon eyes. Hungry. " Coffee please".

The slumber party winding to a gentle close. Sunday morning nudgin' us back into real time. A pretend week at the beach, sunrise to sunset, 7 days and 7 nights. A make~believe marathon. In just under 24 hours. "Yeah, baby, we had a good time...."

"Boy~O, Boy~O, Boy~O!"

I'm fidgeting. Thinking of maybe biting my nails again. Kicking up cathair. I did 3 tummy crunches and then hung the clothes up on the night~time line. Turned on the babbly blah~blah~blah~babbly TV.....and smoked another cigarette. Checked the mail. Thumbed through it all and pitched it into the overflowing garbage can. Grabbed a black bag and went out on the deck, chopped the night blooming jasmine back into a crewcut.... and drenched the neighborhood in white perfume. Checked my emails. Checked the phone for voice mail, text messages. Checked to make sure I get bars in the living room, the kitchen. Checked to make sure the charger was working. And now I'm fidgeting. Again.

Hours to go. Maybe days. "Anytime" he said. "Rest up" he told her. I watch the clock.

Waiting on Baby Boy Love. Four weeks early and "anytime" he said....

You can't make me.....

We caravaned. Met up in the Valet parking lot, squishing in between the "reserved-for VIPs"....and flip flopped up the deck to The Crab House. Oh, Man, what a beautiful day for Peace Out, coconut shrimp, french dip, and ice cold beer in a bucket. Me and three of my new best friends. I know, I know, I know, you've heard it before.....

But there we were. Instant friends. Old friends. With very short pasts. And a lotta catchin' up to do. 99 beers on the wall later, we had laughed ourselves silly, solved world hunger and been on a peace march. We had confessed, professed, dared, bribed, danced,harmonized throughHello Dolly in our best Joe Cocker voices, and scooched in closer for the punch line...

"But what if"?

"What if you won, fell into, stumbled on a gazillion dollars?"

Skipping the lengthy four-fold conversation we had about charity, clarity, responsibility and all that hoo~hah ....what it all boiled down to was this...

"But isn't it all relative? Wouldn't a blue lagoon with cascading fountains and towering palms be the same to you as a millionaire as your little vinyl pool was to you last summer?"

"Ummmm. No."

I chewed on a piece of celery. Dipped it and swirled it in bleu cheese. Chewed again.

Behind their Foster Grants I could sense their eyes rollin'......

"Lemme tell you about my little blue pool......"














When we caravaned out of the parking lot,
sunkissed and dreamy,
beerbattered and fed,
there were four make-believe millionaires dreaming about blow up pools.....

and smiling......

No touching

I wasn't going to go. Friday's are for dancing and Saturdays are for wild oats. But, they called. I made every excuse, but a fitting one, and then jumped in the shower and threw on a pair of jeans. If you skip Friday, they come lookin' for you on Saturday....


The Saturday faces are different. Piranhas and barracudas. Nothing like the manatees, tattooed and grey, comfortable in the warm blue waters of Friday nights...I wasn't at home, but I wasn't far from it....


In the murky, jerky waters.... I tipped my Michelob to the mirror and the faces lined up watching me watching them..... the elbows on the counter, stray dollar bills in "I fold" concession, laugh lines and frown lines sagging like a Salvadore Dali painting. And I ached for them. These strangers on the other side of the bar.


The band played everything except Rolling Stones and I sat out the set. Fidgeted. Smoked. Told stories.Twirled my love beads. Friday's are for hippies. This wasn't feelin' like a Friday.

"Do you wanna dance?" he said, inching closer, breathing canned beer on me, three lines into the slow song. "No touching" I whispered and he vanished, poof! and he was gone....until the next one. "No touching" I whispered and he laughed, took a hand from the crowd and disappeared.

"Now?" my friend asked, nodding to the dance floor, questoning, comfortable, but not sure, and I threw my head back and said "yes, but no touching".....

"I don't know how" faded into the lyrics, the music, the rhythm, the rhyme, the move me, the this way, the that way, the "I've never done this before"....and I "mmmmmmmm,hhhmmmmmed" him as we danced eyes closed, around the couples, between them, into the music.....close, but never touching. Driftwood in the waves

"She won't let you touch her?" beer~breath bellowed over the band, into our peace. I never opened my eyes. Moving. Swirling. Psychelic circles, paisley foot steps. "No, she wont let me" Lucas whispered, barely aware he was talking. "Then take her back where she came from!", BB belched from his four square podium, arms draped around his mortified prize, feet shuffling, rough red cheeks touching hers.....chest puffed out like a plaster rooster on a kitchen wall....

We gave him two fingers and kept dancing.....


Into 1976 at The Saloon. Into Christian's living room, fluorescent light's glowing, mermaid goldish growing in a bathub. Into yesterday. Tomorrow. Down the dirt road to Peace Creek. Through a midnight sand dune. Over a rickity tickity wooden bridge. We just kept dancing, no touching....just feeling. The music.

The guy with the canned breath and canned lines stopped, mid mindless step, and watched.

And then he surrendered.


"Peace......"
was the last thing I heard him mutter as he left the floor.....

Counting....

I opened my back door on Sunday and could feel it. Smell it. Almost hear it over the weed-eater next door and the sirens. The beach.

We're counting days. Week-ends. Pennies. Nightmares. And then....

We're going!

Seven days and seven nights blurred together, smudged together, tethered together.....measured only by sunrises and sunsets.

And I ache for the peace.

The constant humming of the tilted window unit shuddering, puffing artic asthmatic breaths. Dripping onto the sidewalk, rusty little puddles I can splash my feet in....one good rinse before I plow into bed at midnight or morning.

The crisp white sheets, sandpapered with coquina and periwinkles, and cozy~comfy, sprayed with sea salt....littered with wet swim suits and towels....and beer bottle rings.

The three o'clock huddle, the housekeepers hunkered down, hiding behind my door, clinking beers and sneaking in ice.

The first sunrise. Kimbies in her long nightie, waiting at the seawall.... The second sunrise, Kimbies in her long nightie and five of our new best friends waiting at the seawall....

The Brotherhoods of Death. Another year older. Wiser. And still aching for their friend, their brother, embracing us on the seawall. Dipping, diving, dancing....Remembering...

The starfish with three legs. Still moving. A ballerina with only one shoe. "It aint over til the fat lady sings" we tell her, and whisk her back to sea....

Pots and pans and dishpan drains filled with shells. Treasures for the keeping.

Feral cats strutting in the moonshine, plucking crablegs from the garbage and bellowing 'Hallelujah"....

The sound of Skinny's car crunching gravel in the make-shift parking lot. 400 miles and 3500 smart cars dollars later.....

The yellow butterfly of San Marina.....

You dirty rat....

We were talking. Like sisters do. About silly things like why they call blondes blonde , about Mexican food tasting better in dives, googling the meaning of the word “occlude” and bantering the definitions.. Verizon to Verizon. It’s free, so we kept yacking. Wandered past the “did you know?”s to the “remember when”s and settled on the story of meeting soul mates from behind a shower curtain. I’m not gonna tell you the story because neither he nor he was a soul mate, but it happened nonetheless. It wasn’t until we got around to the “palmetto bug and rats” reminiscing that I started to get the heebie jeebies. Started to feel that familiar “something’s crawling up my leg” phobia.

Skinny is spooked by roaches. With wings. And rightfully so. She was only six when they invaded her space, laced up her legs like fishnet stockings and started giving her nightmares.

I’m haunted by Ben.

David Bowie was spinning for the last go round, the whisk~me~away, the nighty~night, and I prayed I would fall asleep before the needle hit the spot where it stuck forever, carving grooves into Diamond Dogs with it’s diamond tip. I piled into bed, crumpled under the hand-me-down quilts from Mamaw’s house and rolled on my side. My face fell into the down pillow like yesterday, like everyday before this one, and I snuggled in. Buttons pawed at my shoulder. Scratched for her space. I groaned and made room. “Jesus, could somebody cut her nails” I thought….as I hmmmmpppphhhhed and readjusted for her comfort. She pawed again.

Clawed actually.

I turned in the dark to give her the “settle down or sleep somewhere else” eyes and she glared at me…..beady eyes balanced between a pointy nose ….brillo pad hair glowing in the dark. I flung the covers off, flailing, leaping…..and it hit the wall.

Smack!

Yelping!

F'n Rat! In my bed!
On my body!
Breathing my breath!

For three weeks, I hauled Mamaws quilt and my first down pillow into the Jack and Jill bathroom and slept in the tub. Convinced I could hear him scurrying across the green and pink tile, crawling up the porcelain. See him in the full length mirror before he rounded the corner. Convinced I would know ....before he got to me.

For thirty five years I’ve known better.

You never see ‘em coming….