Tunesday, Part One Year Ago

Aimee Mann- Phoenix.  At this exact time last year, I was dancing with a golden retriever to Elvis' version of  Unchained Melody. I was supposed to be packing, but all I could do was dance around the living room knowing that I'd never see my dog again. The yogurt in the refrigerator was dated to expire after me. I felt sorry for it. It had so much hope. It was purchased by a girl who believed she would outlast it. I remember when he booked my flight home; he was on the phone: "February 12th. Phoenix to Atlanta," he said, and then, "just one way." He looked at me, shook his head, and mouthed, "so sad."  He chose this day because the 13th was a Friday, notoriously unlucky, and because the day after that was Valentine's, notoriously cruel to the unexpectedly single. I remember exactly what I wore February 12th, 2009 while I waited for him to change his mind. In a black dress, an orange coat, and a yellow handbag, I drank a beer on the patio underneath the orange tree and waited for him to walk outside and say something different. I brought my suitcase downstairs and when he looked up from his work, I waited for him to realize this was real and say something different. In the car, I waited for him to turn around and take me back home. On the plane, I pressed my forehead to the window and watched everything get small. I looked at the bottom of Camelback Mountain for a man with his arms outstretched to the sky waving for me to come back down.

Sean Hayes- Fucked Me Right Up.  So, maybe there is a theme. Every night for weeks, months, maybe, friends showed up at my house, often unannounced. They lit candles on my porch. They poured wine. They tossed packs of cigarettes at me and then held a flame to my lips. Indulge, they said, without saying anything. Sometimes, we laughed. Sometimes, mostly just the girls, they cried with me. Sometimes, no one said a word and the only sounds were exhalations, a glass setting down on the table, eyes shifting from one to the other before landing on the ground at a bottle cap, the moon, a shirt sleeve where a thread had unraveled and become the most important thing in the world.

The Mountain Goats- Moon Over Goldsboro.  It is February, 2008. Ryan and I are having breakfast before he flies back to Phoenix from Atlanta. He has been visiting for the weekend, and we are in our last hours.“I don’t speak pancake slang,” he says. I look up at him. He is studying the menu, genuinely perplexed.  Fortunately, I can speak this language, and I translate the meaning of breakfast for him as simply as I can: Breakfast is not the beginning, but the end. Breakfast is when you’ve made up your mind about everything and the only remaining choices in life are between the following species of pancakes: ww pancakes (whole wheat, for those who wish to live long, but enjoy nothing), bb pancakes (blueberry, for those who would rather have any answer, even the wrong one, than allow a question to dangle leaf-like in the air), cc pancakes (chocolate chip, for those who climb mountains for the thing at the top, those who expect cherries, and those who break promises.) In the end, we both choose toast. Sourdough. I eat everything but the crusts. He notices and exclaims, “good job with your toast.” This, I recognized, is bread slang, and means something that can only be translated with a cello.

Clem Snide- Beard of Bees.  Here is the good news: Anything happens. Anything happens with or without you. Anything happens when you’re having a beer with a venture capitalist at a bar. Anything happens on a Tuesday morning when you walk into a tattoo shop on 2nd street and shake hands with Hector. Anything happens when you kiss the boy you loved when you were seventeen. Anything happens when you just sit with three girls and don’t watch football. Anything happens in New Orleans at the same time anything is happening all they way in Paris. Anything happens in the sky, just as anything is happening on the ground. The trick is not trying to make anything the shape of something else. That’s not a man waving down there by the mountain, after all. But it is a nice tree, a palm, and it was having a grand time with the wind.

Annuals- Brother.  My brother is now almost as tall as a skyscraper, but he’s much kinder than one. When we were young, a zig-zagged bathroom adjoined our bedrooms. A secret tunnel! When we would fight, our parents would separate us by sending us to our rooms, and one of us--usually Alex--would quietly sneak through the secret tunnel, knock and sorrowfully apologize for the hair pulling or the name calling or the usurpation of the remote control. Whomever apologized was always forgiven and the hours that followed were a joyful reconciliation during which we happily shared everything. “No, you can be He Man, and I will be Skeletor. I insist!” Once, during such a bout of camaraderie,  Alex burst into my bedroom with a green marker and wrote, AH! on my white door. This, he explained, was our initials and also spelled,  AAAHHHH! A genius discovery! The graffiti was our secret until I got in trouble for something. My father stood in my doorway scolding me and before I could swallow it I burst, “Alex wrote on my door with marker, and it won’t come off!” My father promptly forgot about my infraction, walked down the hallway and Alex, caught quite off-guard, was punished. When I walked through the secret tunnel to apologize, he was unready to accept. This was not the worst part of the betrayal. For the following two years, when caught doing something I ought not, I blurted, “Alex wrote on my wall!” and pointed furiously to the door. It was magic. Our father would instantly forget that I had done anything wrong, and he’d head down the hallway to Alex’s room and once again, lecture him about not drawing on the walls. When Alex would try to explain that he’s already been scolded for this, my father would remind not to interrupt. I’ve confessed this since, but I did try unsuccessfully to use it once more when I dropped out of college. I’ve walked through the secret tunnel and apologized, and have been mercifully forgiven, but let this be my public apology. I’m so sorry, Alex! I will play Monopoly with you, and I won’t cheat this time or make fun of when you do something dumb like let me trick you into trading Baltic for Boardwalk. You can even be the little dog! I will be the thimble.  AH!

Comments

[Jennifer D]

I loved this.