There Is None So Blind As He Who Cannot See

In Detroit, as you may have heard, little goes right these days.

Our ex-mayor just went to jail.

It was announced today that the Mercury line of automobiles will be discontinued effective this year. (I'm going to miss Jill!)

^^^extra superfluous picture of Jill. "You've got to put Mercury on your list!" Or not.

Crime, unemployment, racial division, corruption, decay, we've got it all. So we really really really need some good news. ANY good news, even if it is only from the world of sports.

Tonight, Detroit Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga pitched a perfect game. In all of the more than century-long history of major league baseball, only twenty perfect games have been pitched. (A perfect game means 27 batters up, 27 batters out, no hits, no walks, no errors, no base runners at all.) The Tigers are playing their 110th season this year, and have NEVER had a perfect game. Until tonight. But wait.

In the 9th and final inning, centerfielder Austin Jackson made a ridiculous circus catch to miraculously record the first out and keep the perfecto alive. The next batter grounded out. One out to go! The batter for the Cleveland Indians hit a ground ball which Tigers first baseman Miguel Cabrera fielded and then tossed to Galaragga covering first base for the out. Perfect game! Except...first base umpire Jim Joyce called the runner safe. He is the only one in the western world to think so. Replays clearly show he blew the call. Galaragga got the next batter out and the Tigers won 3-0, but my goodness.

There is an unspoken rule in baseball. There are lots of them, actually, but one of them is that the first hit of a game must be a clean hit. Another is that, if you are the last batter in a game like this, if you are anything remotely resembling out, you will be called...OUT.

So. Is Jim Joyce blind?

Is he the puppet of some foreign power?

Is he just a fucking idiot?

Jesus may forgive you, Jim.

But Detroit never will.

Lord have mercy.
___________

The Secret

Every Sunday, the amazing fashionista  Daryl has a feature called "Tell me A Story", in which she posts one of her photographs and asks her readers to spin a yarn about it. My story-writing skills have been slumbering, but I have tried to wake them in order to participate this week. So, without further ado, here is Daryl's photograph, and my story to go with it!

I was sitting on a hard white bench under a crab apple tree when I saw them. They were just two girls, quite young, and at first I thought they might be sisters, but then I realized that their hair had been dyed the same color. Best friends, then. Copying each other and magazines and other friends and grown women, trying on styles and personalities, they were trying to find their way and themselves, just as I did, and my friends did, once.

I am 84 years old. The woman who was my best friend is inside the building behind me and to my right, surrounded with flowers and her loved ones. I shall miss her. When Alice and I were young women, the world had changed so much. Any young man who was healthy enough to go was off fighting the Germans, or the Japanese, in places whose names we had never heard of until they started appearing in the newspapers, day after day. Many of those young men never came home, of course. Alice and I married two of the ones who did, but that was later. 

The two girls across the road are eating ice cream and talking. They are standing close, in their own little world. I remember how it was to have a special friend like that, one who knew you so well, she could finish your sentences, or tease you about something you were sensitive about, until you started laughing in spite of yourself. Alice was that friend, for me. 

Because of the war, we had opportunities our mothers never had. We didn't have to get jobs waitressing or doing sales in a department store. We got jobs in a factory, doing jobs where we didn't have to be charming to anyone we didn't want to be charming to. We punched a clock and collected a paycheck the way our fathers had, and it gave us a freedom, and a feeling about ourselves, that we had never had before. We tied on our babushkas, like peasant women, and worked each day assembling explosives, or bullets, or whatever we were told to work on. Some of the girls' fingers turned yellow from the chemicals. We didn't care. We had, for the first time in our lives, money in our purses that was ours, and we could go to the movies, or buy that dress, or put it away, but whatever we did with the money, what mattered was that it was ours and we had earned it ourselves. We didn't have to wait on a man to have the life we wanted.

Watching the girls across the street, I feel a sudden urge and ache to be one of them, to be young, and to be just starting out and discovering things. I wonder if they are discussing boys, or the ice cream, or other girls they know. I wonder if one has a secret, and if she will tell her friend today, or ever.

When I saw Alice, earlier, she looked beautiful, despite age, despite being....so uncharacteristically still. I wept. It is not just the loss of Alice, my dearest friend, but the loss of someone who knew me in a way that only happens when one has known someone else very well for a good long time. Oh, Alice. Who will love your honest smile they way that I did, where you have gone?

I remember sitting in the Aztec Theater, watching "Leave Her To Heaven" with Alice. The woman in it was a banshee, but I liked her anyway. I didn't know that, within a few years, both of us would be married and raising families. The men took their jobs back when they came home, making Fords and De Sotos instead of bombs. We fed babies, and also our men when they came in at the end of the day. Life settled down to being more as it had been before. After so much horror overseas, people wanted normalcy almost above anything else. Alice and I never went to the factory again.

I can't help feeling, as I watch the two young girls, that the one with the shorter hair does have a secret she's keeping. Maybe she is wondering if she can trust her friend enough to tell her what is in her heart. At that age, everything is so confusing, friendships are made and dissolved in the blinking of an eye, and it takes a very special friend indeed to share some secrets. How to be sure that this connection can endure? And, by telling, would she be ruining that chance forever? Either way, the telling or the not telling will nudge her life this way or that. Oh, but listen to me. They are probably just sharing an ice cream and nothing more.

I stood for a moment saying goodbye to Alice just now, you know. Inside the funeral home, with tears spilling down my cheeks, I told her what had always been on my heart, but I said it all silently, as I always did. Then I bent and kissed her. It was the first time I ever had.

__________

Don't Take Me Home, Baby....

...cos your mama won't like me.

My rather challenged mail lady (you know how they can be) just recently delivered my April issue of Curve magazine (Curvemag.com). I got my May issue, with Sarah Silverman on the cover, weeks ago. Anyhoo, the cover story is elegantly entitled "The Hot Stars of Lesbosploitation" and has a cover shot of the three female stars of the movie "Bitch Slap." Nothing but class on my coffee table! I'll set it right next to Town & Country!

But I digress.

One of the three ladies depicted is actress America Olivo, in the role of Camero, a "drug addled nutcase." Oh my gosh...my dream woman!

The wildest I ever get is putting chocolate sprinkles on top of my frappuccino. But you know what they say. Girls like bad girls. Or something like that. Camero, Camero....*sigh*

_____________

The Unhappy Toothpaste

The Unhappy Toothpaste sulks inside its tube.

"Look at me," it complains.

"I am all pasty and pale. It is almost June, and here I am, stuck inside."



"But you are minty fresh!" points out the cap.

"Oy," moans the Unhappy Toothpaste. "That hardly makes me unique, now does it?"

"Just trying to help."

The Unhappy Toothpaste can hardly stand it. It mutters, "I am surrounded with morons."



Then The Lady comes into the bathroom and the Unhappy Toothpaste goes all gooey, which isn't difficult for it to do.

At her touch, at the slightest squeeze, the Unhappy Toothpaste gives part of itself to her without hesitation, and that part is soon all foamy with joy!



Then she spits it out and it goes down the drain.



Now the Unhappy Toothpaste is even unhappier.

"I kill germs and bacteria that cause gingivitis. I whiten. I freshen breath. I can even be used to fill small holes in plaster. Why am I not loved?"

Even the cap doesn't know how to help with the awkward silence that follows.

Then the Unhappy Toothpaste squeaks plaintively, "I even give good oral."

But it makes no difference. The Unhappy Toothpaste has no brain, no heart, no hands, and no survivability outside the tube!

A movie career seems unlikely, except, perhaps, in a supporting role. 



Enter the Dissatisfied Hand Cream.

I can't give away the rest.

_________

By The Numbers

She only told 1 little lie. A baby one, really. 15 years of marriage and a dozen regrets later, they were just 2 people at 6's and 7's with each other. They'd been married on the 4th of July. The fireworks lasted 8 months, then faded. The little lie? "I still love you," she said.

_________

Transference

New paint on an old door is a sly trick.

Wait for a sunny day, and then

Wave the brush in your hand up and down as a signalman does--

The train will be coming through...

That is the only certain thing.



Set your can of color on a newspaper,

And both in the morning sun.

If you see, beyond its silver rim, that someone you know

Has died or gotten married,

Or discussed your heart in an interview,



Remember that this job will take many coats,

And each will have to dry before starting on the next.

In the meantime,

As you sip tea on the steps and read further, out of boredom,

Don't be surprised at the ink that stays on your fingers,

Or the paint that remains on the page.

_____________

Girl Jox

Like the frequency that only dogs can hear,

Something hums in me, in here,

At the sight of these

Swoon-worthy women,

The girl jox.



So ok, all right, maybe it isn't exactly my heart

That goes a little tilt, a little faint

When I'm around all those ponytails and high fives...



Guy jox are like too-loud music,

But girl jox are like baby bear's frappuccino--

Just right.



Girl jox, where do you go

After the game,

After Pizza Hut,

After torturing ones such as I

With your golden

So kissable

Thighs?



Home with each other, I suppose--

Or to a boyfriend? Say it ain't so!

But never to the starstruck poetess

With the glasses and the library card;

Never to the girl with the black-cat remove,

And the chalk lines drawn around

Her stupid

Hopeless

Endless desire

For you.

____________

(This is a new edit of an old poem of mine)

photo: Jessica Mendoza

____________