J. had a freezer full of goose breasts riddled with shot. His family owned property on Broad Creek with a duck blind right against the water, where the menfolk, clad in camouflage, would sit on brisk fall mornings, guns poised. He showed me the blind that first summer, took my hand and led me through a tunnel of cornstalks gone brown. We sat close on the austere bench, hidden behind grass that had become hoarse with whispering over the years. I am sure he kissed me in that humid July air because we did a lot of that then, sweet lingering kisses in between fights and sarcasm.

He’d told me that a former tenant of the Sugar Shack, the house he and his brother were renting from their grandmother on the far side of the property, had keeled over one afternoon in the back bedroom, dead from a heart attack. By the time they found the body, the man’s faithful dog had chewed off half of his face. It probably started with wake-up licks that progressed to nips and then frantic biting. But J. was often full of shit, and I’m not sure if he was just trying to scare me. If so, it worked. I’d spend the night there holding it, too nervous to walk the ten feet to the bathroom, picturing the gory scene, the spiritual remains of this lonely person floating over the room.

One muddy November night, when lingering kisses had turned into the fire of post-fight sex, I realized I was on the edge. J. and I had gone from chemical intensity to a kind of in-between thing that wasn’t satisfying but was just enough to keep me hooked. We’d spent the evening at the bar, drinking and picking at each other. By the time we shoveled into the Sugar Shack driveway, my brain was crackling. We had a fight about something ridiculous or something deep-seated and heavy, it doesn't really matter, and at some point I grabbed a shotgun from the gun cabinet.

As I write this, I can’t believe that I did such a thing, so dramatic, so serious. Could I be making this up? No. I was drunk and sad and teetering on the edge of the abyss, so I grabbed one of his (unloaded) shotguns and pointed at my face. Maybe we struggled. All I can remember is me stumbling in the shabby living room of the Sugar Shack where it was cold and damp. J. was lit from behind so that his face was cragged in shadow. I was hysterical with pent-up emotion, struggling to keep hold of this unwieldy gun. Eventually J. took it away and returned it to the cabinet. We went to sleep. I woke up the next morning barely able to move, felt around for his sleeping form and remembered that he was probably hunkered down in the duck blind with his cousins.

I’m sure he chalked the night up to my overgrown sense of drama, another mark against me to go with my unfaithfulness and love of alcohol. Thank god I've tossed aside those crutches for the most part, though I miss the drama sometimes. Drama sparks up the night, shines a little light into the abyss. Without it, you have only darkness, have to bravely perch on the edge until the abyss slowly creeps away. And that's where I seem to be right now for reasons that are unclear to me, dirging it out until the fog lifts.

"Shoot him 'fore he run now," is a lyric to the song "Shotgun," originally by Jr. Walker and the All Stars. Click here for a danceable, levity-producing version from the documentary Standing in the Shadows of Motown. It features some of the original Motown sessions musicians and the late Gerald Levert as singer.

Image from the Washington College magazine.

Tags: love, writing prompt, Round Robin, College, hunting

The house teeters above you in a nimbus of red light. A pillar of cracked, uneven steps capped by burning jack-o-lanterns ends at the front door, where cackles and howls animate the night air. “A real witch lives there,” the boy next to you says as he tentatively places a cardboard hoof on the bottom step. You hold your mother’s hand a little tighter and keep walking. Down the street, a sickly-looking woman with a black pointy cap perches by a cauldron. She waves her gnarled hand, pours a ladle of steam into a styrofoam cup. You start to run, but your mother catches you by the collar

She and Paul shepherd you into a blank-faced building with a mirrored lobby. There is a gorilla in the elevator. He stands upright and powerful with black fur that tufts over his arms and legs. You dig into your mother’s thigh with angel nails. “It’s all right. It’s just a costume,” she says and the gorilla, with some difficulty, removes his head to reveal another one underneath. “See?” he says. “Just a costume.” Your heart flip-flops. The gorilla struggles to replace his head and turns toward you, ape face askew and fixed in a lipless grin. He attempts to give the thumbs-up sign with a rubbery hand. “Shit. How am I supposed to hold a drink with this,” he says, tugging awkwardly at his digits. More people collect in the elevator: a flapper, a man in a Nixon mask, a woman mimicking the hangdog face and lanky body of Cher. Paul, making a joke, has dressed in prison stripes, while your mother has Cleopatra-flat hair and a beige tunic with gold accents.

You flow out with the crowd toward a door in the hallway. It swings open and Catwoman steps out, revealing a room cloudy with smoke and conversation muffled by faux fur and latex. She reaches out with heavily lacquered nails and rakes the hair under your halo. People are always touching your hair, cooing over your thick blonde ringlets as though you were a doll.

The gorilla closes the door.

This is an excerpt of a work in progress. The entire piece isn't written in second person, just those bits of dredged-up memory. For another Halloween story, read The orangutan did it.

Image: Man in gorilla costume from Compassionate Spirit.

Tags: Halloween, costumes, John the Murderer, memoir, man in a gorilla costume, Halloween 1972

It was one of those conversations that I'm tired of having, but I couldn't seem to stop myself.

Mr. Trinkle and I were standing against the wall at the Fox Theater in Oakland, this over-the-top restored venue from the late 1920s, drinking our beers and waiting for the group Echo and the Bunnymen to come onstage. We'd already had a lot of laughs that would be almost impossible to explain here (for example, the image of us wearing cucumber and cabbage outfits, just to find our moment of glory in the truly ridiculous [but very cool-sounding] Echo song Thorn of Crowns). Without warning my dead son winnowed his way into the conversation, which lead to talks of alternate lives and then my father showed up, too, unrepentant, demanding the old song and dance of anger.

My father and stepmother visited us last month, which was a truly wonderful visit, one for which I am grateful. As a result of nerve damage in his back, he is in constant pain and traveling is very difficult on him, but they made the trip and we all had a good time. There was just one ripple in the visit, one that I tried to ignore, in a discussion that would have been impossible without the blog. He found writing to survive over a year ago and read through it in its entirety. Eventually he apologized via email for any pain he had caused me, which was the extent of our interaction on the topic. During this most recent visit he asked "Are we ok?" meaning, I suppose, "Is everything all right between us?". Yes, I said, we were ok -- when he read the blog I felt like he was listening to me. Did he feel like we were ok?

Well, sure, but he wanted me to know that, despite my accusations to the contrary, he had tried. I had no idea what he was talking about, but his response was probably to this post, where I write about my anger at my parents for doing nothing when I desperately needed help: "My mother stopped parenting; my father never even started. They deserve my compassion. It's no use getting angry at those who don't see their own worth." It's a heavy accusation and I stand by it. The truth hurts. We didn't dig any deeper into that particular pit, but our discussion bothered me, still does, and that was what I was talking about in the lobby of the Fox Theater, that and imagining my never-to-be-24-year-old son, dressed in skinny tapered pants and an ironic t-shirt, angry at me for my own form of neglect, of the fetal variety.

The band started. We hustled to our seats, suddenly surrounded by the music that was a part of the soundtrack of my mid-teens and I started to cry. I sobbed through the first three songs while Mr. Trinkle patted me reassuringly, probably feeling bad about the tickets, which were a birthday present. The music transported to a bleak time in my life, when things started really getting bad and I was indescribably alone. I felt the direness of my situation at fifteen and sixteen, combined with the beauty of my current life. I am forty years old, married to a good, supportive man. We have a healthy, creative, wonderful child. My life is in enveloped in love and warmth. How did I get so undeservedly lucky?

Our conversation in the lobby -- the clinical look at my father, the ghostly appearance of my son, my guilt over that time of terrible fear and anger -- began to make sense. No matter how much work I've done here on revealing secrets, writing out my pain and anger, trying to forgive my parents, I can't take the experience of what happened in the Little House away. Even thinking about the music we were about to hear brought me to the edge of that past, to the isolation and neglect. And my father's main reaction upon reading this entire blog, apart from a generic, though I'm sure heartfelt apology, was to tell me that he tried. He has never acknowledged any direct responsibility for (or curiosity about) that time. I wish his acknowledgement didn't matter. Maybe someday it won't.

I've put so much effort into trying to forgive the unaware that I've forgotten to pay attention to my own grief. I still carry around sadness for things lost, for not mattering enough, for acknowledgment that will never be. So I cried and cried until Ian McCulloch started singing about vegetables. Mr. Trinkle turned to me and raised his eyebrows. We started to laugh.

I really am lucky.

Echo and the Bunnymen play "Silver" in Oakland, courtesy of some fellow fan:


Image: Living proof at my fingertips, or me and family at Muir Woods, August 2009. Photo by my mother.

Tags: The Little House, Echo and the Bunnymen, 80s music, child neglect, family, guilt, grief

Here was the scene: my four-year-old son wearing a pair of old high heels, a canary-yellow birthday party hat on his head, grasping a sword in either hand. It was another one of his many guises, a funny mix of feminine and masculine, underpinned by the dark potential for violence. He gave my husband a birthday hat and a sword (we have a large supply of both) and they began a battle, two "spirits" hashing it out. Soon after, the kid swapped out the swords for a stick turned gun. If you are my Facebook friend, maybe you saw one of the resulting photographs, which I put up with the heading “The Low Spark of a High-Heeled Boy.” It was one of those annoying isn't-my-kid-clever-and-cute posts. But just look at him. Isn't he?



Every day at preschool, my son dresses up in costume. It might be as basic as a police officer hat. Sometimes he adds bat wings or an elephant nose. At home he puts on his batboy costume and flaps his wings as he takes flight in the living room. Playing with the concept of name and identity, he uses aliases at our Music Together classes. The alias used to change weekly depending on his book-obsession of the moment -- Art Dog, Mrs. Grizzle, etc. -- but now his chosen identity lasts for months. After weeks of singing "Hello to Chipmunk" one of the summer session parents had assumed that was his name. "You know, Berkeley," she said with a shrug after I set her straight. "You never can tell here." Last week he went to class in full pirate regalia, from scarlett hat to skull-and-crossbones vest to sword. "Nobody will know who I am," he told me with a sly smile.

Part of his dressing up and taking on identities, his love of costume, has something to do with shyness. These are ways to be in public with being totally seen. But I also think he has a bit of the dramatic in him. Like all children, he has a rich imaginative life. He makes a set of bike wrenches into a train, builds a boat out of a pile of sticks, creates robots out of spare toys and junk. My son truly believes that if he runs and jumps fast enough, he can fly. I remember flying, too, that heady moment of lift as I raced across my grandparents' family room and landed in the dark green chair in the corner. It happened. I can't deny it.

I worry about the future of his imagination, about the coming imposition of what it means to be a boy. When he goes to school full-time next year he will be immersed in the culture of the group, where rule-happy children and adults start forcing kids into slots. I remember school as a place where creativity isn't valued and anything different is quashed. I want to protect him, to take his imagination and cover it in gleaming armor, to let him know that flying will always be possible.

The change will happen. It is inevitable. But I hope that he will hold tight to his creativity, protect himself when he needs to without smothering his imagination. The further he gets out in the world, the less control I will have. All I can offer is my love and support.

Image: The high-heeled boy at home, October 2009. Photo by Mr. Trinkle.

New selections from the back catalog of the blog in Best and Rarest!

Tags: imagination, childhood, death of imagination, pretending, make-believe, groupthink, school

Surely there are hidden meanings everywhere, waiting to be uncovered. This was my hypothesis when I started my latest self-improvement project “Barbara’s Weekly Epiphany.” All I had to do was approach the world with a childlike sense of wonder, to keep my eyes and mind open, maybe even wear my heart on my sleeve. All of that information that has beaded off my consciousness, repelled by my cynical attitude and “been, there, done that” grubby cliché-ridden approach was going to be captured now, in a mind as open as my VW sunroof on a light-pierced June afternoon.

I started a blog about the project, wanting to share my insights with others: epiphanyquota.blogspot.com. First epiphany? You have to sell your ideas, sell yourself, if you want to succeed. You have to believe in you, or no one else will. Second epiphany:  fake it ‘til you make it is more true than you think. Third epiphany? In the middle of a crowded public park, if you close your eyes and quiet your thoughts, you will hear the vibration of the world, the sound of its heartbeat.

The blog started getting a fan base, made up mostly of earnest young men drawn by the stock photo I’d put up that looked vaguely like me fifteen years ago. They were drawn by that and the supportive and slightly flirtatious comments I’d left on their own blogs, encouraging observations on the quality of their writing, the strength of narrative voice and character, how close I felt to them though we’d never met. These exchanges led to other epiphanies, ones that I didn’t share on the blog:  bullshit actually works; the reality of the online world both mirrors and denies the reality of the solid world; men will believe anything.

One of them -- let's call him Brad, a name that fits in its brevity and practicality, that matches his corny, Hemingwayesque writing style -- got a little too interested. How was I supposed to know that he would take my ego-stroking seriously? I thought I had covered my tracks (always cover your tracks, a too-late epiphany), but somehow he found my phone number. I have an old habit of letting the machine pick up and would stand over it, listening to these silences injected with anticipation, the light touch of breath, the occasional throat-clearing. The messages hovered in the air, sticky and thick, for hours after the caller hung up. Brad eventually told me he was responsible, in an email where he attached a photo of someone, I presume himself, in flagrante. I immediately moved the sordid pic to the trash, changed my number, and blocked his emails. There are some sick fucks out there.

I type this in my ratty old bathrobe, a mangy Pomeranian on my lap. But I could be lying. You never know.


*From a Round Robin prompt last winter ("my latest epiphany"). Every word of this is made up. Really. And I'm all for positive thinking, have spent years faking it and am on the cusp of making it.

Image: "Epiphany," Henry Ascensio. From Tavistock Gallery.

Tags: satire, online identities, power of positive thinking, cliches, epiphanies, flash fiction

In my dreams, the dead are silent. I’ve never had a good conversation with a single one of them, just offer my apologies, bake the bread, pour the coffee. What is the guilt about? The dead no longer care about my transgressions. Isn’t it enough that I hold them here in my subconscious, treat them as gently as I would a freshly-laid egg?

But this dream was different. We were going to visit Kevin, who has been gone for over seven years now. As in real life, I was nervous: would I react properly to him? Would he toss the verbal slings, so subtle and cutting, if I didn’t pick up on something, if I reacted too slowly? Or would he sit there, blue eyes glowing, as my mother and I circled him like butterflies, flitting here and there in our attempts to placate?

Kevin spoke. He used the ethereal language of dreams, of those who are now ashes and light, but in that nasal New Jersey accent that I haven’t been able to replicate in my mind for years. And he was funny, so funny, because Kevin was bitingly funny. I laughed and realized how much I missed him, how much time had gone by and then I woke up, not remembering a word of his complicated meta-joke.

Time flies on and I die a little every day, lose another connection, feel the pull of a long-ago past. Yet my grandfather still shows up at the old house. I smell his cigarettes, breathe in sawdust, too-sweet coffee and turpentine. He waits in his cell of a room, a voiceless old man in a flannel robe, unshaven and glassy eyed. I rush past the sink filled with dirty dishes, walk a path of slate to get to a mailbox that hasn't been opened in years. Sometimes we take his car for a complicated drive to Christiana. Maybe we are heading to the hospital, waiting for someone to hand me a small bundle, something I've forgotten.

The dead appear without explanation or warning. Carolin greets me in a too-bright dorm basement, fixes me with intense eyes. David Anderson sits in a classroom, shoeless, staring at the algebra equation on the board. Frank the cat meows for food that I don't have. And my grandmother, the one I ache to see, is sick of my inattention and has stopped showing up at all.

Someday, no one will know that I was sixteen and angry once. They will remember an old woman deeply lined, forgetful, with clouded-over eyes, demanding and harmless. Inconsequential. As though I had been born without desire, without the power to wound.

Image: Postcard, date unknown.

Tags: grandfather, Kevin, Death, existential angst, dreams

Guess how old I am today?

Just add one to this number.

I'm fine with it. Really.

Image: Me in 1970 at Hollywood Beach.

Tags: birthdays, the big 4-0, aging

The story was that he and Willard were drunk when they poured the foundation. It was a hot day, unusual for May, and the sky was cloud-veiled, the sun nothing but a glowing round cloaked in grey. The men mixed the cement by hand in a wheelbarrow, kept taking slugs from the whiskey bottle. Vi and the girls started out planting flowers, then prepared a lunch of liverwurst sandwiches, sugary potato salad, and coleslaw. Finally all there was left to do was to sit on the metal lawn chairs and watch.

Everything went down so easily. The cement had a nice resistance, just yielding enough, like Vi on a good night. It was a perfect mix, Willard agreed, as he passed the whiskey bottle back. Running a trowel over it was soothing, could almost put you to sleep. Dusk was enveloping the neighborhood as they wrapped up. One of the girls had fallen asleep on a blanket on the dirt, and the other one glowered as she kicked up clouds of dust in the rutted driveway. Al struggled with the wheelbarrow until he decided the hell with it, it was just a rusty piece of shit anyway.

Vi finally had to drive everyone back to Delaware, the men singing a song she didn’t recognize, the girls bleary-eyed and hungry. When they returned the next weekend, excited to start building the cottage, Al ran his hands across the foundation and groaned. It didn’t take a level or a plumb line to figure out that they had to start all over again.

Image: The house at Hollywood Beach, August 1957.

Tags: faction, family, alcohol, family stories, flash fiction