Natural Disaster
So I’m in the dairy section of the local grocery supercenter, standing there, looking at the eggs in an open egg carton, making sure there aren’t any broken ones, when a scraggly older gentleman saunters his cart up next to mine and stops. He looks me directly in the eye, and with a laser like stare, he says, “I have a big dick.”
There is a mildly uncomfortable pause, where we stand locked into one another’s presence, my eyes and his eyes, engaged in a silent staring contest. In a move of super-controlled daring, I allow my gaze to drop to his crotch for just a second or two, and then, I move back up to address him to his face, as I close the egg carton, place it, and it’s three broken eggs back on the shelf, and begin my exit strategy.
“Good for you.”
Now I’m walking through the store, but I’m done. I don’t know what I needed from here in the first place. I don’t know what it is I want. I’m pretending to shop, but the limbic center of my brain has made a deep covert plan that only I know.
I’m going to stroll nonchalantly to the front, leave my half-empty cart by the freezer section, and get the hell out of here.
And that’s exactly what I did.
But now I’m driving home. And this scene is replaying in my head. All the crazy questions are pounding. Mostly the why’s. Why would he do that, to anyone, but more specifically, to single me out of the crowd?
I’ve got to get myself together and get to work. And now I’m not sure if my kids will have what they might want to eat today while I’m gone.
But whatever we have will have to do until I can know what to do about this. Or at least until I know what we do need and get the courage to return to the store.
2
I’m sitting on the bed, putting on my pantyhose, looking vaguely in the mirror, thinking about what I should wear today. I’d already thought all of this out earlier, before I got out of bed. I had an outfit all planned out, down to the most minute details, to the coraline colored accessories and the taupe-nude heels.
That all seemed, now, too risqué. “Better go drab,” I muttered out loud, and found a last minute exchange of a grey sweater dress and chose no scarf or necklaces. I kept the nude heels though, only because they’re very comfortable.
My son called out from the living room that a package had arrived, so I left my bedroom without checking myself in the looking glass.
A box of coffee had arrived and the company had included a few free tea biscuits, individually wrapped, of various sorts.
“Well at least you’ll have a snack today,” I waved the biscuits at him.
“I thought you went to the store,” he said disappointedly.
Then I remembered I had needed some eggs and was going to buy a roast to put in the slow cooker.
“I’ll leave some money on the counter. You might have to walk to the little mart and get yourself something to eat today.”
He looked at me very perplexed, but I just grabbed my bag and went out to get into the car.
I caught a glimpse of myself in the reflection of light from my modest sedan, the grey of my dress almost completely subdued in the light. I look very dowdy, I thought to myself, perfect to blend in for a day like today.
“I haven’t had any coffee yet,” I noticed suddenly. “Oh well. I don’t have time to stop for some.” And then I backed out of the drive and was on my way... to work.
3
The drive to work was a silent one. I turned the stereo completely off, not down, as I would normally do, if I needed time to think of something, or talk to someone on the phone.
Something about the quietness, with all the traffic rushing by just as usual as ever, put me in a surreal mood, as if none of any of this existed at all. In my mind, I suddenly had no home, no car, no job, no world, but was stranded in space, with nothing at all to even put my feet on.
Some part of me I’m not aware of, took over the driving obligations, navigated the turns and stops that needed to be made, while I existed in this empty place, somewhere so far out, yet deep within the recesses of my mind.
But there he was, the scraggly man, looking not so old to me, staring intently into my soul, opening his mouth, whispering this time, softly to me, “I have a rather large dick.”
I stared for an even longer time, this time, from the safety of my sedan. “What a handsome face you have,” thought I. “Why would you need to tell me this, when it seems to me, you might be very kissable, and then one could see for themselves just how endowed you might or might not be?”
After an eternity it seemed, in slow motion replay, I dropped my gaze in my memory, to the crotch of his trousers, to remember what I could from the quick glance I’d taken back in the grocery store. A regular crotch and nothing more it seemed to me. But this time, entirely in my mind, I thought I saw a twitch down there. And so I stared even more, and then was sure. I’d seen it move, there underneath the covering of his pants.
My reverie abruptly stopped, as I became aware that my car had arrived, and I had parked it in the lot beside my place of employment. I was just to the point in my memory of telling the man, “Good for you.”
“I sure wish I’d thought to say, ‘Good for you and your big dick, Asshole!’” I said, and I guess I actually said that out loud as I was getting out of my car, because I suddenly noticed a man getting out of his automobile a couple of parking spots down, and he looked rather startled, and walked hurriedly ahead of me into the office building.
“Oh no.” I thought, this time silently, and put my fingers up to my brow, shaking my head now. “I’ve got to get myself together.”
4
“Where is your bathroom?” I had asked one of the cousins I’d just met that day. I couldn’t remember what they’d told me her name was. There were so many of them.
“It’s out back,” she said.
I started off down the hall toward the back of the house.
“No! It’s outside!” she had called out after me.
“Outside? I asked slowly, not comprehending that concept.
“Great-Granny doesn’t have indoor plumbing,” she informed me. “You have ta use the outhouse.”
I was eleven years old, and I had never known anyone that actually used an outhouse.
“I guess you uppity people from Texas don’t use outhouses,” she sneered.
I don’t know if my expression showed a change or not. I just really had to go to the bathroom, so I went out the front door and around to the back of the house to find the outhouse. I felt sick inside as I walked, and hurt and shocked that she thought I was a snob.
I always felt my family was the poorest one in our small town, except for the McCabe’s. They sometimes worked for us on our run-down farm, but at least we had a farm. The McCabe’s were dirt poor, and got by from building fence for other people, and miscellaneous temporary farm hand work. Come to think of it, something about these cousins reminded me of the McCabe’s. Maybe they were related, too, even though they were more than six hours and a state line away from my hometown.
The grandma we visited in Oklahoma had a real nice bathroom, nicer than ours in Texas. She and Grandpa drove much nicer cars than we did. I assumed all Oklahomans were richer, but we had just come from their house a few hours to the east, for a family reunion, and here I was, it seemed to me, dropped into the middle of a bunch of extra-hillbilly terrestrial McCabe-type relatives.
But! If there was one thing I couldn’t stand, it was a snob. And the thought that someone could consider me one, aggravated my already torqued up intestines. I was really trying to hold it all in, and make it to a toilet.
But there would be no toilet today. My destiny was an old grey outhouse. I saw the archetypal shape, and recognized it from classic westerns I’d seen on tv. It looked worse than anything I could’ve imagined, and I could smell it from afar.
The wood was weathered and not tightly fitted. I opened the door and saw the thick piece of wood laid across, like a seat, with two big holes, looking like large black empty eyes staring up. I looked up, too, to see what they were looking at, and I could see the sky through the cracks in the boards of the walls and ceiling.
I couldn’t bring myself to go all the way in. I was smart enough to figure, that the cracks were a good thing, so one might breathe, if one were brave or needy enough to go inside and shut the door.
I was needy, but I was not brave, and something else terrified me, that someone might look in through those cracks and see me, with my pants down.
I took off, around the back of the outhouse, shinnied between two strands of sagging, rusted, barbed wire fence to some bushes I’d seen earlier. I felt they’d protect me from anyone at the house seeing me.
When I got behind them I looked out beyond, just a field with scattered shrubs and trees, no one there! So I pulled the ruffled skirt of the red gingham dress my mom had made for me up, and pulled my panties down right there, and squatted out in the pasture. My stomach was killing me, and I had a terrible bout of diarrhea.
It seemed like I was quite a while in that position, until I was finally able to straighten up a bit and feel the tightness in my tummy easing some. Then I realized I didn’t have any toilet paper.
There was nothing around that I could use. So I took my panties off and cleaned myself with them, and then just left them out there with my poo behind the bush, and returned back to the house to rejoin the reunion still in progress.
5
Somehow I felt the very same way, walking in to work today, as I did forty years ago, walking back in to the reunion, so out of place, so out of time, so ill at ease in a place surrounded by so-called family then, and so-called co-workers, in the present.
Why did I feel like even some of them had seen me behind the bush back there with my pants down?
I caught a glimpse of my visage in the reflection of the plate glass door, a passing glance of myself, distorted from lights on the floor beside the indoor planter box, where dark green leaves of ivy grew and other non-edible plants that prefer shade.
I looked wind blown and rushed, appeared to be flushed in facial complexion and the expression that flashed across my eyes was wild. My grey sweater dress had clumped around me and I felt dumpy and now much too dowdy. I tugged at the hem of it to pull it flat, as I patted my hair down into place and then caught sight of my eyes in a framed mirror that hung in the front of the hallway. My eyes were still wild, and it seemed that there was nothing I could do about that.
6
My mom had made that dress for me to wear to someone’s Golden Anniversary. “Golden Anniversary” means someone has been married for fifty years. I couldn’t imagine such a thing, but I think the party was for my grandma and grandpa.
“It was a very boring escapade,” I’d thought to myself. Old people sitting all around, eating white cake and drinking from tiny crystal cups, some tasteless punch that came from a very fancy punch bowl. I wanted some koolaid, or a coke, and tried to tell a few jokes I knew, but no one wanted to laugh it seemed, so no one paid a bit of attention to me. I felt very disappointed, and so I’d gone outside to swing, and that’s when I fell and scratched my knee, and my brother had laughed at me.
Big tears had welled up in my eyes. I glared at my brother and wiped the blood from my knee with some leaves I pulled down from a redbud tree that grew beside the swing set. The heart shaped leaves were soft and green, and strange bean pods hung down from the tree. I’d taken some with me once to try to plant at home, but they didn’t grow. I guess they didn’t like West Texas any better than I did.
And then there was my brother, I glared at him. All the brothers I saw on tv protected their sisters, but oh, not him. I hated him so much, for so many things, and especially now, with him laughing at me while I bled.
And just about then, my aunt had come out to tell us all to get in the car. We were going off now to Great-Aunt Onie’s house, a place I’d never been, and I really should have gone to the bathroom right then.
I feel I need to go right now, but I’m passing the restroom door to get to my cubicle first to drop off my purse and make an appearance so no one will think I’m late. I hate this place, too, and, as I log on to my computer, I wonder why I can’t do this from home, It would be so much more comfortable, and also then, I could be there with my kids this summer while school is out.
But now, I really need to go to the bathroom. My tummy seems to be in knots again, and I don’t know why. It’s only nine o’clock. Well, 9:05. I sigh, and head for the bathroom.
By the time I get back down the hall, my boss, Tom, stops me just beside the bathroom door, and he’s talking to me incessantly about the new project. I’m aware of smiling at him, forcing my head to nod occasionally, pretending to listen, yet my ears are trained on another conversation I can barely hear coming from the break room.
“So then she just screamed out, ‘Good for you and your big dick, Asshole!’”
Laughter cackles from several anonymous others, then the unseen narrator continues, “and I don’t know, is she talking to me? Is she on a Bluetooth feature of her phone? She’s all alone blurting this out in the parking lot!”
“I’ve never seen her use a Bluetooth device,” I hear someone else say.
“She’s not that type.”
My boss, Tom, is still talking to me. “And won’t that be nice?” he asks me.
“Mmmmhmmm,” I say, not having the slightest idea what he’s been talking about or what he just referred to.
But I sure wish he’d move, because I REALLY NEED TO GET INTO THAT BATHROOM!”
7
I’m not sure, but it sure seems, as if the whole office is talking about me. I had finally made it into the bathroom, and when I came out, I ran right into the man I’d seen in the parking lot this morning, the one, I’m sure, that was telling the wild story on me in the break room.
He looked startled, as he should be, for so many reasons, but mostly because I think he was just about to go mistakenly into the women’s restroom. He bristled and apologized and stepped over to the other side of the water fountain where the men’s room door is and hurriedly went inside.
I found it a little humorous and had to laugh, and was almost to the garrulous point of throwing my head back and having a good one at his expense, when a woman rounded the corner with her lips all pursed up ready to tisk someone, until she saw me, and she herself, had to suppress a giggle. Her ridicule snuffed out my guffaw, so I put on a bluff-like stare, and dared her to raise me. She folded fast, walked right past me with an, “Excuse me, but I need to go!”
Which, that is something, I know well, can trump darn near anything else involved in either office politics or office poker played slyly in the middle of the hall.
I walked back to my cubicle and began editing an article from a pharmaceutical company about a drug study they’d just done on some new pill that they claim corrects erectile dysfunction.
I usually get a kick out of these.
But today I’m struck by the word “corrected.” It’s as if these people are saying that the only right way for a penis to hang is up. Anything less than erect is “incorrect.”
I always like to sympathize, but I can’t seem to put myself in a man’s shoes, or his trousers. Would I choose to take a pill, if I felt the rest of the world considered me broken or ineffective? The manhood of man, an interesting thing to contemplate.
Then quite suddenly my thoughts of this were interrupted, or maybe just collided with, the remembrance of the man at the grocery store that very morning, and his awkward, if albeit, direct, reference to his manhood.
Maybe he has recently found some new relief, or fountain of youth, and is so proud that he would be inclined to boast, even to strangers at the grocery store. That could explain a “why,” and even relieve me of a burden of wonder, of why “I” would be his special target, which frankly terrified me. Could I be some special one, of which the scraggly man had chosen?
While on one hand, it might be nice to be said “special person,” to someone, it seemed peculiar to me then, as someone formerly unknown to this stranger, to be told such intimate information. Or had the man been stalking me, while I shopped, and decided by the way I carefully cared to check the eggs before I bought them, that I would be TheOne for him, to share his newfound manhood status.
Or maybe none of this were true, and maybe he’d never had any trouble at all down there, and was used to being inherently worshipped by his women, and just felt that I should know about it.
Then suddenly, as if by remote, the channel changed, a recurring problem I have with the ‘TV set’ that runs in my mind sometimes. What about the man in the parking lot, here at work, who wondered out loud to them all in the break room, that he thought I might’ve been talking to him! Does he think he has a big dick, too?
8
(I’m going to be known for this story someday, and I guess it is going to say a lot about me, or at the very least, people will say things that they feel are true. But what are you going to do about it? What will you think? What will you say, when you see me anymore? On the sidewalk, on the street? In the office, or at the grocery store? Because I’ve gone ahead and shared this very crazy tale with the world.)
9
Well anyway, back to the dress my mother made me for the very special occasion of the Golden Anniversary. It was red and white checks, with a touch of plaid, and had a gingham type of look. I loved it so, it had pinafore sleeves and a storybook appearance.
It came in two parts, and the first was a jumper that fit snug across the bodice, and a ruffled skirt, short, that came to just above the knee. And then, if one was feeling fancy, the second part was a full maxi skirt, that could be worn underneath the jumper part, for the double effect of serving as a tu tu, and making the dress into a full length one.
I’d felt fancy getting ready for the golden anniversary party, and so I’d donned the full regalia fashion of the dress. But as the “party” wore on, I began to feel silly in the long skirt, and pinafore jumper. So when I’d gone outside to swing, I’d taken the maxi, tu tu thing off, and while I was shucking out of it, I slipped, and that’s how I’d scraped my knee.
And when my aunt came out, she had interrupted me from saying something I would surely have regretted to my brother, but regretted only because he’d have certainly told my mother what I’d said. And the worst part of that was he always misquoted me.
I would come up with some great insulting zinger, only to have him point the finger at me, and tattle, and in the prattle of his lame remembrance, he always seemed to omit the key word or phrase that made the retort such a biting one, and my stinger fell flat on the deaf ears of some adult, who then could not appreciate my wit properly. Then my penance would be double, for not only that, but I would still get in trouble for saying, what he reported to be this vague, and not very insulting or interesting insult.
At any rate, I felt so rushed to get into the car, that, as I previously related, I failed to stop first at the bathroom, or to bring my skirt along, in case I felt the need to be fancy at this mysterious place where we were going to.
I’d forgotten all about the maxi-skirt out in the backyard, and had scurried to try to secure a decent spot in the car before everyone else piled in.
10
Now, I’m eleven, but I know better. You always go the bathroom first, because once you get into the car, and your dad or your grandfather starts driving, neither of them will stop for man nor beast, but least of all for anyone to use the bathroom.
But I guess I was off my game, in a strange place, leaving from my grandma’s house. I didn’t have a point of reference or even think of it until we’d gotten thirty minutes down the road, and then I’d blurted out, “I’ve got to go!” And everyone in the car stopped talking and turned their heads to look at me in disbelief. This was something simply not done! Everyone knew the impact of the forbidden words I’d spoken!
An audible groan from my grandfather’s lips. “Clifford!” My grandma hissed and tried to shush him.
“Well what am I supposed to do about it?” He demanded. “We’re in the middle of nowhere!”
“How bad do you have to go?” My grandma asked me seriously.
“Pretty bad,” I said, and cut my eyes around to see everyone else rolling theirs.
“Well, just pull over on the side of the road a minute,” my grandma gruffly whispered, but everyone in the whole car heard it.
Grandpa rumbled the car to a stop on the gravel shoulder of the black top country road, and I was told to go out in the ditch and hitch my skirt up and do what I needed to there.
My bladder suddenly tied in knots and I felt very squarely that I didn’t have to go anymore. My brother had already opened the door and had gotten out, and looked toward the ditch and began to laugh hysterically.
“I can wait”, I stated.
“It’s too late for that,” my very aggravated grandfather had said. “We’re not going anywhere til you get out there and do your business!”
Then the rest of the car chimed in, impatient with this uncomfortable delay, a howl went up of indistinguishable yips of various sounds of utter dismay and even after I’d gotten out of the car, I could still hear them griping and bitching about me.
I stood alone in the ditch, and in a foreshadowing hitch of my dress, I squatted, put my elbow on my knee, my hand to chin, in thinker pose, and tried to no avail to pee.
My face was toward the car, and I could see them all, still so untempered, so distressed over this, what they saw as, an unnecessary pit stop. I couldn’t distinguish their particular words, but what I heard disturbed me.
What’s a person supposed to do when they really need to go? I couldn’t see another way to be, but now my bladder had gone shy, my eleven year old twat was unaccustomed to fresh air, and I caught a chill from a southern breeze. So much so, in fact, that it became personified to me, as if someone were directly behind me, blowing softly on, what should be, the veriest most privatest parts of me!
So much so, that I, in fact, turned, and saw that there was a man, standing a hundred feet or more away, in the field out there behind me, and he had stopped his work and turned, just in time to see me bare my veriest, most privatest parts to him!
I screamed and jumped, and in one fell swoop, had pulled my panties right back up, and was back in the car telling my grandpa to go! The man I saw was startled too, but he recovered by throwing his head back, and having a good laugh at my expense.
And I wasn’t sure if he’d been real, and was trying very hard to feel that maybe he wasn’t, but everyone in the car was laughing, too, and they laughed all the rest of the way to Great-Aunt Onie’s house.
And I sat, not laughing at all, still needing very much to go to the bathroom.
11
At lunch I left my cubicle and headed to the break room. Someone had eaten the leftovers I’d put in the refrigerator the day before, so I stood staring in, wondering what I could eat, maybe someone else’s food, for spite.
In truth I wasn’t hungry, or thirsty, but this was my only time to take to get a break from work, and grab a bite, and so I wandered back to my cubicle and got my purse and keys and left the building.
It felt nice to be outside and breathe a little bit. I put the windows down in my sedan and even decided to open up the sun roof on my old car.
The wind was in my hair as I left the parking lot, and I had a feeling that I wished that I might never make it back today, or maybe ever, if I could be so lucky.
Somehow after driving aimlessly around, I wound up at a sidewalk cafe. They had a welcoming patio, and I parked my car and put some quarters in the parking meter. I had enough for one hour, which was really more time than I had to spend.
I wandered in and waited to be seated, sat down in a sunny spot, and watched the few cars passing by. No one came and offered me a menu or anything to eat or drink, so I just thought and soaked up the quiet part of the day.
I began to smell the sizzling bits of something cooking on the grill, and started to get hungry. But by now, my time was almost up, and I hadn’t even ordered anything.
“Am I invisible?” I asked myself, or just a middle aged woman the world has passed on its way to some young woman’s birthday party.
Then as I got up to go, I saw a ticket on my car. “Well it seems my car is visible.” Then I got puzzled by the time. I surely hadn’t been sitting here an hour, long enough for the meter to expire.
I left the establishment and picked the parking ticket from under my windshield blade. Ten dollars must be paid before two weeks or the fine would double.
“Oh brother,” I shook my head. “Just what I needed.”
Just as I unlocked my car, the church bell from the old town square rang Three. But wait, didn’t I leave the office at eleven? Had I been sitting unattended for an entire four hours, with nothing to eat, nothing to drink, and never having been to visit the bathroom?
12
I got in my car, and while I drove, I began to envision the turn of events that would have been occurring at the office while I’d been gone. On any normal day, no one would miss me, or say a word, for I perceived that truly I was invisible at work.
But today had been a different situation.
Anytime I’d risen from my chair, it seemed like people turned to stare at me. And once that morning, a nerdy person had stood by the partition and poked his head above my cubicle just to look at me. How could I even ask or say that I was invisible today, when every bit of the fray at work seemed to be aroused by me, somehow.
So what would be waiting for me when I finally made it back through the front door
of the office after such a long luncheon? I was quite sure that any type of entrance I made would not go unnoticed today.
Suddenly I recalled a date I’d had with a 6’5” vegetarian, and how the restaurant he’d taken me to hadn’t agreed with me, and I had needed to get to a bathroom quickly. I’d jumped out of his truck while it was still running. We were stopped at the red light across the street from his pawn shop, and I had made a mad flight of a rush against traffic, and straight in to his bathroom.
And after what seemed like an eternity on the pawn shop throne, I’d worried about my exit. And sure enough, he and the other two blokes who worked for him were just standing around waiting for me to come out. They stopped their conversation and stared at me, awaiting some explanation as to the remarkable length of my stay.
All I could say was that I’d tried to go out a window from inside the bathroom, but there were bars covering it. And one guy literally fell in the floor laughing while the other one stammered, “She really means it! Because you have to pull back the curtains and blinds to see that the window is barred over on the outside!”
I had the notion to try and reverse the course of that situation in some crazy cosmic maneuver. Instead of making a covert escape, maybe I could hoover myself in, through an open window. The only one I knew might work, was, of course, located in the women’s bathroom.
So I pulled my car to the lot on the side of the building, and looked both ways to see that no one was coming, and made my way to a window and pushed on the pane. Luckily it had remained unlocked, and I pushed it up enough that I could jump up, hike one leg through, and then squirm down and get both feet on the floor. But in this process, my grey sweater dress had gotten caught, and was heisted up around my waist.
Just about then the door opened. A silhouette figure reached the switch and turned the lights on, exposing me there, with my dress bunched up and my panties showing! I was frantically trying to pull my skirt down, when I saw the light come on, and the silhouette turned out to be the man who’d overheard me talking to myself in the parking lot that morning!
“Auggggghhhhhh!” He screamed! “Oh my god! You just scared the hell out of me! What the heck are YOU DOING in here?”
I had the good sense not to incriminate myself, and instead of trying to think up an answer, I simply adjusted my dress and walked past him out the Men’s Room door, just past the water fountain, and right into the bathroom I had mistakenly mis-windowed.
13
I only stayed a second or two, not wanting to leave any opportunity for people to get to talking about this, and I was already hearing muffled voices when I came whisking out of the ladies room. I had made a quick check in the mirror. My dress was back down over my thighs, my shoes were on, my hair was patted back into place, but my eyes, had even a wilder glaze spread over them than before, but, once again, there was nothing I could do about that.
The walk to my cubicle requires a confident strut on any given weekday, but much more now, and so, I put on maybe a bit of an exaggerated show, just to brazenly and openly dare anyone to stare at me now. But inside my head, I only hoped to make it to my chair without crying. I would have to work late today, not only to finish the edits required, but also so my pay would not get docked. And here I’d left my children at home, without the usual abundance of food that I normally liked to leave for them. Now supper would be a hectic rush.
I called home and my younger son answered.
In a hushed voice I tried to tell him I’d be late getting home, and was everything going ok so far for them. He seemed good, and mildly distracted, so I knew he was busy with his video games and everything was fine.
I tried to concentrate on my work, but was feeling constant hunger pangs. So I walked again down to the break room. I opened the refrigerator door, hoping maybe someone had tried to store some new leftovers in there from today.
I was standing there staring in, when I heard footfalls on the linoleum. They stopped. A quiet second, my back was to her, or him. I dared not turn, but suddenly a gasp and then, a man’s voice loudly proclaiming, “Jesus Christ!” Then footfalls leaving quickly.
“What have I done now?” I thought, or maybe I said it. I put my hands behind me and down, only then realizing that I hadn’t checked the back of me in the mirror once I’d gotten in the building, and apparently when I snagged my dress, I’d ripped the back of it from the waist, and it had come completely unraveled, leaving only my panties to cover my bulbous ass.
“Oh no,” I said, and, to cover myself, I just sat down in a chair there in the break room. It was the last straw. I began to cry and sob, and all the stress and strain of my life and day came billowing out.
And all the while I shed my tears, my mind was on autopilot, thinking, but no solution came to me except that I could just sit there and wait for everyone to leave, and then I could go and finish my edits and then, maybe, finally go back home.
And what I would do after that, was a matter of question, and so uncertain I couldn’t even imagine it.
14
Then I saw someone peek in. It was him, the man from the parking lot this morning. It seemed to me he had a guilty conscience. But I didn’t even care, I’d lost track of all the staring eyes I’d seen that day, all the gaffs and laughs and faux pas.
“May I come in?” He asked, as if this was my own private break room.
“Of course,” I said, a bit loud perhaps, for I was still crying and catching my breath.
He ventured up and sat by me. He tried three times to put his arm around me, but stopped himself each time.
Finally he rested his arm on my shoulder, and said, “I don’t want to appear bold or brash or rude, but could I get you some food?”
“Yes,” I said. “That would be nice. I’m really quite hungry.”
Then he took his jacket off, and helped me wrap it around my waist to cover the rest of the back of me.
“Let’s just get out of here,” he said, and led me from the break room,down the hall to the front door and out into the parking lot.
15
“Where’s your car?” he asked, noticing it wasn’t where I’d parked it that morning.
“It’s around on the side,” I said.
“Ohhhh. Okay, I’ll drive you around there when we get back, but first, let me take you to you get some food. Or would you prefer to go home and change? I’d hate for you to. It’s really quite a beautiful dress. I’ve always loved the color grey.”
His name, he said was Augustus, but I could certainly call him Gus, if I’d rather.
I told him no, Augustus was great and I didn’t want to go home just yet, for I knew if I did, it would be even later before anyone would get to eat anyway.
And so he drove me in his car to the little mart not far from my house, and I bought myself, tho he offered to buy, a small hot plate and a piece of pie, and he had a piece of apple pie, too, and then I bought some eggs and bread and lunch meat to take home with me, and told him, “These things are much cheaper at the grocery store but today this seems much more convenient.” And he agreed.
He took me back to the office lot, and we arrived at the side where my car was, and he asked if I would be okay. I thanked him. He chatted jovially. He talked a lot, and it made me feel comfortable. But finally I said that I should go home. I touched his arm. It was warm and wonderful. He stopped talking, and looked directly at me. I got nervous and let my eyes drop, I tried not to listen, to what I absolutely feared he might say, but I’m pretty sure I saw it move, his crotch, that is.
I smiled and said, I’ve got to run, and he said, “Okay, Hon, I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Well, what are you doing later tonight?” I asked him.
“What would you like to do?” he asked.
And somehow after this crazy day, I knew for once exactly what I wanted to do.
“I’d just like to get away for a couple of hours and relax,” I said.
And he said, “Great! I know just the place. We could drive down to the lake if you’d like, and watch the sunset.”
“That would be great,” and so he said he’d pick me up at nine, and we’d get there in plenty of time to see the sun go down behind the water.
16
So I finally went home and fed my children. We laughed and visited, but I didn’t mention a thing about what had happened to me all day. I played a few of the video games they like to play and then told them I was going to take a ride down to the lake for a while with a co-worker of mine. And they were fine with that.
I had changed into a summer frock, and grabbed a sun hat, and went outside to wait for Augustus to stop by, and just about a minute later, there he was, but I asked him to wait for me just one second, while I ran back inside to the restroom first.
At least I had remembered that, I thought as I got back in his car. We drove out toward the lake. He played some jazz on his car stereo. My thoughts floated somewhere back to the memory of that ill fated family reunion so long ago.
I had returned from my foray into the field behind the outhouse pantyless, in my red gingham dress my mom had made for me, feeling fancy despite the fact that I’d left the fancy part of the skirt back at grandma’s. Now that my tummy ache was gone, I didn’t care that my cousin thought I was a snob. I was just happily relieved. It seemed to me that everything would be alright now.
But suddenly a shriek went up through the crowd. Great-Aunt Onie’s prize winning hound had come trotting through the throng, smelling worse than a feral hoglet. He had rolled in something bad, and he had a little girl’s filthy panties proudly clenched between his teeth, shaking them like a squirrel he’d just treed and snagged.
This was now beyond my worst fear, beyond anything I could have imagined. The dog was running happily everywhere, shaking the smelly underwear all around, and he, too, was smelling nightmarishly awful. “He’s rolled in something dead!” someone shouted.
“No!” Some other cousins bellered out. “He rolled in some dead shit!”
A shout went up to get the garden hose, and several people lined up to have their clothes sprayed off, too, before someone finally was able to wash down the dog. But the poo was not coming off him very well, and, as my grandfather had remarked on the sad drive home, “The whole ordeal had really gone to hell in a hand basket.”
But I must say, from the corner of my eye, I caught the sight of him smiling in the rear view mirror, and knew that he had kind of liked it. Come to find out, he’d never wanted to go in the first place and was happy to get out of it and back to his beer somewhat earlier than he expected because of the big catastrophe.
But as for me, I have to be the one who learns the hard way, that truth may or may not always prevail, but the tail will never wag the dog, and the truth will come out, one way or another.
17
Augustus and I rode off into the sunset. And lest you think that we, like the sinking sun, disappeared happily forever, or at least for one night, into some morally ended fairy tale of love, remember, this is me your dealing with here. Accidents, mishaps, mayhem, miscues, and disaster seem to follow in my wake, so take a moment and know, this is not the end of the story.
What would you do if I told you that you had enough money in the bank right now to last you until the end of the world?
You say the world must be gonna end soon in that case?
Face it, you have everything you need inside you.
Just as the acorn is the seed that grows itself into a tree, the seeds of exactly what we are, can’t help but sprout, yet we’re surprised if we allow ourselves to become what we truly are.
And I’m a joker. I play jokes. I poke fun at life, and folks who take it so seriously. I am a prank, a slip, a slap-stick bit, some major schtick of comic relief, just waiting to happen.
18
I had no intentions of getting naked. I didn’t think I had any agenda at all. We drove out toward the lake. On the way, Augustus told me he was the chairman of the board at work, and asked me if I had any suggestions that might create a better workplace environment.
It was the last thing I wanted to think about, but what popped out of my mouth was something I’d thought of earlier in the day.
“What if we could work from home?” I asked him.
“Work from home?” he asked.
“Yes. Couldn’t we be on our computers just as easily at home as we are in the office?” I wondered to him aloud. “Except that we could have a cheaper more nutritious lunch and be in our own bathrooms when we needed to pee or poop or anything like that.”
He had a completely blanked out stare on his face, as if I’d come from out of nowhere with that one, but I could see his business acumen grinding away, weighing the fiscal responsibility it implied.
“That’s not a bad idea,” he finally said. “I could probably sell that building for a lot of money and office out of my house as well, cut back on the insurance and the taxes, not to mention electricity and gas, and just the pain in the ass liabilities.”
“You’re a genius,” he said, smiling at me, his eyes starting to twinkle.
“So how did you become chairman of the board?” I asked him.
“Oh lord,” he sighed. “That’s a long story.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah,” he said, pulling into a flat, grassy spot that faced the west in front of the lake.
“Hmmmmmmmmmmm,” I mused, wondering if it could be any longer than some of my wild tales.
He pushed a button that put the top down on his coup, and we sat there, the lake air breeze blowing. He turned the radio jazz down low, to just the perfect degree, where one could think, and we sat quietly, watching the sun go down.
A part of me was back in town, back in time, taking a look into an egg carton, thinking about the broken eggs, wondering if I should shave my legs, today. Had I? I hoped I had, for I wanted very badly to be touched on the legs right now.
Another part of me was remembering my abandoned skirt, in the dirt by the storage shed in my grandmother’s old back yard, and how I’d run so hard when I was eleven to reclaim it when we’d gotten home that day. So fast I ran, my legs kicked up and out, and my aunt exclaimed, “I see your butt! Where did your panties go?” And then I knew, that everyone would know, exactly whose underwear the dog had found, and whose terrible toxic poo had shut the entire family reunion down.
And still another part of me was tired. I wonder why?
“I think you are so beautiful,” he turned his head to look at me. “There’s something so wild about your eyes.”
My ship capsized. I longed for him to fall with me into a sea of sex and love and total devastation, to swirl into my memories, as a momentary validation of my entire existence, a super mega twister tryst with the chairman of the board.
He moved to kiss me. I moved in. The kiss seemed endless and endlessly we shucked wildly from our clothes and before the kiss could lighten up, we were both buck naked and going at one another like wild animals in some semblance of the last mating season on earth.
Maybe the door was a little ajar, but abruptly, we fell out of the car together, stuck together like glue. A cloud of dust flew up from under us. After the thud, we lay still a moment.
“I smell smoke,” I said.
“Are you joking?” he sat up.
“No, and I see flames,” I said pointing to the underside of his car.
He scrambled up. “Let me get my fire extinguisher!” he cried.
“There’s no time!” I replied urgently. “We have to get away from here!”
19
I figured he’d want to get away from me, but he held me tight, while his car blew up, shooting a fire show into the night. We just knew someone else had surely seen the flare, and notified the proper authorities for us.
So we just waited, calmly there, in the glow of the very unnatural bonfire. He stood behind me, covering my naked derrière, me in front, covering his rather large manhood.
Just as the lights from fire trucks appeared, he turned me toward him, and kissed me again.
And with the echoes of sirens in our ears, he put his hands on the sides of my head, and looked me in the eyes and said,
“I’ve never seen such a natural disaster as you.”
The End
