dr. putz and the tool of torture

"It hurts, Dad."

"Stick your head out the window. Let the breeze hit ya."

I rolled down the window and the cold night air numb my inflamed face. From the moving car, I was nothing more than a blur. I closed my red-rimmed eyes, soothed by the knowledge that no one could see me. My face relaxed as I breathed in the scent of snow. I waited for the fat flakes to tumble out of the thick gray clouds hanging overhead. I wished they would stick to my face and bury me in a soft white carpet of cold.

"Ya know, it could be worse. There are other ten-year-olds with cancer, hair falling out and tumors sticking out of their chests."

"I know, Dad."

"Some kids, they been in fires. Got no skin at all. No eyelids either. Everything just burned off. You should be thankful."

"I am, Dad."

"Had a lady in the cab the other day. Thought she was carrying a football wrapped up in a blanket. Know what it was?"

"What was it, Dad?"

"Her baby. Ain't got no arms or legs. Just a body and a head. How would you like to be that baby?"

"So, I should be thankful I wasn't born a football?"

"Exactly!"

This was the lecture I heard every Monday night on the drive home from Dr. Putz's office. It could be worse, I had my health, I should be thankful. Think about babies with no eyes, boys with no feet, girls with no tongues. On nights like this, I wished I had been born with no ears.

In the beginning, Mom took me to my appointments. That was before Dr. Putz became a cutter. At first, he prescribed creams and pills. The creams burned my skin and turned my face crimson. Then, my skin flaked and fell off like the crust of a croissant. Hot pokers of pain shot through my stomach from the pills. Dr. Putz stopped the creams and pills. There had been no improvement anyway.

Next came the ultraviolet treatments. Every week, I baked under the orange lights as the rays soaked into my skin. Little black goggles protected my eyes from the brightness. I pretended I was a beach bunny roasting in the Caribbean surf, warm ocean water lapping at my toes. I liked this treatment, though it didn't help my skin one bit. It did, however, cause blinding white spots to blur my vision for several minutes afterward. This prevented me from seeing the stares of other patients as I exited the office. The pity in their eyes was like a punch in the gut. My father was wrong. Maybe it wouldn't have been so terrible to be born blind.

"You're not responding to the usually prescribed treatments. We're going to have to try drainage." Dr. Putz declared after three months with no improvement. I looked at Mom, who had started dabbing her forehead in fear. Too afraid to actually ask what drainage entailed, I laid down on the table and squeezed my eyes shut. The paper beneath me crinkled as I squirmed under the bright table lamp poised overhead.

Metal clinked against metal and Mom gasped. My eyes shot open and I jumped up, bumping my head against the low-hanging lamp.

"Settle down now,' Dr. Putz said as he tried to shield me from what he held in his hand. But it was too late. The metal rod pointed towards me like a witch's wand. It was shiny with a circle at the tip. The circle was a little bigger than a pinhead. Black spots danced in front of my eyes as I envisioned what would be done to me.

Dr. Putz's firm hand pushed on my chest as he guided me back down onto the table. My breathing was shallow and jagged. Tears pooled in the corners of my eyes and trailed down my cheeks. The damp coolness felt good against my hot face. I tried to squeeze my eyes shut but they kept shooting open as I sensed the metal rod creeping closer to my face. Wet, smacking sounds escaped from Mom's lips. I strained to hear the prayer she was saying for me.

Stars danced across the darkness of my closed eyes as a scorching pain seared through my face. Dr. Putz pressed the circular tip of the rod deep into the largest pimples on my face. He grunted with the effort of it. The metal tip dug into each pimple until there was a pop and blood and pus oozed onto my face. He repeated this six, seven, eight times. No pimple was safe. He attacked blemishes on my nose, chin and cheekbone. The ones on my nose were an exclamation point of pain. It felt as though the flesh would tear from my face.

When he finally finished, he sat me up and stared at my face.

"Much better!" I looked at Mom, whose mouth was covered with a tissue. She nodded a lie at me.

"I thought you were never supposed to pop pimples?" I accused, woozy with pain.

"You're not. I am." He smiled, wiggling the wand of torture at me. "See you next week."

I didn't see my face until we got home. Deep potholes of dried blood littered my skin. Angry welts were rising around the explosions. Shame burned my ears and anger tore at my throat.

"How could you let him do this, Mom?"

"You want to get better, don't you? He's the doctor. He knows best."

There was no fighting that logic. Before going to the doctor, I had already tried everything imaginable to help myself. First, I went on a diet. No chocolate, no fries, no pizza, no soda. Two months later and six pounds lighter, my skin had not improved. Fifth grade was not the fun I had hoped it to be. Although I was starting to fill out my training bra with something more than Kleenex, my skin still took center stage. The acne started a slow descent, marching across my neck, shoulders, back and chest. The medicine cabinet was bursting with anti-blemish products: there were creams and rinses, masks and mists. I consulted all of the authorities: Seventeen Magazine, the Avon lady, even a palm reader. I begrudgingly heeded unsolicited advice from strangers on the street.

"Ya know whatcha need, kid? Get yerself some toothpaste and slather it all over them zits. Bring 'em right to a head."

"Oh, sweetie. I know just how you feel. Hot compresses soaked in chamomile tea. Hot as you can stand. Lay them over your face. Draws out all the toxins."

"Orange peels. Vitamin C does it. Eat lots of oranges. Lay the peels on your face."

I tried it all. Almost. A sweat-soaked bus driver advised me to dip a rag in the first piss I took in the morning and lay it across my face. The morning after I heard this advice, I stared into the bowl, clutching a washcloth. My hand hovered inches above the yellow water. I chanted, do it do it do it! As the cloth almost skimmed the surface of the bowl, I flushed in disgust and stormed out of the bathroom. I may have been a zithead, but I would not allow myself to become a piss face.

Shortly after Dr. Putz started digging into my face, Mom stopped taking me to my appointments. Instead, she said, my father would come home early on Monday nights. Dad never came home early. This was momentous.

"Why?" I asked.

"I just can't bear to watch what he does to you."

I had my own theory. During one of my appointments, Dr. Putz turned his attention to my mother. He stared at her sitting in her usual seat, and approached her like an animal in the wild. Mom sunk deeper into the chair as he swiped her long bangs away from her face.

"Mom. Up on the table please. That needs to be removed." Dr. Putz guided me off of the table and took my mother by the elbow.

"What? No. Leave it. It's fine."

"It's not fine. It's disgusting. And it's coming off. Now."

"It" was a large pom-pom sized mole that hung in between Mom's eyebrows. She had kept her bangs long her entire life to cover it up. Sometimes, when her bangs got pushed aside, I saw it jiggling like a Christmas tree ornament. It was not my favorite part of my mother.

I leaned up against the wall as Mom looked at me pleadingly. I shrugged my shoulders and felt some amount of glee to be on the other side of this routine. Mom's damp hands left dark imprints on the paper that I clung to every week. There was a quick snip of a scissor, and the pom-pom was resting in Dr. Putz's palm.

"There. Done."

"Ohhh." My mother crooned, looking green about the gills. "Thank you!"

The next week, Mom came back to Dr. Putz with a new haircut and my brother Chris, who was seven. Chris had acquired the nickname of "Hindu Dot", thanks to a similar mole centered just above his eyebrows. Unlike my mother's, Chris' was flat. For some reason, Mom had not afforded Chris the same protection of long bangs and insisted on keeping his bangs short.

The teenaged boys on our block chanted "Hindu Dot" whenever Chris passed. He kept his head hung low and bit his little lip to keep from crying. Mom caught them in the act one day.

"You little punks! Think you're so brave pickin on a little kid? How 'bout I get his older cousin to come and kick your asses?"

I giggled on two accounts. One - my mother had said "asses", though she did cross herself as soon as she uttered the profanity. Two - the cousin she was referring to was older and larger than these boys. However, he was a virtual shut-in at twenty. He rarely left his room, and never left the house. I pictured Mom pulling these bullies by their ears and leading them to my cousin's dark cave of a room and saying, "Kick their asses!"

Mom had decided that Dr. Putz could put a stop to the Hindu Dot. Chris sat on the table under the blaring light that I was so used to. I watched his little legs shaking and my heart crumbled. At that instant, I wished it was me up on the table. I would take all of the bullying if they would just leave my brother alone.

Chris squinted his eyes and clenched his jaw as Dr. Putz injected a needle around the mole. I then watched him slice a neat circle around it and blood pooled in the spot where the mole had been a second ago. He placed a band-aid over the hole and patted Chris on the head. Hindu Dot was dead.

Dr. Putz seemed to enjoy the scalpel and had plans to mine my mother's body for more moles. Shortly after the death of Hindu Dot, Mom begged off of her doctor duties and sent my father in her place.

This, however, did not sway Dr. Putz from his scalpel obsession.

"You have suspicious moles that need to be removed" he informed me.

"Suspicious?" Dad asked.

"Yes. Cancerous."

So began the excavation of suspicious moles. Every few weeks, Dr. Putz would numb me up and slice me open. I felt like a turkey being carved for Thanksgiving, except no one moaned "yum" as he sawed into my flesh. Most of the moles were on my back. The cold blood ran down my back after each incision, and I felt faint from the thought of my blood leaking out.

The moles were usually teeny tiny and didn't require stitches, just a band-aid. One stubborn mole, however, was deeper and larger than the rest. It was to the right of my belly button and Dr. Putz said it had to go. The hole left behind was cavernous and needed several stitches. The bandage bulged visibly through my shirt. The next day at basketball practice, Bobby Kimmel stared quizzically at my stomach.

"What happened to you?" he asked, face scrunched up.

"Got stabbed in a street fight." I responded with a steely gaze.

"Are you all right?" Bobby's dim eyes shimmered with wonder.

"I'll live. Other guy didn't." I strutted away, too tough for words. Bobby was left in a fog of wonder.

Months passed in a similar fashion. Dad drove me to my weekly torture sessions with Dr. Putz, and he squeezed the life out of my pimples. We drove home, and I suffered the lectures about my lucky life. Dad insisted on stopping off at the supermarket every week. I begged him to take me home first. The treatments with Dr. Putz left me bloody and puffy and exhausted. I couldn't bare the disgusted glares of other people. But Dad refused.

"Can't let anyone make you ashamed. Show your face. Be proud. You look fine. Besides, supermarket's on the way home."

I tried to keep my chin up like my father said. The fluorescent lights of the supermarket bit into my face. My skin was dry and cracked from the scabs already forming. Eyes strained to stare at me, then shot away when I caught their glances. Little by little, my head dropped lower until all I could see were my own shoelaces.

I found refuge in a book display for young adults. The books were a warped child's version of trashy adult romances. The titles read: "Too Young To Die", "I Want To Live", "Why So Young?" The covers depicted tragic young girls with sallow skin and sunken eyes. They were all dying of leukemia or heart failure or some romantic jungle-borne illness that was slowly eating their brains. They were each wasting away in the prime of their lives, and they looked beautiful doing it. Boyfriends who were football captains and class presidents were being left behind. I wanted so badly to be one of those girls! True, they were dying, but they were so pretty and popular and their boyfriend were so cute. Plus, no one made fun of a dying girl. If a boy could love a girl with brain rot, why couldn't he love one with a few blemishes?

I hid amid these stories until my father came searching for me.

"Dad," I would whine, "some woman called me gross."

"Yeah, well. You're not. And she's an idiot."

"D'ya think I could get a book?" I batted my tear-stained lashes.

"Yeah, yeah. Grab one and let's go."

It wasn't exactly a lie. Some woman had called me gross. Maybe just not that night. Those books were my best medicine. It made me feel better to read about other people's miseries. There might just be hope for me yet.

I became more feisty regarding the harvesting of my moles. One night, while waiting in the bleach-and-body-odor-scented waiting room, I spied a brochure about skin cancer. It detailed the appearance of suspicious moles - bigger than an eraser head, multi-colored, jagged edges. None of my moles had had any of those features.

That night, Dr. Putz zeroed in on a mole on my right cheek.

"Yep. This one's gotta go," he nodded.

"No way. You're not scraping anything off my face." I protectively covered my mole with my palm.

"But it could be...."

"It's not. None of them have been. You're not doing any more."

Dr. Putz sighed in exasperation, looking to my father for support. Before Dad could speak, I handed him the brochure I had swiped from the waiting room.

"Look, Dad. These are cancer. Mine doesn't look anything like that." He looked at the brochure and nodded. I held my breath, waiting to see whose side he was on.

"Let's leave that one alone for a while, Doc."

"But it could...."

"Yeah. Thanks anyway. She's good for now."

Dr. Putz stored away his scalpel for the next victim, disappointed that he wouldn't be able to practice his carving skills that night.

It happened a few weeks later. Dad and I walked into the exam room and were met by Dr. Putz's gleaming white teeth. I had never seen them before. They were unnaturally large and unnerving. I understood why he always kept them hidden beneath a scowl.

"Hello! Good to see you! Listen, Dad. How about you wait outside tonight? I'm going to try an extra long treatment with the UV lamp. Go on out. I think the game's on." My eyes attempted to keep Dad in the room, but he nodded reassuringly, heading towards the television.

My stomach shook and my chin quivered. I didn't trust Dr. Putz. As soon as Dad left the room, the sour scowl returned to his lips. The UV lamp clicked on and its hum filled the room.

"Up on the table, please."

I reluctantly slid under the lamp and folded my hands across my chest. Sweat pooled in my palms as Dr. Putz placed the goggles over my eyes. I kept peaking out from under them. The light from the UV lamp was blinding. Dr. Putz had his back to me, but I could see his busy hands preparing something. Glass canisters clicked open and objects were dropped onto a metal tray. I was about to sit up when I felt the pressure of his palm heavy on my chest.

"Stay still now. We're just going to remove that pesky mole."

"No!" I shouted, and kicked my legs up in the air. My foot knocked the UV lamp away from the table as I struggled against Dr. Putz's needle-baring hand.

"Don't tell me no." Dr. Putz was determined.

"Dad!" I screamed loudly as I dug my nails into Dr. Putz's hairy bear claw of a hand. He let out a yelp of pain and dropped the needle. He backed away from the table just as Dad swung the door open.

"What the hell's goin on in here?" His jaw was set and his fist was balled as he looked from me to Dr. Putz clutching his hand.

I didn't wait to explain it. Running past my father, I fled the building and out into the dark night. Leaning against the car waiting for Dad, I wondered if the pretty, dying girls in my books had doctors like this.

The car ride home was quiet. I wasn't interested in the version of events Dad had heard from Dr. Putz, and I wasn't in the mood for a "lucky" lecture. Dad didn't even put the radio on. My head throbbed from the effort of holding back my tears. We drove past the supermarket without stopping.

"Dad? The supermarket."

"Not tonight," he said.

We pulled up in front of the house and Dad turned off the ignition. He stared straight ahead, his hands on the steering wheel. I kept my feet on the dashboard, staring up at the two stars I could see through the windshield.

"You never have to go to him again."

"I won't."

"I know."

We sat quietly in the car for a while. I could feel the words my father wanted to say. His eyes darted back and forth. I was grateful for the silence, and the dark. Cars and people passed us by. I watched them and wondered about their lives. I could see them without being seen by them. I wanted to stay there forever.

Continue reading...

zithead

Miss Rose was the prettiest teacher I had ever seen. She jingled when she walked, with a golden charm bracelet around her wrist and a sparkly anklet resting above her strappy heels. She smelled like a garden and had a laugh like Christmas bells.

The girls wanted to brush her wavy hair. The boys tiptoed close to her lap, waiting to be petted on the heads like puppies.

Miss Rose had let us into her life as no other adult had. When she bought a shiny new sports car, she took turns driving us all around town. On Monday mornings, we had what she called "Me Time". One by one, with the class lights down low, we would whisper what had been the most memorable part of our weekend. Miss Rose could barely contain her glee as each of us detailed trips to the mall or a baseball game. I felt pressure to elicit her electric laughter. I concocted stories of deep-sea adventures and foiled kidnappings to keep her attention. While the other students rolled their eyes at me, Miss Rose's bow lips formed a deep O of excitement.

After our fourth-grade highlights had been chronicled, Miss Rose crept closer to the class. In a conspiratorial whisper, she recounted candlelight dinners with her boyfriend, Beau, and hiking trips high up in the mountains. There was never any gray in her days.

"Children. Close your books and take out a piece of loose leaf and a pen. We're going to have a contest!" Miss Rose giggled and clapped her ringed fingers. She was always doing this - wiping away the cobwebs of classwork and injecting magic into our days. She kept a drawerful of sweet treats that went to whomever could recite the Pledge of Allegiance the fastest, or create the most colorful drawing of our classroom. I had once won a Sugar Daddy for the most original essay entitled, "What I Would Do If I Were A Shoe".

"Now, this contest is only for the girls today." The boys looked downtrodden as the girls sat further up in their seats.

"But, the boys still get to participate." Their spirits perked up somewhat.

"The prize today is very, very special." We inched over our desks as Miss Rose undid the clasp of her coveted charm bracelet. "The winner gets to wear my bracelet all day long!" We gasped and wiggled our arms, already feeling the weight of the charms on our wrists.

Miss Rose then explained the rules of what was to be the "Prettiest Girl in the Class" contest. We were to write the numbers one through ten on our loose leaf, and then list the girls in the order in which we perceived them to be - prettiest girl first, and on down the list. She would then calculate the lucky and lovely winner.

I puzzled over the list with the pen cap in my mouth. This was an almost impossible task. Should I be honest and objective, which would put Tiffany at the top of the list? She was everyone's pet, with curly blonde hair and crystal blue eyes. Or, should I favor my best friend Laura? With the sad, inward turn of her left eye, she was sure to be at the bottom of most lists. And even more troubling, where to put myself in the lineup? I wanted to wear those musical charms more than anything, but I didn't want to seem conceited. Better to play it safe, I thought. List Laura first, myself second, and Tiffany third. That, I reasoned, was as fair as I could be.

Not surprisingly, Tiffany came in first. Miss Rose wrote the names on the board according to their average placement on everyone's lists. With horror, I realized that I had placed seventh. Only three girls were not as pretty as me. Daphne, who weighed 220 pounds and was often so hungry she ate her own hair; Tara, who suffered from scoliosis and wore a robotic metal brace from her hips to her neck; and Mush, who was so named because it looked as though someone had pushed her features into her face and they had permanently remained there. Even Miss Rose stuttered when trying to remember Mush's real name, which was Martha.

Tiffany claimed her prize triumphantly and jiggled her hand all day. The charms danced against each other and sounded like a giggle. I shushed her during a spelling test, too distracted to sound out the word "straighten". She smirked at me with victory.

I trudged home in a cloud of confusion. When had I become one of the least cute girls in the class? Just four short years before, I had been crowned "Little Miss Recreation" in front of the whole town. I had strutted in front of the judges in my red, white and blue swimsuit, swishing my behind and shaking my head because I was so proud of my pigtails. I had done especially well in the interview component. When asked who I wanted to say hello to in the audience, I pointed and blew a kiss to my five-year-old sweetheart, Peter, who I planned to marry as soon as I got off the stage. The crowd ohhed and awwed over me. The judges chuckled and winked. I had been a shoe-in.

I slumped into the apartment and dumped my school bag onto the floor. Marching into the living room, I surveyed the virtual museum of our family photos. I scoured the snapshots, finding myself to be cute in each and every one. There I was in the second grade play, a blank spot where my front teeth should have been, shining like the morning sun. And just last year, on my eighth birthday, splayed out on my Wonder Woman sleeping bag wearing Super Girl Underoos. None of this evidence pointed to a number seven placement on a pretty list.

I sulked into the bathroom and snapped on the overhead light, searching for some sign of my unprettiness. Shockingly, I found it. Angry red bumps had erupted on my forehead, chin and cheeks. This had not been the first time I had noticed them. They had settled across my skin some weeks before, but I hadn't paid them any attention. I had been too busy with baseball and bike riding to see what had been happening. Lately, my mother had been looking at me strangely. She would hold my chin in her hand and give me the look she had previously reserved for the children on the Jerry Lewis Telethon. "Go wash up," she would instruct. And I would spend an eternity trying to scour the caked dirt off of my knees and elbows and neck. She never looked satisfied no matter how hard I scrubbed.

During art the week before, I had been partnered up with Tony Fontanella for a project.

"I don't want to be her partner!" he protested. "She has the pox." He scrunched up his face and made the sign of the cross in front of me.

"Yeah, you smell like butt cheese!" I countered, punching him in the arm.

"She does not have pox, Anthony." Miss Rose defended. "It's just a little bit of acne."

Tony was not reassured, and scraped his chair away from me.

Acne? I was puzzled. The word itself sounded so harsh, like a cat spitting up a hair ball. I didn't want it, and now I had it. I sunk my head and wondered what I had done to get it, but then Miss Rose planted a kiss on my pimply cheek.

"Pick a hand!" she had teased, holding out both fists in front of me. I puzzled over which held the best prize, and picked the left. A jawbreaker the size of my eyeball rested in her pretty palm. I plucked it out of her hand and tucked it into my pocket for later.

"You're the prettiest girl here today," she whispered. She nodded reassuringly, and I instantly perked up under her gaze.

In the bathroom, I stared at my reflection and felt a lump the size of that jawbreaker stuck in my throat. I filled the sink with scalding water and drowned the facecloth in suds. I scrunched up my face and scrubbed my skin raw. Dunking my face in the steaming sink, I counted to thirty before gasping for air. I expected to see a new me, with all of the old skin sheered off. Instead, I saw the same me, only pink and red and puckered.

The next few weeks at school were slow as snails. I was eagerly awaiting my friend Lisa Palumbo's sleepover. She lived in a large brownstone with her mother and younger sister. Mrs. Palumbo was the first divorcee in our school. She wore long flowing skirts and beads around her neck. Lisa said her mother didn't shave her legs, and she read books about Buddhists and Hindus and Hare Khrishnas. She kept an aloe plant in the kitchen and an herb garden in the yard. For dinner, she would cook us foods that sounded more like conditions than meals, such as curry and hummus. Mrs. Palumbo preferred that we call her Lorraine. Over a steaming bowl of some reeking concoction, she lectured us about women's lib, whatever that was, and taught us to pump our fists in the air.

Lisa's house was our favorite sleepover spot. It was rumored that her building had formerly been a funeral home, and our seance activity was always very successful there. A group of us would gather around the ouija board, fingertips fluttering above the mystical pointer, communing with the dead and asking questions.

"Oh spirits of the underworld, who in the room will be the first to die?" Lisa would moan and groan. Whichever girl was least popular at the moment would miraculously have her name spelled out. Thankfully, my name had only appeared on one occasion. It happened to be on the same day that I wouldn't lend Lisa my favorite pink sweater.

The day before the sleepover, Lisa called me during dinner.

"Hey, Noreen, real quick. I forgot to mention. You, um.... Yeah. Look. Bring your own pillow tomorrow, okay?" There was a giggle behind her words that I didn't trust.

"Um, I guess. Why?" I asked suspiciously.

"No reason. All the girls hafta. Okay?"

"Sure."

"Cool. Later, gator." And the phone went dead in my ear. I now felt a nervous flutter where the excitement had been before the phone call.

I arrived the next night with my pillow tucked under my arm. Lisa opened the door and squealed with excitement. We hugged and she ushered me in. I was the first guest, and we were giddy with the events for the evening. There would be the seance, and the ritual torture of the first girl to fall asleep. We would gorge thoroughly on forbidden sugary snacks (no white sugar allowed under Lorraine's watch) and cuddle under blankets as we scared ourselves to sleep with horror movies.

One by one, the other girls began to arrive. I noted, with curiosity, that none of the other girls had brought their pillows. Once everyone was assembled, I whispered this fact to Lisa.

"Guys, get a load of this. Nor wants to know why she's the only one who had to bring her own pillow!" She snorted and slapped her knee. The other girls gushed with giggles and rolled their eyes.

"What?" I whined. "Tell me why."

Lisa widened her eyes and launched into it.

"Seriously? Look at your face. We don't want you infecting us. You're like, a total zithead!"

The girls erupted in volcanic laughs, and the ash of their words fell all around me. My face burned like lava. I wanted to rush out into the cold night and walk home in my socks. Instead, I laughed and shrugged my shoulders, swallowing the hurt that huddled in my chest.

I hung back for the rest of the night. My fingers fell limp on the ouija board, and I took no joy in freezing Tiffany's training bra when she was the first to fall asleep. My anger brewed inside of me like a stew. I wanted to sprinkle the seeds of revenge on these girls and the words they carelessly hurled.

I had my chance as they all crept out into the kitchen for a midnight snack. I snuck back into the living room where we were all set up to sleep. Quickly and quietly, I picked up each pillow and rubbed my face all over it. I made sure to cover every pillowcase with as many germs as I could spare. I said I small prayer over each pillow, and kissed them all for luck.

I ran to school each morning, bursting with anticipation. As Miss Rose took attendance, I inspected each girl's complexion. I was beginning to think that my spell had soured.

Three weeks after the sleepover, when I thought that all hope was lost, Lisa came in with her head hung low and her hand camouflaging her face. A bulbous bump was entrenched in her chin. An array of smaller blemishes orbited around the planetary pimple. Lisa looked as though she wanted her desk to open up and eat her. My spell had worked! I felt lighter than I had in weeks. A smile tickled my lips all day. I might have been number seven on the pretty list, but I could feel Lisa's stock sliding down the scale. Beware the wrath of Zithead!

Continue reading...

engagement

“Brett wants to marry me!” I gloated to the other girls. They looked at me skeptically.

“He offered me a job this weekend. On a turnover.”

The girls collapsed in giggles against each other. I stood stoic in my delusion, wanting to prove them wrong.

“He could have picked any of us for the job. Why did he pick me?”

“You need it more than we do, that’s why.” Mags said, not unkindly.

This was true. These girls had rich daddies to pay their tuition and living expenses. All I had was my calloused hands, a bad back and a bus pass back to Jersey every night. But still, I held fast to my dream.

“He said, and I quote, ‘I have something really important to tell you when you get here,’” I said in my best Brett-imitation voice.

“And that’s your proposal?” Mary Carolyn shook her head sadly at me. I nodded with pride.

“Girl, call us from the honeymoon!” Mags made kissy faces at me as Mary Carolyn moaned. I would show them.

I donned my cleanest work boots and tightest coveralls and boarded the train for Connecticut. It was going to be a long night. No one wanted to work turnovers. The job started as soon as a play closed down. The crew moved in quickly to demolish the old set, then erected the new set all in one night. The jobs started around midnight and could stretch until past noon of the next day. It was grueling work, but I knew I’d be fueled by Brett’s amorous attention.

I had only met Brett a few months before. He was five years older than me, and three inches shorter. I worked as the scene shop forewoman of our theater department. As such, I built and lit all of the shows we produced on our main stage, and I also taught carpentry, welding and electrics to the new kids coming in. We had hired Brett to work as a carpenter on one of our larger shoes. A few years before, Brett had had to drop out of school. He ran out of money one semester before graduation. This bonded us instantly.

Brett taught me to drink Guinness and throw darts. He and I would go to the local Irish dive after work some nights, and he would always treat. I became shy and quiet in his presence. I pictured our carpenter babies, and dreamed of the home we would build as a family.

After the job ended, Brett kept in touch and threw me jobs whenever he could. I appreciated it, as he knew my loans alone were not enough to pay tuition. But this was the first job that Brett had invited me to work on with him. Our future together was finally about to blossom.

He was waiting on the icy platform for me. I saw him before the train even stopped, and I waved like a puppy wags its tail. Brett greeted me with open arms and hugged me to his chest. He patted me warmly on the back. (I would later read that if someone pats you heartily on the back during a hug, there is no romantic intention behind the embrace. Sadly, I did not have this information at the time.)

“Good to see you, kid!” I balked at his word choice. But then I pictured us on a porch surrounded by our grandchildren, and decided that it was a sweet term of endearment that would keep me feeling young forever. I could live with that.

We rushed to Brett’s waiting VW Bug. It was yellow in the spots that weren’t rusted through. It looked as though Brett were living out of his car. Bags and pillows and pots and bowls littered every surface of the interior.

“Sorry about the mess,” Brett said as he cleared off the front seat for me, always the gentleman.

“It’s okay. Are you moving or something?” I could picture the house in the hills Brett was now busy building for us.

“That’s what I wanted to tell you.” We sat in the toasty Bug. Brett moved closer to me, and I licked my chapped lips in preparation.

“Betsy and I are getting married!” His long blonde ponytail bobbed with excitement.

“Who?” I was baffled. Betsy? Isn’t that the name of a doll who wets herself? He couldn’t be serious.

“She said yes! I’m moving in with her this week.”

“Wow. Great. Cool.” My face scrunched up as I were smelling parmesan cheese.

My ears could not take the assault of happiness being hurled at me. I heard bits and pieces: “together since high school”, “works with handicapped kids”, bla bla bla. My heart had been smashed against the dashboard, and all he could talk about was some do-gooder girlfriend teaching the blind to read? Please.

Brett chattered on endlessly until we got to the theater. Once there, I drifted away from him and tried to get to work. Brett had failed to mention that this was a union gig, and I was no card-carrying member. I was also the only ovary-bearer with a tool belt. The Teamsters were decidedly not happy to make my acquaintance.

I walked in a fog, the name Betsy banging around in my head like an eight ball. Our first task of the night was to assemble scaffolding. I tried to worm my way towards the scaffolding and prove my worth, but the Teamsters muscled me out of the way. I watched from the side, and noticed that they were piling the scaffolding without inserting the pin that would hold it all together.

“Fellas? ‘Excuse me? Um…the pin’s not in. It’s gonna collapse if you don’t….”

“Yeah yeah yeah, girlie. We got it. Why dontcha run and get us some coffee?”

I turned on my heels and walked away before the structure could come crashing down. After taking two steps, I heard screams and shouts and felt a searing pain in my head. The next thing I remember is waking up with Brett’s angelic face hovering over me.

“You okay, kid? You took a hard hit from that scaffolding.” Brett sat me up slowly. My right elbow was wet and throbbing. A woodpecker was boring a hole into my forehead. I felt my elbow and blood pooled in my palm. My stomach swam and I turned and threw up on a Teamster’s shoes.

“Let’s go. We’re taking you to the hospital, kid.”

“No! I’m fine. Let me just get a drink of water. I’ll be all right.”

I stood and watched the world spin. Brett held my waist firmly. I swooned into his arms, happy to let him hold me. But then, I remembered. Betsy.

I struggled free from Brett’s grip and weaved my way to the bathroom. A large horn had sprouted on my forehead, and the flesh was torn from my elbow. I bandaged it as best I could, and went back out to work.

Brett kept a close eye on me for the rest of the night, bringing me one water bottle after another. The Teamsters kept their distance and said nothing else. I worked harder and longer than all of them, only stopping every once in a while to puke in private.

The next day, we sat in the middle of the newly erected set drinking tea. The pain was no longer centralized to my head or my elbow. It ran through me like a current, pulsating hotly. I was ready to go home.

Brett drove me back to the train station in silence. He helped me out of the Bug and walked me to the platform.

“Sorry about what happened.”

“It’s okay. It was an experience.”

“Maybe you could come to the wedding. I told Betsy all about you.”

“Yeah. Great.”

The train pulled in and Brett handed me an envelope containing $500 in cash. It was $100 more than I was expecting, and it was enough to make my final tuition payment for that semester. I thanked him by vomiting one last time at his feet.

Continue reading...

writing exercise

I'm taking a class at SVA called Autobiography into Art, so I've sort of been neglecting this blog. I know it's a big disappointment to the two people who actually read it. I'm working on a story about a client, and it's taking forever. I will hopefully post it some time this week. Until then, I'll post an exercise from class called a memory chain. It's actually a cool way to get some ideas flowing. Just write down one memory, which reminds you of another, and another, and so on. Like a free write. Don't stop and think, just write. Then you can generate a story or whatever out of one of those memories. Here's this week's assignment, my memory chain:

Liberty State Park. Bicentennial. Sitting on the lawn. Watching the fireworks directly above us. Felt like they were falling down around us like a cage.

My wedding night. Rooftop garden dinner. Unexpected fireworks. My dad saying, "This is for you, baby." I almost believed him.

Port Authority. 2am. Waiting for my dad to pick me up. About to be mugged by three thugs. Dad's Buick comes barreling down 8th Avenue and jumps the curb, straight at the thugs. Dad gets out holding a billy club casually. He walks over, takes my suitcase and puts me in the car without a word.

I am little. Fishing on the pier with my dad. There was an enormous sink hole at the end of the pier. Concrete and metal bars lay in a heap above the foamy river. My dad said, "If you fall in I'm not coming in after you. I can't swim that well. No reason we should both drown." I stepped away from the gaping hole, untrusting of my father.

Fishing with the homeless twins Georgie and Raymond. They smelled like pee and had dirty finger nails. I caught the biggest fish of the day and won the pool - five dollars.

Snorkeling in the Bahamas. Warm sun, soothing water. Crying inside my goggles, so grateful to be alive. The most gorgeous fish I've ever seen. Feeling a part of the sun and the ocean and the wind. I follow the back of a colorful fish and swim behind it. It turns to me. One eye and half of its face have been torn away, probably by a fish hook. I will never fish again.

Walking to Weehawken with a pack of Camels. The first pack of cigarettes I ever bought. I stopped at the gas station, didn't know which kind to get. "Unfiltered?" he asked. "Okay," I shrugged. Walked over the bridge to the marina and stared at the city. An enormous orange moon rose over the city and hung there like a medallion. I wrote someone a love letter that I would never send. I smoked a cigarette, unfiltered. My head spun and my chest felt heavy. I picked tobacco off my tongue, confused. Oh! That's what unfiltered means.

Montauk. Really high waves. Rough water. Jelly shoes wash up on the beach. Everyone screaming. My dad and another dad swim out, looking for two girls. They don't find them. My dad has to be rescued by men in a little rubber boat. We don't go back in the water.

Deep-sea fishing. I eat a tuna fish sandwich. My friend's dad catches a baby shark. I wonder where the mother is. It rains, the boat rocks violently. I cry and throw up my tuna fish sandwich.

Standing on the corner waving up at the hospital window. I see a figure in the window, a hand waving. My mom says, "Wave. It's Daddy." I wave but I'm not so sure. He's been gone a long time and I'm scared he's not coming home.

I'm sobbing and the snot is running into my mouth. I don't want to go to church. Something bad will happen there, but I don't know what. Maybe the roof will collapse on us. I beg my mother to let me stay home. She tells me to go stand on the stoop and get some fresh air. Stop crying. Your face is all red. I wait out on the stoop and hiccup. My dad comes out. "Come on. We're going fishing." I take his hand and bound down the stairs. I'm sorry my mother will die when the roof collapses, but I'm glad I won't be there when it happens. I will miss her.

I'm walking by the river. It's the spot with the sink hole, but it's not a sink hole anymore. It's a paved walkway, benches, kids on bikes, yuppies with dogs. Daylight, bright sun. He's sitting on the bench, looking nervously back and forth. He doesn't see me. I smile and raise my hand, about to call "Dad!" I stop, see him take a long hard pull from the can in the paper bag. I stop walking and stare, my arm still in the air. He looks around again, locks eyes with me. His face deflates. He looks at the brown paper bag. Then at me. He shrugs. I walk away.

I'm sobbing and the snot is running into my mouth. I don't want to go to church. Something bad will happen there, but I don't know what. Maybe the roof will collapse on us. I beg my mother to let me stay home. She tells me to go stand on the stoop and get some fresh air. Stop crying. Your face is all red. I wait out on the stoop and hiccup. My dad comes out. "Come on. We're going fishing." I take his hand and bound down the stairs. I'm sorry my mother will die when the roof collapses, but I'm glad I won't be there when it happens. I will miss her.

Okay. So a lot of this won't make sense to anyone but me. But it's a good jumping-off point for me to get some more stories done. I'll post them as they come. Thanks for reading, you two!

Continue reading...