Sophie Can Dream

The avocado is the vagina of foods. A slick-rich treat of green heaven. A green world waiting for the tongue. It also waits for the toast. 

The toast. That square gluten bed of arousal. Day mattress where the knife spreads the green.

Sophie has been single for so long that yes, she now ascribes sexual meaning to her food. Her olive salad is a bed of eyes waiting for her to undress. Her carrots are tall orange strangers that make her faint.  

Tonight, yes tonight, she will have rib-eyed steak. Near the bone, the fat sops up the juices.

Essay on Grief — I finally wrote about my friend’s passing

“Hello. Am I speaking to a Ms. Eliza Mimski?”

I was at work, substituting for a middle school class that had just filed out. Another rambunctious class would be coming in soon. “Yes, it’s me, but I only have a minute. Can I ask what you’re calling about?” 

“I’m Ms. Allen, the building manager for your friend Rececca. She’s listed you on her application as her contact person.” 

My heart dropped. I sensed what she was calling about. “My friend’s okay, isn’t she?”

*

Rebecca died. It’s been two years now. She just didn’t wake up one morning. We always joked that when we left this world behind we hoped we’d go this way. 

She was my buddy, my pal. She was my good friend. Rebecca was younger than me by about four years–I was seventy-six when she passed–and for a long time she’d been part of our group of four female friends who went out to dinner every few weeks. She was the quiet one, the rest of us noisy and laughing too loud and leaving big tips to hopefully compensate for our boisterous behavior. But after a few years Rebecca stopped coming to the dinners because of her chronic fatigue and bodily aches and pains that made her too tired and took too much effort for her to leave her apartment. 

Because of her physical problems our friendship shifted and we became phone friends. I couldn’t visit her because that took too much energy for her to deal with. We’d talk most every day in the late afternoons when I’d take my beloved, precious and very reactive dog Tiger for a walk. Before I called her, I’d make sure my brindled pitbull had pooped a couple of times and I’d thrown away the poop bag since I only had two hands–one for his leash and the other for my phone. On the days when Rebecca didn’t answer I’d feel so disappointed and hoped she’d call me back.

What did we talk about on my long walk with Tiger that lasted a good hour or more since he had to stop every few feet to pee, to smell every blade of grass, every plant, every bush, not to mention asking her to hold on as I crossed the street to avoid another dog? Just that Rebecca and I recounted the minutia of our day, details interesting to no one but us. How she’d watched TV while thinking about getting up off the couch but it just took so much energy. How she’d finally managed it and made coffee. How she’d taken two naps, one for an hour and one much longer. I would listen as if this were headline news, sorry for her continual health problems. 

My minutia. If I’d substitute taught, I’d tell her about the lesson plan or the two mischievous boys who wouldn’t stop hitting each other and acting out, or the fire drill where I’d forgotten to take the roll sheet with me outside. And if I hadn’t worked, there’d be the recap of how I’d gone to the grocery store, or worked on my latest novel, etc.

One of the things that must be mentioned about Rebecca was how she excelled at listening. I’ve met very few people in my life who have had the ability to really make me feel heard, and truth be told I’m not that great of a listener myself. She was quiet in her listening, never tiring of it, never butting in and taking over the conversation, and she didn’t seem to need as much attention as she was willing to give. I could talk about the minutia but also talk about my fears. Fears like I’d never get my novel published or the huge fear that blocked my foreground, my fear of losing Tiger who’d been diagnosed with cancer. 

Another thing about Tiger. When he was a puppy he’d been bitten on the face at the dog park and he’d never gotten over it. He’d been reactive ever since. So when I’d walk Tiger and the neighborhood German Shepherd would appear with its owner, the two of them coming down the sidewalk, I’d tell Rebecca I had to cross the street. Only I wouldn’t say it in quite that way. Instead I’d say: That Mother Frucking shepherd is coming right at us, whereupon she’d shout, and this would be the most energy she’d exhibit on anything: Mother Frucking shepherd! Tell it to go back from where it came from. And the same would go for the Chihuahua that Tiger hated, and the French Bulldog and the Yorkshire Terrier, etc, all of whom Rebecca and I called the Mother Fruckers as if the dogs were responsible for Tiger’s behavior…  

It was horrible, learning about her death while I was working. This kind of thing should never happen to anyone. The call came through about ten in the morning and I didn’t get off until three-thirty that afternoon. The next class swarmed in, took their seats and there I was, acting as together as I could as their substitute teacher. This swell of emotion that I was experiencing needed to be held down. Yeah, I could have called the office and told them what had happened but I chose to stay at work. I just didn’t have it in me to say the words aloud. 

As the day wore on I was practically jumping out of my skin. I don’t know how I made it through sixth period without breaking down but I somehow did. I guess we do what we have to do. The moment the bell rang I grabbed my stuff, ushered the students out and locked the classroom door. I checked out in the office, gave back my classroom key and fled the building. Once in my car I drove a few blocks and pulled over–I didn’t want anyone from the school to see me breaking down–and with my forehead on the steering wheel I finally started sobbing. 

After a few weeks, when the reality of her death had sunk in, I was relieved that she had died because she wasn’t in distress anymore. I suppose everyone says this when someone they love who’s been in a lot of pain passes away. For Rebecca, it meant no more awful aches and pains or being wracked with depression, no more being a prisoner of the couch, no more loneliness of living all alone. No more sorrow, and I picture her up there above the clouds, satisfied, comfortable, and finally at ease.  

I remember after she passed away how lonely I felt without her and our check-ins. It was just me and Tiger up and down the San Francisco hills. I’d tell him how Rebecca was gone and I wouldn’t be talking to her anymore, and I wondered if he missed her calls too. 

A year came and went, and then Tiger’s cancer suddenly got worse and he passed away within a week’s time. Then it was just me. No Rebecca. No Tiger. At first I’d wear his leash around my neck, taking it for a walk. I’d tell Rebecca how lonely I was without him, without the both of them. Just me walking down the hill all by myself.   

My memories of Rebecca are precious to me. She’s gone and this is what I have left of her.

Journal Much?

A short essay on my personal journaling/action plan… published by Literary Yard

Journal Much?

I am one of those people who keeps a daily journal of sorts. That’s me–I’m 79 now– and I’ve been doing this for as long as I can remember. From the moment I wake up in the morning (well, after spending an hour or two hidden beneath the covers while watching dog videos on TikTok) I grab my $3.99 black and white composition book off the nightstand, open it and go to the next clean page and get started. 

My basic journal routine, different than most:

First, I center the date on the top line of the right-hand page, and then I number the lines from one to ten, knowing I can add more later.  This first part of the list is very repetitive, things I do every day: writing the name of the current novel I’m working on and how many words I commit to writing that day; reminding myself of my physical therapy exercises (I do these because I suffer from vertigo–at 79, you wouldn’t believe the multitude of ailments I suffer from); reminding myself to read something as it keeps the brain active. After that, I write Walk, as I record my daily mileage, which ranges between a mile and three and a half miles. Yes, I am a walking junkie and never skip a day. I’m like one of those people who works out at a gym, only my gym is the sidewalk. Have you seen those ten flights of stairs in the Sunset District? Yes, I walk up them. And then the rest of the list is devoted to the random things I need to accomplish that day. 

Are you bored yet? I can imagine you are, for journals of all kinds are for those who write them, not for the eyes of others, and, I imagine, they are generally bland. Journals are not diaries that hold our secrets, our hidden truths. And for me, my journal helps me to organize my life and I could never express how much satisfaction I get from checking something off my list when a task is completed. It’s my drug! It’s a serotonin high!

Let me just say that I’m careful about what I write down because it means I really have to try and do it–(believe me, I’m a chief procrastinator). So it’s a kind of promise I’m making to myself. Sometimes it happens that I’m unable to complete a task through no fault of my own, like someone I need to talk to being unavailable. In this case, the task ends up on the bottom of the page under COs, or CarryOvers, and hopefully I’ll accomplish it the next day. The things I generally detest doing on my list are making customer service phone calls, but who likes them? No one I’ve ever met. I try really hard to keep my cool and not utter curse words at the robotic voice. 

I guess if there was a quasi-interesting part of my daily journal it would have to be what goes on the left-hand side of the page. What I generally need to work on is my lousy thinking because it tends to get me into trouble. I criticize people in my head, especially those who try to get close to me since I learned in my childhood that intimacy can be a dangerous thing. This is also the place where I write down the things that I’m grateful for, forcing myself to be positive. I will write down a person’s name in a kind of hieroglyphics (just in case they should get hold of my journal) and how the relationship is going, what resentments I have against them (I am the resentment queen of all queens and as a Pisces, believe me I can remember verbatim what they said that offended me, what time of day it was and even what they were wearing). I also keep it positive by writing the things I love about them, what I appreciate, trying to train my mind, opening up the nice part of my brain. The part that appreciates. The part that sees the good.

On the bottom of that page I write down singular words I want to live by. Here’s what I wrote today: professionalism (this comes in handy with dealing with the public–I substitute teach during the school year and try my hardest to keep the classroom a happy place and not to get into it with the mischievous ones); courage; acceptance, patience with myself and others; tolerance. These are the things I could definitely improve upon, and writing them down over and over guides me in that direction. 

Once I finish writing the left-hand side of the page, I focus on my daily tasks. For example, I’m writing a new novel and I’m one of those writers who don’t follow an outline. Rather, I just sit in front of my google doc and my fingers start tapping the keyboard. Sometimes I say to myself, don’t write that!, and this is when I know what’s about to be written is definitely the right thing. I try to get to my novel as soon as I can because I’m also the queen of all queens when it comes to procrastination, and it’s hard for me to get started. It’s only the customer service calls, if there are any, that exceed my writing.

I know there’s a lot of people out there in the world–millions and maybe billions–who don’t use a journal in any way. Their mind is a box where they keep their list of things that need to get done. That’s just not me. And it’s not so much that I just don’t remember things as much as I feel safe with my journal. Does that sound weird? Safe in the respect that my day is ordered, that I generally know what to do next, and once again that I get to reach that magnificent high when checking off a task, the satisfaction that it’s been completed. 

I had never written such a violent action scene until my new science fiction novel that is titled The Metamorphosis II.

Lights off. I waited, hands in my lap, steadying breaths. Soon, I lapsed into a dream world. Drifting, drifting through a thin line of waiting. And then a pop, pop, pop jolted me. My eyes widened as I sat bolt upright.

I knew that sound and dove beneath my desk. Shots fired. I squeezed myself into a ball, my body shaking. My chest beat. I had ten hearts. And then, a deadening silence. 

I stayed put, my arms wrapped around me. I squeezed myself tighter, tighter, tighter. 

Michaela, where are you? Are you hurt? Are you okay? The diva? Sinn? Gregorson? What was happening?

Soon, a message over the loudspeaker. Everyone stay put. The shooter still at large. Someone was whimpering. I realized it was me.

The past washing over me. Mama’s house. Me retrieving her photographs. Her bedroom light flicking on. The cold metal in my hand. Me killing someone. Me, shooting Jimmy Y and kicking him in the head.

I heeded the announcement. Arms wrapped tight. My mind swirled. Everyone soon dead. Myself dead too.

Help us! the brains telegraphed. We’re being held captive. Bokomoso wants to keep us alive. The lab. Had the shooter been in the lab? Were the diva and Sinn dead?

Bokomoso. How did he find out about the brains? Which employee tipped him off? Who? Was there more than one? And a bigger question–how did Bokomoso get into the building with a gun, much less at all? 

My hopes and dreams stepped forward, crowding in beside me. The dream of my depression lifting, being free at last. Michaela’s dream. Rhonda’s dream. The diva’s. Dave’s and Gregorson’s. What we were living for, hanging onto. Where our hopes lived.

I couldn’t let this happen.

Maybe it was stupid, what I did then, uncurling my body from beneath the desk and standing up. I crept toward the door. I listened. Nothing but sirens in the distance. Carefully, inch by inch I opened it, stuck my head out and looked one way and then the other down the hallway before I entered it. Standing against the wall, my palms spread out against it, I edged my way toward the staircase, my heart pounding, sweat breaking out on my forehead. 

Detached from myself, I watched my hand as it opened the stairway door as if this hand belonged to someone else, my feet then proceeding to climb the stairs two at a time to the floor above where the lab was located. Help us! the brains telegraphed. Help us! 

The diva and Sinn, I telegraphed them. Are they alive? Are they wounded? 

No answer.

Me, in my body but outside of it at the same time. Yes, watching myself. Nothing seemed real. Me, at the door. Me, opening it. The sirens louder. My feet advancing. I wished I had a gun for protection. 

I twisted the doorknob, shocked that the door was unlocked, but then maybe Bokomoso had left? I opened it a few inches before I kicked it open, expecting gunfire to come my way. When it didn’t, I figured that he and whoever else might have joined him had fled the lab and were hiding in another part of the building.

Bravely, slowly, stupidly I entered, my eyes roaming the stark white room filled with  long tables, brain jars lined up on several of them. I’m here. I’ll protect you, I told the brains. Okay, but where was the diva and Sinn? 

My eyes, afraid of what they might see.

I took steps. My gaze swept. And then I saw him, Sinn, laying on the floor, his thin body, his dark pointy hair, his sloping mouth fallen open, blood collecting on his shirt near his heart. I looked away, then looked back again. My feet said run, but I stayed, forcing myself to walk toward him. I knelt down and stared at the kaleidoscope of blood. Surreal. Not real. Sinn. Yes. Sinn was dead. 

My hand cupped my mouth as I stifled a scream, my body uncontrollably shaking. Pulled back–I was pulled back into the past. Jimmy Y, laying on the floor. The smoky smell of gunpowder. And the silence. The screaming silence. 

Time stopped. Time sped up. Reality. Back to reality. Where, where was the diva? I stood up, afraid of what I might find. And then I looked around and saw her. 

No, I screamed, the sound escaping my mouth. I rushed to her and knelt down. No, no, no! She was dead, her neck on sideways. Blood gushed, pooled at her throat. Her face, contorted, destroyed, her skin black with blood.

*

It was actually fun writing this. I know it sounds weird, saying that writing a violent scene was fun, but it was an adventure, going in a direction I’d never ben before.

This is an excerpt from my novel Sex, Love and Makeovers in the City of the Ancient Cougars.

Below is from a scene where Dixie, in her 80s, waits for Freddie, her young lover who is just out for her money, to meet her. Dixie’s beloved husband has died and she thinks that maybe joining the cougar beauty contest and taking a young lover will help to break her grief.

Dixie, standing across town outside the pricey Cafe Verve, began to worry. In her new little black dress purchased from a boutique appropriately called Little Black Dress after Freddie had remarked that black would set off her blonde hair, she watched the couples passing by, a few entering the restaurant. Still, no sign of Freddie. She texted him but received no answer.  

In response to Freddie’s comment about her blonde hair, she’d jokingly replied, You mean this straw broom on top of my head? She’d been trying to be funny, but she had to stop putting herself down. This kind of humor might have worked with Harold, but Freddie was young and energetic and Dixie had to be her best self, her most attractive self, no apologies. She had to sell herself. What a funny choice of words. She was so new to all of this.

Two older women approached the cafe. “I’m his sugar momma,” she heard one say to the other, an odd sound to Dixie’s ears, “and he’s my sugar baby.” Sugar daddy was a phrase she was used to hearing, but sugar momma? Sugar baby? Yet sugar momma summed up Dixie’s new identity, for why else would she be hanging out with Freddie, or rather him hanging out with an old woman like her, and why else would she be giving him presents? Presents that he expected, like the alligator wallet she’d bought for him, or the hour and a half massages she’d paid for at Rub Me Right. He’d chosen to meet at Cafe Verve, and of course he’d expect her to pick up the tab.  

“Yes, you’re his patroness,” the other said, laughing as she followed the first one inside.

The words rolled around in Dixie’s mind. Sugar momma. Sugar baby. Patroness. She stood waiting.

*

Available on Amazon

Blue Tames Red

…an excerpt from my novel Sex, Love and Makeovers in the City of the Ancient Cougars published on Amazon…

The novel takes place in a fictitious South American town where a beauty pageant for elderly women is going on. Cecilia is one of the contestants and this is during the swimsuit competition.

***

Cecilia, a large woman with a round face and bangs like fur, who was the first contestant scheduled to go onstage, her body resembling the Venus of Willendorf with its curves upon hanging curves, had let go of seeing her body in terms of what was wrong with it. She no longer fretted over her weight, no longer agonized over losing this pound and that pound, no longer held her breath while perched atop the scale, peering over her stomach and cautiously reading the dreaded number. Years ago, she’d made the decision to accept her body as is. Once onstage, she planned to walk center stage, open her robe and let it fall to the floor, exposing the ebb and flow of flesh, the huge sag of her breasts governed by the thin straps of her bikini, her bikini bottom barely visible beneath her overflow of stomach. She planned to walk in a slow circle and show it all off.

….from my novel Race-Switch, on Amazon

The following is from a scene where the main character, Valentina, is expressing how she doesn’t fit in with her new Mexican culture, (having switched from White to Black and then to Mexican). Instead of a sense of belonging she experiences a sene of racelessness where she suffers from feeling like an imposter. She has just come from the police department where she has reported being harassed, and the officer, when finding out she’s a switch, tells her she’ll never belong to his race.

***

“That’s terrible,” Michaela had said of the policeman, “and you should have waited for me to go with you. Why didn’t you listen to me? But to be honest,” she continued, “I can understand the officer’s way of thinking. I mean, you chose his race six months ago.”

Valentina groaned, inching away from her in her swivel chair. “It’s okay for him to have those feelings, Michaela, but not to voice them. And correction. I did not choose to be Latina. Lakeisha chose it for me. I wonder what he’d have to say about someone switching out of his race. I don’t think he’d like that either.”

“I bet he’d feel worse with someone adopting his race,” she said, tipping back in her chair. Adopting. Like the switchee didn’t naturally belong.

“Well, if I’ve adopted his race then I’m no race at all for I’m certainly not white anymore. I have no remnants of my bio-self and as far as my first switch, there’s no remnants of Lakeisha either. So let me ask you a question. Who in the hell am I then? I’m raceless. That’s what I am.”

“You’re not raceless,” Michaela countered.

“I want to feel like I belong but other than knowing there’s Cesar Chavez Street in the Mission district, and spending time looking at murals with you and eating burritos at restaurants, and oh yeah, going to Dolores Park, that’s all I got. My race is one of strong people and it’s wrong to consider myself a part of that history just because I have a disk implanted in my inner thigh. The only thing about me that’s Latina is my reflection in the mirror.”

“You just had a bad experience is all.”

“Racelessness,” Valentina muttered.

Going places….

Stow Lake in San Francisco

A little over a mile around. People walking their dogs. Big breath of green air…