NormaDesmond - Archived Blog Posts

[NormaDesmond]

Thomas
We've lost another one, and quite suddenly for us.
Thomas, our rough and tumble cat, the biggest one of our bunch,
the one who raced down the streets so fast that the neighbors thought he was a raccoon, was killed by a neighbor's dog this afternoon.
As was his habit, Thomas enjoyed breakfast and a nap at home,
then went out around noon for his tour of the neighborhood.
Other neighbors gave him lunch and treats,
and some let him sun himself on their patios.
Today, one neighbor left her gate open and her dog got out.
Thomas was a bit too old to be the racing cat,
too old to dart up a tree,
too old to fight back,

Thomas was mostly Carlos' cat because Carlos saved him.
Years ago, while walking the dog, he came upon this fat cat sitting under a tree.
He stopped to pet this cat and then the cat followed Carlos
and Dengoso part of the way home.
The next day, same story, only this time the cat followed Carlos further;
he followed further and further each day until one day
Thomas came into the house and met the rest of the family.
Carlos wasn't sure he needed another cat, so he took Thomas to his office,
hoping to adopt him out. But Thomas, big and tough looking,
sat on the reception desk like stone; most of the clients thought he was too big,
or too mean, or maybe, since he never moved, he was a stuffed cat.
Nobody wanted him.
That was all it took, Carlos brought him home
and Thomas became one of the guys.

He didn't have a lot of cares in the world:
a corner to nap in,
a smidge of dog food with his morning cat food,
a scratch behind his ears after dinner,
and the offer to tag along whenever you took Dengoso for a walk.
I don't know how many times someone would ask Carlos or myself,
"Is that cat following you?"
And he was.

The last memory I have of Thomas was him sitting by my feet while I worked in the yard painting the fence.
Where we went, Thomas followed.
But now he's following Voncie and Spunky and Squeaky.
Big? Tough? Mean?
He was a pussy cat.

 

[NormaDesmond]

Oddly enough, it felt like love at first sight, except for the fact that she was a woman and I was a ga…I was...I wasn’t interested. So, I guess you could say it was like love at first-in-line, since she stood behind the counter of the School Employee’s Credit Union counting the wad of bills I’d lain out for her. Smiling, she was always smiling, she smacked a rubberstamp on the back of my paycheck and filed it away in a drawer somewhere.

Just to make things clear, I wasn’t a school employee; hell, I wasn’t even a student. I was a bartender at, of all places, Marie Calender’s, a pie shop and she was a bank teller who smiled at me. Who smiled at me and said ‘Hello’ every time I came into the bank. She always seemed to take her time with the other customers so she could wait on me, always smiling, nodding ’Hello.’ Saying “Next.”

It was with that smile that she instantly became my friend; at least that’s what I told people at work about my friend Erin, at the bank. I didn’t have many friends and I needed all I could get, whether they knew it or not. See, I was gay…. Wait! Let's say that again. I am gay…. But in those days I was so far in the closet I couldn’t even see the strip of light at the bottom of the door; if there was a light...if there was a door. The closet is a dark, safe…lonely, place. At least that's what I used to think.

Nevertheless, she smiled at me whenever she saw me, and soon I was grinning back at her…slightly, nervously, my head dropping soon after my lips curled because this was a new thing for me, smiling at people. But Erin’s smile never wavered, it intensified, like an incandescent bulb, the wattage increasing, each time I saw her. And I, too, smiled a bit more easily, whenever she looked my way and said, “Next.”

Love at first in line. The gay guy and the teller.

Then the day came; the day I dreaded most of all; the reason I had so few friends, and why I kept to myself and went straight home after work and never answered the phone, never said ‘Yes’ to co-workers who wanted to see a movie on the weekend. The reason I spent my time alone, in a book, in front of the television, asleep. It was the Day of the Question. I can still see her, counting my cash—being a bartender, even at a pie place, was profitable—and depositing my check for me.

She smiled at me and asked, “Would you like to see a movie sometime?”

This was it. The budding friendship was over. I would tell her ‘No,’ making up some excuse and then I would rush out of the bank. She would smile at me a few more times; stop waiting for my turn in line to open her window. I would use the drive-thru or the ATM; anything to keep from going inside. There would be no more nods.

“I can’t.” I said, pretending to look for something in my wallet. A scrap of paper, perhaps, with a list of excuses on it. “Um….I….I—“

“Are you gay?”

I stammered and flushed, my face burning and my eyes watering; my heart thumping loudly, echoing in my chest like a rock tumbling down cavern walls. I slammed the closet door, crawled to the back, and turned away from the light.

“No.” I said. Angry, Annoyed. I wanted my deposit slip. I wanted out of there. I wanted to be back home where no one knew, no one cared.

“Yes, you are.” She laughed. “So what?”

So what? So? What? And she smiled again and the light came up from the floor, rising over my scuffed shoes and ripping along the creases in my Levis. So what? I felt her smile calm the smashing of my heart in my chest. I felt the smile, cool on my skin, and the laughter drying my eyes. I grinned, still red-faced, but otherwise elated, as I had never felt in my life.

“Yes, I am.”

I wanted to faint.

It was only then that I could take a breath. No holes had opened up to swallow me. No unruly mob formed among the principals and the basketball coaches, the Algebra teachers standing impatiently behind me waiting for their turn at the teller. There was no lightening bolt, and no shouts of ‘Burn in Hell, faggot.’ I didn’t die, and the world didn’t stop spinning.

Yes, I am. So what.

“Would you like to see a movie sometime?”

“Yes, I would.” And I laughed out loud. I stood a little taller and I looked her right in the eye. I felt drunk with power. I had said the words, I’m gay and it hadn’t killed me. No one was erecting a guillotine near the ATM machine. No bonfires in the safe on which to burn the queer. I was alive and breathing and on the verge of the best friendship I had ever known. A friendship that didn’t die of AIDS years later…like Erin did.

(to be continued)

 

[NormaDesmond]

Why her? I used to wonder when I visited her in the hospital that last time. Why not me? I was the gay one, and everyone knows that AIDS is God’s punishment to the homosexual; at least that was what the graffiti along the highway said. Why her? She was my friend, and a mother, whose own son had passed away of complictions from AIDS a few days before her. A mother and son who were in the right place at the wrong time. In that same hospital, some twelve years earlier, she was giving birth to her daughter; and hemorrhaging.

The transfusion came quick, and poisoned.

Yet, it wasn’t until she gave birth to Joey that Erin learned she was HIV-positive; and so was her son.
I was gay. She was a mother. He was a little boy. They were my friends. She was my first date.

Our first, for lack of a better word, date, was uncomfortable. I had never...never...shared a meal with anyone who knew I was gay. Lots of people may have suspected, may have seen me and thought, “Yep. Fag.” However, she was the first person to know because I had told her; she asked, and I answered.

And she didn't care at all.

Still, our dinner was tense. I didn’t know how gay men were supposed to act. Should I mince and lisp and talk in a high voice? Should I wear frilly shirts and tight pants? Or, should I be myself, even though I had no idea exactly what that meant?

I sat quiet while she talked. And then I spoke. I made a little joke and she laughed, and I relaxed somewhat. She talked some more, I listened. She asked questions and I gave one-word answers. But she listened to me. Listening; that was a new thing.

Our second dinner was better, if only because it was a lunch. Daylight and sunshine, a sidewalk cafe and a bottle of something white…Sauvignon Blanc, I think, from Sonoma. We let loose with one another. This time I smiled and laughed at her jokes—though we both knew I was far funnier, what with being gay, and all. I listened to her, and asked about her, and learned about her.

She had a three-year-old daughter, Merrianne, at home. And a husband, who was there in body, if not in spirit and heart. Body, because she was pregnant again and didn’t know if she should have the baby if it meant staying married. She wasn’t sure about that…being married. In the end, it wasn’t her decision. Her husband left her because of some letters he’d read: H I V.

She quickly changed the subject from babies and husbands to music. Did I like U2? I said I didn’t think so. Diana Ross, sure; U2, not so much. Then she asked what I thought of The Pretenders and I said Chrissie Hynde was pretentious—a joke. What did I know from The Pretenders? I could recite Judy’s life story but I didn’t know Chrissie Hynde from Chrissy Snow.

Erin had tickets to a concert in Oakland; a Day On The Green. U2…Chrissie Hynde and The Pretenders…and a band called the BoDeans. She asked me to come along. She wanted a day away from her husband, a day with a friend. Maybe we could go into San Francisco after, she suggested; we could go into the Castro and check out the guys. Would I like to come along?

Would I!

(to be continued)

 

[NormaDesmond]

We haven't had a good 'pet' year, it seems. In the last twelve months we've lost Spunky and Voncie to Cancer, and Thomas to a dog attack. We had to put Dengoso, our nineteen year old flea-biscuit, down last month.

Now it's Scruffy.

Last week he suffered an embolism in his hindquarters, and lost the use of his back legs. We tried medications to see if we could loosen the clot that paralyzed his legs, but after two days of treatment it became clear he wasn't going to get any better. He also had a bad heart......well, he had a good heart actually, only it didn't work like it should.

Scruffy was a 'found' cat. My partner found him, brought him home, and Scruffy found his way into our hearts and our lives, becoming the old man of the house. He used to be a tough old bird, always outside, running up and down the streets, tagging along with Dengoso on his walks. He used to run, I mean run, after the dog, playing catch up.

But then he got to old to be outside, He had a bad eye and din't see so well. And he got a touch of arthritis in his legs, his crooked legs. He wasn't up to running after poodles anymore. So, because he was the boss, Scruffy made the decision to become an inside cat; and he moved into the house and ruled, like he ruled the yard, and the streets.

But he was a playful cat, too; and a loving cat. he liked nothing better than to sit in your lap and rub his head under your chin. he was the snuggling cat who slept between us each night, walking across our heads and licking our hair while we slept, or tried to sleep.

He was the alarm clock cat. Every morning at 6 AM he woke us up to remind us that breakfast should be served. he sauntered into the kitchen every afternoon at five to ring the dinner bell.

He was the House Cat. He ran the show.

Scruffy lost one of his ears to cancer last year, so he was our one-eyed, one-eared tough guy. But he never flinched, because it was only one ear and he still had another one; and he still had us; and he still ran the show.

Now, he's gone, too. But I imagine that wherever he is, he has tow good ears, two good eyes, and two good back legs. He's also got his five best friends--Squeaky and Spunky, Thomas, Voncie, and Dengoso--to run after, to snap at, to play with, to chase, and, most importantly, to boss around.

If you ever see a skinny old man, with thinning gray hair, his Sansi-belt pants pulled up to his chin, his shoulders hunched over, barking at the kids to get off his lawn, all the while trying to hide a smile, think of Scruffy.

Tough on the outside, but pure gold all the way through.

 

[NormaDesmond]

Chapter One, Part One​

Five little brown bottles of pills, coated with oil from her fingers and covered with dust, some of the labels yellowed and peeling back a bit at the edges, meticulously placed in a row on the glass shelf above the sink; at the ready. Tiny bronzed bottles with odd sounding names—Nembutal and Valium—stashed away over the years for illnesses both contrived and real: pulled muscles and insomnia, a nonexistent fall down the back stairs, migraines.

Now that her best day, her last day, had finally arrived, Barbara Jean Seaton would put those hundreds of caplets and capsules to good use. One by one by one she unscrewed the lid from each amber vial and emptied the contents into a ceramic soap dish; the ping-ping-ping echoed all over the gleaming white-tiled bathroom before eventually dying in the drain of the claw foot tub. Then, with hands as precise as a concert violinist, Barbara removed the cap from a special bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label.

_____________________________________​

“Barbara Jean? You best be getting up this instant, young lady! There is a lot to do today. Do you hear me? BARBARA JEAN?”

Crash. Barbara couldn’t hear her mother’s voice as much as she could feel it, scratching a path up every single vertebrae of her spine until the words ended up inside her skull, rattling around loose like the metallic marble of a pinball machine. Her mother’s rasping tone forced her out of bed that morning, and Barbara felt as queasy as a schoolgirl on the first day of school after a too-short summer. Yet, oddly enough, Barbara’s head was clearer than it had ever been in those sad and lonely days, a painful reminder of how little time she had to prepare for the homecoming.

After slipping her feet into a tattered pair of pink mules, Barbara sang blissfully, and also somewhat regretfully, “My babies are coming home,” as she raced around the bed to the window—the big one above the window seat, the one that faced the sea—and jerked aside the dust-filled curtains. The thin tin rings screeched along the cast iron rod, angered at this sudden intrusion after so many years of darkness, and her hands shook with panic, which sustained her as much as cigarettes and bourbon, and sobriety, from which, for many years, she had been far removed. Squinting as the sun danced along the water, Barbara wondered how long it had been since she allowed the sunlight to come into her room; how long since she had seen so clearly what needed to be done. The yellow light of morning, caressing her skin, soft like chiffon, cleansed the muddy recesses of her mind, and she realized, looking at the sea that day, that the past was past; nothing mattered any longer.

For now, this day, she had a sense of purpose, a sense of duty; Mother was always saying, ‘Every young girl must have a sense of duty,’ and so Barbara knew it would do no good to stand gawking at the ocean all day. Mother wouldn’t stand for it. There was much to do and only a few days to make everything right. Her babies would be home next week, all three of them in the house. A family again, after so many….

“BARBARA JEAN!” The words cracked like a whip against her neck. “You cannot have my grandchildren come home to this filth. What in God’s name will they think?”

Drawing back, head down, as was expected when Mother was speaking, Barbara chewed the dead skin at the edge of a thumbnail caked with grime, trying pathetically to shove aside her mother’s insinuations. The children loved her, clean house or not; no matter what she had…no matter what. Harry sent beautiful cards every birthday, though, of course, Barbara wouldn’t open any of them, she couldn’t; but he always sent something. Even Renny called once or twice a year, although she could only talk for a moment, and always in whispers. And James, her baby, still lived nearby, with Emma and their son; he came up whenever Barbara needed him. Her children loved her, no matter what anyone said.

Still, Barbara allowed, giving in to Mother once more, knowing she couldn’t risk making the old woman any more enraged, couldn’t suffer another crack to her spine, it would be nice if everything was perfect and neat. Knowing what she needed to do, Barbara sped away from the window and flew down the stairs, her feet leaving a trail in the sand and leaves that blew through the house on those nights when she’d been too drunk to lock the doors. Reeling through the dining room, not even glancing at the bottles in the hutch, bottles untouched for days, she kicked open the swinging kitchen door and froze at the sight of the jade green room. She had no idea where to begin, the task seemed too much for her to comprehend; there simply wasn’t time if the children were to be home next week.
A shove to the back, Yes, Mother, and an idea came to her. She slid back the pocket door to the butler’s pantry. For Barbara, the expression ‘butler’s pantry’ had always sounded too highbrow for the small, dimly lit closet lined with shelves, but Mother had dubbed it so the day she showed Barbara and Billy the house at the end of Skeleton Road, and the name stuck. Butler’s pantry.
“Honestly, Barbara. It’s only a name. But if it affords you some respect from others, then I don’t see the harm.” The voice hissed in the blackness of the pantry, drawing her inside. “It makes people look at you in the proper light.”

The proper light. For appearances sake. Doing what was expected. Mother’s words. What will people think? Barbara remembered the first time she had invited some ladies from town in for a visit. How the women flinched when she suggested they take tea in the front parlor; how terrified they were of handling her Royal Daulton cups and saucers with the exquisite golden China garden pattern. The expressions on their faces when they saw the trays of delicate cookies, too fragile to pick up, and the vases of flowers scattered about the house, the soft sounds of classical music in every room.

And Barbara recalled how she felt when every one of those women was suddenly too busy with this or that to come out to Skeleton Road for tea again; too busy to extend an invitation for her to visit their homes; too busy to look at her with anything that even resembled respect.

“Barbara!” Snap. The shelves, slick with fingerprints, grease and dirt had long since been stripped of canned goods and cereals, pasta, sauces, flour and sugar; staples for which Barbara no longer had any need; her meals, since the children left, consisted of frozen dinners, or delivery from Fort Bragg. But there! Retreating into a corner, cowering as though it was ashamed, was the one object that had dragged Barbara into this dreary place. A lone can of Ajax; a single can; yet it would be enough to get her started. It was a push, and Barbara Jean Seaton always needed a push.