I woke momentarily confused. I thought I was in an airplane. Then, I remembered I'd turned on the air conditioner, sometime around 1am, to mask the screams and thrown beer bottles from the apartment building across the empty lot outside my bedroom window.
"Sunday Morning on CBS" was mostly a large infomercial for next year's Ford car models. There was a small section on a sidewalk chalk art festival in some town called San Rafel California. They're reproducing the Sistine Chapel in chalk: professional artists, kids, passersby. Italian sausages sizzled on a grill. I felt jealous and wished I lived there. I wished they'd devoted half the air time to this fleeting segment as they had to the Ford piece, but guess they couldn't find a chalk company to pay for promotional consideration.
They did a piece on that stripper museum, out in the Mojave desert. It was supposed to be funny; Bill Geist does the funny, quirky, human interest pieces. Female sexuality is supposed to be funny, especially when it's old women, who made a living in burlesque, a "tawdry" artform. I marveled at these women: spangled, feathered and spandexed under the bright, desert sun. They smiled broadly, batted their eyes powerfully, undulated liquidly down the runway, directly over the faces of onlookers. There wasn't a super model in the bunch. None of them looked like the feminine "ideal," currently pushed to market products. When a 75 year old great grandmother and famous, old time stripper took the runway, I was dazzled by her slender, muscular legs.
It made me question my decision to retreat from my sexuality. It wasn't so much a decision, as a resignation. My teeth are broken. I can't stand the rejection of superficially-horny strangers, answering a personals ad on the 'net. That's just the men.
And FORGET women! I'm too strong and wild for women anymore; I scare the hell out of them! And I resent the snippy, backhanded passive aggression they use to impose their behavior modification on me. It's called manipulation. You'd think, after TWO women's liberation movements in this country, in the last century, alone, women would have dropped stealth tactics for open warfare. But we're still too intimidated by the totalitarianism of patriarchy to be honest. We aren't liberated; a few of us are tokens, to shut the rest of us up.
After the TV show, I turned on the radio, for "Weekend Edition" from NPR. I guess I need light, fluffy news on Sunday. I learn a lot, though. And, without a car, which I dearly miss, it helps me travel to familiar old stomping grounds, as well as places I'd never have thought of going.
As I listened to an interview with John Coltraine's kid, who's just released an album, I heard Raoul begin a racket outside.
Raoul is completely self-disabled, through excessive use of mind altering chemicals. Well, he's not COMPLETELY disabled; he manages to maintain the facade of being a (gawd help us) SURGICAL NURSE at the university hospital. But it takes large quantities of cocaine to head off to work at 8:30pm, after a 3 hr. nap, to wear off the effects of 4 hours of daily, afternoon drinking and marijuana smoking.
Raoul hates me. The very first time he became abusive to me, I put my foot down and made it clear I wanted nothing to do with him. So, he has organized other neighbors here, also chemically dependent, to torment me, to try to force me to move out. He provides them with alcohol, drugs, money and food for their assistance.
It's so bad, I took apart a segment of my fence, out by the alley, and built a gate to the empty lot next door. I rarely use my front gate. I want no contact with anybody here.
But I do sneak out, late nights or early mornings, to attach my garden hose to the faucet outside my and Raoul's gates. I have an extensive garden: in my own, narrow yard, along the outside of my fence, along the alley, in the empty lot, and in two flower beds across the alley, outside the adobe wall of my neigbhor, Rowen.
My washing machine sits on a concrete slab in my yard. It flushes out through lengths of flexible tubing I've spliced together with duct tape and baling wire, and waters the large flower bed I constructed the length of the back wall of the building I live in.
I stepped outside last night and fell over a red brick and a two foot length of 2x4, placed there by Raoul. I confiscated them, after I picked my self up off the uneven path of step stones, dirt, pebbles and weeds out there. My wrists hurt. My torso is bruised. My legs are scabbed over.
So, Raoul had to drag out his hand saw and a drill to devise something to mask the gap in his fence, inside of which he has concealed a series of paranoia-inspired locking devises which he sincerely believes only HE can unlock. When my electricity went out and the utility company damn near ripped Raoul's gate off its hinges to get to the meter box, I swiftly unlocked the entire Rupe Goldberg contraption in less than a minute. It was either that, or stay awake all night while Raoul worked, to guard his crap from the vagrants who wander onto the property, or repair the gate, myself. I mean, this guy was going to tear the gate DOWN to get to that meter!
Joe, Raoul's "student," came up as soon as the utility guy turned off all the electricity in the whole building without warning anybody. He asked how I got in, and I said I opened the gate. I explained the circumstances. But Joe questioned whether I had Raoul's permission to enter! I actually DID have Raoul's permission, as the problem persisted for several days. But Joe said, "do you REALLY?" So, I said, if he had any questions, he should refer them to the property management company, and ignored him thereafter.
Raoul's still out there. Sounds like he's building an ark. I can't see inside his yard. I have a small cosmetic mirror on the top shelf in the kitchen, pointing outside BOTH our gates, so I can see what the hell's going on out there. But he's inside his gate, making a racket.
"Singing Wire," Native America music and topics, is on the radio now. I love that show. If you haven't heard, "Indian Karz" by Kieth Sekola, you haven't heard NDN music.
Time to pee now, so I'm signing off.
I almost forgot! Today's Sunday! That means CHAT in an hour! MSNTV users, here's a great and easy to use IRC: http://homes.paulding.net/stb/tomeegirl/chat/chat4tv.shtml http://homes.paulding.net/stb/tomeegirl/chat/chat4tv.shtml
Computer users, go here: http://www.net4tv.com http://wwwlnet4tv.com and click on the "chat thing to find out about it...look for "shows."
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