America the Beautiful

by Moon Unit Zappa

Zappa dedicates to her mother and trees everywhere. Acknowledgments has her thanking a few Zappas, Diva and Gail among others, Tory and Ahmet, as well. Then under family and friends, Patton Oswalt, Doug Benson, Brian Posehn, Matt Walsh (oddly?), Beverly D’Angelo (National Lampoon's Vacation films) and Al Pacino, Tree People, Julia Sweeney, Quentin Tarantino, Jim Jarmusch, Jim Gaffigan, Justine Bateman, Matt Groening, Rob and Marisol Thomas, matchbook 20, Todd Barry.

Under ‘my healers‘ are a few people and Music. A special thank you to her writing angels for kind words along the way: Cameron Crowe, Billy Bob Thornton, k.d. lang, Alanis Morissette, and most of all infinity gratitude to her beloved real-life Otto, Paul Doucette.

America hears herself saying yes to get coffee with a complete stranger, but not really, since he’s served her hot drinks on a few occasions, so they’ve spoken. She’d get French roast and he’d add a touch of cinnamon despite management disapproval, but liked his defiance and had said so. He liked she brought her blue mug and lobbied for free refills, and thanks to her, the chalkboard sign read, refills free if you save a tree. She once saw him give someone change entirely in ones, so she agreed.

This explaining why she was sitting in her car parked at a metered parking spot an hour early to meet Otto. She didn’t know why she agreed to meet him early in the day since not being a morning person. She once broke up with a man for continually trying to wake her early in the day for all-hour sex. His name was Angie.

He claimed to be diurnal, a word he taught her which meant he was the devil and woke with the rising demon sun. Her other exes had understood morning don’t start for her until 11am at the earliest. She was the daughter of an artist. She starts checking the time and telling herself to relax, calling herself Mer, and comforting herself by excusing the early arrival being about getting a feel for the place and to get a good parking spot (the latter makes sense for certain areas of Los Angeles).

She tells herself to breathe. Then wonders what kind of a name is Otto and it was more like Odd-o since he talked so much about history and physics, light noticing itself being observed. When she’d asked what he liked doing for fun he’d said, reading, ping pong, creating an internal double of himself energetically to let off steam. Saying this before handing her his number inside a matchbook with the First Amendment typed inside the flap.

Mer starts to imagine she’s feeling ill and looks in the rearview to see if she looks sick. She tells herself to relax which reminds her of her Scottish yoga teacher has her inclined to say bagel and cream cheese in her best Sean Connery after saying, reeeLOXshh. Over the last year and a half since the Jasper Husch Incident, she’s realized she’s a nervous sort, esp when subjected to a first date in over 9 months. A year ago she wouldn’t have noticed Otto.

She hates the word date, it sounded tough and chewy, the moisture and sweetness of life was sucked from one’s bones and in a way had been, if forced to get back out there and… date. It’d be nice calling it a cloud or pudding, something bouncy and hopeful. She’s going on her first pudding in over 9 months since the Jasper Husch Incident. Sounds a lot better.

Funny, like a Nancy Drew Mystery with an illustration of a shadow of a man fleeing down a spiral staircase with a small incriminating pool of pudding. She smiles and thinks how nice Otto is. She had a pale blue dress with printed white moons on the hem and an orange shawl with pink platform shoes on this fine Wednesday. He was standing behind the counter of her favorite coffee spot, Mom and Pop Kaffeehaus, wearing too short navy blue cords, brown suspenders, and a Rainbow Brite t-shirt.

When he he’d introduced himself to her, he put out his hand over the counter and said his name, Otto Guthrie. She accidentally shaking him at the wrist. He asks her name and she says, America Throne. This, after he’d stepped back from her vigorous wrist shake and rubbed his wrist.

He doesn’t seem to recognize the famous Throne name her father having been the artist and passing away from an aneurysm at 50. He asks if she had hippie parents and she responds with a she guesses, instead of dumping her history on him which she claims this was due to having had therapy. Then he asks her out on a Friday and silence, he saying her name again and she replying with a yup as she swung her arms and pressed her lips together like she was about to get a bassoon lesson. She plays this scene over repeatedly as she sat in her car.

She considered when Otto got there he’d sit in the cafe and they’d have a deep conversation and swap family horror stories. The old her would’ve told of her stillborn baby sister Shiva Plum when she was nearly 3 and her mother didn’t smile again until her brother Spoonie was born 2 years later and her jealousy of him being the one to restore laughter to their house but took the attention as well. Or how she dropped out of school due to how much their family traveled for the successes of failures of her fahter’s art. She mentioning her father’s fame seemed to oppose the anger over his notorious but covert affairs and her mother’s bouts with depression, wanting his attention and also her own life, remaining unfulfilled pursuing any achievements on her own.

This naturally leads Mer to mention the difficulty being ‘hippie royalty‘ and attempting to discover, one’s own identity in the certifiable shadow of a self-made ‘genius‘. The complex emotions growing up the daughter of an artist while living in a fishbowl, as example, a particular incident from her mother’s photography phase. To Mer, her mother’s artistic statement was around taking photos only when people were miserable and didn’t want their picture taken, demonstrated by one of Mer taken when she was 7, standing shirtless in underwear in their kitchen holding a fabric dolly Spoonie had drawn on with a fake-blueberry scented permanent Magic Marker. A few moments before the picture and continuing to snap away, Mer begged her to give Spoonie up for adoption as punishment for his heinous crime.

In Mer’s fury to be taken seriously, she slammed her hand down on the kitchen counter and had accidentally grazed a pool of leftover salsa. In the picture, she’s holding her favorite dolly by a limp leg, rubbing swollen eyes with chili pepper fingers and screaming. Spoonie went unpunished, and she was scolded for even daring to dream Spoonie be given up for adoption. Her only consolation came a few days later: After her father saw the finished photo of Mer, her father was so entranced with the purity of her pain and discomfort, he worked several days without sleep, eating or spending time with them to capture Mer in an oil portrait.

He entitled the piece Pure for a show of the same name. Despite it becoming quite popular and her father uncaring of reviews, one of his only works to win him international acclaim. Mer had gone to the show, her portrait between a picture of a woman at the height of orgasm called Ecstasy and a matador at the moment just before plunging the death blow dagger into a bull. For a few wonderful moments her father paraded her around in his shoulders in her Spanish señorita red dress.

The painting had sold for $30k, shocking for the time, and so in celebration the family slept in a fancy hotel room and she got to order anything she wanted from room service. Since she was the inspiration, her father gifted her a white rabbit fur coat and the next day, their photo was in the newspaper, taken from the show when she was on her father’s shoulders. This memory would lead to her confession about being a late bloomer, which is polite for poverty-stricken trust funder, which is polite for loser. Then, without warning, she’d stop stirring the sugar at the bottom of her too bitter espresso, and become very still, her eyes drifting past him, and bravely describing seeing her father die quiet suddenly in the arms of another woman who wasn’t her mother.

Mer imagines Otto’s reaction ranging from understanding as he brushes her tear-soaked hair from her face or like Jasper who freaked out and bolted because she’s so emotional and leaving her to pay for his uneaten sandwich. Mer looks for a Chiclet in her bag or anything to do or chew to settle her stomach and building nausea. Then she starts spiraling into paranoid suppositions of what if Otto is her future husband or not and only someone passing through, a fling or something awful in between. Would she be able to tell or is everything a choice, a science experiment?

A cosmic consequence based on random accidents she’s mistakenly labelled Collecting Data. What if she has to go on a hundred or 300 more puddings before ending up alone. They say if one hasn’t found someone by the time graduating high school one will be in a sort of loveless inferno until 40s and have to settle. No soulmate for her, America Throne.

Bad America, bad. Mer tries to breathe deep and make her thoughts stop this deep dive, but it doesn’t work. The thoughts move to possibly dating a murderer, she trying the deep breathing and rationalizing it was fear talking. She debates calling him to cancel, but realizes she didn’t have his number, she thinking of leaving, and then seeing him arrive and wonder what kind of loser shows up to a date an hour early.

She scrunches lower in her seat and sees he looks handsome in his jeans and bandanna around his head outfit. He chooses a table outside after going in to speak with a person inside. She watches him sit, hit his knees, stand, pull back his chair and hit the customer’s chair behind him, apologizes, sit down again and slide forward and hitting the table with his legs again. She’s still thinking of driving away when she sees he has a big, fat, orangy-pink-straight-from-somebody’s-real-garden type rose, and decides to stay.

America next has a nightmare ranging from her being crowned Miss America in a dress made of clown noses and people in the audience dressed like nurses including her mother and brother, Jasper also there, sneaking out, she knowing he gave her a fatal disease he wanted them both to die from, separately. She tries running after him, but then a bundle is in her arms and turns into a baby knowing its her dead sister come back to life. She’s so happy, she leans in to kiss her but she starts turning blue. She looks for help but no ones there and realizes it’s night and and she’s in a dense forest and she’s lost.

She starts crying and her tears turn to rose petals, she then in an industrial kitchen decorating the baby’s coffin with icing instead of paint, writing ‘Bugs and Fishes‘ in pink along the edges where the hinges are. Just then the baby’s eyes blink open and her mouth forms a perfect ‘O‘ like she’ll speak. She coos in an old croney voice, don’t be afraid. Mer wakes on her back, sweaty and scared, hands clenched at her chest, gripping her nightgown.

She hears an owl outside and fixes her eyes to the ceiling and listens to her heartbeat pounding. She catches her breath and recognizes their new place. It was their 3rd night there and in the morning Jasper would fly back to San Francisco and finish one last illustration jub for another internet billionaire, pack up his painting studio, cat, clothes, and furniture, along with everything else he owned, and hand the keys and lease over to his deadbeat friend, in exchange for helping loading the rented moving truck. Then Jasper would drive back down to make L.A. (ad her) home once and for all.

She turns over to see Jasper sleeping and wonders why she didn’t have a good dream like one where she’s a long distance runner. She loved those kinds. They’re better than flying dreams to her, sometimes she crosses a finish line and Jasper’s there to greet her or sometimes her father in skintight snakeskin pants, when he was happiest. It was something about an even, measured pace and knowing she had the stamina in body, mind, and spirit to continue going forever.

She curls into a crescent to spoon Jasper and says to hum she had a bad dream, nuzzling into his ear. He response she try falling back to sleep and she says she can’t, she smelling his shoulders but exhaling away from him because he hated when she breathed on his naked back. She asks, Baby, is he sleeping and he groans, suggesting she get a drink of water, it worked in the movies. Jasper amazed Mer since he could be dead asleep and still manage to say something clever.

She gets up and pulls on her favorite wool sweater and goes to the kitchen, making her way through boxes and heard the dog Tulie (Tallulah) making licking noises in her crate, comforting her and making her feel safe. She sets up making some chamomile, sitting on a rug as the water boiled. When Mer had found the house she immediately made the down payment to secure it, knowing Jasper and she could work out her paying the 1st and last payments as well, so he could get next months rent and then pay her back the rest when he had his upcoming art show, then after this they’d be 50/50. They’d been together a year and a half and hadn’t planned to move in together so quick, but the place was too good not to get.

She admits pushing Jasper a tad since whilst being a one bedroom, he’d be near the major galleries and would have the garage as his studio. Mer was already imagining how they’ll soon probably be married, since this is what comes after living together, but she not exactly thrilled by the idea of marrying a painter like her mother, but at least knew the life. She was imagining having 2 kids and buying a house together when the teapot started to whistle, she imagining their boy and girl’s features, then turning off the heat before it cried a loud whistle wail. After making her tea she sits back down cross-legged and sips, pressing the warm mug to her cheek after.

Mer looks up at what she calls her God Wall, a portable altar on framed cork-board in the breakfast nook with magazine tear-outs and postcards she’d collected over years, images of lovers, pioneers, poets, postwar survivors on street corners, one postcard she by far favored of an old-fashioned classroom in 1880s with children’s names written in thoughtful cursive on the blackboard. She thinks she liked it because of how people always having made a big deal of her name being America. She thought of how it’d be light soon and smelling the jasmine wafting from outside through a window screen. She listened to the birds and thought about their new home happily.

She then returns to bed, laying down and pressing her hands together thanking God for being herself and grateful for her family and Jasper and dog. She wondered what it is about being truly loved making one feel invincible to the outside world. She whispers again to Jasper to see if he was awake, and when she gets a response of hmm? She responds goodnight, and he tells her to go to sleep Guava before rolling over and away from her onto his ‘perfect hairless belly‘, she loving when he called her by her pet name.

She rolls onto her back and closes her eyes, then hears what sounds like a cat being eaten alive by an owl or coyote, she opening her eyes and turning over toward Jasper saying, Jas? He responding with what, and she again saying she can’t sleep and he suggesting of thinking of something good, before turning on his side, so she scooting toward his back and deciding to think of him for awhile, since he’s something good. On their first date they’d gone to see the giant sequoias and instead of kissing her, they lay on their back and pressed the crowns of their heads together under a canopy of trees. She felt so happy to be small, insignificant beside the trees, they insignificant together.

She’s reminded of a memory when she was a child with her father and she had tangled hair and he trying to comb it loose with baby oil and his last resort being to cut the tangles loose, she having been touching Jasper’s dreads. She wanted to say she loved him and have him say it back, but he was gone, so she turned over and thought of the little blue face telling her not to be afraid, wondering, afraid of what, before falling into a dreamless sleep. She next awoke at a little after 7am with probing fingers trying to harden her nipples, and though they were unbelievably in love, it made her mad for like, 8 reasons. For one she didn’t enjoy how he was poking at them, making her feel like a pet store kitten with an eye infection being poked at by someone with no intention of buying her.

For another, he could’ve let her sleep for at least another 45 minutes before driving him to the airport, since he didn’t drive. He knew she hadn’t slept well and she also didn’t like morning sex. Also, who wakes someone wearing a nightgown and big granny-style undies to have sex? Esp when she was almost 30 and still sponging off her family’s melting glacier fortune and forced to audition for a yeast infection ointment radio spot to earn money.

Esp since she was 7-12 lbs overweight. Even at 29 and born to a genius she was yet unable to pick a career. She had no choice but to accept her mother’s offering of 2k/mo. She’d already bounced from yoga studio receptionist to actress to P.A. to gallery slave to voice-overs.

Her mother dubbed her a late bloomer and swore it didn’t bother her to wait for her to make her fortune. Whilst also never expressing a desire for repayment she felt the unspoken pressure to make a gazillion dollars to pay it all back. Voice-overs seemed to Mer to be a good compromise, potential of making at least 750 a pop for standing around in a small padded recording booth trying to sound like a baby, a chain-smoking phone sex operator, or mall-obessed helium hottie. Plus no make-up requested and one can remain completely anonymous.

It made her mad and glad she was a poverty-level trust funder, happy to be able to lean on her family for support yet able to do little else than pay rent and bills. Didn’t her almost live-in boyfriend understand the sleep he was poking into probably contained vital information which would inform the rest of her natural eartly life as to her actual PURPOSE? Did he think she wanted to be the spokesperson for itchy tweeters? On top of everything else, she had to pee like a racehorse!

So even though she wasn’t in the mood whatsoever, she let him continue his advances. One does this when in love. Her back-up plan was knowing the alarm would go off any minute putting a finish to the a.m. frolicking since Jasper couldn’t miss his flight if he was to make his fancy magazine illustration deadline. Jas always enjoyed the challenge of a last-minute big money request, liking the pressure, crazy hours, new contacts and free exposure.

While he poked at her nipples like a handyman testing a new doorbell, she checked her glands both fearing and hoping for a sore throat. Normal, she couldn’t bear the thought of selling the nation crotch cream. Jasper always said it was better to do something and make some money than to do nothing and make none. Still, what’d he know about the struggle for career identity, he’d known he wanted to be a painter since before he was Da Vinci in another lifetime, and like her father, didn’t care if he made, $5 or $500 so long as he was doing what he loved.

Jas rolled on top of her spreading her legs with his own, she reaching in a drawer for her diaphragm, putting gel on it and they having awkward sex, for her since none of this was helping her need to pee. By 7:29 he abruptly pulled her legs over he head and came, screaming he didn’t want to have a baby, this when she accidentally kicked him in the face. She apologizes and wriggles from under him saying she’d get him a cool towel. She runs into the bathroom, turns the cold water on and relieves herself, she still too shy to discuss bodily functions with him after almost a year and a half, including hearing her pee.

He asks if she’s bringing him a towel, and she pretends not to hear, he saying she wasn’t fooling him in there as she heard him comping around and sipping his suitcase. In the bedroom she sees him piling clothes into a small brown tattered suitcase, he already back in his boxers. She snuck up and hugged him from behind and she asks why he’s packing? Passing her hand seductively over his deflated crotch.

He replies he’d need some of this stuff this week, pulling away and making his way to a chair with his clothes and putting them on. She tells him to leave them, but he tells her he’ll need them since he’ll be up there for a week when he’d said a few days before. She says, he hadn’t told her and he replies he’s telling her now, since he’d gotten an extension on the job and he had to get his cats to the vest as it was on Tuesday. So she showers, lets the dog out to potty and brushes her teeth, then hearing the Ganesha alarm clock belt its Om Namah Shivayah, she calls Jas before getting her purse, and walking outside and locking the door, he waiting for her in the car.

Leaving with more than enough time didn’t seem to make a difference since she still hit traffic making up time on a surface street. He hadn’t said much as he looked out the window, she giving his fingers a squeeze and his response being he’s going to miss his flight, she replying he’ll be fine and speeding up as a yellow was turning to red, she unconsciously popping an old mix tape he’d made for her when they first met. He looked at her then looked away. Traffic moved more slowly as they reached the tiny Burbank airport, she unable to wait with him since she had to get to Culver city 15 minutes ago and was hoping the session would run over, feeling disgusted with herself.

As she pulled into the small white alone, she kissed Jasper more on his ear than his cheek as he turned toward the seat lever to get his bag from the back, she saying oops and he apologizing. Even in a hurry moving slowly as he got his ticket out, cooing she had to go and he shooting her a sideways look as he gathered his belongings. She apologizes for this morning as she watches an airport policeman signal to get moving, she saying she’s just really stressed right now. He replies he knew and they stared at each other for some seconds.

She says she loved him, Guava as she geared up to merge left, he replying him too, closing the door. She pulls away and glances back, he standing there looking like a disheveled punk rock college professor, she waving wildly like a maniac and staring at him through her rearview, he already having turned to walk inside. When the first side of the mix tape finished she took it out to hear on the radio a massive forest in Bali had a forest fire wiping out a batch of patchouli trees, she thinking good riddance hating the smell of patchouli. Even though she sped she was still nearly an hour late, one upside was finding a parking spot in the front, her stomach growling.

She flew up the staircase since the elevator didn’t work and apologized to an angry black-haired smoker, she nicknamed Captain Issues since she berated her for being late. She has Mer follow her down a dingy corridor to an all-beige room with ratty couch and mic stand and music stand with the pitiful copy highlighted in orange. She asks if Mer’s ready, she not even having time to put her purse down, the woman already with headphone’s on and her finger on the record button. Mer says she guesses and drops her bag to the floor, she’s told to slate her name.

She leans into the mic and says her name. The woman throws her headphones back and says please don’t lean in, and returned them to her ears. She requests she slate her name again and start. Mer complies and they proceed to her first take.

When she completes the lines, the lady gives her some notes for the 2nd take, including sounding sexy. After the 2nd take, she’s told they’ll let her know. When she got back outside and blinded by the sun her tummy growled again, so looks around and sees The Greazy Spoon where she decides to order their current special of a potato deluxe with all the fixins’. What she got was a small microwaved potato split in the middle with margarine, and ‘healthy‘ parboiled frozen stir-fry vegetables, a side of plain non-fat yogurt, instead of sour cream and some freeze dried chives.

She was going to send it back, but instead sees a homeless man outside so she decides to pay her check, wanting to bequeath the mess on him as he rummaged through trash, she knocking at the window to attempt at getting his attention, but he moves on before the waitress can figure out how the over-blown computer system worked. Mer returns home with the plan to unpack some boxes. When she gets back she asks Tallulah if there were messages, looking at the answering machine, then when she saw there wasn’t, she goes to the bedroom to make the bed, Tulie following and licking her foot. Mer flops on the unmade bed and Tulie whimpered, Mer replying, up!

Giving permission to cuddle with her, the smell of Jas on the sheets making her generous. She holds them to her nose. She shares how the first time they’d made love, it was in his bed and he hadn’t washed the sheets for weeks. Their start stretching her perception what with feeling creepy, like an animal, but craving him, her thoughts then going to where he’d put his stuff when he got back, and deciding to finish unpacking after a cup of tea.

When she gets to the kitchen she sees a fax in the breakfast nook/office/library. She watches as the fax prints and she freezes, what follows is a drawn out description of what it would look like if she were in a movie before sharing what it was, since the movie dramatic camera swooping descriptions were to conclude with the fax reading. It saying in a flowery metaphor, which is mostly a quote regarding his point, loss is natural, souls come together not to remain together but to grow and move on. There’s no separation though it appears so in the physical.

In reality it’s more like simply having entered another room. He concludes, please don’t call him, he’s entered another room. Love always, idiot’s name. (To be fair she isn’t better) The movie reaction is the typical where close-up of girl’s face then in slo-mo the cup drops and her heartbeat would be louder than thunder.

The camera would move back back back like the souls leaving the body and the girl is shown in a silent anguished scream, arms outstretched like Jesus. Mer doesn’t follow his request and calls him, but he surprisingly picks up (before call screening). The call doesn’t yield much other than to know he knew they didn’t work but she wanted to try and make it work and so he got his few fucks in and fucked off. He says they just didn’t get along, which most of the rest of the conversation he mentions, which isn’t much, could have been dealt with sooner.

By the end of their call he tells her again not to call him and this time she wants chocolate, pushing the dog away from her. She goes to a 7-Eleven and picks out an assortment of chocolate bars. The Indian cashier tells her she needs to purchase fiviteen dollar minimum. Mer thought he meant 50, so she starts putting bunches of bars on the counter, the cashier saying she only had 37.18, she doesn’t care, and insists using her card anyways, he asking any relation, she confused and he clarifying the famous important painterwriter.

She says she’s the daughter, her description of his Indian caricature continuing as he tells her he’d become a painterwriter, poet because of her father. The man continues to rattle off particular accomplishments he followed, Mer feeling like it was a reverse stick-up, she backing up with arms raised, pleading with her eyes to leave her alone. As he continued to share, when he paused, she wanted to ask for her goodies, but he bursts into tears, then he stops as quickly as he starts, he asking about her brother Spoon who does music. Mer stumbles for words and he questions what she’s up to, he last reading somewhere she was trying acting.

Mer tries a snotty response by replying, voice-overs actually, because she liked her privacy. Once the man alludes to her growing up must’ve been a trip, taking a mimed hit from a joint, she replies her father hadn’t done drugs, but his continued disbelieve making her mad. She has a moment thinking of over-sharing sexual situations her father created in the home with both women and men, but instead, smiles and asks for her receipt. Her complying and bidding her farewell.

She half runs half limps to her car like a bad guy with a leaking bloody bullet wound, the fax laying crumpled on the empty passenger seat. She uncrumples it with chocolate fingers and rereads it. Worse the 2nd go around. She starts driving and plans to go straight to Jasper’s house as Tori Amos blasts on the cd player.

She goes to her new home first to check to see if he left a message, and ‘come to his senses‘. It’d save her the trip. As she’s thinking of how no one had a spare key to care for Tulie, she misses her turn and makes an illegal U-turn, crosses an island and 5 lanes of traffic, then seeing cherries. A doughy police officer is next asking if she can hear him, tapping her window.

Then asks if she can tell him what happened. She was parked by a liquor store, she speaks in short description, handing the officer her license, registration and fax letter she had wadded in her hand, staring into space. He walks to his patrol car and reads the letter, when he returns he says he still has to ticket her, then when he hands her license back he asks, any relation as tears shoot out of her eyes. She says, cocksuckingfaggotasspieceofshit, and nods, he replying things will look different in the morning and to take it easy.

She continues grieving when she gets back, like it was her job. Then she thinks about how they were supposed to be starting their lives together but her adorable little cottage now had the nickname San Quentin as she locked herself in. (Definitely not the first celeb to make this claim to their beautiful homes) She lets’s Tulie in her bed and burrows in Jasper’s smell as she claims she won’t take him back or call him again. Mer’s mother calls at a bit after 6am.

Her mother’s voice on the answering machine blasted, since Mer had turned it up in case Jas called. Her mother shrills of calling to let her know her bro was having a concert in the evening. Mer thinks, she means gig, as she also gets annoyed by her mother’s way of greeting her was calling herself by her first name, Camilla, which she’d done with she and her bro since her early 20s to give the guise they’re all good pals…who obeyed her. Her mother rambles on until the machine cuts her off talking about a blue bird having landed on the railing then reminded of a memory to describe the shade of blue it was referencing Mer’s aunt and grandmother at the Magic Castle.

A few minutes later her mother continues back on the machine acting like she’d picked up the phone, then saying she thought she’d heard her pick up and repeating her message of it being Camilla and her brother having a concert at The Butterfly Club. She then ending the call with love you, bye bye. Mer corrects her in her head again of it being The Dragonfly, Mother. Her mother leaves a 3rd message thinking Mer had tried to call her and then provides more details about the show and if Mer has a guest list the latest time to let her know and also how she poke to an agent who said he’d help Mer out as a favor to her mother, she picking up the phone and loudly saying Mother!, she didn’t need new management having gone on 72 auditions, she lying, but her Mother had hung up.

Then the answering machine goes on again and she says to bring Jasper, Mer then yelling into the phone, Mother, she is asleep!, her mother replying with how could she be asleep if she’s talking on the phone. What proceeds is a circular conversation of Mer getting annoyed to shouting mentioning the break up and her mother disregarding why Mer would even be upset. Before saying goodbye again and after Mer says to not bring Jasper up ever again, her mother does twice more in case someone changes his mind. Mer calls her immediately back so she can ask why she’d hung up on her, Camilla denying she had since she’d said goodbye and the conversation seemed to be done, since Mer hadn’t said anything and so then Mer apologizes instead and Camilla reminds her of when she needed the guest list and says love you and hangs up again, Mer not having a chance to respond but says love you to the dead line.

Mer lays back down thinking about how she can afford her new place without her own money or an actual job and what she even wanted to do for a living and what’s so great about living anyway. When Jasper ‘loved‘ her in her old house he left her poems everywhere he knew she’d look, along with all the making love, fucking, experimenting sexually and glad she didn’t let him shit between her legs, which he’d suggested and she thinking how he’d found a way to shit on her anyways. She hears the machine clicking and immediately thinks it’s Jas so picks up desperately only to hear Spoonie asking sleepily if she had a plunger. Camilla wanted to know, Spoonie still living at home.

They also have a circular conversation about when they need her guest list and making sure she’s coming, then Spoonie sharing Camilla was cleaning again which meant she was upset, the 2 seeing this as children. She asks if he knew what it was about but he’d have to investigate and let her know. She at the end agrees to come and they hang up. She is successfully completely roused when a neighbor starts up a saw and so this spurs her into finally breaking and calling Jasper since everyone was bugging her why should he sleep peacefully.

His machine picks up and she pulls a hey baby it’s her is he around? Is he a square? Ok call her when he gets in. Love you. She hangs up felling better she’d made contact. What proceeds in the downward slope of continuing to call the machine, her next message telling him of Spoonie’s show and her mother needing to know by 4. She calls again going heavy on the baby’s and by the end getting mad.

She then leaves more messages about feeling left in the lurch with a place she couldn’t afford and how she wished she’d grown up like a bottom-feeder like him and her parents instead of a C-level celeb. The last message she keeps short enough to not be cut off by the machine she apologizing about the previous messages and wanted to work this out still, ending with I love you. She lays down and feels like she’d been beaten by a pillowcase filled with a cement skyscraper and called him right back, this time it ringing and continuing so hanging up. She lays still and congratulates herself because she, unlike Jas can commit to things like laying down, a few minutes later needing to pee, so gets up, gets sidetracked by picking blackheads on her nose, tells herself to stop after 20 minutes, all she had to do was make it through the next 72 hours, then peed.

On her way back to her bedroom she’s sidetracked by a hummingbird hovering near her window sucking nectar from a hibiscus. Hummingbirds representing joy in Indian folklore, it pausing by her window holding itself perfectly still and pooped a 3rd of its size. She thinking, this is so her life. At around dusk, after ordering food, she climbed back in bed and passed out, waking up in the middle of her brother’s 2nd encore feeling jet-lagged and guilty for missing his show, she then leaping out of bed to see 8 messages.

Spoonie called to inform she and Sadie were on the guest list +1. Her mother calls 3x, first to see if she had names, then if she wanted to drive with her, then to see if she left. The other calls from Sadie saying she was worried about her, sorry to miss her calls and thought she knew she was gone all weekend. She calls back from a payphone saying she wasn’t on the guest list and where was she.

She calls again to say she’d gotten in anyway and now she was home and she loved her and was worried about her and whatever she did not to watch TV, promise to call her if it ever gets this bad. Mer watches TV and is blasting the people who paid for timeslots when her phone rings, she hoping it’s Jas and it’s only Sadie. They’d become fast friends 9 years earlier when taking the same painting class and crushing on the teacher. She shared a lemon poppy seed muffin with her and she tells her she has black things in her teeth.

She trusted her instantly. She hated when she repeated her name though, like a scratchy cat meow, Mer? Mer? Mer? Mer? She didn’t pick up the phone. Mer had taken the class to impress her father.

They both ended up dropping out of the class. After an assistant where they had to choose a part of a garden to paint and each section had plants from a particular country, the 2 choosing England, they both ended up getting notes from the instructor, but when they found out he was gay, they dropped out. Sadie hangs up after calling her and Tallulah’s names, then requesting she have her owner call her. Sadie calls back and wonders if she’s listening to her and promise to not watch TV, she ending with please call her.

Meanwhile Mer is thinking of where Jasper could be and thinking, probably Benny’s place. A jazz musician with a dyed blond beard, who she thought was secretly in love with Jasper which he denied endlessly. She continues watching TV and infomercials for useless shit, she thinking how much enjoyment she had on her own without Jasper, and the power she had by not calling him to tell him about the useless product he’d have enjoyed seeing. She was actually proud of Jasper for listening to his inner voice, which was the hardest thing in the world, but she didn’t know why his inner voice told him to break up with her, when hers insisted they should have a batch of kids asap.

The phone rang again, and after she thinks, bless Sadie’s heart, she turns the ringer and machine volume off, and continues watching TV. Then she starts her period, taking her undies off and kicking them over to a laundry pile she’d started in the living room and Talullah had made into a nest for herself. Mer snaps, off!, as she got a kitchen rag to give herself a quick wipe down. She calls Jasper again and he picks up, they having a bad exchange where she’s still trying to get back together with him and telling him she was probably being bitchy since she just got her period.

She asks why he’s crying after he reminds her how she’d sent about a thousand evil messages lately and he’d been answering her coldly when she said she loved him so much. She asks if he’s fucking someone and she apologizes, saying she didn’t understand why he’s doing this and to please still love her. After continuing with the back and forth she calling him an asshole and she being abusive. She asks if he’s gay and then after he tells her this is too painful for him and one day sometime they can be friends, this set her off and says is he a fucking crack smoker?

She isn’t his friend, she’s his GIRLFRIEND! She devolves more about getting the house and he saying she’d never given him a chance to tell her not to, and she saying she’ll be open to experimenting sexually if he wanted, tonight even (despite being on the rag, literally, and maybe forgot or doesn’t care since she already showed she’ll be uncomfortable for ‘love‘), and he tells her he has to go after she asks if he’s still there, he staying silent so she saying fuck him, he’ll need a fucking restraining order mister, because this thing ain’t over. She slams the phone down and thinks about how she’d been abandoned by Jasper like her dad had abandoned her in increments a million times over, she not only mad at Jasper but her dad too, and felt abandoned by all of them. As she watches the news she sees a pilot with a wedding ring on and hits redial on her phone.

He let it go to the machine. She called around 800 more times only getting his machine. Her calls ranged from manic to dangerously calm, and kept redialing until the machine didn’t pick up anymore. She thinks he must’ve unplugged the phone, then wondered if she was going crazy.

She goes into the bedroom and flung herself on the bed, reminding herself of his bad qualities, but her brain telling her to stop when she asks what’s so good about him and she replying, she just loves him, OK? Then the doorbell rang and she hears Sadie say she can hear her TV so, open up. Mer tiptoes back into the living room, and quietly slides the phone a safe distance away; evidence. Then she goes to the front door, Tulie following with tail wagging.

She opens the peephole and Sadie cocks her eyebrow, Mer then opening the door. She greets Sadie as the sun blinds her. Sadie replies she looks like shit, Mer replying she knew, bowing her head. Sadie moves forward so Mer’s head lands on her shoulder, stroking her hair.

She lets her head stay there as she soaks her seater with tears. When Mer backs up, Sadie asks, how her transitioning’s going, walking in, putting her purse down and evaluating the state of the place, first turning the TV off, then getting a box with odds and ends and junk in it, Mer sharing the list, and dumps it out before heading for a fitted sheet Mer was using as a curtain, and opening a window to let more light in, Mer acting like a vampire as Sadie says it smelled like death and needed to air out. She next goes to her bedroom to get Jasper’s left clothes. Mer is windmilling her arms and asking what she’s doing, Sadie explaining she’s redecorating and helping her find the will to live.

Sadie reminds her of the rules, and number 1 was to throw away everything reminding her of him. 2, throw away clothes she wouldn’t want him to see her in. 3, do something new every day, something she hasn’t done before. She suggests washing her hair, and number 4, NO TV!

If they must, only cinema. She suggests pretending her life is a movie and recast, and what she needed is a nice rebound screw with a new leading man. Mer responds, she’s disgusting, she know this? Sadie maintains, because she tells her the truth?

She needs a great orgasm from a new guy or an O and no guy. Either way this called for screaming O’s. Mer glares and says what she needed was Jasper back. Sadie’s response is to rationalize with what Jasper’s ‘Big 3‘ astrology signs are, and Mer knew it was only a matter of time.

Sadie turns to her bulletin board and Mer flips off her back, as she took off Jasper’s pics, and throwing them in the box. Mer protests with whoas, and Sadie replies, trust her on this, they’re going to have a nice funeral for him. She won’t stand by and watch him suck the life force out of her. From now on this box is a coffin.

Mer still tries to stop her and rushes forward to try prying the photos from her fingers. Sadie fights back hard, guarding them and says she never thought he was right for her anyway. Too passive. Screw him. Mer steps back and asks what she meant. Sadie continues how it wasn’t like anyone liked him, her family put up with him because she was in love.

She puts up with this kind of bullshit from someone wonderful, Ben Affleck maybe, not Jasper Husch. She places the photos in the box and goes to the kitchen, Mer following, hearing Tulie’s little nails trailing behind her. Mer is protesting, and Sadie, says, the truth hurts, holding a little teacup Jasper had hand-painted for her birthday (when he still cared), Sadie continuing, but don’t kill the messenger, dropping it in the box. Mer again protests, saying, not the cup, and collapsing dramatically in a heap.

Tulie licks her hair and she pushes her away, she nudging her stinky chew toy near her, Mer sitting up, and thinking, why God, her? Sadie mentions at least he lives in a different city, and she can make a clean break. Mer states the ‘other city‘ was her salvation from this hellhole. THAT city is real life to this city’s illusions and lies.

Mer stands and follows her around like a basketball safety. Sadie asks, then why hadn’t she moved there? Mer stammers the excuse of her work here! Sadie looks at her which bored straight to her core and they both knew she could do voice-overs anywhere.

So maybe she was right and she fucked it all up and maybe Jasper wasn’t the one scared of commitment, maybe she was. She didn’t know how long she was quiet, next telling her wearily to, just get out. Sadie makes a face, about to say something and changes her mind, instead turning and walking to the living room to collect her purse. Mer apologizes and Sadie accepts pretending to look interested in her car keys, she saying maybe she’s being too rough, but she hated seeing her like this, what everyone sees.

He’s a fucking loser, Mer. Then covers her bases and says, of course if they get back together again, she fucking loves the guy. Mer manages a small smile, Sadie taking a tiny step toward her and says to promise her, if she can, whatever she does, she doesn’t call him. Let him come to her.

Mer looks at the floor and notices a knot looking like a woman screaming. Mer says, ok, Sadie asking if she promises, Mer looking up and promising. Sadie goes on about how Mer will feel proud if she doesn’t call, if she gives in, she’ll feel like shit and he’ll be the winner and he doesn’t get to be the winner, so they have a deal, she running to her and hugging her. Then she tells her she has to get back to work but will check on her when she gets a free minute.

She giggles and shares she was supposed to be on a run for paint thinner. She takes a small wrapped parcel from her bag and tossed it on her couch, giving a mischievous smile as she asks, did she mention how happy she was they’re both single together? She jumping up and down. Mer reminds her, Sadie, uh, hello, painful break up alert! Sadie replies, she knew but whenever she was ready to hit the town, say the word.

She hugs her again and they hear a wet thud, looking down and seeing Mer’s homemade pad having reached its critical mass and lay bloody side up on the floor, Sadie asking what the hell is that? Tulie coming over to sniff, and the 2 bursting into hysterics, Sadie shrieking no!, gleefully and Mer snapping, off!, still laughing, but Tulie picking it up and trying to make a break for it. Mer grabs her by the collar and she drops it, Sadie kicking it with her foot and it flying under the sofa. They erupt again and Sadie’s brushing tears away as she helps move the couch and Mer put it in the trash.

Sadie relates the moment to a movie, Happiness, she air kissing Mer on both cheeks and telling her she had to go and try and stay cinematic, then she was gone, the rainbow after a hard rain. Mer seemingly to forget what she’d already done is optimistic and thinks, she can do it with Sadie’s help, the new plan being to make him come to her. He’d have to sweat out her not calling him. She climbs back in bed.

Next is her leaving a short message, Jasper, it’s her, is he there? No? Ok, she loves him. For a moment she berates herself for being weak, but only allowed herself to feel awful for a few minutes. Instead she reminds herself to stay cinematic about all of this and decided, cinematically speaking, she’s been through the equivalent of a terrible car wreck and gone through the windshield and was now hospitalized in critical condition, and if in her dementia, she cried out for her dead husband, so be it. The package Sadie had left was a book titled, How to Get Your Mate to Marry You or Move On.

Mer sighs dramatically before flipping to the 3 bookmarked pages’ worth of adventures she had planned for them over the next 3 months to keep her mind off Jasper Husch, super-villain. The list of activities ambitiously included white-water river rafting, karaoke, tap dance lessons, horseback riding, a cooking course in Italy, a painting course in Spain, an archaeological dig in Israel, mini golf, go-carting, therapy and yoga. Ick. Sadie inscribed, this book is her BIBLE! Love, Sadiepop.

Mer reads Ch 1 from the Dr. Karl Sage, stating if the person wanting to make positive change to repair the broken bonds and restore The Love Within™️ can’t show 3 simple days of restraint, like not calling long enough to Let Love Lick Its Wounds™️, then the fractured relationship is indeed irreparably doomed. Mer continues reading, and sees his program a one-two punch: Out With The Old And In With The You™️ being on the strictest watch for 90 days, Mer wondering, can she give Jasper Husch up for 90 days? No problem. In addition, do something always wanting to do One And For You™️, and for both people’s sakes, have fun because a happier you means a better weeeeee!

Mer continues to Ch 2 of The Book, stating there needed to be a masculine giver, and feminine receiver or both parties had to remain androgynous in order to ensure Lasting Love™️. The FemRe was supposed to respect her mates ideas and wait for the MasGi to cherish her feelings. It made no difference if the receiver was male or female but no relationship would work if there’s both. Mer thought she’d been the MaGi and FeRi, and if she’d found the book sooner they’d be sending out applications to preschools.

She’d know if the relationship were salvageable in 9 short weeks. Mer thought it’d be perfect since Jasper wouldn’t be able to resist her birthday which landed within the 9 week window, it hear 8 ½ weeks. She reminds herself to make no overtures of any kind and wait for Jasper to come to her. Ok, can do.

When Mer read the testimonials it gave her more confidence since ‘literally dozens‘ of the RMs™️ (retrained males) actually proposed within the first 37 days when they felt their female counterpart retreat. Ah, but would she say yes? Maybe yes, maybe no. Maybe yes.

She let out a squeal. All she had to do was get through the next 8 weeks about 4 thousand complete listens to an Alanis Morissette album plus sleeping in late would pretty much do the trick. In some rare but extreme cases, Dr. Karl recommended total abstinence for The Wounded Heart™️ in the form of lengthy silent retreats to totally incinerate those feelings and patterns which magnetize only pain. Mer shudders thinking about all the losers who had it that bad.

Mer says aloud, that’ll never be her. Then, without hesitation, she got up and ran to the bathroom to look at herself in the mirror, to look herself in the eye and made a promise to herself: America Ludmilla Odin Throne, she’ll get Jasper Husch back come hell or high water, even if it means having the discipline not to call him. She’ll find the strength to have zero contact with him at all costs. She got goosebumps, feeling like a spy on a secret, important mission to save the world.

She felt like she had a purpose, then kisses the mirror, spotted and dealt with a blackhead she’d missed, and climbs back in bed. What follows is Mer calling. Again. Jasper says, he asked her not to call him and Mer replies, she knows, she knows, she just called to say she won’t be calling him anymore, well at least not for awhile.

Jasper asks, she’s calling to tell him she isn’t going to call him? Mer replies, well, uh, yes, when he puts it that way… she just…she just didn’t want him to think she’s abandoning him or anything because she’s not. It’s just something she needed to do. For her. Jas says, ok. Mer says, she needs to disappear for awhile, to take care of herself and also thought he might want to get an extremely helpful book called…well, it’s kind of got a cheesy title, something like Getting Love or Moving On or something by this guy Dr Karl Sage…Anyway, never mind, but, yunno, it’s pretty helpful…

Jasper replies, well, good, thanks. Mer says, so how is he. Jasper replies, he’s gotta go. Mer replies, yeah, well, ok, her, too. Well, take care of himself.

Jasper says, yeah, her too. She says, well, bye and slams the phone down so hard Tulie jumped. She sinks under the blankets covered her eyes with The Book and decides to sleep it all off like a bad dream, but not 10 minutes later her mother stops by out of the blue ‘just to say hello as she was nowhere near her neighborhood!‘ She let her in and retreated to her feathery cocoon.

Mer asks what the hell is that stuff, referring to some blotches of pink cream all over her face. Camilla answers, calamine mixed with calendula and aloe. Camphor is great for tightening pores. She then notices the book and says it’s a terrific book she’s reading. Really helpful. Then she pulled out 3 chocolate cream puffs, 3 because she’s superstitious, and only ate things in odd numbers, she arranging them on a plate she’d gotten from Mer’s kitchen.

She sat down at the edge of the bed and bit into a cream puff, asking if she wanted, holding out the one she’d bit. Mer makes a sour face and rolls onto her side. Camilla then says, she’d really love it if she came over and helped her organize her father’s room. Mer hated when she called it this, she referring to his art studio.

The way she said it made it sound like it was the 50s and they were divorced but still lived in the same house. Mer doesn’t answer. So her mother states, America, she really has to pull it together and stop being so selfish. The creampuff clunked as it hit the dish, Mer feels the bed give as Camilla stood and left the room.

She hears the fridge open and close, the jingling of car keys, her high heels against the wood floor then the front door opening and closing and a car engine starting, Mer thinking, fuck her. Then Mer goes to the kitchen and gets the puffs, she eating them one after another. Then she notices the envelope her mother’d left, enclosed was an article from the LA Times about how the depression of one family member negatively affects the rest of the family, along with her blood money check for two thousand. Sadie brought more clothes than she needed for the first 3 crucial nights.

Unsure whether she could endure the remaining 62 days, 11 hours, she enlisted Sadie’s expert help. Sadie first transformed her living room into ‘a safe workspace‘, lighting a candle, spreading out a bunch of newspaper and art supplies, including blank spiral sketchpad, glitter, crayons, colored markers, glue sticks, and a stack of magazines for collaging. She pulls 2 couch cushions off the couch and motioned for Mer to join her on the floor, which she does reluctantly. Sadie gives her a black disposable fine-point felt-tip pen and starts, Ch 1 Question 1 What did her Primary Annihilators™️ (you parents) teach her about love and how is this similar to what she learned from her current partner?

Mer comments how she didn’t see how writing any of this down will… Sadie interrupts, just do it, Mer. How does she think she got over Jeep The Creep so fast? Mer reminds her she’d been comatose over him for almost a year. Mer watches her nostrils flare ever so slightly.

Then she responds, yes, well, without this book it might have taken her 3. See how she did hers? She shows her journal with sparkly gold glitter cover, and had graphs and pie charts, collages and quotes, affirmations and articles photos and dried leaves, a calendar of tasks including things she’d eaten, a happy face sticker for good days and frowning for bad. She went the extra mile and had a little gold star on the pages for the days she masturbated, pink shiny hearts for what she called ‘duty dates‘, red ones for real dates, and silver hearts for ‘wink wink nudge nudge‘ dates.

Mostly her book had all 4, Sadie wickedly says, for extra credit, it just helps to take the edge off. Mer considers how it’s strange how one thinks one knows a person - Sadie with her book and Jasper with his lies. Sadie asks, ready? Mer asks, wait, what was the question again?

Sadie rolls her eyes and says to just write down what she hates about Jasper in one column and what she hates about her father in the other. Mer thinks how she didn’t really see what loving Jasper had to do with her father - the only thing they had in common was their profession and perhaps their disappearing-act life-style. Mer comments, Sadie this is bullshit. Sadie replies, Mer, how does she think she got her amazing job and why does she think she now has the patience to hold out for her dream man.

This isn’t only about dating, it’s about finally living, now start writing. Mer stared at the blank page, took a deep breath, then wrote her 2 lists both titled ‘The Things I Hate About Jasper Husch‘ the other with the same but with, ‘My Father‘. The differences between the lists were for Jasper, they were short and numbered, like, 3. His underground anger, 6. His false love, e.g. Guava, 20. His cats. Her father was a run on paragraph about memories and why she chose men who needed to be babied and coddled.

Mer looks at Sadie seriously and says, next question, please. Her arm like a wind up toy needing to keep going. At night Sadie slept beside Mer in her big bed built for 2 and managed her first restful night’s sleep in days. (This part is like her journal through August, so dates are given, but not here, and also is writing it in short-form which won’t be copied, similar to Bridget Jones.) By day 3, they’d already been to the museum, mini golfing, and spent a drunken evening karaoking Billy Idol songs until 3am.

Mer got a standing O from 3 Korean businessmen after a heartfelt rendition of Rebel Yell. Despite being sad and missing Jasper like crazy she just kept thinking, Let love lick its wounds, repeating it again. She imagines Jasper licking his big lazy-ass paws after eating the fucking gazelle she’d killed. The rest of August was as follows: batting cages with Sadie after work.

A day later getting a mani-pedi with her mother in a salon and ending up buying $120 worth of skin care products she won’t use. The day after going to a voice-over audition for more legroom on commuter flights. After, go on a date with herself and play Ms Pac-Man at local bowling alley. Get hit on by guy who sprays disinfectant into returned bowling shoes.

On Fri she goes roller-skating in Venice and start to feel like her old self a little before she met Jasper. Later at the pier on the Ferris wheel she was behind an obnoxious couple flaunting their love by making out which made her feel like a piece of shit because Jasper didn’t want her. She started wishing their death then feared her own for wishing theirs, thinking of Jasper’s hairline to behave, and when back on the ground ate some cotton candy and felt better. Saturday she has a picnic in the park by herself and finish rereading a section on Trying New Things.

When getting to the part about putting energy in things she always secretly wanted to do but too scared to dare try, she realized the answer was art. She decides to make a journal of the hours without Jasper they ‘endure‘ apart, complete with watercolors, photos, and favorite poems, and take the whole weekend since her heart knew someday she and Jasper would be together again and he’d appreciate more how she kept the faith alive in spite of hardship of time and distance apart. She glues several polaroids of herself to where she was getting a little crush on herself. Under sexy photos dressed like a Vegas showgirl she writes, he maybe seeing this now and feel bad he hurt her but don’t since making this journal has helped her love her.

P.S. Can he believe he wanted to leave all this? She feels she’s actually changing for the better in ways she can’t see. By Monday, Mer is going to a casting office on Sepulveda to voice a Morticia Addams type of a black comedy kid show called Good Mourning! After, she goes to a frame store to buy and later glue a postcard of Chagall’s The Lover’s on the cover of her ‘secret‘ journal.

She brainstorms and decides to send the journal to Jasper to remind him of how happy they once were. She writes how it’s vital to keep secret from Sadie. She congratulating herself for not phoning and puts a reminder for herself to suggest they both keep one and send it back and forth to keep their love alive together. She goes to OfficeMax and spends rest of savings on necessary materials, then stays up gluing photos, saved notes, movie and concert stubs, etc and starts to get a little crush on herself again.

On the inside flap she writes, no matter what happens, even if they aren’t together, she just wants him to be happy. Signed Bugs and Fishes, Mer, and falls asleep with a smile on her face. By morning she remembers she had an awesome sex dream being back together and gets up in the best mood for the first time in weeks. She goes to Kinko’s to Fedex IT and reminds herself not to tell Sadie.

Then she waits by the phone for a reply. She waits Wednesday and wonders if he’s out of town, or it’s lost in the mail or fell out of the truck or someone stole it and saw the naked Polaroid. She decides to call Jasper to leave a message asking if he received it, and later sees Spoonie’s band and secretly check messages from club 72 times, only to come home to NO messages. She eats chocolate, picks at her skin, screams at Tulie and falls asleep in a pool of snot in her pillow.

She still waits Thursday and later has coffee with Sadie at a French cafe. When she notices a pretty bald girl and she’d be Jas’ type, she spills her guts to Sadie who informs her writing is contact and she has to start the 9 weeks over. She berates herself and acquiesces, crying hard on her drive home and almost getting in an accident. She gets home to a steaming pile of dog shit.

Then wonders if he left her because her house smells like dog. She buys ammonia and eats an entire bag of mini Reeses, refuses to brush teeth and falls asleep watching late night talk shows. Friday she finds out Jasper switched to voicemail and so leaves a screaming message demanding he return her phone call, even though she can’t disturb his sleep the way he disturbs hers. Then she bombards Jasper with messages, email, and faxes demanding her collage love journal back, plus all previous letters, photos, etc asap.

Then she calls to apologize for screaming messages and calmly explains he has until sunrise deadline to accept her offer and hang up to scream at Tulie for making licking sound. In the evening she calls Sadie and confesses everything, then begs her to sleepover. While she waits for her to arrive, she pretending she’s a dead body at the scene of a very bloody crime, and also pretends she’s the detective, speaking into invisible tape recorder in fakey Raymond Chandler-esque accent as she identifies herself and notes the cellulite on her thighs like the wing of an airplane caught in a severe hailstorm and a birthmark on her ass looking like Italy. She then gets a sudden image of Pompeii and thinks all the beauty and then Whammo! volcanic surprise.

She then recognizes she’s severely depressed when she uses phrases like ‘whammo‘ and wonders if she’s going crazy. When Sadie arrives, she gives an extensive lecture to resolve focus on herself, work and to, gulp, try exercising for a change. Later she burns her arm on the oven rack trying to make a baked potato. Sunday she starts day one again, and goes on a ‘dumb voice-over audition‘ for Charging Bull Beer, where she’s forced to say ¡Ay caramba! It’s double hopped!

She imagines Jasper being speared to death by a bull’s tusk or antler and hopelessly paraded in a colosseum outside Madrid. She gets home and takes Tulie for a walk around the block 3 times in a row. She feels strong and won’t ever take Jasper back. She hears Tulie stretch and relax and letting out an adorable high-pitched little breathy yawn and she thanks God for her.

She then cried because she loves her so much and holds her close even though she’s making soul-crushing licking sound. Later she gets a phone call saying she booked the dumb beer voice-over and starts working on Mexican accent and eats Mexican for dinner. Monday she records the radio spot, and feels like a human again. She smiles at people and takes a walk for the first time in eons.

Notices the way it hits plants and trees and on the way home hears her and Jasper’s song, singing along to Journey’s ‘Open Arms‘ and goes home to zero messages. Resists a strong temptation to call Jasper and beg him to come back now she’s making the sweet green again. Instead she doodles a self-portrait in black ink on white paper. She’s a fat skeleton monster lady with spots, scales, flippers, pimples, ingrown hairs, and rolls of stomach fat.

She has squinty piggy eyes with dark junkie circles under them and teeth are rotted, blacked out, and covered in chocolate. She’s waving hello and clutching a wad of steaming shit, a giant erect cock sticking out her ass, bloody at the end where she tore it away from Jasper’s body. She stands childlike under a palm tree and some twinkling stars. Underneath she wrote, Another Fucking Day In Paradise.

Journal entries end and next she leaves another message to Jasper, hey Jas, it’s her, is he there? Pick up if he’s there. Then Spoonie gets a threatening call from Sadie about Mer being on deathwatch and had to be monitored constantly, since she’d screwed up and had to start the 90 day plan over AGAIN, and it was his duty as a brother to take Mer out and show her a good time, including driving and a treat. She wanted to go to a desert island where artists didn’t exist and die from eating too many overripe papayas. Instead Sadie suggests the W Hotel for high tea recommended from a ditzy lead actress of Beddy Bye for Betty a horror film.

Spoonie had a crush on her so thought it sounded like a good idea, and Sadie promised him a meeting with her in exchange for his good behavior. So, when Spoonie drove up in his inherited cherry red convertible T-Bird (given to their father in exchange for one of his paintings) and honked twice, Mer halfheartedly running down the steps to greet him. His wheat-colored Beatles haircut was still wet, wearing a droopy Hawaiian print shorts and white V-neck, which he’d be wearing shorts even if it was below freezing. Mer was wearing a gray cashmere sweater and a pair of jeans and left her hair down.

She had missed him, they used to be close when she was the only female he worshiped. They greet each other with ‘hey’ and he says how Camilla wanted them to help her clean out the office, so he thought they could go over there first, help her out for like an hour or so, and then… Mer interrupts, uh, hello! What about Operation Rescue Mer? She’s kinda not feeling up to going through a bunch of old fan mail. She felt bad enough, the last thing she wanted to do was hang around her mother’s depression going through her father’s belongings, so they could haul it to some old mothball-infested, old-sweater depot and she can bump into strangers wearing her dad’s shit.

She asks, couldn’t they go later? He stutters, yeah…they can…it’s just - his voice cracks. Mer looks at him and he bit his lip, a childhood body language for something’s really wrong. She asks, what is it?

He replies, he shouldn’t tell her but, Mustard. This was their code word for Big Trouble, it stemming from when Mer knew a boy in high school who hadn’t ever tried mustard and it weirded Spoonie out of how he couldn’t have come across mustard yet. Spoonie takes a deep breath and shares, he overheard Camilla talking to an accountant and she can’t afford to give them money anymore and hasn’t really been able for a while now. Mer asks, what’s that supposed to mean?

He confides, any money she gives them from her own savings. She’s taking a flat-out loss. She has to clean out the office so she can figure out what stuff to sell. Like on eBay, otherwise she’s gonna have to think about selling the house. Mer responds, what? Why doesn’t she just… Does she know he knows? Spoonie says, no, she knows how she is. Even if they confronted her she’d just deny it. As he was leaving she asked him if they’d help her sort through some things to take to Goodwill, he just thinking they should help is all. So Mer rationalizes how this will be good for her to reach out to someone else in her time of need and by the time they finished helping her they’d have plenty of time for tea and get downtown to visit Sadie without hitting too much traffic.

She looks up to see Tulie’s head peering through the living room window, front paws resting on the sill, her ears standing straight up like little black windsocks and whimpering, don’t go! Mer thinks, probably a warning. Mer prepares herself for the dizzy feeling she gets as they round the corner to view the front of her family’s home. She was already annoyed by the thought of setting foot on the gravel driveway, to be greeted by their 5 dogs (all names and breeds given but not mentioned after), as well as their corresponding piles (which Spoonie referred to as ‘the security system‘).

Even with a full-time gardener, Spoonie and she had to cover their mouths and noses with their shirts and make a run for the front door. Camilla greets Mer by telling her to come quick, she’s receiving an entity named Cornelius and he has a message for her. Camilla is sitting at the kitchen with her psychic teacher, Madame Barbara. Mer glares at Spoonie, their mother always doing this, insisting she needs help and scheduling something else to prevent follow-through.

Mer says, she thought she needed help cleaning out the office. Camilla says, what? Oh yes, alright, in a minute, first she wants her to come in so she can give them both a healing. Spoonie picks up a box of their father’s stuff and asks where she wanted it, trying to intercept their mother’s escape-hatch plan. Camilla replies, uh, actually, put it in the garage so she can go through it again later. Ooh! Cornelius is showing her men dressed in 20s-style bathing suits and curlicue mustaches popping up like jack-in-the-boxes.

Mer says, seriously, mother, she thought they were coming over there to move boxes. Spoonie backs her up, saying, she’s right. What about this one? What should we do with it? Spoonie points to an overstuffed box full of their father’s clothes. Camilla says, oh, why doesn’t he load it in her car so she can take it to Goodwill. She adds, take the easel too, then meet them in her bedroom so she can give him a healing, too.

When Spoonie picks up the easel, Mer couldn’t stop herself from shouting, don’t sell the easel, Spoonie giving her a death look, and Mer amends, she means donate, because she wants it. Her mother cleared her throat and says, sure, of course. She take it, now come with her for her healing. She grabs her hand and leads her down the hallway to the doorway of her bedroom and she instructs she please remove her shoes and sit. Mer does so and Madame Barbara acts as support as Camilla shares, after Mer asks if Jasper and she would get back together, it was over, Cornelius had said so, Madame Barbara having asked for her.

What follows is Camilla having a vision involving Vikings tying Mer to a pole, have raped her, but untie her instead of roasting her, places a rose in her mouth and take turns spinning her. Mer asks how she’s meant to interpret this, and Camilla considers maybe the solution will involve a rose. Spoonie suggests, like the Roase Bowl, which is what they had to pass on their way downtown to see Sadie, he having snuck in and motioning with his finger she get up, his arms crossed. This is when things devolve and Mer calls out bullshit, trying to remind she’s in a suicidal depression and she plans on marrying Jasper.

When Camilla asks why she doesn’t call him and tell him her feelings, she says, SHE ALREADY HAS! HE DOESN”T RESPOND! So Camilla says, then why doesn’t she give up all this moping? Mer replies, great idea, why doesn’t she have her inner wizard wave his magic wand and make it happen? It further devolves and ends with Mer sitting outside and remembering a few memories of her father.

Spoonie comes out and asks if she still wanted to go for high tea, it being a bit late and would get traffic so opts to just see Sadie and he can take her to high tea the next day, Spoonie saying, he works, so she says, fine, Saturday, he saying he had rehearsal. How about Tuesday? She agrees, yeah. Fine. Whatever. As Spoonie’s driving they stay silent until he says, Camilla’s right. Mer asking if he was trying to hurt her feelings, then Spoonie says, he’s not gonna lie to her, he spoke with Jasper and he told him.

He had to talk with him because he was thinking of using some artwork he’s done for his album cover. This soon becomes about jobs and Spoonie telling her to get a real one, how she took money off Camilla and defined herself by who she dated. Mer says he was as privileged, just because he could hide behind his job at a paint store, he replying he was at least saving his money for his real career and investing on himself and she should just get a job somewhere, it’d boost her esteem. She replies, if she’s such a fuck up and he’s so great, why doesn’t he move out?

He tightens his grip on the wheel and after a moment says he hadn’t taken time off work to fight with her. Mer strikes like a cobra and says, no he took time off to meet Lila. The whole world stops for a beautiful woman doesn’t it, Spoonie. He’s just like Dad! A lie, which made his jaw muscle tighten and then say, all he’s saying is get over it, the guy’s totally moved on.

Something’s just don’t work out. She closes her eyes and swallowed, hard feeling the cool wind and tasting salt. When they arrived downtown, Mer headed on foot in the opposite direction of Sadie’s set. She comes eventually to Mom and Pop Kaffeehaus and goes in.

At the counter was a handsome, dark-haired guy in a tattered woven cowboy hat, gray t-shirt, and army pants, looking like a hairy Tom Hanks. She gives him her order and she says he looked familiar as she knocks over a sugar dispenser and apologizes profusely, he saying no problemo and asks if she needs some sugar, she thinking more than he knew and says no. She’d be better off drinking it like it is. She doesn’t trust herself, she’s had a shitty day, actually a shitty month. Her boyfriend just dumped her.

She thinks, idiot. The guy says, then this one’s on him, and she says, no that’s ok, but he insists, saying maybe this way she’ll come back and she won’t be a stranger next time, he giving her something sweet wrapped in a napkin, she blushing and takes this as her cue to go, he then offering her a flyer for his band, and to come check them out. She says, bye from the door and he shouts it back in return. The sun was setting and the colors it bathed the dirty buildings in golden light made her think of the little paintings her father made in his travel size water color books during his trips to Italy.

As she walked she realized she’d accidentally stolen the blue cup he’d given her for her drink, but she wasn’t going back after all the dumb stuff she’d said about being dumped. Sadie says loudly, there she is! Shit. Enough for people with walkie talkies to stop and stare. Mer could tell Spoonie had told her everything by the way she embarrassingly fawned all over her like a cuddly octopus.

She grabs the napkin with the remainder of the wafer out of her hand and stuffed the treat in her mouth. Sadie says, she was looking everywhere for her. She wanted her to say hi to the producer she was telling her about but he already left. He totally wants to meet her, she showed him the photo in her wallet of her. Then she leans in close and whispers, divorced.

Mer was insulted, and says, she happens to still be in love with someone, Sadie. She can’t even think about somebody else. She lets a punishing silence pass between them, then smiles. Sadie then loops her arm underneath hers and pulls her toward a standing wooden structure, saying, come along. Sadie shows her the children’s bedroom she’d been working on and it looked haunting in red.

She then leads her to somewhere they can sit heading toward the catering truck where they found Spoonie talking to Lila. They looked nauseatingly adorable, then Sade says in a loud whisper, she really thinks she might like Jym, at least for a rebound screw. Mer protests, Sadie! Lila speaks up saying, A B C, 1 2 3, one always has to replace a someone with a someone, then smiles warmly and offers her hand for her to shake, Mer shooting her most evil look at her and before she could be introduced, loudly says to Spoonie, she’ll be waiting in the car.

Later on the ride away, Spoonie says, what she did wasn’t cool, Lila is really nice. He looking peaceful in his 22 year old hormone-infested rock n roll universe. Mer replies, why doesn’t he just date Tulie, at least she has a personality. He looks at and through her, like evolved people who happen to be one’s wonderful, smarter, more together, handsome younger brother tend to do and says, he sees someone’s in a better mood.

Mer watches her neighbor banging away at an old car on her 30th birthday, she planning to stay close to the phone for Jasper’s call, thinking he had to because it was her birthday. She was entering 30 with a bang, she making earplugs out of Kleenex smelling her pillow which smelled like her new peony and seaweed-scented shampoo, a recent purchase on a ‘Me-Date‘ at Fred Segal’s, along with a pre-birthday impulse pair of shiny yellow patent leather trousers she planned to wear for dinner with her mother and Spoonie later tonight. She had bought them without bothering to try them on. The phone rings and she immediately thinks, Jasper!

She picks up and it’s only Sadie calling on a staticky cell, who asks, is she first? Mer sighs and says, yes, she’s the first. Sadie replies, oh goodie, then she’ll sing! Happy bir- her cell dies, and Mer stares at the phone before placing it back on the cradle. When Sadie calls back, Mer picks up on the first ring as Sadie says, she’s driving through the canyon and are they still on for 7?

Mer confirms, and Sadie makes sure it’s a real 7 because she knew her mother’s involved, and Mer confirms it was. Sadie then asks what she planned to do today, and Mer says she’ll be pampering herself at home, which Sadie asks, she wouldn’t be waiting around for anyone to call, is she? Mer singsongs, no, Sadie stating, because he probably won’t and she might want to prepare herself for the possibility, since he hasn’t called her in over…Why don’t they go barhopping and get her laid?

Mer replies, Sadie! She says, hell, get them both laid. Has she masturbated regularly? Reply again, Sadie! She asks, semi-regularly? Again says, Sadie!

It was true, Mer had been wholly unable to even think about pleasuring herself. For what? She’d only fantasize about Jasper and what would be the point? It depressed her, but mostly she feared she’d die of heartbreak and be caught in a gutter with her hand down her pants.

She stares at a yellow chest by the side of her bed, inside the drawer was lube Jasper had brought home once when he tried talking her into letting him fuck her with a Coke bottle. Sadie next asks, is she still there? She guesses that’s a no. Does she even want to get better?

Mer replies, yes, she does, but… Sadie continues, well eventually, she’s going to have to kill the super piney feeling and the only way she knew how was new Boom-Boom. Yunno, replace a cock with a cock. They need to get some new drive-in-size fantasy going… Mer replies, she doesn’t want a new fantasy, she wants… and the line goes dead. She opens the chest after tearing a part of the peeling pansy sticker on the front and put it in her mouth, spitting it out quickly, she then fingering the small tube of lube gel.

She then gets triggered into a memory of when she was 7 and she’d used a round-toed sneaker to bounce her ‘soft and bony peeing place‘ against it, not knowing about sex and only having heard her parents from their room. She drops the gel back in the chest. She then clasps her hands in prayer, and says aloud, please God, please make Jasper call because she doesn’t want to boink boink diddle diddle herself on her birthday. Tulie scratches at her crate, so Mer gets up to let her out, she feeling a little ill.

Mer says from her kitchen window as she watches Tulie, potty potty potty. Good potty; as she pours dry dog food in her bowl (the 2nd time she’s used the 3x potty). She then remembers something romantic from when Jasper ‘loved‘ her on her last birthday (not going too much in detail, since the reader should already tell at this point, this whole book is at the least damaged-woman-zone, and at worst, mentally ill). After she uses the lube and decides to go into a much too descriptive handjob to herself when she’s interrupted by a machine message from her mother, wishing her a happy birthday! Is she there birthday girl? Pick up if she’s there. Mer darling? No? Darn. She wanted to pop by with her surprise! Oh, she’s giving it away.

Mer is getting nervous thinking about it. Her mother then says, baby girl, is she screening? Ok, well, she’ll just see her when she sees her. She’s not going to tell her what it is, but she’s going to love it. Bye bye. Mer thinks maybe she’s picking up Jasper from the airport, she resuming probing. The phone rings again and, mommy loves her.

Mer buries her face in her pillow, slightly turned off. She’s full-on masturbating when her mother and her ‘surprise‘ - an unmarried Asian couple dressed like bankers arrive, the younger female acting like the translator. They were assessing where in her home the energy was blocked, because her gift was having her house feng shuied. Didn’t have time to wash her hands, only leap up, put her undies on and blushingly let them in.

They insisted on Western handshake, but awkwardly offered her ‘sinless‘ hand. Referred to as the ‘hooker‘ translator, who asks, may they come in, she nodding and leading them into the living room. The couple walks around tapping out numbers on a flat black compass as big as an atlas and calculates the four directions in relation to the exact hour of her birth. They tsk-tsking as they intensively snoop and stop to give her the first pieces of ‘goo news‘.

The ‘slutty translator‘ says, they want her to tell her she’ll never have a goo relationship unless she cut down tree in front of house. Otherwise she’ll always be single lady. Mer asks, sorry, they want her to what? The translator makes a scissors-cutting gesture with her under and fuck-you finger to clarify, saying again, cut tree or she single lady forever.

Mer turns to her mother and says, they want her to chop down a more-than-100-year-old tree so she can date again? Camilla smiles, nodding, and the translator makes gesture again and says, cut, then she happy in man love. They all look at one another and smiling and nodding, all contributing to ruining Mer’s life. Then she says, arso in bedroom must get rid of bed. Arso, must keep bathroom door close at all time. Arso, if possiboo, sleep in closet if she want have career success, otherwise bedroom fine.

The translator bows, Mer is outraged and when she looks at her mother, she looks serene. The banker couple say something else in Chinese, then, arso, buy fountain and get rid of mirror. Arso her Neptune in Scorpio say no no to alcoho. Camilla shrieks, that’s true! They’re all allergic to alcohol. It runs in the family, she smiles proudly. After the 3 strangers huddle together whispering and then, they want her to tell her so sorry but Neptune also rule anesthesia, so no no plastic surgery.

Mer glares at her mother and asks, anything else? The translator smiles warmly and says, most important cut tree otherwise no husband. No husband, no kids. No kids, no reason be alive. No reason be alive, no happy grandma. She bows to her mother which started a wave of them bowing and her mother blushing and clutching at her heart like she’d just won an Oscar. Mer snaps, yeah, she gets it, losing all sense of decorum, since she wanted to throttle her mother.

This puts Mer in the state of, didn’t her mother agree this was a depressing pile of fraudulent insane? A giant, stinking sack of untrue? Or worse, were they dead right and she was destined to be alone, forever, what she couldn’t admit to herself. When they’re 3 quarters the way out the door, her mother pleads, do her fortune! What about her career? Any chance of success in acting?

The old man takes Mer’s hand before she can refuse, and says, oh no, very bad. She bad at business and she bad at acting. She bad at relationship and she bad at know how to be happy. Her mother’s face drops and says, this is what she always thought. Mer stamps her foot and asks, well is there anything she is good at, she hearing herself give all her power away, continuing, what should she be doing? He answers, work with color. She very goo talent for art. Paint bedroom color of rose, very healing for her. They then say, goo-bye!

Bowing and bowing at her. Before they drove off she overheard her mother agreeing she always thought working with color would be very therapeutic for her. Mer thinks, since fucking when? By 2 p.m. Mer had done her spa ablutions and decided Feng shui wasn’t for America the country or the person, it’s for Chinese people.

Mer then spends the next few hours cleaning the bathroom and glamming up, and by 6 p.m. is getting worried Jasper hadn’t called. Finally, 7 and Sadie roll around and despite no sign of Jasper, she finally puts on her new leather pants, Sadie giving implicit orders to wear something sexy, talking about duty dating like a General of the Dating Army, in the war against being single. After applying lip gloss she asks how she looks and Sadie covers her mouth and says, oh my god. So, Mer speed walks to a mirror, thighs rubbing.

Sadie says optimistically, it’s very Matrix-esque, now what shoes? Mer was stuck on the pants still, looking at muffin top, hips flaring, and going right up the crotch, she saying she doesn’t know, Sade. Sadie says, well she does, come on, she looks gorgeous! She taking Mer by the arm and leads her into the closet, grabs a pair of high-heeled purple boots she got downtown for $10 and off they went.

At the fancy Chinese restaurant (her mother chose), she spots her mother, brother, and the girl from the set sitting in a large black leather booth. Her brother and the actress get up so Sadie and she can slide in and the chick introduces herself, she gracefully saying, she was sorry they didn’t get a chance to talk on set the other day, she seemed a little distracted. She’s Lila. Mer smiles politely and shakes her hand, she glaring at Spoonie as Lila bends around Mer and greets, hi, Sadieface! Sadie somewhat nervously replies, what’s up, sistamama!

Lila points, and asks, did he see their produ…? Sadie coughs, shakes her head, Lila winking saying, oh…Mer couldn’t believe her eyes. How dare Spoonie bring her to her fucking birthday dinner. A fucking winker!

How dare Sadie, too, for liking her. Her mother attempts to make pleasant conversation, saying, isn’t it remarkable they’re all single? Mer, Sadie and herself? Spoonie will probably end up married before either one of Mer or Sadie!

Lila blushes and Sadie squeezed her hand, Mer looking up at the ceiling, at God, and thinking, what makes her mother like this? This was when her mother’s phone rang and she merely hands it to her, nodding knowingly. Mer freezes, thinking, who could it be? Jasper? The president? An alien? Tentatively she takes the phone and says, hello?

Her grandmother says, is she and this nice Jasper engaged yet? She was calling form her boat in Hawaii. Mer, dying of humiliation and embarrassment being on a cell in the middle of a restaurant, says, no grandma, they broke up. Grandmother says, men are bastards, always taking their halves in the middle before turning around and dying on ya. The only thing they’re good for is the frequent flyer mileage. Ha Ha Ha. Get him some water, will ya Joe? Ok, gotta go, someone’s choking. Grandma loves her, baby girl. Happy Happy.

Mer wants to call her machine to see if Jasper had called yet, but she was completely surrounded, so she handed the phone back to her mother. Then around and around went the lazy Susan: spare ribs, fried seaweed, orange peel chicken, beef and broccoli in oyster sauce, fried rice, egg rolls and wanton soup. Then came presents, she receiving a journal and colored pencils, a dvd of Lila’s last movie, even though Mer didn’t own a player, and the card said love Spoonie and Lila. Her mother gave her a red knit blouson with capped sleeves and a dragon on it (she’ll never wear), a check for $30 (one for every year!), and a hummingbird feeder (to feed the birdlings).

Sadie gave her a giant translucent purple vibrator. As Mer attempts to stuff it back into its velvet pouch, Sadie loudly announces, it’s called the Grape Ape! She got it at the Hustler store! Just in case the people in the back of the restaurant couldn’t see it. When the chocolate creme brûlée came with a single candle in it, she blew, and wished for Jasper back.

When she opened her eyes she saw wisps of smoke rise up past the blackened candle stem, then slowly, tiny sparks and the candle blinked itself back to life. She blew it out again, praying it wouldn’t be so, she didn’t have the type of family who’d think she’d find this remotely funny. The more she blew the harder they laughed, Lila taking mini-polaroids. This was when her mother announces if she ever dates again, the next boyfriend she has is going to be black.

Mer buries her face in her hands, stares at Lila to study her reaction, she not able to tell if her mother was joking or not, so snaps another photo. Mer excuses himself, and waddle-ran to the bathroom. Sadie follows too closely behind her, her pants rubbing she could’ve started a goddamned fire. Sadie grabs her arm, and says, Mer, wait, she wants her to meet someone, waving to a blond gangly giant with clunky black Elvis Costello glasses and a soul patch at 6 o’clock, Sadie continues, look! It’s Jim Court the producer she’s been talking about. Isn’t this a coincidence?

Jim waves back and motions for them to come over. Mer shoots Sadie a look and says, yeah, it sure is a coincidence. How come he brought a date? He was sitting next to a gorgeous model Mer recognized from magazines. Sadie bites her lip, then blew it off, saying, who cares about her, come on, so as they zig zag past, the pants made an awful friction sound causing the ultra-hip in comfortable chic turn and stare.

Sadie says, Jim, this is America, America, Jym. He says, nice to meet her. Mer says, nice to meet them both. The frail girl’s hand went limp in Mer’s, her eyebrows perfect.

Then they all smiled politely back and forth at one another. Sadie squeezed her hand 3x indicating the 3 seconds duration of eye contact she required of her. Mer could only stare at the ground and cross her legs because she was suddenly desperately aware of how much the model wanted them to disappear (a good sign) and of how the fabric of her trousers was creeping up inside her like a karate-chopping hand in reverse. Mer says, well, again, it was nice to meet ya’alls and beelines for the bathroom with Sadie in tow.

As the bathroom door swung open, Sadie whispers, now can she fix her up with him? Mer doesn’t know if she burst into tears because she was treating her like it was really over between her and Jasper or if it was because she wanted to fix her up with a guy who dated models or if it was she catching the sight of the girl in the mirror who was out publicly and could easily win the award for the deepest camel toe contest. She feigned illness and waited in a stall until Sadie was gone.Jasper shouldn’t have set the bar so high, he shouldn’t have painted her dream, this is the kind of stuff people don’t recover from, not if they’re her. Then she checks her messages on the payphone in the bathroom to see if Jasper had called yet.

He hadn’t. Sadie asks if Mer wanted her to come up when they pulled up to her house just before midnight. Mer says, sure, meaning no, even from the window she could see the red light of her answering machine wasn’t blinking. They sat cross-legged in her living room floor in silence, she with a pillow and Mer with a battery-operated digital clock and the phone in her lap.

Sadie looked at her like she was dying from a massive gunshot wound to the chest and didn’t want her to find out. Mer says, he might still call, Sadie replies, she knows. They watched the clock, the last 4 minutes to 12 a.m. Sadie asks, is she ok?

Mer nods, hearing the crickets all the way up the canyon. Sadie says, well, she should probably get going, Mer nodding again. Sadie goes to the kitchen for her keys, Mer following her in on her knees. She then pleads for Sadie to call him for her, for her birthday, she only wanted to hear his voice. Pleeeease?

She clasps her hands together. Sadie paces around her tiny kitchen and swings around to face her asking, what does she expect her to do? Mer replies she expects her to be her friend, call and hang up, she just wants to hear his voice, she doesn’t care if they get his machine. Sadie crosses her arms and ask, what if he answers?

Mer says, hang up, pleeease? Sadie paces again and asks, what if he answers? Mer says, hang up, pleeease? Sadie paces again and says, this is all a bit too Girl, Interrupted for her.

Then puts her hands on her hips, looks at the ceiling, then back to her saying, she’ll do it under 2 conditions. Mer says, fine, yes, anything. Sadie says, she goes on a duty date with Jim. Mer crosses her eyes and agrees, fine, yeah, whatever, and?

Sadie says, she has to see Dr. Karl Sage, in person and do EXACTLY what he says. Mer asks, what if he says, hang in there, Mer, Jasper is totally right for her? Sadie says, he won’t. Mer asks, what if he does?

Sadie says, fine, and Mer says, fine. Sadie shakes her head and Mer says, come on Sade, she just has to hear his voice then she can get over him if she hears his voice. Sadie rolls her eyes held out her hand for the phone and asks what’s the number? Mer grabs the phone and punched in the crazy math and handed her the phone.

They leaned in close, he answering on the 4th ring, sounding happy. In the background they hear a giggling female voice say, who is it, baby? In a British accent, Sadie hung up. The room was spinning.

Not only could he live without her, he preferred it. She clutches her stomach, the muscles in her belly cramping, she feeling a rush of hot liquid in the back of her throat. She runs to the bathroom, locks the door, and pukes. Sadie knocks but she doesn’t answer.

Mer presses her forehead to the tile wall, round 2 she rested her hand on the toilet rim, she playing Saving Private Ryan-esque movie trailer in her head starring herself. Speedy flash-cut images of her kicking in a door of a thatched-roofed hut only to find Jasper and his slut, writhing bodies on satin sheets in THEIR bed, and she spraying them with machine-gun fire. Now she’ll have to pretend he’s MIA, Jasper. He’s dead and she’ll never get to see the body to say goodbye.

Only he wasn’t dead, and she wanted to scream but no sound came out. Instead she knelt forward and threw up dinner and her entire existence. Sadie kept knocking on the door saying, Mer, open the door, please answer her, is she ok in there? Maybe he’ll call her tomorrow, she manages brightly, and asks, Mer? Mer calms her breath after small aftershocks of air settled, finally opening the door and saying, he’s not gonna call, sniffling and turning a piece of toilet paper in her hand over and over.

Sadie starts, well, maybe he’ll… Mer says, Sadie… don’t. She just nods her head and looked at Mer’s shoulder, then brushes Mer’s hair behind her ear, and asks, is she ok. The bearded man with party shoes came out to welcome Mer and she hated him on sight.

Party shoes? Please. No wonder they only took photos of the author’s heads. Plus, he looked more jovial in person, shiny wax-apple smiles, dimpled cheeks, and his eyes were actually twinkling.

Mer was disgusted as she followed Sage to his ‘office’ which had a forest green couch full of pillows, a single navy blue bed littered with stuffed animals, and a rolltop desk - a shrine for Kleenex. One wall had an oak bookshelf, 5 shelves of self help books titled like, Unearthing the Hero Within Using Dreams, Symbology, and Garlic. On the wall near Karl were a couple official-looking certificates with a painting of a ship on a stormy sea and a cheesy aphorism about endurance, and a clock to watch him make $125 for 50 minutes. Karl asks, how she’s doing, Mer repeats his question, he confirming, how is she doing right now?

She crosses her arms and says, she’s doing fine, just fine. Karl says she seems agitated. Mer asks, does she? He says, yes, then cocks his head thoughtfully, and says, on the phone she mentioned several things, maybe they can start with the breakup and feelings of extreme depression, does she want to tell him what’s going on?

Mer repeats his question again, and he confirms, uh huh, how’s the body? Mer clenches her fists, he means other than what she already told him? Other than hating her life because her boyfriend dumped her and she has no real career and her best friend wants her to stay single forever and her mother drives her nuts and her brother’s life is perfect. Not to mention she has fantasies of murdering her dog when she makes a certain annoying licking sound? Karl laughs and says, all right now, having the most intelligent eyes, he really listening to her and seeing her possibly without any judgement whatsoever. Gross.

She fought back tears of gratitude by finding a little resting spot for her tongue in her back left molar and says, she wants her boyfriend to love her and he doesn’t want her. This world is so fucked. Karl asks and what does this remind her of? She looks at him and brushes her wet hair behind her ears. Karl hands her a Kleenex which she took greedily, and says, it makes her think God doesn’t exist, and if He did, He likes to ruin everything, and take away anything good.

Karl scribbles in a spiral notebook with a fancy maroon pen? Mer asks what he’s writing there, and he asks, this? Looking down at his notebook, he continuing, oh these are just his personal notes so he can keep track of anything which might bubble to the surface which he keeps in a filing cabinet, gesturing to one under his desk. Mer squints at him warily and he says, she can look at them anytime she likes. See?

Mer looks to see his writing depression over loss of male love, probably dad. He then reminds, all right now, she was about to say what it reminded her of, but Mer asks coldly, is this supposed to make her feel safe, him sharing his notes? Fine, her father, this is who it reminds her of, her father. He asks, could she tell him a little bit about him?

She asks, what about her boyfriend? Karl says, let’s start with Dad, since this is where the imprinting first, occurs. Does she know this is where it starts? Mer says, uh…yeah… He asks, what’s her father like?

She eyes him suspiciously. Hadn’t he heard of her father? Didn’t her name sound familiar? Didn’t he know who she was? If he knew who her father was, surely they could get this over with in one session, she saying, her father’s dead. Karl warmly says, oh, well what was he like?

Mer stares him down and says, oh, he was just a brilliant genius, that’s all. Yunno, he painted a bunch of stuff, got a bunch of awards, wrote a bunch of stuff, got a bunch of awards, built a bunch of stuff, then dropped dead, leaving them all behind. Karl scribbles in his little pad, and Mer keeps her arms crossed, eyes half-mast. Karl says, oh, ok so, he was the famous painter. He’s sorry, he knows very little of his work, remember seeing or hearing something about him once on PBS or NPR. His work wasn’t really his taste, very graphic, very sexually explicit, is this it? Mer nods, some of it.

Karl observes, she seems angry, what did she mean by leaving them behind? She replies, nothing, putzing with the carpeting with her foot, pushing it forward, then back. Karl says, it doesn’t sound like nothing? She asks, why didn’t he like his work?

Karl says, let’s focus on him some other time, today is only for her. Did she like his work? She asks, what, the painting, the writing, the elaborate stage designs, the performance art? He says, sure, any of it. She asks, he means as a kid?

Karl says, yes. She says, well, as far as the art went, she liked some of the colors. Mainly they embarrassed her, the early stuff, anyway. Karl asks for clarification on how she meant embarrassed her. She says, well, yunno, close-up vaginas and anuses, people copulating, penises inserted into vaginas or anuses or ears or whatever. It freaked a lot of people out, including her, and she still had to behave nice in public and be supportive. At age 7, some of the buttholes were so clue up they looked like flowers, so they didn’t bother her as much.

Karl asks she tell more about his creative process. Mer sighs like she’s bored, saying, he’d have friends come over and sit, but not actual friends, since her parents didn’t have over and sit, but not actual friends since her parents didn’t have any so she guesses students or models, really. They’d mostly be naked and in different yogic poses in the kitchen or stuffed in the dishwasher, and her parents would photograph them from all angles and they’d either come back and ‘sit’ some more or become her dad’s… she angrily air quotes, ‘friends’. Karl asks why she air quoted and she replies, because. While they worked slavishly long hours, she’d be downstairs helping her mother prepares food for all of them, his studio behind her childhood home.

It’s like a tree house and she’d go up there with fancy tea sandwiches they painstakingly made on a silver tray and she’d find them naked all over their things, because her dad had decorated the ‘set’ with stuff from around the house, like her toys, blow-up sex dolls, porn comics, the American flag, their dishes and blankets, forks, clothes and whatever. Once he did a series of acrylics based on nude photos he took of she and Spoonie when they were tiny and painted them on everything. Household stuff: soup spoons, plates, a baby doll of hers, an old TV, a can of bug killer. Her tiny and nude on an old black phone.

It totally freaked her out someone was going to buy tiny her and take her home to their house. Of course critics thought it was some deep commentary on the decline of communication and commodification of society of something. It was pathetic, she laughs and continues, she wanted to be a secretary when she grew up. Karl asks, what else?

Mer replies, nothing else. Reiterating, just big droopy naked-ass bodies all over their stuff, basic all-American orgy scene. When she sees a slight frown on Karl’s face, she shifts slightly, and adds, they didn’t have a lot of money then, so they had to share stuff from around the house. Karl makes a note and she scratches a nonexistent itch on her throat, she thinks, does Karl think she’s weird, or her parents were weird? Was her upbringing weird?

Karl clarifies, by stuff she meant personal toys and belongings? Her face reddens, and says, well, yunno, all for the sake of art, nodding and smiling uneasily, Karl continuing to look at her with a blank face, then asks, were her parents named too? She says, oh God, no. Never! She thinking, phew, she’s in the clear, then continues confidently, only when they were all alone in the house, then they’d walk around naked.

She smiles and Karl frowns, shakes his head and scribbles violently. Mer asks, hey, what did he just write, is it bad? Karl says, no, no, he only made a note to himself about some of the things he suspects they’re going to be targeting in their work together here - her negative response to explicit visual stimuli, the fact she wasn’t protected from inappropriate stranger nudity or inappropriate parental nudity, a lack of object constancy coupled with narcissistic parenting and improper reality mirroring… The room started to spin, she felt claustrophobic and she wanted to run outside and get some air.

Dr. Karl asks as he hands her a stuffed koala, how did this make her feel? Sharing her toys with strangers? Mer says, uh, she felt angry. Is this what he wants her to say, she felt angry? She unconsciously pulls the bear’s ear, she was angry with Karl now. Who says, he wants her to tell him whatever’s true for her. He’s here to help HER.

Dr. Karl smiles, and says, she felt angry then, is this how she felt, angry? She wished he’d stop smiling, and says, she wished everyone would die and one day her father did. There. Is he happy now? Are they done? She’d practically twisted the ear of the koala clean off. Karl asks, could she talk to him about her feelings.

She says, NO! Wasn’t he listening? She couldn’t talk to anyone about anything. He asks, was there ever a time when she could? Tell him about reaching out to her daddy. Tell him about her daddy being there for her. She looks outside the big window and stares into the vastness of a perfect blue sky she couldn’t feel. Next she remembers when she’s 26 and men in cheap gray suits lowered her father into the ground.

She doesn’t say this to Karl, along with the memory of her grandmother at the funeral with Spoonie, instead pushing the feelings away and watch a seagull fly past dropping something it held in its beak. As she tears at the corner of a tissue, she asks, what does this all have to do with her boyfriend? Karl says, he doesn’t know yet. What did her boyfriend do? Mer’s eyes narrow and she says, he’s a painter.

Karl asks, like her father? Look America, he’s going to save her a lot of trouble. What does she want? She repeats the question, then says, she wants Jasper back. He says, besides Jasper. Mer says, she wants her father back.

Karl says, well. They aren’t coming back so pick something else. She roars, what does he mean? Pounding her fists into the sofa, he smiling and saying, would she like to do a rage exercise to move some of the blocked energy around? Before she could decline, he motions for her to move to the floor by the bed, he encouraging her, great, what he’d like for her to do is lie down and slap her tailbone into the ground.

She blew her nose and asks, what? He pours some hot herbal tea from a silver thermos into a coffee mug which said #1 DAD and repeats the instruction turning back to her, smiling even more warmly than before. She says, stuttering, yeah, no, she heard him, she just doesn’t… He interrupts, it’s an exercise to help unblock some of the trapped first and 2nd chakra energy at the base of the spine.

It’s based on what children do when they’re having a temper tantrum. Her survival and identity issues are hidden in her tailbone and this exercise is like turning a little key which opens up a little door there and relieves some of the trapped negative feelings like, compacted rage, self-loathing, hopelessness, despair. Mer says, in his book he didn’t say… He interrupts saying, he works a bit differently one on one, in fact in extreme cases he’ll go so far as recommending 9 day silent retreats to purify the emotional body and face the dragon head on so to speak.

Mer thought she may faint. Did he think she was this bad off? Did he think she was an Extreme Case? He asks, would she like to lie down and try it? Mer says, she had no idea floor work would be involved, she doesn’t even belong to a gym. Karl reached out to hug her and she hissed like a cornered animal, Karl looking worried.

She buries her face in her hands and convulsed in big 7.5 quakes. Karl hand her a new box of tissues, her hair fell around her, protecting her like a cage, and she says, she just wants to not be in pain anymore and be able to let Jasper go and move on. She wants a different ending, her life to start. She felt Karl tentatively rest his hand on her back and she wanted to swat him away but didn’t.

After awhile Karl says, he’s sorry but their time’s up for today but they can get right into this next week if she likes. He stands and moves to the door and Mer looks up, panic stricken, then ran interference by blocking the doorframe with her arms, asking, but why is all this happening to her, she eyes him hungrily. He says, America, sometime they choose prickly people to make them feel yucky feelings so they can uncover old hurts and be pointed in the direction of their wholeness, having folded his hands politely at his crotch as he says this. Continuing, this way, they can start to feel their happiness sprout real roots, because eventually they’re only going to be interested in finally seeing their true selves, grounded, in an expectationless reality.

He exaggerates his facial expressions for ‘prickly and yucky’ and ‘whole and happiness’. The way he said it she knew it was probably trademarked or soon would be, he concludes, but they can talk more about this next week if she likes. She asks, but how is she going to get through today? He brightly asks, how ‘bout a homework assistant?

She makes a face and says, ok. He says, make a list of all the things she loves about Jackson, positive qualities she associates with him. She corrects him, he continues, then make a list of all the things she loves about her dad. See if she can notice any similarities between Jameson and her father, any patterns. This will allow her to see if she can have the positive qualities she associates with them in her life, on her own. See if she can start to give those things to herself.

She corrects him again and he apologizes and continues, have long walks. This will keep the blocked energy moving until they meet again, and he’ll let her in on a secret, he whispering now, sometimes when we start behaving like the person were mad at, there’s a little pot of gold waiting for us at the end of the Anger Rainbow, so she may want to think about picking up a paintbrush between now and the next time they meet. It may be very healing for her to start painting. Of course, call anytime. She did great work today. Her inner reaction, MER? PAINT? He unlocks the door.

Then he holds it open for her like a real gentleman saying, America, if she continues to work like she did in this room today, in no time at all she won’t even be interested in entertaining situations which aren’t in her best interest. He presses his card in her hand, patted her on the shoulders and declares, all right now. The brightness outside stings her eyes and she couldn’t stop blinking. She thinks, so this is how it is, pay someone not to have enough time for her, then when she gets better in about 30 years, she’ll finally be able to make good choices. For her.

Yes she felt angry! Angry her father had all this time for all these freaky naked people who touched all her things and rubbed their stupid smelly-ass fat cocks and cunts all over everything. All over her things. She didn’t ever want to see those things or those people ever again, and there it was, The Finished Product. The horrible memory frozen in time for the whole world to see and everyone who saw it said it was fucking wonderful, and, oh, how neat her life was so free, not like society with its soul-crushing rules.

Lucky her, America. To know true freedom all the time! She looked at the business card, wiped her nose on her long loose-flowing skirt, then tossed the card in the trash. When she got home she checked her messages. Habit she guesses.

Then she flopped on the floor in the living room and unconsciously unclipped the black disposable pen from the spiral binder of her journal, found a clean page and drew a little hairy octopus suffocating a pink-cheeked cherub of a girl, writing things she loved about Jasper and her father on the long strangling tentacles, a long paragraphs worth some of which: His appreciate for music, color, air, trees, light, eyelashes, dancing, eating, sleeping, not sleeping, anything fun, his humor, his commitment to himself and his creativity no matter the distraction, his belief in himself no matter the criticism, his kindness, patience with freaky fans, his smell, hands, hugs, the way he loved her unconditionally, and how happy she felt when he loved her. Together Jasper and her father owned everything good in the world. Did she think she could provide the same things she associated with being loved by them for herself? No, she didn’t.

Karl, next session, after looking at a photo says, based on Jasper’s body type, the way his neck lurches forward and his shoulders collapse in toward each other, he can honestly say this relationship was doomed from the get-go. Look how skinny his calves are, he wasn’t equipped to handle her anger and intensity, eventually she would’ve left him. Mer asks, really? Karl says, all right now, today they’ll find out where not good enough lives in her body so he wants her to just breathe.

Mer sits up and says, before they start, she wanted to say how great it is to realize she’s merely transferred her pain on to Jasper when really it was her father who caused it all along and she’s totally willing to transfer it all onto him so they can get down to business. Mer smiles and Karl looks at her with a straight face, thought better of saying anything, and silently passes her the Kleenex box. Karl says, why don’t they go inside and just breeeeathe. She closes her eyes again, folded her hands in her lap, and right out a massive sigh, Karl continues, now imagine she’s on an internal jungle safari.

He continues describing the scenery when he says she hears a crunch beneath her feet and does the sound of a monkey. Mer opens her eye and sees Karl has his eyes closed, so she closed her eyes again. He then starts asking where is not good enough hiding? Oo-oo wah oo-oo-wah. Come out, come out wherever thy are! Where does not good enough live in the body. Come out of your hiding place. Mer bit the inside of her cheek and thought she can do this Mer, just surrender, he says, they’re gonna pull you out by your roots today, so don’t be shy!

Her mother would love this guy. He says, just relax and keep breathing and imagine an emotional Geiger counter scanning the landscape of her vessel. She rolls her eyes even though they’re shut tight. She thought, sweet Jesus, he’s obvious a quick who trick people the first session and then completely snaps for round 2, Karl saying, all right now, can she tell him where not good enough lives, America?

She says, uh, it’s definitely in her belly, she felt bloated from lunch and expected her period, so it wasn’t completely untrue. He says, great, now just breathe into her belly and when she’s comfortable, tell him what she sees. Mer doesn’t exactly know how to breathe into her belly, all the same some images bubbled up, of her chicken Caesar, half order of spaghetti, and 3 cappuccinos. Then another of her putting Karl’s grandkids through college while her condition worsens, came floating up right behind it, he asking, anything?

She says, nothing yet and he says supportively, she’s doing great. Keep hacking! She opens her eyes and asks, is he sure this really works? He says, well, she’s a little tougher than most, so why don’t they send for backup, intensify the quest so to speak why don’t we have her stick her legs straight up in the air and point her toes toward her nose. She pauses, stares at the diplomas on his wall and swing her legs up above her.

He says, good. This activates several meridians along the backs of the legs and inner thighs. Just let the blood gently cascade down her legs and pool in the lagoon in her belly. She felt the blood moving toward her hips now. It made her feel a little queasy, and he says, just keep breathing, America, breathing and pointing. Let him know when the images start to surface. Mer suddenly says, she’s seeing something!

Since it was true, and she shares a memory from when she’s 10 and having a severe outbreak of acne, trying to stretch the skin so the redness disappears, constantly looking surprised, but the kids still call out various pizza toppings when she walks by. Karl furiously scribbles and says to continue. She’s so self-conscious she starts wearing a baseball cap to hide the inflamed whiteheads and scabs. One day she hears her parents fighting because Spoonie and she don’t see their father who’s always in party mode when he’s away and too tired to play with them or busy working until he can party all over again.

She overhears to at least try saying hello to her for a change. She sneaks into their room to tell them she’s going to be late and her dad takes her hat off to kiss her and grimaces, not knowing her skin was so bad. She tells Karl she felt rejected like when Jasper wouldn’t pay for dinner or make love when she wanted, like when he’d left her and refused to speak to her for no reason at all, rejected like when her mother accidentally told her she didn’t want kids in this lifetime, like when her father stayed away too long or didn’t make time for her, like dying too fucking soon. Karl said things like she should focus on herself, her career, on her boundaries. He thought it’d be great for her to stay open to dating so she could practice being a girl and allow herself to be nurtured. She was to let the man pay for dinner no matter how uncomfortable it made her, accustomed as she was to going dutch, or picking up the tab entirely, and so it went.

Week after week little salty pools formed in her ear canals and no matter her confession - dropping out of school and not going to college like she’d wanted, less dreams - he’d end the session the same way, all right now. Then she’d leave clutching a tissue, feeling like a slightly lighter wreck than the previous week as new concepts started to fall into place like a train schedule board. Back in her car, she’d feel defeated, but as she started the car she’d tell herself to hang in there, Mer, someday she won’t feel anything for Jasper at all. By the time she’d get home it’d hit her, she resting her head on the steering wheel, saying: she is alone and this is her life.

She goes inside to hear Sadie’s, Mer, Mer, Mer, is she there? She’s got to talk to her! So Mer drops her purse and runs for the phone, she asking what was it, Tulie taking the opportunity to see this as playtime and grabbing her ball and nudging her kneecaps, but sulks away to her bed when Mer tells her, off, Tulie! Off! Sadie takes the longish route to inform Mer, Jym had been sitting with his ex-wife and right now he’s in NY, but she gave him her number and she hopes it’s all right! As Mer is freaking out about what if he calls? What if he’s her husband? What if it’s the reason Jasper dumped her, she gets a 2nd call, and clicks over to hear it’s Jym, so after she tells him to hold on she tells Sadie after maniacally shrieking No!, when he offers to call back, then tells Sadie he’s on the line and what should she do?

Sadie telling her to talk to him. Mer asks, what should she say? Then asking, how? Sadie saying, just be herself, be normal and call her right back, she hanging up, and Mer clicking back over. She greets him again and to her ears sounds like she’s wearing a skirt suit.

Jym gets right to the point of calling to find out if she wanted to go out for supper, she holding the phone to her heart for a moment before placing it back at her ear to hear him finish, if she’s available then. Mer apologizes and asks when, he continues, or another night if that one’s bad. Mer says, it’s probably fine, what day did he mean exactly. He says, he meant this Saturday, but it could be next Sat if she prefers.

Mer thinks, and risk him getting a girlfriend by then? Mer says, NO! This Saturday’s great! Her eyes went as big as saucers as she can’t believe she was given 2 days notice, like a gentleman, or out of a fairy tale or movie! She tells herself to calm down and she lowers her voice saying, well great. See him then, Jym. Good-bye.

He says, wait! Where should they meet? Mer apologizes and says, she’s in the middle of 8 million things, smacking her forehead thinking, Idiot. He offers to pick her up if she likes and she agrees, fine! He says, great! Well, he’ll call Sat morning to sort out the details. Is she a morning person?

She bites her finger and takes the opportunity to lie, oh, yeah, totally! He says again, Sat then! She says, Sat it is! Then after putting the phone down, screams and runs to Tulie to give her a little squeeze, who gets on her hind legs and they dance around like a couple of maniacs.

Then she flops on the bed and waits to call Sadie for the glorious blow by blow, to recollect it on her own first. Suddenly she didn’t feel like staying home after she thought how Jym Court called her. From NY! Jasper would never have done this, and if he did she’d be worried about the money he’s spending calling from a hotel, and he’d likely have her call him back and pay so he could save his money. Not Jym.

She wanted to call Jasper to tell him everything but knew he wasn’t a friend to her. Not anymore and she could be consumed by thoughts of Jasper no longer, not when she had Jym to think about. So she picks up her journal and took a drive, her plan to find a cafe and just WRITE. She was so spaced out and drove for so long she ended up downtown, so goes to Mom and Pop Kaffeehaus.

She didn’t remember the stolen cup until she’d walked in, wanting to turn and leave, but the guy at the counter recognized her and shouted, hey, he remembers her! Hazelnut latte, no foam, she stole a mug last time she was in here! They’d changed the art around since last time. Mer blushes, and says, wow. Oh my God, she’s so sorry, she completely forgot. How much is it, as she takes out her wallet. He says don’t worry about it, it’s on him.

Mer declines, no, no, she’s not like that, then thought about Karl’s orders to receive and ordered an Earl Grey and said, thank you, instead. While he separated the leaves from the tea with a white plastic/mesh strainer, he small talks about an article he’d been reading on the Lotus blossom, and its uses, scientists studying its surface to learn how to make a better houseplant since nothing sticks to their petals, which was why they were selected, for their spiritual significance. Did she know this? He smiles and places a paper cup on the table, she smiling back when she notices, he asking, milk and sugar?

She says, half and half. He comments, it’s really cool. She saying, huh? He clarifies, the article. She says, oh, he watches as she pours 3ish sugars from a dispenser and stirs her tea, he then asking, so, how’s it hanging.

Mer then thinks of Karl and her having to practice his instructions on boundaries, she saying, she doesn’t mean to be rude, but she doesn’t really feel like company right now. Karl would be proud. He replies, that’s cool. She scoops up her cup and walks in time to the music on the jukebox, plopping down at a small table and starting to write in her journal: America Court (repeats like standards).

She practices doodling her name with his last as her own and how it looked with both together as well as her name with hyphen, she not liking how their names looked together, calling it awful. She practices writing Jym’s name and didn’t leave a tip or say goodbye when she left. When she got home she found out she booked another voice-over and thought, rewarded for all her good growth. Later the same night, lying in bed she thinks Jym with a y, why the fuck not!

She then thinks of the Lotus blossom and how her parents’ hippie friends ditched their last names and took a whole new name entirely. Jym and America Lotus, since nothing sticks to them, they’re untainted, like them. Jym calls a little after 11:40 a.m. to square the pickup time and she almost burst into tears when he asked with real interest, how she was doing. To know she was talking to a man she wasn’t paying who still wanted to know about her feelings.

For the rest of the day following their 12 minute call she imagined what their kids would look like, or if he’d make a good father (vowing to find out at dinner), she then notices how amazing plants, animals, the sky, and birds were. By nearly 7:30pm she was becoming more socially unstable, she realizing her entire life hung in the balance, if things went well with Jym, she’d be moving on, but if it went lousy, she was destined to be alone and miserable for the rest of her life. Sadie gave her implicit orders to wear something sexy or she’d personally off her. She decides on a black slip with black shawl and ballerina flats, then leaves her hair down with a sparkly blue barrette since she couldn’t decide what to where, then the doorbell rings, she checks in the mirror for anything embarrassing on her and opens the door.

He stood there freshly showered and cologned in a cashmere sweater, tailored trousers and funky black boots with silver-buckles across the toe. He was more handsome than she remembered, leaning against the door to steady her balance. They smile at each other goonishly, pulling the ends of her hairlike a nervous schoolgirl, he then asking, is she going to invite him in? She blurts, of course!

She has zero manners, she’s so sorry. She’s so nervous she feels like she’s getting diarrhea. She thinking, Jesus, Mer, what’s wrong with her? She blushes and bit her fingernail nervously to keep from saying anything else idiotic, but he just starts laughing.

He says he’s nervous too, maybe they could just hug for a while. She couldn’t believe her ears, announcing, yes! Utterly relieved they had feeling ill in common and Jym unlike Jasper, was a problem solver. He felt vulnerable and manly at the same time, maybe because she knew he’d been loved and divorced.

They stood like this until only their heartbeats and breath were the only sounds, then Tulie click click clicking at her ankle sniffing Jym’s leg. She presses her nose hard into his cashmere arm and deeply inhales. He lets go first, steps back and looks at her saying, she looks really beautiful, he liked her hair this way. Mer says, it was driving her Brazil nuts about 30 seconds ago, she again thinking she’d die all over again.

She thinks it’ll turn him off, but instead takes her hand and asks, how ‘bout a tour? Next he opens the door of his white convertible jag for her, and she slides onto the cream-colored leather seat, and in a heartbeat she’d become one of the girl’s Sadie and she hated most. The ones with boyfriends who took them to fancy restaurants and bought them expensive presents and took them on all-expense-paid vacations. She always thought Jasper made her stronger but now realized he only made her feel unloved, she couldn’t get him to fold her laundry.

When she felt the comfortable seatbelt and Jym flipped the switch to warm the seat, she decided no matter the outcome of their alliance, she was over struggling-poverty-art-boys. He takes her to a hidden restaurant in Malibu with, Sol in the name and people couldn’t help but stare at their attractive glowing chemistry factory, Jym calling her Dollface, she feeling like one. Over the weird French appetizer she found out Jym worked for a company which made TV shows and low-budget top-grossing teen horror flicks, he was in Dev and he dreamed to blend the teen format with adult content to make his mark giving the game show world the legitimacy it deserved. Jym didn’t believe in astrology but knew he has a sun cusp, moon, and ascendent.

The more Jym mentioned, the more Mer was glad her body’s autopilot for beating her heart and breathing and swallowing wasn’t a conscious effort because everything she wanted was seated across from her. By their 3rd course, Mer wanted to bare all, she was scared all the time, she wanted him to hold her all night, and for the rest of her life, because she needed a man and he made her feel like a woman. She wanted to say she needed him and how much she’d lost, but it was worth it now because he existed. Instead she said, key lime pie sounds good, but Jym ordered coconut creme caramel and apple pear tarts tatin with caramel for dessert anyway. Trust him.

When it arrived, he rocked in his chair like a big kid, smacked his lips and said, scrumdidliumptious! She admired him for how unafraid he was to express his childlike wonder and darkness over little things. She just smiled and beamed him love. When the waiter brought the check, she repeated her therapy mantra, she is the lady, not the caretaker, eldest child, or mom, but she didn’t have to worry since Jym was Catholic from IL, so unlike Jasper, he reached for his wallet and paid with a shiny new corporate card, saying decadently, you little tax write-off!

While the little candles on the tables flickered their Morse code message, he’s the one, he’s the one. She looks up at the ceiling and sees a big mural of a blazing sun. This was when she realized sol means sun. Sol. Soul. True love was what allowed her to see the sun as sol. Sol. Solmate.

To be love itself, an ever shining sun. As he sensually sucked the last of the warm-caramel-coated apples and waited for his receipt, she couldn’t help but wish it was her in his mouth, but she tells herself to not rush and let things take its natural course. On the drive home, Mer asks him if he has any V.D., she thinking they should get AIDS tested together even though they’d definitely use protection the first 6 months. He looks at her for a poignantly long time considering he was driving, brushes a few strands of her hair from her face saying, she’d read his mind.

Jym walks her to her door and asks if he could see her on the weekend, she scares herself when sweeping her foot and moved her mat, a spider running toward her foot, she shrieks and he saying, so is that a yes? She stutters, um, yeah, ok…sure, yes, she’d love to. He makes a date for Sat, she agreeing and then kisses her cheek, softly saying, goodnight. She giggles and says goodnight, swoon and slipping inside, thanking God for meeting the man she’d marry, she’s sure of it, as she scrambles into bed and calls Sadie.

Mer starts on message telling her to pick up, he said he wanted to get marry and everything. Sadie groans and asks, what’s wrong with him? Mer says, nothing. Sadie replies, something’s wrong, he probably has a small cock. No man with a big cock wants to get married.

She giggles and replies, she doesn’t think it’s small. Sadie says, you slut! Mer says, no! She sort of felt it when he hugged her. Sadie reinforces she can’t sleep with him until she sees whether his apartment has Star Wars toys.

Mer says she thinks he’s the one, biting her lip. Sadie with a bit more conversation, hears the seriousness of Mer, thinking about marriage and in disgust says, no kids. Mer says, not right away anyway. Sadie replies, Jesus. Good night, Mer.

The 2 hang up and when Tulie made her licking sound, Mer didn’t even mind. She turns her light off, hears the owl outside in the big old pine in front of her house and remembered how her mother had told her they mean wisdom because they have full sight even in the dark, so Mer takes this moment as a great blessing from the Creator and looks out the window to see if she could glimpse the bird, never noticing how tall the tree was. The next morning the biggest bouquet of white lilies arrived at Mer’s door in a brown vase and a note, From your not so secret admirer. Love, Jym. Mer hums the Wedding March while she put them in water. Jasper who?

Jym announces, welcome to his padarooski, the following Sat night as he opens the door to his 2-bedroom apartment. He continues, come on in and meet the freaks! Referring to 2 cats nearly immobilized by fat meowing in steady unison. He introduces, the fat one’s Messy and the fatter Bessy.

Mer melts and asks how they got their names, Jym coughs and says, his ex named them. Messy because her hair always mats up and Bessy after Bessy Buckley from the musical Cats. Mer’s face goes hot and she asks, he means Betty Buckley? The mom from 8 is Enough? Jym confirms, yeah, she loved that show.

Mer says, but…, and he says, he knows, trying to shrug off the history and petting one. He stands and walks to the kitchen with Mer following. He asks, if she wants water, beer, or wine, she saying water as he pours Merlot and hands it to her, she shyly giggling and saying, no thank you. He asks, she doesn’t drink?

She says, she’s allergic. He then asks, what happens when she does, she blushes saying, she for one thing, gets a little bit sexual. He says, really, doesn’t sound too bad. She amends a lot sexual actually, he hands her the glass and says, don’t worry, he doesn’t bite.

She repeats this, blushes and takes the smallest sip. Behind him on the fridge, Mer sees a postcard and she says, hey, that’s her father’s painting. He takes a sip of his wine and says, isn’t that a coincidence?, staring her down like a cheetah. Then he pushes open a swinging door and she sees a chandelier, below it, a orange and white checkered tablecloth on the floor with about 3 dozen blazing tea lights, which made the chandelier cast starry rainbow streaks on the walls.

She feels like Pepe LePew and thinks, see him at the altar. They ate their take-out Italian and listened to classical music with too many crashing cymbals in Mer’s opinion, then talk about favorite movies and magazines. He subscribes to everything, saying, he had to stay on top of things, yunno, for work. She comments, he obviously must get the home magazines, thinking stupid, stupid and clarifies, because the place is so beautiful.

He says, yeah, looks around, and adds, he thought about submitting it to Metropolitan or Home & Garden but… he just rents. He finishes his glass of wine and says, she looks really beautiful in this light, touching her cheek and Mer feeling a stray hangnail with his moisturized hands, she’s glad she didn’t say anything because he kissed her then, it was soft but wetter than she imagined, she panicking and saying suddenly, she should probably go. He agrees too quickly back, ok. As they gather the dishes, she’s regretting saying it, and he walks her to the door, saying, goodnight Dollface, lightly stroking her hair.

She says, goodnight like a mute, lobotomized Juliet and walks down the little brick path to the start when he says, hey, Mer? She turns back and says, yeah. He asks if she wanted to stay the night and he promises he won’t try anything. He crosses his heart as proof. Adorable!

She tries reminding herself to be strong, hearing Karl in her head, but Jym says, he just thought it’d be nice if they just…held each other tonight, as he slunk toward her softly rubbing his soul patch. She thinks, Mer, be strong, pace herself…besides, there’s no one to let Tulie out, so she blurts, sure, she’d love to! Thinking, Jesus, Mer, what an idiot, she heard submarine attack sirens in her head and says, but she doesn’t have a toothbrush. Good girl, she thinks.

He says, he has a spare, she saying, what? He repeats having a toothbrush. She says, of course he does, he has all those teeth, she practically skipping back into his padarooski. He lets her wear his big flannel jammies to bed while he wore a t-shirt and Abercrombie & Fitch boxers, of course he left his calf-length socks on.

They then brush their teeth side by side and when she spits she sees them both in the mirror and they look good together. In his asthma-proofed bed with hypoallergenic comforter and matching pillows, he stroked her cheeks and she tickled his back under his t-shirt, he saying, he’s glad she’s here, she agreeing, her too. He says, he knows they aren’t in charge of life’s little gifts, but he wanted her to know he’s open to receiving them. Mer agrees, suddenly his breath is on her and tenderly kisses her goodnight and they hugged saying, goodnight, Dollface, Mer saying, goodnight Giraffe, and just like that she nicknamed him.

With her and Jasper it took them ages to come up with Guava, to the point they didn’t have the energy for another name. She thinks, holy shit, maybe her life will work out after all. Even in the dark, she could see he was looking at her and smiling and she was flooded with the alarm one feels when one glimpses the entire rest of one’s life…and likes it. Jym again says, goodnight she also saying it and he holding her til they fall asleep like monkeys.

In the morning, Jym microwaved her some chai, ‘bachelor style’, and poured it into a big beautiful cup. After he showered he tells her if she ever wanted to leave things at his place he’d empty out a drawer for her in the bathroom. She drove home in a moonwalking state of shock. She found 2 puddles of pee and a steamer; was worth it.

She’s on the phone with Sadie as she cleaned the dog mess and asks, does this mean he’s her boyfriend, does she think, Sadie, does she? Sadie replies, not if she only dry-humped. Dollface and Giraffe? Jesus, Mer, her stomach. She’s making her physically ill. What about Jasper? She says, she’s totally over him. Like his fax, ‘people grow and move on’. He’s on a path and she’s on a path and this is the beauty of life. Sadie replies, Euch.

Mer says, Sadie, why can’t she be happy for her. She says, because she’s nuts. She hasn’t even had sex with him yet and she thinks he’s her boyfriend. What if she hates him in bed? What if he makes porn face when he cuts? What if he’s a premature ejaculator? Mer says, Sadie! Tulie came traipsing in and nudged a rope chew toy in her lap, Mer feeling generous, so she tosses it, even though it was wet with her stinking saliva, it skidding across the kitchen floor and disappears under the stove.

Sadie says, she’s just worried about her is all, she complained about Jasper nonstop then overnight she’s planning her future with a guy who sounds like a high school basketball PE coach. Can she say rebounding? Tulie reappears with the toy. She bent and tossed the damp horror east.

Mer reminds her, she’s the one who fixed them up! Sadie says, to date, not to fall in love with. To be honest she really didn’t think it’d go anywhere…Tulie reappears enthusiastically with the wet ropy toy, then drops it and sits panting, waiting for the next toss. Mer teases her by holding it over her head and lowering it every so often, Mer talking to Tulie saying, they know Auntie Sadie is just a little jealous, don’t they, Tulie?

She understands she’s not in charge of life’s little gifts, she’s merely open to receiving them. Sadie replies, Auntie Sadie is just gonna go throw up now. Bye, Mer. Tulie nips at her hand so she swats her down, and put the chew toy on top of the fridge where she couldn’t get it. She says, bye, Sadie, utterly fascinated with the communication device in her hand.

She thinks, aren’t phones amazing? Mer knew she was in love because when her neighbor started up his uncommonly loud leaf blower and beat his car senseless, she didn’t care. When Spoonie told her he and Lila ran into Jasper at a photo exhibit, she didn’t care. When her mother called to her she was thinking of selling the home she grew up in, she didn’t care.

She only thought if Jasper was a cosmic joke so Jym Court could be the stellar punchline, she’s laughing with the Almighty this minute. On Thursday she saw Karl, he didn’t even have to prod or ask how she was, she blurted out a monologue of unbridled joy. As she streams out with all the good things Jym does, and is available to her even during important meetings, she says, she’s really happy. Then truly seeing how Karl had been re-parenting her, and teaching her by example for the last few weeks she deserved more and as a result, attracted someone who cared as much as Karl did.

Now she knew it was time to quit therapy. Karl asks, did she have sex with Tim? She blushes, no! His name is Jym. Karl nods, the courtship phase is extremely important. Remember, she can’t roast marshmallows in the power struggle phase if she hasn’t built a fire in the courtship phase! This way, is she waits until she knew who she’s dealing with, she can enjoy s’more of him later on!

She giggles, she’ll wait! She’ll wait! It made her miss her dad, to be scolded like this. He winked at her, all right now, our time’s up for today. Next week sometime? She nods, she didn’t think Karl was ready to hear the truth, so on her way home she phoned him from her car, and thanked him for all his help and canceled next week’s appointment.

Later the same night she saw Jym’s pubes for the first time. They kissed and dry-humped for a hot while and could feel him hardening. As he pulls at her shirt, she thinks, oh God, her adult acne! Fine. Better to get it over with. He should know this about her. If he’s anything other than understanding, it’s his probably.

He says nothing, just continued kissing her deeply and so sweetly all she could do was relax. Then he stuck his hand in her jeans for the dipstick wetness test, starting to finger her. She unzipped his trousers, seeing he wasn’t wearing underwear, she thinking, how 60s of him. His cock flopped out like a lazy showgirl, and she thought, Jesus, he’s huge!

She started sucking on him with his pants still on and he fully stiffens. She tugs his pants and he lifts his hips so she could get them all the way down. This was when she noticed his pubes were shaved, almost no pubes, only razor stubble, she thinks he should’ve warned her but didn’t know how it’d have come up. She tells herself, try to maintain, this type of nitpicking was what tore Jasper and her apart.

Accept him for who he is. So what if he has a few kinks, everyone gets kinks, it’s just a matter of finding the one’s one can live with. She didn’t want to break the mood so she did a sort of blow dryer technique on his stubbly ball to make the negative energy vanish. He was moaning and gyrating, thrusting his exceedingly large cock in and out of her mouth.

It whacked the roof of her mouth with the force of the end of an industrial flashlight. He was a gentleman, however, and pushed her mouth away before he came, it mostly landing in his exceedingly, large bellybutton and her hair. Turns out he was a screamer, also a bit shocking, but these things can only be found out by jumping in. They lay there for a little while in his afterglow, her on his buttery chest, him tugging on the ends of her crispy hair.

Then suddenly Jym sits up and started crying, he saying he had to tell her something she might freak out about. Her mind races, immediately thinking the worst, V.D., AIDS, Cancer? They already talked about this stuff, did he lie? Is he a sociopath? Did he kill someone? Is he still married? He says, this is really hard for him, but he thinks he’s falling in love with her. He bubbles her tiny bare breast, and continues, he just feels so selfish for coming first. He wanted to stop, but her mouth felt too good. He’s sorry.

She pats him on the back, then thinks, wait, is she costing him or mothering him? Either way, TURN OFF! He continues, it’s just it takes a really long time for his penis to get an erection again. Mer thinks, penis? Erection? Was she dating an anatomy book?

He leans in and kisses her cheek, she then thinks, it would’ve been nice if he’d given her an orgasm first, or at all, or say, now. She guesses he kind of tried, or is he just a lazy pig? She was angry now. He then says, oh, baby, he’ll make it up to her. Come here, Princess. Whattsamatter, baby. Whattsamatter?, he kept repeating, whattsamatter as her face was smushed under his sweaty pit, only she didn’t say anything because he was just crying and already felt like a big fuckup, he continuing, please for give him.

She replies, of course she forgives him, even though she didn’t. She thinks, why can’t he just get over it and seduce her now? If he wanted to give her head right now? Or at the very least, finger her. Anything, just do it now now NOW. Or is this some twisted manipulation so he gets out of it altogether and how come she can’t say any of this? Now she feels like she’s a freak for even wanting him to and now he has kind of totally gotten away with it, and now it’s too late to even ask and, anyway, why should she even have to ask, and now there’s just too much pressure! He says, let’s just hold each other, so they lean back and drapes the blanket across them. She lay against his wide, flat chest and she thinks, at least he’s falling in love with her.

After a little while, he grabbed her hand and let her feel him hardening, whispering, stroke him. She does, still a little crabby from before, but his passion for her dissolved her irritation, and before she knew it, gold foil was coming off an extra-large condom. Miraculously they manage to climax at the same moment. She started crying, Jasper truly behind her now, he cooing, come here, and holds her close.

First time sex is so weird, it started to rain as they lay in each other’s arms. They listened until she felt Jym twitch himself to sleep. Overall, not the greatest, but she knew she’d sleep like a baby, certain there’d be many many more opportunities to perfect their lovemaking. In the morning she heard him get up and shower, listening to his bathroom sounds - wet feet on floor, brushing of perfect teeth, coughing up phlegm, rinsing sink, tapping toothbrush.

She knew soon she’d have to move her car, she was blocking him in. She thinks, she can live with this, she thinks. Those first couple weeks it was all faxes and phone calls and emails. Jym was literally healing her with his adorableness.

3 examples are provided mostly similar to: Baby, Sweetness, Honey, Love (etc.) gives himself different nicknames, (Jym the Jyraffe and Jym ‘Barry White’ Court) then after Halloween one day out of the blue, he says, he just thinks she should have this, and handed her a key to his swanky high-tech apartment avec chandelier. The best part of any relationship, the only noble cause worth aiming for, is the settling in. She despised the courtship phase, the ‘Steely Dan’ time, when swearing up and down one has the same taste in music, calculated dispensing of half truths, which eventually break down and give way to what’s real. It’s only when one is truly brave, like she and Jym, one is able to let all disguises fall away and be granted entry into the glorious land of We.

Jasper and she couldn’t even find their keys to the car in the parking lot near the entrance of such a place. What she loved must was the regularity with Jym, the monotony, the routine of simply being. The discovery of when they both wanted sex or dinner or time to themselves and the careful negotiating of it all without killing each other. She already knew the mornings by heart.

Jym would shower and dress, then heat them up some chai from Trader Joe’s (bringing hers to her in bed), toast her, take a sip, smack his lips and say, scrumdidli (the rest of the word supplied but I won’t be, since there are a few). Then one of the cats would either spit something up or meow too long, causing Jym to yell at them both. Then, she’d have to get out of bed to move her car which was blocking him in. Jym would get home around 8:30pm, and since she didn’t like to eat late and Jym didn’t cook, they’d usually just order fancy oil, cream, and butter - drenched takeout and watch TV.

She was careful not to cook for Jym because she didn’t want to turn into his little hausfrau like she was for Jasper. She was hyper-careful not to repeat old destructive patterns which turns her into a mother or resentful lover. Then, after she watched Jym watch his game show, sitcom, or teen horror competition duke it out on the boob, they had sex. On weekends the sex times varied in between watching Jym play street hockey with the guys from work, watching Jym get a mani for work, walking her dog, seeing movies, and watching Jym snack on lunch meats.

Describing his habit of how he’d dip the meat in mayo rolling up his sleeves of pin-striped monogrammed shirts and getting the white goo on his elbows, wrists, and hands. She thinks this was something one did on one’s own time, behind a locked door, but praised him for his courage while fearing for his cholesterol. He astounded her, unafraid to pick blackheads, fart, and listen to his flirtatious female messages in front of her. This was the beauty of Jym, and largely through her acceptance of his little quirks she started to realize how she was pretty to blame in the demise of her relationship with Jasper.

She never really let Jasper be Jasper, she was too busy hating everything he did not related to her because she felt threatened Jasper choices took him away from us, like his love of porn, or his affection for seeing movies in the gayest hardcore neighborhood of San Francisco, when there were plenty of other theaters within walking distance for seeing those same movies. While she always thought he was stupid and secretly gay, now she saw he was just a sensual, life-loving innovator. With Jym, she was willing to watch him eat processed meat and saturated fats and not even mind so much because a happy him meant a happy us. For the first time she felt she was in a real grown-up relationship, for the first time in her life she felt motivated to work out (partly because Jym didn’t and partly because he was around models and actresses all day long).

Plus, by the time he’d get home late at night, she’d have missed him a whole day’s worth and actually wanted to see him again, as opposed with Jasper, who worked from home and they were always in each other’s hair and space, never taking time apart, unless she was in LA for a couple weeks to book a voice-over. She did stomach crunches on Jym’s sisal (carpet-looking) rugs and couldn’t believe she was even ever depressed. Later during the night as they’re entwined on Jym’s sofa, he asks why they hadn’t made love in her bed yet and asked if it was due to Jasper. She told him maybe it was because she was still holding onto a small part of him.

She was so grateful to be busted, she had to have him this very minute, so they got in the car, drove to her place and did it, slow and mission. Then it was official: Jym and her were for real for real. Thanksgiving came and went without issue, even though it was a day before her sister’s death anniversary and Jym and she couldn’t be together, his family expecting him home in IL and he’d bought the ticket before they’d met, and he promised Xmas together, which was by far the more important holiday of the season. Mer’s mother didn’t bother her once the whole day, even though she talked at length about exciting upcoming events planned around her father: a retrospective in Prague, spreads in a couple magazines, and a touring slide show in grammar schools across the country.

She made her gravy and (to her) world famous cornbread, ginger, and chestnut stuffing. Mer felt happy and even helped make the pie crusts since actually feeling something to be thankful for. She even had a terrific chat with Lila, and Poona talked about going for a spa for a long weekend as a foursome! She did get a little peeved when Lila shares, it’s so great Jym finally calmed down, yunno, since his reputation for being such a player and all.

She just had another helping of turkey and all was forgiven. It helped of course Jym faxed her romantic mushy stuff 179 times during the day. The next day though, she was feeling particularly bloated and they had their first fight. She’d gotten him on the phone and made the mistake of telling him she felt lonely and a little bit fat.

Jym told her bluntly he didn’t believe in feeling sorry for oneself, she replying, she didn’t she was only feeling sad, also making the mistake of mentioning being envious of his work because he was gone so much. He says she’s just like his ex-wife and why didn’t she just get a job, any job, and focus on problems she could actually solve, he asks, what does she even do for a living? All he sees is he does is get an allowance like a 30-year-old child, while the rest of the world works for a living, she responds, he’s just jealous. He says, of what, she saying, not having free time, and he replies, to do what? Sit around and get fat?

She replying, he should talk, what about his bagged meat obsession? He saying at least he buys it with his own money, she saying, yeah, and he’ll pay for his hospital bills with his own money, too! So he says, at least he has health insurance! This shut her up, since she wasn’t sure if she was on a co-pay since she didn’t know what it was.

Then he hangs up on her and doesn’t call for 2 days even though she had to go to his apartment 2x a day to feed his cats, he apparently feeling perfectly justified not apologizing. She wanted to call Sadie, but she was still mad she and Jym had progressed beyond the one-night stand she’d hoped for and didn’t want to give her a reason to celebrate. Then considers calling Karl, instead going to get kitty litter and wet food for his cats. At Dog Slave she runs into the coffee guy, she apologizing for being a bitch last time she saw him.

He replies, no worries, mate, in an Aussie accent and asks how she’s doing, she making the mistake of serving the nice batch of dumb relationship problems to which he said, without knowing her, he’d say she’s looking for ways to push a nice guy away. He’d just blow the whole thing off. He was wearing a t-shirt with, Jesus Saves, Gretzky Gets the Rebound and Scores, making her feel kinda sorry for him, so she thanks him pays for the items and gets the hell out of Dodge. On her drive home she calls Jm and apologized and they agreed to disagree.

Jym made her promise to get a day job and/or not to feel sorry for herself, by the end of the call he could tell she was a little upset, so told her they could get a spare crate for Tulie to leave at his place so the animals could get used to each other, which made her feel a lot better. He then regales her with pre-Xmas shopping stories with his family and being snowed in with drunken aunts. All in all she counted only 17 scrumdidli’es. When she got back to his place there was a giant puddle of hairball stew.

She scrubs the floors and smiling, thinks, maybe she should have a baby. Then she drove home and curled up with Tulie listening to the rain on the roof, eating an entire bag of Oreos and falling asleep. 2 weeks before Xmas, Jym and she went out for dinner and he broke the news to her over oysters, unfortunately, he’d be away in NY. For Xmas.

He says, it’s business, Dollface, matter-of-factly as he sucked back another hot sauce-infested piece of sea slime, some translucent liquid dribbled out of his mouth and he says, scrumdidli. She frowns and says, but… he promised! He handed her an oyster he’d prepared for her, she touched the hot sauce with her tongue and put it back on ice, taking a large gulp of water. He says, look, Dollface, they’re courting these hotshot puppeteers and - , she repeats the label in question, and people put their forks down and stared.

Calmly Jym wiped his face with his napkin and says, he’s trying to make Hit TV here, Dollface, but he promises they’ll have New Year’s together. She started laughing hysterically, he signals the waiter for the check and repeats in her head, Hit TV and Hotshot puppeteers along with a phony laugh track, Jym looking around the restaurant nervously. She asks, why didn’t he ask her to go with him? He says as he pats her hand, is this what this is about? He just assumed she’d want to spend the holidays with her family. It won’t be much fun, Dollface.

He holds her chin in his hand and made a boo-boo face then says, besides they have 2 whole weekends before he leaves, for just the 2 of them. She softens and leans in to kiss him. He kisses her forehead and wipes his mouth on his napkin and folding it in his lap, then saying, also he needed someone to watch the cats. They drove home in silence.

Since Jym was going to be away, he wanted to sleep at his place for the remainder of the month so his cats knew how much he loved them. To appease her next day he surprised her by getting a little dogged for Tulie and setting it up in his living room. The first weekend was dedicated to just them, going shopping and she helping him buy presents for everyone he worked with and some he hardly knew. Whoop-dee-doo.

The whole time he complained how much money he had to spend and how people were constantly taking advantage of him the way they were. Her face burned with resentment and feelings of abandonment. As they’re being rung up for an unflattering orange sweater she’d hate forever and come to associate with the pain of this moment she thinks, he likes the people he hates more than he likes her. In the evening he broke their dinner plans since he was busy doing prep work on the sock puppet phenomenon.

His exact words: Dollface, he’s gotta stay here and make U.V. for the Flyover. She naively asks, what’s U.V., he saying, Über-viewing, she saying oh. What’s the Flyover? Jym looked annoyed and says, yunno, the people between NY and LA. At first she thought he was joking when he said he was blowing her off for the Flyover, then realizes he wasn’t and she was dating a mutant with a get-famous complex who works with socks.

Her unstated fury turns to uncontrollable, borderline-violent laughter. He asks, what? She says, nothing, and that night she slept at her own house, feeling more alone IN than out of a relationship. Then she calls him an Uber-asshole in her head and makes herself laugh out loud.

The next Sat before Jym leaves for NY, he takes her to buy a small tree which they decorated with tiny purple lights and handmade ornaments she’d collected over the years and tinsel galore. She accidentally breaks a beautiful silver glass ornament Jym had given her and he yelled, but then apologized, she feeling terrible. More than this, it felt mysteriously symbolic somehow, even though it’d come from Banana Republic and they still had about a million more left. She put dried rose petals she’d been saving in the shiny fractured half sphere and they hung it up anyway.

Though fragile and useless, she thought it still retained something in its jagged beauty. Later they ‘made love’ before going to sleep and he had an O, but she didn’t. In the morning, Jym screamed at Tulie and then her because overnight she’d gifted him with a nice steaming pile of her disowned rage on his pristine hardwood floors. As he droned on at earsplitting volume about how it’d leave a stain and how now he probably wouldn’t be able to get his deposit back, she thinks, my, he is really quite the little rage-a-holic. Mom much?

She tells him she was convinced the only reason she had a key to his place was because he wanted her to water his plants and feed his cats while he’s away. By then he was screaming loud enough for the neighbors to threaten to call the cops through the cracking plaster walls while he intermittently paced and packed fancy ironed pin-striped shirts into a garment bag, while she ammonia-mopped his precious floors down on all fours. This was when he announces out of the blue she doesn’t respect what he does. She assures she did and he blurts, he bets no one ever stood up to her before and told her she’s wrong.

He bets she always got her way. He bets no one has ever told him no. He saying this like it was his personal duty to be confrontational with her. She shouts up at him, BLAAAAAAAAA!, like a juvenile delinquent, he just staring at her.

She starts laughing and goes to kiss him, and though he let her, neither of them felt resolved. Later when she drove home from taking him to the airport, she couldn’t help but think how remarkably similar this felt the last time she took Jasper to the airport and shudders. Tulie hopped in her lap as she drove and when stopped at a red light, her funny face made some leathery-faced men in a beat-up pickup with a hula girl on the dash laugh, Mer only smiling and driving on. Mer’s mother cooks only one truly amazing meal a year and it’s Xmas.

They have the tradition of taking in strays who don’t have families or can’t make it home, but there’s a price - they eat turkey with all the fixings, like a normal family, but for some reason her mother insists on making dozens of tiny meat pies for the baby Christ’s birthday. Since their oven is too small, she can only bake a few at a time, so she tortures everyone by making them take numbers and forcing the guests to eat in a round-robin row-your-boat sort of way. Some sit while others of them wait, smelling curried chicken, mincemeat, stewed fruits, and vegetable medley for the vegetarians (which may not still be available by the time they’re called to the table). In the meantime, everyone has access to an enormous pot of mash potatoes and mulled wine.

Spoonie and she hurried to talk her out of the madness, but she seems to think it allows people to mingle, and casual. Thanks to therapy, Mer secretly thought the reason she likes it is because it prevents any real intimacy taking place. Since her father’s passing, they start festivities around 3:30pm (although the meal never actually gets underway until well after 8 or 9) but, it can take as long as 6 hours to make sure everyone’s fed. Usually by this time, they’re hungry again for seconds.

Mer had spent all day making smalltalk and pie crusts galore, she checking her messages to see if Jym had called periodically (he hadn’t yet), anything to avoid watching Spoonie and Lila fall deeper in love. She called Sadie in ID where she was visiting her family to wish her a Happy Merry but she was out sledding with her tiny cousins. She missed not seeing her dad grouchily crouched in his favorite chair in front of the overly tinseled fire hazard of a tree. As she goes to her father’s art sanctuary, she feels in the dark for the sconce Spoonie had painted monsters on as a Father’s Day present when he was 5, flicking a light on.

She set all of his art supplies along with still brimming ashtrays, as her mother had preserved it for him. A favorite painting of her mother’s rested on the easel, of Cupid, which she studied, it hovering over a moon-base L.A. where a lonely-looking woman in a floppy hat and sunglasses lounged poolside waiting for her dreams to come true. It seemed the more Jym and she settled in, the more she saw her old restlessness and depression weren’t going away, it was only playing peek-a-boo while she was distracted by Cupid’s arrow in her ass. She missed watching her father paint, his expression of deep concentration.

She liked his little rituals, lighting a candle before starting, or how he’d take several breaks or how he looked when he completed a painting. She grabs a small tube of paint and recalls her fondness for thievery, how she used to steal her father’s nearly finished tubes of gouache, in hopes of delaying him slightly, but not taking anything he’d miss too terribly. If he was in a good mood he’d say, Camilla, a little squirrel got into his things again. She’d reply, it’s probably a poltergeist, and Mer would squeal with delight hoping to be caught and hugged.

She has another memory of cleaning brushes with her mother from the vague smell of turpentine. One of her favorite paintings was a large oil-on-canvas with a very small camel and a bouquet of watering cans. When she was 9 she’d tried to imitate him and this painting, working with crayon, ink and paper. She held it up and he said it was good but would be better in oil.

She looks at his drafting table with 3 photos and she has another memory of how he’d act during Xmas morning since they’d wake him moments after he’d go to sleep since he’d pull an all-nighter. Then downstairs, in the living room she heard a blend of acoustic guitars and laughter and picked out Spoonie’s, savoring it like a ripe berry before turning off the lights and going back inside. Her mother squawks to give her a hand, wrestling a shiny brown bird onto a large serving tray, she straining potatoes for mash, then announcing they eat, and they did. Later, watching the couple exchange gifts made her heart melt.

Spoonie gave Lila a red G-Shock watch and Lila gave him a matching one in yellow. She thanking him calling him, Honey Boy and he calling her Money Girl, saying it in hushed tones of tenderness and surprise. Then they gave each other matching turtleneck sweaters and a bunch of other household and pastime items, they donating a box of chocolates to Mer because she was eyeing it. Even though she’d eaten so much it hurt to lie down, she raced to squeeze or bite every chocolate to see if she was interested in it.

She leaves the one’s she didn’t want up for grabs. Then she vows to workout and maybe even fast for a day so she could button her pants before Jym came home. When she got back to Jym’s place to feed his fat cats, there was no message from him, only the otherworldly cat throw up. She was going for the ammonia when she heard Jym’s voice on the machine and reaching for the phone she slipped in the vomit, banged her head on his chandelier, and managed to break a clear hanging crystal teardrop.

Merry fucking Xmas. She picked Jym up from LAX, looking so handsome in a new cashmere Dr. Huxtable-style sweater and Santa hat, she forgot to stay mad at him. The plan was to head straight back to his house for a belated Xmas and sex (3x). He shouts scrumdidli!

Leaning out the window as she paid $3 for the airport parking kiosk. When she’d gone down the street and took a turn, a tire blew and even though she had a spare she tells Jym she didn’t know how to put it on. Jym shakes his head and angrily got out looked at the damage and says they should call AAA. While they waited Jym says he’d never noticed she had a mustache before.

She looked in the rearview she noticed it did look a bit darker than usual. When the mechanic arrived nearly an hour later, he asks Jym why he hadn’t put the spare on himself. When they turned onto his street he says, Dollface, he’s tired. The tire episode was a buzzkill but once inside she gives Jym his gift anyway, an antique robot which shot real sparks from the tiny raygun.

It turned out he didn’t get her a gift because he was so stressed about the puppet show he hadn’t gotten any shopping done. Then said he didn’t really have time to buy anything anyway. Then he said he didn’t see anything he liked. Then said, what does he get the girl who has everything, then he really just wanted to wait until he had more time to find just the right thing.

She’d have preferred just, sorry. Later, in the middle of a great long-distance runner dream, Jym mounted her. She didn’t open her legs fully or climax since she was freaked out about her mustache and the present thing, but not Jym. She just kept her hand to her lip and stared at the ceiling til he was done.

In the morning Jym announces he scheduled to have the house de-fleaed, and it wouldn’t be safe for her to stay and would be wise if she took all her clothes and belongings home, anything she didn’t want contaminated with toxic foam. Jym got her a box and watched her pack, sweetly assisting putting Tulie’s crate and toys in the car. When she came back in to help him with his stuff, she saw he’d packed a box with her bath stuff and she laughs saying, at this rate, she’s practically taking everything! He just smiles at her as he zipped up some of his suits in a Gucci garment bag, saying he’ll just dry-clean the rest.

At 11 in the morning, as she’s in the middle of bleaching her lip and bikini line while she was at it, her phone rings and Jym says, he has to tell her something he’s afraid she won’t be able to love him for, he calling from his office, and asks, does she have a minute? She says, ok… Jym says, he told her a little lie, there was no exterminator, he actually called a locksmith. She says, huh?

Jym says, he wants her to know he respects her but he’s really not ready for a relationship right now. He thought he was, but now realizes he was just renouncing and wants to get to know himself since he has never really taken any time off for just himself and it all happened so fast plus they don’t really get along. She asks, she’s sorry, is he breaking up with her? Jym says, he guesses he is. She asks, on the phone?

She thinks, at least this was progress, then asks, can they at least talk about this, say later, in person? He says, he wouldn’t be comfortable with this. She says, WHAT? Jym repeats snapping with a grotesque finality, he just feels they don’t… get along.

She says, she thinks they do, defensively, he replying, they don’t. She says, well, she thinks they do! Jym says, look, Dollface, he doesn’t want to argue anymore. This isn’t about her, it’s about him. He’s gotta run. She was laughing now saying, but she didn’t do anything wrong. He pursued HER!

He says, it’s just, he’s just not done grieving his last relationship and this all happened so fast. He was hoping for a friendship which slowly built into something… She says, OK, Jym, fine. Let’s just take things a little slower… He says, he doesn’t think she understands, it’d just be too painful for him. He should really go. Mer stutters out, but…but…but he works with socks for Godsakes!

He hung up on her, she calls right back to ask if he’s bipolar but he wouldn’t accept the call. She stares at the phone until making a dash for the bathroom to rinse cold water on her burning bleached skin. She thinks, thanks for nothing, Jym with a WHY. She felt like one of Jym’s sock puppets, like a hollowed-out sac of flesh with God’s hand up her fucking puppet ass.

She was about to go into old her, leaving hostile messages on everyone of Jym’s numbers - home, car, office, voicemail, email, and pager - telling him he’s a fake human, a non-person, a cyborg, but something happened. She realized, if he was freaky enough to organize a lockout, he was freaky enough to be all wrong for her, just like Jasper. She hears a plane fly overhead and thinks they seem to be going over with increasing regularity, must have changed their flight path, and truth be told, she felt nothing, just like Karl said she would. Sadie says, Ben Affleck’s going to be there!

She was talking about a big New Year’s Eve party Lila got them all invited to, even her mother was asked to come. Lila also organized for Spoonie’s band to be the entertainment. It was a launch for a new magazine called Launch, and the theme was, surprise, OUTER SPACE! Lila had gained them entry because she’d secured the much-coveted premiere cover, her in a silver bikini straddling a bullet-shaped rocket which said Uranus or Bust.

Mer didn’t want to go for the following reasons: it’s a party, it’s on New Year’s Eve, her mother would be there, and Spoonie and his steady girlfriend would be positively adorable together the entire night. She means, one doesn’t put an orphan in a roomful of happy families, right? When Sadie picked her up at 9 she states, she’s not going out like this, Mer having assembled a man-get-thee-back sort of costume for the occasion, featuring a grayish, yellow and lime floral-patterned muumuu housecoat type deal, black and white argyle socks and purple clogs. Mer asks in mock defiance, why not?

Sadie rolls her eyes and says, because nobody wears clogs in space, they’re bad enough on earth. This from a woman in silver jodhpurs and pink fluffy tube top and silver platforms with handprinted silver and pink daisy toenails. She was back to her old self again now Mer was single again. Mer says, she needs tenderness!

Crossing her arms and pouting she says, anyway, exactly who is she gonna meet at a party? Sadie rolls her eyes and jumps up, no one so long as she’s dressed like this. Or worse, she’ll meet the type of person who would be drawn to her in tis outfit and trust her, she doesn’t want this. Besides, she knows the rules, ABC, 123, smugly pushing her toward her closet and she rummaging through her summer dress. Mer says, thank you but she has no interest in men. She’s through with them. Sadie still peruses her closet and reminds Mer, she’s telling’ her, ABC, 123. Pose, counterpose, if Jym doesn’t call, workout so her ass attracts someone who will. If Jasper’s career flourishes, date his boss. If his boss doesn’t want her, fly to Europe and have a fling with someone who does, like an emperor or something. Now tonight she’s going to look pretty and have fun if it kills her.

As Sadie pulls her balloon dress over her head Mer says, Sadie, what she needs is to get over Jasper and men completely. Sadie replies, she’s the one who said she was over Jasper, he’s on a path and she’s on a path… Mer says, this was before Jym decided to dump her, it’s his fault she’s thinking about Jasper. She just can’t believe people think it’s acceptable to love someone one day and run out on them with zero answers so they’re left holding the bag, again. Jasper is probably with someone else in a loving committed relationship this minute. Sadie says, please. What makes her think either one of them has a skills to actually be with anyone? She’s going to have a good life, missy, so let’s hit it.

She chose black leather high-heeled tennis shoe boots, then coils her hair in big loops about her ears, blew silver glitter on her eyes and shows Mer in the floor length mirror. She says bored to the core, this is a lot better. As Sadie drives she continues, and don’t think she’ll ever get any answers out of Jasper or anybody which would satisfy her anyway, the guy has the personality of a fucking radish, and no one likes radishes. Mer replies, rabbits do.

The 2 stand in a dangerously long line, hoping to get past the red velvet ropes and have ripped doormen assess the general validity of the statement, they’re on the list. Mer asks, who invites people to a party and makes them wait to see if they’re allowed to come in? Sadie says wryly, apparently Conde’ Nast. Mer had almost talked Sadie into leaving when the coffee guy recognized her by her hair and pulled Sadie and she by the arm past the others who’d spent 45 minutes plus shivering in the cold.

He knew the doormen, Mer silently apologizing to each and every Martian, astronaut, and Venusian Goddess as they slinked past. Their grinning savior in baby blue fleece blanket draped like a toga asks, how’s it goin’? They were safely 40 stories high in an all-silver rotating room, Mer hypnotized by his white skin and black chest hair crop circle patterns and wondering if she’d ever gotten his name then notices the all-legs blonde drop-deader in Eskimo boots, headdress, and fake fur bikini, bedroom cat eyes and dark eyebrows, looking like a taller Siberian husky. It didn’t matter since Sadie abruptly announces, there’s Ben Affleck and suddenly pulls Mer with arm-dislocating force to the bar.

Mer says, well, bye! Oh and thanks! He did the catch ya later jerk of the head. Sadie then stops and says, shit, they lost him! Mer says, she was talking to that guy, and Sadie compares him to a poor man’s Tom Hanks.

Mer asks, why is it fine for her to chase someone but she can’t have one simple conversation. Sadie states, because she tries making one simple chat her new boyfriend. Fun only, Missy! Sadie spots Affleck again and makes a dash as Mer stands there feeling a bit losers for how many people she recognized doing auditions for or with and fake smiling.

Mer stands by a giant glass window, realizing she had a perfect view of hell, then suddenly ducking behind a fake ficus to avoid her mother, now arm in arm with Quentin Tarantino, she not even wanting to know what this could be about. This was when she was accosted by Baby, she having worked with her father for a bit, and the nickname coming from she calling everyone baby and also having a too big head and no attention. She calls Mer baby and she tries to ignore her, but it doesn’t take, she kissing the air near her cheeks then saying for her to come to NY, she’d be a star on the bar scene, one just not meeting real men out here! Then introducing her to a brooding 20’s something actor she’d end up fucking on a motorcycle in an alley in about an hour (another rep Baby didn’t seem to mind).

Baby was inviting her for drinks elsewhere, but Mer declined inadvertently sounding like she was gay but clarifying she was with her best friend who’s a girl. Baby says it was a shame, since she and her fella were hoping for a 3-way with her, the 2 walking away. Mer scans for Sadie so they could escape, she seeing coffee guy who gives her the mimed phone and mouths call me, Mer laughing and giving him the Fonz because he was such a giant dork. Mer finds Sadie in line at the restroom, she offering Mer, Cosmo?

Trying to hand her the pink drink, Mer declining, no thank you, where has she been? She wants to leave! She swallows the drink in a single gulp and says, Ben-land. Too skinny. Sadie had once broken up with a guy because he’d lost too much weight becoming a woman’s size 4 and if hearing his name, Sadie will convulse as if recalling severe food poisoning. Sadie follows after a tray of multicolor Rice Krispy treats calling, it’s not even midnight!

As Mer heads for a table with twins in matching jumpsuits, someone looming over her says, hey, she looks like Princess Leia, Mer seeing he did too, saying so, and noting his green eyes and long black hair as he peeled an orange. After she introduces herself when he asks and he recognizes her name, but doesn’t make a big deal about it, he says his name is Charlie Mate, they then sharing their interests and bond more after both accepting kimchi salads in paper cones and belching because the dressing was made with rancid oil. Mer and he chat about feeling done, Mer including how many ways she’s done with many aspects of men, he saying, taking care of other people’s feelings is pretty overrated and his motto in life was make oneself happy. Then he mentions his ice sculpture, pointing to the giant bird coffee guy had walked past earlier, when Sadie had dragged her away to chase Affleck.

It was of a bald eagle in an astronaut’s helmet and clutching the earth in its talons. Mer asks him, he’s an ice sculptor? In Cali? He replies, he’s a real rebel. Then Lila appears and says, God, please tell her they knew each other and planned those outfits since they practically look like twins, she mentioning Spoonie would be on in about 3 minutes. See her next year!

Then darts off but mouths, he’s cute when Charlie wasn’t looking. The lights dim but not enough for her to glimpse her mother positioning herself next to Denzel Washington at the foot of the stage. The crowd throbs like a giant amoeba when the industrial music starts with an electric bagpipe she and Charlie smiling at each other. Then 10 seconds to midnight Spoonie stops playing and they count down, Mer looking at Charlie and thinking, would he kiss her, he looking at her devilishly grinning.

In the corner of her eye she sees Sadie already making out with a fat Spock. At one, Charlie grabbed her hand and licked it. When Mer got home she already had a message from Charlie asking, is she around? Is she a square? Mer screams out loud, she says this!

The message continues, he just wanting to say it was really nice meeting her tonight and hopes they can get together when she has some free time. As she lay down in her bed swathed in cozy layers of white flannel and down, pieces of herself returned like iron filings to a magnet. Charlie and she meet in Santa Monica, Mer inviting him to come walk in nature with her on a massive mountain with view of mountains, sky and sea. She felt good this morning and having a no-pressure outing with a nice guy.

All the same, she chewed 3 pieces of wintergreen gum; poor hygiene is just poor manners. Charlie arrive dressed like a trendy forest ranger in olive khakis with a vintage Boy Scout shirt with a patch saying 420, mirrored police sunglasses, and clunky mustard-colored lace-up boots. Mer was brave enough to pour herself into a pair of jean shorts and a long-sleeved ribbed purple shirt, even though her legs were wintry white and unshaven. Mer figured she needed to be utterly herself right away, this way she’d find out quick who stuck around.

Charlie points out white sage and its Latin name, along with rattling off about 16 other plants, which of course he knew about plants. Turns out Charlie had a little herb garden, mint and chocolate geranium were his favorites. She was so nervous about her breath and memorizing plants with names, she hadn’t noticed an ingrown hair on her leg the size of a small dog until they start their ascent. She panics and hugs the area closest to the fall so he wouldn’t see the inflamed boil side of her leg, but Charlie was wily and crisscrossed in front of her point ing out some kind of succulent ground cover and tiny yellow wildflowers.

He says, this is mustard! Pulling yellow blossoms off the sender stalks for her to taste, this reminding her of Spoonie and her codeword. He’s saying, this is licorice and this is yucca, she staying low, unable to concentrate on anything he was saying because she was sweating so much and straining to hide the bump. She touched IT compulsively now, with every other step.

She was all bump and minimal forward motion. He suddenly asks, is she OK? Mer asks, what? Why? He says, because she’s kind of walking funny.

She says, oh, deer in the headlights, he saying, she’s walking like this, demonstrating, and continuing, like she has poopie trou or something, grinning. She drops to the ground and pulls her shirt over her bent knees, burying her face in her hands, he asking, dude, did he say something wrong? She says to her navel, no, it’s just he’s so honest and she doesn’t know him and…and… He crouches beside her, and puts a hand on her back saying, just say it.

She points to her leg, ran her hand over the fabric which hid it and says, bump! He asks, where? Pulling at the end of her shirt trying to get a look, Mer saying, NOOOOOOOO! He says again, let him look at it.

He bent on all fours and leaned forward, without lifting her face, she raises her shirt and reveals it, he saying, eeuwwww! It’s huge! Can he pop it? She screams again, NOOOOOO! She pulls her shirt back down and started rocking herself back and forth, saying, go away! She peers at him over her left kneecap as he smiles devilishly.

He asks, let him pop it, can he? His intentions seemed so pure, she letting him lift her shirt again and after a closer look decides it’s not ripe so found wild lavender, crushed the blossom and stem and applied it like a salve instead. Then they collect eucalyptus leaves and told her to boil them, then with gauze, apply it like a poultice, she not hearing the word in real life, esp from a handsome hetero 26 year old man. The following Tue she asks Charlie if he wanted to hit the museum for the Cubist show still running.

Her dad’s stuff had been up for weeks and kept promising herself she’d go. Charlie dresses like a Salvador Dali painting complete with pocket watch. Before they’d gotten in his giant dented blue flatbed truck with sticky starter, he climbed her tree. Her tree! The one the Feng shui people said prevented her from ever getting a man, this tree. Charlie climbed it. Climbed it. Climbed IT.

She was so shocked she dropped her purse. Strolling through the halls and seeing the look of awe on Charlie’s face as they stop to examine a piece of her father’s work called, If all else fails choose D none of the above, a painting of pure sky, had Mer recall one of the only things she liked about seeing her father’s work on display. She liked it best when the pieces belonged to them. They continue to see a couple more and she gets memories of her childhood, ages 5, 7, 13, and sitting int he kitchen as her father warms up a bowl of chili from the can and making color jokes together.

While he waits for the lugubrious brown stew to boil, they call out horrifying color combos and laugh. She says something like, apple green and orange plus brown, and he says, that’s nothing. Beige, mildew, and D.C. or turquoise, leather, and tofu. If she tries to argue leather isn’t a color he tickles her. When they were driving sometime Spoonie and her mother play, too.

Car interiors have them peeing their pants, strip mall color schemes send them over the moon, the idea of fabric stores flattens them. When Charlie and she get to a piece from her father’s Cubist period, their feet become cement, it’s called From Russia with Glove. The image is the Statue of Liberty, barefoot in Central Park, wearing a crown of thorns made of splayed Barbie doll legs and an oven mitt. Charlie and she can only look at each other and know instinctively how sad it was; the loss of a true humanitarian absurdist.

There was nothing to say, then Mer has an epiphany about Cubism, always despising this type of art, but now understood it wanted them all to comprehend the full scope of things, to see and know everything from wherever one stood. To see the back of the head of those one loves and inside their heart at the same time one looked them in the eye. Inwardly she thanks Charlie. When she got home she decided to spruce her place up a little, so picks wildflowers from all her neighbors’ yards and hillsides.

Placing daffodils in an old tea tin in her kitchen window near the sink, iris in a jelly jar by her bed, and a single white camellia in a mint-green-and-white chipped finger bowl by her father’s easel. The next day Mer was still feeling inspired from the museum, so calls Charlie to ask if he wanted to paint pottery. They go to a ship and she’s suddenly nervous with there pressure of her father’s artistic legacy, so picks up an unfinished soap dish, but Charlie wouldn’t have it, picking out a large unfinished salad bowl because he wanted something large he could paint with her. Her courage surfaced, wondering if it’d stay at his or her place or if they should just move in together to avoid argument.

She lets him choose the colors and a girl in a navy apron squirts them onto a square glazed white tile: orange, ice blue, and magenta, dark green, brown, pink and plum. Mer looks around the room, it hard not to notice things differently with him around. For instance the relationship between things in pairs, the edge of the table they sat at, the corner of his chair, the tiny plants in the window leaning toward each other. Charlie asks, what’s she thinking about?

She blushes and says, uh! Twirling her paintbrush in the water watching it turn milky blue, continuing, um, things in pairs actually. Charlie jotted straight up in his seat, turned his side of the bowl around for her to see a big fat PEAR next to a bunch of dancing bananas with top hats and faces, and a scruffy-looking creature with for legs and antlers looking like it started out as a dog and maybe turned into a goat. Mer identifies what she sees then asks, what the hell is that?

He contorts to her side of the table to examine it think sits up triumphantly and saw, it’s a goatbear! They erupt into peals of laughter, he asking what she made? He sits straight spine in his seat and his whole face softens, saying, wow! She lightly smacks his arm and says, shut up!

He says, he’s serious. It’s really nice. Really…feminine, she crinkles her nose as he continues, she’s like a real artist. He loves the colors. She pulls a face and says, nah. He looks sad now and says, really. Don’t close off. See? He turns the bowl back around and she looks at what she’d done, trying to see it through Charlie’s eyes: intertwining vines and roses, 2 birds and 2 dancing fairy ladies, and some snacks with mosaic multicolored backs.

She brushes her hair behind her ear and says, not so bad. He affectionately conks her on the head. Later in the evening they end up at a carpeted piano bar at a dive West Hollywood hotel. Charlie knew no one was ever there so they sat and played the piano even though she can’t.

They end up singing all the Pat Benatar songs they knew at the top of their lungs to the dead drunk amusement of a few lingering lonely hearts and some random staffers. Soon the man with the industrial strength vacuum was using the end of the nozzle as a mic for a duet with Charlie, Hell is For Children, never sounding so good. Later when Mer calls Sadie from bed, she asks, does he have a girlfriend? Mer says, she doesn’t know, as she strokes Tulie’s pink belly softly.

Sadie asks, did he try to kiss her? Mer says, no. Sadie states, oh that’s a bad sign. Mer says, Sadie…, she continues, he’s either gay or he has a girlfriend. Mer asks, maybe he’s just being respectful? Sadie says, they see each other all the time and talk 500x a day and have all this synchronicity and he hasn’t tried to jump her? Something’s fishy in Denmark.

Mer replies, or maybe he’s a grown-up, Sadie, and what’s the rush if it’s forever? Sadie replies, he has a girlfriend. Mer saying, Sadie! Sadie reminds her, where’s the rose connection, if he’s the one.

Mer says, maybe she got it all wrong. Sadie says, just do her a favor and go out with this guy she met in her spinning class. She might like him. Mer says, what guy? Sadie says, he’s a math teacher. He’s from ROSEville.

Mer replies, Sadie, her plate’s full. Sadie says, well, at least add a side dish for Godsake’s. At least find out if he has a girlfriend before she goes all gaga on her. Mer says, goodnight Mom.

Sadie says, Goodnight, Mission: Impossible to deal with. On Wed evening Mer asks if Charlie felt like dancing, he suggesting a spot to meet him, a dance studio in the Valley. It was a large simple high airplane hangarish ceilings with a ballet barre type of place. African and Brazilian samples blaring.

Barefooted people of every size, shape, and color, their eyes closed and dancing wildly. In the corner was a bench decorated like an altar and littered with fragrant magnolias and a row of lighted white candles. Charlie tells her, just let her body move the way it wants, this is like the opposite of yoga, just totally free her mind. Over on the altar she can offer up her intention.

Tonight he’s going to dance the purity of connection along with a little don’t-make-me-pay-my-Visa-late-charge on the side. Following his lead Mer slips her shoes off. He smelled like sandalwood, he grabbing her hand and pulling her onto the floor. At first she was shy for him to see the way the music moved her, but when he started hopping around like a Mexican jumping bean, she felt a little more free.

After an hour of swaying, jumping, bumping and weaving in and out of sweaty backs and dam pits and outstretched fingers like sea anemone feelers, she was fearless. It actually felt good to be in her own skin. To be herself completely opposite Charlie, who was also himself, and not lose her. She felt a radiance in her belly, like they were all walking around with little potbelly stoves full of light, beaming it back and forth at one another.

Everyone was just a light being on a path dancing through life. She wipes her eyes with the back of her hand for the realization, maybe this is what Jasper meant in his letter, she looking over at Charlie. His eyes were closed and was giving himself a long luxurious hug. Later, over cheap Mexican food, she broke down and told Charlie about Jasper and Jym, mainly to get things off her chest, but secretly to initiate dialogue about their possible future together without scaring him off by talking about herself.

She figured he’d just naturally bring up his whole relationship deal if she broke the ice. As she continues with not getting why all the people she loved didn’t love her back, including her dad, and not having seen a relationship actually work, Charlie, as he’s building a guac fortress says, dude, she didn’t do anything wrong, no one did, relationships are all about flow and finding someone who makes her feel good because they’re just flowing right alongside of her doing their own thing. A lot of it comes down to plain old timing and luck…, even though he’d said ‘dude’, her chest tightened and vibrated like a paper drum, like a revelation was about to blast on through. Charlie leans in closer, smelling of onion salsa, dried sweat, and denim, popping a tortilla drenched in guac in her mouth.

The candles on the table in clay pots made his face light up like a sun and he says, when something’s right, it’s just…right. Dude, she’s totally great, so don’t even sweat it. She feels seen and she aches, saying, she feels so lucky to have met him. He replies, him too, and takes her hand, she looked up at him with tears of joy in her eyes.

He handed her a hankering from his pocket, embroidered with tiny hand-stitched roses. She couldn’t help but laugh and think of course you carry tea old fashioned hankies with roses on them you miracle. When Mer got home, she wrote in her journal a preface of thanking God and as a result of knowing Charlie Mate the following she wouldn’t miss about being in a relationship with Jasper Husch or Jym Court, writing 8, including, the panicky feeling she couldn’t be herself. The jealous feeling whenever they were apart, the anxious feeling when they didn’t call.

Under the list in crayon she colored a rainbow and drew a little self-portrait: a girl in a dress of moons and hearts, under a canopy of stars. As she climbs into bed, she inwardly praying, if it’s not too much to ask, could God make Charlie love her forever and send her a little job so she doesn’t have to take money from her mother anymore or at least a sign as to her real purpose, just so she knows God’s real? Thanks. The rest of the month goes like this, from journal entries.

Thurs she and Charlie picnic in Griffith Park, reading poetry aloud in the sun, discussing importance of classical music, becomes so swooned she accidentally leaves wallet in Charlie’s truck. Come home to 3 annoying messages from her mother saying she misses her and wants her help cleaning out the office, and remind she’s thinking of selling their childhood home or at least remodel the kitchen (again), and the real estate person is coming Fri so again could she please please please come help her clean out ‘the office’. Fri she meets Charlie at Starbucks for her wallet, they sit in the car and talk for hours. Smell and covet jean jacket he accidentally leaves in the back of her car.

Drives home holding it to her face and post a surprise pic of them looking like Twin Stars on her bulletin board she never uses above her computer. Sat she goes on a voice-over audition for BBQ sauce wearing lucky jean jacket, then meets at Starbucks to return jacket. She receives gift of old tees and patches Charlie thought she’d like. Spend the rest of rainy afternoon alone, whimsically darning socks and jeans with homemade patches and embroidery thread.

She has a massive crush on herself, listening to Bach and avoiding picking up the phone when her mother calls again about today being the perfect day to clean out the office. Later, she goes to Largo with Charlie to see Spoonie open for a couple bands. Mon Mer receives annoying phone call on car phone from her mother about making time to talk to an annoying journalist for Vanity Fair piece on her to run in conjunction with her father’s birthday and retrospective in Frankfurt in the middle of drive to beach with Charlie for guitar sing-along and lesson on how to build fire in sand. Tue Mer books commercial for BBQ sauce, talk about luck and flow.

Calls Charlie and they make a plan to go to Big Bear to see snow and celebrate. She makes perfect cup of Earl Grey with half and half and 2 sugars. Thank God up and down mostly for getting out of cleaning out the office with mother and for the 1st time ever feeling like things are turning around for the better. She thinks all suffering was meant to lead her to bliss as result of Charlie.

Knows beyond a shadow of a doubt consummation of Charlie’s love for her is only a matter of time. One learns a lot about a man from his toothbrush, and Charlie had 2. He finally had invited her over to his tiny one-bedroom house for a home-cooked dinner. While he checked on the parchment paper salmon and cockle rapini, she snooped around.

Out on his tiny wooden deck she met his various herbs in tiny terra cotta pots neatly arranged on a low picnic table bench. Lavender and tarragon and basil, they having names like, Lola, Sweetums and Nettie-Arlene. After viewing a spotted dish with a generous portion of old scrambled eggs for the neighbor’s cat, she spun the tire of a bicycle which hung from a hook under an awning then returns inside the humble cottage. Near a large window, there was a small metal card table from the 50s with a white enamel top and 3 mismatched metal chairs with diamond patterned velvet cushions in sumptuous golds and purples.

A patchwork quilt covered one wall, and above a foldout futon couch there were hats with buckles, buttons, plumes, and silk flowers for nearly any occasion. His digs were small, but cozy; magical. It looked like a secretly rich jester lived there. While the wild rice steamed, they decorated devil’s food cupcakes.

They mixed food coloring in little pots of store bought vanilla frosting and made their own colors. Mauvy brown, orangish-pink, grey. She was as free as a kid again and Charlie put a big swipe of blue frosting on her nose, she letting it dry there, almost wishing it were a tattoo. Then she made the mistake of excusing herself to use his bathroom (secretly to see how she looked with blue frosting on her nose) only to excitedly discover they had the same Amidala toothbrush.

When she emerges waving the toothbrush wildly in her hand, he froze and before he could utter a word his body gave him away. He says, that’s his fiancee’s, his is the other plain blue one. Mer says, oh, trying to play it off like she already knew he had a fiancee, and says, well, she has the same one as her. Her sounding funny and separated itself from the sentence, hanging suspended in the air.

Of course he had a fiancee, as she looked around his house now, it becoming crystal clear. There were little feminine touches everywhere, a pink paper lantern in the window a framed poem written on a stained cookie doily, and a fucking right out in the open goddamned Lilith Fair CD. At this point Charlie started to pace, and says, her name’s Arielle, she’s a model who works with the blind, training guide dogs, and she’s on a bathing suit assignment in Jamaica but hates it because the modeling world is so fake and what they really want to do is open a little restaurant and have a full-service catering business complete with flowers and ice sculptures and hors d'oeuvres , and stuff because, he means, people love parties and with the whole internet deal he thinks people are really gonna want to get back to basics like good clean eating and artistry in general, and dinner’s almost ready so why doesn’t she take a seat. Mer though about all the men she’d ever loved in terms of their toothbrushes, Jasper had hemp bristles and was addicted to porn and Jym’s was electric and wasn’t so great at head, her first boyfriend used a Water Pik and never wanted sex.

She wonders what horror she was being spared by seeing Charlie’s plain toothbrush - impotence? Infidelity? Schizophrenia? Nymphomania? WAS HE A WOMAN? Suddenly she was furious, and asks, did he think they’d have an affair? He replies sweetly, no, he thought they’d become awesome friends. She goes the other route and says, oh, so she’s not good enough, is this it?

She’s not attractive enough for him? He stutters, no…he…, she brushes tears away with her fingers and asks why didn’t he tell her? He says, it never came up. He really wanted to but didn’t know how. He was actually gonna tell her tonight and he’s really glad they’re talking about this now, he the calmly adds, phew! He feels a lot better. Mer thinks God, he was worse than Karl, so thorough, and even-tempered, she felt like the Tasmanian Devil spinning out of control next to him.

Then Charlie starts to cry, too, and says, he’s sorry for not telling her sooner he had no idea he’d like her this much. He never meant to hurt her. He wiped his nose on his arm and she noticed how golden blond and hairy his arm hair was, the snot making a silvery trail as it dried on his skin. Her mind was a busy arrivals and departures sign updating its schedule again. This explained why he never tried kissing her, or walked her to her door or came in to her house.

She wanted to get in her car and drive away, but even standing there arguing and being sad with him was more fun than anything else in the world, so she stared out his big boy window instead, the sun setting. She repeats in her head, she’s a part-time ex-model who works with the blind. Oh, she’s beautiful all the time, but she only models part time, making a fortune when it’s convenient for her, but her real passion is donating her time training dogs for the blind. She looks at Charlie now as he lit 3 blue candles, his eyes damp and she thinks, this guy’s never going to leave her.

She’d have to be modeling for Amnesty International on a full time basis to turn his head and even make a dent. He says, she’s coming back in 2 weeks and he’d really love for them to meet. He thinks they’ll really like each other. She says, yeah, sure whatever, trying to laugh it all off, but snorted snot out of her nose and had to excuse herself. In the safety of the bathroom, hugging her knees, she says her name out loud, Arielle.

This made it real, then resting her head on the toilet with the clear undersea themed lid, seeing the seaweed and tiny opalescent seashells and sea horse trapped forever in plastic made her feel even sadder. Charlie knocks on the door and asks everything ok in there? She wondered if she’d ever have real love all to herself with someone as real as Charlie forever. He says, Mer, please come out here and have dinner with him.

She wanted to hate him, instead she opened the door and says, Charlie. He replies, yeah? She asks, does she knew about her? She means what did he tell her about her? But their phone rings and the machine picked up and a girl’s voice, soft and nervous pleaded, baby, is he there? It’s an emergency.

He ran for it, and Mer moves outside to give him some privacy. Under a million twinkling galaxies she wondered how many other people were sitting down to awkward heartbreaking dinners this minute. She can see him pacing from the warm yellow light of the kitchen to the dark of the den. Then hears him say, ok. He’ll be on the next flight out, and with heavy steps Charlie came outside to tell her the news, saying, Arielle’s father had a heart attack, this hit Mer like a bowling ball punch to the teeth, he continues, they don’t know how serious it is, but…

Mer starts gathering up dishes and says, of course, yeah, my God. Is there anything she can do? He says, no, just leave it, before scurrying off to pack. Suddenly Mer feels like she’s 3, ands a memory of her last moment’s with her sister Shiva Plum, which is more detailed about how she wasn’t allowed to hold her by herself. With Charlie and Arielle’s mismatched dishes in her arms she looked up in time to see a shooting star and made a healing with for her, for them, then wipes the blue frosting from her nose.

Mer comes home to 2 messages, one was Charlie, calling from the airport telling her he’s thinking about her and wanted to make sure she’s all right. He wondered if she wanted to have coffee Thursday when he got back to town, she saying out loud, no, thank you. The 2nd message was her mother, Mer, darling, it’s Camilla calling. Listen, Larry Flynt saw the pice they ran on her in Vanity Fair, the one with the family photo; anyway, like she said, his office called and wanted to know if she and Grandma and her would be interested in doing a photo spread entitle, ‘3 Generations of Pussy’ for Hustler. She told them she didn’t think she’d be interested, but just call her so she can let them know for sure. Grandma said whatever she decided is fine, it’d be a free trip to Capri or the Bahamas, but she’s fine either way. Love her! Mchwa!

Next, Jasper is he there? It’s her America. Of course he’s not there: it’s voice mail. She…she just wanted to tell him… she’s thinking about him… and she loves him. Bye. Inwardly, fuck. Karl says, as patient as always, as far as calling Jasper a year ago, 6 months ago even, she’d have driven up there, so although it’s a minor backslide, calling and not engaging is actually tremendous progress and Charlie, well, it’s a hard lesson to learn of one can have it all and it still might not work out, nice guys can sometimes just be boy friends. She looked at the stuffed animals lined up in a rainbow starring back at her from the tantrum couch.

She fakes a gag reflex, she disgusting herself, and says, well, she wants the rest of it, goddamn it! Karl says, he hears her anger, but maybe Charlie can be a friend to her. The way he said it made her think of movies about cavemen: me friend, this fire, fire bad. She says, ha! If she’s so anxious to give love away, why doesn’t she just adopt a little crack baby? At least give it away to someone who deserves it. It’s insane - she’s healthy, educated, she can vote, she can wear whatever she likes, she has no REAL money worries, her car is paid for, she has a beautiful home, she’s white…

She looks at Karl pleadingly and asks, what kind of happiness can she really expect to have? He coughs into his hand and adjusted his ass in his seat, saying, well… Mer continues, why isn’t this enough? Why does she want a boyfriend so much?, pounding her fist into her thigh. Karl says, don’t beat herself up, America. He thinks they’re doing real work here to make sure she is whole in HER first.

The true desire to reach out to others naturally arises when it stems from a real satisfaction with Self. He traces an invisible capital S in thin air. Mer says, she’s so bored of being sad. Karl asks, how bored? He faced his desk, unlocked his file cabinet, pulled a piece of paper free from a tan folder and handed it to her.

It was a flyer, black ink on glossy white paper in calligraphy font next to a dark-haired woman’s smiling face, it read: There can be no suffering in True Freedom. Join Luna forest at The Thistlewood Community Retreat Center conveniently located an hour from Portland for 11 days of silence in the beauty of an old growth forest for an opportunity to remember one’s true nature. She looked over at Karl’s smiling face, she thinks 11 days of silence? The worse cases in his practice only needed 9.

Was she worse than the worst case? Karl must’ve seen her panic because he says, Mer, she’s a wonderful teacher, she cuts right to the heart of things; well actually, she would… he trails off, as if remembering a wonder vacation. Outside the sun was starting its descent, it casting a shadow on Karl’s face like he was wearing an executioner’s hood, he looking at her and saying, he thinks she’s ready. She swallowed and asks, can she think about it?

He asks, she means postpone? She forgot how annoying he could be, she’d promised herself never to come back, ever. If only she accomplished one thing in her life it’d be to never return to this office. Karl says, if she does decide to go he guarantees she’ll be a different person.

A fire truck roars by with sirens blaring, she feeling like the truck and says, she wants a good life. Karl states, she has a good life now. She’s just playing some old tapes she needs to unlearn. He sounded like one now, he continuing, all right now, he thinks they’re done for today. This one’s on him.

When she moved toward the open door to go, Dr. Karl held his arms out and offered her a hug, smelling of almond massage oil and tobacco. She leaned forward and stuck her butt out so their hips wouldn’t touch. He patted her on her back behind her heart like he was trying to burp her, and says, how about letting the Future Her start to make some of her decisions from here on out, and remember, the treasure doesn’t do the hunting. All right, now! Mer was driving when Sadie calls and says, there she is! He fucks like a goddamned criminal, Mer, she’s serious. She’s totally in love.

Mer says with forced enthusiasm, that’s great, Sadie. She replies, what’s the matter. She sounds sad. Mer says, she’s just a little depressed. She just came from - Sadie cuts her off and says, listen, come and meet her and Swane tonight down at Spaceland. Swane wants them to go see this band Rows Five Through Seven.

Mer squints and asks, she means like a chaperone? Sadie squeals, OOOH! No, but that is so funny… Mer asks, wait, who’s Swane? Sadie says, he called her the minute he got back. He’s been out of the country. Location scouting. So does she want to come?

Mer says, oh, she doesn’t know she’s just feeling… Sadie says, oh, boo, never mind then, she whispers, Mer, he’s huge, she’s serious. Hung like a horse. She has to whisper ‘cuz she’s at his house and… Mer hears a male voice now, shouting something from another room, Sadie calling out to him, what, honey? She can’t hear him. Yeh, ok, in a minute. Mer, he wants her to come join him in the fucking shower, can she fucking believe this? She totally gets what she means by ‘you just know’ she’s gotta go. If she changes her mind just meet them down there at 11! Mer says, yeah, ok, she hangs up and thinks this is so her life.

Just when she’s single and miserable, Sadie gets a boyfriend. Suddenly the Tom Hanksy coffee guy, clad in newspaper biker paraphernalia, raps on her car window with his gloved knuckle. She jumps. He says, oh, sorry! He didn’t mean to scare her! Horrified he caught her looking so awful, she rolled down her window, forced a big smile, and accidentally said, she’s doing great!, before he even asked her how she was.

He looked at her quizzically and says, him, too. Hey, he’d give her another flyer to see his band but he knows she won’t show. She wanted to apologize, or at the very least follow him home and make out, but she knew this fixation wasn’t where her health was at, so she just nodded. She could tell he felt her blow - off energy by the way he looked away and wiped his mouth with the back of his gloved hand, just then, Wind Beneath My Wings, came on her radio. All she could do was flap her hands as if trying to put out a campfire and says, oh, no. Oh, no!

She was so weirded out by the synchronicity of Sadie’s call and horrified at the same time Mr Dreamy caught her dialed into an Easy Listening station she turned 9 shades of beet red. The light turned green, the coffee guy bit the velcro end of his black glove, tightened the strap, and half-waved goodbye. Mer calls, see ya!, then thinks, this is so her life. Mer shouts to the ringing phone, she’s coming, she’s coming!, as she turns the key in her front door which was now painted cranberry to attract love, and says, hello?

Camilla says, Mer, it’s Camilla calling. Mer says, yes, Mother, she recognizes her voice, dropping her keys on the kitchen table, thumbing through her mail and Camilla says, listen darling, she really needs her to help her clean out the office. These documentary people are coming and she needs her to help her pull slides and… Mer asks, what documentary people? When?

Tulie scratches on the back door asking to be let out. Camilla says, the people from Belgium radio. She makes a crunching, chewing sounds and continues, for the show in April to coincide with the show in Frankfurt. Dunno, the one she asked Jasper to do the program cover for. Hearing Jasper’s name plunged her into a frozen lake. Her mother took another bite of something loud and says, now, she needs her to be available to be interviewed and she needs the house to look - Mer interrupts, radio, Belgium, Frankfurt, wait - what? Why did she call Jasper? When did she talk to him and what the fuck is she eating?

Tulie scratched the back door again. Camilla says, potato chips. She didn’t, he called her. Mer’s pacing now and Camilla says, America she told her all this. They’re all going over there in the spring and Jasper expressed interest in doing the program guide and she doesn’t think he can be there at the show but - Deep creases formed along Mer’s brow and she says, no, Mother, no she didn’t tell her, because if she had she’d have told her then what she’s telling her now, don’t fucking talk to him, and she certainly would’ve told her not to ask him to do the program.

When did she talk to him? WHEN? She absentmindedly rapid fire flexed and released the muscles in her calf. Camilla says, oh, she doesn’t know, right around her birthday? He said he has the time even though he’s right in the middle of about 17 things… Tulie scratched the door again.

Mer starts to pace, and says, she can’t fucking believe this. Jasper and she aren’t even speaking and… Camilla says, she can’t talk to her when she’s like this. Goodbye, Mer. Mer says, he broke her fucking heart, Mother! Does she understand that? Camilla says, he’s a fine artist and she really doesn’t see…

Mer asks, how come she doesn’t see her as a fine artist? How come she doesn’t think about her? Camilla cuts her off, America Throne, she didn’t call her to bear witness to a psychic meltdown, so she’s going to put the phone down. Tulie made a whimpering sound and Mer watched her squat then, heard liquid on wood and screams, NOOOOO!, as she watched a fine clear stream puddle between her legs. Camilla says, fine. Then shall she tell them Tue? She and her can get the room done quickly at the weekend and…

Mer says, no! No! Camilla asks, well, what about Jasper? Mer says, she really has to go Mother. She has to go! She slams the phone down so hard, she startles herself.

After she damp-mops with lemon-scented ammonia, she smooths the blank page of her journal with her hand and at the top of the page wrote: THINGS I AM GOOD AT: Long list proceeds, including, being annoyed by her mother, being single when Sadie has a man and vice versa, choosing bad men, and later hating them, being jealous of Spoonie and Lila, hating Tulie, hating herself for hating her, secretly staying in love with Jasper no matter how much he hurt her or how awful he is. This night she dreamed she was a long-distance runner in a suburban neighborhood, pacing herself and running past normal things, then past Spoonie and Lila smiling and waving, past her mother gardening, Charlie’s there trying to hit Star Wars piñatas out of her tree with the end of a broom. She jogs in place and the sky goes suddenly dark, then seeing a woman with a large-brimmed hat drive by in a red pickup truck and in the flatbed she sees Jasper in a naked back bend, and has an enormous erection, he massages it in long strokes in time to her breathing, and he looks and smiles at her. Then she sees the woman driving the truck is her father who’s also smiling.

She wakes up to a ringing phone and looks at the clock, 2:17 am, she saying, hello? It was Sadie on her cell, she heard out garbled voices and bustling street sounds, she saying, she’s at Canter’s, she had to walk outside so he can’t hear her. She thinks she may have found her dream man. As she’s speaking to her she can see the outline of his penis in his jeans. He was on the show Roswell. His last name is Rose. Chuck Rosenzweig. Mer says, bye, Sadie. She easily places the phone back in the cradle and thinks, no more Roses, or Jasper’s, or therapy, or men.

The phone rang again, but she didn’t pick up, she knew what she had to do. She arrived at Thistlewood in a light drizzle in the dark. A Grizzly Adams heavyset bearded mountain man instructs where she can park her cigarette-smelling rental car, and she walks back with her enormous rolling luggage in darkness, when seeing him again asking why there weren’t lights, using a pocket flashlight, he first tells her directions to find a certain cabin on a handout, then gives her a wheelbarrow for her gear, which should be promptly returned for others to use. As for the lights this Retreat Center used a generator and rushing river water, so it’s recharged overnight and electricity must be used sparingly, if at all, man.

Then adds, but hey, isn’t it fun to learn to see in the dark like our owl brothers and sisters? Mer thanks him and he bids her farewell with a make herself at home, brown teeth showing under a mustache as he smiles in the dark. After several minutes she has zero luck finding her thatch-roofed shelter, but locating several others, the drizzle turning into rain, then into a full-blown storm. It was muddy and she was scared to a point of temporary blindness, though she did manage to notice how good it smelled there.

Wet and woodsy air so clean it stung her lungs to inhale. After continuing to walk she finally locates cabin 9, the one with the infinity sign, the one she’d been circling for nearly an hour because she hadn’t realized they didn’t have numbers, only symbols, which she felt should’ve been explained up front. When she turned on the light, it dimmed and hummed, but saw to of the 3 ‘beds’ were already taken. The room looked like a kidnapper’s crime scene after the police bust, stained mattresses and sleeping bags rolled tight on the floor near an old dirty sink.

A faded, drooping army cot by a drafty window, the glass cracked and whistled when wind whipped by. One of her favorite things about traveling was getting settled, but her imported creams looked garishly out of place before the lights flickered out. Irritated to be trapped alone in the dark in an abandoned garden shed, she decided to punish the entire Thistlewood Community by not returning the wheelbarrow. She sits on the cot and after a few minutes of extremely shocking dark and quietude, decides she didn’t want to be alone.

So, against her will, she fishes through her luggage for rain slicker, Banana Republic pink and blue cashmere scarf and matching cap and let by intuition, the smell of burning wood, and a bit of light she could make out in the distance, she headed for the main room of the big log cabin. Once inside, she spied a placard with ‘Om Sweet Om’ and another with Namaste, hearing her father in her head: Namastay-away is more like it. She started identifying the rooms, seeing the passable Mess hall, according to rain-soaked treasure map. Near an old radiator she saw about 30 pairs of muddy shoes, thinking did they expect her to remove hers?

Ha! On the wall were candid photos of staff working in various practices with goofy titles some of which: Mystical Theatre, Continuum Faerie Dancing, which upon seeing the ‘e’, Mer started feeling her depression turn from sadness to horror and devastation, realizing what loving Jasper Husch had amounted to. She chewed her pinky fingernail and entered the room where 50 or so people in mismatched mountain attire and wool socks were sitting upright and meditating cross-legged on the forest green-carpeted floor or in metal chairs in front of a big roaring fire. At the front of the room she recognized a radiant dark-haired woman, roughly 40ish in a taupe sweater set and long white skirt, sitting in the lotus position.

Mer thinks, is she as crazy as these people? Does she look like these sad women with braided hair and these lonely balding men, all gathered together in miserable quietude? She thought not. Still, she guessed they’d all been through something pretty awful to end up there. She scans their pathetic faces, not a cute guy in the bunch to distract her, she sighs and takes a seat in the back next to a woman swathed in a tie-dye blanket thrown over her shoulder like a cape.

Mer’s chair made a loud squeak when she sat down but no one acknowledged it. She sits upright, crossed her stripy sock-covered feet, and folded her palms in her lap, taking her cues mostly from a large man to her right in an even larger poncho. She listens to the rain beating on tin roof, crackling fire, and modest coughs and blowing of noses, rustling fabric, etc along with wind whistling. She was settling into a quiet moment in her busy head when she heard the ding of a tiny bell, Luna clutching a little copper bowl and small wooden wand letting its sound resonate and dissipate completely.

She says nothing, sets the bowl down on a small table with burning candle, folded her hands in prayer, held them to her forehead, and turned her head to everyone, smiling, until she’d blessed every last one of us. Now people stood, and either stretched or wandered out toward their shoes. Some headed toward Luna’s empty chair and pressed their foreheads to the floor in respect or bowed their heads as she passed them. Luna smelled like sterling roses, Mer stunned by her radiance, she bowing her head too.

When she looks back up, Luna’s bowing back at her, then leans in close and in a thick Scottish accent whispers, welcome, her voice as sweet as bananas and cream, she continues, they’re now in the silent portion of the retreat but there’s a handout for latecomers at the front desk which shows what times to gather together. Is she America? She wanted to speak but she made the mistake of looking directly into her eyes, which contained a certain vastness which made her feel both instantly at home and homesick. Mer rests her hand on the back of a nearby chair to steady herself, wanting to collapse at her hem and beg her never to let her return to her little pit of despair back in the dumb old Hollywood, CA. Mer thinks, oh my god, is she for real?

Luna asks again, is she America Throne? She wiggles her toes inside her socks and manages to find her way back to her body and nods yes. She smiles at her even more radiantly than before, obliterating any irritation from her arrival. In silence she guides her to the desk with handouts resting on a wooden shelf next to a bowl of floating flowers and a small tea light blowing inside a blue jar.

Mer reads the schedule which started at 6:30am-10pm. It’s titled, Namaste and Welcome To Your Self! 3 bells will ring indicating the following: rise and shine! (Stick figure of a guy yawning with his arms in the air - shown for each activity) After the list, it concludes with No reading music writing talking. Just being. Luna whispers in the meantime, just enjoy the silence and ReeeLOXshh, before heading off into the darkness.

One of Mer’s roommates had lit a candle and was washing her face in a little sink by Mer’s cot while the other was already in her sleeping bag in the back of the room. Mer prepped her toothbrush during roomie 1’s face ablutions, and when Mer needed to spit, roomie 1 was still hunched over the sink, so Mer finds the cabin door open and hacks it outside, but the door accidentally slams closed, and when Mer turns she perceives an evil look from the fresh-faced roomie. Roomie 2 merely changed positions and snored into the wall. As Mer wrestled herself into her nightie inside her sleeping bag, she thinks, fuck her for not making eye contact and judging her when she was hogging the sink.

Fuck the snorer, too, fuck this whole place, why do they have to have roommates anyway? She doesn’t need a retreat, she needed a fucking vacation. She tells herself, first thing in the morning she’s outta here. She’ll fly home and drive down to Twentynine Palms or stay at a spa somewhere. Fuck this.

Then roomie 1 blew out the candle and the room went dark. As she lay with eyes open, she thinks, how clinically depressed was she to pay money to not speak and share a room with 2 strangers in the middle of hippie nowhere? What on earth could Dr Karl have been thinking? He acted like she’d be instantly healed the second she stepped foot on the premises.

There and then she vowed to have Dr Karl’s license revoked, like earlier vowing to have a certain stoner’s resignation by lunch for not telling her about the door symbols. She was suddenly startled into outrage as she listened to roomie 2 bark through her nose. This is when she named them, Snorey and Hoardie. As she finally starts to drift off she hears Hoardie shaking several pill bottles like maracas.

She probably thought she was being polite by not turning the lights back on; she was wrong. Day 2, three loud gongs sounded through the camp and let anyone within a 30 mile radius know they’d beaten the sun by a hair. Her roomies were starting to stir, but Mer was unconvinced this was really happening, and after testing the air with her finger, noted too cold, and snuggled a little deeper into her squishy tomb, pressing her face into the downy nylon trying to warm her cheeks and nose and decide to remain in bed; Forever, but her bladder had different plans for her. Heckle and Heckle were well into their little morning rituals, one doing various yogic postures while remaining horizontal, while the other covered her yellow hair in a reusable shower cap and walked out the door.

Outside the window she saw several modest but scantily clad men and women trudging toward a co-ed bathhouse. This realization was bad, not awful, since it came to her attention she was in the middle of the most gorgeous old growth forest she’d ever seen. Rainforest documentary, National Geographic gorgeous. She thinks, maybe this isn’t so bad, maybe there is a God, and maybe, during the night, she’d died and went to heaven.

She unzips her sleeping bag, felt the sting of cold, and hurriedly slipped into rubber and canvas flip-flops, this was when she heard the first clap of thunder. At breakfast, people with wet hair moved slowly, to Mer, pretentiously, as they made their way toward the choice of Tofu Scramble with scallions, bell peppers, sweet potatoes, or ass blaster special number 2, oatmeal with stewed prunes. Hot licorice tea and sliced oranges all around. She thinks, sweet monkey, Christ she’ll starve.

She stares at her meal with the courage of a mountain climber on a slippery rock face. Some people hung their heads in prayer, blessing their food or perhaps like her, wishing it would turn into sausage and eggs. She checks the clock on the wall: only an hour until meditation, and only another 10 and 3 quarter days til she could leave. She thinks, Ok, Dr Karl Sage, PhD, where’s her fucking revelation?

Then she thinks, at least she’s not thinking about Jasper. Maybe she can hang in there after all. Day 3, at morning meditation, she politely battles for a seat very close to the foot of Luna’s chair. Even in silence people competed for a chance to be next to her, she already meditating.

Softly Luna says, see one’s mind as a flowing river and let one’s thoughts effortlessly drift downstream. Instantly Mer’s mind became a flowing river she tried to cross, but her thoughts were slippery thoughts, she leaping from one to another. When they were an earsplitting decibel, she opens her eyes and comes up for air, deciding instead to study the room. She notices how she still held her stomach in despite no handsome men to impress and how the hearth could seat 5 big asses comfortably, then how if her mother were here, she wouldn’t be able to keep her mouth shut.

Then came the demonic open-eye imagery: Mer dying, her dog dying, her mother dying, her grandmother dying, Spoonie dying, Charlie, Jym, and Jasper dying, everyone else dying, and leaving her left alone to grieve their loss and then dying herself. Then come the living horror fantasies: Mer homeless and they won’t help, Mer rich and her family homeless and she won’t help or they come to live with her, she rich and Jasper homeless and comes back to live with her. After almost an hour of fending off additional grotesque images of Charlie fucking a model, Jym fucking a model, Jasper fucking a model, and then moving in together, Luna finally rang her little bell and she was first one out the door. She thinks, how come they all come out smiling?

As she puts on her rain slicker, she notices the little posted quote of the day, Marry the one who never leaves. She thinks about how she’d feel when Jasper called her Guava and what made a person mean Guava one day and never again? She could feel her hot tears intermingle with raindrops. By dinner she was a complete wreck, piling too much food she wouldn’t eat on her plate and took no fork.

Her plan was to punish everyone by eating like a savage, her internal rebellious brat on overdrive. She wanted to ruin everyone else’s peace since she wasn’t having any. In her head she shouts at Karl: what’s the point of this place, you fuck? She’s here, isn’t she? Where is it, huh? Where’s her BIG BREAKTHROUGH?

This night she didn’t sleep, the rain had paused but her mind was out of control, now with thoughts of chemical warfare, the pope, and Sheryl Crow. It was too late for her to make arrangements to get home tonight but vowed to leave when the sun came up. She closed her eyes and tried to lay on her side. Snorey bulldozed away, and Hoardie snacked on the loudest granola ever created.

She was going crazy but at least she wasn’t alone. Day 4, Luna posted a note saying morning meditation was canceled feeling there was a lot of restlessness in the air, which was fine with Mer since she was going to blow it off anyway and make arrangements to leave but the office was closed, so she trudged to an enclosed area with a natural lithium hot spring bubbled amidst tiny flowering plants. In a fake tropical Japan, she beheld 4 tiled tubs representing the 4 directions and seasons. She checked the wooden schedule on the creaky hand-wrought gate to make sure it was a Women Only day, mercifully it was.

She chose autumn for her birthday in the fall and the temp suited her best, but mainly it wasn’t as crowded as the other tubs, being nude with strangers not exactly what she had in mind, but her bathing suit seeming wildly out of place. She lowered herself into the slippery brown-blue tiled tub, little bubbles forming on every little hair on her legs. The water made everything super-reflective and up-close looking, she realizing she found herself even more disgusting when magnified. She thinks, no wonder all men leave her, after esp seeing her toes with thick yellowing nails and black tufts of hair.

Just after noting the differences of other women’s bodies some with sagging breasts and overly bushy pubic hair along with the opposite skinny, dairy-free skin, adorable freckles, and boyish hips with coiffed pubes and how they were all grotesque, 2 pale feet slipped past Mer and slunk into the water, when Mer noticed it was Luna, she blushing. She was embarrassed she was sharing a naked soak with a teacher, but also ashamed, she getting the impression Luna could read her every thought. Mer goes under water holds her breath, the humming generators sounding in her ears along with her heartbeat and bubbles. When she surfaces, Luna had her head resting on the rounded cemented edge of the tub and gazing at the sky, seeming to be listening to outside sounds: the birds, lapping water, the wet vacuum sound of some women exiting the tub feet smacking on cement as they moved toward their clothes.

Mer decides to mimic her, and smells flowers and earth, noticing dragonflies and shimmery leaves in nearby trees. Suddenly Mer feels very beautiful, it seeming so obviously they all were very beautiful, it was only her mind which was ugly, and for a moment, everything was still. Wending her way back to her little cabin, she realized something loosened and softened in her. She felt like something had been hatched and set free, she held her arms open and pressed her chest into the sky.

Looking up past the canopy of trees and into infinite blue, she saw something which took her breath away. A bird falling toward the earth, dropping rapidly, its beak pulled toward the ground in a seemingly perilous nose dive, suddenly pulling up and out at the last possible minute. She thinks, oh, so this is what a retreat is about - moments of immeasurable sweetness. She decides to stick out the day and leave the next, or maybe the day after, then thinking, 11 days is nothing.

Day 5 she thinks, what is wrong with her, Mer? One minute she’s at peace, the next psychotic! It was as if the past 9 months and her entire life had been rammed into 11 excruciating days. A single moment doled out a complete emotional roller-coaster ride.

When she was on the verge of hysteria, she got up. Her plan was to go to the restroom and gather her wits, but once outside the meditation hall, she just takes off running. Up the path through the woods, past the cabins and parking lot, past the welcome kiosk to a nearby yurt which looked more like an abandoned circus tent than a holy place. It was freezing inside and smelled like plastic and dirt.

She lay flat on her belly, trying not to be absorbed into The Mother, while the sentence, I am going to die started to repeat in her head. Miraculously a few minutes later, the small wooden door with stained-glass moon opened and Luna entered, asking, what’s the matter, Dear? Luna knelt down, put a consoling arm around her shoulders and rocked her, brushing Mer’s hair with her hand. In her most musical lilt, she tells her, she’s only telling herself a story. Those are just thoughts suspended in a great peace, try to reeloxshh into right now. She’s in imagination, Dear, now go to the truth.

Luna looked at her only for a few moment’s but all was obliterated. A mystical explanation by definitely is something which can’t be explained or understood by anyone other than the person having it. How would one put into words a momentary flash which illuminates everything itches - a revelation which burns so bright it lights up the darkest recesses of one’s soul and leaves nothing for the mind to grasp, only empty space. Lightning-flash fast, Mer understood it didn’t matter if she new what her purpose was or what she did for a living, because she understood the Great Mystery was moving through her, expressing itself as her.

In her mind’s eye she saw herself as swirling colors turning into a painting, a peacock, a frosted cupcake, a tiny painted Russian doll which kept opening to reveal a smaller her until she disappeared and was therefore, everything. What she’d known previously - she’s America Throne, dumped of a very painful break up, sad daughter of a genius, and the very embodiment of loneliness and despair - suddenly dissolved and replaced by tremendous optimism, an avalanche of sweetness, leaving every cell of her being light-drenched. She thinks, maybe she’ll go back to school, maybe sell her car to do it. She could take cheap art classes at Santa Monica College: pottery, painting, wall paper design, cake decorating; everyone likes cake.

She thinks, it’s going to be her mother’s birthday soon and she wanted to make her a cake, in fact, she wanted to bake her 5 cakes! She wanted to be her own personal cupcake chef. Maybe she could even specialize in it and open a shop. She imagines telling her she doesn’t want to take money from her anymore and how she wanted to be a cupcake chef so she can pay her back for everything and she’d say, she meant pastry chef, and Mer would reply, no, she really means just cupcakes, and she’d say just keep the money and use it for yourself, she doesn’t really need it, and then Mer sneaks and saves it up and gives it to her anyway because, she loves her more than anything in the world, and it occurs to her she’s always been scared to be an artist.

If one at least did what one loves some of the time, then one has a better chance of some happiness. Then came a rushing feeling, she felt: She’s a river and these are just her mind-thoughts calmly rushing by. Luna says next, accept loss forever, let sleeping Buddhas be. Luna accepted her just as she was without asking for anything in return, and due to this Mer saw herself, it didn’t matter if Jasper loved her since she was love itself, and her father, well, he did the best he could.

Now she understood the only thing she could count on was impermanence. This is what she’s thinking as she stares blankly at the man behind a United counter. He asks, any relation? She asks, pardon?

Over the din of echoey loudspeaker announcements, crying babies, squeaky luggage carts and rushing feet. She was still in shock, going from total silence back into worldly chaos. He repeats his question, smiling shyly, she noticing his 2 front teeth overlapped and he kind of whistled when he spoke a she continues, to Boris Throne. He means ‘cuz he noticed here on her Driver License her name is America Throne, born ’69. She’s not by chance… She says, yes, he promptly blushes, drops his pen and picks it up again, starting to type furiously and says, he loved her father! He was his total hero, screw it, still is. What was it like? Having Boris Throne as a father, he means.

Smiling from her feet, she says, he was an amazing man. He says, this is what he thought, he’d gone to a book signing once in Pittsburgh and he stood at the back and watched, people waited hours for him to sign his book! Mer asks, which one, mentioning a few and he says, no, the cubist one, From Russia with Glove. He was so amazing, so patient. He waited until every last freak and geek had said his peace. He was kind to every last one, does she know how rare this is?

Mer says, her mother is probably going to put out another coffee table book of his stuff. She runs the estate. He says, he knows. He bets she’s amazing, too! Mer says, she’s really the glue of the whole operation, some people in line behind her were starting to get annoyed now. He shares how at the show he’d shown his father some of his work, at the time working with wax, and he said he should do something with animals, so he chose the airlines, laughing at his own joke.

Mer smiles and slides her luggage under the metal counter, he saying he’d seen her brother’s band play one, too. He drops his pen again and apologizes saying he’s a big fan, could he give her a hug? He loved her dad so much, and without thinking Mer leans over the counter and held out her arms. She then understood something about herself and about the beauty and satisfaction of total adoration.

He pulls away and wipes his eyes with the back of a luggage tag saying, he’s gonna bump her up to first class, she replying, cool. When Mer picks up her phone saying, huh? The next morning at 10 am, groggy and recovering from the fact Sadie and Swane had sex in her bed while she was away and it’s what she gets for asking lovebirds babysit her dog. Spoonie says, mustard.

She sits bolt upright repeating their emergency word, and asks, is it Mom? Spoonie starts to debate what kind of mustard it is, since their mom wasn’t dead or dying and he’d run it past Lila and she thought it counted, Mer replying he’d told Lila about mustard? This is practically mustard in itself, she speaking up and saying, she’s here for her America. Then the 2 speak around Mer and both ask her to meet up in person, so she agrees and tries to stay calm.

She circles for a spot several blocks from their meeting place at Nirvanarama’s, a health food, high-tech restaurant. She looks around but the 2 weren’t there, so she asks for a seat to wait. As Mer was sitting next to a boy who looked like a smaller, more evil version of Jasper, his mother feeding him different foods, and when she asks did he like this he’d scream, nooo!, and finally manages to get some egg in his mouth but some falls on to toast and he shrieks at top volume, the eggs are tickling the bread, Mer thinks he’s so adorable she debated the idea of stuffing him in her purse. Then Spoonie and Lila sit down across from her in matching outfits of black turtlenecks, wool caps, and jeans, looking like chic foreign spies.

One of them says, they have something to show her, Lila reaches in her purse and slides a 5 by 7 card into Mer’s hand. It was an invite to Jasper’s upcoming art show and it read Bugs and Fishes: New Works by Jasper Husch and Maya Richter. At the bottom under the date and time, Jasper had handwritten in perfect block caps, he can’t remember America’s address, so please give this to her, but they’re all invited! Loveyamissyouhopetoseeyouthere, love J. P.S. thanks for the nice message!

Mer says nothing. Spoonie punched Lila in the arm and says, see? French’s. Just like he told her. Mer could only nod and stare. Lila asks, what an asshole, right?

Mer thinks, since when are Spoonie and Lila sympathetic to her feelings? They must really love her. Lila says, turn it over. Mer does and sees a picture on the back with 2 people sitting across from each other in thrones divided by a great chasm.

In one chair, a naked man with a giant snake-like erection sat stoic, his back to the girl on the other side of the great divide. The girl, who had long brown hair, sat facing him, and held a glowing moon in her lap. She was naked also but her skin was a map. Mer says, it’s her.

Lila said, they know! Mer wondered if she’d killed Jasper in a previous life and now was making it up to her in small, deadly increments. She wondered when the pain would stop and who or what would be strong enough to put an end to it; she held her breath. Lila says, it’s called Adam and Even Now - did she see? She’d be like, what the fuck, right? She thinks this is totally horseradish Dijon, right?

Mer nods again, and Lila punched Spoonie in the arm and says, see? Spoonie asks, what does she want them to do? Lila said, they thought she should hear it from them, her eyes as big as pancakes, looking at Mer with such concern she claimed her as family now. Spoonie asks, Mer? Is she ok?

She didn’t say anything, just wiped her nose on the sleeve of her faded jeans jacket, removing an orange and yellow elastic band from her wrist and piling her hair on top of her head like a wedding cake, and smiles. She didn’t call Jasper to say she was coming, he hadn’t called to warn her about any of the bombs he dropped. She didn’t know what she’d say or do, only having the sense she’d lost something and she had to get it back; from him. She suddenly understood the quiet adrenaline of trip wires under leafy forest floors, the hidden aliveness of planning a kill.

As she sped on the freeway on the gas fumes of old wounds, she had several fantasy scenarios: 1. Dalai Lama-like she’d forgive him on the spot, 2. She’d see him and slap him, then he’d come running begging forgiveness when she turns to go, 3. She’d see him and slap him and he’d cower in terror then she’d turn to go and he’d come running after, 4. She’d see him and slap him and turn to go, he’d come running after and they’d make love and live happily ever after. There were others: she’d kick Jasper into infertility, he’d spontaneously combust at the mere sight of her, and a random one where she kicks a pregnant passerby in the stomach; she speeds up. She’s 7 again and hears her father having sex with a lady from her school; she knows because she recognizes her sneezes. She’s 9 and she brings her father to show-and-tell, but he doesn’t pay any attention to her, only tickles all the kids no one talks to.

She’s 15, 21, and every age where her father ever left her, and her brother, and her mother inconsolable. She’s 26, in the cemetery standing under a tree, and the pretty lady she doesn’t recognize can’t get her umbrella to close. She’s standing next to a man she recognizes from the paint store and she thinks she might be sick thinking about him in the box. Fuck artists, they should all be put down executioner-style, they’re disowned fragments of God which need to fly home before they cause anymore destruction.

This is what she thought as she rounded the corner and pulled into his street at 3:30pm, her hands sweating. She finds a parking space right out front. She gets out and almost doesn’t recognize the Victorian house since he painted it. He had new shades in the front window and painted ‘Jah Love’ on the glass front door.

It infuriated her he thought he was spiritual. She took a deep breath, climbs the steps, and rings the bell. No one answered so she rings again; nothing. She peeks through the window and knocks and knocks rather loudly, calling, Jasper?

She knocks again making the parrot upstairs go berserk asking who is it, who is it, over and over. Mer knocks again and the glass shook in the frame, now she was really mad. She sat on the stoop and buried her head between her legs and dug her nails into the skin around her ankle til it turned red. Then she thought of the lockbox beneath the stairs, in the alley, past the trashcans in the back, and wondered if Jasper could be so stupid.

As she turns the key to the backdoor and goes inside, her face went tingly around her ears, she was light-headed as she steps in the kitchen. She ran her finger over the butcher block counter trying to place the feeling in her gut. The house felt different, lived in, when she opens the fridge and sees Diet Coke she thinks, oh my god, HE LIVES WITH SOMEONE! She shrieks, not caring who heard her.

This D. Coke went against his hippie shit diet and state of philosophy, she couldn’t believe her eyes. She closes the door and staggers back, his cats coming over and circling her ankles. They meowed, so she put some more food in their bowls and headed for the bathroom. As Mer rummaged through her things and smelled her grapefruit and honeysuckle body wash, she spotted a photo tucked in the corner of the mirror of a smiling Jasper with a smiling Debi Mazar look-alike.

She moves to the bedroom, the unmade bed with new white duvet, the crumpled clothes on the floor, misshapen black and white swirled vibrator by the side of the bed. She felt the thick Egyptian cotton of the blanket cover, then lay down not the bed, pulling the covers up around her. She scans the room, not a trace of Mer, she pulled the blanket over her nose, the room had scented candles, tantric sex books, message oils, and she knew it was, really over. She moved to the living room toward his workspace, past his ‘tech’, his TV/VCR and stereo, past elaborate alphabetized cd collection, Belle and Sebastian, Pixies, Pavement, Frank Zappa, etc.

She thought, she never realized how depressed this poor guy was. Past his Star Wars collection now out of their boxes on a high homemade shelf, past his drafting table, and every conceivable art supply, until she found herself before 12 white plaster balloons.They had a metal base weighing them and a title of the piece on a small brass plaque. On each of the balloons small canvases of Jasper’s new works were embedded in their plaster faces: A ghoulish Technicolor clown with hollowed out eyes and a massive erection poking pointy through he fabric of his colorful striped attire.

A nude woman with a smoking cigar sticking out her vagina, dropping ashes on a caricature of Bill Gates holding a swarming beehive on a stick like a hobo. A homeless man wearing a coonskin cap and nametape with Louis, holding half a map and eating a Slim Jim like a popsicle. Another with swans and pelicans and businessmen in a tarry swamp, struggling to get free. One after the other, brilliantly rendered but awful to behold. Deviated. Lonely.

In the corner Jasper had painted one with a deadly traffic accident. Twisted metal and bodies strewn across a darkened highway. She had once seen such an accident on her way to Jasper’s, thinking now of the heavyset woman she’d seen facedown and lifeless in white shorts, alongside a man she presumed was her husband. The looked like they might’ve been vacationing, Mer had cried as she passed and prayed for those who’d receive the news.

Jasper depicted his crash scene inside a giant bloody vagina, lips spread apart like theater curtains. Finally she stares at the one of her and Jasper, the 2 people in uncomfortable chairs across a great divide, and she’s not angry anymore. All this time she’d mistaken Jasper’s attention to detail for her father’s depth, the intensity of his subject matter for her father’s passionate satiric look at the world he loved so well. His work had been underwear nose all along, only she never saw it.

His silence, her answer. She hears the twinkling wind chimes outside, as the sun comes up over Silicon Valley and she thinks of how she’d seen dead bodies and fires on this highway, not mention slaughterhouses, and ‘laughter’ smack in the middle of the word, this occurs to her for the last time on her long drive home, and even though nothing’s funny, she has to laugh. Her mother and she sort through various closets, drawers, and boxes in her father’s office and Mer notices how pretty she is. Her mother gets so much pleasure being with her and Spoonie, but her father was the only one who could really make her laugh.

Digging deep through musty boxes, Mer comes across several drawings she and Spoonie did when they were small. Underneath them, tucked in a small red traveling sketchbook of her father’s, she found a photo of her parents when they were her ear, they holding hands, squinting in bright sunlight in a sunny modest garden, and another of Mer at 2, clutching a ratty little yellow blanket and has on big plastic rings and a tiny, pink crocheted bikini. Her father looks uncomfortable holding her in his red Speedo, pale, hairy, knock-knees, and still another of him and her mother and Spoonie and she. She studies her mother’s face at rest, lost in thought as she folded one of her father’s shirts and placed it into a box a long with his enamel palette with dried paint, the colors B. Throne loved into textured splotches, a rough sea of sanguine, eggplant, ocher, ebony, green-gray, and midnight blue, the label on the box, For Keeps in black ink.

The day her father died was sunny, she remembering since she was in the gallery and he was flirting with a young woman in a short cream-color skirt. She’d seen his work being hung for the show and had wandered in off the street to talk to him. Her father’d asked her to run and get him a piece of cheesecake and she hadn’t wanted to go since she knew he wanted to be alone with her. She was mad at him since her mother was in the back room, she turned and suddenly there was a commotion.

Her mother and she ran to the front of the gallery, but he was already dead, slumped in the pretty woman’s lap. The girl said he touched his hand to his forehead and just collapsed, she tried to catch him. Her mother pushed her out of the way, and held her father in her arms, saying, don’t go my baby, not yet, she just kept rocking him and stroking his hair and saying, come back, don’t leave her behind. Then the ambulance came, later the doctors would say brain aneurysm, and Mer imagined a lump of all the things her father had wished he’d said to them, traveling from his heart all the way to his head.

She’s 26 standing at the cemetery under an elm, she recognizing different people who’d worked with her father and her family, her brother’s shoelaces coming undone. Everyone standing around, looking like Chaucer characters, she taking her mother’s hand and it’s ice cold; her mother won’t look at her. She squeezes her lifeless icy fingers and watch her lips quiver, then nodding, the men in cheap suits powering the mahogany box with sky blue satin interior into the ground. Mer thinks, he’d have hated the color and design.

Now they sprinkle dirt and white lilies on the lid and men with shovels pile soft moist dirt back into the hole. Camilla asks, how about Cups and Dishes, breaking her reverie, Mer asking, what? Camilla repeats, Cups and Dishes instead of Bugs and Fishes. Spoonie and Lila came up with it. It’s only for family. She told them Lila can say it too, when she and Spoonie get married. She winks at her and asks, is she coming to the concert tonight?

Mer asks, mother, where’s the copper dragon? She only just noticed it’s gone! She says, oh, she sold it, to the nice Japanese man she met at the Playboy mansion making her an offer she couldn’t refuse. They’re millionaires, smiling quietly, and resuming rummaging, as though she’d just mentioned something obscenely mundane, like, she thinks it might rain today. She yawned and says, she’s up awfully early. She thinks, this is so her life. Just when one thinks one can’t get any happier, one can, and does.

The heart keeps bursting open wider and wider until one feels one might explode, and then she sees it. Shining up at her from the bottom of the soft old cardboard box, hanging on a maroon ribbon. She slipped it over her head, held it in her hand and noticed the weight of it against her breast, the warmth of the ribbon on the nape of her neck. The charm her father gave her, she picturing him perfectly now, standing in the airport, waiting for the embossed coin to be finished so long ago.

She recalled his wild white hair in points like meringue, like flapping bird wings, smelling like Winstons and dandruff shampoo, his hands, tips of his fingers curling upward like wings of a hawk, like Buddha’s fingers, and she hears his deep resonating voice, laughing. She reads slowly, it saying, I love you America the Beautiful. Spoonie played the Auden poem he set to music at his show. She thought about how happy she was for him and Lila and how much he looked like her father, esp the way light hit his cheekbones.

As he sings and she watches him strut across the stage, she wondered if her father was proud of him too. At this moment Sadie and Swane look over at her and smile, they had big white flowers behind their ears and toasting each other with flaming blue drinks. It was their 4 month anniversary, after all, and then Spoonie makes an announcement, introducing Otto Guthrie from Rows Five Through Seven. There comes a handsome man she recognized from the coffee place, wearing a painter’s smock, a dusty-looking top hat, and embroidered Western shirt, playing stand-up bass, saw, and didgeridoo on a hillbilly/fusion cover of Amazing Grace.

She sat there slack-jawed, later after the applause died down some stranger sat down next to her, removed 2 mugs from a blue backpack and opened a silver thermos, she smelling cinnamon and ginger. He says, unleaded, as he pours her a cup of homemade chai with milk and a little too much sugar. She says, cheers, and he says, she seems different. She asks, does she?, taking another sip then asks, how?

He says, more open maybe? More at peace? He’s not sure yet. She asks, yet, huh? She had to smile at this one. Then he asks, does this mean she’ll have coffee with him?

She blushed, grateful it was so dark in there, then watched as he took out a red plastic cylinder with a yellow top, unscrewed it, and blew bubbles in her direction. Then he slides the container toward her, gathered his things and started to walk away. She says, wait, that’s so sweet. He says, yeah well, he’s rot-your-teeth sweet.

At home she lights several tea lights and pours herself a cup of Earl Grey, placed a small can was on her father’s easel, squeezed creamy colors onto a piece of cardboard, reached for a slender brush in the jelly jar and started. As she looked around the house for some inspiration, she thinks, home, her home. She thinks, 9 months, all this time spent in labor giving birth to herself. While Tulie snored, the tip of her brush filled in the spaces between narrow lines, the stalk of a flower the branches of a winter tree, in time to her rhythmic breathing.

She painted sky and stars and fluffy cotton candy creatures, and though it didn’t turn out quite like she wanted, she didn’t edit a single longing. At night back in her bed she dreams she’s a long distance runner pacing herself perfectly breathing feeing in sync with her body and the scenery she passes. She again passes usual things in a neighborhood, then passes Jym watching TV, past Charlie licking stamps, past Lila and Spoonie dressed like penguins in top hats and tails. Past her mother talking on the phone while feeding birds dried crusts of bread.

Past Sadie and Tulie rolling around on green green grass. Past Jasper asleep in a hammock, and past her father standing on an endless green lawn, watering the great yard in a pink dress, with his white hair in pigtails, waving goodbye. The next day she visits Otto at the coffee place downtown and so, this is how it came to pass she’s scrunched in her seat, watching a guy show up an hour early for their date, wondering whether she should get out of her car and go through with all this. She finally gets the trick to life is getting out of one’s own way and letting life go on as it does, because it will anyway.

So she unscrunches a little, in spite of herself.Yeah, but why get out of the car if she’s whole and lit from within and all? Because, just as she’s thinking all this, she sees Tom Hanks drive by with his wife Rita. She realizes she’s graduated, no longer Meg Ryan, living out the fantasy onscreen romance, she’s Tom’s real-life wife Rita, and she smiles and waves at her for no reason at all.

This is why she gets out of her car, this was why when she goes to the crosswalk and presses the button and it says Walk, she does. In her own time, in her own way, clutching the little good luck coin at her heart. Everything’s in slow motion now, she feels like she’s on a runway, she’s a model, a model citizen. Otto sees her now and her face goes all sweaty.

She read somewhere in certain Indian cultures one’s allowed to be a part of festivities as soon as one shows one’s first smile, based on the smile one’s given a career, a home, a mate, he smiled like this. Otto stands up to greet her and as he does he hits his knee on the underside of the table. She lurches forward trying to catch the rose as it tumbles off. Her little good luck charm taps her breastbone and a gust of wind comes up.

The orange pink petals scatter and she leans in to help, he handing her the stem and kneels down to collect the fallen petals. People in the cafe stare or move their chairs back, some try to help. Otto keeps scooping, chasing the soft flowers as they scatter for cover under nearby tables or customers shoes or into the sun on the sparkly gray sidewalk. Otto walks back with careful steps and opens his palms revealing a small handful.

Then he holds his cupped hands close to her nose so she can smell the luminous rose. He says as soft as Tulie’s ears, it’s from his garden. She feels the weight in her legs like little roots digging their fine threads deep into the earth. She leans in a little more, smelling the musk of his skin mixed with the heavy fragrance of the bloom.

When she lifts her head she sees he has tears in his eyes. He blinks once and lets his hands fall to his sides, the rest of the petals dropping to the ground and blowing away on the wind, dancing along the sidewalk as they go. For a moment they both stand absolutely still looking into each other’s eyes. His are blue, he smiles and she smiles thinking about storybooks and fairytales and epic movies about epic love.

His voice cracking, he finally says, hi. Once there was a girl who lives ever after, sometimes happily, is what she’s thinking, but what she says back is, hello.

I don’t remember if there were love story movies with this same ending, but I know there were at least a couple after. I don’t get why she wanted Tom Hanks to be the reason for her to get out of her car (since she only kept repeating and Sadie would call him a poor man’s Tom Hanks, this isn’t much of a compliment), when she had a better reason at the start of the book being the flower and what wasn’t mentioned by the end, the color matching her shawl. A lot of this book is painful for a handful of reasons. One is how Mer knows at worst, she’s acting mentally ill, at best still ignoring morals and being an ignoramus.

What’s worse is she knows the men she’s falling for are too, and her mother’s behaviour not helping her sanity. I’m glad I reread this since I’d forgotten how I won’t need to again. This was a withdrawn library book and I’m glad it was free, but I now think I also understand why it was being put on the freebie cart, no one was borrowing it. Most of the characters, including our heroine act too superficially masquerading as deep for comfort, Mer seeming to flutter with this self-awareness then giving up to hopefully become more aware as she grows.

Also the way she teases and neglects her dog, treating Tulie badly for neurotic reasons. I’m giving her character room beyond her book growth. As for Moon Unit giving Paul Doucette the Otto title in her thanks, they’re divorced now, with one child and he remarried a year after his divorce finalized. Fun shit.

The book is intriguing in the sense of getting Zappa’s perspective in a real way growing up with a celebrity father in an artistic industry. Unfortunately, the rest of it is very difficult due to personalities of characters and the only way to overlook this is considering they truly seem like real Californians. Also, no resolution beyond Mer breaking into Jasper’s home. Similarly to her story, I’ll leave my review open to interpretation.