Miss Jackson and the Plastic Vagina

I.
There were waivers passed around in early
spring, in anticipation of the last
chapter in our sexual educat-
-ion, that first year of high school, in a brick,
renovated building deemed “not enough,
only up to date but not state of the
art,” by my father, when baggy pants and
hockey jerseys were still very much in
vogue, and braces plagued the adolescent
mouths of a grand number of us.

II.
Both my
responsible parents dutifully
signed it, and I was ignorant to the
fact that it was, in fact, a parental
right to refuse.  Upon that discove-
-ry, I remember thinking about the
outrage with which I would have greeted the
news that my mother and father were to
deprive me of the chance to hear about
breasts and intercourse, and all these other
things which were to fill my sordid,
acne-ridden head.

III.
Ms. Jackson, about
my mother’s age, greeted us all (minus
one, whose parents exercised their rights), and
set the new ground rules for engaging the
materials covered in the next few
chapters in our textbook (and here I have
to believe that she knew we read ahead).

IV.
The reading, however, was not memor-
-able, not satisfying my puerile
need for visuals.  Although, there was an
afternoon in which we suffocated
a banana with premium latex
condoms (I thought the packaging looked a
bit goofy), all of us taking our turns
after Ms. Jackson demonstrated the
proper technique (“Get the air bubbles out,”
she said, rolling it down towards the stem, a
reminder that I would receive a year
and a half later in the bed of some-
-one else after school, before I went to
work at the pharmacy), before we ran
to the bathroom, giggling, to wash the
smell of spermicide off.

V.
No one could have
foreseen the complications involved when
out of her bag, Ms. Jackson produced the
plastic vagina.  Gender mattered not
as she placed the beige body part on the
beige desktop:  we were all in a state of
utter disbelief, with an esteemed class-
-mate Nate emitting a hushed “Holy shit.”
Class proceeded, but our fresh teenage eyes
seldom diverged from the unexpected
guest.

VI.
As Ms. Jackson began detailing
the names of all the various regions
contained within this as yet unexplored
region of the female sex (both in the
classroom and the field), her fingers ventured
inside, I suppose as a way to catch
our attention and demonstrate its depth.
It seems, though, that this action, smacked not of
prudence, as when she attempted to ex-
-tract her hand from someone’s replica,
she found herself unable.

VII.
As students,
this was fast becoming a bit too much
for one period’s worth of awkward dis-
-comfort; true, some did laugh, but most of us
stared without offensive intent, simply
coming to terms with the fact that our ninth
grade health teacher had gotten her hand lodged
uncomfortably, unintentionally,
and apparently quite securely in-
-side a plastic vagina about which
we had absolutely no forewarning,
and trying to retrace how exactly
we got here, and what we’d be doing if
our parents had never signed that waiver.

VIII.
Too young to analyze what this situ-
-ation meant for the long term student-and-
-teacher dynamics of authority
and power, we silently complied as
she dismissed the class, waiting until we
were at the other end of the hall to
begin our laughter, that slow, rising song
of puberty-plagued guffaws, done before
the ringing of the sixth period bell.

The Earthworms’ Rainy Springtime Deaths

I.
In the Aprils showers that in Vermont
have extended to May, I see them on
morning runs, vying for dirt, slithering
with mixed purpose on the pavement, most of
them alive, but some are either squished or
severed in half.  I do try, honestly
I do, to avoid them, but I’m sure my
shoes, unintentional accessories
to the crime, have felled a few.  They are pink
and brown and sometimes a somewhat reddish
gray, all of them soaked as I loop back to
my apartment, the converted funer-
-al home.  Days later, sometimes, if the rain
lets up, they will be there, dehydrated
versions of their former selves, stuck to the
sidewalk, accidental, anorexic
peppers, or, if there is no reprieve from
the rain, they fall victim to cars or bikes
or passers by, before bloating signi-
-ficantly to a quite unpleasant end.

II.
And I think back to seventh grade science,
taught by a strange woman who did yoga
and talked about peeing on plants somewhere
in India (“It’s good for them!” she then
explained to a gawking class), as we learned
about the earthworm, we were all in a
state of disbelief when we discovered
that they could not regrow if they were cut
in half, given that we had just witnessed
something like that happen with another
animal (brown, slimy, lived in water)
in our petri dishes two weeks before.
We listened as Miss Develeskis told
us why, during rainfall, they tended to
surface, citing moisture, oxygen, and
other elements, I’m sure, then noting,
with little sign of remorse, that these side-
-walk adventures and pavement promenades,
owing to the way they breathe, resulted
with near certainty in their untimely
demise, their surfacing merely a short
purchase on life, driven from the under-
-world up into the less amenable
conditions of our own existence.  “So
the earthworms are basically committing
suicide, then?” asked a classmate and friend.
Miss Develeskis chewed on the question
for a bit, before replying:  “I guess
you could say that, yes.”  We stared back at her.

III.
Then it happened that I was a student
down the street, in a renovated high
school that opened late upon my entry,
when, once in my second year and once in
my third, I learned from classmates the news that,
in the springtimes consumed by tests, and sports
and part-time jobs, in our small, safe town com-
-posed of small, safe families, two earthworms
in the form of young men my age had, as
green lawns came back to life and the daylight
extended past the afternoon, as a
result of the raindrops of school bus taunts
and unrequited love, and of the weight
of the Baptist Church, and having to leave
student government and soccer behind
(respectively), climbed above the soil
of their daily grind, and out the windows
of their bedrooms, to be recovered at
a later time by their own species, up-
-on returning home from work, shocked at the
spectacle that they were forced to behold.

The VA Dialogue

The day after my final grandfather died,
I was in Palo Alto, California, at the VA,
on a business meeting with a doctor in Pulmonary and
Critical Care.  We were there to talk about his
upcoming 25th Reunion, not about how my grandfather,
born in Maine, who when I was in grade school
built things larger than himself, in the years before he
died, couldn’t walk three steps without a wheeze.

We talked about how the doctor was doubtful he’d be
able to attend his reunion next year, despite his volition,
but that he wanted to be involved in any way possible,
not about how we could not convince my grandfather
to put the tubes in his nose and not in his mouth.

And there we were, talking at a table amid
an assortment of wandering veterans
talking about college endowments,
and the role of philanthropy in a down economy, all the while,
me wanting to ask if he’d seen many shipyard electricians with
lung failure, or anyone working at a printing press in the 70s,
and how on earth you got them to listen to
any advice other than, ‘Take these pills.’

Do they just get tired of not dying?  I almost asked.
In a manner of speaking, I suppose,
he, as a result, did not quite say.

And I imagine myself, as we walk towards the parking lot,
saying, not out of the blue, “He passed out on the toilet a lot;
and that is how he died,” and the doctor replying,
with his medical smile, “I’d love to have a look at that file.”

Karl’s Lucky Fuck You Tie

He wore the tie twice, once for each year
I was on the high school team;
once for each game we played away against Farmington,
who was apparently our rival, denoted by the fact
those were the only games in which an
ambulance was parked outside the rink.

In a diamond shape the letters sat,
strategically arranged, the pattern uniform from knot to base,
not calling attention to themselves, until,
in his locker room speech, Karl made it known: 
Boys, tonight I’m wearing my lucky Fuck You tie.

In the first season on the team, I, a junior,
looked around as the sagely seniors snickered, in on the joke;
sensitive to the information gap, Karl walked around t
o each one of us, at this point mostly dressed in
our mostly plastic armor, extending the tie under
each of our anticipating noses, and the secret message
revealed itself to each one of us, causing a
snicker and a sense of imperfect solidarity.

And that year, we played to victory,
powered by the fortune of a textile profanity,
Karl never too quick to congratulate, walking into the locker room
as we de-iced and de-robed, the melting snow on the rubber
floor causing him to comment, It’s like a fucken bukkake in here.
Only I laughed. 
I knew someone had to know it, he said with a smile.

It seems, though, that luck has to run its course,
even with worded neckties, for my senior year,
when again he circled the room and demonstrated
to the underclassmen, we skated with gusto to no avail, the
goal I scored (only the second in the tenure of my youth),
being the only indication that we were there,
Farmington’s reaction being to respond with six.

The saving power of the tie being lost, he sought a
source of blame, and so the referees, whose
poor judgement in Karl’s eyes, received no dearth of
heartfelt criticism, the most resounding example of which,
immediately before his expulsion from the game
(and which would gain for him the eternal respect of his players),
saw him screaming between plays,
I don’t mind getting fucked,
as long as there’s a little love.

Confessional with Cassye

There was some confusion about how to pay for my dinner, our drinks, but soon

all was settled and we had our beers and my burrito, seated towards the entrance amid the college crowd.

It wasn’t school, actually – merely busy, a lot of work.  But then began the

real reasons why the sickness and the stress:  one Arthur, a known when last I saw her, a source of great allure, had become the cause of her recurring ressentiment,

turning, nearly, back upon herself, aided by the tools of years before.

It was a circuitous sentence that led her to admit she’d been a cutter, and I

pointed to the skin below my rolled up sleeves, revealing a similar experience from a similar cause.  She saw my

index fingers but not the scars.

“Don’t,” I say feebly, nearly begging, keeping in check my own

dark draw to the wound before the blood, looking at the lips

(a smile?  a frown?) slowly opening before the

inevitable tongue starts flapping about, tracing its contemplative path down the forearm,

knowing how hard it is to know better when the choice is there and

you want to make a mistake.

We conclude, as independently of one another we have before, that she shouldn’t have to feel what he’s making her feel, but

fuck,

there’s physical attraction, can all this really be reduced to that?  I mean every time I’m near him, every time -

So interesting and open it remains, as the

source of their relation visits soon, propelling them both into close proximity, inviting the

possibility of so many things (sharing a bad anew, creative mutilations, dialogues with a streaky mirror),

but, as it is, my burrito is gone

and our beers as well,

so we choose our next adventure, the bar to which

we were initially supposed to go

(where twice she was asked if her name was her name),

before we ended up back at her place, and

before the closed interstate placed me back on Pine Street,

where after hydrating and seeing new photos of her quartet, with quick arms around each other,

we had originally bid farewell.

Three Preludes

I.

The living room floor still had its deep green carpeting and the first set of furniture before the cats kneading their claws forced us through three more sofa loveseat combinations.

It was a sixth grade social studies project:  definitions and illustrated examples of various geographical features (archipelago, atoll, cape…), and father was helping me.

I had reached isthmus, and had begun pasting with Elmer’s glue (“Glue sticks don’t work as well”), when he got up to match my mother’s yelling, the origins of which I do not recall.

And then their hands were around each other’s necks, and when my hearing came back, it was in the form of my own voice and my sister’s, screaming for them to stop.

They did not immediately or entirely heed, instead lowering their hands, glaring, my father breaking the silence:  Get out of the house, get out.  The response:  Make me, Alan, make me.

So instead he slammed the door, and soon drove off, and while I cried beside my sister in my room, I listened as his car returned, and we did not know what to do, or what might happen next.

We won’t do that again, said my mother later that night.  After all, we broke the answering machine, she half chuckled, but she refused to lie and to say that she still loved my father.

II.

I was driving with my mother to West Hartford, between my first and second year of college, her pressing on the imaginary brake on the passenger side:  The speed limit’s 35 here, Jeff.

The ensuing argument arose from, I believe, her technical support needs clashing with my volition not to be found at home, and so began the same exchanges rehashed from years ago.

But with a twist:  to emphasize how bad a son I was, how rotten a child I had become, she added, You’re just like your father, you know.  Just as horrible as he is.

Defused, I listened as she elaborated:  Don’t ever turn out like him, or you’ll never stay married.  You’ll never keep someone acting like you do, you know.  I put on my turn signal.

That’s why I’m divorcing you’re father.  Wait, what the hell?  I can’t do it, anymore, Jeff.  I’m divorcing him once your sister’s done with college; I’ll die alone, I really will.

I never did tell my father, although when I saw him watching baseball that night, with a cat sitting happily on his chest, I decided to join him instead of going out.

And as we sat there, me the audience to the ultimate in dramatic irony, I began calculating the number of years before I had to tell him that I knew all along.

III.

She proved a faulty soothsayer, as the summer after my sister’s graduation, they remained together, still with their frequent bitching, occasional outings, and frustrating friends.

Then I was in Maine, with them, my grandfather, somehow still alive, and relatives from the West Coast, drinking more than lightly, less than heavily, at a family cottage on a wharf.

The next morning, we drove to Camden, my mother and I in one car, the rest of them in the minivan, a little quieter, a little unsure of what would be remembered.

She recapped the evening’s events, after I had turned in or stopped paying attention, including discussions of religion, money, and how we didn’t want to talk about Sammy anymore (money).

There was no segue to be found on the revivification of the theme of their crumbling marriage, just a key forced into a broken, rusted lock, stuck again now on the passenger side.

I can’t tell, Jeff, she says.  When he’s in groups, he can be so fun and charming, but he can really make me feel pretty lonely at home with the things he says.

I mean, with the cancer thing, I could have been there on my deathbed, and if it was the day he was supposed to have lunch with his friends from work, you know he would have gone.

So finally:  Ma, we’ve had this talk before.  You’ve been saying you that you were going to do this for years.  Thinking to myself:  oh, and you tried to kill each other.

It’s not that easy.  There’s the house, the insurance, the cats, and all the other, just, stuff.  I mean, it’d be a very messy thing, and I just don’t know if I have the energy for it.

You know, there’s something he said to me when we first met that should have cued me more than it did.  He said that he had never really been happy in his life.

So just do it already, I said, biting my tongue with further advice, thinking of my father, alone in half of the house, drinking a beer after mowing the half of the lawn, trying to see if he’s smiling.

The Reasons They Do It

Two tables away in a small college
café where I take my lunch, two men, both
donning sweaters in a sixty degree
spring, discuss things I do not own (such as
multiple cars, multiple homes, children),
and professions I am not in (such as
law, medicine, practical vocations).

It was during their brief exchange on the
psychology of med school (neither of them
revealed themselves as doctors), that I tuned
in to steal this snippet:  No one wants to
be a general practitioner; they
all want to be specialists, because that’s
where all the money is.  Uh-huh, trust me.

I here recall a friend, currently in
classes, thinking not of the cash in which
he’ll be swimming, but rather of his up-
-coming pathology exam Tuesday.
If asked why he chose to specialize, why
he’s not going into primary care,
his answer would not be money.  No, his
reasons are far more direct, in his own
words why:  I just want to cut people up.

A Delayed Narration of My Birth on the Order of Twenty Four Years

It is on a Monday that I listen
to my friend Michael, a med-school novice,
describe to me what he had that day seen:
I got to watch a C-Section performed,
he exclaimed, after passing wishes
of well-being on the afternoon of
my birth (though I was, so I’m told, born in
the evening hours, yet that as well
is imprecise, and probably unknown),
and I inform him that it was by this
method that I, as MacDuff, was not of
woman born, as my exit was poised to
happen feet first, entangling my neck
in the cord to be severed to give to
me life.

As expected and desired
(in an admittedly surreal manner),
Michael proceeds to describe in a way
that only the medical community
can, the method by which twenty four years
ago, I was hastily into this
world brought:  You know, I guess you’re supposed to
lose about a liter of blood during
the entire thing, he says, and then, for
emphasis and elaboration, points
out, you could see the resident reach in
and she was covered basically up
to her forearm in blood.

“Oh,” I comment
inanely, gropingly and cluelessly,
needing to fill the pregnant pause; “So did
the blood get on the floor?” I asked, trying
to reconstruct what it might have been like
for the phantom of that mother I call
biological, under bright lights and
the pressure of a sentiment strong that
true labor, literal extraction, blood-
-letting, pain, only to relinquish the small,
slimy, sobbing mess that was me on that
day in December, might have not been wise,
or rather, might border something
we call regret, responsibility;
but for the moment in which she heard me
crying, perhaps she was afforded one
small, vanishing moment, when everything
was not yet known, when, in that bright,
sterile room at the St. Luke Roosevelt
hospital in Manhattan, everything
was potential energy, and the world
had not yet invented disappointment.

Young Mummy

In May, the students had gone home,
to leave their daily mourning in small Vermont.
Not a week had passed since young graduates
received their proof of purchase (a diploma and a cane)
and began to mettle in world affairs when the news arrived.

Sirens on a Wednesday afternoon, towards 4 pm,
the height of my professional inactivity, heralded
the discovery of the twenty year old, extracted
from the creek where we were afraid he would be found.

I found out by way of an article online, my friend,
a volunteer firefighter, in the accompanying picture
escorting the stretcher.

For the three interceding months in which he was
missing, speculation, wild fantasy, and a sense of community
took hold:  murmurings of foul play, another strike
of the smiley face killer, someone in Cornwall at
4 in the morning, a helicopter photograph
revealing an ‘object of interest’ in Lake Champlain;
candle-light vigils, cops and agents
with HRD, the technical word for dog in these situations,
his forlorn mother leading students into the woods.

I would later hear someone who knows science
that it was fortunate that spring was so cold
and snowy:  if we’d had a normal spring, the
fish would have just gone nuts; the ice basically
preserved his body as perfectly as it could.

The fortunate coroner ruled out foul play,
but did not necessarily cancel the testimonies
from the young man’s first-year friends
regarding certain liberal use of alcohol and a
likely appearance of weed.

So there are no more dogs sniffing in the snow,
their tracks making perfect lines that chilled us more than the wind,
no more posters in the local stores.
Only a website, reminding us that
he was and will always be twenty years old,
still perfectly preserved thanks to the icy creek,
still unaware that he was the first among his equals to die.

I Sang into the Telephone

I heard a song this afternoon, as I
meandered in a car not mine along
meandering roads that would soon bring me
back to that place once, and now becoming
again, my home, that brought me quickly back
to Paris, on a morning when we, as
I recall it being said, ‘weren’t
going well,’ and therefore found ourselves in
two different places and apartments,
me on the second phone to be stolen
in my time in that city of skewed mem-
-ories, seated, singing, looking from my
kitchen table facing exactly east
before the building across the way was
being redone, knowing that that was about
the direction I’d have to look to see
you if that distance I could perceive, my
voice transmitting the words of a singer
you knew only by the sounds of him; that
morning I sang, it was a weekend, and
I was alone in my rented space, thus
the seizèd chance to pine loudly
as my cereal sat, getting soggy.

And you, at the end asking, why, why, why
did you feel what you felt, and why, why, why
was there so much meaning in all that had
just happened during the course of this call,
the length of the song, the small number of
weeks of this protean concept of what
it was going to be down the long and
theoretically thorny avenue
of being together, at home, always,
but not quite, ever closer, but not quite.