Here's what happened

The funeral was today.

I found out yesterday that the Brookie I referred to in a previous post had killed himself on Monday. He handled some of my financial stuff, so we still spoke on the phone on a regular basis. It had been a couple of weeks since our last conversation.

I’m not quite sure what to say yet.

“Don’t you know who I am? I’m blankety-blanks personal secretary.”

My cheeks flushed with the shame she projected onto me, the white trash bag-boy who filled in as cashier, when the store was busy. Blankety-blank was president of the grocery chain, now bankrupt, that his father had founded.

The check she had presented for payment had only her name in the left hand corner.
No address. No phone. Store policy required that I include a phone number. This was in the days before debit cards and before personal secretaries became executive assistants.

“No, ma’am. I didn’t know that. Can you please write your telephone number on the check?”
I asked again, politely, without a hint of the rage seething through my veins.

She called the manager over, holding up my line.
He performed his best shuck and jive routine, guaranteed to leave the customer with a smile as he okayed the check. And when he had finished, she turned that ice cold frigid dead eye bitch smile to me in victory.

I hated them both. I had been on my feet since 7:00 that morning. On Saturdays I worked from open until close to pay my way through the shitty junior college that I attended. I didn’t need her to remind me who I was, I knew already. I have been reminded all my life.

The declaration of independence may say that all men are created equal, but there’s not a damn thing in there about being treated equal. In America, the rich and the connected get the good stuff, and they get it for free. The middle class work to pay for houses and plasma TV’s that they can neither afford nor find the time to enjoy.

But the poor, well, we like them to remain invisible.
We don’t like to be reminded how dirty and despicable they are.

We avoid the places where they live, not just in the Lower Ninth Ward, but here in west Birmingham and south Atlanta and all those places in your own city.




I spent the three day Labor Day weekend, in Mississippi, cleaning up after the storm.
(That’s how we always refer to the latest hurricane or tornado around here… the storm.)

Today, a friend from New Orleans arrives. He has been in Baton Rouge since the storm.
He has his car and two pairs of jeans. That’s it. He doesn’t know what he has left “at home”.
It will be months before he can get back there.

I’m just pissed off. And frustrated. And full of hatred.

I hate that life goes on.
I hate stupid fake Christians who say that’s it GOD’S REVENGE.
I hate stupid politicians who steal our money and lie.

Give me a fucking break.
If there was a heaven and hell, don’t they know that they are already in HELL?THIS IS HELL.
You are in hell, you didn’t make it to heaven and you never will.
There is no heaven you fucking jackasses.

Hell is bodies floating down streets.
Hell is water full of shit and piss and blood and dead dogs and dead babies.
Hell is having your house smashed by wind to NOTHING.
Hell is having nobody care enough to save you because you are poor or sick or old.

We are OK.
The storm passed through here on Monday, but had weakened considerably.

I have family in Louisiana and Mississippi and they are also OK.
Still without power, but safe.

I have friends who evacuated New Orleans and most of them are OK.
Some are still unaccounted for (phone service is spotty at best and non-existent most of the time.)

I managed to get through on Wednesday to one of them who had evacuated to Baton Rouge.
He broke into tears after he answered the phone. He has most likely lost everything.
He was lucky to survive.

I have heard secondhand of others who made it safely to Houston, Lafayette, and Atlanta.

JB and I are leaving today to patch the holes in the roof at my 75 year old mother’s house.
She lives in Central Mississippi. Two hours from the Gulf.

My heart is broken.

Our dear leader is a complete failure.
His incompetence doesn’t surprise me for we have known it all along.
Now maybe others will know.

Nero fiddled while Rome burned,
Marie Antoinette offered cake to the masses,
Our dear leader says, “If you don’t need gas, don’t buy it.” and held his dog.

One day, I will wake up and be fully contented…I’m getting closer every day.
Lately I’ve found appreciation in the smallest of things:

Dinner last night with friends and their two daughters, ages 2 and 5, the giggles we shared, and the joy on their faces as they hugged JB and me last night.

The way Claire, our cat, waits for me to settle in my chair and hops onto my lap for our nightly petting ritual, and the look of happiness on her face, as she lies, legs up, eyes closed, relaxed.

Cooking dinner for my husband on Sunday night, after he returns from three days helping his sister move, and having him fall asleep next to me soon after.

The pride of homeownership I feel when I have spent Sunday morning, sweeping the porch and walk, trimming the ivy, and raking and watering the front lawn.

Greeting the regulars we see each weekend morning at the neighborhood café.

Margarita Thursdays with the boys.

The beautiful man I met this weekend (in cyberspace) and the way he made me feel. (Thanks Jeff!)

My blogging buddies and the beautiful words they write, and the lives they share, and feeling that I’m not so alone anymore.

Work has been a monster bitch lately and I only post at work.
Ipso facto No posts lately.

I admire those of you who can post frequently and remain interesting.
It’s not one of my talents. Most of my posts read like they were written by an unpopular twelve year old girl with boogers, braces and body odor, whose parents work late so they don’t have to listen to her, whose grandmother won’t let her come over after school anymore, whose brother tells people he’s an only child, whose cat leaves the room when she enters and whose dog goes next door to play.

I call her Kimmy.

Kimmy’s the little girl who lived in the apartment next door to me many years ago.
(Actual quote: “I hate myself. I can’t even ride a bike.”)

When the grandmother who lived with Kimmy and Kimmy’s mother (I never saw Kimmy's father), was returning to Michigan, Kimmy wrapped herself around her grandmother’s legs and carried on like a wounded animal. I stood just inside my apartment, watching through the curtains, and cried with her.

I don’t show my emotions like Kimmy but I wish I did. Emotional honesty has always been a challenge for me. I hide behind the curtain. I don’t let you in.


On a lighter note, JB and I went to a pool party on Sunday. The guest of honor was the guy who cuts JB’s hair. Most, well ALL, of the crowd was considerably younger than we, but we still had fun. At one point, some guy, (we didn’t know anyone there very well), yelled out that he was probably the oldest guy there. He was 33. I quickly changed the subject, (back to nipples, as it were) but everybody laughed.
With me. I think.

Later, no less than three of them, (THREE!), made what I consider to be inappropriate overtures towards me in the pool. It was fabulous.

When I first moved to Birmingham, many years ago, and was the new guy in town, I briefly dated a Brookie.

Brookies are from Mountain Brook, the exclusive (literally) Birmingham suburb for super-rich white people. (The high school girl missing in Aruba is also a Brookie.)

This Brookie pursued me HARD. He was relentless and so super needy that I eventually fell for him. Of course, as soon as I did, he dumped me. He was/is so messed up, that I thought I could “save” him. He didn’t want to be saved, he just wanted another conquest. A few months into our “relationship”, I found out he was an alcoholic AND a coke fiend, neither of which I had encountered before, a fact which EVERYONE IN TOWN KNEW, but me. (Hey, I had led a sheltered life prior to that.)

When I told him that I was in love with him, he told me, “We are all just ants.”
The fuck??


Though we have remained acquaintances, I went from love to shock to pity in about 30 seconds.
Now when I see him, it just makes me sad that I ever even went out with him. He’s gained weight and his teeth are more yellow than ever. (He still smokes.)

I learned, after we dated, that, as the new guy in town, I had damaged my fragile reputation considerably, unknowingly of course. But you never know who is watching and what they will remember about you. I was able to salvage my reputation pretty quickly by falling in with a great group of guys, some of whom are no longer here.

One of those guys who took me in was Scott.
Scott died ten years ago this summer and though I only knew him for a couple of years, I miss him every hot July afternoon.