Lifestyle

Cray-Rae

cdibbs 2 Comments

My hands were clammy and my mouth was dry. I was so focused on the road and trying to listen to the voice spewing directions, so yeah, I was silent for the first couple of rides. I wasn’t sure if I should say something after greeting them, or just go. I headed for the destination we were both wanting, dropped them at their door step, and went on my own way.

My first ride was a couple from the building next to me, and my third ride was a sweat girl from own building I live in. She was headed for a blind date, so cute. She said the app name, I new what she talking about, but I have never heard of this app! I’m forty-something. I told her I was new in Denver and so to forgive me for not knowing exactly where I was going. She laughed and said, “You’re doing fine…I’m so nervous.”

I told her she will do fine, “Walk like you own the place.” We said goodbye.

I don’t know how many times I circled the same block looking for a group of people. They were fun, my age, and one guy was commenting that his pants weren’t skinny enough to be going to the neighborhood they were about to enter. I laughed. I immediately imagined a kid with cigarette pants, sleek shoes, a beard, and wearing a knit sweater. When they exited the car I told them to have fun, the two ladies yelled out, “We’re already having fun.” Then I heard them say how cute I was.

The drunk girls were my favorite. I couldn’t help but keep thinking back to the days when I would get shit-faced drunk, and falling from the car. Yes, three girls swung themselves into the vehicle like it was their bedroom, they hit the seats like it was a bed. Chatty next to me was hilarious and I told her she could be a stand-up. Of course she replied, “I’ve heard that, I’m from New York, Stanton Island to be exact.” She had the most beautiful natural red, curly hair. Her eye makeup was perfect, not a smudge–however, her friend who had passed in the backseat was a different case. When we arrived at her apartment she rolled out of the car and dropped to the ground. Her friends jumped and squealed, scrambled to get out of the car and to her side. She fell again behind the car, and again in her front yard.

Her friends propped her up against a tree, she leaned in and hugged it like a bear. One girl got the keys, the other went for the tree-hugger. Well, tree-hugger fell back taking out her friend, both girls splayed out on the front yard while New Yorker stood there beautiful holding the door, yelling at them to get up. I wasn’t sure if I should help, and thought twice real fast. I couldn’t stop laughing. I drove away wondering how they were going to get her up that flight of stairs to her apartment.

My last two rides were fabulous and left me smiling. I get another couple, they’re from Chicago, but had just moved here from Utah. She was going to medical school out there. She had to leave because of the culture. She said, “They have this matrimonial medical exam to make sure you’re still virgin and then they use some device that is supposed to stretch out your vagina, so the woman can be more comfortable when she is conceiving.”

My jaw dropped. I could only imagine what that device looked like, and unless it’s for kink play, why would any woman want to stretch out their love maker. I was happy that she moved here, and will not have to perform that medial exam, ever. But, I did want to tell her to look up some kink sites and she’d find out what that device looks like–and that masochists use it during play. I refrained.

My last ride was the best. Two guys, drunk and taking shit about their good friend’s girlfriend. Guy 1 said, “Dude, you’ll see, you’ll see I’m right. Even my wife doesn’t like her, she is so crazy that she named her Cray-Rae.” These guys made me laugh. “No, listen Guy 2, you will see, I bet money you will come back and tell me how right I was. She is so crazy. She talks  to you like you’re stupid. She has to know everything, be right all the time–”

Guy 2 cut him off, “Yeah, we’re having a party and she was like ‘You’re inviting those people.’ When did we become Those People?” 

“I’m telling you, this wedding is going to be a disaster, I mean the bride hates her and Cray-Rae is going to the bachelorette party. I bet Bride kills Cray-Rae before anyone can even get over the border.” He broke his conversation and directed it to me, “I’m sorry M’am, I don’t mean to offend you, I just, she is just super crazy, and sorry, but she is a bitch, she is full of herself, and I know I am not the smartest person, but I’m smart enough to know she isn’t either, and its so annoying.”

I told him not to stop, I had a comedy show happening in my backseat.

Writing, and all it’s charms

cdibbs 3 Comments

I graduated, yeah, from a masters program. MFA in creative writing. In all that glory, I find I still don’t have what I need. I still feel lost and/or confused as to how and when I keep writing, and if I am even good enough…will they like it, will it grab anyone, am I the only one who likes my stories? The trials of writing a story or novel can take endless hours, for some. I am one of those. I pound it out when I feel like it, and simmer on it, the story, while I sit around and wait. But, what am I waiting for? To keep the writing going is the hardest part of graduating. My deadline is now on my own regard. I also don’t have a professor looking over my work letting me know what works and what doesn’t. To keep up the writing, the story telling, to share it with the world is not the easiest task.

Perhaps it’s my dialogue about the writing, calling it a task creates a motivational blocker. No, really?

I have to change the narrative, writing is now my art – paid or not – a job that will share my voice. Why I started writing to begin with was for my voice to be heard, you can’t silence me in my art. So, if I feel so strongly about the story and a character’s Why, or How, and their outcome – then why do I feel like the writing is a task? Because when I’m in it, and the character is talking, it is the most enjoyable part of my day. I tell myself to change the narrative, but change it to what?

Change is the only constant format of life, everything else is a crap shoot. So I take the challenge of the change that has been presented with my art. My narrative will be that writing is my art. I do it because I love it, and it’s how I can be heard…but will this change. Yes. I’m sure the doubt will strike me once a day, or more. So, to continue in this forever-changing-world that will trigger doubt, I can embrace the fear, hold it close and turn into fuel, courage, and see the charms in writing, not the task.

The changing narrative will be my challenge. I see this. I know this. Not the writing. The writing will be my charm in life.

A POEM

cdibbs 1 Comment

SHARPEVILLE CARNAL
The gun echoes through the doorways, retrovoom and downtrodden
hooves shed the dirt, hunger snorting the tendency and ready
but
halting, for a split second.

Capes coating their eyes, coats from the closet, a hidden closet
it goes places imperceptible, like the horses, ride ride ride.
Let’s continue.

Forever the hooves hawling the dirt — running — away or to you? Don’t open the gate,
secure all guarding edges; It’s the latter which is expired before the opening to catch
a runaway.

Pop pop pop like a can of coke the exploding “crisis” cannot scare the connector to
the hooves. The dirt, it chokes on construction-paper capes. Rainbows swirling, oh, the capes: like the fizz tickles up your nose, always keep it distant.

Round 2, oops, lap 2. The whistle cracks. According to my neighbor, I’’m new
at this. Clomp clomp clomping hooves, flowing flowing flowing capes, covered
eyes. Poor pasteurized beasts, it’s the race for your infinite win.

Survive, take the turn, dig deeper, stomping out the brokenness.

Their quinceanera sill is perched where the ribbons dangle, part of the brailing complete with communipaw hair. Do you see it? God must have placed it there.

God, hooves accompaniment of nothing, except, nature. An organic speed
at ordinary velocity permeates a race ahead.

Stay in place.
Launched for play.

Round round round they go trollopping the weedless trails, crazed by non-meaning production
value. Money money money reigns. Trop trop trop through their laughter and focus on the doorways to Kmart.

Redemption—do you know about the killings? Is it twice a day around the        weedless trails, round they galloptrop their hooves. Expendable, dying.

A Cobb Salad is delivered to Janet Green.
A bottle of champaign overflows; the flowpop, gallop and overabundant.

The end is near, Sugar Bowl has taken the lead; yes, yes.

Now the corpse needs a hearing aide. The cricket cries, Milady. Looking beautiful
but biassed, a remote Mr. Droppings. A tyranny of a buttkisser and continues to
litter the weedless trails, wandering out to the uncleared landscape. Hysterical recognition.
Kitty Jackson pulled out askew suitors. Gaudy sill, gaudy brailing. The, “Super Box,” Miss
Kitty Jackson wharls past, splitting monsters, grinding dirt, spraying litter.
Suddenly blazing.

SHORT FICTION

cdibbs 2 Comments

After You Left

You clutched your shining lunch pail, draped your coat over one arm and bent at her still body. Not a flinch as your lips met her creamy skin.  One last look over your shoulder and the door closed. She slept. Her eyes moved slightly right to left, riding the waves of a dream. Her soft skin wrinkled to open her bright baby blues, lashes so long, a touch of darkness underlined them.

I was there from the beginning: your midnight move-in, touch-n-go stay, leaving her for months at a time. Where do you go? I don’t wonder, but a woman left to suffer loneliness…and when you leave her in a glass house, someone will see. They will see her undress, slowly, waiting for anyone to watch, to spy, and perhaps make a move.

I knew who she was, did you? Did you know she liked to be watched; did you know she dressed for me, and undressed?

Her skin shimmers from the glittered, peach scented lotion as she bends over to show just a bit of pink, just a peak of what one could indulge in. I took pleasure in watching her. I wanted her. You never knew how she wanted to be touched—she likes it rough. Your soft kisses bored her and when you made love to her she rolled her eyes. Her guests, when you’re gone, they’d tie her down to that huge, walnut four poster bed you purchased; they slap her and fuck her from behind. She records her love affairs: go to the closet and look in the shoe box marked “Old Running Shoes.”

I love her most when she smiles—her almond-shaped eyes curve and bend, pulling you in, and all I want to do is kiss her. Must be how she got you.

She walks and the whole room follows, her hair flows even without wind and she purposely moves each limb as if being recorded—she knew she was being watched. Her body language invited me. Covering her long legs with those black stockings and clipping the garter, one thigh and then the other, slowly. She reaches for her pill case, and crushes the pills into a perfect line, sometimes two. She pulls the drugs deep into her navel cavity and draws her head back. She hides them in her underwear drawer if you’re curious.

Two years I watched her; two years she dressed for me. I came, again and again.

The thoughts of her leaving are no longer bearable. I won’t let you take her from me.

Her slip was silky, silver and sheer. I ran my hands down her back and she moved in closer: I knew she was mine. Too easy and warm to the touch, so normal. She opened those dreamy eyes of hers and held my gaze. When she froze it was the perfect moment—I pulled my right hand over her mouth, and pushed into her throat with the other. I felt her esophagus crushing, her breath became lighter, and those baby blues popped and reddened from the pressure. I had a sense of power, holding her, knowing I was going to be the last one to enter her, to touch her. I was the last one she would touch, scratch her nails down my back through the denim pullover. Her hands gripped my arm, pleading. This time there is no game: there is a finish line, an end. She struggled at first, hard, thrusting her hips, trying to buck me off. I had her between my legs, pinned down, each knee crouched over her shoulders.

I saw her fear, her willingness before she went limp. Her soft blonde hair fell between my fingers as I massaged her scalp. The blade ran over her skin, splitting it open. Never mind the blood, it’s not from her head. It’s her heart that bled out—how ironic.

You can find that in the freezer.

The rest of her, turned inside out—like she did to me—is all there for you to examine, to see for yourself the whore she was: hidden behind the tulips, the flat shoes, and capri pants.

Will I miss her naked body in the morning sun, pushed out to the open air of your patio? Perhaps.

She took pleasure in many hands, but even more pleasure when she washed them off and greeted you, you unsuspecting and so trusting. Really, I did you a favor.

Look up.

I’m your bad neighbor.