SANDY’S TREASURE HUNT 

She had been showing her son the Underdog. That's what she called it whenever she’d push the boy so high on his swing, hold on to him for so long, she’d end up on the other side. Run right under him, Underdog style. Lifting his sneakers almost into the sun and for a moment, the child hovering high above her head while she rushed below him on the ground. Running in her flip flops in the swing sand.  

They were in the park across the street from Dumdum’s where Sandy was now living on her couch. And this was where she would lift her son so high he could see something glinting on the ground, far away. In the spot only the most daring kids sometimes landed. That you had to launch yourself from the highest point of the swings to get to, and that this boy could do nothing but point at it until his mother stopped pushing him. Getting her to see what he saw down there under the sand, not quite buried, peeking out bright and hot looking. 

“Look!  Gold!” 

“Where?” 

“There!” 

Sandy would get to it first. Had already closed her fists around what she’d plucked from the ground before her son had even gotten himself off his swing. Wouldn’t even show him what it was. Not at first. Dropping to the ground and curling into a ball to protect it when the boy grabbed at her hand, tried to see what she was holding. Pulling at her fingers until she rolled face first onto the grass. Kept telling him it was nothing. To stop touching her. He was making her angry and if he kept it up, there would be no more park for him. 

Eventually though, when they were back at Dumdum’s and the boy had calmed down, she finally showed him what she’d found out there. Let him hold it on the couch in front of the TV. A glittering diamond ring. 

“It looks real. It’s probably expensive” 

Then she asked for him to give it back. To settle down, already.  Reminded him how he would have never found it if not for The Underdog, and no, he couldn’t have it. Grabbed his wrists to keep him from hitting her. Didn’t listen as he pushed his face into the couch cushions and started screaming. The boy inconsolable as he realized this had been his big chance and he’d blown it. He’d trusted the wrong person and now would never be rich. 

That night Sandy would sleep on her couch, with one eye open. Waiting for her son to come creeping towards her in the dark. Coming for what was rightfully his.  

A TRIP TO THE BUSHES 

She didn’t remember her friend’s name. Maybe she was a witch. Some girl from the laundromat. Started to think whoever she was had put something in her drink as Sandy suddenly found she was sitting across from herself as an old woman. Starting to feel very funny like she wasn’t anywhere. Looking at this face that was a lot like hers, but all wrinkled up. A Sandy with eyes that finally knew everything. Nothing like the eyes she had now. And so just watching as she grew older and older right in front of her. Maybe about to turn to dust right on the couch. Crumble between the cushions. 

Before she completely disappeared, she quickly asked the old crone if her and Bruce were going to make it, and there was only cackling before Sandy found she was no longer in this place anymore. Was now getting pulled somewhere dark. A place filled with crushed pop cans and potato chip bags. That smelled like dead birds. 

Sandy was being dragged into that big bush that grew in front of their apartment. The place where they lived way up at the top, a thousand miles away from down here, where Bruce’s hands were on her head and Sandy was scratching his face and branches were poking them both in the eyes.. The neighbours looking down at her as she crawled out to the sidewalk. Bruce still holding onto her ankle, his face covered in mud. Not sure what they were even fighting about, only that she had to get out. Get away from him. That this was where she was going to die, right on the grass, fingernails dripping with his blood. 

And that was when Bruce realized he shouldn’t have given Sandy all that acid. That of course this wasn’t any fun with her. She was such a goddamned drag. 

And so as he looked around at all these faces he sort of recognized from hallways or from behind storefront counters or from bus stops he also waited at in the morning, he knew this looked very bad. All of them staring at Sandy, her hair full of leaves. With blood all over her hands. Some woman screaming how she was going to call the cops on him. And Bruce, not knowing what else he should do, unable to help himself, beginning to drag Sandy back into the bushes. Pulling by her legs. Hoping everyone would just go away. Not able to remember where they even lived anymore. Thinking it was somewhere in the sky. A place much too far away for them to ever get back to. 

CLIFF 

Cliff won’t let me have any of his milk for my cereal. 
He’s the guy my mother lives with now 
And so now, 
Once a month, 
I go over there. 
The two of us taking the bus to his townhouse 
That has a playground out front with bullets in the sand 
Me and my mother always getting there after the sun has gone down 
When there are no kids around.  
Only adults on the swings, smoking cigarettes 
And we knock on one of these doors and go inside to find Cliff  
Who will probably be watching television 
Will probably still have that little moustache I don’t like 
And sometimes he will even have a guest over 
Usually a friend in a wheelchair who he’s always pushing down to the store 
Wheeling him back and forth for pepperoni sticks.  

So maybe Cliff’s not such a bad guy, after all 
But right now he's the jerk who won’t give me any milk, 
Not unless I give him some of my cereal, 
Which everyone knows I won’t ever do. 
Never. 
Not even as Cliff sits across from me at the kitchen table and pours himself a big, cool glass, 
Makes crybaby faces at me, 
Gets milk all over his moustache as he gulps it down.  

All I can do is stare back 
Mouth full of CoaCoa Puff dust, 
Trying not to choke as I see him smile, 
Milk dripping 
From the worst moustache you’ve ever seen.  

No idea what my mother could possibly see in this idiot. 

Jinnistan wrote:

I was always a dry cereal kid, myself.

You fucking monster.
 

LONG ASH MORNINGS

When I used to smoke, 
And drink, 
And smoke,
I could stay up forever.

Until I fell asleep,
Fast asleep
Still smoking
Until the morning.

Then sometimes waking up,
And my fingers sometimes burned,
And my aunt Joanne's head sometimes on fire.

 

crumbsroom wrote:

“Another one with my dad?”

Might be the most fucked up part of the whole piece.

I have two nieces - really second cousins, but whatever - each with separate fathers, and one of course less available than the other, and they're already weaponizing this against each other, both under 10.  It's a sad, tragic thing to behold.  Children can be goddamn monsters.  So what if their mother happens to be a whore.

Outside of that, I also think it's sad and tragic with this focus on gender, probably a big part of our outsized obsession with it today.  Whether it's one of those mean mothers who dressed up her boys in girls' attire back in the day, or fathers constantly moaning about a "proper heir", it's all bullshit which only emotionally distorts our children.  And for what gain?  The chauvinistic notion that a man who doesn't produce a male is somehow lacking virility?  Or whatever the female equivalent?  Just perpetuating their own guilt and inadequency to future generations.

Jinnistan wrote:

Might be the most fucked up part of the whole piece.

I have two nieces - really second cousins, but whatever - each with separate fathers, and one of course less available than the other, and they're already weaponizing this against each other, both under 10.  It's a sad, tragic thing to behold.  Children can be goddamn monsters.  So what if their mother happens to be a whore.

How some people will turn on or off affection or even concern due to who one parent is is generally pretty damning about the person. Years ago when my half brother went missing for over a month, and I said I was going to go down to the city he was last seen in to see if I could find out where he had maybe disappeared to, my grandmother just stone faced asked me: "What's he to you? Why is that your problem. Let your mother sort that out"  

Not only was she telling me it didn't matter what happened to this person, simply because we had different fathers, but also that she personally didn't care about this child who she had known since he had been born. Because of fucking geneology.

Outside of that, I also think it's sad and tragic with this focus on gender, probably a big part of our outsized obsession with it today.  Whether it's one of those mean mothers who dressed up her boys in girls' attire back in the day, or fathers constantly moaning about a "proper heir", it's all bullshit which only emotionally distorts our children.  And for what gain?  The chauvinistic notion that a man who doesn't produce a male is somehow lacking virility?  Or whatever the female equivalent?  Just perpetuating their own guilt and inadequency to future generations.

I'm all for addressing people by whatever pronoun they want, having their procedures covered under medical coverage, guaranteeing equal rights for them, ensuring they are protected from bigotry whereever possible, and generally not giving a fucking shit how people want to live their lives. So, I would call myself pro trans, pretty much down the board, regardless of the opinion I also have that, maybe, just maybe, what trans and non-binary people should be aiming for is a world which gives less of a shit about gender at all.  

Gender is a prison. Breaking down our ideas of what gender actually even means is what we should be doing. Maybe even trying to completely move away from these mostly arbitrarily designed constructs should be the ultimate goal. But I feel this seems to be the reverse of what some activists are asking for, where they are pushing the idea of having categories of gender continuing to be an all important element of our identity. But to me, at least outside of this situation, it all kinda feels like its still all about codifying this idea that some things (or behaviors, or appearances, or attitudes) are male and some are female, and as a result, some people are male and some people are female (not speaking anatomically, on through the lens of gender).  

Maybe I"m missing something, because I have no idea what it is like feel like a woman in a mans body, or a man in a womans body but....if I'm being completely honest....I don't even remotely know what it's like to feel like a man in a man's body. I guess it's what I feel like right now....but is it? Maybe because their is no discrepancy for me in these two things, the whole issue just becomes invisible to me....but what does feeling like a man feel like? Are we honestly sure this is even a thing?  

I've talked about the issue a lot with my ex, and we have both stated that if we were to ever wake up one day and she was suddenly in a man's body, and I suddenly had a womans body....putting aside the impossibility of this, or the initial shock of it....would the body actually feel alien to me? Would it no longer be my body. I honestly don't think I would care. My body, and whatever is or isn't attached to it, has so little relevance to how I think of myself that the whole gender argument is completely lost on me. And it makes me sometimes wonder how much issues of trans people feeling like they 'aren't who they are supposed to be' lies more on the dysphoria end of the spectrum. That it is a result of a society that gives too much of a fuck about stupid things like what your body is or isn't.  

But I also grasp that I could be completely wrong about all of this, and I'm just an anomoly because of my feelings about my own 'maleness', or maybe they would say my attitudes are covered by the term 'non-binary'. I have no idea. All I know is, or ultimately care about is, if it makes people feel better to be called by a different pronoun, we should just do it. And if there only way for them to feel better about themselves is to reassign their gender, go for it. And if anyone wants to deprive them of their basic rights, fuck those people.  

Still though, I can't shake my gut feeling that if we didn't put such an emphasis on maleness vs femaleness in our society, that trans issues would be considerably if not entirely less for those he feel they are in the wrong bodies. Because ultimately, my big question is, why should it be or feel wrong to be a 'male' in a 'female' body (or vice versa) in the first place? 

A very slight rewrite of what I posted just before. Probably not worhty rereading for the couple of minor changes, but for my own records, here it is

PICKING UP 

Sometimes Sandra falls asleep while she’s driving. Her eyes are open, so at first you can’t tell. They seem strange. You usually worry she’s dead before even thinking that maybe she’s asleep.  

The curb will always wake her. Puts the life back into her eyes as they hit it hard. Proving she’s still with us as they jump up onto the grass and she lurches for the steering wheel.  

Sandra returning to her body just in time to miss the tree. To tell her son to stop saying how close that was. That she almost killed them both.  

“How dare you blame me” 

Sandra makes sure the boy remembers how this is all his fault. That he made her do this. That she wanted to stay home. Had told him she was too tired and that this is exactly what would happen if he made her drive all that way to come get him.  

That Randy wouldn't have fallen asleep like her. That Randy should have driven him. That Randy’s already had his shoes on.

“What’s the big fucking difference, anyway?” 

But he said it had to be her. Not caring a single bit that she was so exhausted. Not caring that she was unhappy and had no time for herself. Said he wasn’t coming to visit at all if she sent that guy to get him again. 

Said he was sick and tired of not talking in cars with Randy. 

It had to be Sandra.

He wanted to listen to the radio with his mother again. 

"No one needs to sleep all the time”, he said to her. “No one can be that tired” 

Not all the time. Not every weekend. It wasn't possible. And so he waited on the phone for her to say otherwise. For her to say she'd come if she had to. A really long time until she said she was on her way.

That she was coming.

Just as long as he knew how tired she was.

Practically already asleep.

That it was already, all his fault.



 

THE BODY WORKS 

The boy asked what happened inside of people and what kept them alive, and Sandy's answer got him listening in quiet moments for footsteps. Hoping to hear these little people moving around inside of him, that kept everything working.  

She said they always knew what to do with the food once it was chewed up and the boy was left imagining tiny brooms for all the crumbs. 

She told him how they were the ones in need of all that air we sucked in through our mouths, making sure the boy kept taking one deep breath after another from fear they might run out. 

Then he considered all the poor souls in charge of keeping every heart in this world alive. Listening to be sure the little people he had inside of him were still working away and wouldn't ever dare stop. Their tiny legs pumping away on stationary bikes. Ropes and pulleys and everything else needed to move blood from end of his body to the other, every bit of this strange machinery that was keeping him alive, dangling and swaying and moving and dripping with blood as they peddled away. 

His blood would be everywhere. All around them. 

He could practically see them in there. The little ones with blood-stained painter's hats set upon their heads. Thinking of them with blood-stained wrenches and screwdrivers hanging from tool belts. Worrying as he thought of them splashing around inside of him in their blood-stained shoes, as it slowly rose around their knees.  

Then up to their waist.  

Maybe about to drown if he didn’t quickly fall down and skin his knee and bleed at least enough out of him to stop the flooding they could no longer keep up with. 

“What are you on about?”, Sandy would ask the boy as she found him bleeding on the floor, telling her he didn't want a bandage. “What little people?” 

It sometimes seemed maybe Sandy didn’t know as much about the Little People as her son did. Had never bothered listening to figure out what they might be doing in there. Unlike how the boy would do, laying there every night, paying close attention for the sound of them toiling away. Doing whatever they had to do to keep him alive until morning. Listening to the thump of his heart, muffled through his pillow. The only proof he’d found so far that they were doing their job. That there would be a tomorrow. That his mother knew what she was talking about, even as she went to get him a bandage anyways, seeming not to understand the vital importance of bleeding.



 

My condolences