I'd Rather Eat Candle Wax

I must be hearing this incorrectly. There is no way this is being said aloud right now. Either that, or I’m dreaming. I have to be dreaming. Pinch me. Someone fucking pinch me. I looked around and down the dimly lit table, candle flame flicker mirroring the palpitations puncturing the insides of my blood vessels, capillary by capillary as each word came out of his stupid fucking almost bewedded mouth. Why did I have to be engaged to a classic over-sharer? Why does he always go too far? The soft light illuminated the horrified faces lining the long, drawn table of loved ones. Thank God we were in a private room at the restaurant, though I am sure the wait staff is already telling the kitchen about the jackass at Table 10.  My Jackass.  Candle wax dripped off the centerpieces melting into the beautiful mahogany tables that had first attracted me to this Italian restaurant. Quaint, and yet modern, I thought, now rolling my eyes at myself. Instead of spending so much time scrutinizing the decor of the restaurant, perhaps you should have talked to Max about what he was going to say during your engagement dinner. Perhaps you should have spent less time agonizing over the shade of red you'd like your nails, and a bit more time training your silly fiance how to give a speech about why he wishes to marry his wife to be.  I caught drips of wax on my fingertips. It didn’t burn, though I would have wanted it to, because it would have at least taken a mili-second away from the embarrassment that gnawed at my insides. What if I ate that candle wax? Would that distract me enough? Could I burn the lining of my stomach and then feel better? Or maybe I could throw up all over the table and make a scene?  I wished more than anything to be slipping between the cracks as the wax did.

“She had a pair of legs that went on forever, gentlemen,” he said eyeing his best man like he “got it” more than any woman could have “gotten it,” before glancing down and smirking. My mother glared at him with a disgust only mothers can convey.  Ugh. I lifted my head from the dripping wax. He looked like a little boy suddenly recalling where he stashed his best candy. And then back up. “I couldn’t stop looking at her.”

It was at this point my father put on his fake smiling, inside ready to attack you face. I could see it forming in the wrinkles and crows’ feet. The larger the smile, the more the anger fester inside him.

“And then….then I go up to her. Well. I guess you could say, I looked up at her. She was tall in those fishnets. High heels.” Oh thank God. John is pulling on his pant leg signaling him to sit down and shut up. John, marry me. Marry me instead of your stupid fucking best friend.

Jam Bands

“You totally would have loved Mr. Sunday,” Jennifer said.   She carefully placed her wine glass down on the coffee table and then went on gushing.  “Relaxed, outside, food trucks, and then that kind of music you like, you know, no words… …dance-ie… …flowing…” Her voice trailed off.  My tongue contracted against the roof of my mouth.  My eyes felt bolted down in their stare.  My body was completely still except for the subtle raise of my eyebrows. 

            “Jam bands?” I said this as if offering my husband some dessert.  A piece of pie, dear? 

            “That’s it!  Yes, all kinds of jammie music.  Seriously, you should have come.”  Jennifer took another sip of her wine.  I smiled, still not moving, dead stare, and said nothing.  Without a conscious thought, I placed my bare feet on the living room rug.  I pushed my weight onto my legs and off of the couch, walked to my bedroom, and shut the door.  I sat at my desk, staring straight ahead for a moment.  I swiveled my desk chair back around to face the inside of my room.  Jam bands?  Why is everyone under the impression that I am an 18-year-old white dude from Long Island that smokes pot in his parent’s basement while watching DVDs of Phil Lesh performing at Terrapin Crossroads with Further?  Did I do something to make you think I have Phish and Grateful Dead tapestries hanging on my walls next my Jimi Hendrix incense?  Did watching my ex-boyfriend at Arlene’s Grocery play “the most significant gig of his life” cause you to believe that I like jam bands?  Was it all the Phish shows I was dragged to by previous boyfriends where the only relief I could get from the drug-drenched-eyes-glazed-over-head-bopping-numbed audience was to visit the ice cream truck, because at least Vermont has good icecream?  Was it seeing Dark Star Orchestra in Philly where I lied and told my boyfriend I felt sick and had to go home so as to avoid standing for 4 hours swaying, listening to ONE LONG OVERDONE SONG?  Or maybe it was the Disco Biscuits show where I spent the majority of the time in the bathroom, watching girls snort things up their noses because I found it far more interesting than the concert?   Must have been the biscuits.  That must be why you think I love jam bands.  

            A jam band in case you have not been graced with hearing one play, is a kind of band that often goes off on long, improvisational musical interludes, no lyrics, no beginning or and worst of all, no end in sight.  The songs of jam bands have names,  and then the rest, is up for well, fucking off.  Fucking off is what entitled pseudo-hippie male (and sometimes desperate female) populations of the northeast and California, refer to as “jamming.”   This kind of music was particularly popular in the ‘60s and ‘70s, which coincidentally coincided with the rise in the use of psychedelic drugs.  Only at that time, there was a political message and stance behind the music so though I don’t particularly care for a lot of it, I can understand and respect it.  And at that time, Jerry Garcia sang about liberating oneself, and actually liberated himself with his lifestyle.  Since then, other bands, sometimes made up of the original bands’ members that have not died from drug overdoses, have come into popularity and play to packed open-air venues, to children of wealthy Long Island corporate lawyers, furious in nothing except for their quest to get tickets to the next big Phish show.  Yes, the act of attending a jam band show has become a demonstration of one’s status and education level.  It is a club, an exclusive club that I do not and never wanted to be part of, but found myself in because of the men I dated.

             Now I know what you’re thinking.  I’m a stuck up prissy, never tried a drug in my life, I need to “live more in the moment” and just let go (in that California bullshit accent) and perhaps I would understand.  Well let me tell you I have tried.  Hard.  And a lot.  First of all, the songs have no beginning and no end.  And I know, I know that’s like “part of the philosophy man…the song continues long after you are listening and it’s totally meta…”  …I get it.  I studied British Romantic poetry in college and took more than one class that had a title like “Buddhism and the Concept of I.”  I’m not exactly a geologist with my head in the dirt with no appreciation for the abstract or for philosophical ponderings.   I can certainly riff.  What I can’t do is get behind an art form that is, strangely very much like the boyfriends I dated.  It denotes privilege and segregates those that play instruments from those that do not, and worse  leaves no room for those that merely wish to know “what’s going on” as the song continues into it’s tenth or eleventh minute without any sense of ending.  And worst of all, when I say this to a jam band fanatic, a lover of the musician’s music, I am met with a pretentious sort of surprise.  “Well, you wouldn’t understand.  You don’t play an instrument.”

            You may be wondering if I hate anything more than I hate jam bands?  I do.  I hate that it took me years to spread the curtains to my own thought and voice, to peer out of myself, look someone else in their stoned, reddened eyes, and say, “Ya know what?  This music.  It’s not for me,” and not made to feel less intelligent or less cultured or political, or dare I use a jammer’s word, “open” because of it. 

“Loretta and Mike”

 The dry heat in the car allowed the smell of the rotting banana peel on the back seat to linger in the air, making it all the more potent.  Bananas and cigarettes: the first things Loretta consumed after she found out the news that she had lost the baby.  The infant in her had died so she furiously ate the banana she had saved to be “healthy for the baby” and then smoked a cigarette to ease her misery. Mike sat next to her with his hands at 10 and 3.  He was always a responsible driver, would have made a great Dad.  Their silence mirrored the thicket of snow that embraced their car, the way a mother embraced her newborn child.  The dark sky and the dense forest felt at once lonely and insulating.  It was midnight but both Loretta and Mike knew sleep was not an option.

Without turning her head or showing expression, Loretta broke the silence.  “We were supposed to make that last left, Mike,” she said in an empty voice.  Mike didn’t answer, just stared on, the moonlight illuminating his deadened face and his light green eyes.  Loretta breathed in the banana infused air, chest rising like the road ahead of her, climbing up the mountain, and then deliberately and heavily breathed out her apathy.  She ran her tongue over the enamel of her upper teeth and then stuck her right hand in her left front pocket.  She pulled out a crumpled glossy sheet of 3x4 paper.  Her eyes jetted from the blackness ahead of her to the black of the sonogram.  She felt the slip of the veneer of the paper and sighed, her head still down.  Still silent.

“WHAT THE FUCK???!!!!!” Mike screeched, tires screeched, Loretta screeched, breaks, sliding, breaks, sliding, STOP.

“What the hell was that????!!” Loretta attacked Mike.  “Are you still fucking drunk from the beer? Are you fucking kidding me, Mike?  What the hell was that?”

“Jesus Loretta, I’m not drunk.  I don’t fucking know.  It came out of nowhere.  I…I….I don’t know!”

Car doors slammed shut.  Two figures step out into the the white tundra.  The wind whipped in their faces blowing Loretta’s loose curly hair into a frenzied dance.  Mike squinted to see his headlights showering some kind of animal figure.  The rhythm of the crunch of the snow under the couple’s shoes felt like a final march to visit a deceased relative before he is buried.  The red blood splattered across the velvet white snow made Loretta shutter as she blindly felt for the picture of the sonogram in her pocket. 

A fawn.  White spotted back with light brown fur.  She looked perfect in all her stillness in the snow, her legs stretched outward, as if she was trying to make some kind of snow angel.  The sprinkled blood seemed to encircle her head just so to resemble a halo.  Loretta saw it and immediately began sobbing.  Her hot tears streamed down her cold face and then into the ruffle of her jacket collar.  She threw her arm into her pocket and ripped out the sonogram, hurling it into the cold wind.  The wind received it like a male dancer catching a twirling ballerina.  Choreography.  Loretta watched the paper playfully tumble on the snow’s surface whirling around and around.   The wind cried out and took the paper away, out of sight and out of mind.  There was nothing more to say or do but get back in the car and keep driving.