There are a thousand stories in the Naked Pueblo . . .
A leathery, wild-haired man, likely homeless, likely disturbed, with a strange heel-toe gait and a visage like a startled goose, approaches me in a convenience store parking lot. I prepare myself for his inevitable request for change, but he passes me and gives me that enigmatic glance which the insane often give me, that glance which makes me wonder just how I have penetrated this individual's conciousness. Does he even see me as a person, or do I appear to him as a large, animate potato? A totem pole?
This man cruises the bank of pay phones, furtively probing change return slots for a meager windfall. To subsist entirely on coin -- can such a way of life still be possible in this day and age?
* * *
Tucson is Bunyan's "Slough of Despond," a cesspool where the outcast, outlawed, defeated and damaged can settle in order to pursue a curious liberty all too familiar to those of us in the West: the exchange of one's dignity, and perhaps even hygiene, for a dusty freehold on which to park a trailer -- a grim aluminum asylum where one can sift at her leisure the shards of her broken dreams. Often, enough trailers and trailer denizens accumulate in one area to form a "wildcat" development (three points to whoever can tell me about Three Points): an ad hoc community, a confederacy of the impoverished, the drug-addled, the defiantly desperate, mixing promiscuously through lurid liaisons and sub-rosa intrigues -- manufactured drama, all too common among these people, intended to bring intensity to their lives of sun-scorched, pinchpenny monotony. Diets of affordable, heavily marketed processed foods betray their bodies into obesity; their arms become flabby flippers, their legs unsightly topographies of dimples, bulges and blemishes. Among these people, ranch dressing is the universal condiment.
Beware, O Reader, of the "T-Loc," the Tucson local, whose frenzied desires have been heated to boiling in this infernal outpost. The "T-Loc" is a predator, albeit a stupid one, who will attempt to coax her prey (usually a Tucson non-local, but T-Locs have been known to eat their own) into a snare of sordid drama. Once besmeared in the pitchy slime of such drama, the trapped victim will soon be leeched of her vitality, the staple food of this vampiric creature.
Immorality and schemes abound in this city where parasites' parasites play silly confidence games for pathetic stakes in the eternal bellum omnium contra omnes that is life in Tucson.
1 comment:
Wasting in the tin box of broken dreams...referring to one or two people you know?
"What?" asked Kate, distracted, "Oh, sure, a story. I think I'll tell you about the frightful day my mother committed suicide."
"Great, this sounds cheery. Your mother, Myrtle? Isn't she still alive?"
"Yes, but that doesn't mean she didn't kill herself. Just listen and you will understand." Kate touched Anne impishly on the end of her nose, gave a sparkling smile, in preparation for her performance, sat up cross legged on the blue and black plaid blanket facing the other woman, and began her tale, "My seventh birthday was the day my mother committed suicide. Life was pretty miserable. We were living in Alabama, my Dad left the year before, we didn't have any money because Myrtle lost her job at the chicken plant. That was a good thing I think, because if she hadn't, now she would be suffering with severe carpal tunnel syndrome. All the repetitive chopping motion. Anyway, I was really sick with some kind of food poisoning I contracted whilst dining with my aunt on the delicious fare at the local chicken fry. My Mom missed too many days of work because of my illness. With that sort of vocation there is always someone willing to step in, waiting for an opening, so they filled her spot on the line."
"Why, Katie, I never knew you were a little southern belle! You don't even have a hint of down home drawl in your speech."
Assuming her best Scarlet O'hara, Kate chastised, "Hush, suga'. Y'all just listen. We were living in this crummy run down trailer park on the edge of town. It was called the Bermuda Gardens, although Myrtle still refers to the place as the Bermuda Triangle. She says we are the only two people to ever return from the bermuda triangle, sane and able to tell our story. The dump was run by a big, fat Bubba who had the hots for my Mom. He slobbered a lot, chewed tobacco and usually had a nasty drool of brown spittle at the corner of his mouth. Bubba was always offering me fifty cents for ice-cream to get me to scram for an hour."
"Please don't tell me a white trash trailer story."
"Watch it. Everyone jests too much about people who live in mobile homes. It's an affordable way to live and you have no idea how comforting the sound of the rain hitting the metal roof. I used to pretend I was Oscar the Grouch living in a trash can on Sesame Street. Besides, a person can pick up their house and move it wherever and whenever they want to. There is a certain freedom and beauty of convenience in that." She added dreamily, "When I see all those Rvs and Airstreams parked together, I can imagine what it was like to be part of a wagon train heading west. It is a very American way of life."
"I was at school that day, the day of my birthday. When I came home and saw all the marvelous decorations, I had the illusion Myrtle had gotten the house ready for a little surprise party for me. She hung pretty coloured banners and streamers and there was a bunch of bright balloons tied to the back of one of the kitchen chairs. She lined up all my stuffed animals on the couch so they could attend the party. The kitchen and the living area were just one big room. I used to have the cutest stuffed beaver. He had these really oversized teeth," she said and displayed a toothy Mr. Ed horse grin at Anne, "his name was Bucky. Anyway, as you know I am an only child and there weren't many kids at the trailer park, just a couple of little boys. One of them was nicknamed Stinky, so you can see how stuffed animals were preferable party guests."
"Stinky," Anne echoed and rolled onto her back laughing, "tell me it's not so."
Kate loved it when Anne laughed. Anne tended to be very serious, slightly paranoid and highly inclined to mistrust the world. In a word, she was realistic. The sound was spontaneous and filled the night air with delight.
"Don't interrupt me or I will lose my train of thought," Kate scolded, "My Mom also had all of her Barbies out of their boxes, she owned about fifty of them at the time, sitting all over the speckled formica kitchen counters. Twist and Turn Barbie, Blonde Barbie, Brunette, Malibu, and Malibu after she sprouted breasts, Skipper, or was it Skipper after she grew boobs? At any rate, there was polyvinylchloride striking the pose on every available surface. Myrtle actually has one of the very first Barbies ever made in 1959."
"A Barbie freak! I think I know too much about your mother now," Anne declared with a giggle.
"Hey, did you know the first Barbie was modeled after a German doll named Lilli which was sold as a sex toy for men?" Kate informed her friend with researched authority.
With a retching sound Anne burped out, "That is absolutely disgusting and now I know more than I ever cared to about Myrtle and Barbie. Katie, sometimes you reveal far too much information."
"Barbie is named after the daughter of the lady who invented her. And get this," Kate inserted a dramatic pause, "Ken is named after her son!"
"Ack! Sex toys and incest. Stop! I don't want to know anymore doll trivia."
"Just one more thing, you know those bumper stickers with the fish on them that were countered by the Darwin stickers? Well, I had a bumper sticker made for Myrtle that had a shark's body and inside it said Barbie. She loved it."
"I think that might be a copyright infringement. Back to the birthday party," Anne pleaded.
"Okay, there were sparkly decorations and stuffed animals, and Barbies everywhere, and on the table was a beautiful cake. I knew it was chocolate with cream cheese icing. That's my favorite and Mom made it for me on every special occasion. Chocolate is Myrtle's favorite also and in fact is the only flavor cake she has ever been known to bake.
I was so surprised, it all looked so festive. I stuck my finger into the icing on the cake, gave it a little taste and called to my Mom. 'I'm home,' but she didn't answer. I glanced around and there she was on her knees, wearing this bright orange flowery dress and a pair of blue flip flops. The 1959 Barbie was cradled in her left arm," Kate added slowly, "and surprise, Myrtle's head was in the oven."
Anne exclaimed, "No way, how horrible!"
"Uh huh. There she was, eyes serenely closed. Honestly I assumed she was dead, I raced over to her and started shaking her. 'Mom, Mom, please.' I was little, but I knew what dead meant. Dead was the baby bird who fell out of the nest. Dead was our cat Albert squashed in the road. Dead meant gone forever, frozen flat in time. All the Barbies with their blank, stale eyes were watching me plead with my Mom not to be dead like old lady Proctor's white foo foo poodle after it drank Bubba's antifreeze, when Myrtle calmly opened her eyes and said, 'Sweetie, I think our luck has changed today.' "
"That sounds like a really cruel joke to play on a seven year old, especially on her birthday."
"It wasn't a joke. You see, she really was going to kill herself, what she didn't anticipate was she used up all the gas in the canister baking my cake."
"You are so full of shit, that didn't really happen."
"Yes, it did. I pinky swear."
"Then what?"
"We ate the entire cake, started packing up our toys and moved to California the next day. Myrtle was a completely different woman after that, as if she had been liberated from all the bad things that ever happened to her. Truly, it was like the hundreds of tiny deaths she experienced everyday culminated at that moment and my old Mom fully expired." With a grand, sweeping gesture of her arms, and in a booming voice reminiscent of an old tymie Baptist preacher, Kate concluded, "A new Myrtle was Born Again from the bowels of the propane stove."
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