Use By Date

You've all seen it. Pretty girls who have that political capital to make doors open, or at least to have them held open for them. Along with that, they have that ability to charm which is learned at a young age. Most girls are either wired with that at birth or come to learn that quick, usually by kindergarten. So take your pretty girl and have her flash an attentive look at someone, with a mile wide smile and all of a sudden she gets the date/job/lower interest rate loan while the rest of the girls are relegated back to the pig wallow to claw and fight for the rest of the scraps.

My Dad once opined to my Mom that women who didn't marry by 30 were losers. For men, he said if a guy didn't “make it” by 40, he was a loser. I didn't understand this till years later when I saw a few girls, who were pressing 30, freak out and got married, pregnant and acquired that 30 year mortgage. For guys, it was more of a rusting that occurred over 40 if they didn't have either the cash and/or career success. By the time they hit 45 and if they were still doing menial labor, everyone around them quietly adjudged them failures.

“Holy Shit Dad! You were right! I get it now!” Your pretty girls married way prior to 30, scoring the best guy they could and retired early as that old Janis Ian song goes.

**

Chellos is a a decent restaurant in only that their food has an amazing consistent quality. Their burgers taste the same as they did when I was five years old and for me, it holds a nostalgic quality. It's also a nice place to go if I'm too lazy to cook something decent for myself. I'll cook off a gallon sized pot luck, last-for-three-days kinda meal and I get bored with that eventually.

So, there I am at the bar at the East Providence Chello's on Newport Ave munching away on steak fries when I hear a familiar voice. I lean over to peer around the beer taps and I see her, Natalie. I don't say anything nor try to alert her to my presence and honestly, it's been so many decades now that both of us would have to do some mental detective work to rekindle those memories. I continue to munch away as I spied.

Natalie was a real Prom Queen of the East Providence High school back then. We had come to know her when some EP kids would come by Slater Park to hang out. Of course, all the guys would be entranced by her looks. It's too bad you girls can't sense what we guys feel when we see a very beautiful girl. It's hard to put into words. You'd be surprised at it and then understand why some of us actually sigh when we see it. We don't control that reaction either, it comes up from out of nowhere in us.

Anyways, Natalie, as a teen, looked like a slightly, just slightly ugly version of Helena Bonham Cater when she was young. 

 

But not anymore. Years have passed. Her beauty had a “sell by date” and I was close enough to see life had etched it's abuse on her face. That's the way time works. Fresh leather car seats turn to creases in time and so does everything else. When Natalie got up to steal a set plate from a neighboring table, she had packed on 50 or so more pounds from what I could see. From what I know and heard over time and it's decent intelligence (gossip), she had married, had a son, divorced, married again and divorced again. She was still fixing hair at various salons in EP and Seekonk for a living.

I wasn't surprised by that at all, not at my age. Everyone I know at this age has porked out, lost hair, gone gray, divorced, blown through relationship after relationship, lost their perky titties or that figure. That's age. That's how things go.

But what did surprise me was that she was still “holding court.” She was at the end of that bar with four other girls and directing it all. The conversation, commenting on the food and leading the pack of girls there as any alpha cheerleader would. The restaurant is also a stop for EP cops and when a couple came in, Natalie gets off the stool in excitement, with a bit of a shrill scream, to greet them and shepherd them to her gaggle who's at that end of the bar. Again, she directs all the action that's happening now.

“Wow..You're still at it!” I think. “Still trying to control it all. You're still 18 and Prom Queen.”

Age is hard on women. For us guys, it' isn't illegal to age. We get “distinguished.” We can get away with dating some girl half our age if we had the chops to pull it off. Our pressures are different and like I said, it's money/power that we're measured by. Do I honestly believe that? No. We're all worthy in our own right by whatever positive traits we own. But you know how society is, how people are. We tend to glorify beauty or power.

You see...we never leave high school, we never graduate...it repeats!

And women are held to a standard of beauty that is taken away, sooo slowly, with time. I've seen many times where a guy's initial attention is drawn away from the 40 year old women he's talking to, to the college girl who happens to be in close proximity. At work one time, where we used to go out back and smoke cigs or take a break, I watched a woman from the business office just glare and I mean glare, at the 18 year old hot and tight diet aid who was wearing yoga pants. I sat there and watched. I read her face and on it was written jealousy raised to the 100^th power.

This same diet aid complained of being sick of guys who constantly hit her up too. Our 40+ business office women nearly burst out of her skin when she heard that. It wasn't said intentionally either, this pretty teen girl who hadn't the experience to deal with it, had a hard time with all that attention.

**

So there was Natalie in Chello's. I guess losing your crown due to aging isn't fun and you clutch and grasp to keep it there, or at least replay your past as you knew it, to this day. The script she played and acted worked so well then, why give it up? It brought happiness.

I finished my burger, paid the bill and left. Going out the door I nearly stumbled on the steps going down due to my ever present kluztiness. A young waitress stationed near the door, the greeter, rushed towards me then stopped when she realized I had regained my footing.

“I”m fine” I say.

“Oh..I was scared for a moment...I thought...but your OK!” she said, trailing off.

Her face was smiling, calm and she felt safe. I can tell now, you get old and can read faces. She reacted to me like I was her Gran Dad. 

 

Loyalty

(If this seems sprawling and loose, it is. It's just a first draft)

I once knew an old co-worker/friend from decades ago in my first career in social work. I had won the job even before I graduated college, but finding out working full time and going to school full time was a feat to pull off in of itself. B, I'll call him, wasn't a college grad but someone who was hired off the streets. He was a conscientious employee, fairly open with himself but suffered from a desperate need to be liked, which became annoying at times.

No matter how many times you tried to tell him that, “you weren't angry with him” or disliked him he had to have reassurance within the hour. I once finally said, “B, if you keep asking, I will hate you!” That usually shut him up for some time at least.

Other than that, he would be there for you if you needed help. Help being the use of his pick up truck, have a beer with or just talk to, though you had to wade through his strange social skills. Many people just didn't bother to understand that but if you watched long enough, you could decipher just what it was he was doing, how he conversed and you could finally translate him.

I'm a firm believer in that you could learn about a person, or a family, on the first entrance into their home. I do what everyone does, you do a quick scan of the place and immediate start formulating an idea of who these people are. Do they stack up to your expectations? It's superficial I know but we all do it and “first times” with anything you have to rely on what little information you have. You judge the book by it's cover for now and amend that judgment as you learn newer things about them later. Most times the verdict on them becomes kinder.

When my brother was alive, he had a friend, an art historian from RISD who wanted to tour our home. I was at first hesitant but it's too late to bar him from doing so. It's rude. The other thing is that your home is a sort of a “the mask is off” display of who you really are, how you live. Once he finished walking around, pulling open drawers and such, he says: “This home is fractured and corroborate...but there are some really interesting spots, full of literature, music, odd and ends you could explore for hours!”

OK, you just convicted my brother and I of having great hobbies but fucked up pasts.

B lived with his parents still and the first time I saw the inside of his house I was taken aback. It was the filthiest home I'd ever seen. The kitchen counters had years of grim on them and on top of that was piled dishes, 14 year old tax returns, tools and various other junk. In one corner was a oversized wood stove that blasted enough heat like a smelter and kinda lifted the miasma of the grime into the air. It was reminiscent of mildew.

He gave me a tour of the home's rooms and to get to them, you followed a trail like in the woods. Along the sides of the halls, in the rooms too, was piled stuff they could not throw out. Any open space that was left was the trail.

So we sat and talked for a bit and I could see years of pathology in this family. I didn't need to know the specifics but you could sense the contagion in that home. I wasn't creeped out but the longer I sat there, the more I began to see.

Something happened to this family...many things...all dark. After seeing this, I never pressed for details. It didn't effect my life nor did I want to know.

Life does what it does and people separate, find new jobs and whatnot. B and I went our ways for over a decade when by a weird chance, we were both applying for a job at Arbor Psychiatric hospital in Attleboro, I was looking for part time, perhaps to see how the old career was. B had never left it and was looking for better digs.

So we start up a small friendship again. Mainly we met up every two or so weeks at a restaurant to chat it up. He hadn't changed a bit.

“What? Did I piss you off? Did I say something?” B says, grappling for approval.

“Nooo, B, You never said anything...Don't worry, you don't anger me at all.” I tell him, for the umpteenth time.

I have to say this though. He did change a bit, for the worse. He then started to try to prove my loyalty as a friend with actual “shit tests.” I didn't see it coming and when I figured it out later, I didn't care either that he had tried. I wasn't that invested with him because so many years HAD passed. Had it been someone I knew currently and dearly, oh..then those shit tests would have mattered.

He had told me he needed help to move some furniture from his home to the dump on an upcoming Saturday. I gave a half hearted, “Ok, sure...” and let it dwindle at that.

“Great, you can always count on a FRIEND to help you move furniture!” he said.

I didn't realize that was the test. Would I even pass?

So that Saturday comes and right at 10 AM he calls like he said he would. I had forgotten all about it and was sitting there in my chair, dead tired and not too motivated to do much beyond breathing. I let the phone ring till he gave up. I was happy to be left alone to recover from working. Perhaps in an hour or two I would rouse myself up to do something.

A couple of weeks later passed and I had not heard from him. So I call, get no answer and finally go by his house. I knock on the door and there is no answer. I finally left a note under his windshield wiper to say I had come by and explained that I was just beat that Saturday he had called.

I never heard from him again.

I had failed the test.

**

I've come across a few scant others in my life who were like that. Their radar is on high, scanning for the least hint of betrayal and use that as a reason to ditch your faithless ass forever. I know what it is. In the past they've been used, abused horribly. So in defense, they MUST find people who are 100% trustworthy and loyal. The problem occurs is that life, people are all shades of gray with a myriad of reasons why they can fail you, for small or great reasons. But to these people like B, it's 100% or nothing. They're not easy to deal with nor is it easy to try to explain to them how small reasons are just that, small reasons and why you can't be Superman to them every time, all the time. Well, that reason ain't good enough for them.

**

So, several years ago, being the snoop that I am, I stalk people on the internet, looking them up with various search engines to see what they're up to. I looked up B to see where he ended up.

I came across an obituary that was three years dated at the time. There was his picture, obit and the various condolences to his only living relative, his brother. “Holy SHIT! He's DEAD!”

After a few moments of processing that, I really wasn't surprised. He came from a tough background and had alluded to suicide even back in '87 when I had first met him. The obit didn't say it was suicide but I knew. He was always healthy as a horse and never abused anything. I guess he had had enough.

Do I feel guilty? No. You can't save everyone. You can't be perfect to everyone either. And IF you try to 'fix' someone, you are up against a Jupiter-like tide of past devastation that happened decades ago. You need a team of trauma therapists, and a year, to somewhat fix a mess like that. Then, in my naivete, I had tried to reach him with reason, with 1 +1 = 2. The problem is that damaged people can't accept logic, their world was twisted into irrationality long ago and logic is Mandarin Chinese to them. You don't speak their language.

There's another I knew, not soo long ago, who I tried to reach. The same thing happened once again. They didn't “get it.” I steered her to a bevy of therapists who I knew dealt with these issues. She visited them and perhaps, this one will salvage a life that's worth calling enjoyable.

No Title

When I first heard the news about Cheryl's murder, a vague memory grew of her, but I couldn't put my finger on it. It finally became evident when a thought from the back of my head came fast forward. She had a brother who I knew.

Pow! A thousand memories came back in an instant. I did know her!

The first time I had met her was when K, Jim and I bounded down the stairs from his bedroom to head for the “One Way” in Slater park. The bottom of the stairs ended in the kitchen and by the refrigerator a girl turns around. She was tilting a 2 liter bottle of Mountain Dew to her mouth and I was quite taken. She was one of those girls who was born lovely and appealing.

Up to then, I never knew K had a sister.

However, she shot me a look like she just saw Big Foot and I knew why. I said, “Yeah, I know...I need a haircut.” My hair was awfully long and Kennedy-esque tousled (I'm being kind to myself here. Many times, I let the wind comb my hair!). She laughed and suggested that I use a weed whacker to fix it. I laughed and probably thought it wouldn't be a bad ideas, how could I look worse? Ah, I enjoyed my mussed up hair anyways, even though I'd get unsympathetic judgment.

So, off goes K, Jim and I to walk to Slater Park via Grand ave. I being 18 and having little social prudence and subtlety, blurt out:

“Wow K! Your sister is HOT!”

“What? Says an offended K.
 

“Your sister, she's wicked pretty!”

“Um...OK...I guess so” K grumbles back to me.

I'd see her often enough when we'd all hang at that house by Bobby's Rollaway in that summer of '82. She ran in a different social circle than the pre-criminal element I was associated with at Slater Park. She was too good for us but our paths crossed more than enough times. Pawtucket is small enough for that.

Well, life is like bus station. People come and go in your life. Our connection died on the vine and she, her brother and our gang drifted apart as time passed.

That until the other day when I saw the news about her. It then all came back.

You know the immediate second thought I had when I had heard about it? I saw her again at that fridge downing the soda and the hypothesis was this: “At 17, she never had a clue her end would come from a 9mm being fired four times into her chest by a wannabe and incompetent Bonnie & Clyde. None at all.”

The point I'm making is that none of us have the slightest idea what our future holds, or how we'll go...or how spectacular our end might be...or not. I never knew I'd be where I am today at 18. Then, I'd probably laugh in your face if I was told I'd be in healthcare, laying bets on a stock trading platform and one that day, that I'd be peering into the caldera of Mt St Helen's volcano. “Ahhh..you're full of it!” I'd say. But then guess what happened.

Her violent death astonished me really because my memory of her was of a pretty, young and healthy girl...who would continue to be that kind of person...forever. How the hell do you end up getting popped for no reason at all? She wasn't the intended target either. It was a pure “being in the wrong place at the wrong time” chance. And that's how stupid life can be. How often do you answer the door and get shot?

I guess this stuff happens all the time all across the world, but when it hits home...

I will probably keep that memory of her chugging Mountain Dew that afternoon. It's the one I've always had. It's funny how certain recollections just burn themselves into your brain. It's a far more kinder and respectful memory vs. seeing that shattered door glass and knowing what was inside.