I turned my head. A few yards away, a blurry roundish light hovered mid-air. I had never seen an “orb” before and didn’t know what one was. But after researching online photographs the next day, this image appeared spot-on.
Whether or not what we saw was an orb, all I knew was we had just witnessed two inexplicable incidents in a dark, windowless, and empty cellar.
And that was when I suggested we high-tail it back upstairs. No one argued.
On the drive back to our hotel, Marion and I pondered our night. Were the things we witnessed only imagined? Or possibly staged? Some phenomena can be logically accounted for. Others can’t be explained so easily. As someone who entered this “haunted” prison out of curiosity, open-minded but also skeptical, I left there believing anything was possible.
What remained behind for Marion and me were several haunting photos, a weird audio recording she later discovered on her phone, and a couple bruises we inflicted on each others’ arms. Proof enough that it was one crazy and creepy night, yet one which Marion and I—as professional ghostbusters—had survived.
Ghosts? Pfft. I ain’t afraid of no ghosts.
Except the ones who announce themselves as I’m cowering in a dark and empty basement in an abandoned prison. Oh, I’m scared as hell of those.
SUMMER
Chapter 50:
CATCHING THE BUZZ
As I pried open a wooden crate of bees, I glanced over at the professional beekeeper who had agreed to let me lend him a hand.
Me (nonchalantly): “So, how many bees are in this little kit?”
Beekeeper: “About ten thousand.”
Me (inaudibly): “Holy shit.”
To bee or not to bee? It was way too late in the game for that question or to make a beeline out of there.
I tried to remember the last time I was stung. Maybe thirty years ago? I didn’t recall the episode clearly. Unpleasant, for sure, yet nowhere near the agony of something going awry now, as ten thousand bees swarmed around me.
Maybe it bears repeating: Ten thousand bees.
This beekeeper gig had drifted on and off my 52/52 list several times, mostly due to my poor planning. Even given my extensive bee expertise—which consisted of knowing bees made honey, were somehow responsible for pollinating plants, and hurt like a bitch when they stung—I was a bit off in my knowledge of the honeybee cycle. When I finally got around to making contact with local beekeepers, most had already started their hives, and it was too early to gather honey.
Thankfully, a local beekeeper, Christian, caught wind of my dilemma and emailed that he was still awaiting a late order of bees. He promised I could assist when the crate arrived. New bees for the newbee: perfect. I waited, on stand-by, for their arrival.
However, there was one small caveat. Christian owned only one protective bee suit which, by the description, would likely be a size too small. I made plans—as I do—to lose twenty pounds in the next week.
If that plan failed, I would be entering into this affair protected only by jeans, a long-sleeved shirt, gloves, and something Christian had called a “veil.” I trusted he didn’t mean a bridal veil. I’d sworn off those for the rest of my life.
At the last minute, I got a message from a local reader, John, who happened to have an extra bee uniform in my size. I left work early that day with the most implausible of excuses. One more thing I never thought I’d hear myself say: “I have to see a man about a bee suit.”
Thanks to John, I arrived for my bee play date covered by a slightly snug beekeeper suit and a special helmet with face netting. Ahh—so, that was the veil in question.
It was a fabulous look. Outfitted in this white uniform and mask, I was damn certain I resembled a Star Wars Storm-trooper.
“You look awesome,” yelled my ghost-hunting friend, Marion, standing twenty yards away as she snapped photos. “Wave at the camera!”
While I did look like a sci-fi soldier, a reader had warned me a bee suit wasn’t made of armor. Those little bee bastards could still sting their way through it. So, while I went about my work, I made a point of carrying an EpiPen in my pocket.
I had only been stung a few times in my life, and I never experienced an allergic reaction. However, those incidents were years ago, and over the past decade I’d developed allergies to almost half of the elements on earth. As far as I knew, the long list of offenders didn’t include bee venom. But I wasn’t sure this was the best time to test that theory.
I cracked open the last few thin boards of the bee kit, and the bees began to escape into the evening air. I stood stoically in my Stormtrooper uniform. I whispered, “These aren’t the drones you’re looking for.”
I might have laughed at my own geeky joke if only I wasn’t so terrified.
While the cloud of bees swirled around me, I attempted to reassure myself that stinging me was possibly the last thing on their tiny bee brains. They were simply desperate to find their way into their new hive. Poor little guys. They were probably more afraid than I was.
Still, as they poured out of the kit and into the air, I flinched and blinked twice. Maybe ten thousand times.
Christian stunned the bees into a mellow state by releasing a bit of smoke into the surrounding air. Smoking a little something different might have mellowed me, too, but that didn’t seem the most prudent option.
Between the smoke and Christian’s expert coaching, nearly all the seemingly amicable creatures made their way into the hive. I escaped with just one sting on my ankle, so painless I didn’t even notice until after I left. A pair of socks would have been a wise wardrobe addition.
Thankfully, my EpiPen proved unnecessary. I vowed that the next time I herded bees, I would attempt it as bravely as Christian, who wore no protective gear at all.
My friend, Marion, who trembled and swore multiple times that afternoon as she took photos, made no such promise of returning. Considering she was once stung by an entire swarm of bees and still showed up to support me, I concluded she was the true badass that day.
My only disappointments? As I attempted to free the bees from the kit, I accidentally smashed one. I peered down, nudged his limp little body, and sighed. Even worse, Christian informed me that all ten thousand of these creatures—every one of my winged itty-bitty friends—would die in about five weeks. Oh, the humanity.
For all the work they did and the environmental benefits they provided in their brief lives, it seemed a cruel twist of fate. But such is the sorry cycle of life for a busy little bee.
After pulling off my Stormtrooper suit and mask, I peered one last time at the bees making themselves at home in their new hive. Considering the bad rap they got, they served an incredibly important environmental purpose. I gained a whole new appreciation for bees.
As I climbed into my car, my body abuzz with both victory and relief, I hoped the Force was strong with them.
Chapter 51:
SPEED–DATING: SOLO–STYLE
After I struck out earlier that year in my online dating game, several folks told me I forfeited too soon. I hemmed and hawed but agreed to explore some other method of meeting men. The obvious alternative? Speed-dating.
I would rather face another year of online rejection than face a roomful of strange men, in person, during a single night of one-on-one interviews across a bar table. Queasy as the idea made me, I registered for an upcoming event.
The night before the affair, however, I received a message from the speed-dating company that the event had been cancelled. If I thought my online dating experience had been a bust, it was nothing compared to this. The cause for cancellation? A dozen women had signed up, yet only one man had registered.
One.
If I was a tad disappointed (“disappointed” being a huge overstatement), I figured the individual most frustrated by the cancellation was that one registered guy. With a twelve-to-one ratio, he could have been Bill Cosby or Ted Bundy and his chances at scoring a date would still have surpassed all of the women’s odd
s.
I was nearing the conclusion of my project. Due to a couple timing issues and unexpected cancellations, I was already a few weeks past my planned completion. Rather than waiting around for a rescheduled date and risk that also being cancelled, I decided to take this item into my own incapable hands. And to up the ante.
Enter Sherry’s Solo Speed-Dating Adventure.
Over the next week, I pledged to visit seven eating and drinking establishments to personally interview men. And no, “interview” was not a euphemism.
Here were my rules:
• I must sit by myself at the bar.
• I must strike up a conversation with at least two guys at each venue.
• I must stay at each place for a minimum of one hour.
• I must work a few planned questions into the conversation. I figured, “Have you ever been convicted of an ax murder?” was a given. Also, “Out of mere curiosity, how many cats do you think a woman may own before you would label her as a crazy cat lady?”
• And, the clincher: If a (presumably) single man piqued my interest and didn’t run away, I must ask for his phone number.
If I were twenty-two instead of fifty-two, this venture would have barely budged my boundaries. But I had passed my prime for meeting men in bars. Now, my fingers were a bit shaky just typing about it.
When I publicly announced my plans, my Facebook and blog readers offered advice and encouragement.
“Good for you!” one of them wrote. “You’ve got nothing to lose!”
“Except your dignity,” added another.
While many were amused at my solo speed-dating idea, some expressed concern for my safety. Throughout the week, I reassured them with brief online updates.
My first evening went as such:
I headed out right after work for happy hour, which I recalled from the eighties as being high time for the single-mingle. To ease myself into this, I chose a venue in an adjacent suburb, a bar and grill I’d been to a half-dozen times. I had a vague recollection of a cute guy hitting on me there once. I glanced around. Strangely, he wasn’t there tonight, thirty years later. I scouted out the small crowd up at the bar and sat two barstools down from the only man sitting alone.
He was a fairly attractive guy, roughly my age. He sat quietly, sipping a beer and watching a soccer match on a nearby TV screen.
I gulped my Bloody Mary as I tried to come up with a clever conversation opener. I knew nothing about soccer. And even less about clever flirtation.
I leaned in. “Big game tonight,” I said. “Who’s your team?”
He glanced at me. “I don’t really care. I’m just waiting here for my wife.” He turned back to the TV.
OK then. I hung my head and sucked down a couple sips of my drink. Finally, I pulled out my iPhone to appear busy. Maybe I’d just spend the next hour Facebooking.
With no other viable opportunities over the remaining fifty-five minutes, I moved on to a new establishment. This one had TV screens turned to soccer and to Judge Judy. Along with Facebook, that would give me three options to fill the next hour.
Fifteen minutes later, a guy sat down next to me at the bar. I glanced around, waiting for his wife to appear, but I soon concluded he was alone. And he was interested.
He initiated some small talk, which was fortunate considering my own proven ineptitude at that. We talked about music and movies and motorcycles. I feigned a bit of interest in this last topic.
He seemed nice enough, albeit possibly overserved. Regardless, it became clear within fifteen minutes that I felt not one bit of chemistry. He wasn’t my type, at all. Although, apart from George Clooney—who’d never shown any real interest in me—I no longer recalled what my type was.
I invested a half hour longer in the experience than I normally would have, just to satisfy my own rules. The conversation wasn’t a total loss: I had managed, for the first time in a while, to engage in a long dialogue with a single guy. I had to give myself—and him, too—some credit for that.
When I finally excused myself and was on my way home, I got a text from a blogger friend, Tony, who was in town from Maryland and wanted to meet up. Tony was smart, nice-looking, and a great guy all around, but he lived nearly five-hundred miles away. Besides, we were just friends.
Just friends? And what, exactly, was wrong with that? Not a thing, I told myself.
And so, I ended the night by chatting for hours with a terrific male friend. It only went to prove that fabulous guys were out there, even if they were purely on the buddy level.
The night’s score? Romance: Zero. Rewarding friendships: Ten Plus. A damn good outcome of the evening’s match, if you asked me.
I recapped these events, online.
“Are any of you still awake? I’m home safe, so no worries,” I posted. “I didn’t meet a single ax murderer tonight! But, there’s always tomorrow.”
My second night proved fully uneventful. No ax murderers. No future husbands.
On Night #3 of Solo Speed-Dating, I learned the most awkward of lessons: Even with a thousand dining and drinking establishments in the metropolitan area, you are not likely to meet an attractive and available stranger. You will, however, run into your new boss, the same supervisor with whom you sat down, just two hours earlier, for your first performance review.
While a few folks in my office were aware of that week’s endeavor, my new boss—by my strategic exclusion—was not among them. As innocent and nonchalant as I hoped I appeared at the bar, I felt like a kindergartner caught with her hand in the cookie jar.
Unlike me, he wasn’t there trolling. He was with his wife and a couple of our organization’s leaders, including his boss. Although Brenda did follow my exploits, she was too professional and too good of a friend to out me to the rest of her party. Probably.
To be safe, I pretended to be with my sister, Lori.
Yes, I had headed there alone and had told no one where I was going. But, in still another small world scenario, Lori and her friend Cay happened to show up and plop down next to me at the bar—at a restaurant I recalled Lori once telling me she didn’t even like.
Even in a city with a metropolitan population of more than 650,000, you can run but you cannot hide.
For my fourth night, I chose a sports bar I’d never been and figured I’d be unlikely to run into anyone I knew. I also reasoned this bar and grill, which advertised specialties of cold beer and chicken wings, was a fitting place to finally allow myself a wingman.
An old colleague, Laura A., whom I hadn’t seen in twenty years, had messaged me earlier that week and offered to accompany me on an evening out. I considered the possibility that by sitting alone at the bar on my previous outings, I might have appeared too desperate. Having an attractive female friend along might make me more appealing. And, I’d have someone to talk to, no matter what.
While Laura and I perused the menu, I decided against the wings. Instead, I chose a submarine sandwich with a compelling name. Even if I never spoke to a nice-looking guy that night, I could truthfully say I enjoyed a Hot Italian Grinder.
That sandwich was as hot as that evening, or either of the next two evenings, ever got.
By the last day of my solo speed-dating extravaganza, I’d grown weary of spending my evenings at suburban bars. I figured it was time to mix it up. Since I desperately wanted to spend my Sunday evening relaxing at home, I pounced on a reader’s idea to instead head out for brunch at a trendy place downtown. I figured I’d broaden my horizons while also attempting to be hip and cool, which was clearly not my norm.
I spied a guy around my age, sitting at the bar, drinking iced tea and writing in a notebook. No wedding ring, either. Single, sober, and a potential writer? It was too good to be true. I parked myself next to him.
He wasn’t movie-star handsome yet not unattractive, with a great smile and striking blue eyes. Admittedly, I would have been intrigued by any guy I observed writing in public, even if I discovered he was scribbling a list of n
eeded parts for a car repair. For me, a man with a pen and pad of paper was one hell of an aphrodisiac.
Such an easy intro to a conversation, too. And, as fortune would have it, he was indeed a fledgling writer.
“It’s my first book,” he said, shrugging apologetically. “I’m a couple thousand words into it. Probably not great writing, but it’s a start.”
We spent the next hour talking about reading, writing, and movies. While he was writing science fiction, not my favorite genre, I had explored sci-fi and fantasy enough to respectably discuss them. I could hold my own with Star Wars or Doctor Who fans. And, as a fifty-two-year-old man (yes, my same age!) who admired J.K. Rowling and read the first few Harry Potter books, he deserved bonus points and a minor swoon.
We drew two younger guys, sitting alone at the bar, into our conversation. They were sweet and nerdy, and I soon wanted to adopt both of them.
But my new friend, Tom, was special. I knew it immediately. Fifteen minutes into our conversation, I already decided I would give him my card and tell him to call me. That’s how brave, safe, and certain I felt.
He wasn’t exactly the kind of guy I usually dated. I’d mostly gone out with white-collar types, and I learned his day job was as a tool-and-die worker. He was former military, which made me wonder how we’d fare on some political and societal topics. I thought he also exuded a bit of machismo, although our conversation clearly indicated a softer side.
But dating the same type of guy doesn’t always work to one’s advantage. If I hoped to find a man I was interested in dating, as this experience was intended, I needed to open my mind and move past my normal M.O. Tom was by far the most attractive, intelligent, and interesting guy I’d met all week.
This was it. I was in.
As we were both paying our bills, I smiled at him and mentioned what a great place this was.
He nodded. “Yeah, I come here a lot. I live just a few blocks away.”
Finding My Badass Self Page 24
