by Shaw Sander
I didn’t believe he disliked children as much as he claimed after he dressed up one year as Santa when the kids were little and came to my house.
I’d twisted Joe’s arm to let me have Dew and Peanut for the holiday, borrowed the airfare and flew both of them to Seattle on Christmas Day, the moment peak season at my FedEx job ended. That night Drake walked down our lane ringing loud Christmas bells, yelling “Ho Ho ho! Mer-ry Christmas!” Single-digit Peanut and Dew stood stock-still, their eyes as big as dinner plates.
Drake looked every inch the Jolly Fellow, though perhaps getting too much into the dress-up spirit. While the outfit met all the requirements, I’d never realized Santa was so fashionable.
His cheeks bore angled slashes of two-tone glitter rouge highlights while his eyes were darkly mascara-ed, lined and shadowed behind multi-colored Bartell’s reading glasses. I had to admit Drake’s lace up Doc Martens made perfect Santa footwear. Beneath the crimson crushed velvet suit were the premium Capitol Hill-made Pac-Feather goose-down pillows usually encased in embroidered silk on his Bon Marche pillow-top mattress. Santa’s thick black belt looked suspiciously like Drake’s antique leather razor strop decorative bathroom wall-hanging while his gloves were the softest charcoal cashmere-lined kid-skin from Nordstrom. I recognized them as retail therapy after his dating disaster with the former porn star.
The cape was a bit over the top but the children loved it. Santa swirled in a red blaze, Peanut’s eyes envious of the twirling radius.
“You like it?” Santa cooed, bending down to let them touch the satin lining. “Many tiny elves no bigger than Disney mice worked on this velvety beauty all night long, their little feet running in circles to make the stitches. I wish you could have seen it.”
Both kids were entranced as he dragged a huge sack of pre-arranged presents to my comfiest chair. Dew’s face was a wonder of conflict, certain this must be an imposter but sure he ought to keep quiet for his little sister’s benefit. Peanut stayed mute and finally after much poking Dew became their spokesperson, their Santa liaison, translating his sister to Santa.
The whole scene was priceless and he swirled out as fast as he’d come in. Drake arrived as himself for dinner 10 minutes later in street clothes. I never forgot Drake’s kindness at going so far out of his way.
Drake was truly a gorgeous man but he thought he was too fat, ceaselessly going to the gym and referred to himself as Shamu. An overeducated receptionist at a downtown law firm, he was the company pampered pet, their mascot, the spoke around which the entire water-cooler company culture hub revolved, the planning committee for every luncheon, shower, birthday, event and award ceremony. His bowties were as legendary as his witty group emails. Forgetting to CC everyone firm-wide once resulted in a paralegal sobbing in the bathroom, fearing she had been dropped from the inner circle.
When I wanted to remember a gay icon’s name, when “Cabaret” was on t.v. or I’d see a reference to Topo Gigio, Neely O’Hara or Barnabas Collins, I’d call Drake.
Shelly pulled me through many times as well.
Glomming on to me at that first NA meeting, she showed me where the coffee was and said that if one hypothetically took home just a few extra packets of SweetNLow per meeting, one might hypothetically stock one’s pantry for free. Coffee was the only reason she was there, she said, as we chain-smoked outside, waiting for the meeting to be over.
If I wanted to remember how insane lesbian love triangles were, I’d get Shell to tell me one of her stories of back-alley fights with butches going at it over her. Or how she got flowers from two lovers, one of each gender, for Valentine’s Day. I told her about the butch in Chicago who had haunted my relationship with Cora, flattened my tires, stolen my license plate, calling and hanging up fifty times a day, the restraining order on file.
Shelly distracted me when I was sobbing over my children so far away, howling with primal grief that was endless, trying to get my mind off Peanut angry or miserable or lonely on the phone, a five-year-old’s raw pain undeniable. Shelly told me I’d be alright after Dew explained his new favorite song: “It’s about a little boy whose mother is leaving on a jet plane and she doesn’t know when she’s coming back again.”
She’d stroke my hair and tell me of the flowers in her Mexican childhood, the blind fawn that ate out of her hand or her mother’s hot flour tortillas so smooth they’d melt buttery into the tongue. If I was still inert with paralyzing sorrow, she’d move on to her using escapades.
Heroin had fogged her world for a long time. She’d hitch-hiked backwards, naked, on the Aurora Bridge one night, getting picked up by Seattle’s most famous rap icon who appreciated her big butt. After much sexual romping, he’d helped her get clean the first time.
There was a series of stories where she’d drink until she blacked out and had woken up in parts unknown, far from the apple orchards of Wenatchee where her family picked fruit or her adopted Seattle. The tipping point was the time she found herself one bright morning in a hotel room alone with three hundred dollars cash on the nightstand. She had no clue what the fuck she’d done to “earn” those crisp hundreds and from looking out the window she couldn’t tell where she was. Picking up the hotel phone, Shelly asked the front desk what bus line she needed to get down town. When she didn’t recognize the names of the streets the operator was mentioning, Shelly swore in Spanish and stopped her.
“No, no, mamacita, listen to me, how do I get downtown Seattle on the bus?” she insisted, sure the operator misunderstood her.
There was a very long pause.
“Ma’am, you’d have to call Greyhound,” said the concierge.
“What? Where the hell am I?” Shelly demanded, the black-out getting even more alarming.
“Why, you’re in Houston, ma’am.”
That was the last time Shelly had a drink or drug.
“ ‘Flashdance’ was on last night,” I told Drake as I unloaded FedEx boxes in front of his desk. “Did you know that Phil Ramone directed the music and Jerry Bruckheimer produced that thing?”
Drake knew I was a complete “Law&Order” fiend, loving all things Bruckheimer.
“Omigod, I haven’t seen that in years. ‘Going on a manhunt, indeed’. That little thing with the big eyes? Jennifer somebody…” Drake trailed off.
“Beals. Jennifer Beals. She went to Francis Parker, the rich kid school in Chicago.”
“What are you doing this weekend, darling? You and Shell going to that 12-step lesbian rodeo?”
“Round-Up, Drake, they’re called AA Round-Ups. And no. I’m sitting this one out. I have a date with a nice biker butch from the Madison Beach meeting. She’s taking me for a Sunday ride on her Harley.”
“I’m thinking about trying the tea dance at the Timberline Sunday afternoon. Does that make me an old queen?” He sighed and made a face.
“If you were an old queen, you’d go to The Eagle.”
“Thank you, Al. I feel much better.”
“I’m working tomorrow. Forced labor. Mandatory overtime. Sometimes I hate this job. I should have gone to college.”
“Yes, darling, you should have because then you’d have a degree and get ahead in life,” Drake said, spreading his arms like Carol Merrill, gesturing at his front desk area. “Like me. My English degree from the UW got me this glamorous receptionist job. At least with FedEx you get flight benefits and a free on-the-job workout.”
FedEx had given me flight benefits to see the children, a 401K, a down payment on my house, a strong sense of self and a high-paying job, even if it was back-breaking and fraught with time-definite terror. I drove a diesel-spewing Grumman through downtown Seattle and though my bones hurt, Fred Smith’s big company had factored into the equation anchoring my life. I was grateful.
That had been one of the therapist’s ideas: find a job to enable me to see my children, despite geographic distance. I hadn’t wanted to be a flight attendant and cargo handling and customer service paid crap. FedEx was the way to go. I us
ed those flight benefits to see Peanut and Dew at least every two months.
Working a blue collar job gave me access to the belly of every downtown Seattle building. My work-world was loading docks with huge screaming trash compactors, beeping trucks backing into precariously tight spots, men hollering and jousting for position. There were a few women but testosterone still reigned supreme in this world of four-wheel dollies, pallets full of shrink-wrapped freight, grimy dark cinder-block walls, diamond-plate freight elevators wearing quilted interior jackets and unceasing ear-splitting noise. Every surface was dotted with tobacco spit, footprints, crude graffiti, and hand-printed Magic Marker signs on torn cardboard (“NO holding frieght elavator”).
But once inside the quiet building interiors, I’d find people like Drake, his position requiring him to sign for my deliveries. He’d brightened the first time we met when I’d commented that his fountain pen matched his bowtie.
“Well, sweetie, your eyes match your entire uniform.”
“Which is why I chose FedEx over UPS. Gotta look good.”
“What else matters, darling? I’m Drake, and you are…?”
He’d held out his manicured hand.
“I’m AnnaLee,” I’d said, “but my friends call me Al for short.”
“Al. Pity. AnnaLee is such a lovely old-fashioned name. Wasn’t that the name of …?”
I was used to this.
“The woman in The Band’s song ‘The Weight’?”
“I was going for a more literary approach,” Drake had smiled. “The original nymphet that Humbert Humbert fixated on as a child.”
“Ah, Nabokov. Haven’t read him in years. I think you might be right. Or maybe her name was like the Poe poem.”
“That’s Annabelle Lee. Not the same at all.”
“And nothing like that magic land where Puff went.”
“Right. That was Honalee.”
“And then there’s the French movie.”
“No,” I smiled, “I’m nothing like Amalie.”
“You’re the new courier on my route?”
He pronounced it “root.”
“Roger that. Every day, oh lucky man, you get to see me.”
“Well, this will be much better than that enormous gal we used to have or the one who looked like she’d just escaped from Purdy.”
“The heavy gal just got fired. Teresa does have the post-prison look, doesn’t she?”
“She needs a better support garment.”
“Drake, this is going to be the highlight of my day from now on,” I said, grinning at his witty assessments. I couldn’t imagine how he’d sum me up in a few words to someone else.
“Then honey, you need more excitement in your life.”
A gift from the Norse gods, Birgitte got nudged into my reality by her twins. They both fixated on Peanut at Nursery Rhymes Daycare the first summer the children spent with me in Seattle. Birgitte’s boys Sam and Adam had insisted on a playdate outside of day school.
By the end of the first hour at Shilshole Beach, Birgitte and I were already penciling in our next get-together, a friendship fast forming over our small children. Dew was instructing the younger children in making a rocky sand castle and we’d seen a few Herschels in the water, the pesky sea lions heading for the Ballard fish ladder to eat spawning salmon.
“Here I’m totally straight and I’ve never been married. The kids’ dad was…nobody. Just some guy. I never even told him I was pregnant. It’s not fair that you’ve been married and you’re a lesbian,” she’d snorted after we’d exchanged abbreviated biographies in the upfront Seattle way.
Birgitta’s Scandinavian father gave her white-blond hair while her brown eyes smoldered with her Italian mother’s looks.
“I’m not a card-carrying dyke. They took away my toaster and rescinded my membership since I’m on that slippery bisexual slope. I don’t get the emails anymore,” I grinned. “I’m more of a byke. Kinda both at the same time. Identified with the girls but still capable of loving everyone.”
“Lucky you. It doubles your chance of a date on Saturday night. I’m hoping this guy Kyle starts to get serious. He drinks a little but nothing to worry about. He’s good to the boys. I’m tired of all the polite dating and being on.”
“That’s much easier with women, I admit. But the break-ups are harder. More emotional.”
“Having kids, though, that’s the real focus. I give the boys all my energy. When does that end, do you think?”
“Maybe when they’re….thirty,” I laughed, trying to envision a time when DuPree and Penelope, patiently gathering stones for the sandy structure, wouldn’t be my total center.
“Mom, play that song again about the boy,” Dew asked. “please?”
He smiled at me when I looked in the rearview mirror. Dew and Peanut took up the entire back, double car seats crowding the Subaru.
It was the first summer they came to Seattle, Peanut in diapers and Dew still prone to sneaking his sister’s buppies away then sucking the pacifier himself for a while
“What boy?”
“The one she’s in love with.”
“Okay,” I said, pushing in the cassette of Trisha Yearwood. Dew began tapping the tops of his little Superman sneakers together and singing along. Peanut was looking out the window, buppie firmly in her mouth. Her pale skin showed eyes ringed with dark red circles, her tell-tale sign of being tired.
“Now play the other one.”
“Which one?” I asked, already knowing the answer. This was our new ritual, our new joke.
“ ‘About The Weather.’” Dew’s face grinned at me as we waited at Denny and John for the light to change. It was the first word pun Dew understood, loving 10,000 Maniacs’ hit, ‘About The Weather’ and turning it into a Who’s-On-First routine.
“Okay, that’s what it’s about but what’s its name?”
“It’s ‘About The Weather.’”
“I know what it’s about but what’s its name?”
“Mom!”
I smiled back at him in the mirror and reached back to pat both their chubby legs.
“Hey look, Mom, there’s the Space Needle!” Dew yelled as we started down the steep hill toward my first apartment with Angel.
“Pace Neo!” Peanut shouted through her pacifier, pointing her sticky finger.
“When’s it gonna take off, Mom?” Dew asked thoughtfully. I explained again that it wasn’t an alien ship but a building built for the World’s Fair.
“Just around the riverbend…” Peanut began to sing to herself, her brain a rotating file of Disney animated movie soundtracks plus the entire Wizard of Oz dialogue and score.
“What should we make for dinner?” I asked, relieved the day was over, happy to be trundling them home from Nursery Rhymes.
“Dick’s!” Dew shouted and Peanut chorused in.
“Fine with me,” I smiled, turning around and heading back to Broadway. We’d take something home for Angel.
I was raised a stoner in the Sunshine Tribe. It was part of the rituals at vespers, holy days, festivals and daily life rhythm. When I retired from FedEx, I told myself, I’d light up a doobie on my front porch. I just felt better when I’m high, everything suddenly taking a deep breath and then smiling out a contented sigh. Got the creative juice flowing, too, interior wheels within wheels, information flooding in Leroy Niemann-color swirls to the surface, layered with sensation and deep longing. Add music and time turned inward, remembering the trippy foggy day I first heard “Love, Reign O’er Me” or that time I felt like I was floating in my ’75 Corolla to “Solsbury Hill.”
The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers were right: dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope.
Malcolm always said cruise control was an impaired driver’s friend but on weed I’d never felt stupid or dull at the wheel. And I sure liked doing housework when I was high---smoke a bowl, put on some tunes, start washing the dishes and next thing I’d be
scrubbing the wax off the bathroom floor on my hands and knees, happy as a lark. The few times I’d been stoned around my kids I was exceptionally patient, more relaxed and a helluva lot more fun.
But all that 12-stepping gave me the other slant and because of my job I had to “think the drink through.” It wouldn’t be worth losing my job over weed. Work now, reefer later.
Drake and Birgitte had both fled Bible-thumping hinterlands in Eastern Washington, Birgitte to work the fishing boats in Alaska and Drake to quietly find other gays at Seattle’s UW. They had had dope in their high schools but never pursued it as seriously as I did.
Drake’s family was a centuries-old Spokane-founding name and he lived quietly so as not to sully the family reputation. Buying a Janis Joplin album at 15 nearly got him thrown out of his mother’s house. Birgitte was a good girl until she went to Alaska for a few years then showed up in Seattle six months gone and tight-lipped about paternity.
Malcolm, he smoked up whenever he liked, stepping into the restaurant’s walk-in cooler for a hit. Everyone just attributed his aloof gaze to innate cool since he’s a six-foot ripped black man.
But weed would have to wait.
Chapter Two
“How about we cruise down Madison and then wind our way around Lake Washington for a while?” Diane suggested, handing me the black spare helmet.
We’d kissed hello, my heart pounding enough to frighten me a little. Solid-built with a husky voice, Diane was a hot butch who’d just gotten out of a long relationship and I wanted a crack at her. Shelly had called me with the inside dope, Diane’s partner weeping copiously in the Capital Hill Thursday night meeting that it was over, that their commitment ceremony plans had put so much pressure on them they’d caved.
