Safety First

“I’m willing to go $75 on both of them”

I know that to many of you it may seem as if I’ve sort of vanished from the wine blogosphere, and for the most part I guess that is true. I’m not sure I ever belonged in that group to begin with actually, seeing as my blog is more of a personal diary of sorts. My life, my son, my relationships, my passion both before wine wrapped its textured tongue around me, swallowed me whole, and after. I write, um maybe wrote is a more accurate word considering how often I’ve been here as of late, (Been writing some soul searching and blisteringly raw pieces for myself but I have been woefully absent from this space) for the joy of finding my voice, sharing and maybe, just once in a while, making someone feel a little more comfortable tucked into their own skin in this complex and confusing world we all amble through. Felt like I was there for a bit but somewhere along the way I succumb to the awkward tugging of these pages, my bare flesh and emotion so exposed the utter nudity of my words making me both moist with want to do more and susceptible to the lashings from those that shamed be for everything from my lack of education to the insatiable gnarl of sensuality that haunted me until I found this place to unzip.

Messes with one’s head I assure you and as I have mentioned in posts earlier, I feel like I have been binding and gagging myself in some sort of emotional self-mutilation. So fucking cliché that I feel like I am preforming an act of flagellation by stepping out from behind my silent cursor to strip down to my most naked and defeated, all my blobby and chewed up bits unprotected for the bottom feeders to feast upon. Fuck you. Eat the poison you fed me. Those toxic little injections of anger, mockery, accusation and utter disregard coursing through my already collapsing veins sending me seeking new ways to nod out….silence my opiate of choice, until.

“I’m willing to go $75.00 on both”

I was sitting with my son at the restaurant I am currently owned by. We were scarfing spring rolls, our teeth tugging through the chewy skin to be met with sticks of vibrant cucumber, crisp greens, densely packed charred sweet shrimp and a layer of deep fried wrapper skin that has been tucked in the middle of the utterly perfect roll, you know, just for added crunch and craveability. The viscous orange sauce I’d seasoned with floral, and throat grabbing peppers, a blanket of hedonism and punishment. The Vietnamese crepe with its painfully delicate eggy crustiness balancing on our chop sticks as we folded pieces into cool lettuce envelopes that we would douse with a sour bath of fish sauce and sweet vinegar and fragrant purple herbs. The packet brought to our insatiable palates, bean sprouts and tender shrimp bodies melting and exploding at the exact same time. It was nearly enough, until.

“Have you seen this?!”

“I can’t fucking believe this”

“Are you okay?” 

  

The text messages started mid meal and that sinking feeling I had been feeling for a month, it was now an undertow that locked around my ankles and pulled me under so deep and for so long I was terrified that I might not ever breathe correctly again. Worse, not sure I wanted to considering the fact that hate actually won.

 Election night 2016. I spent it in one of my favorite spots, with someone I love more than any other on the planet, then I came home, threw up and emotionally passed out on my couch. Clothes on, my sickened breath redolent with the gin martini I “needed” before heading home and the bile stirred up by a momentary loss in my faith. I don’t read a book, I don’t pray at any alter. My faith lies in the oft kicked in the gut belief that most of us, no matter how blobby and poisoned, scared, scarred and uncertain, we are at our core decent. Trying to find my faith the next few days would prove, erm, challenging and at times painful but….

“You got them both!”

A Facebook message from my coworker Andy. He had been at the shop working our annual Su Casa event. Su Casa, a group that helps victims of domestic violence escape and begin a new, safe life. If there are more courageous and selfless people out there I don’t know who they are. Each year Randy and Dale Kemner, my bosses, offer up our space, provide wine and staff as well as a few snacks to Su Casa so they can raise awareness, and funds that will provide much needed assistance to families that just need that extended hand and safe space. Those of you that have been reading me for any length of time will fully understand why this cause is so near my heart. These individuals are what we should all aspire to be, people that care for those so in need that even just the slightest beam of brightness and hope will inspire their own inner superhero. Inspire them to reach out to the hand that is being extended to them and run from the one that has been pounding and reigning down upon them.

I’m going to confess a weak truth. I never work this event. It’s too close and too hard for me. I look at the faces of the women that come in to set up. Prep food. Fasten balloons to tables and sign posts. Smell them heavily scented and feel their palpable excitement for the evening like a sweet stroke over long ago healed wounds, a whisper over my scars. I know I should be the first to volunteer but, but I don’t. I prep cheese plates in the back and before walking out the back door I look into our space, The Wine Country’s big welcoming embrace as newly glammed up women work together fastening name tags, prepping prizes for the raffle and shove big serving spoons in plastic bowls full of fresh fruit or mayonnaise dressed salads in order to raise some money for their sisters that will come, when they are ready. I soak it in each year and slip out the backdoor. Proud of the people I work for and amazed at the overpoweringly uplifting and, hopefully, inspiring nature of the whole scene. This year however…

Before I was running out, too afraid to look anyone too deep in the eye, not for how they might recognize my, edge, as much as for the fact that being in their presence tends to cause a reaction in me that most find unnerving. Watching a grumpy looking rock tear up is some sort of Hunter S Thompson level crazy and I find most would rather not. Can’t say as I blame them, can you? Anyhow, this time I took a few extra moments. Strolled the shop and decorations. Helped with affixing balloons and assisted a lovely woman with caramel colored skin, shiny jet black curls, cheerful eyes and full painted lips that stretched wide with every gesture that made her tasks a little easier. She was stunningly confident and comfortable and I envied her. Admired her. She had in her smile and wit something I was drawn to. A longing. A familiar flicker that made me feel at home. Safe. I followed her around with a tape dispenser taking deep breaths, hoping I could breathe in some of her hope.

Heading out just before the event was to begin and I was stopped, literally in my tracks, by two paintings. I leaned in close. Studied the lines like I’d seen people in museums all over the world do. My goofy uneducated noggin taking it all in. Hands folded behind me, back slightly curved as I inspected the work being displayed. Both pieces critically inspected I scribbled a, slightly low, bid on both of them before straightening up my spine and walking over to Randy as I grabbed my backpack.

“Randy, I want them. I’m willing to go $75.00 on both”

Randy’s big smile the kind of extended hand I was seeking. I knew, as I always know, he was looking out for me and would do his best to help me, help lots of us. Climbing into my car that night I knew I had an advocate, as a woman and as a person, in my corner and I knew he would raise his paddle as it were and fight for my instantly adored and longed for pieces genuine hope. 

So now? Now I get to wake up each morning, some easier than others but I wake up knowing that no matter how much hate there is out there, in my home, my homes if you include The Wine Country and this place, if y’all still want me, I have safety…and hope. 

Thank you Su Casa, Randy Kemner for all you do and thank you to Lamesha and Jose, your beautiful paintings full of honesty and hope grace my living room walls and remind me that as bad as things get, there is always hope. You give me the courage and desire to speak, loudly. Cry openly. Seethe secrety. Drink deeply. Love openly. Open my mouth and creek out my voice again, hopefully. 

 

Sweet Shells

 “Do I have to go Mom?”

My whining voice as my mother tried to coax me away from whichever Judy Blume book I was deeply nuzzled into. She had the night off from school and had a “date” with the adulterous man she was seeing. My mother dated rarely but when she did, she went for anything other than what was good for, or could be good, for her. This particular man was one I had a fiery hatred for. First of all he was married and while everyone around us told us he wasn’t, his daughter, that he brought with him on several of his outings, assured me, he was still in fact very married and while we knew of her, his wife knew nothing of us. Even then I didn’t have too many hang ups about that kind of thing. To each their own and it isn’t any of my business to tell grown ass folks how to live. That said, this was my desperately needing mother and I knew….could tell by the way she selected her perfume from the glass tray atop her dresser what kind of night she was hoping for. The kind of knight she was hoping for, and I was sure this black grease wreaking, slow witted, living in a hotel room user was the polar opposite to what she needed.

“Please Mouse. Come with us. We are going to that shrimp place”

The words still a bubble in the air above her head and I was shoving my summer blistered heels into my Keds, standing tall as I ran my pudgy hand over my layingaroundallday shirt and with a slightly defeated snarl replied, “Okay fine! Just make him leave me alone”

So not only was this man a liar, a user and a cheater, he was also cruel in that way that only profoundly stupid men can be. Every time I came to dinner he would call me “Hungry Hungry Hippo” and when he’d call to speak to my mother the first question, out of his tubby face, “So Sam, you still ugly?” so needless to say spending the night with Ms. Blume’s perfectly aged stories were a far better option for me but, well there was that sweet smelling momma of mine, and the promise of fried shrimp, a thing I had only known because of that grease stinking ape, and the only thing I could find pleasure in when he and my mother would start kissing, the sight and sound making my stomach turn….turn right to that bucket of fried shrimp. 

“Nance, you got your wallet? His thick southern accent oozing with a sickly sweet stench as we approached the iron rod covered walk up window. Took us like 20 or 25 minutes to get there and it was in a part of town that my mother would never be caught dead in…the part of town that drew me back years later for its honesty and truth no matter how busted, broken and sad. I looked up, well across as I was nearly as tall as she at this point, at my mother and refusing to make eye contact with me she reached into her purse and pulled out her pocketbook. Dinner on her, again. “Yeah, I have some cash” she sputtered and with that the goon belted out his order.

 “Yeah, we’ll be having 2 pounds of those fried shrimps and don’t cheap out on the ketchup sauce! I also want a shake” like he was a 10 year old getting to pick dinner on his birthday. I was actually ten and while I sat there, thirsty because it was only his drink requirements dealt with, my legs dangling off the side of his oversized van thing that looked like a Frito Lay delivery truck, I listened to the two of them coo and flirt and the only thing that kept me from either retching or snapping my ten year old leg off in his dumb ass, the briny, bready, horseradishy aroma and roof of the mouth scraping of those perfectly fried and cocktail dunked “shrimps”

Fixed coral colored tails fanned out, deeply brown coating squeezing the flat splayed shrimp bodies, hard fried just enough that the crunch of their flesh between my teeth drowned out the ever screeching lies, empty promises and eventual bickering and tears that were coming from the belly of the van. The spent tail quarters and nose expanding aroma of cocktail sauce my music as I sat on the bumper of the van after being pushed out so, ‘the grownups can talk” the grunts and slow rocking of our chariot teaching me how I never wanted to talk in that kind of grown up way. The fragrant briny whiff a comfort as I sat in the dark on a swaying bumper as drug deals, sexual exchanges and toothless homeless folks passed me by, not noticing, for a second, my Keds dangling from the Frito Lay looking van. Never seeing me dip my chin into the bucket to hide my tears of frustration, maybe humiliation as I found the one and only good thing in that moment, becoming once again a submissive to the seduction of oceanic fragrances. That and knowing that my mom would be needing extra hugs that night and I would be the one giving them to her….which was why she begged me to come in the first place. 

The other night my son and I sat with two very real loves of my, of our lives, and we all crunched away madly on old school breaded shrimp, this time the submission of their crunch covered flesh nearly silent compared to the boisterous energy and welcoming exchange and debates spinning around the table. My voice, his voice, our voices all bouncing about as the hedonistic tug of thick cocktail sauce, heavily flecked with serious tatters of horseradish and sweet tomato ketchup were wrapping me up in a kind of embrace  that I so longed for 35 years ago. I might not have noticed how powerful the moment had it not been for the nights spent on that Frito Lay bumper and the resulting tight hugs and hair stroking, another one of our role exchanged moments that taught me to be just a little stronger.

Can’t smell the ocean, oysters, clams or fried shrimp without feeling nostalgic and a bit taller. It’s that kind of observation that reminds me, there is plenty of bad but if you can, somehow, find some tiny bit of hope, strength, power or courage in them…someday those bads will smell and feel a whole lot like a much needed embrace.