Bukowski in a Sundress

by Kim Addonizio

  Remember a previous fight, the night of his birthday. He was turning thirty, and you were now fifty-six.

  “Happy birthday, baby,” you said, pouring yourself a third glass of wine—good wine you’d paid for. You often paid for groceries. You picked up some of the costs for his travel. Even a poet’s earnings, compared to a blues musician’s, are pretty substantial.

  “I don’t like it when you drink so much,” he said, pouring himself a glass of wine, eating some of the chocolate cake you’d bought him.

  “Don’t tell me what to do,” you snapped. You were often snappish when drinking. You criticized him, too. Truthfully, you were kind of a bitch after three glasses of wine.

  On Thanksgiving, say, “Why do I always do this?”

  “Do what?” he says warily, a forkful of apple pie halfway to his mouth.

  “Fall for someone who can’t give me what I need.”

  This is when he gets up and leaves.

  After a few days, have a serious talk and decide to stay together. Feel hopeful all over again. Fuck the rules; you are an artist. You can transcend this age stuff and all the rest.

  But really, you can’t.

  He leaves again during your final fight. He is a lot bigger than you, so it is impossible to stop him, despite raising yourself to your full five-foot-one height in front of the door and throwing out your arms. Phone him several times. Write him abject texts, begging him to answer his phone. Realize that your words are lost in cyberspace, never to be acknowledged or recovered. Realize you are alone in a vast, cold universe.

  • • •

  A YEAR LATER, attend a memorial for the blues musician who was your teacher in the band workshop. Your ex’s band is performing. Go up to him and say everything you need to say: That you are sorry the two of you stopped bringing out the best in each other. That you wish him well. Hug him and walk away, hoping he is lusting for your ass in your tight jeans. Do not go home, drink some tequila and text him, asking him to come over.

  He won’t.

  Wonder whether this affair was your swan song, whether you’re doomed now to start piling New Yorkers and Poetry magazines on the furniture, to huddle listlessly in a moth-holed sweater in a dark apartment, waiting to die and be eaten by your cat. Your cat would likely not hesitate; she can hardly handle the hours between her late-night feeding and breakfast.

  Quit drinking for a month. Make all your friends sick of you crying over your breakup, whining about feeling old and lonely. Write pages and pages of crap about him, crap you should be embarrassed to show anyone, and submit them to your agent as part of a memoir. Get rejected by every publisher in New York and a few scattered across the country. Keep writing. Wait, be patient; you will heal. One day you’ll say his name and it will have only a little weight attached to it, instead of dragging you down into the pain and sorrow of love. One day, he will be your friend. It will be a tentative friendship on both sides, each of you aware of the harm you have done each other, each of you still caring, wanting to get it right between you, whatever it is. You’ll go to hear him perform. Watching him onstage, seeing how connected he is to his music, how completely himself and alive, you’ll fall for him all over again, swooning and starting to spiral. Later that night you’ll walk with him in a park and stop by a fountain where you once held each other, and when he reaches for you, seeing the look in your eyes, you’ll say no, and almost, almost mean it.

  I New York

  I WAS STANDING in the big renovated kitchen of my new Manhattan sublet one afternoon, making coffee, when I noticed a piece of cardboard sticking out from under the stove. Strange. I leaned down, pulled it out, and in an adrenaline rush leaped three and a half feet onto the counter and crouched there, looking down at what was on the cardboard.

  Just a mouse.

  I stayed where I was, trying to figure out if it was dead or alive. Then it moved, a little. It had a small spasm and then lay there, pulsing. It was stuck on a glue trap, firmly attached by its right shoulder and tail. The landlord must have put the trap there, not mentioning it to his new tenants.

  Up until now, I’d been having a mad love affair with the city. It was summer, and I was living in a New Yorker’s wet dream: two big bedrooms, hardwood floors, high ceilings, lots of light. I was hardly paying for any of it. My friend Elizabeth had a temporary job there and didn’t want to live alone, so she was covering most of the rent. I was sort of a paid companion, a role I took to easily. I’d be very good at being rich, but no one has ever offered to test my talents in that department. I never made a dime from my divorces, not that either of my husbands had two nickels. New York was like a wealthy, handsome, intensely artistic, complex, slightly manic man who, for some inexplicable reason, was enthralled with me. Not that I’d ever met a man like that. Who needed men anyway? I’ll take Manhattan.

  It seemed you could get anything delivered here: pulled pork sandwiches, Thai or Indian food, beer at 4:00 a.m. when you were sitting around with your old friend coming down from the coke he’d brought over. I hadn’t done coke since high school, and soon I remembered why: I hated the quick blastoff and the hairpin turn plunging you back down, a little lower than you were before. But being in New York made me want to be open to every adventure. Just say yes was my motto. I’d been living alone in Oakland with my cat and had concluded that I needed a change from my life in California.

  Also, my daughter was in Brooklyn. I hadn’t lived in the same city with Aya for ten years, since she went off to school in Minnesota and then moved to New York to be an actor. Now we went for coffee and walked around looking for vintage clothing stores. She stopped by between auditions. When she did a play in the West Village, I got to see it twice, in previews and again on opening night. This particular play involved her character being thrown around and nearly raped, so it wasn’t the best one to revisit. She cowered against the wall a lot, looking terrified. She got slammed against it. The first time I saw the production, her bloody nose looked so real I wanted to jump out of my seat and save her. Elizabeth was completely traumatized. She didn’t go out with us afterward, just headed off home, overcome and weeping. Such is the power of theater.

  Washington Square Park, which I was always crossing on my way somewhere, was its own sort of theater: little kids and dogs sloshing through the fountain, a troupe of acrobats somersaulting over a row of tourists, a man playing “Moonlight Sonata” on a baby grand, about twenty-seven films being made by self-important-looking NYU students. When a man walked by meowing, I nearly fainted with happiness. New York was so interesting. When it got too interesting, I could hide out in the big lovely apartment while Elizabeth was away at her office all day.

  • • •

  NOW THERE WAS a rodent. There might be more glue traps, more mice twitching on little squares of cardboard under the stove and refrigerator.

  My coke-providing friend has agonized over killing fruit flies. He actually used to catch and release them, until they grew too numerous and he reluctantly bought a fly strip, after learning that even the Dalai Lama kills mosquitoes. I have no problem destroying flies, mosquitoes, ants, roaches, or other sentient beings smaller than my pinky. This mouse was considerably bigger.

  It moved again and made a weak high-pitched sound. I got down from the counter and approached it cautiously. It looked truly stuck. My immediate impulse was to shove it back under the stove and pretend I’d never seen it. The mouse would die, and when the smell filled the apartment, I’d innocently find the corpse in Elizabeth’s presence. She, being a former wildlife rescue volunteer, would insist on a proper funeral and burial. I’d light a candle, bless the unfortunate victim of urban progress, and recite a eulogy I’d written: “To a Mouse Caught in a Glue Trap.” I could get a poem out of this. There’s a solid tradition: birds trapped in airports or shopping malls or slamming into their reflections in windows. Animals getting shot or poisoned, flattened by cars, mangled by lawn mowers. I coul
d use my mouse as a metaphor to explore humanity’s relationship with animals. Or I could give my poem a political spin, and bring in class or race. I could make people really care about this mouse as an emblem for powerlessness.

  I picked up the cardboard by the very edge and climbed with it out the window to the flat roof, where we weren’t supposed to go. There was a glass door from the kitchen, but even though I’d spent an hour trying to pick the lock with a couple of paper clips, I couldn’t get it open. I set the mouse down on the roof and tried, with another piece of cardboard, to free its tail.

  This seemed to cause it pain, so I stopped. I climbed back in the window, leaving the mouse out there, and watched it for a while. A smattering of light rain was falling. The mouse would expire in the open air instead of the dust and darkness beneath the stove. Or a predatory bird would swoop down on it. There were falcons in Washington Square Park. I hoped one would cruise by right now.

  I went to my laptop and googled “free mouse from glue trap,” though I wasn’t sure I actually wanted to free it. If I let it go on the small, enclosed roof, it would have no place to go except back into the kitchen. It would get stuck on another trap, or else skitter around eating tamale and meatball crumbs. It would venture into the living room, then down the hall to my bedroom, make a nest in one of my shoes, and have tiny pink babies. Other mice would come over to see the new babies. Soon we would be overrun.

  I landed on the PETA website and read, “Glue traps cause slow, agonizing deaths.”

  By the time I was done reading the page, I was desperate to save my mouse. Cooking oil, apparently, was the way to go. I climbed back out the window and brought the mouse inside again. I found a long, shallow take-out container with a clear lid from an enchilada delivery the night before and cut the cardboard trap around the edges so it would fit inside. The mouse gave a little shudder. I spritzed it with organic olive oil spray, but the aerosol hiss terrified it into frantic squeaks and thrashing, so I switched to a bottle of Greek Extra Virgin, poured a little around the trembling body, and quick-closed the lid.

  It surprised me that this technique actually worked. Within a few seconds, the mouse was free, sort of—anxiously moving around the small space, looking for a way out.

  Now what? The roof? Not the roof. And I couldn’t just let it out on the street.

  Maybe it would peacefully suffocate now.

  In the meantime, I really needed a shower. I’d been writing in my pajamas all day. I’d been in close proximity to a rodent. There were possible diseases. I looked at it frantically trying to find its way out of the container. What if it escaped to run loose in the apartment, spewing babies?

  I climbed back out the window and set the container on the roof again, just in case the mouse muscled its way out. I texted a couple of friends asking them what to do. I called Elizabeth at work, but she was in a meeting. I wanted to leave her a message: “Call me back now or the mouse dies.” Instead I texted her, FUCK HELP MOUSE NOW. “Fuck help” was our code for “If you’re ignoring me, don’t—I really need you.”

  According to the information I’d found, the mouse had about an hour’s worth of air in there.

  I went to take a shower and wash my hair.

  In writing, getting away from the problem usually helps me find a solution, or at least a way to go back and tackle it again. In the shower, I decided on a plan: I’d take the mouse to Union Square, a couple of blocks over, and let it go in the park. I’d have to find a spot without people in it. I was not sure this spot existed anywhere in Manhattan. The people were as numerous as vermin. Union Square Park was full of them, pushing designer strollers, slumped on benches, playing chess, chanting Hare Krishna. Maybe I could let it go in front of the circle of those chanting, blissed-out, clearly insane devotees.

  I went back out the window and stood looking down at the mouse. It looked up at me through the plastic lid. I could hear its thoughts clearly: You are a flawed God, a cruel and unjust being who inflicts needless suffering on the undeserving. You are morally capricious. Narcissist that you are, you want everyone to worship you. The world would be better off without you. But right now you’re all I’ve got. Please get me the fuck out of here.

  It was clear to me now that New York was going to test me, and not just this once. Outside it was summertime, and the living was privileged. Winter, though, would come soon enough, bringing record blizzards and dirty snow. The train would inexplicably quit running, and everyone would pile off the cars up to the streets, fighting for suddenly nonexistent taxis or setting off walking in snow boots and Eskimo coats. The homeless would sit on their corners, giant lumps of humanity buried under layers of clothing and dirt, somehow surviving. New York would come to seem like any other city, only with more of everything. Greater highs, grinding lows, more pedestrians restaurants nail salons students crazies pizza falafel musicals garbage trucks rainbow flags immigrant taxi drivers angry or jovial or indifferent; more town cars bicycle lanes No Parking trash bags small dogs in sweaters and impeccably dressed and made up old ladies. DON’T HONK. MAKE ART NOT WAR. PLUMBER LOST MY JOB PLEASE HELP. CONSTRUCTION AREA. More TAVERN, BAR & GRILLE, WINE AND LIQUOR, HAPPY HOUR, COCA-COLA, HERSHEY’S, YAHOO!, WATCH THE GAP, YOU ARE HERE. More pigeons, roaches, rats, mice.

  I put the mouse in its molded plastic prison into a Whole Foods bag and carried it into the park. I sat on a curb near some shrubs and flowers and waited. People kept walking by. They had no idea of the life-or-death drama that was unfolding, just as I had no idea about their lives, unless they were loudly broadcasting them in cell phone conversations. “Like at every like moment I was like, of course I’m not like taking a fucking like job as a barista,” a twenty-something girl announced. Another girl with an earpiece said to the air, “At our age, dating is like going on safari.” A man who was seeing a woman named Angel was confiding to the friend on the other end, and to me, that Angel needed to be beaten up when they made love or she couldn’t come. As for the others, walking their dogs or children or hurrying toward some destination, they remained mysterious.

  I pulled out the container, placed it on my lap, and waited some more. I felt too embarrassed to open it. My self-consciousness might have been the final nail in this poor creature’s take-out coffin. It couldn’t have much air left. I looked into the container. The mouse had given up looking at me with its bright, beseeching eyes or scrabbling around looking for an exit. It was lying down, still breathing. Probably not for long.

  Finally I decided there was no way to set this mouse free without at least a couple of people seeing me. So what, I thought. This is New York, a city teeming with weirdos, actors, artists, and every human desire and sorrow. No one would bat an eye at a woman hunched on a curb and opening her take-out container, a mouse appearing instead of a veggie wrap, seizing its chance, leaping fast as lightning into the flowers.

  What Writers Do All Day

  MOST WRITERS I know avoid writing. We bitch and moan about time to do this thing we’ve been called to do, and when we finally wrest that time from the maw of errands to be done and loved ones to be dealt with and actual paid work, like waiting tables or lawyering or reading other people’s writing, we avoid it like mad.

  I asked my four thousand Facebook friends—most of whom, of course, I don’t know—whether they avoided writing, to see if what I’ve just said was true. A few of the responders said they didn’t. If Joyce Carol Oates or Stephen King were my Facebook friends, I’m sure they’d be in that camp—though why would they be on Facebook, “liking” a photo of me gazing from behind a wineglass with a yellow smiley face taped to it, when they could be writing? One of my unknown friends opined with the force of holy writ, WRITERS WRITE. NON-WRITERS TALK ABOUT WRITING. This sounds a lot to me like “Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach”—i.e., reductive bullshit. Good for him, I want to say, but for many of us, it’s not so easy.

  Besides, I like to think that avoidance is
actually preparation—like a dog turning a few circles before it settles down in its favorite spot, or a tennis player warming up with some baseline rallying, followed by a few crosscourt forehands, down-the-line backhands, and overhead volleys. Preparation is definitely a better concept. So maybe listing what other writers do to avoid writing can not only demystify the creative process for the layperson, but serve as useful advice for someone out there aspiring to become a published author. In that spirit, I culled some surefire tips from my Facebook friends, which I list here:

  Try on your shoes.

  Hunt for obscure jazz CDs.

  Feel guilty and cry.

  Make lists of people who have died.

  Have sex, with or without company.

  Watch Game of Thrones.

  Load a bowl, pour an adult beverage, and then return to reflecting on the journey to the end of the night.

  Have a good poop.

  Work on your labyrinth.

  Here is what I did for the last hour and a half of my scheduled writing time today: Wrote e-mails. Answered e-mails. Texted my friend Donna telling her what I was making for dinner on Friday. Made toast. Wandered around my sublet in New York. Admired the colorful printed cloth I bought to cover a table in the sublet. Made a list of ingredients I needed for dinner on Friday. Checked my Facebook messages. Saw an ad for pillows on Overstock.com and took a look. Went to the Facebook News Feed and clicked on “25 Celebrities When They Were Young,” from which I concluded three things:

  1. Most people are ugly as teenagers.

  2. No one is ugly in their mid-twenties, especially if they are destined to be famous.

  3. I am old.

  Wrote a lengthy e-mail, in my head, to the editor of my latest book. Did some yoga stretches. Wandered to the windows and stared out, thinking about how much garbage there is in New York. Wandered to the mirror and stared in. Who are you? I thought. What are you doing in the middle of the morning when everyone else is out there selling sausages and gyros from carts, delivering FedEx packages, cleaning hotel rooms? Your roommate is a couple of blocks away, ending world hunger. Elizabeth works for the Hunger Project. They go into poor villages in Africa and Bangladesh and India and empower people, especially women, to address their own needs and end their poverty and chronic hunger. It turns out chronic hunger kills a lot more people than those famines that get all the news coverage. My roommate was doing something about education and AIDS and potable water. I was still looking in the mirror, wondering what could cover those dark circles under my eyes. I was not a celebrity. I was a parasite.