Leave the Lipstick, Take the Iguana

by Marcy Gordon

  “Sure. Ski trip to Tahoe?”

  “Nope. Dogsledding. Minnesota.”

  He stopped rummaging through the box of mittens.

  “Why?”

  Good freaking question.

  “With my mom.”

  He stared at me for about three seconds. “Try these.” He handed me a package of Hot Hands, little chemical patches you slip into your gloves.

  “I’ll take the whole box.”

  “Nice day out there, folks,” the pilot said as we taxied on the tarmac. “Six degrees with a slight breeze out of the northeast.”

  My mom and I glanced at each other. “Ha!” she said, zipping up her jacket. “That’s nothing.”

  She whipped out her cell phone and called my stepdad. “We’ve landed!” she shouted into the phone. “There’s snow everywhere! I’ll call you later!”

  In the tiny airport, I saw things I’d never seen in California. A moose head hung over the drinking fountain. Past the security checkpoint a stuffed grizzly bear pawed the air with his club-sized foot. Several women sported calf-length fur coats, looking quite toasty snuggled inside those dead animals. Why hadn’t I thought of that?

  “You the folks from California?” a chunk of woman in a fur-lined camouflage parka said in her singsong accent.

  I nodded.

  “Okey dokey, then. I’m Wanda.” She motioned toward the taxi purring at the curb. She hoisted my mom’s suitcase. I gazed around the blinding white landscape. “So, you guys ever seen snow before?”

  We puttered out into the icy afternoon, the low winter sun glinting across the slick highway. We chugged past iron mines, a store called Chocolate Moose and a town called Embarrass. Flakes fuzzed the windows while Wanda passed back pictures of her grandkids. She asked if we’d ever felt an earthquake.

  It was three-thirty and getting dark when we arrived at the Wintergreen Lodge. “Oh, you’re the ones from California,” said Dominic, one of our guides. We shook hands with our fellow mushers, all from the Midwest. All had nice warm hands. One was even wearing a t-shirt.

  I poured steaming tea for my mom and me, and Dominic announced we’d start Dogsledding 101 after dinner. “But first, let’s talk about fears and expectations.”

  “Yah, then we need to go over your clothing system,” said Lynn Anne, the other guide. She was looking right at my mom and me.

  I snuggled a little closer to the wood burning stove. One woman said she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to handle the dogs. Another confessed her fear of falling through the ice. My mom didn’t know if her cell phone would work in negative-degree weather. I was wondering what the hell a “clothing system” was. And my feet were cold.

  I raised my hand. “Uh, I’m a little worried that my contacts are going to freeze to my eyeballs.” I had read that such things could happen. I wanted to be ready.

  Dominic gave me a stern look. “Don’t get freaked out by the cold,” he shook his shaggy head. “If you get it in your mind that you’re going to be cold, you’ll be miserable,” he said. “Besides, it’s only fifteen below.”

  We practiced saying “gee” for right turn, and “hike” for go. We gobbled hunks of Baked Alaska. Then Lynn Anne asked us to lay out all our cold weather gear. She picked through our multiple fleece jackets, the Polartec leggings, the boots with extra liners. “You guys are going to roast,” she said. My mom and I beamed.

  People started yawning, and made for their rooms. But we were still on west coast time and wide awake.

  “Hey,” my mom said, “let’s see if we can see the northern lights.” Her face glowed.

  “You mean … outside?”

  “Come on,” she nudged me. “We’ll try out our ‘Clothing System.’”

  “Okey dokey.”

  It took ten minutes to get suited up. I pulled on a pair of thermals. Insulated snow pants. Then a fleece jacket. Another fleece anorak, then the shell. Two pairs of socks and two hats. The minus forty Sorels. Glove liners and mittens. The Hot Hands. And the neck gaiter pulled up over my mouth, doncha know. I looked like I was ready to rob an igloo.

  “Mmmffphrgg” my mom said, and poked an appendage toward the front door.

  Outside, I squinched my eyelids so only a nanometer of pupil was showing and braced for the icy blast. I gripped the handrail and started down, like Neil Armstrong descending. That’s one small stair, one giant step for the thin-blooded, freaked-out, overly-dressed Californian.

  I stood in the deep snow and surveyed the wintery surroundings. The spruce trees were like giant green toothbrushes with a foot of icy white toothpaste squirted onto their branches. “You O.K.?”

  My mom nodded.

  We waded through the thigh deep powder on White Iron Lake. A half moon winked from behind a cluster of clouds, bathing everything in a fairy tale white. I thought of wolves. Of Robert Frost’s poem. Of the ice, solid under our feet. My mom’s breathing was heavy and I stopped.

  “I forgot how quiet it gets in the snow,” she whispered. I pulled down my neck gaiter and looked up. Tiny diamonds gleamed in the black bowl of the sky. Orion, the hunter. The dog star. Polaris.

  We hadn’t gazed at the stars together since I was a little girl, back when time stretched out in front of us like a long summer day.

  “It’s wonderful to be here together, honey” she said, and put her arm around me. Her breath hung warm in the icy air.

  You’re lucky, my friend’s voice echoed in my head.

  I nodded, and deep inside my ears I heard the shushing of my heart, the blood running hot and strong through my body.

  My mom turned to smile at me. Well, she crinkled up her eyes so I assumed she was smiling, because I could only see a one-inch strip of her face.

  And we were warm enough to stand together for a long time on that frozen lake, staring at the stars moving slowly but surely across the wintry sky.

  Suzanne LaFetra is an award winning writer whose work has appeared in many newspapers and literary journals, including the San Francisco Chronicle, the Christian Science Monitor, Brevity, on San Francisco’s NPR affiliate radio station, and in many anthologies. She lives in Northern California with her children.

  MEGAN RICE

  The Spice is Right

  I’ll have what she’s having!

  Tacos before sex. Tacos after sex. Perhaps even sex with a guy named Taco. Sex in a taqueria though? This was the last way I was expecting to spend my Saturday afternoon. In fact, I was planning on spending it watching pirated movies alone in my Mexico City apartment. Then my stomach grumbled.

  Down the street from my apartment was a little taqueria that served the best alambre in all of Mexico. The perfect combination of Oaxaca cheese, ham, peppers, and salsa made me question why I ever needed to cook for myself again. Truthfully though, it wasn’t only the food I went for.

  On that particular Saturday afternoon I grabbed my wallet and walked around the corner to the taqueria. I found the cook and owner sitting in two of the red plastic chairs that made up the twenty feet by twenty feet dining area. They looked bored out of their minds. A bottle of tequila sat on the table in front of them.

  “Hola, que onda?” I asked.

  “Aqui, waiting for you!” they responded cheerfully. The cook got up and started my alambre without me even having to order. Happily chopping up the veggies and meat to heat on the grill, he started talking of the joint taqueria he was going to open with me in Oregon one day.

  “You and me, we’re going to be rich,” he said confidently. When the alambre was ready he handed me the plate along with a basket of corn tortillas.

  I took my usual seat by the counter next to the owner. Already I felt nervous. I’ll admit a part of me was intrigued about the gentle voiced twenty-five-year-old. His black moppy hair. That cheeky smile. A man who expressed a sincere love for tacos, french architecture, and japanese anime. He was unusually charming.

  He grabbed the bottle of tequila and opened it.

  “Thirsty?” he asked. I shrugged
and let him pour me a shot. The three amigos—my future business partner, my Mexican infatuation, and myself—raised our shot glasses.

  “Salud!” we said in unison and drank up.

  We continued talking until I finished my alambre. Angel asked if I wanted to smoke out back. I nodded and followed him out the door. Surprise! The “back” was really his bedroom. Oh how smooth.

  “You sleep in the taqueria?” I asked, peering in. It was exactly what one would imagine a guy like him sleeping in. A king sized bed tucked in the corner. Anime movie posters on the wall. Some odd eiffel tower knickknack sitting on his one chair desk. I hesitated at first to enter, but Angel gave me a reassuring “no problema” smile, and I went in.

  “Saves on rent.” He handed me a cigarette, lit it, and I then moved to examine his collection of films lying next to the television. Within seconds I felt his lips on the back of my neck. I shouldn’t have been startled. Should I really be that surprised? I started making small talk about my love for Jack Black, pretending not to notice that a guy with whom my conversations had rarely gone beyond favorite taco toppings, was now moving his hand toward my bra strap. He stopped.

  “Is this all right?” he asked kindly.

  Is this all right? I wonder. In about 97.4% of situations, no, it probably wouldn’t be. But I guess that particular afternoon the alambre aphrodisiac was too strong and my taqueria man too tempting. My mind screamed “Seize the moment Megan! He’s hot!”

  “Si,” I tell him. Yes, vamanos, andale, let’s do this hombre!

  He spun around to face me and we started making out. The copy of Nacho Libre dropped to the floor, soon to be covered by our clothes. We wrapped ourselves around each other like a perfectly prepared tortilla. He is the cheese, I am the ham. No wait—I’m the jalapeno pepper and he’s the picante salsa. Actually, it doesn’t matter because by the time I managed to find a decent taco analogy to describe our sexual act, it’s over. A bell is heard from up front. The sound of the chef talking to a customer brought us back to reality and we quickly grabbed our clothes and checked our hair in his bathroom mirror. Slightly less elegant than when I came into the room but convincingly tame enough to fool any suspicious customers. Was it just me or did I smell like chorizo?

  I quickly walked through the kitchen, not able to look at the chef in the eye. He was no fool, he knew what happened. Our joint taco shop endeavor had officially been scrapped. “Out the door, out the door, out the door” was all I could think to myself. Jesus Christ. Jesus Cristo. I had sex with the taqueria guy. In his taqueria. Does this mean I don’t have to pay for my alambre? Oh god, I just paid for my tacos with sex. I am officially a taco whore. An alambre slut.

  “Let me walk you home please,” Angel said to me. I motioned that I was good on my own and said I’ll talk to him soon. Once back at the apartment, I found my roommates in the kitchen sifting through the box of take out menus. I glanced at the well worn taqueria flyer clutched in my friends left hand.

  “Hey Megan. Hungry?”

  I shook my head and left them alone to sift. The next hour was spent scrubbing any lingering scent of taco off my body in the bathroom.

  Any effort on my part to avoid the taqueria for the next couple weeks was made in vain. Turns out a few days after our little incident the taco shop shut down for unexplained reasons. I never saw my taqueria lover again. Shame really. The alambre was good.

  Megan Rice is a half-Oregonian, half-Welsh rock star. She’s been incredibly lucky to have worked in various countries in Latin America and Europe and she’s just getting started. Having recently gone through a quarter life crisis, she now embraces a life of words, art, love, and pure madness.

  KATIE EIGEL

  Drug Money

  Desperately seeking a hit of culture.

  “Mom, Dad, can I borrow some money for drugs?” I asked on a phone call from Switzerland to Missouri. Actually, it didn’t come out like that. But that’s what I meant. When you ask your parents if you can go to Amsterdam, you’re basically asking for drug money.

  My parents, whose nerves were already frayed from worrying what their twenty-year-old daughter really “studied” 5,000 miles away from home, were speechless. I knew better. I had asked if I could go to Holland as opposed to Amsterdam, thinking that visions of tulips, windmills, and wooden clogs swirling in my parents’ minds would still secure my slot as favorite daughter.

  They raised me as a trustworthy, Midwestern Catholic girl, so I meant no harm. (Oddly enough, the first time I met marijuana was on a school prayer retreat.) At the time, my worldly curiosity burned stronger than my Catholic guilt of committing venial sins.

  Funny thing was, I could smoke pot in Switzerland; it was decriminalized, but that wasn’t good enough. I needed bragging rights. I was a gullible American who bought into the idea that one had to venture to some top-ten-list destination for the “Best Places to Get High.” If someone bragged about smoking pot in Switzerland to other home-bodied Americans, who have not heard of the place via mass media, the adventure doesn’t hold up. It would have been a lot cheaper, and possibly more scenic, to get high in a lush Swiss park surrounded by the Alps. My dad always told me, “Go big or go home.” Although that was the last thing he would say in reference to Amsterdam debauchery.

  “Why do you want to go to Holland?” asked my Dad.

  As I stood in my Swiss studio apartment staring out at the mountaintops, I could picture Mom and Dad side-by-side in their rocking chairs, looking out onto the peaceful, picket-fence backyard dotted with Gingko trees. If I couldn’t spin-doctor this one, they were in for small-town shock.

  “Well,” I said as my voice cracked, “we met some people in Italy who are from there and we want to visit them.”

  Silence.

  “Annnnnnd,” I stretched, trying to break the awkwardness, “there’s so much art and culture there, like Van Gogh. It’d be really cool.”

  Still nothing from the other end, so I threw in the phrase that any college student did when hopes for independence grew slim.

  “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime chance. While I’m over here, I should take advantage of it, right?”

  “You’re not going to go to Amsterdam are you?” asked my Dad in a tone that verged on using my full name.

  “Well, maybe. I mean, just for a day trip or something. Sooo … can I go?”

  My Mom finally caved. “We’ll put some money in your account. But don’t do anything stupid.” Mom was, and still is, always right.

  I hung up the phone, looked at my roommate, Jan, who sat on the bottom bunk in our bedroom, which was also our living room and dining room.

  “I can go!”

  “Shut up!”

  “I know!”

  We hugged each other and raced five feet from our multi-purpose room into our kitchen, which housed our matching laptops. I booked the flight I found prior to my phone call.

  Jan and I didn’t know much about Amsterdam. And for two naive Missourians, we had no business going there. Neither of us wanted to pay for art museums, let alone hard-core drugs, or fornication. We were, however, willing to pay for recreational activities that Americans can’t legally do.

  With little research, our city map, and the address to one coffee shop, we headed out from the main train station, which dropped us off in front of the area’s main canal. Tour boats passed each other. Families crossed over bridges holding hands. Triangular-shaped buildings, all the same height, lined the canal.

  We set out on foot and learned the importance of dodging bikes on the streets and sidewalks. Bicycles arched their ways across the cobblestone bridges and hugged the base of every tree and street pole.

  There was something about this city that made me think it kept a big secret. A good secret. A secret it would share as soon as you showed a genuine interest. This secret we found in the ubiquitous cafes. Everyone inside appeared calm and peaceful. A few patrons sat at tables and read newspapers while slowly exhaling ghostly streams. Alternately lifting cig
arettes, espresso cups, and newspapers. We wanted to be among this group, so in we went.

  “How do you ask for weed?” Jan whispered to me as we walked in trying to look like we’ve done this before.

  “I don’t know. I never bought it.”

  “Maybe you just ask?”

  We sat down, placed our jackets on the chair backs, and glanced around trying to fit in.

  One young woman worked the counter.

  “Vhut can I get you tourists something?” she said.

  “Ah …” I glanced at Jan’s open-mouth smile. She was the happy-go-lucky blonde who always got what she wanted. Not because she was seductive, because she was flirty.

  “Umm, we want some weed.” Spoken like a true suburbanite who was trying to score pot in a chain-restaurant parking lot.

  “Virst timer?” the waitress guessed.

  “Yes,” Jan said with a friendly you-figured-us-out laugh. I laughed, too.

  “Zen I split yous hassish bar.”

  She pulled out a candy bar in a brown wrapper that said, “Stoners.” It resembled the font and colors of Snickers.

  “Very strong. Eat little. Vait, zen more; not thing whole.”

  “How much?” I asked.

  “Sten Euro.”

  Sold. Jan and I giggled when the waitress turned to get change.

  “Are we really going to do this?” said Jan.

  “No turning back now,” I said as I tore open the Stoners.

  It looked like a Snickers, too. I broke one-quarter off and slime green ooze gelled onto the wrapper. It stuck to my finger and I licked it off.

  Down went piece number one. It tasted the same way pot smells, like a skunk that got thrown through a pine tree. Maybe it would slowly ease into our systems, like the first drag of nicotine jogging through the nervous system, but nothing. We were antsy to feel mellow.

  “Let’s go exploring,” Jan said.

  We strolled down a lively, narrow street. No room for cars, just people, bikes, cafes, and chintzy-gift shops. Jan and I ducked into a few shops to look for miniature clogs. Still no high, so we ate more Stoners.