The Dead Body Show

Today, on our way to visit my mom in Portland, we saw a sign in front of a church advertising Vacation Bible School and I said something about vacation and bible school seeming like an oxymoron when Max announces:

"I would rather be hit by a bat than go to vacation bible school."

Dammit, I love my kid! We were laughing all the way to Portland after that.

My most recent DVD obsession is CSI New York. The dialog is decidedly cheesy. I mean, the characters are constantly cracking the kind of puns and "jokes" that generally make me want to hit them. When a victim has had his head sliced off they make jokes about him "losing his head". The only reason I couldn't see that one coming was my completely misplaced faith that NO ONE writes such cheesy lines anymore.

Having said that, I admit that I am transfixed by forensic science. It is important to me, since they are portraying very brutal crimes, that the perpetrators are nearly always caught. Otherwise I would not be able to watch it. I am glued to this program partly because ever since I was very young I was always aware of the places that one might find dead bodies and it is one of my deepest seated fears/beliefs that it is my fate to find one some day. Every CSI New York show begins with someone unexpectedly finding a dead body.

I estimate that at least once a day I see a spot, or a corner, or a landscape in which a dead body seems inevitable and I think to myself "don't look too closely or you will uncover something". Every time another baby is born my chances of finding a dead human being somewhere increase. It's a creepy way for a mind to work and I don't really like it. Why does my mind fixate in such a way? Who can say? Is it the mental illness? People often reveal an attitude that being mentally ill is just a question of mood swings and a kind of linear problem. My experience of it is that everything is turned upside down and even when on the optimal level of medication and under the best possible care, the mentally ill mind goes places that other minds try hard not to go.

Sometimes my mind feels like a camera snapping negatives of what might have been, what lives in a parallel universe, or what will happen soon. It isn't exactly reality. It's near reality.

Crime shows in which crimes are actually solved using really cool fast-forward science is magnetizing to me. Cheesy dialog or not, CSI is filled with crazy in-situ death scenes that their deluxe grasp on science inevitably tears apart into digestible facts. I wish I was in a lab finding out all the facts because it might feel like the universe was careening out of control a little less.

I will rent the whole CSI Miami franchise next, because my movie rental place has about ten seasons of it, but I wanted to see the NY ones first because I don't like warm weather and the Miami ones all look over heated.

You know how book stores sometimes have a resident cat? If I worked in the coroner's office doing autopsies I'd want Pippa to accompany me every day in the morgue just like she does when I write. She's in my lap right now and I love that every time I come to write a post she camps herself in my lap like a little familiar.

I'm suddenly remembering the year everyone died. During the time I worked at Wendy's (1988) I used to stop by a donut shop on Kearney Avenue on my way to work. I didn't often eat an actual donut since they always make me feel kind of sick but I would drink the appallingly cheap coffee and convince myself that all young fashion designers start off working at Wendy's. There was this incredibly sweet older lady that worked most of the hours I came in. She and I would chat, sometimes she would give me free donut holes. I don't even remember her name which makes me so sad.

One day she wasn't there anymore. She continued to not be there for several weeks. Her name might have been Vickie. I finally asked the person who was there what had happened to my sweet older lady friend and the person went almost white as a ghost and informed me that she had been stabbed to death while working her shift.

That kind of thing, even when you're a hardened urban chick with work boots on, can really cut you to the quick. Standing on the spot where someone died a violent death has a psychic impact.

The same year I had befriended (0r was befriended by) a cafe worker named Sean in my favourite coffee shop "Les Croissants". Sean was one of those amazing high energy guys that was living life to the fullest. My room mate James and I both loved him. I didn't love him in a blushy girlish way. Sean was obviously gay. And I have always avoided falling for gay men as it's a pretty useless exercise. He was wonderful though. He once took James and I into the cafe basement where his bosses were letting him store a bunch of crap he bought from locker auctions where you buy the entire contents of abandoned lockers. For Sean there was a thrill in bidding on unknown contents. You were allowed to see what was revealed in the locker by opening the door, who knew what treasures the rest of it might house?

He had tons of microscopes from his locker auctions, some ratty fur coats, and a lot of other junk. I didn't really see it as a great hobby but what I loved was Sean's great adventure. He talked about "Land's end" sometimes and I can't remember what that was about. It's just a fragment of memory floating into my mind right now, late at night. A fragment that made the events that followed seem somehow more poignant.

Just like the donut shop lady, Sean just wasn't in the cafe anymore. After a couple of months I got up the nerve to ask about him and the person I asked went a little ashen and asked me in hushed tones if I hadn't heard already? Heard what? Heard that Sean had died. I just froze inside. I asked how he died and I got some enigmatic answer so I pressed for more detail.

In painfully secretive tone, I got the information that Sean had died of erotic asphyxiation.

When I looked it up I couldn't pretend to be shocked. The weirdest thing is that that wasn't the last time that subject came up amongst my acquaintances. A person who approaches all of life as an incredible gamble is looking for a thrill. All I can say is that at least he went in the middle of a kind of joy. In the middle of the pursuit of excitement. No one who was honest could ever claim that he died a miserable old sod.

And no one can say he didn't leave something positive in the world behind him. He always made me feel seen and heard. He always made me feel hopeful and enthusiastic and his own joy was infectious. If I die soon, I hope to leave some of that behind too. In spite of all my down moments lately.

I won't die of erotic asphyxiation though. If a coroner claims that as my cause of death you can be 100% certain of foul play. Please remember that.

I'm pretty sure that was the same year that my friend Carrie* and I were doing some make-up gigs and we were riding with some band members to a biker bar on 14th avenue (possibly called Zeitgeist) when the driver of the car we were in crashed into the back of a van. It was very sudden and I remember worrying about getting busted since the drivers had certainly been drinking and so had under-aged Carrie and I. When the cops arrived it became clear quite quickly that the driver of the van had suffered a heart attack and died which is why we hit him. No one got busted and we went to the bar and had some mixed drinks that involved some more under age drinking.

I keep wondering if it counts that I discovered that the traffic obstruction near Philip's and my laundry mat fourteen years ago was a dead Asian guy in a car at the stop light. We would have called it in to 911 if we hadn't already heard sirens approaching. Somehow I suspect that the universe has a queer way of keeping score and I keep hoping that I have already paid my dead body dues.

Yet I know I haven't.

[[[ (That was a special message from Pippa)

All my life I have been a cat person. Then I got Chick. Chick is pretty much the most amazing lab mix dog that ever existed and having her is one of the biggest ironies of my life (having been afraid of dogs in general and black labs in specific my whole life). I used to consider myself a cat person. Now cat people are calling me a dog person. Can't one be both? But truly, if I could only identify myself with one camp? I will always need to have a cat in my life.

Or two.

Does that make me a witch?

I may not always need a dog in my life. Though I will always need Chick in my life.

We still miss Ozark.

But we also love our new (healthy) baby girls. It's so late. Time for bed. Some nights I just put it off. But tonight I can snuggle with my man, my dog, and two baby cats. Like a den of maladjusted sleeping thieves.






*Carrie, have you got any memory of this? Did I hallucinate this experience? Who was the band? It was one that played at "Uncle Charlie's", right?