Bungee and Single Bars are Bad



Feral Bungee was left in the apt. last night when I went out. He wanted to go out too at some point and battered open the side accordion vent next to the AC. Now I cannot close it. And he thinks he should come in and out through the opening. Someone remind me why I brought that wild animal here with us. Jack just pointed out that now mice will come in as window is at ground level. Damn cat.

Jack has been sick with sore throat and fever but seems a little better this morning. He was with his father last night and I went out with Lia and some other women to a place in Huntington called Blue Hanu. Good Mojitos, lousy atmosphere. Troglodytes abounded including an annoying midget man with tiny feet shod in thongs. I went out to use cell phone and there was an excellent band across the street playing Springsteen's Spirit in the Night which I went in and enjoyed. Don't know what is wrong with me. Crowded bars, standing room only, with people checking each other out left me extremely impatient and cranky. Maybe I just don't know how to have fun anymore. Or how to flirt anymore. Just wanted to go home after half an hour to my cool, silent apartment. I think I will not be inflicting my joyless self on anybody else's night time outings again anytime soon.

Dreamt last night that I was having an affair with one of the lawyers at work and he wanted me to move to England for the Summer with him. Hmmmm, wonder where that came from? Gotta do some work. And Kate is now reading this over my shoulder.

Crab

When I eat crab, slide the rosy
rubbery claw across my tongue
I think of my mother. She'd drive down
to the edge of the Bay, tiny woman in a
huge car, she'd ask the crab-man to
crack it for her. She'd stand and wait as the
pliers broke those chalky homes, wild-
red and knobby, those cartilage wrists, the
thin orange roof of the back.
I'd come home, and find her at the table
crisply unhousing the parts, laying the
fierce shell on one side, the
soft body on the other. She gave us
lots, because we loved it so much,
so there was always enough, a mound of crab like a
cross between breast-milk and meat. The back
even had the shape of a perfect
ruined breast, upright flakes
white as the flesh of a chrysanthemum, but the
best part was the claw, she'd slide it
out so slowly the tip was unbroken,
scarlet bulb of the feeler—it was such a
kick to easily eat that weapon,
wreck its delicate hooked pulp between
palate and tongue. She loved to feed us
and all she gave us was fresh, she was willing to
grasp shell, membrane, stem, to go
close to dirt and salt to feed us,
the way she had gone near our father himself
to give us life. I look back and
see us dripping at the table, feeding, her
row of pink eaters, the platter of flawless
limp claws, I look back further and
see her in the kitchen, shelling flesh, her
small hands curled—she is like a
fish-hawk, wild, tearing the meat
deftly, living out her life of fear and desire.

Sharon Olds