Dregs

“I can’t listen to Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves without becoming nauseated.”

“Why?”

“It was always playing when I was pregnant with you. I remember one time in the laundromat, it was on and you kicked me so hard I peed on myself and vomited at the same time."

* * *

Alex is currently reacquainting me with the joy that is film. In bed, we pull out the portable DVD and play movies. Maybe because I haven’t watched movies in so long, I feel like I pay attention to the soundtrack and score much more than I used to. Each song has meaning. Each carefully chosen. No note out of place. I think of the events of my life, and wonder at the songs playing in the background by no decision of my own.

* * *

I love radioblogclub ‘cause it reminds you how the Paul Stanley falsetto in I Was Made for Lovin’ You is quite possibly the most frightening thing you don’t remember hearing from your childhood. In fact, if you hear it, you might remember some evil memory or another and burst into fetal wails.

* * *

After he left, we found a little one-room apartment in government housing. Everything, the walls, the floors, the steps, made of concrete. The hard life of the abandoned. We had a tiny radio. I think it was 1979. I don’t remember which song I was listening to. Maybe it was Johnny Lee’s Looking for Love.

* * *

Have you ever held down the SHIFT key for 8 seconds? Your computer will get angry.

* * *

The first time his fist landed on her, Queen was playing. I don’t know who directs my dreams, but he always gets the details wrong. Same with my memories. We Are the Champions was a poor choice for the musical score of this episode of spousal abuse.

* * *

I was reading another guy who kept referring to ugly, older women as dregs overachieving for his attention. It reminded me of what she must have looked like after my dad worked her over. A dreg with nothing more inside her than a good heart, a capacity for love in spite of the hatred shown her, a love of reading and conversation, a fear that abandoned mothers must face everywhere, used up and tied down with children. I remember glimpses of her trying too hard with the make-up in the mirror. Thrown mascara. Face in hands sobbing. But somehow reapplying the mascara. Getting back into the game and not giving up. On any of it. On love. On us. On the one man out there who might see beyond the extra weight that child rearing and general wear and tear can add.

It’s called gravity, my friend. And not everyone has it.

I’m starting to think I prefer the dregs.

Tag: Conduplicatio