NaNoWriMo: Chapter Three



The next morning I awake to the clicking sound of high heels walking over the hardwood floors. I pry open an eye and there's Tuesday walking back and forth in the entry. She's all dolled up in a black strappy dress. Her hair nicely curled. Her face painted up like she's going to a party. She plays with her hair in the mirror for a while and then checks her teeth. She slips on a black rain jacket and slings a large duffle bag over her shoulder and then makes for the door. She catches my gaze out of the corner of her eye. "I'll be back in a couple of hours. I have a couple of houses to clean this morning," she says. She smiles and waves and is out the door.

I decide to start dressing before Cindy gets up. I slip off my one-day-old panties and pull on my sweats. I then stuff the panties into my jacket pocket and zip it up, making a curious bulge. I go to make the bed and there's a bunch of long black hair all over the pillow next to mine, and it's not just the usual strands people shed here and there--it's a handful. And it certainly doesn't belong to the boy, or to anyone else who lives in this apartment as far as I know. Tuesday and Cindy both have brown hair and so do I for that matter. Perhaps it belongs to a guest, I think. I gather it all up in a tissue and flush it down the toilet. Cindy comes walking out of the bedroom shortly thereafter, donning a bright red silky robe and squinting behind a pair of large round glasses. Her hair's pulled back into a loose bun and the remnants of last night's makeup are smeared all over her face. In the light of day, there is absolutely no doubt . . . Cindy is a man. She groans and shuffles across the hardwoods and says, "Good morning."

I follow her into the kitchenette off the living room. A clock above the stove shows five past ten. "You like coffee?" she asks as she pulls a coffee maker from a cupboard beneath the counter.

"Sure, that would be great," I say, sitting down at the small round table in the nook off the kitchen. Cindy shuffles over to the sink and fills the coffee pot with water and then shuffles back and fills the reservoir. She dumps three heaped scoops of black coffee into the filter and turns on the machine.

"I can't eat first thing in the morning, but I can make you something if you're hungry," she says. She opens a cupboard door and rattles off some possibilities: "Poptarts, oatmeal, cereal . . ."

"That's, OK," I tell her. "I don't normally eat breakfast--just coffee's fine with me."

Cindy sits down at the table across from me and struggles to open the window. It finally gives and her hands slips off badly into the wall, breaking off her fingernail. "Fuck!" she yells. "I hate the god damn windows in this building. They're either painted shut, or you break something trying to open 'em." She picks her bear claw of a nail off the floor and lays it down on the table next to a heaped ash tray. A saltwater breeze drifts through the window and I can smell the Sound miles away. Cindy paws for a cigarette rolled halfway underneath a pile of papers on the table. She lights up and blows the smoke out the window. She leans forward in her chair and looks at me over the tops of her glass: "So where are you from, Martha?"

I pause for a moment and contemplate telling the truth, but the forgetting is settling in nicely and my mind's already rewriting history. "From Portland," I say.

Cindy's eyes light up. "Really! I love that place. Me and Tuesday drove to Portland almost every weekend last summer. We'd stop and pick up some shrooms and then we'd go hang out at Cock Rock all day."

"Cock Rock?"

"Yeah, Cock Rock . . . I can't remember the real name. Anyway, there's this beach there and you can lay out naked."

"Sounds nice," I say.

The coffee pot starts making it's post brewing gurgle. Cindy gets up, pours two cups and sits back down. "So what were you doing in Bumfuck last night?" she asks.

"Just visiting friends," I say.

"Couldn't get a friend to drive you into town?"

"Yeah . . . well . . . we kinda had a disagreement." I digress: "So you got a son?"

"Yeah, Franky; he's five."

"Were you married?"

"No, it was actually just a one night stand. I was into boys back then, but got really twisted one night and ended up sleeping with my boyfriend's sister. After that night, I didn't see her again until she called me last year to tell me we had a kid together."

"What a shock."

"Yeah, it was at first . . . he's a cool kid, though." She digresses: "So Tuesday's at work?"

"Yeah, she said she'd be back in a couple of hours. What does she do, anyway?"

"She does nude house cleaning."

"Really? I've never heard of that."

"Yeah, she was doing it for this other lady for a while, but the place got busted and the lady lost her license. So, she just decided to try it on her own."

"Wow . . . I bet she makes pretty good money."

Cindy's eyes turn sly and the sides of her mouth curl up, forming a sinister smile. She leans across the table even further and whispers, "Yeah, real good. Tuesday has some customers who are into the tranny thing so sometimes I go with her. We make a lot of money for those shows. I've even been able to afford my new hormones. I've only been taking them for a couple of months, but I swear my tits already look bigger." She opens her robe up so I can see and starts poking at her still very male looking chest. "Don't my areolas look swolen?" she asks.

I give her chest a long thoughtful look. "Yeah, they do look a little swollen . . . especially the right one."

Her smile widens and she starts to laugh a little. "That's funny," she says, "I thought the same thing." The clock suddenly catches her eye and she jumps out of her seat real quick. "Sorry, I gotta get goin'. I'm spending Christmas with my parents this year cuz my Dad just got diagnosed with prostate cancer."

"I'm sorry," I say.

"Well . . . they think they got it early so I'm sure he'll be fine. Anyway, feel free to hang out and finish your coffee or whatever you want."

I finish my coffee and decide to stretch out on the bed. I snag a stack of old Mondo 2000's on the way over and start flipping through the pages on the bed. I'm halfway through the stack when Tuesday walks through the front door, breathless. Her duffle bag thuds loudly on the floor. I look up and she's stripping out of her clothes right there in the entry. "Sorry, I took so long," she says. "I ran into DeeDee outside working in the front yard and she said to come down later and pick up the key to the apartment. She said we can take a look by ourselves. I'm just gonna jump in the shower real quick."

She pauses for a moment, maybe it's because I'm looking at her slack-jawed with a warm tingle in my stomach. My God, she is so beautiful! Her shimmering bronze skin and long golden-brown hair, I had no idea in the dark last night that I was sitting so close to a Goddess. Seeing her now in the light with all the makeup and that body and those soft febrile hairs between her legs, she definitely looks older than sixteen. She leans against the wall in a lazy fashion and some silky tressess fall sexily over her young--still budding-- breasts. "Having fun?" she asks with a flirtatious grin.

"Yeah," I say, "These are amazing magazines." I hold one up so she can she what I'm reading.

She playfully twirls a strand of hair with her finger. "Yeah, they're Cindy's. She's really into that stuff. I'm not sure if she told you, but she's a programmer . . . a really good one."

I shake my head and smile.

"Well, I better jump in the shower," she says. "Have you taken one this morning?"

My heart races, thinking this might be leading somewhere. "No, not yet," I say.

She smiles and lightly bites down on her lower lip. "I'll leave the water running and you can jump in when I'm done. There's clean towels and washcloths on the rack and I'll give you something to wear," she says. "I'll even let you use my toothbrush--it's the sparkly pink one on the edge of the sink." She turns and heads into the bathroom, leaving the door open. The water turns on and I hear the screech of shower curtain rings followed by a long relaxed sigh. She's in there for at least thirty minutes and the thought crosses my mind after a while that maybe I should go in to check on her. Steam has been rolling into the living room for some time and beads of water have formed on the windows and are starting to break and run down the windowpanes.

The bedroom door opens and Cindy comes walking out wearing a light blue button up men's dress shirt and a pair of pleated khaki slacks. Her hair is slicked back with gel. Her nails have all been neatly trimmed. She walks into the bathroom and starts wiping the mirror with the sleeve of her shirt. "God damn, Tuesday!" she says shrilly. "I can't see a thing in here. My Mom and Dad are going to be downstairs waiting for me in about one minute and I still have to put my contacts in."

"Chill the fuck out!" Tuesday shouts back. "I'm out." The water turns off and Tuesday slinks out naked with her hair wrapped up high in a towel--her skin glistening with fresh-from-the-shower dew. She plops down in a bright red papasan chair across the room--a large bottle of lotion in her hand. She pumps out a thick white dollop onto her palm and goes to rubbing, starting on the left arch of her perfectly formed foot.

From over my shoulder, I hear Cindy grab her jacket off the hook near the front door. She announces in a rather apathetic tone that she is now leaving and wont be back again until tomorrow morning. The door opens and slams shut before either one of us gets the chance to tell her goodbye. I look at Tuesday and she explains how Cindy always gets this way when she has to go over to her parents. "They don't know about 'Cindy,'" she says, "and it kills her to have to dress like a boy."

Tuesday pumps out some more lotion and starts rubbing down her gloriously toned calves. "I forgot to tell you when I came in that DeeDee seemed really excited about renting to you."

"Yeah?," I say, "but she hasn't even met me."

"Well, DeeDee's kind of old fashioned and she goes by word of mouth. There aren't many rooms here and there's not much turnover so when someone moves out, one of the tenants usually has someone lined up for her. Plus, she owns the place outright."

"How come the apartment is still vacant?"

Tuesday stops rubbing and her face turns more serious. "Well, the girl who lived there was DeeDee's niece. Her name was Kate and she got really sick. She ended up dying a horrible death about a year again and DeeDee just couldn't deal with renting it out, I guess? Lucky for you, it looks like she's finally over it."

"Man, she must have been pretty young."

"Twenty-three."

"Twenty-three! Did she have cancer or something?"

"No, she suicided."

"She killed herself?"

"Yep . . . she jumped out of her living room window."

"In this building . . . she jumped out of the living room window of the apartment we're going to be looking at?"

"Well, to be exact, she jumped 'through' the living room window of the apartment we are about to go look at. From what I understand, the window was painted shut."

I start to feel a little sick to my stomach. "That's horrible!"

"Yeah, a jogger found her body early the next morning face down in the flower bed. It shook us all up pretty bad. I mean we weren't best friends with her or anything, but we did try to include her when we had parties. She'd usually say no, but last year my friend Eva, who lives down the hall, had a Christmas party and she showed up. Eva invited her in and she just sat in the corner all night in this daze. She didn't say a word to anyone and then she left. A couple months later, she kills herself. I don't know what was wrong with her--obviously something was."

Tuesday finishes slathering her body and I can see her mind working. "Why don't you come with me to the bedroom," she says, "I think I have some things you can wear."

I follow her, trying not to stare at her perfectly curved hips and rounded behind.

The bedroom is sparse except for a large round bed in the center, which appears to take up most of the room. Tuesday walks over to a large wardrobe closet built into the wall and swings open the doors. I sit down on the bed and watch as she feverishly goes through the hangers, throwing clothes on the bed left and right. When she's done going through her entire closet, several minutes later, there's a mountain of clothes covering the bed. She bends over to open a drawer below the wardrobe and I catch just a hint of lips peeking out from below the cheeks of her ass. She reaches in the drawer and plucks out a handful of colorful panties and socks and tosses them onto the bed. She digs around in the drawer some more and finally gives up. "I'm sorry, I don't have any bras," she says. "I can't stand those things." She cups her breasts in her hands for a moment as if to comfort them from the thought and then tosses me a black tote bag. "Fill 'er up," she says.

"Wow, thanks," I tell her and then I stuff the bag with everything but a pair of black cotton capris and a black tee. I take the clothes, along with a fresh pair of white cotton panties, and make for the shower.


NaNoWriMo: Chapter Two



The road takes a sharp left and I can see a slant of yellow light off in the distance, streaming down from a tall lamp post on the side of the road. There's a car parked underneath and I can barely make out the outline of a tall figure walking towards me. As the figure comes into view, I can see it's a woman--an incredibly thin woman with shoulder length wavy brown hair, wearing an odd fur coat, which makes her upper body look like a gorilla. She catches sight of me and speeds up.

We finally meet up and the woman asks me in a soft low voice if I happen to have a light, while she tries to manage a cigarette between her brightly painted-on lips. She's a strange looking woman with a rather large sharp nose and small dark beady eyes and after studying her for a moment, I wonder if she's really a woman at all. I look for the lump on her throat as I pat down my pockets, knowing I don't have a lighter. In the light, I can't make out the lump.

"I'm sorry," I say, "I don't have one on me."

She plucks the cigarette from her lips with a rather large hand and stuffs it back into her jacket pocket. "That's OK," she says, "I've got one in the car. Me and my girlfriend just got in a fight and I ran off without it. I needed to blow off a little steam. You know how it gets around the holidays."

I smile and nod and start walking again. She starts walking with me. "That's your car up there?" I ask.

"Yeah . . . well, I mean it's my girlfriend's car. She's waiting for me to come back." "What are you doing out here?" she asks.

"I'm heading toward town," I say.

She looks at me like I'm out of my mind. "Your wallking? The closest town's five miles down the freeway and you can't walk down the freeway this time of night with all those drunks on the road. Come with us," she says. "We're going that way, anyway."

I normally don't go off with strangers, especially freakish ones that offer rides at night in the middle of nowhere. But I didn't have much choice. She was right, I would surely freeze to death or get hit by a car before I made it, and I sure as hell wasn't going back. I'd choose death over that for sure. "That would be great," I say, "as long as it's OK with your girlfriend.

"She won't mind," she says, "we pick up people all the time."

We get up to the car. It's a dark green Maverick, late 70's I presume, and all the windows are fogged. The driver's side window rolls down and a suprisingly young woman leans out and gives me the once over. She barely looks old enough to drive, but there's a toughness about her that might ruse you to think she's older. She looks over at the other woman and I can tell there's still tension. "Who's this?" she asks.

The tall woman looks puzzled for a moment, realizing she never caught my name. I chime in: "My name's Martha."

She points to the young woman in the car and says, "That's Tuesday and I'm Cindy." I nod and smile. "Martha needs a ride to town," Cindy says.

Tuesday cocks her head. "Come on, then," she says, "let's get the fuck out of this place." Cindy leans against the car and muscles off the bright red cowboy boots she's wearing and tells me to jump in front-- she's gonna stretch out in back. We get in and Tuesday lights up a cigarette and starts the engine. She blows a thick cloud of smoke out the window and says, "We're headed to Seattle, you goin' that way?"

I live far from Seattle. Everyone I know lives far away from Seattle. "Seattle sounds good," I say. Tuesday reaches down and cranks the volume, filling the car with a funky vibe.

The ride is long and quiet. I catch a glimpse of Cindy fast asleep in the back seat. Tuesday grabs for another cigarette, but the pack is empty. She crumples it and tosses it behind her, hitting Cindy on the forehead. Cindy stirs, but doesn't wake. She pulls a joint from her pocket and lights up. "I hope you don't mind," she says, "I actually drive better with this stuff." I shake my head. She takes a long hit and then motions for me to take it. I take a small hit and start coughing immediately. I'm certainly no prude, but it's been a while. Tuesday starts laughing. "Good shit, huh?" she says. "That's Texada Timewarp. It's very cerebral, especially in the frontal lobes. My parents grow it in Oregon and they're vegan so it's totally organic." We finish the joint and we're both feeling pretty good. "So where do you live in Seattle?" she asks.

"Oh . . . I just moved there . . . I'm stayin' in a motel downtown until I find a place."

"You by yourself?" she asks.

"Yeah, it's just me," I tell her.

She raises a finely shaped brow and says, "There's a vacancy in our building. It's actually been vacant for almost a year now. It's not much, but the landlord's real cool--laid back. She owns the place and the rent's super cheap. If you want, you can stay at our place tonight and check it out. We just dropped Cindy's kid off at the ex's so it's just the two of us."

"I appreciate the offer, but I don't want to intrude on your Christmas."

Tuesday starts laughing so hard I'm afraid she's gonna fly off he road. "Baby Jesus and Santa Claus," she says. "You don't believe in that crap do you?"

"No, no, of course not," I say.

"Me and Cindy, we're pagans," she says, "so we won't be trimmin' the tree or any of that other shit."

I look at my watch and the little hand's inching toward 1:00 a.m. and I know my options for decent housing will be limited at this hour. "OK," I say, "I'll stay." She smiles and she doesn't seem so tough anymore.

We roll into Seattle about thirty minutes later. The apartment is just off the freeway on a hill that looks over the city. We pull into a parking spot right in front of a large house. Tuesday looks over at me with heavy lids. "We're here," she says. She turns around and shakes Cindy: "Wake up!" We get out of the car and it's dark so I can't see much--just the outline of things. We stand huddled on the stoop as Tuesday fumbles with the key. The front door is magnificently ornate with two stainglass panels on each side. Tuesday finally gets the door open and I follow them up the old creaky stairs to the second floor. We walk into the apartment and it's suprisingly homey and nicely furnished. It is also relatively tidy, except for the unmade hideabed in the middle of the living room, which is covered with toys and clothes. Tuesday sees the mess and immediately walks over to clean it up. "Sorry about the mess," she says. "We were running late this morning."

"Don't worry," I say.

Tuesday gives me the low down--where the kitchen and bathroom are, et al--and with eyes barely open, they both retire to the bedroom.

The nice marijuana buzz has faded so I go into the kitchen to pour myself a glass of water so I can take a Xanax to help me sleep. The kitchen is old and quaint--right out of Leave It To Beaver Land. I imagine Cindy wearing an apron, sweating over the stove while Tuesday has her feet up at the table, reading the newspaper.

I down the water and pill and the warm buzz sets in. I strip out of everything except for my cropped tee and panties. I turn off the main light and walk over to the bed. There's a small child's light on the end table. It's the kind that casts colorful shapes on the walls as it rotates. I turn it on and watch the revolving sailboats, sand castles, and starfish until they lul me to sleep.

I'm somewhere in the dream world, when something draws me out. It's a sound. I'm disoriented and at first I don't hear it again so I think maybe the sound was just part of my dream. But just when I start drifting off, I hear it again and this time there's no doubt that I'm awake and I'm hearing it. It sounds like scratching. I stay perfectly still and hold my breath so I can tell where it's coming from. It comes again, this time louder, and it's coming from across the room. I sit up in bed and look, but there's nothing over there except for a large picture hanging on the wall. I'm feeling brave so I crawl to the end of the bed. It comes again and it sounds like something's scratching from the other side of the wall, starting from the ceiling and scratching all the way down to the floor. The hair on my arms sticks up and I scramble back and pull the covers up over my head. The scratching continues and gets louder and louder each time like something's trying to claw its way through the wall. I tell myself it must be a rat. Yeah, a rat. I'm sure this place is full of them, living in the walls away from the cats. Just when I think I'm going to pass out in fear, the scratching stops and somehow I manage to fall back asleep.


Art by Michael Hussar




Sex-deprived Japanese Women Find Relief




More Troubling Election Links

via The Blogging of the President 2004 :

New! 11/9 Ian Welsh: Thinking about vote fraud

Matt Stoller: another stolen election

oldman: speaks for itself

Barry Ritholtz: mapping out election results

Ian Welsh: Okay, it was stolen

Shaula Evans: fight fight fight

New Links November 9

Statistical improbabilities of Bush FL vote tallies

Atrois: The Ohio Code

Sarpy County, Nebraska: More votes than voters

FL: voting machines reject mysterious wet ballots

Shifting numbers of Florida's election (with graphs and charts)

More from MSNBC's Keith Olbermann plus he wants your feedback at KOlbermann@msnbc.com

Bob Fitrakis: Evidence is mounting

97,489 extra votes in Cayahoga County, Ohio

Democracy Now: The E-vote Factor

eRiposte: Election 2004 results

No paper ballot recount requests yet in Florida - and how to start one

Another rigged election? The Elephant in the voting booth

Electronic voting machine woes reported

Machine error gives Bush extra Ohio votes

Gambling glitch mars vote tally

Wired: Watchdogs spot e-vote glitches

National voting rights monitor documents voting irregularities in the south

Warren County, OH shrouds vote count in darkness

Ralph Nader challenges vote count in New Hampshire

Citizen attempt to expose irregularities in Florida

WI group says, Election stolen

Indianapolis Wish-TV asks, Will Your Vote Count?

AP gets direct feed from tabulating computers

media Black Out Voting Problems

Republicans and Democrats spar over vote tally

House Democrats Seek election inquiry

Voting irregularities (with charts!)

William Rivers Pitt: Worse Than 2000

Florida rigged the optical scanners with stats and charts

Strange election results from Ohio

Electronic Voting machine woes reported

Defective software lost votes

Over 20 percent of the machines tested failed to record votes properly.

Electronic Ballots: Major media reporting major problems

Video the Vote: Documentation from Cleveland Polls

Angry Ohio Residents Storm State House

New World Disorder: Week of Nov. 7 -13



Untitled, Charles Bronson


Suicide at Ground Zero

link via Dr. Menlo of American Samizdat


More Voting Irregularities

link via m prophet over at American Samizdat


Roq la Rue: The Pin Up Show, Nov. 13th

A group show featuring artists: Kirsten Easthope, Lisa Petrucci, Jason Nelson, The Pop Tarts, Lynne Naylor, Michiko, Miles Thompson, Erin Norlin, Joe Chiodo, and more. And if that wasn't enough to dazzle your dendrites, there's also gonna be a Pop Surrealism Book Party!





Joe Chiodo





Erin Norlin

Who Links Here

. . .