Virginia fancies herself to have long ago been the sweet and innocent child to whom the famous letter, "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus," was written.
Those innocent days are lost. These days her knees look like ragged old balls of beige yarn. And now before the sun rises, she's come to recognize it is her rightful duty to subject them to this harsh and cruel sacrifice. Pressing them to the floor and with the pounding of a rolling pin to reduce the thick blue ceramic coffee mug to a pulp-like substance, at first she fails in her devious purpose; then determines she must transfer the resulting bits — stirred in with one-half-cup of early morning coffee — to the powerful blades of her topnotch blender: knowing full well this may be the last time she will be able to use it for any other kitchen purpose.
A pleasant nutty odor lingers in her kitchen.
Virginia is mystified as to how she, of all people, has ended up on the special mailing list of Leisure Time Entertainment. The large urgent-looking envelope had arrived on the same day as her most recent issue of AARP magazine. She has twice tucked it away on the shelf above the edge of her ecru bathtub beneath various pieces of reading material. Though it promises over 500 new items to choose from + a free video, she allows herself to believe that she intends to throw it in the trash basket. Admittedly, she has hovered over it a number of times, each time pretending to look upward to the ceiling: as if doing a safety search for cobwebs.
And even to her most secret self, she would not deny that the word leisure sounds awfully attractive in her dull life. Her co-workers frequently travel to Mexico or Hawaii on special four-day all-inclusive package deals, then return with exotic photos showing them kissing dolphins or macaws.
Poor soul has not been outside of Cincinnati since she moved here from Nebraska twenty-seven years ago.
At three a.m. she suddenly wakens from deep sleep — like she is being dragged by the
gross meathook of an overwhelming force — she rushes to open the Leisure Time envelope. In spite of its huge, WARNING EXPLICIT EROTICA, notice, she breaks an interior second seal. She has not even had her coffee yet. She suspiciously looks over her shoulder to assure herself that the mini-blinds on the south wall of her tiny apartment are tightly shut. And so assured, she is able to allow her eyes to study the inside front cover where a beefy hunk proves, beyond doubt, that one can obtain a one-month supply of a growth stimulator to increase penis size for a meager $29.95.
Leisure does not mean a trip to Hawaii.
Virginia remains strikingly calm.
She was raised on a Nebraska farm where her father provided the professional stud services of his grand champion appaloosa stallion to serious horsemen throughout the west: One-hundred-fifty bucks a pop.
She has seen a gargantuan penis before.
Her father had been unaware that she'd once hidden behind a stack of hay bales to peek as he assisted Platinum Streak in placing his penis inside an unusually nervous and awkward mare. And rather than imagining the penis inside of her (as many teenage farm girls might have done) Virginia had conjured up the notion of the penis swinging between her own legs as she daily walked two miles to school. But she had eventually dispensed with the notion by picturing how painful it might be to accidentally step on it and until now, that awful thought had never entered her again. Nonetheless, though she is fifty-eight years old, she has never personally experienced the touch of a human penis.
The thought is both terrifying and delicious.
The flashy magazine offers thirty-four pages printed in blazing color. It is as seductive as the follow-up craving for a second lick of salt. She dares herself not to look at another page.
She spoons instant Folger's plus a teaspoonful of hazelnut non-dairy creamer into her favorite large thick blue coffee mug, then sets the microwave to add one minute. She allows herself a moment to relish the nutty odor, then removes a two-day-old slice of pumpkin pie, left over from the Thanksgiving office party, from the bottom shelf of her spotless refrigerator. The pie is rubbery. She wishes she had opted for a pint of the leftover cranberry sauce, laced with orange slices, instead. It might better have given her the kick she now needs to cope.
Her throat turns dry and nasty: like a mouth full of aspirins — without water — as if she might never again produce saliva. And like lightning before her gritty sleep-filled eyes, flashes the curiously spooky e-mail (in the form of a poem) a stranger identified as iwrn, had directed to her home computer shortly before she went to bed on Tuesday:
1 souls greytess luv stori
cauz 4 anuthurs
2 drop kneez 2 brok glass
thn skreem 4givnss
Of course she had opted to delete it as the work of a haywire lunatic but, until now, she was entirely unaware she had memorized the haunting words.
In an instant, the Leisure Time magazine takes on a life of its own. It appears to breathe. She would swear the pages separate and expose themselves, one by one, as in a gentle breeze, revealing multi-colored breasts the size of hot air balloons and women and half-men upintimately performing bizarre and unthinkable acts. With unnatural objects. She cautiously touches the densely-inked pages only to find the paper bears the temperature of fevered human flesh.
She fills her dainty lime-green teakettle with tepid water and a dose of Miracle Grow. She proceeds to water the philodendron that wanders from her revolving mauve comfort chair at her front and only window, over the framed Christmas photo of the employees of Hoover's Drug, her crimped-paper tulip bouquet, her fat Indonesian carved-wood elephant, a Barnes & Noble condensed medical dictionary and all the way into and around the ceiling of the kitchen. All the while, she keeps her face aimed in the direction of the magazine — like it just might be staring her down in judgment. Her hair remains tautly imprisoned in steel curlers.
She returns to her favorite thick coffee mug; haphazardly hurls it crashing to the polished turquoise linoleum floor. She has been led afoul by cruel mail predators! She is only a hare's breath away from being transformed into a common whore. This is one of those precious moments when she considers herself fortunate to be a loner — explaining her reckless decision in opting to open the second seal to a housemate or companion would be all but impossible.
And it is now that the notion strikes her that she must pay penance for breaking the seal to enter the material so clearly defined on the front cover of the magazine. How could she, such a shy and prudent woman, possibly have been so foolish as to allow herself to think that she might find exotic Mexican and Hawaiian beaches within?
Plus — the Tuesday e-mail — such a clear and present warning of things to come.
She is obliged to rid herself of the memory of any evidence of this awful spell. And sooner rather than later.
Surely everyone at work will know what she has done the moment she puts her fingers to her cash register. Bessie Longfellow will say, "Whassa matter, Ginnia, you seen a ghost?" Bessie never misses anything. In fact it was Bessie who sensed that Conty Strong had throat cancer even before Conty's doctor knew it.
And of course Bessie will notice how Virginia's fingers will be all over the board. She will punch in too many zeroes and overcharge some poor innocent fixed-income customer. And after twenty-seven years of faithful service, Mr. Fred Warren will manhandle her by the shoulders, then throw her out onto the street to whimper and beg. He will stand red-faced, right out in public, right in front of those huge, humiliating, revolving glass doors where she got her slip caught once, and he will shout out her name, then shame her in front of Bessie and Emmy and Mim and all the hungry breakfast customers across the street at Burger King. He will say, "I've always went and thought I could trust you, Miss Virginia Thomas. And now look at how you've up and shamed everything Hoover's Drug has stood for — decency! honesty! righteeeousness! Has the old red devil hisself whipped his pointy tail creeping up unner you lily white skin and tooken possession of your fingers? Just how many zeroe do you think they is in five dohlahs, young lady!"
Perhaps the twisted yarn-like wrinkles on her knees and the pulp-like granularity to which she has managed to reduce the dark-blue ceramic mug will make the bending and pleading all slightly less painful — so she won't be compelled to scream. She would hate to waken the newly-wed McNeals above her. And the old Wellingtons below. Or most of all, the dear little Johnston twins — no doubt sucking their thumbs raw and sleeping soundly on the other side of the west wall of her kitchen.
The sun has not yet risen.
And she will definitely put the filthy magazine out with the trash: Next Wednesday when the Pickings Garbage truck makes its rounds. But first, if she can find the time, and she must, she will wetsop its pages in a bucket of Clorox — fluidly suspending its disgusting images so infinitely that no other innocent soul will ever be subjected to its lure.
The Poet Spiel: Born out west to decent white farmers; same year the U.S. entered WWII; maverick child who made art which evolved as he matured intellectually through lifestyle changes leading to considerable national exposure. But in 1996, traumatic life/death illness abruptly halted his career. When his life was spared, he became reticent & for the first time ever, uncreative—until spring 1999—when he unearthed an urge to write, opening the pathway to become the Pushcart Prize-nominated, devoted author, known for often iconoclastic poems, curiously human short stories & visual art published in scores of independent press journals. Check out his web page, built with the assistance of Lora Gardner, at www.thepoetspiel.name.