I'm on a work trip in NYC, and I'm staying in Williamsburg on Metropolitan avenue just passed the BQE in a Cuban guest house and restaurant. It's seedy, but meals are included. When dinner comes they tell me I can piss in my seat. I do this while watching customers come in and out. Piss hits the floor. My food is served.
My husband and I are eating dinner and he tells me about this woman he knows from a heavy metal band, she's an old friend, someone he went to art school with. She has cancer. He suggests we go to her show to support her. She is a lovely woman, half Korean, in her forties. She sing-screams like the lead singer of Rush - Geddy Lee. When she is finishing her set, her eyes bug out of her head. She morphs into a monster.
I'm meeting my sports surgeon for the first time. He's got an ultra-modern clinic with his face sprawled everywhere, shiny white teeth, digital backdrops. He's the Jay Z of surgeons. We look at a music video of my knee, it dances along with synth music, rolls around, slows down to reveal multiple angles. We just have to take out the hardware and fuse these ligaments back together, he slaps his hands, presto! I make an appointment with a hologram nurse, then later take care of Beckett and her friend at a house on a beach in Costa Rica. Because I don't have an extra car seat, I miss my sister's wedding and my mom's birthday. My sister hugs me and says it will be alright, there's always next time.
I am hanging out at my sister's house in Minnesota. My co-worker is there. I am working on a song, singing softly with my guitar, she tells me to stop. "Those lyrics are bad. Let me do the wordsmithing. I know pens. I know paper." She begins to deconstruct my lyrics and makes up some of her own. They are much better than mine. I feel hurt, a bit like a failure. She attempts to help my niece Sarah out of her wheelchair in a harried, uncaring way. I tell her to please stop and help Sarah out of the chair myself. Sarah smiles and hums. She puts her hand on my shoulder. Her sweetness obliterates all of my insecurities, all of my fears too.
