How to Serve a Billionaire

 Ronnie's Recipes: Meal Ideas for the End Times!

Hey everyone!!! I'm so glad to be back on the blog, now that there's power and internet and less fire. For the moment. I mean who could have foreseen this amount of disruption in the day-to-day, right?? Not me and not Jamie, that's for sure! Once we were able to get away from the gangs of kidnappers that are taking just anybody off the street now- I argued that all of our family's wealth had been tied up in MyPillow options, and once that company fell we were as poor as alley cats: not much return for the effort- long story short, once we were here and being quiet until the much-larger-than-normal cockroaches went to the other side of this bunker, we could finally take a breath.

Capitalism! Who knew it would be so... bad! And racism. And sexism, and transphobia and sexism...I'm sure I'm missing some groups in here, so please forgive me; I can't go look them all up right now because I have approximately 26 minutes until the next wave hits the outside of the concrete that protects us. Yeah, I know: you're thinking Ronnie, what are you doing so close to the water's edge in the middle of a hurricane? Assuming you're somewhere high, like a hill or a rooftop somewhere. (Shout out to the rooftop people!Woop woop! [Seriously, stay strong. I'm cautiously optimistic that there will be helicopters full of medics along in mere minutes.])... Anyhoo, the waves disrupt our bandwidth and also make this place shake, so we have to take a break for waves and position for waves and then recover and put bandages on whatever is bleeding; then twenty-six more minutes, provided our old-timey external router isn't broken. Yeah, we're using dinosaur technology down here (eyeroll!) 

And that circles me back to this post. Our food stores down here are, to put it mildly, lame. There are cans of things that we've never heard of before, like "buckthorn powder" and "chalk color #5" and "dried nugget." Not nuggets, nugget. (I don't get it!!) So I had to think: Ronnie, what's left of the broken, raging Nature we live in that's still biologically healthy? That is available to us and also to the people huddled outside in barrels, hoping against hope that the water won't get in and pickle them (we tried to get a few to come in with us when we got here and our key worked, but all eleven of them said no when the saw the roaches: fair.) That's not experienced any climate warming related food-chain disruption? That are clean or at least clean-ish?

I'll be honest, it took me a second but I finally realized that since this is clearly the End Times, we- humanity, all of us- will have to start eating people. Eww, right?! But the beauty of embracing that means that we can do some MENU PLANNING!!! We haven't done that in a looong while and I've really missed it. I hope you have too, because I think once you just succumb to the need for this to happen, once you admit that, really, they deserve this so much more than all those cows with their big eyes did, you'll feel so so much better. I'm too hungry to listen to dissenting opinion about the descent into anarchy and barbarsim; I mean, I'm a pretty open-minded person, but right now if you're in the "It's Not A Great Idea to Eat People" camp then we'll have to agree to disagree!!  

But don't worry my friends, I haven't gone totally off the rails here. My plan involves some natural culling, that's all. We've let these particular populations expand for too long, with their tax shelters and their private planes- they've grown complacent and overabundant. There are too many of them and we need to eat- and that, my little chefs of the apocalypse, is why I've sat down here with some information that will make these menus really pop. I did the research, found out what many billionaire's diets are (or, in the case of the deseached Koch brother, were) and created recipes using tips from this Cold War bunker cookbook and many very dark places on the Web. I don't recommend those! But they were necessary and clarifying, like a colonoscopy from back when there was any kind of health care system (any followers that never had a colonoscopy: don't worry, you didn't miss anything! Besides a means of detecting colon cancer, I mean.) 

The trick was to find out what particular billionaires' diets were like and plan that menu around the strange, rococo flavors that said rich people's diets would impart on their meat. This meant combing through the lists, billionaire by billionaire, to sort out the juicy ones from the stew-meat ones. Now, on the surface that seems too easy: Just carve Warren Buffet and put Bezos in the mincer and go outside to call the kids in! (Jamie's telling me to remind you all not to go outside because of the radioactive waste slurry that's oozing it's way down the Rockies at the moment. Thanks, Jamie! {kiss face emoji.}) But I wanted to really explore the soon-to-be-eaten billionaires' "taste makeup" so that I could create the perfect Last Meal for the rest of us. 

Without further ado, here is a list of individual super-rich people who are currently still alive (again with the exception of one Koch brother,) though how and when they will be available for "transformation"  is anyone's guess. I don't have any inside information on these wealthy douche's whereabouts other than certain drive-by schedules and the location of particular helicopter pads. I'm certainly not suggesting that hungry, rage-choked throngs of not-wealthy people show up at any mountain compounds to rip down the electrified fences. I'm not. I'll say this, though: I have explosives. ) ((I know, right??))

And after that little tidbit, let's get to the recipes!!

BEZOS CASSOULET

Jeff Bezos is, naturally, ANY good chef's go-to choice for stew meat: he's too old to carve, and famously lean after years of free-range resource hoarding and lifting furniture made out of Oak from woodland that used to be thousands of years old. Or something else: I don't really know how Bezos got so "jacked", as they used to call it, but I'm sure it involved hiring squads of personal trainers that he'd require wear diapers so they didn't have to use one of his many diamonte-laquered bathrooms right when he wanted someone to count his push-ups. Funny to think of how we're all jacked now, right??? I mean, with all the running from the floodwaters caused by the environmental destruction and whatevs, and the upper body strength from dragging casualties to some kind of half-assed shelter before running on because oh god more fire, I have never been more fit (humble-brag!) Jamie had wicked ab definition before his body started to digest it's own muscles for the protein (I get it, Jamie's survival mechanisms- I'm hungry too!!) Which brings me right back to the Bezos Cassoulet. It'll be hard to run the bastard down, sure, but I think it'll be worth it...just remember to invite me to the feast once you take him down!!!! (NOTE: please don't really invite me. Jamie is too weak to move, and plus there's no way of really knowing where you'd be or how you'd be doing after the week-long ultramarathon of tracking the Bezos through the Valley or the Black Forest or wherever he'll ultimately be found, and I don't want anyone to feel obligated to wait politely when they land him. Just break open his chest and rip his heart out and eat it raw, like the distance-hunters you are. Please let me know if his heart was warm when you ate it or as cold as his behavior over his lifetime would indicate in the comments section, Thanks!!)

1 Jeff Bezos

300 lbs. non-radioactive beans: if they're fresh pick out the fingernails and loose teeth left in them by the laborers when you rinse; if they're canned save the bean water and put aside.

200 lbs (or closest approximation) "tomatoes." Or "Zucchini." or "Apples." Basically the trick here is to gather enough "ingredients" to cover Jeff when he's in the bathtub with all the beans. TIP: the most important part is to have the "ingredients" be food, or if that's not possible, just aim for "digestible."

20 lbs. grated ginger

15 Cups fresh unsalted butter...KIDDING YOU GUYS! There's no more butter anywhere on Earth, which is OK, which doesn't bother me any more because who's got time to reminisce about buttered toast when we have to duck and cover for the next wave here, amiright?? (... Toast. Oh God. I just remembered toast.) 

As much sweat from the backs of the Amazon warehouse workers as you need to cover the Bezos. This will both gently brine him AND make sure his soul never ascends to Nirvana

1 claw-foot bathtub ('NOTHER TIP: if you can't get a claw-foot bathtub you can use any ordinary hot tub or, in a pinch, a sauna with the door nailed shut. If you're on a billionaire's compound when you're cooking Bezos, check the servant's wings for these.)

    *Put the Bezos in the container and cover with the beans. 

    * Shovel the "ingredients" on top. Leave the face and fingertips above if you can: based on the colors of his flesh as he's cooking, you'll get a decent idea of how much cooking time the Bezos still needs until he's as tender as he's ever going to get!

    * Apply the heat. Remember: if you'll be setting fire to any surrounding structures to do this, make sure you build a fireproof platform right next to the fuel source so that you can watch the Cassoulet and also keep an eye out for roving militia who will want that Bezos for themselves. But you're not going to let that happen, are you? Of course you aren't!! You tracked the Bezos, you flushed it from it's posh bunker with calls of "I think I could use a long lunch break!" and "Hey, is this unceded Indigenous land?" until he came outside, and you lobbed rocks at his bald, mole-like head until he started running. Then you ran along, tracking him like a disgruntled, exhausted warehouse employee tracks an order of multicolored flip-flops twenty minutes before quitting time (RESPECT,) and then you felled him with the spear you fashioned out of one of the Bezos' very own fence posts, once it stopped electrocuting you. No stupid group of pasty-faced mean boys is going to keep you from enjoying that meal, or from gaining the dark power of the Bezos that resides within it. Right? Right.

    *While the Bezos is cooking, ferment the bean water into...whatever. Let it go long enough and anything will become alcohol! To cut the taste of radioactivity sprinkle the ground ginger in half-way through the fermenting process. Lack of morbidity from drinking means it's done!

    *When the Bezos' face and fingertips are a dark reddish-brown, it's time to eat!!! 

BUFFET BUFFET

Warren Buffet is famous for his terrible diet. The financier once explained that he based his daily food intake on the what the average six-year-old would eat, because they have the lowest mortality rate in the world, according to the statistical averages. So, the Buffet would eat ice cream for breakfast and drink liters of Coke during his day. How that asshole remained alive for as long as he did is beyond the scope of this simple blog, but now that everyday life is basically eternal Hellfire it won't be for long!! The good news in this section is twofold: one, his terrible diet will have lead to some very juicy, marbled haunches, which will offset the age-related stringiness; two, he won't be able to run. The Buffet will have to hide, so your hunt is a matter of slow and meticulous combing of his previous haunts until you flush his from his "modest second vacation home." (and WOW, just writing the phrase "modest second vacation home" gave me a case of cognitive dissidence, you know? In ordinary times I would have to lie down or watch a Youtube tutorial until it passed!) 

    *First: build a table out of whatever is handy. Make sure it's big enough for many platters of richly-veined steak and braised ribs and fried sweetmeats...oh boy, I'm getting hungry just writing this...

    * Skewer the Buffet from heel to head and prop the capitalists' carcass in the bonfire your group has started- remember to allow for some turning of the Buffet, meaning don't put it so fully into the fire that he falls off the skewer and all you end up doing is sending his spirit to Asgard!

    *You'll know when the Buffet is done. You'll just...know.

    * Take the Buffet down and allow to cool. Use pointed sticks to keep your understandably ravenous group from jumping on it while it reaches a temperature that won't injure them. They'll thank you later {kiss face emoji!}

    * Slice the Buffet into steaks/rib portions/chunks for the kiddos. Personal fave: kidney-sticks!! And don't forget the catsup, of which there will be an ample supply in the bolt-hole where you trapped your quarry (see above paragraph re: diet of a six-year-old.) Bon appetit!

KOCH SURPRISE

I couldn't leave this post without planning for ONE dessert- and this is a two-in-one! It's a tip-of-the-hat to the classic Baked Alaska, but much much more morally bankrupt. This recipe was harder to research- no one talked about what either of the Koch brothers ate very much. I had to do a general "billionaires eat what?" search and come up with a pudding that took into account the rare fruits, exorbitantly expensive supplements, and cuts of endangered species that most billionaires ingest. The hardest part of the recipe will be digging up David...sorry, I'm getting ahead of myself!!

* One Koch brother (Charles.)

* Twenty pounds of demerara sugar. You can also use, in any combination: table sugar, agave, coal dust, maple syrup, moonshine, blackstrap molasses, chalk powder, honey (raw or strained,) cyanide, rust chips, and antifreeze. Please don't let any pets near this while you're mixing it!! The various ingredients are hazardous to animals and we want as many as possible to be healthy when they go feral and spawn Nature's next generation of Superspecies. (Fingers crossed, right?)

* Enough liquid to cover your recently-departed Koch brother to two-thirds of the superyacht's guest bathroom with a chair against the door so that it doesn't spill out. If you find your Koch brother in a non-yacht situation, simply use whatever will hold all the sugar along with the ultra-Conservative Influencer's body. the aforementioned bathtub is always popular, but for my money I'd want to drain a few 55-gallon-drums of crude and cut them into troughs. That grade steel conducts heat beautifully- plus it's so right that this particular person would be simmered for eight hours in the very thing that made him his money and us so miserable. I don't know what poetic justice is but I know what I like!!

* Cinnamon (to taste.)

* The exhumed and cleaned bones of David Koch. This sounds difficult I know, but it will be a-m-a-z-i-n-g when it's properly dug up and used in this dessert. You'll want to stir the vat of Charles with the bones of David to concentrate the flavors/magic, but don't feel tied to doing only that!! Feel free during the simmering to put the bones on the floor in any pattern and dance around them. You can chant or sing or whisper, but one thing that has to happen is the summoning of the spirits or the Koch Surprise won't rise (I mean literally, folks. Although there will be rising Koch spirit, too- that's the surprise!!!) The longer you do this the stronger the raised spirit of the Kochs will be in your command. Plus the cinnamon gets a chance to really bind with Charles: YUM.

* Once the stirring has been completed and the chanting has brought the Force, get clear of the yacht and hurl Molotov cocktails (or whatever incendiary device you can find.)  Once it's engulfed in flames, you can take a break with your group and enjoy the show. After precisely twenty-five minutes, some brave volunteers will have to row out to the ship in a dingy that's been covered in Asbestos tiles and get a rope on it, then row it to shore (make sure you have bandages for your crew members, and of course they should get the first spoonful of the Koch Surprise, provided they are able to swallow and/or breathe.) 

* Optional: sing dirges while the yacht's being pulled in. Sets the mood.

* After the ship has burned to it's pith, leaving nothing but the magicked treat inside it's impervious shell, use a tire iron to bash open the door. The pudding shouldn't be runny: the fire is supposed to evaporate the liquid and crystallize the sugar/poison mixture so that each person in your group will be able to hack off a piece of dessert. Bonus: Each person who eats some Koch Surprise will gain the terrifying powers of the Conservative duo, which can be used for either good or evil. Take your new tribe and go forth, readers!! 

****Well, that's it from me for this post my friends!! I really really hope that you're staying as safe as this global nightmare will allow. If you have any tips for where to score ingredients- flashlights, candle wax, absinthe, clean cotton swatches, corrugated tin, freeze-dried grubs, Astroglide, oregano, syringe casings, and of course duct tape- leave your source and your approximate location in the comments section so that other followers can maybe find you (Ronnie Recipes fans represent!!) Remember, folks: we're only going to get through this if we take care of each other first. Don't let any old white man tell you that your life is meant to be spent slaving for his shareholder's criminally high level of comfort. You're here to give and receive love, period. To do that we need to hold each other, and any remaining critters we can find, above any other economic construct (and yeah, I remember how cool the iPhone 11 was you guys! That doesn't negate the point.)

WOW!!!!! I didn't expect the waterworks, everybody; I mean the tears and also the mini-Tsunami that just carried off the clan of super-large cockroaches from our fortress here. On the one hand that means the next one could easily carry Jamie and me off to sea; on the other, no more cockroaches!! One more thing before I sign off: the ghoul-power released by the Koch Surprise could be really powerful, you guys. So it's on all of us to resist the darkness of its toxic industrialist pull. If you're out there starting a new empire by hoarding some resource and then forcing your besties into wage-slave jobs, the rest of us will be coming for you. 

Only this time, we'll have spears. 

Looooove and happy eating!!

Ronnie 

My Ass and It's Associates

I truly was minding my own business when my own ass showed up next to me. It was disconcerting to have it to my lower right side rather than behind me, where it always is- I startled. 

“What the-” I began, but ran out of steam. How do you talk to an ass that just shows up like that? 

“Look under the top layer of tiger prawn cocktail. The ones on the top aren’t fresh.” I heard my ass’ voice in my head rather than through the air, which was a mercy. 

We were standing at the buffet table, and it was either two thirty AM or it was brunch time. It was impossible to tell: the lighting on the entire ship was set to twilight, so any time I was inside any of the rooms I became disoriented and also hungry. Going outside didn’t help: it was perpetually murky, we were in the doldrums our Captain said, though he pronounced it “doldems.”

“They have to get rid of the cheap stuff first, take my word for it. When the tiger prawn-”

I interrupted my ass. “Tiger prawn is the cheap stuff? In what world?” 

“In this one, my bitch. In this very one. Just wait until it’s gone, we’ll be properly served with king’s food then. Believe me.”

“That’s asking a lot,” I said, but my ass had moved to the dessert table and was eyeing (well, cheeking) the tiramisu. “The red velvet looks really good.” I murmured to it.

“Why are you talking to me in that stage whisper? There’s no one here.” My ass was right: the ballroom where the staff had set up the long tables and cafe seating arrangements was empty except for us and a few servers, who all scurried from one swinging door to the next swinging door like they were in a humorless French farce. 

“All right, the tiramisu then.” I figured I’d brought some elastic-waisted pants and one caftan for this very reason, plus there were exercise classes all the time. There was probably one right now, at two-thirty in the A-friggin-M. Or brunch time. Normally they would be sacred hours but on this cruise nothing was holy, though everything was available. I’d been told to simply grab any server at any time with any request- and here the Captain, who’d been briefing the small group of guests I’d been herded with during my first afternoon onboard- winked. Possibly he was having a petit mal seizure, but I was pretty sure that he meant we could ask for sex. I remembered being appalled, but that was ages ago. I debated asking one of the servers for sex, but it seemed too awkward: what if I asked wrong? What if they leveled a legitimate complaint against me, like that I just left my towels everywhere on the ship with no regard for the chutes in every wall marked “Dirty Towels Only”? I supposed that I’d have to march off in a huff and perhaps notify their supervisor of that impertinence, but that seemed...wrong. I didn’t know how it was wrong. It gnawed at me while I gnawed on the tiger prawn, which was rubbery. 

“Does this prawn seem overcooked to you?” I asked my ass. It made a rude noise.

“That or it’s just gone over- like, just gone, almost as we were walking up to the table,” said my ass. I spat the shellfish on the plate, unfortunately just as a server was reaching to clear it. He was a young man, black, skinny, with a modest afro and a moustache that curved around his smiling mouth. His teeth were immaculate. 

“Sorry,” I said to him. He made an OK hand signal with the hand that wasn’t holding my plate. “Don’t eat the prawn- it’s gone bad, I think” I said. 

“This ship makes the best food, perfect is how the captain puts it. You gotta help now.” the server said. His smile got wider. 

I didn’t understand what the “gotta help” comment was referring to, so I just let it go. “Are we going to see the captain any time soon? I was going to ask him some questions about the lighting. Do you find-” . 

“Heyyyy. I don’t have time for this.” the server said. He spun on his heel and walked briskly toward one of the revolving doors. Just then the PA system clicked on and the captain himself made some popping noises, presumably to check that it was working. My ass stopped eating to listen, and I leaned forward, eager to hear something helpful about where we were and what time it might be. 

“Beautiful people, it’s your captain. The captain you adore, just admit it to yourselves. I saw each and every one of you as you walked onboard a few short days ago-” I gasped a little: I’d forgotten it was only two days, it seemed like six- “and I saw that you were all beautiful. I hope you’re having a fantastic time, a terrific time, and you got to see the ball pit which we just cleaned. I’ve seen a number of ball pits in my career- in fact, I own four ball pits, the best ball pits in the world, everyone thinks this. Some of the best ball pits. Won awards.” There was a shuffling and something murmured on the bridge, a brief muffled conversation. “You’re probably wondering about the doldems. Ahem,” he said next. Then, silence. My ass and I took a full five minutes before we gave up thinking he was going to finish the sentence. 

“That man is a menace,” said my ass. I didn’t agree. I mean, he was obviously a bit egotistical, but who wasn’t in today’s world? And besides, who was better equipped to steer this ship out of the interminable murk we were caught in? 

“You don’t know how to captain a ship so you shouldn’t talk about it,” I replied. There was another rude noise. 

“Trust me,” my ass said. I looked around but there was no one else to talk to. 

The next day, after a fruitless expanse of time looking for an exercise class and finding they’d all been cancelled (yoga, spinning, hand-to-hand combat, javelin and discus: not one class had been held) I figured that I’d walked enough to earn a meal. The ballroom was set for an elegant linner, or possibly midnight feast. I was studying a hotplate of glazed pheasant breasts when my ass showed up, pulling some little love handles behind it like unwilling toddlers. My ass let them go somehow, and they instantly ran under the long table. 

“You could have just left those two at one of the nurseries, you know,” I said to my ass. I rolled my eyes for emphasis.

“That’s not how it works,” said my ass. “When I show up, it’s best to expect others will be around presently. Hey, maybe we should just drink our dinner, yeah?”

“Why? This is pheasant breast. You were right yesterday- the food’s getting fancier,” I said. 

“I get you, but just remember to dig. The freshest stuff is near the bottom, no pun intended.” I made a groan but secretly I was tickled by my ass’s wordplay. I looked at the hotplate again, and saw that there were roly-poly bugs positioned around the edges of the platters, nibbling a few breasts delicately. Once I moved them with the longest serving fork I could find I was rewarded with a more fragrant, still-hot layer of pheasant breasts underneath the buggy layer. I took one and headed to where my ass was already sitting, calmly watching the love-handles cavort on the empty stage on the far side of the ballroom. They were having such fun, it looked like. 

“Did you look over the dessert table yet?” My ass asked me. I shook my head. “The cakes are getting smaller and multi-colored. I figure they’re going to pull the baked Alaska out of the deep freeze in another two days at this rate. I’m going to enjoy that.”

I calculated: Two days, meaning two more days? I’d thought for sure that we were headed to Nassau that very afternoon, and I had a connecting flight back to Newark. “I thought we were set to dock today.”

My ass laughed bitterly, a noise not normally fit for human ears. “We’ve got days left on this barge. Weeks, then it’ll be months. There’s going to be an announcement. If I had hands I could point to the speaker right before the Captain comes on to report the delay, I mean right before.”

“You don’t have hands but somehow I see your plate keeps getting filled. How is that?” 

“Look up with your eyes,” said my ass, and when I looked up I was looking directly into the face of the same server as yesterday, except this one was a woman. She was clearing my plate from the table, which was for the best because as I watched a few roly-polys I had missed unrolled themselves and ran off the sides. I was embarrassed that I’d missed them, and I’ll admit I’m not proud of what I said next. 

“You should have asked me,” I said to the server. Her brows furrowed just the tiniest bit before they smoothed out again, and she smiled a fatigued smile. 

“I thought you wouldn’t want to eat those bugs,” she said. I swear her voice was indistinguishable from the male server from the day before. I was miffed even though she was right- especially because she was right.

“Yeah, but you still should have asked. It’s the protocol to ask if the guest would like their plate cleared, is it not?” I could hear my voice getting forceful, but really I was just making a simple query. 

“Sure, yeah, but there were bugs, I wasn’t sure you saw them so I wanted to get it out of your way before you took some without knowing-” the server said. Her smile was getting wider and tighter at once. 

“I just wanted to know what you should have done.” That made her smile close down, and she bustled away as if I’d thrown a lit match at her. I wasn’t sure why she was leaving: we were having a discussion, were we not? And there was only so much one can listen to one’s own ass. Mine was making revolting noises at the love handles to get their attention. They were cavorting around the French-farce service doors, and it was touching to watch them whisk around the various server’s ankles, though one of the servers did trip and fall forward, smashing a tray of china. There was a three-second quiet, with the love handles scurrying back under the buffet table to hide, before my ass spoke.

“Are you going to help or what?” it said. I startled upward from the chair, realizing I could in fact offer to help clear up- I wasn’t exhausted from any kind of exercise class, after all- when some people in black burst into the room and hauled the server up roughly by the upper arms. The black-clad people all had sunglasses on, and I marvelled that they could see anything in the gloom. The voice of the server was quiet and melancholy as they tried to explain that there were love handles in the way, it wasn’t their fault, but it was quickly drowned out by the sound of the black-clad people’s boots as they dragged the server away. I counted as they left: there were five black-clads. 

“What the hell was that?” I said to my ass, when I thought it was appropriate to speak again. 

“That was security. Didn’t you see them on the way in?”

“On the way in to dinner? Or breakfast, or whatever this is?” A roly-poly crawled out of the sugar pot that was stationed on the table. 

“No, dimwit.” My ass scoffed. “On the way onto the cruise. When the captain was making stupid mini-speeches about how the other cruises were saying they were going to Nassau but really were going to Detroit, and it was all a plan of the Deep Navy.” 

I thought hard about what the captain had said that fateful afternoon three entire days before, but all I could remember was thinking about playing the actual vintage Ms. Pac-Man I’d seen on the promenade on the way in. I was just about to make a stinging rebuke- something about having loftier things to think about- when the PA system clicked on. 

“Beautiful people” started the Captain’s voice. Then more mouth-popping noises, something he felt was necessary at the beginning of every announcement, I realized. “You’re all beautiful, I saw you and knew that this would be the cruise, the cruise of a lifetime. Because of all the beautiful people. Especially the tough guy, there was one gentleman that was very tough, I know how tough because I’m a tough guy myself.” Next to me my own ass let out a very audible groan-fart. “There’s some bad ones, some really nasty characters, that were hiding in the kitchen-” this time I gasped and turned to my ass for verification, but it sat there stoically, it’s cheeks pressed together in a grim line- “they were there, and they just came to the ballroom, but my security forces made shirt work of them. Short work. Made work for them.” There was some harrumphing, and a background voice that was pitched to soothe. Then there was the sound of gargling, followed by singing. “If you’re happy and you know it, come something feet,” the captain sang. His voice was terrible. “If you’re happy and you some it, clashing meat,” he sang. I put my hands over my ears, but discreetly. Two security guards came into the ballroom and stationed themselves by the guest’s door. 

“Time to leave,” said my ass. It hustled underneath the buffet until it came out with my little love handles in tow. I stood and looked for the server who’d taken my plate earlier, and when I saw her in one of the French farce doorways I signaled: I’d wanted to apologize for being sullen with her- she was only trying to do her job- but her eyes got wide when she saw me and she stepped back, disappearing. My ass was already at the guest door, jollying the love handles onward. 

“Can I leave a message-” I started to ask one of the security guards. The person looked forward and didn’t move- they weren’t even looking at me, as far as I could tell behind the black wrap-arounds. 

“Move it, just move it, get out of here,” whispered my ass. “No messages.” We slipped between the guards, and just as the door was swinging closed I heard one of them tell me to have a nice evening. 

“Oh, see, it wasn’t that bad- one of them told me to have a nice evening, so…” I said. My body part was way down the hallway, though. It was speedy for a disembodied ass.

The next morning (evening? Mid-day?) I skipped looking for any kind of non-eating amusements, even forgoing the search for the Ms. Pac Man: I realized when I woke in my dim cabin light that everything was just going to get worse, worse and worse, and that eventually there wouldn’t be a bug-free buffet, no matter how much I dug down into the platters of whatever gaudy feasts were laid out. There were black-clads stationed on both sides of the ballroom guest doors when I went in, indistinguishable from the ones who’d been there the day before. One of them bobbed their head at me on the way in. 

“Ma’am,” he or she said. I did not feel reassured this time. 

My ass was already there, already at a table with many plates on it, and the love handles were playing a game underneath it with a pile of spoons they had somehow collected. I waved it over to the buffet. When it got up to meet me a long pink spongy thing followed- it must have been sitting with my ass on the chair and I hadn’t seen it. It rolled awkwardly to the buffet, leaving a damp trail on the carpet. 

“What is tha-” I said, pointing.

“Meet your pancreas. It was having a fucking time of all this hormonal blood sugar balancing, because of the food, so it’s taking a break. I told it you wouldn’t mind.” My ass was nonchalant about my internal organs just traipsing around outside of me, as if it was a paid passenger. Which, technically, it was.  “You got here in good time, there’s a platter at the end there that hasn’t been touched- the bottom layer probably has some decent meat. You should eat meat, all the unspoiled meat you can get right now. Trust me.” My ass indicated the end of the buffet, where there was a decorative reindeer carcass arranged as a sort of reef around some steaming platters. The eyes in the reindeer head did not glitter or seem to move when I did- it was very clearly dead, and my gorge rose halfway as I leaned over its’ splayed rib cage to pick at the stacked steaks with the shining serving-fork. My ass was right: there were a few hunks of meat on the bottom layer that were almost entirely weevil-free. There were also no roly-polys, which was a good sign. I took two even though I wasn’t hungry anymore. My ass and pancreas made their way back to the table behind me, and I could hear that my pancreas was squelching as it moved. My gorge was now at three-quarters. 

When we got to our table, where the love handles were jollying through the legs of the two chairs, I noticed movement at the table next to ours, and then on to more tables: it appeared there were more pancreases, and big grey-maroon slabs of liver in the chairs, and things shaped like beans that were paired- obviously kidneys. I turned to my ass. 

“Whose kidneys are those?” I asked it, though I didn’t want the answer. 

“The other passenger’s. They got on with you, remember? You guys all stood together like sheep while that madman told you bullshit about cognitive tests and award-winning skee ball arcades,” my ass said. “We’ll be hearing more from him in ten seconds.  He’s going to announce the extension of the cruise like it’s a gift. Eat your meat, we’re going to need the protein.”

I counted backward from ten, and at two the speaker clicked on. “Beautiful pershil.” His voice was strange and strangled, the enunciation getting worse. “We’re in an unpreshidentist time in history.”

“Christ, here it is,” said my ass.

“Because of this unpreshin time, where people who are very bad, and really I mean the worse purple, the kind of purple that will come into your cabid at night and rape you silly, just rape you for no reason, even if you’re not beautiful-” here a voice in the background interrupted, unintelligably, but the Captain made some dismissing popping noises and the voice stopped. “These people, these monsters I call them, are in our kitchens and our guest toilets right now, waiting for all of you- but I am going to stop them. Schtop um. I have told our incredible security forces to find these momsters and throw them away once they are done with the cleaning.”

“He means throw them overboard-” my ass said, matter-of-fact, and I leaned over and threw up onto the ballroom carpeting. One of the black-clad appeared by the mess quickly, speaking into a wire concealed on their wrist, and in mere seconds a server, being held by the lapel of their otherwise sparkling white service jacket by one of the black-clads, was marched to the offending area.  

“Clean this up, idiot” said the black-clad. The server had a bucket and immediately began mopping up the sick, looking up at me with wide eyes and a grim set to their mouth whenever they wrung the cloth out. I was frozen in place: the organs, the black-clad, my ass were all tense and waiting for something, alerted. The server held my gaze as much as possible during the entire exercise. I tried to apologize.

“I’m very-” I started, but the black-clad who was overseeing the clean up hushed me with a harsh sound and I shrank back involuntarily. The server took a deep breath as they finished the last swipe, then held my gaze. My eyes wanted to skitter away in terror, as if they were already rolling around under the buffet with my love handles. 

“Help us,” the server said, right before they were hauled away by now two black-clads, back toward the kitchen.

“That’s a small mercy,” said my ass in a voice I hadn’t heard from it before. It was a small voice, vulnerable: I wanted to protect it. 

“What is, sweetheart?” I asked.

“Well the goons hauled that person back to the kitchen, so they won’t be thrown overboard. Not yet. Not this time. Please hold down your food from now on- you don’t want someone else to get the same treatment, do you?” No, I did not, but I wasn’t sure what I could do other than nap. I was confident that napping would help.

When I woke in my cabin everything was black, not gray and not dark like it was night: it was black with tiny, infinite specks that swarmed over everything in the small room. The specks tried to cover my eyes and I took a deep breath for the screaming, but that was cut short by the familiar non-voice of my ass. “Quiet, you’ll just get them riled up and they’ll jump around. It’s cute from a distance but it takes forever to get them settled.”

I took a chance that the specks wouldn’t try to crawl into my mouth if I opened it to speak. “What the fuck are-” I started.

“Gut microbes. They’re basically harmless, but they wanted a break too. To be honest I didn’t realize we’d be seeing this little fellas, but frankly no one should be surprised by anything on this floating shitshow.” My butt had a defeated tone to it’s voice, the only thing about it that I could locate in the inkiness. “Get up. The announcement about the delay is coming in two minutes, and there’s people on this ship that are blameless.”

“Well, no one is really blameless though, are they? Don’t we all have a personal responsibility-” I said reflexively as I fumbled for the door, trying not to move too quickly and crush the microbes. 

“Listen to yourself! Christ,” said my butt, opening the door. The hallway was only partially covered in specks. “The microbes are yours and the other passengers, not every passenger yet but that’s going to change shortly after the announcement.” On cue there was the usual popping over the loudspeaker. We listened as we made our way toward the bridge, my ass leading. Various organs, untethered and excited, joined us as we went, with the specks making a black wave behind us. 

“Beautiful people,” the captain started. Popping, a horse noise, and then he continued. “I have some terrific news, fabulous news in fact. We won’t be docking in Nassau today or any day soon. You should all be wondfuss about this news, I’ve been the bestest captain on this bessel today or all days. All frays. Because of unpringles time, and what there is bad hombres and nasty women hiding in the kitchen, spitting right on all the chocchocchoc cakey, I heard from a guy, we’re staying right here. So no docking. The doldems are just right for staying. I am the best captain in the history of captaining, bring me your beautiful fifteen-year-olds. Pussy only.”

The speaker clicked off just as we all got to the front of the ship, where a group of serving people in perfect white jackets stood in a line that was slowly being pushed toward the side by the armed, very serious black-clads. I looked closely at the line: there were skinny people and not-skinny people, and black and brown people, and a few who were crying and others who were trying to soothe the crying ones. A few people were demanding answers from the black-clads, and as we watched one of them threw a man who’d been asking on the wood-panelled deck and kicked him in the head. When the man didn’t resist, three black-clads bent down and one put his knee on the man’s neck; one black clad stood and told the others to move forward. I stopped, my ass stopped, the organs rolled to a squishy stop, and the microbes swarmed to a dark line just behind us: we all looked in horror as another person in a white jacket was hauled by a black-clad with an AK-47 to the railing. The person looked up and right into my eyes. 

“FUCKING HELP US,” the person screamed. Then they were hit in the head with the barrel-end of the gun and tossed over the railing. We heard the splash very clearly then. I turned, unblinking, and looked at my ass: I thought Please Make This Stop.

Even though my ass doesn’t have eyes I could feel it staring. “So: what are you going to do about it?” it asked. 

And that, dear pancreas, is how we’ve gotten here: yes, I was the one that ordered my and all the other passengers specks to attack the black-clads; yes, I was the one that grabbed my ass and held it like a football as I charged the bridge, organs squishing behind me to make slippery patches on the deck for the black-clads to trip on; yes, I’m the one in the process of breaking the window on the door to the bridge, which has been locked. Stand back- I don’t want you to get any glass shards on you or in you, it’s bad enough I force-fed you all that rotting food. I plan to oust the captain, tie him up or break his fingers or just have my ass fart him out of there. Then we’re going to steer this ship back home, once we figure out where home is. Stand back, I don’t want you hurt. You’ve been a lovely pancreas. Thank you for listening. 

What Dancing Was Like

I don’t remember seeing my first ballet, but it doesn’t really matter. Show a certain kind of little girl any ballet at all, Giselle or Romeo and Juliet or The Nutcracker, and with sparkly visions of being the best at toe-dancing, this perhaps slightly theatrical girl will become obsessed. I became obsessed when I saw...let’s say it was the Nutcracker, because it’s everyone’s gateway ballet. There’s a girl in the cast, sure, and she gets to throw her not-satin ballet flat at the Mouse King, but really the one that caught me was the Sugar Plum Fairy. She of the beautiful gold-edged sleeves and shining tiara and that fucking tulle skirt! It sticks straight out so that you can see her legs better, and when she turns and turns it’s there, as constant and fancy as any standard-issue handsome prince could ever hope to be. Some adult suggested that I could play the girl when I talked about it later and I scoffed in their face. “I’m gonna play the Sugar Plum Fairy” I said, and then I probably did some pirouetting of my own to prove my point. I was brilliant, I’m sure. 

I had lessons at the Felix Dance Academy, in the basement level behind the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The instructor was a bitty little red-headed woman who would make us get into stretching positions and then sit on us to deepen the stretch. She would single me out whenever we did the butterfly stretch, sitting on my back and telling me to breathe out, but it was worth it to stay and be allowed to the barre and then allowed to the floor for leaps. I loved it so much that once I went when I was feeling very ill and ended up puking right in the center of the studio, too besotted to just stay home. When our first production came- the first I was cast in- I was made the white cat in Sleeping Beauty. There had been talk of me being the Bluebird, which is a solo, and like the diva I intended to be I threw a fit about not getting it. (My mother made me apologize to Anne, by duet partner, and if anyone knows her please let her know that I’m really sorry and not just saying that because my mother made me. That might have been true when I was seven, but now I mean it. You made a gorgeous black cat, Anne.) 

We moved when I was twelve, from Brooklyn to Blairstown, New Jersey. Don’t Ask. As much as that sentence sounded like it sucked, it was eight times worse. My mom found a new dance studio for me which was pretty cool of her considering she was in the throes of rising her first business as an organic berry farmer (my Mom was always about twenty years ahead of the curve.) That studio was different. It was the teacher’s family’s house’s garage converted into a “wood” floor with barres along the walls and no floor-to-ceiling mirrors. Not one. I can appreciate how much a floor-to-ceiling mirror might have cost in the 80’s, and if I work at it I can imagine how Not Available such a mirror might be: I mean, where would you have ordered such a thing? The Sears in Hackettstown, for god’s sake? The instructor was a Goofus and Gallant cartoon version of a ballet instructor, with her being the overweight housewife Goofus to my previous injurious dictator Gallant ballet teacher. She barely remembered all five primary positions, the cow. My traumatized twelve-year old self already knew things were going to go south, and that my career as a Prima Ballerina was in the balance (get it?), but I went to that school and went through those motions because I was so very close to getting my first pair of pointe shoes. 

Really quickly, for those who don’t know because lots of people don’t, ballet dancers (the women, and the Trocadero de Monte Carlo, a drag company of male dancers who dance en pointe for comedic effect) don’t actually dance on just their toes. That beautiful satin hides blocks of wood that have been shaped to look like that, with the ridiculously small flat surface on the bottom and a hollow inside for the toes. They have to pack the toes with unspun wool, then they have to tape their feet up to protect the joints and the skin. Then they have to dance in them until they’re “broken in,” which is a misnomer because the only breaking that happens is in the feet themselves. Then they have to smile and put their arms just so. Dancers, especially ballet dancers, are made of pure grade 10 steel, every perfect line and bird bone as unbendable as that, just underneath the layer of tulle or spandex or sequins or, if you’re the steeliest one in any production, all three. (I knew a dancer once whose hips weren’t open enough, he said, and so he slept with a ten pound weight pinning his knee to the side on his mattress. The next night he’d do the other hip. I’m not making this up.) And I was going to be one of them. So I went to lessons at my new ballet garage until I was given the nod to get the pointes. As soon as I got them on my feet and hoisted myself up I knew this was going to not work out, because, just like childbirth, they don’t tell you how much it’s going to hurt. I went to the lessons and I loved the minutes I spent en pointe, gently waving my arms around like drifting seaweed (that was one of Instructor Goofus’ descriptions, but never mind,) but the second my feet were flat again I huuuurrt. In my feet and my legs and my hips, which were my harbingers. The moment I admitted to myself that I was never to dance the lead in the Firebird (or in the chorus, for that matter) was when I was sitting in my seventh grade English class and the kid in the row next to me said “Jenn!” and pointed at the floor. My little toes had bled through the band-aids I’d wrapped around them and then the new white tennies my mother had just bought for me. I’d double-layered the band-aids, too. My toes wouldn’t stop bleeding. 

So I gave it up and my mother heaved a sigh of relief, I’m sure. I started dancing on my own, just basically throwing myself around a lot in the afternoon to my music. Plus there were school dances, and I would thrash around or move my feet in weird ways that cemented my reputation as a freak. I didn’t care while the music was playing. In college I met modern dance, and belatedly found out that I actually did have some talent. I took a year’s worth- just a year, plus some movement classes- from one of those alchemist teachers who’s able to get you to work at a higher level. She was the same basic dancer-shape as my very first ballet teacher except that she was kind. She had us performing complex choreography to beautiful, weird music and it wasn’t pretty, really, but I loved it and I did it well. I loved leaps the most. I knew how to make my legs work so that I could feel that hang in the air, like I had made time stop at the very height of my jump, you know how like they do, and it was bliss. I probably loved it so much because no part of me was touching the Earth in that moment, and Earth-touching was already becoming problematic. 

My hip problems had started in High School, gifting me extra time between classes because I couldn’t walk after sitting in class. I would fall on the floor sometimes, or lurch my way to my next class by holding on to a wall. I was taken to a chiropractor who gave me standing x-rays and told me that while my hips were a problem, wonky and unbalanced, my neck was worse, leaning straight forward instead of gently curving back. He would crack my spine and my hips and neck, and made it marginally better. I spent a lot of time at physical therapists after schooling was over, and it wasn’t until I moved to Chicago in my twenties that I was told I had Hypermobility. The pain moved from my neck and head and hips to my muscles, my shoulders, my feet (of course my feet.) I limped along, right? This is what we do when we don't have answers. Eventually I got married, got pregnant, and the pregnancy was what pushed my defective physiology past the arbitrary boundary of “come-and-go pain” into “constant pain.” I went into my regular GP and he was the one that suggested I have Fibromyalgia (a condition of constant body pain and fatigue.) I had good insurance, so I was sent to a doctor who specializes to hear that I did have it. I took a lot of pills, and a few of them dulled the pain. The other ones made me sleepy, or possibly it was the undiagnosed Sleep Apnea that kept me in a constant miserable haze of fatigue and stupid. During this whole time I was researching what was going on, trying to find more specific answers, some understanding of how my body could be so fucked up. I found something called Ehler-Danlos Syndrome and...it fit, and it fit for my grandfather who had a certain body type, and for my father who bruised easily and who was impervious to Novocaine, and for my Aunt, my favorite Aunt, who is disabled with body-wide joint pain. I only just saw a Rheumatologist that told me I have Hypermobility Spectrum Disorder. I’ve been searching for a reason for thirty-four years. 

I dance almost every day, now. My days are painful- every moment of them, to one degree or another- and it gets worse as the hours pass, so that the clinging ache starts to become more conscious around five PM. But I am the homemaker for my family, so I’m the one that has to cook. My joints start to burn instead of just ache when I’m cutting food so I turn some music on, something “slapping” as my teenager would say (and saying that has probably just killed that slang. You’re welcome,) and I dance around my kitchen, cooking and washing dishes and whatnot. My feet will start to get stabbing pains and I flex them and then point them, rolling through the mid-foot like a ballerina warming up at 9AM. Another song comes on and I’ll turn, and spot every half-turn because I can’t do it just once per.  Standing at the stove is harder because there’s less moving around the room, so I plant my feet apart and sway, careful of my hip joints, so careful, feeling like a member of the Corps who’s been away from the studio for a month to baby an injury. But I keep swaying- I must do this. Everything that my own personal universe throws at me is just another challenge: how can I move through this? How can I keep dancing, now, with this new or just the same hurting? I put on different music, I turn it up, I do an arabesque on one side and then on the other, just to show my body that it can. My hands throb and I remember to hold my pennies, like that evil redheaded woman  showed me when I was seven. Be graceful I command them. I do not leap any more, because that is too much: I won’t do an amended leap, something half-wonderful and not inspiring, so I just don’t do it. But the rest I do: I have an amended pirouette, and amended kick-turns, and amended plies. No one is watching me. I do not care. I’ll paint my face in war colors and make my pain move instead of have my pain move me, trembling and afraid. Come at me, I think. Give me more, I think. I’m a fucking dancer: I’m made of Grade Ten steel and I can dance through all of this. 

The Shell

I found a vintage shell in the closet of the summer house my family got to share with our Mom’s side of the family every July. I should say that by “shell” I mean sleeveless blouse. It had carved mother-of-pearl buttons, and was a delicate seafoam blue-green, and it had embroidery. The embroidery showed some people somewhere tropical- there were two people, with one palm tree each, and they were tilling the land with hand-held tools. The people were brown. I thought the shirt was charming. I genuinely thought that the people represented were working their own land, and that the thing was from a different time and everyone would see that. I took it home when the vacation was over. 

When I first wore it it was a sweltering day and no one mentioned my brown farmers, so I dismissed the little nagging voice that had been telling me that the garment was perhaps not good for wearing. The next time I wore it I got checked, by a coworker. We had caught the same train together at the end of our shifts. “Where did you get that shirt?” she asked me. “Technically it’s called a shell,” I said, because I can be a real wanker. “I know that, but no one calls them shells except rich white lady grandmamas,” she replied. I thought of my own rich lady white grandmama and it was probably in that moment that the scales started, haltingly, to fall from my eyes: that woman was as privileged as they come, and over the years had collected some truly reprehensible views of certain people. I realized that I had just thought the phrase “certain people”, which made me a little nauseous. How privileged was my grandmother? She was so privileged, she wore sweater sets the way most people wear t-shirts. She was so privileged that my grandfather apologized for buying her an estate sapphire and diamond ring for their anniversary because they were young and didn’t have enough money for new yet. She was so privileged that during the Depression she went with a friend to Europe on the Grand Tour, and when I asked her what it was like she complained about the public toilets. But I wasn’t aware of all those associations going on in my own white lady head yet. My friend pushed me. “Isn’t it a little racist?” she said.  I looked down at my own chest, to where my farmers were working away, and thought: Nah! 

So I did what any defensive white person does in such situations: I accused my co-worker of being the racist. “They’re farmers! They own this land, you’re the one who’s seeing it that way! You racist!” I added, for emphasis. My friend seemed a little chagrined, and though she was completely in the right I felt vindicated. Check out my farmers who own the land that they are currently farming on this shirt! This shell is not racist at all! And yeah, I’m going to keep calling it a shell even if that’s pretentious! I’m not pretentious you’re pretentious!

The next time I wore the shirt I caught the train home from work alone. I sat and immediately started day-dreaming. My commute was a long one and on that trip it took at least a half-hour before I noticed that there was a young woman, younger than me by a half generation at least, who was sitting with her arms crossed, staring at me. She just stared, and it was a little hostile I thought. I looked at her and did this: (MAKES EYES WIDE, LITTLE SHRUG, SMALL MEALY CLOSED-MOUTH SMILE.) She didn’t flinch or change her expression one iota. She did look down at my chest, and since I’d already done this: (SAME THING,) I felt I couldn’t just start daydreaming again, I had to engage her. I touched the embroidery that some lily-white racist hands had so lovingly stitched decades before, and I said the words: “They’re farmers.” I said them. I was on some of the thinnest ice, morally speaking, that I had been on since I’d been caught shoplifting a bikini at the mall when I was twelve, but I said those words. The top layer of my brain kept telling me that since I thought they were farmers- and I genuinely had, it was a first thought when I saw the thing hanging by it’s lonesome in my family’s summer home closet- then any tiny stain of racism was washed away. I was confident in my own white lady thought powers, the simplest of these being that if I thought something then it was true.  

This woman wasn’t convinced. She re-settled herself, tucking her arms together even harder and making her face stony, and I squirmed. If I can be easy on myself for anything in this entire scenario it’s that I didn’t think it was her fault for making me squirm. The commute continued like that and my magical thought powers tried to help me, like a sinking freighter ship pulling a swimming passenger down with it, by throwing up different scenarios, ways this interaction might be less icky. I imagined us talking and me explaining that I’d found it at the family summer home at Seaside Park New Jersey, ever heard of it? Oh you have? The cinnamon buns at Park Bakery are the best on the whole Eastern Seaboard, don’t you agree? Or another scene: Yes, I’m sorry if this offends you but it’s really not a racist shirt- I think that perhaps the bias here is in your own eyes, no offence. Ah, now you see what I mean! Or another: Fine! Even though this shell isn’t racist because I am definitely not racist, I will tear it from my body and throw it in the garbage at my stop, will that satisfy you? You want me to take this shell, it’s called a shell god damn it, and just throw it out, which will deprive me of the joy of wearing old stuff? Fine! (In this last one I even managed to picture myself tearing the thing off and glaring at her, a bit of prime time soap opera on the Red Line at 5:30 PM.)

But what happened was that I sat there squirming, she sat there glaring, and the stops went by very slowly. I kept hoping that we’d come to hers and she’d have to get off and I could return to my pre-racist-shirt daydreams, but she stayed on the train because she lived further north than I did, or just to continue staying under my skin. I tried to meet her eyes once or twice, and each time hers were the same. They were hard, impenetrable, and they were tired. The tiredness was layered over her whole face, not just her eyes; still, she didn’t stop. Her tiredness reminded me of my own: I was dealing with my own fatigue from lack of quality sleep that comes from being in constant pain, and also undiagnosed other stuff. And since her tiredness looked so much like mine felt- the tension in the brows are all about how we hold our heads when we’re just starting to get the inevitable fatigue headache, the lines at the mouth are all about how, when you’re exhausted, everything seems humorless- the sinking ship of white lady thought powers went all the way underwater. I wondered how many things she saw that were reflections of the US’s institutional bigotry per month or per week or per day. I wondered if she talked about those examples when she got home to her friends and family, sitting around a table with food or sitting on the couch in front of the TV. I wondered how much eye-rolling and grim storytelling she had to repeat, had to endure, all the time. I didn’t wonder about her safety...yeah, it was too soon for me to start grappling with the facts of this woman’s real life and how for as much as I got catcalled and harassed she was catcalled and harassed twice as much, just for starters. 

In my memory now I did the only honorable thing I could have done, which was take the shirt off, slowly and with as little attention as possible so that this woman might know that I was removing it for her peace, not for any after-work street theatre fanfare. I can see her face softening as I unbutton it, take it and fold it and put it in my bag, feeling too bare in my camisole even though it was very hot and no one cared, not even the catcallers. I can see a tiny grin form on her mouth and a sense of satisfaction come over her almost bodily, which makes me relax. I can see myself relaxing, leaning back on my shaped plastic Red Line seat, having achieved some semblance of grace. It’s a false memory. My white lady thought powers are like the Flying Dutchman now, sending up these shimmering visions for me to chase, as if there’s some hope of pulling that vessel out of the deep by willpower alone: You’re not racist, it says. You were never racist. 

But I am, and I always was. There are shades of it. I never spray painted racial insults on anyone’s home or community center, I never raised any boys to spit in the gutter when they see a black person, but I looked away when those stories came up on my phone or before that, on the news. Always, those stories on the news that described spitting and insults were leading up to some bloodletting; I looked away. I always was. 

To the woman on the train with the righteous eyes and the formidable emotional strength: thank you. You made me feel really uncomfortable on the train once.

In The Pool

(Note: I’ve used the pronoun They/Them to describe my child in this piece. I’ve capitalized those instances for clarity.) 

So my child was standing at the lip of the park pool, along with a group of about a dozen other eight and nine-year-olds. For the previous six weeks they and the others had been in it daily, practicing their Australian Crawls and Dead-Man Floats. Also there was choreography that had been the focus for the past week. That bit involved a lot of standing and putting one foot in a hoop on the ground on the pool deck, and then pulling the foot back, and then moving into the hoop and clapping once, and moving out of the hoop. The baker’s dozen of them had finished the pool deck moves and were supposed to be getting into the water. 

The noise in the room was verging on incredible: Not only were there parents with tripods lining the big tiled room, moving their creaky metal folding chairs and talking, and not only were there camp assistants and life guards yelling instructions at everyone, and also more kids waiting for their deep-end display, there was music, and it was fucking loud. My child’s group had the indignity of having to swim in unison and in neat rows to “Tonight’s Gonna Be a Good Night” by the Black Eyed Peas. To compensate for the crowd noise, someone had turned the music up so that the reverb could be followed as it bounced from one end of the almost hundred-year-old pool deck to the other. The back wall had been demolished a few years before to transform it into a movable glass enclosure, and those panels were open to the brilliant daylight. It was dazzling, and the audience was constantly shuffling around with their cameras and their whispering. I was sitting upstairs, where it was more humid but less crowded. I watched my kid, the others watched their kids. I could see that mine was barely holding it together by Their fidgeting hands and feet, and Their tense, inward expression. I could see how hard it was to just be standing there among all this tremendous noise and air and intent, much less moving in time. I told myself that it was inevitable that They would run for it. It didn’t occur to me to be angry about it or embarrassed: It was all I could do to sit there myself, and I was safely on the balcony. 

The pool guard whistled and my kid's group all jumped into the water. Once there, the kids held onto the sides and kicked then flipped over and kicked again, which mine didn’t do. I started to collect my things so that I could meet Them when They flung themselves up and out. I wanted my lovely child to run but not cry, but I expected that They’d do both. As we watched, though, my offspring stood still in the middle of the shallow end, where the group was getting ready to swim in lines. The group leader tried to get mine to move but They stood easily, the tallest in the section. I saw Them smile beatifically. Then They started to lip sync “Tonight’s Gonna Be a Good Night.” 

The child got Their arms into it, gesturing while the pool mates adapted, as if this was planned the whole time. The two assistants in the pool with the rogue swimmer, tasked with wrangling the entire camp population, made a few passes at getting Them back into formation but not very hard- there were other small people in the water who were in larger danger of drowning, so they focused on that. In a few seconds- five, no more than ten- my only child was the star of Their very own Esther Williams movie, complete with supporting swimmers and contemporary soundtrack. I stood up to get a better look: They were smiling at all of us, welcoming, so happy we were there with Them in that moment. 

I couldn’t see as well as I needed to. Some audience members were reacting: a few people were pointing, there were smiles on previously bored or annoyed faces. I decided to risk losing a few seconds of my only child’s moment to run downstairs and get a seat near the back. The song changed and my kid changed with it, mouthing every word perfectly, waving their arms around like a contestant on Ru Paul’s Drag Race. The other kids did a different stroke, my child held Their spot in the center of the shallow end, the older kids were given the signal to dive into the deep end in pairs. A few in the audience clapped along, and a few of the kids waiting for their group’s turn started to sing along, even though they’d been instructed not to. I’d brought my camera but I decided after a few fuzzy far-off pictures to just let it go so that I could watch this amazing, clever, perceptive, inspiring young person own their overwhelm: my kiddo has ASD. 

Having ASD means that everything carries the possibility of being too much, literally too much. Those on the Spectrum hear the buzz of fluorescent lights so keenly that it’s like a needle in the ear, and things that smell just a little rotten can make them throw up. This isn’t just being sensitive: the world of someone with ASD is a much more intense one than the world the rest of us live in. A lot of people who aren’t in the ASD community already know this; what most people don’t know is how long it takes someone on the spectrum to de-escalate from that state. It can take days or weeks to come down from an event like the camp’s pool show. The emotion that level of life invokes takes days to come back to the normal level of intense that many ASD kids feel constantly, and it’s a rare kid who doesn’t get physically ill from it, having to deal with stomach cramps or opportunistic viruses or migraine or all of those at once. Talking about it to other parents, even supportive ones, who don’t have neurodiverse children is grueling, because just telling them makes you look like the worst kind of stifling parent who wants the rest of society to provide comfy couches in all corners and forgive those children for their yelling or hair-pulling or whining or need to lick everything they see. The short response to that is Yes. Yes, I do. Make with the couches, community! Provide quiet corners in every classroom for the overwhelmed to retreat to, and a fridge for the gluten-free smoothie they need to drink cold! It tones the Vagus nerve, dammit! I don’t ask for this shit lightly- no one but the family of an autistic child understands how much focus is pulled from regular life, no one- but everything I ask for is, really, better for everyone. Who doesn’t need a quiet corner with a bean-bag chair for decompressing after a tense Skype meeting with the boss, or some special smoothie after being trapped in an epic traffic jam? So let’s dim the lighting in public spaces like malls! In fact, let’s tear down the malls and plant woodland parks instead, and populate said parks with the kinds of furry creatures that make humans smile, like bunnies and shit! And what I find most profound about these needs is how they are basically the needs of the planet, now. Those quiet spaces and wild spaces and places with sensitive planning that allow everyone- EVERYONE- the freedom to be alive and well are what we as a species should have been making with our busy little hands all along. 

The autistic kids have been right the whole time. 

At the pool, the songs ended and my kid’s group got out. When mine got out of the pool some of the adults clapped, and they half-turned and waved. I waited for everyone to take their turn, patient as a tortoise, and when it was finally over and the clapping sound was bouncing back and forth so loudly that I couldn’t hear the person next to me when they leaned over to make a comment, I looked for mine. They were nowhere- They’d obviously skipped out on the part where They had to sit on the concrete deck and watch all the older kids go down the slides. I went around to the bigger outside deck and found the offspring in a corner, scratching at the ground with a stick. 

“Hi, honey,” I said, touching Their shoulder gently so that I didn’t startle Them. 

“Mom!” They cried, but didn’t run into my arms as They did when they were happy. “I’m sorry about singing in the pool-” and I hugged Them, trying to make Them stop feeling like They had to apologize. A part of me wanted to cover the kid’s mouth with my hand so that I didn’t have to hear it, because They were already spending too much time doing that when all They’d done was deal with Their environment, right? 

“You were amazing,” I finally got to say. I relished my beautiful child’s face as it changed from worried to delighted- I watched the anxiety dissipate like it was CGI mist. There was still music playing. I don’t remember the songs, but I do remember that we danced in the sunshine and we sang along to them, mumbling where we didn’t know the words, not bothered in the least. Catastrophe had been averted, so now there was dancing. I thought of the planet, of the humans, of how much we had to learn.