The following is one in a series of intermittent excerpts from Coma residents’ blogs published by Coma News as a community service
By Sadie Cracker
Yesterday I went to Bear’s Biker Bar- where the smell of stale tobacco smoke and disappointment mingles with the last breath of Americana– with my friend Robert McGuiness.
Robert’s a good friend mainly because his unemployment gives him the flexibility to meet whenever I can corral babysitting and because I like his Scottish accent.
Among the many topics of conversation was the recent miserable failure of my cross-country Kerouac-style, run-away-from-my-life-with-two-screaming-kids trip. Kerouac just had himself and a trunk full of alcohol. I had two boys, non-stop potty breaks and three bloody noses, for which no one would take responsibility.
So Robert and I were discussing this when Charlie, a local biker and Coma librarian who’s into tattoos, wandered in with his guitar over one shoulder.
Charlie stood at a makeshift bar stage (several tables threaded together- legs sawed off) and started playing
‘Freebird‘ on his guitar.
He stopped mid-way through the chorus, “But if I stayed here with you girl, things just wouldn’t be the same, cause I’m as free as a bird now and this bird you cannot….”
“Hey Sadie, show us your B cup,” he said and pointed above the bar, where a line of bras were threaded through a clothesline.
“Take it off!” said Charlie to the soccer mom.
Robert was no help. “Take it off,” he said.
The line of bras seemed like a line of soldiers that hoist up and highlight things forever fallen by pregnancy and the passage of time. I looked up at those bras staring back and me. Judging me.
“It’s a C cup!” I said.
But then I couldn’t figure out how to keep my shirt on and take the bra off. Even with Portia, the burlesque dancer behind the bar, showing me how easy it was to avoid a nip slip. Ultimately, my suburban rebellion was quashed by my fear of what my fellow misfits would see when they saw my Haines cotton Target special with a wire that had worn through the middle that is constantly stabbing me.
They would see the truth: A woman stuck in the past, who cannot let go of the old and the cotton, and who is afraid to be free.
Back home, I let the sitter go and brought the boys outside to sit on a blanket and watch the stars. The spacestation was set to streak through the sky and we sat silently waiting.
“Mommy, where’s the spaceship?” said Ben.
The sky was filled with stars and endless black space, and then something bright streaking across the sky.
“We should run.” said Joe, my oldest. And so we ran with the spaceship across the yard, with my bra stabbing me the entire time and me laughing so hard it hurt.
Follow
comments feed
