cape cod
i’m cued up at the Sparrow. the best coffee shop in Orleans. today, the line’s out the door. every summer the Sparrow functions as my default office. it’s where i take calls, figure estimates, write, and, this morning, it’s where i’m busted by Sharyn.
“doc livingstone i presume?” she stares at me, amused, as if i’ve returned from the jungle with a bone through my nose.
“i missed youuu.” she says. her blue eyes twinkle. “didn’t think you were coming home.”
“i was delayed my dear. our baggage train was attacked by crocodiles while crossing the Zambezi. we beat the filthy buggers back, but not before they made off with our bags.” .
“Zambezi?”
“hey – it’s your metaphor,” i say, “i meant our brave lads in homeland security have misplaced my luggage.”
she laughs, and offers me a tooth brush.
“i’m good.” i say. i move in for a hug.
“ugh, dirty.” she says.
Sharyn’s faded jeans, and wife-beater t, are streaked with dirt and sweat. the faint scent of china musk hangs about her blond hair. she is dirty, but, beautiful.
“yeah baby,” i say, “that’s when you’re at your best.”
outside, under the shade of an old locust tree, Sharyn and i catch up. she leans into the bumper. i set my mocha, bagel, and globe over the hood of my dusty pickup. it’s only 9 am, but already i’ve spent $6.25. for the nosh, $.75 for the globe. breakfast is a cool $7.
“you seem down” she says.
“yeah, gets harder to leave [tag]Panama[/tag] every year.”
already, i’m jonesing for Panama. mostly, it’s the clarity i miss. even in the city, life feels pared down, closer to the bone. on the cod i’m pulled in so many directions.
“im surprised” Sharyn says.
” ’bout what?”
“that you want to stay. that you dig the girls there.”
“why?”
“they’re catholic aren’t they? conservative? and you’re … well … a freak.”
Sharyn laughs. it feels good to be insulted in english again. a large woman takes a seat on the faded bench next to us. she licks melting ice cream from her swollen fingers.
“yeah, they’re catholic.” i say, trying to ingore the ugly scene, ” they believe in god and country. but not in that annoying, american, judeo-christian, its better to eat and shop than fuck kind of way.”
“wow,” she says, still smiling, “you better write that down. and speaking of sex, i’ve got fifteen minutes before i need to get back.”
“fifteen minutes? shit – when have you ever known me to last fifteen minutes? besides, we can’t. my coffee would get cold.”
“so this is it then?” Sharyn says,
“it?”
“you’re not coming home next year?”
“i’m not saying that. it’s a [tag]hobson’s choice[/tag]. if i don’t come back i’ll be broke in another year.”
“you can still make mad money painting.”
“yeah,” i say, nodding slowly, “yeah.”
“and you know what they say about writing … don’t quit your day job.”
Written by: Cojito Copyright © 2012 · All Rights Reserved · Panama After Dark
Alright… not to bust your hump (as my own blog doesn't even make the attempt to be 'literary') but:
"i lay my jumbo mocha, whole wheat bagel, lite cream cheese, and boston globe over the hood of my dark green pickup with the seriousness of a surgeon preparing to remove a kidney. "
… is way too descriptive. It comes across as amateurish prose, and you're a much better writer than to spew out something this weak. Were you drunk when you wrote it? Basking in the afterglow of an orgasm?
Christ, man. If you want me to buy you cheap drinks the next time I'm in Panama, you're going to have to do better than this.
Tighten, Brighten and Sharpen. — e.b. white.
[Ass-kicking mode: Off]
Keep writing. I'm addicted to your blog.
lol damn, everyone's a critic.
hey now, comparing the placing of a bagel and coffee on my truck to a kidney transplant just seemed funny to me at the time. it's absurd. hence the humor. lol guess not.
you make some good points. my Zine is hack writing not literature. i could use a good editor. have you noticed my appalling use of commas? and yes, i may have had a few too many pints of guinness when i wrote it. in my defense, i hadn't had guinness on tap for a very long time. and its really really good.
when i put together the book i promise to edit this out. one of the things i like about wordpress (and other blog formats) is that i can easily revisit a story and edit it. i do it all the time.
thanks for being an addict.
i should also mention i'm often guilty of overwriting. i take chances trying to catch lightening in a bottle. and i really appreciate the feedback. "ass-kicking" or not, it helps.
lol ok, i edited it again. but i left the offending sentence untouched. i still like it. lets if anyone else hates it.
You are a work in process, my friend. It's not about the being, it's about the becoming…
I'm going back in September — how long are you planning to stay here in the land of fat people?
Hey, you need to add Kerouac and Henry Miller to your repetoir (sp?) — and a little Ayn Rand would do you good too.
Try "Atlas Shrugged".
yeah, my stuff is always changing on the fly. i've edited this piece 3 times since i posted it. there were a lot of things i wanted to change. sometimes you just want it out there.
my ticket says i'm returning to panama the end of sept. but i might stay a little longer if the money's right.
when i was a lad my dad had a killer book collection: kerouac, miller, bukowski, ayn rand, thoreau, orwell etc. i learned to read with his playboys and vitorian porn, but i ended up reading almost all of his collection.
You're doing great. Yours is the only journal type stuff I read on the internet.
Well, except for Survivalblog. But that's a whole 'nuther genre. ;)
I like how you capture the gritty realism of what you write about.
The part about the bagel, nosh and green pickup just seems too… ho hum. It's like, "That's the same shit we all see, everyday and don't need to wax peoetic abour it,"
Now, if you took the girl back to your pick up truck and banged the shit out of her… that'd be different.
But you're right — everybody is a critic.
Where your real strength is– like HRT's– is that you have an ability to take the reader into world's (or places) he doesn't normally go.
But now I'm blowing air up your skirt. ;)
thanks man. that's good to hear. i've had a couple of writing teachers who said the same thing. they believed i should cultivate that part of my writing; the dark humor and gritty realism.
lol but what's more real than eating a healthy whole wheat bagel next to a fat woman eating ice cream? you're so jaded crj.
hehe much as i'd like – i can't fuck everyone. besides, Sharyn's real. the conversation's real – more or less. even my bagel was real. it wouldn't be very honest of me to claim i banged her in the sparrow parking lot. first of all, my coffee would have gotten cold. and secondly, i don't think her kids would have liked that very much.
cheers.
Your dad was (is?) a smart man.
was – he died when i was 16.
"but what’s more real than eating a healthy whole wheat bagel next to a fat woman eating ice cream?"
and
"it wouldn’t be very honest of me to claim i banged her in the sparrow parking lot. first of all, my coffee would have gotten cold. and secondly, i don’t think her kids would have liked that very much."
See– now THAT'S what I'm talkin' about. That's great writing.
Lean. Mean. George Foreman-style.
26,100 results on Google for "Doc Livingston, I presume?"
See… this is the kind of shit you're forced to endure when you open up the comments section of your blog. ;)
lol you should see the shit that gets filtered out.
arrgh – i'm not anonymous. just writing from a new connection.
I don't know how, or if, you keep touch with things in Orleans. I grew up there in the 50s when the year-round population hovered around 900 people.
Last week there was a massive Nor'easter that tore up Nauset Beach. It opened a huge, huge breach in the outer beach down by Chatham. In 65-66 I ran a beach taxi business at Nauset and you could drive all the way down to Monomoy.
Today CNN ran a long report on the beach erosion from Nauset. My family ran the Snack Shack there for 35 years. From the video on CNN the water (at low tide when they were filming) is no more than 100 feet from the dunes that shelter the Snack Shack, the Beach administration building and the bandstand.
When I was a kid you had to walk through the sand for a couple of hundred yards past the dunes to get to the water. Today, the water is less than 50 yards from the parking lot.
wow, small world. you really are an old salt.
i grew up on cape during the 70's. i did a lot of surf casting on nauset, caught mostly stripers and blues. i go back to the cape every year. i had a flat in orleans in the 90's. sold out in 2002. i'm excited to see the newest break. i read about it in the boston globe online. i was there in '87 – when the last break opened up. it was right in front of the million dollar house we were painting in chatham. a short while later the house fell into the sea, and the public landing, and beach went missing. i read that monomoy has reattached to the mainland. just like old times.
here's a link to the story if anyone's interested – http://www.townonline.com/brewster
i hadn't seen or even thought about the cape codder for years…clicked on your link. good pic of the new cut.
out of curiosity i looked at the obits (us old farts do that sort of thing)…all off-capers except one, a nickerson. no snows, eldridges or sparrows. cape sure has changed.
eat me