On the Town With Molli Brown

Right now, it is weeks later, Cali is burning and I'm sitting in a hotel in Northern New Jersey, drinking Orangina and watching Perfect Strangers.

But I have to tell you about my Saturday Night with the Ladies.
Our Parents went away for a long weekend and left me in charge of two teenagers, and you might think that's the worst idea ever, but you can shut the hell up cause I can be very responsible sometimes when I try really hard.

Friday night we'd stayed in with Chinese and movies, so Saturday I wanted to go out,out,out! I was pretty well recovered from my pneumonia by then and feeling itchy. But this was tricky, where to go? There's really not much for underagers in our part of So. Cal. Anyplace that had live music also had alcohol, and I wouldn't be able to get the girls in, movies are freakin' expensive (after popcorn and all that jazz, you're talkin' 50 bucks to take 2 girls and myself to a movie. Movies used to be a goddamn nickel and you got a cartoon and a news reel. That's what wrong with America today.)
Shan wanted to go to a hookah bar, which is I guess the hot new hangout for all her hoodlum friends, despite that they should be too young to smoke hookahs in anycase. I referred her back to my afore mentioned pneumonia. The last thing I wanted to fill my newly un-infected lungs with was a whole lot of scented tobacco smoke, no matter how delicious triple apple may be. And didn't I quit smoking (again) 3 weeks ago? I vaguely remember that, and, oh yeah, you kids are too young to smoke!
So that was out. After much deliberation (and lectures on my part about Shan's makeup, and how I didn't want to go out on the town with Tammy Faye Baker 2.0) We decided to head toward Riverside for some dinner and a Drive-in Movie, cause it was within my budget and also I'm a sucker for Drive-ins.

Despite my trepidations, Belle turned out to be a good driver, (she just got her license) even on the freeway, and we got to Riverside without incident. Now, where to eat? I am starving. Belle wants Sushi. Shan hates fish. I want tacos. (I always want tacos.) We pass a place that says Pacific Cafe and also says Sushi. I think the cafe part means things besides Sushi, and that everybody will be happy. We go in. It is empty. A teeny tiny Japanese lady sits us down, comes back in 5 minutes with menus, and take our drink orders. The whole time we where there, she consistently thought the 3 of us were 2 of us. Belle and I got place settings, Shan didn't. Belle and Shan got their drink orders taken, I didn't. Shan and I got our food orders taken, Belle didn't. I found this absolutely hilarious. So, we look at menus, its allll Sushi. Shan's getting upset, Belle decides she doesn't think she can eat Sushi after all, I still want freakin' tacos, but now we're sitting and we're the only people in the joint and this little Japanese grandma is bowing at us and asking what we want, and, yeah. So I order some spicy tuna, Shan sees a thing on the menu that says "stuffed potato." When she asks Grandmother what's in it, the woman brings her a dinner/app. menu with all sorts of non-Sushi items on. I'm trying not to crack up all over the place, Shan orders some sort of chicken kabob, we eat fast and high-tail it out of there.

We still have 3 hours to kill before the movie, so we start walkin' around. I still want tacos, but the Ladies are over food for the moment. Belle sees Le Sex Shoppe on the corner and says, "Lets go there!" These kids have as low an opinion of my sense of responsibility as ya'll do.
No,no,no. No Sex Shoppe. Keep walkin' Ace.
I'm feeling like I could use a drink right now, but again, responsibility gets the better of me. I remember a funky cool coffee house I used to go to, and decide caffeine will have to do, and I drag them over there. Shan resents all the walking, because she is wearing her "tall shoes."

Now we're at the coffee bar. There's a long line and only one kid working. There's some spaced-out trip hop on the radio and a lot of hipsters on couches and around tiny tables. The wall across from the counter is lined with old books and local art, and the lone kid working has a nice smile and an easy manner. "Do they only have coffee?" Says Shan, making a face. The huge menus above the counters attest to the fact that they have much more than coffee. Shan gets coffee anyways, some sort of mocha raspberry affair. Belle gets a fancy latte too, and then they both decide they are hungry again, and now I'm buying caramel brownies and ham and cheese croissants. Notice the complete lack of tacos. I get a plainjane coffee and we sit a bit. Shan's launching into a tirade about how busy and chaotic the place is and how do writers sit in these kinds of places for hours and hours anyways, when a Vampire walks in.

Picture a man in his mid to late thirties. Aristocratic nose, high cheekbones, slanty, amber wolf eyes, long, flowing locks of flouncy hair, clearly wearing makeup (eye-liner and foundation) long fingernails painted black, big silver rings, black leather garb (not clothes, garb.) way way too warm for California, big silver cross on a long long chain around his neck. A right-out-of-Anne-Rice freakin' Vampire. He orders a coffee and a ham n cheese. I'm not fooled one bit. Vampires pretend to eat people food all the time. I seent it. I point him out to the ladies. Belle giggles. Shan flips out and she thinks we're going to die. "We're pretty much dead," she says. So he's waiting for his ham n cheese, and groovin' on this triphop. Like, he's doing some weirdo dance with his arms. "You see!!!!!!" says Shan, "He heard you and now he's putting a spell on us!"
He was putting a spell on us. We had to leave the coffee shop and find our car, so we could go to the drive-in. Riverside is very small. We parked in the middle. We walked no more than 8 blocks. We couldn't find our car. It wasn't missing. We just couldn't find it. We had been confounded by a level 2 confusion spell! We walked around and around for an hour. Belle was all caffeinated and sugared up. She was floating about 10 feet ahead and 2 inches above us, singing to herself. Shan was stomping around in her "tall shoes," wailing about our impending doom. I'm not scared of vampires and I like walkin' around at night, so I was inventing conversations in my head to have with Bean about how I sugared up her children and got them confounded and then sucked by Vampires. And also lost the car. In that conversation, Bean said, "Are you on drugs? How much have you been drinking?"
How is it that I'm always in the most trouble when I'm sober?
Then it was getting spooky out, because we were in between some high buildings that echoed, and there were hoodlums on the corner, and street toughs on the steps. At least that's what Shan was crying about. And then, we were in a shadowy courtyard, with a tall tall luminous fountain at the end of it. Like moths, we made for the light and then, a voice high above me says, "Good evening ladies."
"Hi-hello!" I squint and look up. About 3 stories above me, a smiley man all in white hovered beatifically in the darkness.
"Nice night out, isn't it?" said the angel.
"Very beautiful!" I was smiling real big.
"You ladies enjoy yourself, be careful and have a wonderful evening," said the angel. He was actually a town hall security guard, and he was more standing on the 3rd floor balcony than hovering in the darkness, but he was still a angel, cause we got to the fountain and turned right, and there, in a pool of streetlight was our car. The Vampires paltry spell was no match for the magic of the Night Watchman! Haha!
And then we were free. We went on to have many more adventures that night, but that is top secret lady business.
Enjoy your evening. Stay away from vampires, it's getting Halloweeny outside.

I Have No Time For Consumption!

Sicksicksicksicksick. Faithful readers, I am currently in Cali, dying of the black lung. Or actually green lung, judging by the appealing pond-scum shade of the slime I am coughing up. Ew. I just grossed myself out. Apologies. I have been living with boys.
So yeah.
In all honesty, I picked up a wicked case of Pneumonia. Gross. But I went to urgent care and got myself some penicillin, so in a few days I should be Aces, and no worries.
Consumption aside, I have been having some awesome good times.
Thursday I flew down to NC for Writers'Forum. Ktbear picked me up at the airport and bought me a sammich. That was spectacular. Then I went to her house to play with Journey Dog and get styled up by Andrea. I looked, if I do say it myself, smokin' hot, which is totally Andrea's doing, even if she did spit on my eyelid. Apparently, that is the price of fashion. Eventually, Martha Mae and Lil Jeffie showed up, and we high-tailed it down to the LBG for the pre-show dinner. At first, we were really excited, because we were confronted by fancy salads, with chicken and strawberries and other weird stuff. We thought, "Man, if our salads are this fancy, dinner should be sweeeeet!" Turns out, the fancy salad WAS dinner. People, I don't even like lettuce. That's OK though, cause I was waaaaaaaaay too nervous to eat much.
I was reading with Carlos Reyes, who is absolutely my favorite living poet, and probably the only man I would marry without significant monetary compensation.

Me and Carlos

Much to my dismay, in the three years since I saw him last, he married someone else. Can you even believe that? This he tells me at dinner right before I am to read. My heart was bruised in a way that only whiskey could cure. I told Martha and she told Jeremy and he arrived 10 minutes before my debut with a hip flask of Jack, and thus, a beautiful friendship was born. I'm still not over Carlos, but I'm considering marrying Jeremy.
So I drank half the whiskey while the introducer was introducing me, and I took the podium glowing with liquid confidence.

Liquid Courage!

I read "Big Smile, Scabby Heart," then "Each Midnight," cause they were short and sweet and "Big Smile's" kinda funny and nervous and I was feeling pretty funny and nervous. And then, (this was another Andrea idea) when I was settling and the whiskey was working its edge-brightening magic, and everybody was easing into the nighttime and the story telling, I hit them with the first 3 pages of "Doll," and just when everybody was leaning in and feeling cold and concerned and hooked, WHA-BAM! Sucker-punched! I left them hangin' and sold like, 7 books right then. Andrea's such a smarty-pants.
So as not to be mean and to brighten things up again and lead into Carlos, I read this wicked-funny poem Peppers and I wrote the week before, called The Passion of the Produce," which is every bit as sexy as you think it might be. Everyone smiled big, I sat down, and finished my whiskey while Ian Pratt made eyes at me from across the room. Well played!

Readin'

Carlos read beautifully, as he always does, and I was so glad I had to go first, so I could sit back and close my eyes and ease into his voice and the soft alcohol and Andrea's warm hands on my shoulders. Reading Carlos, I like his English poems, their sharp-edged, soft hearted images. But I mostly love when he reads in Spanish. The sounds I don't understand make amazing pictures on the backs of my eyelids, dusty, dark, spicy pictures somewhere between deserts and oceans, between dawn and midnight.
If you get the chance to hear Carlos read, you should go, and not just cause I want to marry him.
After all that, my entourage was tuckered out. Even though I was buzzing with mischief, they coaxed me back to the Mabry Manor for some chilled out R&R. It's a good thing too, cause 1)People were getting arrested on campus that night and, with my luck I woulda been amongst them, and 2)I got Pneumonia the next morning.
(Props to Andrea AGAIN for not being among the arrested! Man, that girl was ON IT all weekend.)
The next day we went back to Raleigh and after some relax-o time, threw Lil Jeffie a rather nice birthday party. At his request I cooked up some fish n chips (and it even turned out good, who knew?) And a bunch of peeps came up, and I think there were beers and some kind of ridiculously complicated game for smart people that the majority of us were too drunk to play.

Party People: Martha's Arm, Jeremy, The Girl with Matt, Matt, Andrea, Lil Jeffie's Very Skinny Leg

This is where my memory gets fuzzy. Not from drinking, but from lack of sleep and sickishness. Because at this time I thought the Pneumonia was just a wicked bad cold, and I was trying to solider through. Solidering through turned into talking with Jeremy and Andrea till 3 or 4ish in the am, at which point my voice gave out for good, and I put myself to bed on Martha's floor. After that I seem to recall a lot of transferring from floor to bed to floor to bed again. I have no idea what that was all about.
And then it was time for breakfast. Martha found us a for-real diner, who knew they had those in Raleigh? Breakfast was great. Ktbear joined us up again, and we all went to some lake to walk around. I wanted to walk around the lake real bad, because we had a puppy with us and all. But then we were walking and I thought maybe I was going to die.
But I didn't die, and then there was diner at Lil Jeffie's Mom's house. It was delicious I'm pretty sure. Spaghetti. I dunno. I was concentrating on not dying, and also not telling people I thought I was dying, cause I was pretty sure I wasn't really that sick and only just being a baby. Then Ktbear took me back to her house to take care of me, cause she kinda guessed that maybe I had one foot in the grave. Yay for Kt, and Journey Dog who is seriously the world's best cuddler. Andrea kept Martha and Lil Jeffie occupied, and everybody was happy.
Sunday morning I was on a plane to Cali and that was fairly excruciating. I was just trying to keep my eardrums in my ears.
Bean and Papabear scooped me up and brought me home to chicken soup and a basket full of of drugs.
And that's been pretty much it. I'm recovering slowly but surely. We had a teeny party for Papabear's 50th yesterday, and then I went to bed. I didn't even eat cake or drink any vodka, which should impress upon you how crap-tastik I feel. Who gets Pneumonia anyways? Ugh, I feel so lame.
Still, for most of the weekend, I think I partied like a champ. And it was fun. Way too short a visit, but superfun. Who doesn't love Lil Jeffie? I can't think of a single person. That kid is the bees knees.