Chicken Legs and Cherry Lips

My god damn friends have always called me Chicken Legs. I play football, I lift at the gym six days a week, but they focus on my stick legs and thin ankles. My legs are actually covered in black hair and kind of disappear into my socks, so I see their point, but I hate the nickname. I'm seventeen and never had a touchdown with a girl, and if I told those bastards on Monday that I got Cherry Lips to take her pants off, I'd be king. At least King Chicken Legs.

My first mistake happened after dinner, at the Cinema Royale, the only movie theater in our small town. The movie theater is gothic, a place where vampires would totally set up shop if they happened to want to invade Streaterville. The seats are so old they are actual red leather, and the floor has decades of popcorn and pop gunk and my sneakers usually stick like I'm walking on some high gravity planet or something. But that's not what gives the Cinema Royale character. It's Goiter Lady. She ancient, like 60 years old, and she's got a big brown mole in the middle of her right cheek, and a huge, huge cantaloupe lump sticking out of the left side of her neck. She wears low-cut sweaters, and smokes in the ticket booth. Red lipstick on her cigarettes.

"Goiter?" I said. "I don't even know her."

Cherry Lips didn't laugh at this joke after I'd payed for the tickets and led her by the arm to the line for the popcorn. Cherry Lips didn't even crack a smile.

Cherry Lips has alabaster skin and orange boingy-boing curls. I'd like to boingy-boing her in my Ford after the movie. Actually, well, I'd never tell my friends this, but Cherry Lips is kind of a mystery to me. She's beautiful, quiet, but clever. I'd be happy sitting next to her while we looked at the stars. I could never read her face, and the only reason I was able to overcome my nervousness and ask her to the movie was that last week in math class she let her guard down and flashed me a smile when the math teacher said something funny without meaning to.

It was a horror movie. The kind where the really hot blonde chick decides she needs some time to herself, to think about her relationship with her equally hot boyfriend, so she goes to her grandmother's summer cabin by the lake way up in the woods. It's fall, though, so no one else is around, and she's reading a book on the porch and the autumn leaves are falling and of course a hideous hottie-eating killer is watching her from the bushes. A perfect movie for Cherry Lips to get scared and hold my hand, or bury her curls in my shoulder. Chicken Legs don't matter in a movie theater.

Hot Blonde Chick stripped to her bra and panties, and walked through the tiny cabin, turning off all the lights. The camera meandered down to the lake shore, where the evil dude was crouched in the moonlight, inspecting something. The moonlight was bright in the movie, and Cherry Lips and I leaned forward, both at the same time. Cherry Lips reached for my hand, and leaned in to me, poised to find refuge in my chest should she need to hide her eyes. The silver glow from the movie moon revealed a strange object on the ground.

Bird feet. No. Chicken legs.

The camera panned out to show a neat line of headless chickens and ducks, alternating. Duck, chicken, duck, chicken. The deranged guy was licking blood off his knife.

To my horror, the glare from the screen set the hairs on my legs in stark relief, and I saw Cherry Lips looking down at my ankles, the spindly joints which at that very moment were being dwarfed and devoured by my socks. I saw Cherry Lips recoil slightly. I had to save the moment, I had to do something to break her gaze, to save my chances.

"Let me take a quack at this," I leaned over and whispered. "The killer was the ugly duckling in school, and his fowl actions are his way of telling the world to cluck off."

Time ticked slower as each new horrible bird reference came out of my mouth. I was watching from above, unable to stop myself. Cherry Lips moved progressively farther and farther away from me until she was almost hugging the empty seat next to her. Her nose crinkled at the top and she stared at me, transfixed, as if she were wondering how I functioned in society at all. I was wondering that myself. No other seventeen year old guy in the history of the world has ever crashed and burned so spectacularly.

Then Cherry Lips did something I have never seen her do, in my whole time of staring at her from kindergarten all the way through junior year in high school. She locked her eyes on mine, and laughed. I saw her creamy teeth and red tongue and dimples in her cheeks. Actual dimples.

No King Chicken Legs for me, of course. Not even a silent sweet moment under the stars. When I tried to kiss her good night after the movie, she swiveled her head and I tasted a cold earring and not those lips I'd looked forward to. But she shook my hand, and told me we should hang out more often.

I think I have a shot.

Music Mondays

I know it's kind of sickening to read sweet stuff from a redhead writing about her husband, so if you feel like you're already gonna hurl, don't read this.

The Old Man and I have the kind of relationship where all emotion is expressed through action: he handles the daycare trips to drop off and pick up The Kid way more than I do; we'll share making dinner and doing the dishes, even though both of us are about ready to fall on our butts from exhaustion; he touches my hair and my face when he comes downstairs in the morning; and he washes my car. Even waxes it. I will refrain from describing the emotional actions in the bedroom, thank you very much.

We rarely talk about anything. We definitely don't talk about feelings. Let me rephrase that: he definitely doesn't talk about feelings. I might ramble on about someone at work and how I'm totally better than they are and I can't believe they said that to me, etcetera, but we don't ever get into the nitty gritty of How are you?

Well, actually, I've been experiencing a general malaise, and I find myself not caring about anything lately.

These conversations do not happen. And so, because these deep conversations do not happen, The Old Man has a tendency to surprise me. Always pleasantly.

This is where the music comes in. I was driving his truck, because he had taken my car to get new tires, and I listened to the CD he made for himself from i-tunes. The same Black-Eyed Peas song I like. The same Norah Jones tunes. Same Michael Jackson songs I downloaded this summer. I almost wrecked, I was so shocked. Here I thought I was married to a 2Pac, Rage Against the Machine, two-band man, and I find that he grooves to (some) of the same stuff I do.

Thanks Old Man for all the pleasant surprises you give me. All of them.

Real. Fresh. Air.

I am from a stretched out interstate bordered by sharp yellow-green dust grass against hazy mountain feet.
I am from a right turn onto new blacktop, then a left turn on a dirt road, one lane under the train bridge, better hope somebody's not coming the other way. Stakes are higher now that there's a three year-old in the backseat.
I am from a hand out the window to touch the way the air has turned fresh two hundred and fifty miles from sour half-assed living, beer headaches, lonely nights of sideways couch-sitting legs curled under eyes between a book and a television.
I am from clouds that glow not city-orange but moon-white.
I am from a place where it rains just enough to tease the plants and where the smell of rain and heat lightning is hot, wet, tormented and moves east too fast.
I am from where it's so dry I have to drink two waters for every beer and where skin lotion is a survival item.

I am from a girl's bedroom with dead quiet nights and a toddler trundle bed caddy corner to where I used to sleep.
I am from wishing star light star bright on the same star I saw when I was little except now it's Grammy and grandson doing the wishing.
I am from the same sharp bright milky way through the big picture window in the upstairs bedroom, except the cottonwood has busted past the horizon and split up the stars.

I am from taking my son to the country so the world can play with him every once in a while.

I am from strong sunlight, no blinds, no neighbors, no need.
I am from a solar-powered coffee maker and power tools always chomping at some part of the house or another.
I am from loose-fitting work clothes and boots caked with dirt and sawdust and gloves with holes in the fingers still good enough to lift two by fours.
I am from thirty second safety lessons from my father: "Use the circular saw. Don't cut off your thumb."

I am from refrigerator magnets:
"The Road to Success is Always Under Construction" and
"Good Guys Finish First" and
Roy Rogers wishing me "Happy Trails" and
James Dean looking at me and
"Peace Rocks" and
"Growing Old is Not For Sissies."

I am from a long walk up the ridge to rocks I climbed on when I was a girl and my boy scrapes his shins and elbows and comes closer to peace here than subdivision living but maybe that's me.

I am from hard grit sandstone molded by God or time but when I'm on my back

palms flat kissing the sandpaper rock

stone under fingers me under sky

it doesn't matter how it came to be

only that it makes me believe again

in my own head and heart and

sticky stubborn stuff that drives me forward through the mundane everyday.

My favorite quote ever. So far this week.

-"Oh well, I guess I'll go outside and try to murder some gophers." - My Mom, who loves her garden.

Music Mondays

Continuing my character playlists. Here's Sam's:

More Than a Feeling, Boston
Purple Rain, Prince
Shattered (Turn the Car Around), O.A.R.
Chasing Cars, Snow Patrol
Wherever You Will Go, The Calling
Tremble for My Beloved, Collective Soul
The Promise, When in Rome
Time After Time, Quietdrive
Better As a Memory, Kenny Chesney
The Cowboy In Me, Tim McGraw
Goodbye My Lover, James Blunt
Kryptonite, 3 Doors Down
Shimmer, Fuel
What Might Have Been, Little Texas
Doesn't Remind Me, Audioslave
Summertime, Kenny Chesney
Always the Love Songs, Eli Young Band
Here I Go Again, Whitesnake

Demon Spawn

"Mommy," he says,
and smiles with his perfect
three-year-old teeth.
His breath smells like apples.

While he has me captured
arrested
prisoner of his sweet
apple breath

He sticks his thumb
up my nose
and cackles
like demon spawn.

Music Mondays

I recently read advice from an author to make a unique playlist for each character, and listen to it when writing abou the character. I figure it'd be a worthy cause to devote Music Mondays to Amanda, Annie, Nick, Sam, Tavi, Shane, and Vick.

For Amanda, I came up with 48 songs. But here are the quinessential Amanda tunes:

"Please Don't Leave Me," Pink
"Brilliant Disguise," Bruce Springsteen
"I Love Rock n' Roll," Joan Jett & The Blackhearts
"Counting the Days," Goldfinger
"Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth With Money in my Hand," Primitive Radio Gods
"I Am Trying to Break Your Heart," Wilco
"Comedown," Bush
"Drinkin' my Baby Goodbye," The Charlie Daniels Band
"Straight Tequila Night," John Anderson
"Neon Moon," Brooks & Dunn
"Get it While You Can," Janis Joplin
"Far Behind," Candlebox
"What I've Done," Linkin Park
"Melody of You," Single File
"Slip Slidin' Away," Paul Simon
"Superstar," Sonic Youth
"Time After Time," Sparklemotion
"Tire Swing," Kimya Dawson
"I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight," U2
"Settlin'," Sugarland
"Wake Up," Arcade Fire
"Wide Open Spaces," Dixie Chicks