A Bitchhole in the Earth

In the weeks after the mudslide, I'd work all day, then come home and dig, and clean the wet dirt off of all the nice things that John and Dawn had accumulated. I was on CNN, in mudboots and a purple sweatshirt, telling my violent tale of climbing over a giant mound of mud out to the road, where the firemen were standing there watching. hoping that someone was alive in that nice ass crushed house. I told the news guy that the mudslide really brought the world down with it. I thought that was really clever. And it kept on coming.

Within two weeks I'd totaled my brothers new LandRover on the way to work, my sister-in-laws BMW in the ADOBE parking garage, then I wrecked my company's van on the streets of San Jose. Manuela was so was freaked out by the thought that she was upstairs in the kitchen(which no longer existed), moments before the mudslide had happened, that she'd hightailed it back to Germany. Her goodbye letter reads:

.I was so interested in your insides. I felt that you had many interesting things to explore, and that you had nobody to talk to. That feeling makes my feelings uncomfortable. I'm sad that you never let me look at your insides. She signed it XXXOOO MANU.

She left it on my bed the night she left.

She was right about me having no one to talk to. I wrote letters all day that I never sent, holed up in closets at work. I listened for something that I could never hear. I quit drinking, quit eating meat, quit everything I was used to. I just wanted to be alone.

We moved into my Sister-in-Laws X-Husband's house. Dawn and "Rob" had one of those "we're still friends, but we couldn't stay married" kind of relationships. . It was basically Me, The Kids, and a new Nanny from Germany who walked around in her underpants. She knitted things but she never wore them. It confused me and she spoke no English. I hated her. Hated her. Rob moved over to his girlfriend's house but would check in from time to time. He owned a string of Car Washes

Since my truck ended up with a creek flowing through it, I had to find a new ride. With insurance money, it wasn't too big a deal, and John said he'd help me out. John was such a good man to me. I found a used range-rover in the paper, with a big metal luggage rack and too many miles. It was perfect. The day I got the car, I headed up alone to San Francisco. I didn't know where I was going, I just drove up hwy 101 until I saw the skyline then dove the car down the Market St exit and into the City. After stopping for some coffee and lingering too long at a few bars drinking ice water, I was driving up a giant hill by bums and trolley tracks, and lampposts when the car died. I had to pull the emergency brake to keep from tumbling backward forever into the pacific. I could see cars lined up and the whispy white waves of the sea beyond them. Another Pickle. The hill was so steep I had to lean forward to walk to the hood and pop it. I thought maybe if I popped the hood the car would start. People were blowing, yelling, shaking fists, at me. They were all different colors, driving small efficient cars that meant to make the world better. They were going somewhere fast. I was in the way. I ran into a bar on the corner, but it was an Asian bar, and the little light skinned people stared at me- a giant screaming at them for a phone. They didn't speak English. Not that it mattered. There was absolutely no one I could call. There wasn't much brother could do from Alaska. I was stranded in the city with less than twenty bucks. Hell I could've been there for days. It hurt so bad in my lungs and my throat that I could have gone forever down into San Francisco, could have become a part of it that no one would ever notice. I wanted that. I really wanted it then.

I sat down on the curb and put my head in my hands. I Heard the honking, people yelling for me to get the fuck out of their way over and over.get the fuck out of the waygetthefuckoutofthewaygetthefuckoutoftheway asshole!!

A bus pulls around my car and stops, and a tall skinny blond body full of tattoos gets off and stands staring at me smiling.

"Man, maybe you should get the fuck out of everybody's way".

"Maybe." I bare my teeth at her like a lion, or an idiot from Georgia.

She walks off.

About five minutes later she walks out of the bar with a beer and gives it to me. Tells me she's a herion addict who just walked out of rehab, and she's looking for a fix. Did I have any money. What was my Name? Brad? Really! My Husbands name is...was..Brad. See I have it tattooed on my ring finger.

She showed me her finger, which held the word Brad in a perfect cursive half-cirlce, , which I thought should probably mean something. I sat quietly until she got bored, until I knew that she didn't offer me a way out of this. Until I knew that I wouldn't end up with her in an alley with a needle looking for a pillow in the cold puddles in the dark. But I didn't want to. I really didnt want to then.

Eventually a carload of punk kids came walking up the street wearing spikes, and mascara with blood on their shirts, and offered to help me push the car to the side. We barely made it up the hill and to a parking spot, but we made it. The honking stopped, and then it stopped forever when we went to a bar and let the loud throbbing sounds of guitar and the screaming surprise me. I was from Georgia. At least I had that going for me. At least I could still be surprised. That night I spent the night with the those punk kids, or hardcore as they called themselves. They admitted they didn't trust me to sleep upstairs so gave me the basement, which they locked me in with a giant silver masterlock. I looked at the lock a long time before I went down the stairs into the dark. But it was there thatI met Betty, a 100 pound brendel Pit Bulldog. (Named for Betty Page of Course)

She and I dreamt together that night, I spooned her, and her snores lulled me into a dark deep sleep. I woke the next morning, found my brother and towed my Car back to Los Gatos on his credit card. . I went to sleep early wondering forever if I would just fall always if I let go. I wanted to. I wanted to let go. I woke up Monday without a job.