CheapThrills

Guest Blog: Castro, Cold Chillin'

By Slinky Redfoot

The latest fad in unoriginal ad campaigns is the “story” idea: everyone from celebs to normal, hardworkin’ folks like you and me boring us with tidbits from their humdrum lives. Gee, Martin Scorsese wears silk socks! Wow, Barb from Duluth collects crystal hummingbirds! Perhaps AAPR (shameful jumbling of letters for reasons I won’t get into) should approach recently retired Fidel Castro and go down this road.

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Brandspankin', where Slinky Redfoot gives brands the spankin' they deserve
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Guest Blog: The Lemonade Anorexia Chronicals, Part II

By Jodie Jordan

Missed Part I? Read it here.

Day 4: Tuesday, January 1, 2008
Health: Can I get a definition?

11:34 a.m.
I’ve been awake for almost an hour now, and I haven’t felt any overwhelming desire to eat. Not once. Breakfast sandwich? No thanks. Crispy, warm and fluffy waffles? Mmm, I’ll pass. So perhaps I’ve really committed to the placebo affect of this “the 3rd day is the hardest day” business, or maybe it’s actually true. Or maybe I’ve inflicted enough permanent damage on my metabolism to buy some time before my body starts to eat itself again. The point is I’m not uncomfortable. And that, my friend, is worth a filling cup of Smooth Move any day.

6:45 p.m.
One of the requirements for this detoxification endeavor was maintaining a relatively normal life. I told myself that I had to keep working out, taking my vitamins, accomplishing my work effectively. Otherwise, it wasn’t worth it to me.

Today is New Year’s Day. I convinced myself that the gym wasn’t open, so I didn’t bother checking to see if I actually could go. And this is the slippery slope that concerns me. I’ve started to use the state that I’m in as a justification for “taking it easy,” for giving myself just a little more leniency with what I’m doing. I mean, I suppose if this was a more permanent circumstance, it would be a more significant cause for evaluation.

But, is this the subconscious dynamic that feeds people with eating disorders? To go easy, be lazy to maintain reserves a bit and facilitate feeling ok, but continue the harmful behavior so that working hard again is delayed?

January 2, 2008 12:02 a.m.
So, in a strange and very appropriate twist on today’s observations, I’ve stumbled upon a TLC program about people addicted to food. It’s funny, the way they describe their eating high, I feel almost similar about not eating. The hunger is a strangely powerful feeling, exhilarating almost. Being hungry has become a normal part of feeling. And perhaps I should feel guilt like they do, for not giving my body the nutrients it craves, as they bombard theirs with horribly unhealthy sugars and enriched carbohydrates. How is it different? Neither of us is getting what we need.

It helps to remind myself (or lie to myself?) that this is a detox, not a diet. It’s dangerous because I do feel thinner, and satisfied when I look in the mirror. Am I confusing my body’s deterioration with something that only appears attractive? Or is this detox actually doing its job? My skin and my eyes are clear. My face looks warm and glowing. My cheeks are flushed. I’ve been having great hair days.

I look healthy.

Anyway, I didn’t feel any overwhelming, I-can’t-do-it-anymore desire to eat today. I guess I’m getting used to it. I wonder if my mind will have a harder time recovering from this than my body will. By the time I’ve trained myself to eliminate food from the things that I want, it’ll be time to ease myself back into having it.

Morale: Didn’t think I’d still be doing this. Scarily impressed and surprised at my will power.
Motivation: The heaviest man alive bathing in bed, eating tacos, and being ok with it.

Day 5: Wednesday, January 2, 2008
I WANT COFFEE AND I WANT IT NOW

12:35 p.m.
I have an unnatural amount of energy today. Doing laundry, I ran up and down the stairs. At the gym, I worked out 70% but without struggle or dizziness. I mentioned on an earlier day that I feel thinner. And I do. But a strange phenomenon is taking place that honestly, is really unappreciated. Unfortunately I don’t have a scale, but I estimate that I’ve lost 4 to 6 lbs over the past 4.5 days. That’s a fast drop. Especially since it involves my body eating muscle to keep fat reserves (also unappreciated). But my abs, well, they have the loose skin syndrome. I feel like if I threw on a bathing suit and ran in place, I could absolutely be a worst beach body on the cover of US Weekly.

I mean, I don’t even know how to counteract that.

4:45 p.m.

Breaking News: My roommate will officially begin her master cleanse tomorrow morning. How will I benefit from this? Well, she has purchased, as required, laxative tea. The same one that I have been enjoying in fact, but hers is chocolate flavored. Yum. Simple things bring me exceptional elation.

Other Breaking News: I’ve decided that day 6 will be the last day. That’s tomorrow. That means that I can wake up on Friday morning, jump out of bed like a kid on Christmas, and sprint to Starbucks for a triple-grande soy latte if I damn-well want to! Will I do that? Hell yeah I will, and not only because I’ve had about $40 in Starbucks gift cards from Christmas burning a hole in my pocket for the past week.

More Breaking News: I’m a tid bit constipated. I’ve read several suggestions to rectify (ha ha) that.

1. The laxative tea. It works. But I think I’ve developed some immunity to it. My body likes to pretend that it doesn’t have to listen to anyone; I like to think of it as resilience. I’ve never been on birth control. I don’t really mess with my bodily functions at all. Now that they’re being controlled by an outside force, a sort of coup de poo has begun.
2. Brackish water. That’s drinking salt water, folks. You know, that thing that you go to great lengths to avoid swallowing when you’re swimming in the ocean? Also known as the easiest gag inducer of all time. For me at least.
3. Enema. Gross. My dramatic aversion to this might seem counterintuitive, since it accomplishes the exact same thing as my aforementioned options, but I maintain my huge issue with doing it. For dignity’s sake.

So, what’ll it be: Stay plugged up, endure nauseating salt water or shoot something up my ass? I think I’ll go with number 1. Thanks.

Morale: I’m pretty fucking hungry, ok?
Motivation: As Larry David would say, I’m looking prettay prettay good (except for the loose skin thing).

Day 6: Thursday, January 3, 2008
The Homestretch

9:40 a.m.
So, you’re probably wondering why exactly I’ve chosen to cut my detox short by one day. Well, as much fun as it is watching my skin get too big for my body, I feel like I’ve accomplished what I set out to accomplish. I didn’t cheat. I didn’t demolish any relationships via mood swings. I didn’t eat any of my friends. If I stop now, I’ll have been in control the entire time. Do I think I could go another day? I absolutely could. But, like I said before, I really just wanted to see if I could do it. And I did.

Also, I only have about a day’s worth of lemonade ingredients left. ☺

January 4, 2008 12:00 a.m.
How do I feel, now that I have but one night of peaceful slumber in between me and eating? I’m excited. I’m also relatively nervous that I’ll be so ecstatic to eat, that I will start inhaling food with no regard for my body’s rusty ability to process it.

Maybe I’ll miss my hunger. We’ve sort of bonded. And I can’t tell if I’ll be relieved or disappointed to once again set my alarm clock. Tomorrow is the last morning that my bowels will jar me awake at 8 a.m.

Morale: Satisfied
Motivation: If I gave up now, I’d have to re-evaluate my life.

3 Days Later: Monday, January 7, 2008.
So, I’ve been eating for roughly three days now. I have to say, I feel better. But I’m still not sure which lifestyle is more desirable: One where you never have to think about when to stop eating, what to eat, when to eat, how to eat. Where food doesn’t exist, except when you want it. A life where if you can train yourself to find pleasure elsewhere, it’s almost just as satisfying as fulfilling a craving for food.

OR, a life where your body can have what it needs when it needs it. Both are mind-numbingly simple and excruciatingly complex – based of course of which state you’re in. The grass is once again, always greener.

As a finale, I’ve created a conclusive Lemonade Diet pro-con list based on my experience. Hope you enjoyed the tale.

Guest Blog: The Lemonade Anorexia Chronicals, Part I

By Jodie Jordan

I swear… I’m a healthy individual.

I work out daily. I do yoga. I’ll kick your ass in spin class. I eat nutritious, organic, whole foods. I don’t cook with salt. I do NOT use Splenda. I take far too many vitamins every day. Fine – I have a slight case of food and exercise snobbery.

Enter The Master Cleanser. Perhaps you’re familiar. Also known as The Lemonade Diet, the phenomenon is a detoxifying fast developed by Stanley Burroughs. Basically, you mix up some water, cayenne pepper, grade B maple syrup and lemon juice, and consume nothing else (barring the herbal laxative tea – I’ve chosen Smooth Move – twice a day) for 10 days.

You may have guessed by now that I decided to try this freaky thing out. And I did that not so much to eliminate the build up of crap from my body or even to drop a bunch of Lb’s in record time. Really, I was bored with my routine. I really wanted to see if I could do it.

I suppose really going for the gold would have involved reading his book, The Master Cleanser: With Special Needs and Problems beforehand, but this was something that I had to throw myself into with only enough mental preparation to activate an understanding to avoid any real damage to my body. Plus, that would have forced me to eliminate the economical value of the week from my Pro/Con Venn diagram. Hey, Beyoncé did it (that was on the Pro side too). And she wasn’t even too ashamed to tell Oprah. How bad could it be?

Naturally, as a writer, I felt the need to document my feelings, status, likes, dislikes and bitching with whimsical and dramatic wit, throughout. The following is the first half of my 6-day adventure sans food. Oops… did I just give away the ending?

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Day 1: December 29, 2007
It’s a detox, not a diet.

12:45 p.m.
Heavy drinking and a Mexican binge at Border Café late last night boosted my motivation to begin today, despite disparagement from my R.N. friend. Worried about my ability to recover from the hangover, I ate an organic energy bar at approximately noon. Whatever, it’s the first day. AND it was in the name of common sense and logical appreciation for my body and long-term health.

Currently, my most potent concern is passing out at the gym. Coming in at a close second place is becoming delirious and unable to accomplish necessary tasks, namely, the work that I have to do in order to make that money. I’ve assured myself that no fun little eating disorder game is worth losing my job or alienating friends. We’ll take it one day at a time.

8:00 p.m.
Earlier, one quarter of a Dunkin’ Donuts bagel sat in a tub of cream cheese and was flaunted under my nose. Now, objectively speaking, this food was not really even desirable, but the very simple principal of ignoring my visceral instinct to eat is the most unnatural of concepts. In direct relation, my regular fluctuations in mood from cranky and easily irritated to energized, patient, and ready for a grand old time, have been magnified noticeably. And a desire to quit now waves in and out with a sureness that I can keep it up. Watch out. I might be on a multiple personality warpath by the end of this.

1:39 a.m.
Well, I think it’s safe to say I’ve never been this hungry. Fortunately I had the Pats kicking ass to distract me temporarily from one of the most uncomfortable states of all time. Perhaps I’m masochistic, but I spend the evening in a bar and subsequently a club. And maybe it was the booze wafting from the drunkards around me, maybe I was just tired from getting my boogie down, but by 10:00 tonight, I started to feel legitimately buzzed. And let’s be honest. I didn’t hate it. I was just about the cheapest date in Boston tonight.

Another thing I didn’t hate, went down around 1 a.m. Post-no-more-eating shit #1. The Smooth Move laxative tea worked like a dream.

Morale: No quitters allowed.
Motivation: My mom, with the following text in response to qualms about proceeding: “I knew you couldn’t do it, you pussy.”

Day Two: December 30, 2007
Poop Tea For Breakfast

10:08 a.m.
My roommate lovingly confirmed the less than lucid state that I was in last night, with the following comment,

“When you started putting together a Brita filter at 2 a.m. last night, that was a drunk thing to do.”

Does it worry me, you might wonder, that the tendencies of a starving person are scarily in line with those of an individual who’s been drinking all night? Well, slightly. If I felt woozy enough to gallivant around town, feeling little to no disconnect from the intoxicated freaks around me, what will happen to me by the end of today? Tomorrow? Yikes.

In more uplifting news, I woke up this morning feeling strong. No hunger pains in the night, no dreams that I was gorging on a smorgasbord of Wendy’s and Waffle House. A pretty standard sleeping experience, actually. I even woke up to an exciting, albeit small, bowel movement! It was like Christmas morning. And as we speak I’m thoroughly enjoying a cup of delicious and herbaceous tea so that later on today I might be able to take another crap.

My next challenge is the gym. Here’s hoping this doesn’t end with me twisted up in the spinning rubber of a treadmill. Is there a bigger gym faux pas than a girl who can’t handle her eating disorder?

2:28 p.m.
Occasionally, and by occasionally I mean all the time, I find myself daydreaming about food. It’s not, I don’t think, that I want in particular to eat. The wanting has become a blanket. I just want. I want something that I can have. And so I’ve started to find alternate means of satisfying myself. Hot showers, comfy aromatherapy candles, drinking my lemonade concoction warm. I distract myself with cleaning, with work, by reading, by writing this. Don’t think that I haven’t entertained the idea of distracting myself with sex. It’s just that my booty call options are all extremely annoying at the moment. I will be soldiering on without that luxury.

12:30 a.m.
I went to the movies tonight. I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to get sidetrackeds from the loveliness of chewing and swallowing and feeling satisfied. And it was, but only because I was so shocked and nauseated by Hillary Swank’s gushy Irish gallivanting to remember to hate my life for other reasons.

As I stood in the concession line behind my friends, sarcastically (but longingly, really) offering my advice on what they should eat, I got to thinking. It’s strange how awkward social situations can become when food gets involved. There’s no question that I was judged for abstaining from the obligatory popcorn, snow caps and Diet Coke. But simultaneously, I was apologized to on more than one occasion for being eaten in front of. We hate on each other for eating, we hate on each other for not eating. We drink strangely strategic brews, instead of eating, to “cleanse.” Did I want to shove my head under the butter pump? Of course. But did I feel extremely satisfied with myself for receeding into the backdrop with a Smartwater bottle filled with an opaque orange liquid? Absolutely.

The things that keep us alive certainly do have more power than we give them credit for.

Morale: Thank the heavens for hot beverages.
Motivation: Recognizing that the hardest part of the day is from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m., and feeling ready to attack it tomorrow. 

Day 3: December 31, 2007
The 3rd Day Hump

9:51 a.m.
Since I’ve identified the hardest part of the day, I may as well shoot out some positive vibes and mention the easiest part: the mornings. I’m sleeping well (still no violent binge-fest dreams), perhaps due to the exhaustion I’ve bestowed upon myself. Surprisingly, I’ve woken up refreshed and alert the past several days. I wonder, though, if this is just a testament to my mind traveling into Survivalmode Town. Since I spend my days moving in and out of woozy fogginess and painful self-awareness, the familiar feeling of waking up “out of it” seems like a refreshing switch.

In other news, tonight is New Year’s Eve. And before virtually throwing your 2008 goggles at me and digitally dangling a glass of Veuve in front of my face, I did for the record, decide to boycott the evening’s festivities long before embarking on this “prelude to anorexia” in the words of my mom. All of your speculations are true: I will not drink and I will not go out. I will not count down to midnight or have a New Year’s kiss. Instead of putting a bottle of champagne to my face, vomiting in a cab and waking up next to who the hell knows with lipstick on my ass, I will be attending a yoga class from 10 p.m. to midnight at Baptiste in Porter Square, probably coming damn near close to passing out, and going to bed early to avoid feeling my body.

On the plus side, I’m looking rather skinny and super cute in my yoga gear.

January 1, 2008 1:37 a.m.
Yoga was a super duper success. No passing out. No feelings of hunger. A little dizziness, but that’s to be expected in a 90 degree room of 50 people sandwiched next to each other like yoga will be banned starting in 2008. I was surprisingly strong. Using the class as an opportunity to tune into my body, I took it easy when I needed to and pushed when I had the strength. And the best part was that nobody around me gave a shit. There was no need to justify or judge what I deemed a less-than-hardcore performance. I just listened to myself. Watched myself. Felt myself. The best December 31st I’ve ever had the privilege of remembering. And that’s not because it’s likely the only one I’ve remembered since childhood.

I spent the T ride home debating on whether or not I should jump off the detox train. Stopping would be so appropriate. Tonight could have been such a grand finale to any cleanse. But I feel like I can do it. And so I’ll keep on truckin’. With newfound fuel. Happy New Year!

Morale: Namaste. 
Motivation: Bring it on, 2008.

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Read Part II here.

Guest Blog: Mass. Gov. Patrick Proposes to Open Drug Clinics After Legalizing Heroine for State Profits

By Slava Menn

Well, I may be exaggerating just a tad, but here's how he justified the illnesses that casinos will bring to Massachusetts:

"For a few unfortunate individuals gaming is more than recreation, and we have provided for them as well. We have proposed to dedicate 2.5% of state gaming revenues to prevent and treat compulsive gambling, as well as drug and alcohol abuse and other related public health concerns, the largest such allocation in the country."

So let me get this straight.  You’re going to:

• Legalize gambling, a highly addictive recreational activity
• Make money off the people who can’t afford it, but...
• ...then help them with the addiction that you’ve caused.

Genius PR move!

That’s like Pablo Escobar opening a cocaine rehab clinic, or Phillip Morris starting a cancer center.

Sure, Mass Lotto brings in a lot of cash.  But where can you buy a scratch ticket? On any corner in Dorchester, Lowell, New Bedford.  But you’ll be hard-pressed to play “Jumbo Bucks” or “Frosty the Doughman” in Brookline, Newton, or Weston.  Tax the poor and feed the middle class and rich?  That doesn’t sound right.

Though this “Lotto Poor Tax” brings in $900 Million, Massachusetts still has a deficit of $1 Billion.   Don’t forget, we’re state that’s notorious for making bad decisions over big bucks.  We got screwed out of $15 Billion and 20 years over this Big Dig debauchery.

We don’t need another crutch. We need to rebuild the foundation.

Deval, you’re a smart man with a creative team.  Can’t you think of other ways to ways to make money?  Here’s some ideas:

• Bring in Corporate Cost Cutters – experts that go into big businesses and show them how they’re wasting money.
• Incentivize Fortune 500 companies to open offices in Massachusetts.  Big revenues, big salaries, big taxes.
• Instead providing bad things, up the tax on bad things: cigarettes, bad booze (Bud Light, Generic Vodka, Yellowtail Wine), gas guzzlers, energy wasters, excessive trash, etc.

On this course, the Casinos will be making billions for a handful of wealthy, taxing thousands of working class, and generating millions in revenue.  But Massachusetts will still be in the red.

Then what happens.  Will we have to appoint a Tony Montana to get us into the white?

Guest Blog: Pittsburgh Summer, Part 3 of 3

By Nikki Keach

Want to start the story from the beginning?
Part 1
Part 2

Now that the workers had descended on the building, I was used to seeing
white men all over the house. But the reporter was the only one I had ever seen actually sit on Aunt Florence’s sofa opposite me, wedged in the armchair with Sondra.

When he asked me about Larry and Billy and Eugene, I didn’t tell him about the twice-daily meetings on the balcony. Instead, I told him about drinking Nehis, licking popsicles, riding bicycles up and down the block and walking to the grocers. When he asked me how it happened, I didn’t tell him about the children straining for a good look at the mannequin. Instead I told him that the balcony broke apart when some of the kids strolled toward the railing.  When he asked me where I was on the balcony and what I did afterwards, I didn’t tell him what happened next. Instead I skipped to when I tried to find Cousin Dorothy to get help.  The interview lasted a long time.  I remember that the reporter was gentle, polite and deferential.  Perhaps he sensed that other emotion emanating from my cousin -- anger that a child had to die before someone cleaned up the alley and repaired the building.  But I didn’t blame the reporter.  He was nice to me.  And I was demurely cooperative, just as I had rehearsed. After the interview, I went into the bedroom and made my mind unpack the disturbing recollections, the undisclosed memories, the ones that were as troubling to me as the fall itself. 

What happened as the balcony crumbled, as clots of boys began their descent, as others stumbled and tiptoed a clumsy dance on decayed wood to find solid footing, was this. I stood motionless and watched, unable to move, my limbs inert.  In my paralysis, I saw that Sondra, my little sister, was one of the children tottering on the edge, trying to propel herself to safety, flapping her arms like a panicked blue pigeon seconds away from an alley cat on the prowl. I didn’t reach out, grab her arm and pulled her back to where I stood.  I stared, dumb-struck and nauseated. Then I lost my vision as everything became, not black, but a hot wavy yellow-white color.  Later, as my hands and wobbly legs located the stairs, I staggered and stumbled into Aunt Florence’s apartment, sick, afraid and ashamed that I had let my sister fall.  I didn’t look for Cousin Dorothy like I told the reporter or anyone else who asked.  I lurched to our fifth floor balcony. My vision still blurred, the groans below helped me pinpoint the junkyard’s three implausible tenants. Their arms, legs and heads flinched spastically. I saw that none of the figures lying in all that rubble wore a blue pinafore. And then I did something that haunted me for many years after that Pittsburgh summer, well into my adolescence.

I smiled.

I’ve thought many times about that smile of mine. Even then I knew that it didn’t simply reflect relief that my sister hadn’t fallen. Long before Pittsburgh, I decided that no matter how difficult, how humiliating, how horrendous the event, I would never show pain, never cry. I shielded myself from all kinds of adversity by smiling. That’s how I packaged the lynchings I heard Mama and Daddy whisper about at night.  That’s how I handled the insults and harassment my parents endured from the police whenever they stopped our car. That’s how I adjusted to our trip to Pittsburgh, when the highway was our toilet because people like Sondra and me couldn’t use the bathrooms at the filling stations along the road. “Never let anybody see how you feel.” I told myself.  That afternoon in Pittsburgh, my smile frustrated the horror, shock and nausea threatening to obliterate me. My smile diluted those triple menaces and flushed them away, so that no one would witness my rising anguish, especially me.

The remaining weeks of the summer still ahead of us, we kids drifted about, waiting for Larry’s return, for him and his twin to draw us together again.   Though I had kept Larry’s last smile at me in my mind’s eye, I feared that his long recuperation had altered him so much that he no longer cared about me, that he became angry or worse, sad. And I worried that I would feel differently about the twins once they rejoined us. But at the welcome home party for Larry, I began to absorb the magnitude of the disaster. It became another one of our stories, in fact, our best story which needed no embellishments once we molded our separate recollections into one that surpassed all the others that the summer’s trash pile had evoked. For now we had a shared experience of fear, heroism, cowardice and loss.

Of course things weren’t the same when Larry and Lee rejoined us. For instance, I could finally tell the twins apart.  Lee was the one who could walk, and Larry was the one in the wheel chair. We soon got used to the chair, hardly noticing it most times, and when we did, it became a shared asset, a shiny appliance that invited invention. And then there was Dr. Forester.  A few days after Billy’s funeral, he welcomed us into the mansion with Oreos and Kool-Aid.  He wanted us nearby, to know Billy the way we knew him. It seemed so strange to me those minutes we became almost as close to Dr. Forester as his own son had been to him. It turned out that Dr. Forester was not the snob I imagined him to be. He let us use the mansion as our meeting place during the day, and in the evenings we laughed and shared with him our stories about Billy’s antics, how he had been the core, the heart of our group, how he added texture to each day.  And in a way, we told Dr. Forester the truth. 

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Nikki -

Thank you so much for sharing this story with my readers. I can't wait to read Pittsburgh Summer in "novelette" form!

You're the best.

Love,
Ryan

Stay tuned for insights from this guy. 
He's posting next Thursday, December 20th, as part of the Guest Blog series.

Looks like he's already got a bunch of ideas cookin'.

Guest Blog: Pittsburgh Summer, Part 2 of 3

By Nikki Keach

Missed Part 1? Read it here.

It happened one late-summer afternoon, just before our parents, (or in my case, Cousin Dorothy) came home for the lunch break. As usual, we were collected on the balcony when Eugene sighted something exceptional.

“Hey y’all! Looka, there.” Eugene called from the railing.  “What’s that?”

“Holy Cow!” Billy said. “It’s somebody dead down there.”

“Naw, it ain’t nobody. Just one of them big dolls they dress up in new clothes and they put it in store windows.” Larry or Lee corrected Billy.

“Naw, it’s real.  A real somebody,” Billy insisted.

“Lemme see!” the other boys shouted as they rushed to the railing to judge for themselves.

“Look at it good and hard,” Larry or Lee said, “It’s all stiff and straight, don’t got no clothes on it. Ain’t got real fingers or nothing else real. Besides it’s white.  What would a white man be doing dead down there?”

By now most of us were pressed against the railing, straining to focus on those naked body parts. Those of us who drifted back to the glider to make room for the others had to accept Larry and Lee’s logic and the evidence of our own eyes.  That smooth pink head and that perky facial expression told us that Billy’s corpse was indeed a mannequin. Then Frankie deftly redirected our thoughts with an invitation to begin what would surely be the summer’s best story.

“Wonder how come they put him in our backyard?” he asked.

We would have collected that prize, hauled him to the balcony and cleaned him up.  We would have given him a name. From our homes we would have snatched hats and shoes, jackets and shirts, ties and trousers to cover his naked body in style. We would have pretended long conversations with him, tied him to a bicycle for our trips up and down the block. We would have spun stories for the rest of the summer about how our new silent friend happened to appear in the junkyard below Larry and Lee’s balcony.  But we didn’t, because his story ceded to the one about to happen.

I remember setting my imagination to spin the core of our new friend’s story and scanning Aunt Florence’s closet for things she didn’t need that a man might wear, when a sound cut through my spinning and my scanning.  I recognized the noise as the one produced inside my head when, after sucking the flavor from a Popsicle stick, I cracked and shredded it with my teeth.  That afternoon, I heard that sound, but I hadn’t finished a popsicle and the sound was not inside my head, but outside, followed by shrill decrescendos, a chorus of children howling  “oh no!”

The railing cracked, splintered, gave out, unable to accommodate the load of six children leaning against it and the weight of their imaginations.  The railing fractured, with a force that hacked through the balcony’s floor. The railing collapsed with cataclysmic power that took it, a section of the balcony and three children pressed against it, chucking them all onto the disintegrating refrigerator, the rusty car door, the shattered windshield, the cans and the liquor bottles, the sewing machine and our almost new friend.

I recall that I ran downstairs into my bedroom and hid my face in the pillow.  I remember trying not to remember, trying to erase what I had just seen.   When I heard the sirens, I remembered Sondra.  And Larry and Lee.  Where were they?  And Billy.  Where was he?

I joined the throng of grown-ups including Cousin Dorothy assembled at the mouth of the alley, nearly hiding the boys from our group standing among them.  I was relieved to catch sight of the blue pinafore. Sondra had worn it that day, and Frankie was holding her hand as she cried. I stood with them, letting the grownups push in front of us, shake their heads and get a good look to discern whose child lay in the junk. From their whispers I learned that the fallen were Eugene and Larry and Billy. We children waited, watched and then moved close enough to the stretchers to murmur something hopeful like, “See you tomorrow” as each child was loaded into one of the three waiting ambulances.  From his stretcher, Larry looked right at me and smiled before his ambulance disappeared down our street.

News of the accident in the substandard housing in Pittsburgh traveled quickly across the city. Aunt Florence was on the phone all day and night. Cousin Dorothy had to bolt the door against news organizations insisting on an interview with Sondra and me. And the next day, Mama and Daddy arrived to take us home.  But we wanted to continue with the summer we were having.  So we convinced them to let us stay, telling them that we were safe, okay, having a “good time.”

Orders from the municipal government dispatched legions of carpenters, plumbers, bricklayers and electricians to our building. There were no more gatherings anywhere near the apartment as the workers demolished what had to be replaced and hammered, spackled and glued what could be repaired. We searched for a stable meeting place. Sometimes, it was Frankie’s front steps, or Willie’s, but never anywhere near the apartment.  Sometimes a few of us would walk to the grocers for soft drinks and candy or ride our bikes.

In a few days, Eugene was released from the hospital, with a huge bandage covering the 30 stitches needed to close the gash in his forehead. Lee spent his days at the hospital during Larry’s long recuperation. And Billy?  His hospitalization lasted only three days.  By week’s end, he died.  His death became another one of the many front-page stories about the incident, with a big headline quoting Billy. “Please bury me in my cowboy suit,” he had said.  Dr. Forester obeyed. We all went to Billy’s funeral.

For the rest of the summer newspaper articles focused on some aspect of the tragedy – from corruption and neglect as consequences of segregation, to the progress on restoring the building and Larry’s recuperation. A few weeks after the accident, while the workers were still busy fixing everything, Cousin Dorothy asked me if I wanted to talk with one of the reporters.  When she said that she’d be there as he questioned me, I agreed to tell him what I remembered. I lay awake all night preparing for the interview, searching for the right words to frame the catastrophe. I pictured my demeanor, where to put my hands and how to set my facial expression. Cousin Dorothy didn’t go to work the day of the interview. Instead, she tidied the living room, a chore she usually set aside for Sondra and me.  In fact, my sister and I had been given no chores since the accident. She, like every adult we encountered afterwards, no longer treated us like annoying inconveniences. Instead, she coddled us as though we were the ones recovering from the fall. During the interview Cousin Dorothy stood next to me the entire time with her arms folded and drumming her fingers on her blouse. In that pose, she charged the air with two entirely different sets of emotions.  I felt her sorrow and her compassion.  I felt her concern and her attentiveness.

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Stay tuned for the conclusion of Pittsburgh Summer.
To be posted next Thursday, December 13th.

Guest Blog: Pittsburgh Summer, Part 1 of 3

By Nikki Keach

It happened one summer in the Jim Crow fifties when Daddy convinced Mama to let Sondra and me spend the summer with his niece, Florence, and her daughter, the beautiful and brittle, nearly post-adolescent, Dorothy.

Mama didn’t think much of Daddy’s coal-mining West Virginia kin, now scattered across East Coast cities.  As far as Mama was concerned, Daddy’s people carried and deposited that West Virginia dust and poverty into the segregated neighborhoods they settled, like the one in Pittsburgh where Aunt Florence and Cousin Dorothy lived, where Sondra and I stayed that summer.

From one end of Aunt Florence’s long block to the other, the opulence of the housing decreased or increased depending on which way you walked. The largest, take-your-breath-away-mansion we had ever seen belonging to a Black family stood at one end of the block. My Aunt Florence, however, lived at the other end, in the tenement on the corner. Though I retained a lot of Mama’s snobbery about everybody in Daddy’s family, except of course for Daddy, I liked Aunt Florence immediately, especially the way she hugged me like I was perfect.

Cousin Dorothy was altogether different from her mother. Sharp tongued, proper and edgy, she seemed even more highly strung than Mama. As Aunt Florence helped Sondra and me unpack, I overheard Mama agree with my cousin about the rundown state of the tenement and its backyard. Cousin Dorothy had set her mind to do something about it, but no matter how articulately she described the shabbiness of the building, nothing ever came of her frequent calls and visits to the landlord’s office.  And, none of the landlord’s promised visits to inspect the place ever materialized. As far as I was concerned, my Aunt’s apartment was comfy and clean. It had a television, little knick knacks and doilies all around the living room.   Sondra and I had our own bedroom with a rug and our own bureau with a mirror on top.  Most important, there wasn’t anything at all in Aunt Florence’s apartment that Sondra and I couldn’t touch.

Thoughtful Aunt Florence had arranged for the 12 year old twins from one of the upstairs apartments to keep us company while she and Cousin Dorothy worked. That first day, Larry and Lee took us to the grocers, bought us Hostess cupcakes and orange Nehis, and introduced us to their friends, all boys.  The twins schooled Sondra and me in the ways of the neighborhood, like where to stand when the Popsicle man chimed his way down the block and which of the big boys to avoid. I developed what was surely my first crush on Larry and Lee, who I could not tell apart. But after a week, I didn’t bother myself with choosing between them because, after all, they were twins.

So that Pittsburgh summer was not one of tossing jacks or jumping double dutch, or marking up the sidewalk for hop-scotch.  It was the first time, the only time, when all my friends were boys, all older than me except for Billy, William Forester III, Dr. Forester’s only child.  Billy lived in the mansion at the other end of Aunt Florence’s block. Frankly, I was suspicious of Billy at first.  At nine years old, my experience with the very well-off Black kids in DC was limited, though I accepted Mama’s stories as though they were my own. From her, I knew that rich Black people disdained working folks like my parents, that they belonged to sophisticated clubs that excluded people like her and Daddy, that they held college degrees from Howard and Morehouse and Spellman, and that they lived in parts of DC where every house was a mansion, like Billy’s.  So, it made perfect sense to me when Larry and Lee said that Dr. Forester didn’t want Billy associating with “that sort from the other end.”

The twins had tried to keep away from him, but Billy tagged along anyway, ignoring them ignoring him. The group had to admit that Billy added pizzazz to the bicycle riding up and down the block, and stealing grapes and figs from backyards at the opulent end. By the time Sondra and I arrived, Billy was folded into the group as naturally as butter into mashed potatoes. I admired his cowboy outfit which he wore once a week.  It had real everything from the felt hat to the cowboy boots and the really real looking six-shooter, shinning from a genuine leather holster. Soon I grew to like Billy too. We could count on him to swing wildly and miss in our summer-long baseball game, to grab some extra hot-dogs for us from the backyard cook-outs we ate our way through on the fourth of July and to concoct the wackiest stories when we relaxed on the balcony.

Each apartment in Aunt Florence’s building had a large balcony off the kitchen. We gathered on Larry and Lee’s sixth floor balcony, not just because it was theirs, but because their balcony had a rusty glider big enough to seat three boys, or two boys and Sondra and me when Larry and Lee made one of the boys relinquish his place on the glider for us. Everyday on the balcony, we kids met and played, and met and talked about playing.  With our backs against the glider’s cracked plastic and our feet pressing hard on the weathered floor, we licked popsicles and the center out of Oreos and swung back and forth in a wide arc chatting with the boys sitting opposite us on the railing.

Six stories below that railing lay the tiny patch of ground that served as the tenement’s backyard, but was, in fact, an illegal dump. That was the other reason we gathered on Larry and Lee’s balcony. From their railing we marveled at the assortment of trash that accumulated down there, sprawling into the alley.  It was the kind of spectacular junk that the garbage man wouldn’t collect but ignited our vast imaginations.  Larry and Lee’s glider came from that pile as did Billy’s growing collection of more and more realistic-looking wooden swords.  But usually, we surveyed the heap for items that invited fanciful histories.  For example, that battery, which we called a generator, next to those rusty cans and liquor bottles, well, it failed during a crucial experiment on cats. The kids peed too many times on that mattress, so that now their mother made them sleep on the floor.  Miss Lady didn’t need that busted sewing machine, over there next to the cracked windshield, because her husband finally got a good job at the Heinz factory. That corroded door became useless when the car was converted into a hotrod, a red hotrod. That new looking refrigerator just plain broke when it fell off the truck as the driver swung around the corner on two wheels to escape the police. We imagined that if we gathered early enough, we might catch “them” dumping their rubbish, but Cousin Dorothy’s chores prevented Sondra and me from joining everybody on Larry and Lee’s balcony the one morning we agreed get up early to spy.

When we weren’t checking the dump for new stories or revising old ones, we relaxed on Larry and Lee’s balcony, drank our Nehis, reviewed the morning’s events and planned the next adventure.  Sometimes we sat silent, listening to the rusty glider accept the stress of our weight and our demands on it to move us as we waited for the grown-ups to call us to lunch or dinner. One by one we’d peel away assured that we’d gather again on Larry and Lee’s balcony and spot the summer’s best story lying in the heap of trash below us.

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What happens next, you ask?
Part 2 to be posted Thursday, December 6th