The Dog Ate My Life
by Rosemarie—Age 55—Los Angeles, CA
Sixteen, working behind the deli counter that’s taller than me, the same old man comes every week to buy a half pound of nose-snotty, slip-ploppy, ripped-out-alien-guts oysters.
Seventeen, singing folk songs for the Friday night country clubbers’ dinner hour, I am not discovered.
Nineteen, one month pregnant with her, I need a job. “Because I’m getting married!” I tell Mr. Constantine, smiling, but Zeus’ Diner won’t hire me because “married women have babies, no?”
Twenty-two, my son is born and his dad is very drunk.
Twenty-four, I take the kids and leave before he does kill me.
Twenty-five, two kids and one divorce later, hawking my songs to the art show crowd, I refuse to sing “Feelings.”
Twenty-six, earning my degree to teach music, Regan gets elected and I immediately lose my food stamps so hell, the kids gotta eat.
And parked in front of a manual typewriter in a partitioned space on the balcony of the Chamber of Commerce, the atrium air resounds with the tap, tap, tap of the keys and the phone I’m not allowed to answer.
Twenty-nine, making twenty-six unique flavors of fresh pasta in a shop window on Park Avenue, a young attorney licks his Amaretto gelato, then pauses to snidely ask, “You do this all day?”
Thirty-four, pastry-chefing at Edward’s downtown, I blow out my shoulder and get to know Mr. Percodan.
Earning that Bachelor’s degree, I tutor a Gulf War vet whose “Syndrome” symptoms include “a permanent headache” but his G.I. benefits don’t cover this.
Husband #2 keeps leaving me for his mom. He “can never love” my son.
Forty! A substitute teacher is a: clueless back-hunching, Frito-munching ghost of a barking dog who never gets to teach anything.
Forty-three. “Dr. Roesh” (at the end of this), family members jibe in bad German accents.
Forty-five, I divorce husband #2. They shoot horses, don’t they? Uh, well, just call me Barbaro.
I’m not his type—woman-cruising genius-bastard who’s ten years my junior—and I’m madly in love with him, so what do I do? Marry his buddy. I’m officially insane.
Mystery illness eats up my life like some ravenous hound from Hell. But….
My children take me west where I get—medically—very lucky, write, read books slowly, make my own bread, feed finches from my sunny Hollywood balcony and soon, quite soon now, I’ll be teaching again.
4 Comments