ANY WAY YOU SLICE IT

This work is copyrighted. It may not be copied or excerpted in any form on any type of media, except for brief excerpts on search engines and links. Furthermore, this post and any part of this blog, including the author's biography and all artwork, may not be used in ANY way by AI (artificial intelligence), including scanning, summarizing, reading, copying, or training, without the author's permission.

ANY WAY YOU SLICE IT
by MARY ELIZABETH (LEACH) RAINES

He sits next to me, sneaks a quick up-and-down glance, and smiles. “Tell me about yourself,” he says.

The strong scent of his cologne is overpowering. It reminds me of the liquid hospital soap I used in the clinic bathroom after getting all the requisite shots—you know, the ones that are required for working in remote places on other continents. Most people over the age of 15 would recoil at the heavy swirls of fragrance emanating from him. Not me. I am fine with the smell.

That’s probably because my nose is used to being overwhelmed by far more obnoxious scents, like the chemicals in the lab. Or the sweaty guys at the job site who labor all day in the sun without the benefit of regular access to showers. Thus I don’t mind a bit that simply by virtue of sitting a few inches away from him, the stench of his cologne already clings to my dress and will remain there long after I wash it.

My dress. I swivel to face him and cross my legs, feeling glad that I decided to wear a dress instead of my usual cargo pants—although all those pockets in the pants are handy for carrying a myriad of tools, and even better, I don’t have to hold in my stomach when I’m wearing them, which I must do in this slinky blue dress I’ve donned. The dress has no pockets. That alarms me on some level far more than any smells could because I am so used to having pockets. Still, I’d put it on in hopes that it would make me look more approachable, and the scent-laden guy seems to be proving me right.

I’m also happy that I’ve worn the earrings with the mosaic rhinestone patterns on them. They flatter my face and take attention away from the thick lenses of my glasses. When I reach up to push my glasses back, I also check the earrings to make sure that they are still fastened, fearing that they might slip off because they are just clip-ons. It has been so long since I’ve worn pierced earrings that impenetrable hymen-like flesh has grown over the holes in my earlobes. 

This man with the strong cologne who is curious about me has gorgeous hair. It’s not quite gay-gorgeous—darn it; why does their team get all the best-looking men?—but still, it is really good hair. He pushes back some untethered locks that have fallen onto his forehead. They apparently prefer being there and tumble right back down as soon as he removes his hand. I’m not used to seeing good hair on men. The guys at my job usually wear baseball caps, never turned askew in some rakish fashion, but sensibly protecting their faces from sun and sweat. It isn’t pretty when they take their hats off. I often wear such a cap myself.

I say, “What would you like to know?”

“Well,” he says, still smiling, “for starters, what do you do?”

I really don’t want to tell him. Whenever I answer that question, men’s pupils contract and they quickly find excuses to bolt away, which has left me with very few opportunities to wade into the stimulating waters of flirtation. Even I am aware that the pupils of someone’s eyes grow larger, not smaller, when they are interested in you.

I fiddle with my strawberry margarita. To color-coordinate with the rosy drink, the bartender has coated the wide rim of the margarita glass with extra-large blushing-pink Himalayan salt crystals.

He asks again. “What is it that you do?”

Thinking wistfully that I will soon have to say adieu to that tempting head of hair, I finally answer his question. “I’m a paleogeneticist.”

He makes me repeat it two more times, but to my astonishment he does not run away.

“What does a paleogeneticist do?” he asks.

At first I stammer a little. He thinks I am tongue-tied because my job is difficult to explain, but that isn’t it. I am simply (and delightfully) floored because this heady man is actually showing interest in me. Taking in a deep cologne-saturated breath, I forge ahead and launch into my answer. I tell him how, on my latest project, I painstakingly supervised the extraction of the hairy stomach contents of an Ice Age wolf, encased them in a sterile container much the way one does with a heart ready to be transplanted, and flew with it back to the lab—the one full of nasty chemical smells—and then, after assiduously slicing off tiny bits and analyzing them to find out exactly what that wolf had eaten 14,400 years ago, I’d found that the wolf’s final dinner had turned out to be a mammuthus primigenius, otherwise known as a wooly mammoth, and its DNA showed conclusively there’d been no inbreeding, revealing that the mammoth had come from a healthy population….

I stop and flush, realizing I’ve been blabbering for way too long. I do that because I truly find my work stimulating. As noted, however, men usually roll their eyes as soon as they hear the word paleogeneticist and quickly make excuses to leave. To my dismay, just like all the rest of them, he does not respond to my chatty rant, not even giving me so much as an affirmative grunt. He avoids eye contact so that I cannot see the inevitable shrinking of his pupils. It seems that once again, in spite of the blue dress and earrings, I’ve blown my chances.

“Understand—we didn’t find an entire mammoth inside the wolf,” I mumble in a final pathetic joke, trying fruitlessly to make it better. “I’m sure he had to share it with the rest of his pack.”

The silence is disheartening. Crestfallen, as I wait for him to come up with the inevitable excuse to get away, I turn my gaze to the as-yet-untouched margarita and compulsively begin counting the pink salt crystals coating the rim of the glass, because that’s the way my mind works.

As I count, I start to stick my hands in my pockets in defeat, and then sadly realize that the dress doesn’t have any. Rather than sit here wretchedly while waiting for him to flee, it occurs to me that I can save my dignity by being the first to leave. I decide to tell him that I have to use the ladies’ room, and then escape out the back door. Mentally rehearsing my speech and preparing for flight, I peer over at him.

His head is still lowered. That wondrous, glorious head of hair (with just the teeniest bare patch on the crown) fills my vision, and the potent scent of his cologne floods over me, blotting out my scheme to run away.

Instead, I switch tactics and bravely crow, “Penny for your thoughts?”

He raises his head, looks up at me with a guilty face, and says, “Oh, I’m sorry. I was counting how many salt crystals there were on the rim of your margarita.”

Of course we immediately fall in love

ONE YEAR LATER
We have been reasonably happy together, but today I am going to break up with him.

This morning I was doing some online research, browsing through the internet to discover if there were any new paleontology tools, the kind that can deftly slice through the skin, flesh, and bone of a fossilized animal. The computer brought up a news article that it decided pertained to my search. I was surprised to see the picture of a younger version of him accompanying the story. Naturally, I began reading it.

It seems that a few years ago my lover had been married. As I read on, my curiosity turned to dismay, for the report said that he had murdered his wife. Over a period of five days, using the same kinds of tools that I was looking for, he had meticulously chopped her body up into small pieces and flushed them down the toilet. For most people the smell of decay would have become unbearable by the fourth day, but if he had been wearing his trademark cologne, he probably hadn’t noticed.

He was busted when his wife’s finger, still wearing an engraved wedding ring, got stuck in the city’s wastewater sewage trap. The arresting officers were so horrified by the gruesome circumstances of the murder that they failed to read him his rights, so he was was freed on a technicality.

That is not why I intend to break up with him, though. I am breaking up with him because he has started to go bald.

***

©M. E. Raines, 2026

ANDREW AND JANET

NOTE: The author herself has taught many classes in Sedona. Apart from her being the furthest thing from wealthy, the difference is that her students learned practical skills with which they could earn a good income as a result, and received many days of training for far less than the cost of the weekend seminar referenced.

 

ANDREW AND JANET
A TRUE STORY
by MARY ELIZABETH (LEACH) RAINES
© M. E. Raines, 2025

 

PREFACE
When I lived in Sedona, our small city underwent an enormous housing crisis when landlords consumed with greed decided to turn their homes and apartments into lucrative short-term rentals for tourists. A large number of residents were kicked out of their homes. Housing costs skyrocketed. It reached a point where not a single one of our thirty police officers was able to live in the very city that they were protecting, and a high school teacher was living out of her car. Those who lurked on the fringes of society had no chance at all for decent shelter.
    The extreme housing crisis did not seem to concern the handful of famous New Age gurus, all multi-millionaires or billionaires, who buzzed into our community one weekend to give a three-day conference. Sedona, a Mecca for the New Age, had helped them become wealthy, and this weekend would be no exception. The hundreds of out-of-towners who’d enrolled in the conference—many of whom were staying in the short-term rentals—paid a hefty four-figure admission fee in exchange for the promise of having their spiritual frequencies raised so that they could live the abundant life they had always desired, and along the way, elevate planetary consciousness.

ONE DAY THERE was a knock on my door. Peeking out, I saw a 70-ish man on the landing. When I cracked open the door, he smiled at me in a kind, friendly way.
    “Hello,” he said. “I’m Andrew, your neighbor.”
    White-haired, quite tall, lean, with a large nose, Andrew was a man who might almost have cut an elegant and appealing figure, except that there was something just a little off about him, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
    Because I felt uneasy, I kept the chain on my partially opened door. He didn’t seem to mind. He told me that a shade umbrella had blown over in my carport, and he said rather proudly that he had uprighted it for me. I thanked him, and he left. It was quite odd.
    Not long afterward I learned that Andrew was utterly broke and homeless. He was staying quite illegally in a tent that was hidden from view in the back yard of Starlight Blue* (*not her real name), an eccentric neighbor of mine who lived in a shabby house across the street from me. Starlight was a compassionate and earnest elderly lady, a hoarder who loved to take in homeless strays—human ones. I liked her. I liked her strays less.
    Andrew was definitely an improvement over some of the people whom she had invited to live with her. There had, for instance, been Brad, a young man who was also a serious substance abuser. When I first moved to the neighborhood, he introduced himself to me on the street in front of my house. He did so by grabbing my breasts. “Nice tits,” he shouted by way of welcome. He sometimes came into my yard to vomit. Whenever Starlight Blue went away, Brad would station himself on her front porch, turn the radio on full blast, drink, and proceed to pass out.
    One day when I was outdoors, Starlight Blue came nervously across the street, looking back over her shoulder, and revealed to me that she was scared. This took me by surprise. She was normally a pretty intrepid person, someone who always kept her doors unlocked and who took walks around the neighborhood at 1:00 a.m. She was not the type who could be easily frightened. She anxiously told me that Brad had put his hands around her neck not once, but multiple times, and had threatened to kill her. She didn’t know what to do.
    I did. I drove her straight to the local police office and helped her get an officer to remove him from her home, along with an immediate restraining order.
    Another example of the homeless people Starlight Blue generously took in and sheltered was a man who (presumably) suffered from Tourette’s syndrome; it was either that or crystal meth. This meant that at random times during the day and night he would wander outdoors and shout obscenities at the top of his lungs.
    Now you understand why I kept the chain on my door when I first met Andrew. Fortunately, he turned out to be a sweet, harmless, and very helpful aging man. Whenever I saw him he looked happy, despite living completely off the grid in that small tent without so much as a radio, cellphone, or Social Security card.

    Andrew spent his time volunteering. He would walk cheerfully to his destinations in all sorts of weather and would usually refuse when I offered to give him a ride. One of his occupations was helping to prepare meals for less fortunate elders at the senior center, which was where, I imagine, he was also fed, since Starlight Blue certainly did not have the funds to buy food for him.
    He volunteered at the library, and with an organization that took care of homeless people (which was ironic), and at the local animal shelter. His weeks were full, busy, and rich.
    In those days I was dealing with some physical issues. Andrew noticed this and, without even asking, took it upon himself to wheel my garbage cans out to the street and back on garbage day, for which I was immensely grateful. Multiple times I asked if I could reimburse him for his help, and this impoverished man would say brightly, “Oh, no. All I want is to see your smile!” I would comply, and he would be genuinely delighted.
    Then, seemingly overnight, Andrew decided that he was actually a woman trapped in a man’s body. He told me that he was changing his name to Janet.
    Janet did not have the means to do anything medical about her newly chosen gender, so she retained the same deep voice, muscles, “equipment,” and masculine gait as before. Those traits did not enhance the womanly look she desired, especially combined with her height, broad shoulders, angular face, and large nose. Some neighbors called her Klinger behind her back*, for she soon began wearing makeup and earrings, and attempted to dress fashionably with donated clothing. (*Klinger was the name of a big-nosed male cross-dresser on an old TV show called M*a*s*h.) She never quite hit the mark, every day donning a different overblown and oftentimes ludicrous outfit. Finding dresses and skirts that fit her tall, lanky, male frame must have presented a challenge. You certainly noticed her when she walked down the street, for she looked absurd.
    Even so, she took her newly acquired gender seriously, and when anyone commented on her appearance, she would say merrily, “Well, I’m still in training.” The only time I ever saw her brow become cloudy was when I accidentally called her Andrew instead of Janet.
          
    I confess that I held more than a little judgment about her new  persona, that is until one day when we chatted for a bit on the street. Tears suddenly came to her eyes as, looking down on me, she said, “You know, I was expecting people to react poorly when I made my change, but everyone has been quite kind to me.”
    I was moved, and this made me feel more tender towards her, but it does not mean that everything she did was appropriate or wholesome. Here is an example. Even though she lived in the tent, she had permission to spend time on the porch of the house if the weather became too hot. One warm day Starlight Blue came across the street to find me. She was once again in visible dismay. Apparently a little girl and her mother had come to visit. When they arrived, who should be stretched out happily on a lawn chair on the porch, relaxing right next to the front door, but Janet, who had donned a woman’s skimpy bikini. Unfortunately, her male bits were bulging immodestly out from the tiny bikini bottom, stuff that one oughtn’t to show, especially to little girls—or to anyone else, for that matter. I doubt if Janet was deliberately attempting to expose the “him” parts of herself, but nevertheless, that is what happened.
    Starlight Blue was distraught and didn’t know what to do about it, so she wound up doing nothing. Janet simply didn’t possess a good sense of such things. On the positive side, she was honest, nothing much ever disturbed her, even her own poverty, and she was consistently cheerful.

    Over the course of a few years, Janet moved from the illegal tent into a similarly illegal small trailer that was also in Starlight Blue’s tiny and cluttered back yard. The new accommodation couldn’t have been easy. Like the tent, this ramshackle old trailer had no electricity or plumbing. Worse, Starlight Blue, who did not herself conform to society's norms, kept such high stacks of old magazines, yellowing newspapers, and hoarded junk in the trailer that Janet could scarcely move. It was, however, a step up from living in a tent, so she did not complain.
    For all her peculiarities, I liked Janet, and Starlight Blue and I confided in one another that, bikini aside, we felt much safer having someone with a man’s muscular strength living within easy earshot.

    Okay. Remember those super-wealthy gurus? On the very weekend when they were happily raking in lots and lots of cash in exchange for injecting a spiritual high into the well-heeled crowds who could afford it, I saw that my garbage cans had not been taken out. Concerned, I went across the street and learned that Janet had been discovered lying unconscious at the door to her trailer. Nobody knew how long she had lain there. She was rushed to the hospital, where it was discovered that her body was riddled with incurable cancer. Living as she did, she’d had no access whatsoever to medical care, and none of us had any idea if our uncomplaining neighbor had been suffering. Within a couple of weeks, she died.
    Sadly, even if she had remained well, Janet would never have been able to receive the wonderful spiritual gifts the New Age leaders were bestowing on the attendees at their conference. She couldn’t possibly afford to get her frequencies heightened so that she could live an abundant life and, along the way, raise planetary consciousness. Then again, she wouldn’t have been able to attend the seminar even if she did have the money to pay to boost her spirituality. She was far too busy volunteering to help others.

    I often think what a difference it could have made if the many so-called spiritual leaders who had become extremely rich by coming to Sedona would have pooled just a tiny fraction of their wealth to buy a few places and turn them into affordable housing for police officers, or school teachers...or people like Janet.
    It made me wonder who among us was the more spiritual: the famous billionaire/millionaire speakers who offered amazing enlightenment, but only to those with plenty of cash to fork over to them? Or was it my friend Janet—humble, homeless, disconnected, penniless, and more than a little crazy—whose entire life was spent in service to others?

***

THE HOLIDAY PAJAMAS AND FRANKIE AVALON

THE HOLIDAY PAJAMAS AND FRANKIE AVALON

This work is copyrighted. Other than brief excerpts on search engines or links, it may not be copied or excerpted in any form on any type of media.

Except for purposes of locating in search engines, this post and this blog may not be used in any way by AI (artificial intelligence), including excerpting, scanning, summarizing, or training, without the author's permission.

 

by MARY ELIZABETH (LEACH) RAINES, © 2024

“Ann?” calls a woman’s voice from outside. “Ann, are you there?”

“Hold on. I’m slow,” I reply as I shuffle to the door of my trailer.

I don’t go by Ann. I have never gone by Ann. I don’t even like the name Ann. Okay, yes, it’s my legal first name, but from the time I was born, I’ve only been called by my middle name, Marie.

This does not matter to Amazon, Verizon, Medicare, Social Security, hospitals, offices, and the people on the other end of the line in overseas call centers who only answer the phone many long minutes after I have been placed on a hold by a recording telling me that they are experiencing larger call volumes than usual and how much they value me as a customer. To all of them, I am Ann.

I continue to the front door, holding onto my walker for balance. When I open it, a chunky blonde woman stands there. She forces out a patronizing smile.

“Ann?”

Should I even bother telling her what my real name is? No, no need. I will never see her again. I nod my head yes.

“Happy Holidays, Ann,” she says, pleased with herself, and hands me a package. It is wrapped in cheap red paper that has reindeer faces on it and the words Jolly Holidays. Both she and the wrapping paper are careful to avoid using the word Christmas.

“My goodness. What is this?” I pretend to be surprised.

“It’s your holiday gift from the Senior Ride Center!”

She continues to squeeze out a smile. It reminds me of a beauty contestant who has just lost the contest.

“Well my goodness, how very nice,” I say, my voice quavering.

From the way she dresses and the newly-waxed Lexus I see over her shoulder in my carport, she is someone who has money, lots of money. I ask anyway. Maybe it’s a little bit mean of me.

“Do you work at the Senior Ride Center, dear?” I ask.

“Oh, no.” She seems both amazed and horrified at the question, and is eager to set me straight. “No, no, no. I’m a volunteer from the Women’s Club.”

She explains further about the Women’s Club, speaking to me in a slow, condescending manner as if she were addressing a toddler or someone who isn’t very smart, but I have to hand it to her: she keeps on smiling. I smile back at her, behaving as though I enjoy being patronized and wouldn’t have it any other way. We are both being incredible fakes.

The Senior Ride Center arranges rides to medical appointments for people like me, old folks without money who are unable to get around on their own any longer. Each year as December approaches, they mail form letters to all of us seniors. These letters are printed in blue ink using a cheerful cursive font so that it almost-but-not-quite looks as if they have been personally hand-written.

“Dear Ann,” mine begins. The letter amiably asks me to choose which gift I’d like from the below list by checking off the appropriate box and mailing the form back to Center. It tells me that if I prefer, I can call the office with my selection. The list gives me the choice of receiving an afghan, soap and shampoo, a Christmas—er, sorry—holiday wreath, pajamas, or slippers.  It also has a line asking if there is anything else that I need.

To save the money of using a stamp, I call the office and say that I would enjoy receiving a pair of pajamas please. Another pajama set is always welcome. I add that I also need a new sports bra

Here’s what I’d really like: an all-expense-paid trip to a warm beach. I like the beach. It brings back memories. Or a subscription to satellite TV, because that’s gotten super expensive. Or, if that’s too much to ask, a bottle of wine, because who can afford wine any more. But I settle for the pajamas. And a sports bra.

“What size pajamas, Ann?” asks the unfriendly female who answers my call.

“Oh, gee, my size? I don’t know. It wavers between an extra large and an XX,” I say, rambling. “Or maybe just a regular large. An L. Depending on whether the pajamas run big or not. Because, you know, if they’re made in one of those countries where the women are tiny, what they think of as large turns out to be…. ”

She interrupts me and snaps, “Just choose a size. I can’t write all that down on the form.”

Oh, dear. I’ve talked too much. You do that sometimes when you’re lonely. I should have known better. Especially with this woman. There are several different people who answer the phones at the Senior Ride Center. Whenever I call and get her, I have to remind myself to keep it short, even abrupt. She always acts as though my requests are huge impositions, as if I am being a pest, and I inevitably feel let down after I’m done booking a ride with her.

“Just choose one or the other,” she now says impatiently. “Quickly. I don’t have all day. What size?”

Without time to think, I say XX, and immediately regret it, but she has already hung up. I feel depressed. Happy holidays to me.

Back to the door: despite the red paper wrapping with the reindeer faces, I of course know exactly what is in the package that is being thrust at me. My XX pajamas. And my sports bra. Except when I open it later on, there is no bra. And the pajamas are way too big.

I continue the feeble old lady act with the stocky blonde at the door. It’s expected of me.

“Why, thank you, dear,” I say in a (genuinely) wobbly voice, leaning over my walker and taking the package from her with a trembling hand that is, always to my surprise when I look at it, full of veins and criss-cross creases and brown age spots. What else can I say to her? “Hey, man, that’s so groovy!” In fact, while the pajamas will be useful, this gift is not groovy.

 

It’s funny, putting on such an old lady show. I’m quite good at it, but I SO don’t feel like an old lady. No, other than the fact that I am full of wrinkles, and my hair has become white and cottony, and my body hurts, and I’m lonely because everyone I know has died, and I can’t walk on my own any longer (the sports bra being only for support, not sports)—apart from those things, I don’t feel much differently than I did when I was young and pretty and everyone called me Marie, because nobody had computers then that decided what your name should be.

I didn’t have any money in those days either, so I couldn’t afford college, but what I wound up doing was even better. I moved to L.A. where for a while I worked as a go-go dancer in a nightclub, wearing a miniskirt and thick black eyeliner and little white boots. Yes, that was me doing the twist in that go-go cage. Boy, could I ever move! I loved the dancing. My legs, now such swollen stiff stubs, were absolutely terrific and my smile was genuine.

After a few months, I advanced to being an extra in the teen-surfer-beach movies that were all the rage back then. The pay wasn’t much, but it was a really cool job. I had so much fun! Think about it: going to work consisted of putting on a bikini, teasing my hair up in a beehive—hair that did not then look like white cotton candy—and wiggling my hips as wildly as I could to rock ’n roll hits. I wasn’t a star, of course. We extras were just backdrops for the real stars, Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon, who were wildly popular back then, and I was only one of a throng of a couple of dozen other cute kids all pretending that we were having a great time. For the most part, we were. On breaks from filming when they were putting up the lighting and stuff, we goofed off a lot. And when the cameras rolled, that was exciting. I thought of myself as an actress.

I never spoke with Annette, but once I was in a short scene with Frankie Avalon, who did a little chatting with me between takes. He was awfully nice, but of course he was just being friendly as he was already married. There were lots of others, though, who weren’t. I flirted shamelessly with the boys on the set, and sometimes wound up bringing this or that guy back to my bed when the film shoot was over. Once I brought two of them home with me. I was good in bed. Who, looking at me now, would ever imagine that?

And guess what? I never ever wore pajamas. I didn’t even own pajamas. No, if I slept in anything, it would be in my little bikini bottoms. My favorite pair had a small fabric honeybee placed in a prominent spot. When the censorship people would not allow them to be worn in the film, the costumer gave them to me, saying that they were no longer of any use to her. I still have them.

It wasn’t only in bed that I was good. Obviously, I used to be very good at dancing, and, at least in my imagination, acting.

I can no longer dance, and quite sadly, I haven’t entertained a man in my bed for years, but what I am still good at is acting. So now, in front of this woman at my door, I act as though I am feeble and grateful, and that is, okay, not entirely an act, because I am actually feeble. And I do try my best to be grateful. Beats being a sourpuss. Still, it’s not me, not the real me.

Anyhow, I continue my fake smile, throwing in a dash of humility as a bonus, and act as if receiving this package is the highlight of my year. Pajamas. What fun!

On an impulse, I say to the blonde Bearer of Gifts, “Hey, do you remember Frankie Avalon?”

I say this because I have suddenly gotten the urge to share that part of my biography with her. It’s my claim to fame, after all. Maybe she’ll tell the people at the Senior Ride Center, and they will be impressed, and they will stop treating me like a name on a list, and start calling me Marie instead of Ann.

She looks blank and shakes her head no. Her smile is starting to grow limp now, as her task has been accomplished. She says a brisk “Goodbye, Ann,” and hastily turns to leave. Christmas—er, I mean the holiday isn’t for another week, but she is very busy. She’s done her good deed and she can cross me off her list. With my little burst of enthusiasm smothered, hoping to save face, I revert back to being the fretful old lady.

“Take care pulling out of the driveway, dear,” I call after her. She nods as she hurries away.

After she leaves, I put on a recording of Frankie Avalon singing a song called Venus. In it he is imploring the goddess to send him a girl who will accept his hugs and kisses. Then I go to my dresser. Hidden away in the corner of a drawer are those bikini bottoms with the honeybee from my dancing days. I pull them out to look at them. When it is my time to go—and that will be soon—I would love to have enough nerve to ask to be buried in them. But because I currently wear an L or sometimes even an XX, I guess that they would be far too small. I sure hope they don’t bury me in my pajamas.

***

LUST IN THE LEMON ORCHARD: THE OBITUARY THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN

LUST IN THE LEMON ORCHARD: THE OBITUARY THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN
by Mary Elizabeth (Leach) Raines

On January 15, Aaron B__  passed away at his home in Santa Monica, California following a long battle with cancer. He was 79.
    I found this online. It was the obituary of my longtime friend, Aaron. I was sad to see that he had died, and I was appalled that these bleak words wound up being the final summation of his life.
    Anyone reading such an obituary would form a picture of someone exceedingly dull and, well, gray: an elderly man, wrinkled, decrepit, seriously ill, declining helplessly into nonbeing, the victim of a malignant disease. As I looked at the words on my computer screen, I wanted to scream, “No! That’s not who he was!”
    When I think of Aaron, I don’t see any gray, except for a few scrumptious silvery strands in his thick, dark hair. No, I see vivid splashes of intense color! And exclamation points! The sparkling blue of the Pacific ocean! The cop-magnet red of Aaron’s cushy Mercedes!! The brilliant yellow of ripe lemons hanging from trees with glossy green leaves!!! Even white came alive when Aaron entered the picture. Envision, if you will, the seductive white of rock salt glistening on the rim of a foamy margarita…!!!!

The first time I noticed him, I thought Aaron was the coolest guy I’d ever seen. We met at a writer’s conference in Santa Barbara, California. It was the 70s. I was 28 years old. I’d published a few short stories, and was excited about becoming a Real Writer. When I saw the conference advertised in the back of a magazine called The Saturday Review, I decided to drive the 3,000 miles to California in my Plymouth Barracuda. I’d never been to the West Coast before. It was my first time driving cross-country all on my own.
    Aaron was a smooth talker, aloof, oozing more confidence than anyone I’d ever met. His garb was what cool guys who had money wore in the 1970s: aviator sunglasses, an expensive black leather jacket, and a shirt that opened part-way down his chest. He had a style of sitting and walking—his lean, strong body just a little hunched over as though he were constantly poised for that most intimate of embraces—which broadcast to any woman bothering to take notice that he was a good lover. And the women noticed. At least this one did. To seal the deal, I was sure that a man like him would never look at someone like me, which made him even more desirable.
    Aaron was nearly fifty when I met him, and he was good-looking. After we became friends, he admitted nonchalantly that he had paid a lot of money for his good looks. Genes had given him a long hooked nose and no chin. His appearance was simply one more thing in life to master, and he mastered it magnificently by hiring the best plastic surgeon he could find, years before such surgeries became commonplace. That’s just the way he was. 

Even without Aaron’s presence, this Writer’s Conference hosted a pretty spectacular group, unequalled before or since. Ray Bradbury, the famous science fiction writer, was there. So were Charles Schultz, (the man who wrote the comic strip Peanuts), Joan Didion, Ross MacDonald, Maya Angelou, Alan Pakula (who was writing All the President’s Men for Robert Redford), Eudora Welty, and Alex Haley (author of Roots). Eva Marie Saint, the famous actress, showed up. I went to a party with academy-award-winning author Budd Schulberg, who had written On the Waterfront—he was married and forlorn, and there was no hanky panky; he simply walked me to the party and we sat mutely next to one another with our drinks on the edge of someone's bed...but hey! It was Budd Schulberg!—and one night I had a wonderful sexy argument over dinner with best-selling author Gay Talese about whether women would ever pay for male hookers the way men pay for female hookers. I argued that yes, women would. Talese said no, they wouldn’t. He was right. But I was young.
    Alongside all these greats, in my view Aaron was by far the choicest man at the conference. Of course, he was completely out of my league, or so I thought. Aaron revealed to me later that he’d had his eye on me from the beginning.

I guess I was pretty enough at the time, even though I didn’t know it, with reddish-gold hair (the color it really is now I won’t say), fresh full cheeks (still have those damn cheeks), a lusty heart (yup, still there), and the delicious, nubile body of a 28-year-old (nope). That week I wore the low-cut polyester sundresses that were all the fashion rage, and flirted with abandon, and drank far too much liquor, and also chain-smoked, because everybody chain-smoked in those days. It was all a ruse, of course, for in truth, I was dreadfully naïve.

An enthusiastic conference-goer, I always sat dead-center in the front row when the authors spoke. Once while in my usual seat awaiting the entrance of a speaker, feeling ultra-chic as I held a cigarette in one hand and a plastic cup of rosé wine in the other, an older woman came up to me and whispered, “Honey, your boob is out.” I looked at her quizzically. “Your boob’s hanging out,” she repeated in a slightly more vicious tone of voice. “Did you want it like that?”
    I looked down, and sure enough, I’d pulled a massive Janet Jackson! My right breast had somehow tumbled out of my dress and lay exposed, a little bare apple, for the whole world to see. I was embarrassed and quickly tucked it back into my sundress. Throughout the rest of the conference, I kept looking down at my chest and rearranging my halter straps compulsively like someone with a weird tic.

Aaron entered the picture one night when some of us attending the conference met in a cottage to read aloud to one another from our work. Aaron read a piece he was working on. It was graphically violent, but well-written. The other women cringed squeamishly. I liked it, and said so. Then I read something of mine. It was kind of sexy. Aaron took notice. But then, he noticed everything. Perhaps, even, my moment of exposure.
    A few days later, he casually invited me to go for a ride in his red Mercedes. He drove me to a posh restaurant overlooking the ocean, where he bought me my very first margarita. Being with Aaron made me feel sophisticated. I loved the leather seats of his Mercedes. I loved looking out over the Pacific. I loved sitting next to this handsome, intelligent older man. I loved the taste of the rock salt on the rim of my margarita glass. I loved the taste of my margarita!
    Aaron and I did a lot of glancing back and forth, and something was building between us, but we didn’t touch…not yet. Not until he drove me to the lemon orchard.

It was a day of firsts: my first ride in a Mercedes, my first margarita, my first elegant restaurant, and now my first lemon orchard. I’d never even seen a lemon tree before, much less an entire orchard of them! Aaron drove the car over a rutted dirt road and only stopped when we were deep inside the rows of lemon trees.
    When we got out of the car, it was whisper silent, more still than just about anyplace I have ever been. Neither Aaron nor I said a word. Instead of speaking, he looked into my eyes and slowly walked to the nearest tree. He reached up and twisted a lemon off a low-hanging branch. Not taking his eyes from mine, moving closer, he plunged both thumbs into the lemon and ripped it in two. I don’t know how someone can rip a lemon in two and make it seductive, but it was the most sensual thing I’ve ever seen anyone do. Aaron handed me half, and then slowly bit into his part of the lemon, sucking the tangy juices, eyes still locked on mine.
    Finally, neither of us could stand it a moment longer. I will not write about what happened next, because this is a PG-rated blog….
    Our lust for one another was short-lived, but we remained good and dear friends for the rest of our lives.

Aaron, of course, did a lot more than seduce me in a lemon orchard, like: write two books, start his own extremely successful hamburger chain, get rich as a stock broker and financial consultant, act in two movies, produce movies, open an upscale restaurant, and schmooze with famous film stars. He was an outstanding artist, a gourmet cook, and a cultured man. He had a tender gift for working with plants. He was a veteran who’d served in the Korean War. He “pumped iron.”
    He did not always succeed. He once laughingly told me how he had been approached by some guys to invest in their film script. Despite his own proclivity for what some would call graphic violence, he scornfully turned them away because their script contained massive profanity and violence with almost no plot; it was later produced as a movie called Rambo.
    Even with his occasional failures, he grew wealthy. Then he hit rock bottom as an alcoholic and drug addict, spent four years in prison for some complex financial fraud, and, humbled and sober, proceeded to climb his way back up again.
    No matter what befell him, Aaron’s manner was polished and gentle...and incessantly cool, of course! He was one of the most accomplished men I’ve ever known, and whatever he touched glowed with color. And exclamation points! In spite of his many life adventures, Aaron never forgot our orchard escapade. He continuously, joyously loved to remind me of that time. I never forgot, either.

Here is the way his obituary should have read:
    Aaron ___, a man who could wordlessly seduce a woman by ripping a lemon in two with his bare hands, died today, and the colors of the world may never be quite as vibrant and bright again.

© 2010, Mary Elizabeth Raines

Look for Mary Elizabeth Raines' novels and stories on Amazon.