Last weekend my wife saw a ghost. It was her old friend Blanquette, a hen of black culture with no family of her own. You could say she was indigent, although Monica admonished me for saying as much. “She’s not indigenous,” she huffed, “she’s a bird just like you and me. Just because she grew up around black people doesn’t mean she’s black. She’s a hen. I’m a hen. Did you marry a black woman? I don’t think so.” I told her no, but, I may have married a black hen. Who knows? I don’t. Back in the doghouse for me. It’s a real doghouse, made of wood and mercifully free of leaks. I’m writing this down on burlap as I pace the night contemplating my marriage. Friends of ours and acquaintances past often compared Monica and me to George and Martha from Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Privately, they urged both of us to get divorced. Multiple times, different people. That’s animal behavior, and I don’t mean the good kind. Years later, they’re all dead or divorced and we’re still together. Shocker.
I love my wife more than anyone or anything on this Earth. Even my cousin Bennington, he’s a close number two, but he’ll never be number one in my heart. I hope you knew that, Benny. I hope you’ll allow me that truth, and know that it’ll never diminish my love for you, which is everlasting and real. But it’s not as strong as my love for Monica. I believe the feeling is mutual. It’s called having faith—remember, God is a woman, and her name is Monica.
The swing set is rusty. I can’t remember the last time we used it. Last fall, Benny sat on it and got copper poisoning. Tetanus shot, the whole thing. We took care of it, because we love him. I’m not sure why Quentin Tarantino treated him like an abusive boyfriend, but I can confirm that Benny did in fact participate in the making of The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth and, the novel by Mr. Tarantino is indeed dedicated “For Benny” (at least according to the galley I read; perhaps it’ll change in time for pub-date). I was acquaintances with Mr. Tarantino in the early-1990s just before he made Pulp Fiction, but I checked out when he became, in his own words, “too famous.” This was around 1996, 1997. I wasn’t even aware of the Kill Bill movies until last year’s re-release; I really thought this man took a 25-year break from cinema. No wonder everyone thought I was crazy when I said Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was very good, especially for a director’s fourth film. I’m under the impression we’ll have to wait another decade for his 10th film.
It’s raining—raining hard now. I’m still dry. This doghouse hasn’t seen an actual dog since the days of Edison and grit tobacco, but it’s still standing, built to last by pioneer Americans. Whenever I’m made to sleep outside, I often think of the Puritans who settled this land and burned women at the stake. Who knows if there were witches among them? I wasn’t in America at the time—well, we called them “the colonies.” Some still do. Why were they so crazy back then? Were they so crazy back then? I don’t know. Monica’s firmly on the side of the townspeople as far as Salem goes. “Those bitches knew what they were doing,” she’s told me. “They knew. They might not have been witches, but they knew what was going on. And look what happened: we burned witches, Europe didn’t, and only one of us is being invaded by Arabs and Africans right now. Witches work on a timescale that even we can’t fathom.”
This shook me. I remembered the stories of the witches, the covens, the 2015 film The Witch, and I got scared. Really scared. So I decided to knock on the front door of my own home and beg for my wife’s mercy. None was needed: she knew I was getting paranoid about flying broomsticks and scary women with green skin and gigantic schnozzes. “Come in, Roo,” she said, “they’re probably taking flight right as we speak.” We went inside and immediately fell into bed. I went to look for the initial burlap draft of this piece in the morning, but it was gone. Stolen by witches (I’m assuming). Shouldn’t I feel violated or something? Someone went into my doghouse and stole a draft of my writing. “Maybe it blew away” you say. NO. Things don’t just “blow away” in the animal kingdom; besides, we have friends in the sky. And we can talk to the wind just like Jimi Hendrix and that hippie chick Mary. Oh sweet summer child, the cliché says, I am so much older and wiser than you. One of two apply to me, and I’ll leave it to you to guess which one it is.
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