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(let’s be realists and get over it)

Eldon Reishus

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Some scientists claim the universe began on the bounce (and shouldn’t have got interested again so early). Kerstin wasn’t much at a disco, but at a square dance she would fling herself across the floor, changing partners doe sie doe. »She’s a bleeder,« the Alice Cooper lookalike at my elbow said—ancient rock star jargon for a veteran groupie prone to easily nick. Kerstin pulled the pin from her bun and invited me home to not get her wound salve mixed up with her toothpaste.

Sure to squeeze up from the bottom, I was reminded of a certain well-developed foreign exchange student from my far past—let’s call her in her hot-pink tube-top Heidi. It was ‘69, the summer of bell bottoms, when »bite the rock« meant »bite the rock« whatever »bite the rock« meant. On my front stoop Heidi put her mouth to my ear and whispered to me in her native tongue. I couldn’t understand a word and loved the European scent of her sun-bleached hair, so supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, so antidisestablishmentarianism. Heidi drew back and held a finger to her lips. »Und du darfst es Niemandem sagen,« she said, speaking through her finger like it might mean anything I wanted.

»Bite the rock.«

Or let’s call her Beatte instead. From Beatte I learned that doe, a deer, a female deer, in German is »Reh« (pronounced RAY—as in a drop of golden sun). Believe me, you meet some songstress foreign beauty feeling pretty fertile in a downtown Portland book shop and it will change your far-out, freaking life... Not until decades later when I crawled to the head of Kerstin’s bed and discovered the emergency eye-wash station did things fall back into place... Jail? These days, what trumped-up charge isn’t waiting two wrong mouseclicks and one brash browser mugging away?

I’m sixty-six and may turn sixty-seven come May. I move between tree care, watching birds, and getting groceries (also for the birds). Mental illness can mean so much more than it’s cracked up to mean. From my medications I have a lot of scratchy red splotches that simply get redder and scratchier. No belt can I thread without missing two, three, even four belt loops. When reading for a change on the quaint bench above the quiet brook out back, I’m always astounded by how many bugs believe I have no interest in harming them. Perhaps that’s why my webcam live feed attracts so many Joe the Plumber and Suzy the Stylist followers: angry, meat and potatoes people who save on zoo-dates the chimps cage for last.