bitches and tomatoes
I was at some fancy venue setting up to play with Dream Bitches, and for some reason Milena was playing 2nd guitar this time. The venue actually didn’t look that fancy — it was in a building that reminded me of a place from my childhood, like Children’s Aid or the 92nd St Y — but the cover was $7. The stage was very high, the floors were linoleum, the lighting was a soft magenta gel. Julie, Ann and I were the first ones there, and by eight pm no one else had shown up (we were supposed to start at eight). Instead of playing our songs, we were to play songs by the Muffs. Ann and Julie were seeing which songs they both knew how to play, by making a list of songs by title (and singing melodies when they weren’t sure). I knew I knew all of the ones they knew, but not by title. Ann complimented me on my singing at our last show, which had been Kim Shattuck-esque screaming, and said I should do it again, especially because this was a very large room with good sound. Milena showed up at 8:15. I could hear her talking, coming up the stairs. I was embarrassed that we were the only people there. I figured that our people just didn’t want to pay the cover. I thought to myself, “How do other people get people to come to their shows here?” I had sent an email, but not texts. Then I thought, “It’s because they play seldom, but when they do there is always a $7 cover.”
At some point later I was sitting around a round table with three other people, eating fresh grape tomatoes off of pieces of a backyard bush. Each one of us had a round bush in a bowl that was like a cross between a christmas tree and a cluster of grapes. The tomatoes were good but I wasn’t that hungry. One of the people was Babs. The others were her family members (uncle, aunt?) She had grown up eating/harvesting these tomatoes and was very careful not to eat too fast, in case of eating a bug. I was careful too. Ten minutes later, no one had found a bug. Then I noticed a weird tomato that looked more like a rotten medjool date, and I was like, “I think I got the bad one.” Everyone reassured me it was OK. I got up and moved my bowl across the table, next to Babs’s. Then I noticed that mine had a big thing growing on it near the bottom that looked like a moldy cracked coconut. I pointed it out. It started to have a swarm of little flies flying around it. Someone told Babs to throw it away. She picked up the bowl, which was more like a plate. The flies became bees. Babs brought it out the back door and threw the bush off the deck into the yard. When she came back, a bee followed her. I became afraid that the bee would know it had been my bowl, and I got under a blanket, and didn’t come out (until I woke up).
