I was about to say, I live in the same place again. Then I thought better of it.
He points at the glass building and says, “Casting. Follow the banners to the courtyard in back. Hey! I gotta get to the yard. You’ll probably be able to find me at the book signing later. When I saw Neil and Neil doin’ it, I got it.
I can’t wait to see who you’re being cast as and in what story.
Nice seeing you again, Miss Walker.”
And he was off.
Entering the colonnade where I’m supposed to meet Miranda, I stepped through a kaleidoscope of butterflies then a veil of bubbles, followed by another angry look alike woman swinging, fanning and yapping as she stomps by me. “Fuck you flowers! Take that!”
Then another flock of children run across my path on the lawn of thymes and clovers, shouting Phở Cue! I notice a pretty little dark brown doll baby dressed like a penguin asking, “Is she a Scrumptious?”
I look around to see who she’s asking about. They’re followed by a troop of sassy surly teenage girls in stewardess uniforms. The first one says, ”A red spinner each, says an Umm.” The second one says to the first two there, “Bet! You’re gonna owe me two bowls of Phở.”
A third, who’s saying, “I love Noodlee Tuesday.” Boxes of band aids and bottles of bubbles decorate the utility belt clinging precariously to her boyish hips. Catches me reading the embroidered P. C. B. S. C. D. patch on her shoulder, and sneers, “Parent Company, Baby Sitters Club, Detroit. Flight 531.” She whips out a bottle of bubbles and offers them to me, “Use them when you need to take a breath.”
The third walks away saying with a bland disappointed sigh, “Scrumptious.” and hands the second one there a red spinner token.
I thank her and continue, walking across the lawn, thinking, I’m a perfect Umma Heyboo. And I’m okay with it, when I realize I’m getting used to all this turf too and stop to take off my shoes.
More or the same group of children run past me, barking Phở’ Cue! Phở’ Cue!” When another one of those angry women that kinda looks like me, if you’re three sheets in the wind, rushes by demanding’, “What that child say? Fuck Who? What you say to me?”
A uniformed Babysitter steps in her line and says, “Umm. Yes. Hey Boo! It’s Vegan Phở, you know the soup. Right? Defiled by a cut of 3 day roast pork belly.
We call it. Phở Cue. Because of the long line. It only happens three times a year. Only on Noodlee Tuesday. And ONLY at the Phở Q Foo Lynn Homme Boi Kee Kee Food court in the village of Plainsite and participating independent locations around the globe.”
I feel triggered, because she sounds just like the ad in my free app. “It’s good.” She smiles, “You should try it. But you need a red spinner and they are hard to get this week.”
The angry woman that kinda looks like me, stares me square in the eye, “I don’t eat pork. Look, anyway, what’s goin on over there in that glass house ain’t no kind of erotica I ever heard of. And now this child is tellin’ me, that what I came to do, is…” Her booming gravly voice smooths down to cheap blended whiskey, “Ooh shit! You mean, I been yelling at people something ‘bout soup all this time?
Okay. So, you a big sexy, like me. I know you understand. I didn’t come in here to read. I ain’t read since undergrad. I came to get busy with one of them imaginary friends. You know.”
I have no idea of what she’s talking about.
Moaning, “I think I’m gonna go read one of those books. This shit is crazy.” She throws a handful of red and yellow 45 record adapters in the air, bows away from me.The flock of children rush in to collect them. One shouting, “I’m gonna be so paid!”
I’m thinking, soup sounds so good right now. I finish taking off my shoes, tie the laces in a bow and sling them over my shoulder like roller skates, scrunch my toes in the thyme and meander up the colonnade of giant play bill banners, quietly reading aloud.
The carpet of flowers and herbs bathes my senses, as I pause to recite each title,
Whynter Wyatt & the Orange Gotan
IRL LARP – Free to View. Alright, I like Whynter’s sexy little beige ass. She got that gravely sexy Sade in the morning voice.
The Last Dishwasher’s Special
-A Propmaster’s Roast adventure-
IRL LARP – Free to View. I don’t watch that shit. Dude I don’t like is in it.
Pookie & Ray Ray in
“The People vs. The Orange Thing
A Quality Garden Tool Emporium Adventure
AR – MR – LARP – VR – RP-Card. All I know ‘bout them is that line, “They not here.”
Black Frost in Sound & Perfume: Not MY Dragon
A Summer of Unicorns twelve step Gotan battlepoem
AR – MR – LARP – VR – RP-PnP. Black Frost is one sexy animated half wolf.
Hasting and Ferry Park: Crates & Pickers harvest festival
1960 What? The true story of Sunny Bridges and the O.N.E. Mile space capsule.
AR – MR – VR – RP-Card. I was at the Motha Ship, I didn’t see Andre 3000
Black Bacchanalia
At the Afrofuturist Youth Music Fest.
Another, What Could’ve Happen enactment
AR – MR – LARP – VR – RP-PnP
Benita loose in the Bouncy Castle
A See What Had Happened feature film. Ooh! Benita “The Beast” She’s my kinda Big Sexy and them pistols on them wide hips. Ooh Shiny Thing!
Black Frost’s Meander: a Bacchanal Frenzy
Whatdahfukastan to Valhalla
IRL AR LARP – Pay Per View. Shaking my head. Man. Legalized cage fighting. Wow! Sick. But it keeps the lights on for five thousand senior’s homes.
An Analog path to Magrathea… What? Wait”
The angry woman that stopped me coming in runs back to me and barks, “Hey! Mag ra thea! Mag ra thea?
Magrathea!
My kid sister plays that game!
Wait! You read aloud! Niggah.
What’s witchu?”
Kinda leaning back like she might turn into an old Dexter Avenue Jewish woman and try to touch my hair or something, I say, “Ye-ah. I’m here to read and do a screen test for the part of the new Simone in the Junkyard.”
I turn to notice the gathering of women, all kind of fitting the basic description of me, zombie walkin in my direction.
The one that passed me earlier says, “Go on Honey! Keep reading. I knew I was in the wrong place when I saw all them babies runnin’ ‘round. Hustlin’ for them two hundred dollar soup tokens. That’s how much a cup goes for at Fuckee Cheese and a bowl is an orange spinner, but you get to keep the bowl. You know. Ain’t nobody shootin’ no fuck flicks round here. And I ain’t never seen an orange spinner in real life. But lookin’ at yo big sexy ass and those lips spit them words got a sistah feeling kinda special.
Like lookin’ at a for real sexy nerd version of me. Say Magrathea again.”
Then a squadron of Queens wearing paper crowns and all sorts of drag came pouring out of the little glass building, filling the path behind me, followed by this inappropriately adorable sexy little woman, who came out the door with her finger in the air, like she was ushering at church. Effervesces “Get out here. Chai Elle I swear…
Hi! I’m Sister Sun.
Hold on! We’re late.
You’re right on time.
We saw you reading on camera.
We love cinema. We couldn’t leave the screen.
This is Judy.” She says, “Hello! So, you’re a real Umma Heyboo. Very interesting.”
Sun says,“And this is Miranda.” They say, “Howdy. Girl to boy if you’re interested. Ah Right.”
Sun says, “You two listen carefully. Go on Shugga. Read.
Take your time.”
But I’m like, “Oh Wait dammit! Hold On!
I’m having a moment here. For real.
I mean like, how many of y’all sexy motherfuckahz, when you heard this is erotica thought it was sex work?”
Every woman that kind of looks like me raises her hand.
“I came to read for the part of Simone.” Someone in the middle of the crowd raises her beautifully accented voice, “So! I was back home in Yeoville last Summer. One afternoon, watching my sister’s children. They are wonderfully well behaved. I got bored. So, I found Coronation on my sister’s mommy porn shelf. I enjoyed it until it got all scientific, heady and the such.
Truly Loves sex.
And, she gets it in.
All the women get it when and how they want it.
Anyway, one night my girlfriends dragged me out for drinks at an open mic.
Yukky bad Love Jones dung. I had the book with me, so I recited the Preface and this…
‘Before I lay down me to rest
Not one child who knows your name
will greet a day…”
All of a sudden I’m taken by this shock of pale, rich, velvety, iridescent, purply, lavendarish, cornflower but, pinkish, color. I think I must be trippin’. I mean, this beautiful weird story, waving in the thyme and clover scented breeze, black and blue butterflies and this circle of ME, in a part of Detroit I always believed was made for TV make believe. I don’t know how or why but, my heart remembers his voice, his cadence, him. As she continues reciting words written on the backs of her closed eyelids.
‘…Cold,
Afraid,
Alone…”
I fall in line with her and state, “…I needed,
wanted,
hoped,
prayed,
waited,
imagined,
designed,
planned &…”
I break, crying, “I was her!”
He loved me and
I made him a
fuck.
Sister Sun blinks as she says, “I know Sweet Tea. Some of us have been her. Some of us think we want to be her.
They want to be just like you.” Directing me to look at the room filled with women who look like me.
She takes my hand, finds the bubbles and says, “Wait a second. I gotchu. Here Baby, that’s what these are for.
Spit until you catch your breath and blow bubbles.
Now, excuse me.” She turns me to the side and waves, “You! Miss with that beautiful Xhosa accent.
Get up here and recite that shit with your sister.”
This woman steps up, the color of his summer coffee. She says, “Hello. Hi I’m, Miriam. I like your reading voice.” With a voice as smooth and dark as her skin. I hate her.
After a minute or two of blowing bubbles, I feel fine. And I don’t hate her so much.
Sister Sun braces my shoulders and directs us to continue.
We recite in almost perfect unison,
“Finally, you I write
There’s nothing you can do about it.
You made yourself real
In gratitude
I crowned you”.
“We sound good in stereo.” I stop us and ask, “Wait! Now which one of y’all said this wasn’t erotica?
Then turn to Miriam, the color of an iced coffee with a shot of espresso in the morning light, just let it out and say, “You’re an iced Red Eye with a shot of simple syrup. I could drink the sight of you. He’d have you for breakfast with an almond croissant.
She says, “Had you noticed, we all kind of look alike. And looking at you makes me very happy to look like…” Bam!
Hauling ass and bellowing, “Fuck you! Periwinkle…” This Plum purple walking Fleetwood of a woman, all big and plush and curvy crashes into me, She falls out convulsively sobbing and giggling, “… Bubbles!”
Like pull string talking dolls, all the ladies say, “Shut the fuck up”.
But not me.
As she catches her breath, “ Yea. Fuck it! I quit. You can have it. I can’t do it.”
I say, “That’s it! Thank you Sweety. Periwinkle! Dude’s name is that color.”
Checking me out as she stands up straight, locks eyes with mine and says, with the breathiest, most cotton candy East Coast accent, “Sorry Honey. You’re a big sexy, built like a brick shithouse back in the day, built, like me.
If you can read that gibberish…”
I walked around to where she just came.
Following me with that Coney Island cotton candy
voice, “But I could crash into you some more, Mommy. Ooh!” She says, “Yea! Periwinkle Bubbles…”
All the ladies say, “Shut the fuck up!” and giggle.
But not me.
She keeps going, “…I thought this was gonna be some of that Sci-fi erotica, musical food porn from the game and G. N. N. and shit.”
Oh No…
…Not me.
I say, “Talk that talk, Baba!
Speak to me. Speak to me!
Ooh gaddamit.
…And I wish that I never met her…” My hands wrap around my hips, wishing they were his, I sway… and bellow,
“…But she got love for me…
Oh niggah, why yo ass always gotta be scruffy and broke.”
Sister Sun reaches up to brace my shoulders again, “It’s Alright Honeysuckle. Now read please.”
I take Miriam’s hand and ask, “Read this with me? Please.”
I look up at the banner hovering in the courtyard above us, clear my throat and recite,
“From Asbury Wyatt Associates
the people that brought you,
Trulie Skrumshus Tightlace Tuesday in Whatdafukastan.
Sound and Perfume: Truly’s home. A perfect summer day.
Trulie Skrumshus does Phở Ghee Geez Contemporary Hip-Hop entertainments, Tom Traubert’s… what?
Miriam says, ”Bhuyidi. qa isiliphu senIndlu yokutsiba, isiliphu kunye nesilayidi.”
I say, “What?”
Miriam laughs, “It’s supposed to mean Bouncy Castle, Slip and Slide. I’m from Johannesburg, South Africa. that’s Xhosa, my grandfather’s language.”
I say, “Oh, I remember him writing that story. Yes. Really nice to meet you. Ready?” We continue,
“And last season’s number one adult game.
Trulie Skrumshus does Bartwells’ Bunch of Jerks
Under the Summer Luge
imagINed nation studios present
Orfeu do Tanque de Prato
a Butterfly in Plexiglas
Truly’s Home: Perfect Summer Day #1
Lapidthopter Pavilion: Designer: Sydney Seddit.
Wait!”
I stop to have yet another moment.
“Hey! She’s that little khaki hued tiny human giant Lego minifigure in my shirt, out front of Joe’s this morning. I’m feeling some kind of way right about now.”
I start again. “Yea. Well. Okay!”
“You are most cordially invited to the last Dishwasher’s Special at the Phở Q Foo Lynn Home Boi Kee Kee food court. In the Village of Plainsite.
Quest to the beginning of our saga with the incorrigible
Mister Periwinkle Bubbles.
Detroit’s favorite restaurant guide and imaginary friend.
Quest back to Youmacon 2015.
Two minutes and two seconds before Periwinkle Bubbles becomes Orpheus of the Dish Tank.
Trapped as a Kitchen Utility in the debauched and depraved party scene of the 1980s.
Pulling double shifts closing Saturday nights and opening Sunday mornings, in an endless loop.
Forever trapped in the purgatory of imagined Nation’s first inverse tesseract, the Mobius Estrus Trip.
Find the Amethyst Rock Black Basil and return the magical cure and the cause of the dreaded Bacchanal Frenzy to Scheherazade Shadetree’s Moon garden.
Help us free the Queen of his imagined nation from a Hell of her own making.
the Mistress of the Whirlwind Pyramid, the magnificent Miss Truly Scrumptious as Eurydice.
Quest with us to save our hero’s best friend.
The last chapter in the Orfeu do Tanque de Prato saga
Begins with you.
I take Miriam’s hand, “Thank you. I think you’re gorgeous too. And he writes satirical lyrical idiomatic gobbledygook. You are most Truly Scrumptious.”
This thick buttery hued chick, same build and sass, but not quite us, steps up through the crowd. “Yup! Dude. That’d be me! Yo. All that love love, poetic shit fo’ da birds. I’m like coat off, belt off, drawz to the side, get it in, get it on, bang that gong. Get it on. What?
I was gone be the next Trulie Skrumshus,
but y’all the real deal.
If you don’t fuck good as you read.
I’ll be happy to be your stunt double.”
I ask, “So, is it like hardcore or Mommy Porn in the game?
I mean, see…
…What had happened was…
She interrupts me saying, “I ain’t read none of them books. I watch the trailers and recaps on GNN Morning W. o. S. And my sisters play Bacchanal Frenzy online with their friends.
Why?
What you know?
You gotta Cheat Code?”
Miriam squares up to her, licks her chops and says in the sultriest of tones, “So, Um-Ah Hey Boo. What yo’ name iz? You can call me Blisstina Ultimatum.”
And starts walking away, left hand resting on the butter colored chick’s hip.
Miriam looks back smiling at me, “Oh. And I’m fluent in Gobbledygook, Sisters. So, you work at Phở Ghee Geez? Huh. Where an adult can be an adult. You’re a Big Sexy, Right? I like your shoes…”
Sister Sun takes my arm and smiles “Yes, Honey,”
Her voice dark sexy sinister intoxicating like weed smoke gapped tooth smile, “She’s got me. I…
…am the Cheat Code.”
The eggplant purple Fleetwood with the Coney Island cotton candy accent chases behind, “So, I’m coming with!
You talk shit like Mister Bubbles. I don’t usually like British accents, but yours is like that Black Coffee South African House with some of that KHAYA, M-M-M
Miriam belts, “I mean my, my, my, my you’re like pelican fly
I mean, you’re so shy and I’m loving your tie
You’re like slicker than the guy with the thing on his eye, oh
Yes I did, yes I did
Somebody please tell them who the eff I is
I am Khaya Mthethwa…
And I really am your kind of man…”
Fleetwood cotton candy says, “Ooh! That shit! Sweety, your voice got me like DTF. Blisstina. Girl, I’m buying the drinks. Butter says, Keep it up, we’ll have another Little West 12th street type of incident.
I’m like, “Second thought, forget about it. She’d only make him stupid for a minute or so.”
