Seven

 

Seven

 

     The hardest thing about my divorce was condensing a whole home full of stuff into the place I

 now live. After my Ex came and got her things, I was left with getting rid of the furniture and

 other household items. I tried to have a garage sale. It was a dismal failure. The White people I

 was living among were immigrants and they just picked through my things and wanted to

 haggle. After about two hours I pushed everything into the driveway and put up a sign that said,

 “Free Stuff.” It took about two days for all of it to disappear. The vacuum, dishes, glasses, pots,

 pans, table, chairs, whatever. The only thing left was the gold loveseat that I loved in the antique

 store, brought home, and watched be whittled down by the dog. How I got rid of the gold

 loveseat was I took a hammer and smashed it into small pieces. Then I loaded the pieces into the

 car that I still had at the time, drove into Golden Gate Park after dark, and threw them into a

 dumpster.

     You don’t realize how much stuff you have until you move it. Even after I got the barest

 necessities into my new place, I found I had piles of clothes left over. I put them in plastic bags

 and set them out with the trash.

     I used to have a lot of photos of my Ex. Not anymore. I threw all of them away except for the

 ones when we first met.

     We were young and skinny.

     We were children.

#

     When I was four years old my Dad had me driving quarter midget race cars. Quarter midget

 race cars are half the size of half midget race cars which are half the size of full midget race

 cars.

     What I remember most about racing was the noise of the cars. I think I wanted to get the race

 over as soon as I could and that’s why I almost always won. I was competing against boys that

 were older than me. I have my trophies and newspaper articles to prove it.

     My dad would work on the car, and we would go to the country fairgrounds in the foothills

 every Friday to run practice laps with the other racers. The racing was done through an

 organization of some kind. It was like little league. The parents all knew each other. The Dads

 would be the pit crew and hang out with the cars and the Moms would be in the grandstands

 chatting and watching, and I would guess, praying that their sons wouldn’t get hurt. I remember

 most of the races being at dusk. I remember seeing the pink sky and lovely clouds over the

 foothills buzzing by from the corner of my eye while I calculated how to pass the car ahead of

 me.

     In some of the newspaper photos there is this pretty trophy girl handing me my winnings.

 Maybe I was just trying to get her.

     Now, knowing my Dad, he probably regrets having me race, thinking it caused me some harm

 and contributed to me being the horrible person I am today. I don’t think it did. My dad has

 asked so little of me in the area of trying to do something he wanted me to do I’m actually glad I

 got to race for him. In fact, the only other request came much later when I was in High School.

 He wanted me to wrestle. I gave it a try. I found I did not enjoy being in such close contact with

 a semi-clothed sweaty boy. I was a terrible wrestler. Once the other guy got me in some weird

 hold that I couldn’t get out of I would give up.

     My racing career ended after a car drove right up my back and stopped on top of me causing a

 crash, and my brief wrestling experiment ended after I was pile driven twice into the mat during

 practice.

     If any of you ever happen to run into my Dad, please be nice to him. My Dad is a good man

 and all he really wants for me, and my brothers is “What’s best for you.”

     Thanks Dad.

#

     I was on Haight Street today with a friend of mine and saw that a place I worked at for a

 while is gone. It was a shop that carried imported items that were nice, but not too pricy. It was

 nice working there. A lot of women came into the store. Too bad I was still happily married at

 the time.

     The friend I went to Haight Street with today is Yellow. Sometimes I can’t understand what

 he says, and he has to repeat himself, but I like him anyway. Last Halloween he asked me if I

 was going to dress up. I told him I didn’t know, and I made him repeat what he said about

 maybe I should dress up as a woman because I wasn’t sure at first if that was what he really

 said, it was. He seemed to think that I could pull it off and offered his vision of me dressed up as

 a woman. It entailed me wearing a wig, he said a red-haired one would look best, lots of eye

 makeup and lipstick, earrings, a necklace, and fingernail polish. He said I would look best with a

 pointed bra, a tight black sweater and a leather mini skirt. He said I could shave my legs and

 wear high heels.

     I assured him that the only way I could convince anyone that I was a woman would to be to

 wear a shapeless full-length dress, a big hat, gloves, and a veil.