The Good Stuff...Or Not...

Ruth works as a family assistant and nanny for a guy with ties to the hotel and casino industry in Vegas, NYC, Miami, and a variety of other hot nightspots. Everything is top shelf in his world, and in hers too when she is working. Right now she's in Miami, playing nanny when needed but mostly on standby, living life among the rich & famous. She called to let me know that she plans to rent a car and drive up to St Augustine for a visit on Monday, but first she has to fly down to the Bahamas for the weekend. They will be staying on a private island owned by a friend of her boss.

Maybe the good stuff skips a generation. When I was her age I was driving a cab in Washington, D.C. One of my regular fares, a large woman with poor hygiene, kept her change in her mouth where teeth had once resided. When it was time to pay I would hand her a big wad of paper towels for her to spit the coins into. That's the kind of crowd I ran with.

I was about to point out that I have never even been to the Bahamas, but that's not true. Carla won a four day cruise from some cheap promotion about fifteen years ago. It sounded like a little slice of hell to me but I went along with it to please her. The ship was small, old, dirty and filled to the brim with people who generally fit that same description. Things didn't go well. In fact, I was on the verge of having assault charges filed against me when the entertainment director put his hands on me one too many times, trying to pull me away from the bar and into a circle of large, gaudily sequined women all juiced up into a frenzy, doing the Macarena under a hopelessly outdated mirror ball. Sweaty celebrants stirred up a sickening breeze heavy with the scent of FDS and bad perfume. I escaped up to the main deck, desperate for fresh air, but all I got was diesel fumes as that old tug labored along.

Like I said, I think the good stuff skips a generation sometimes...

Stephanie

Whenever we went somewhere together, Stephanie drove her her hot little convertible. A MG Midget, not much bigger than an amusement park car broken free of its miniature track. 

Small, cute, perfect. Her automotive doppelganger. 

That particular rainy morning we had gotten up early to drive down to Virginia Beach for a bit of fun and sun. The weather channel said it would clear by the early afternoon. Her idea, I was just fine hanging out at my place, but I had spent the week on a carnival ride from hell with my work, so I was seeking vacuous bliss with someone else in charge.

It was hard to see the road that morning, a misty rainy shit of a day. Wind driven water sought the path of least resistance and dripped from the line of rubber lips where the convertible top was clamped down tight to the windshield. Never tight enough of course.

I was really enjoying being the passenger for a change, rolling a joint, kicking back. Normally I was “in charge” of our time and activity. At work it was worse. It was great for her to take the wheel for the day, for her to drive everything, with or without the car. “You decide” I said. Where we were going and what we would do was her job that day, I was along for the ride. Not an easy thing for me to do, I finally relaxed and started to enjoy the letting go. That's when she rounded a tight curve and drove head on into the front end of a big Chevy four door. A fucking boat of a car. Young Stephanie had put a wheel over the edge of the road on the right side, quickly over-compensated, and cut a hard turn to the left, directly into the path of the Chevy.

Stephanie, oh Stephanie, such a sweet little fawn of a girl, smashed that beautiful face of hers into the steering wheel. In an instant, the plastic disk at the center of the wheel broke away and allowed the metal post of the horrifically designed horn mechanism to slice her face open like an ax. From her upper eyebrow line down to the center of her nose she was divided into opposite halves. We hit in slow motion, my legs driving into the glove compartment and dash, molding those to the shape of my knees. The beach towel I had been using to stop the leak at the top of the windshield glued itself to the radio controls like a fresh coat of white paper mâché.

Stephanie hit the wheel hard, bounced back and turned slowly to me with a look of surprise and awe. I could see her brain clearly, beneath specific layers of sinus cavities and bone, cleanly opened by the surgeon of traumatic impact. Her face had been split in half. At first there was no blood, just clean white flesh and bone, layers exposed, a chart hanging on the wall of a cranial anatomy class. I was interested in the anatomy of the horror, taking mental notes, observing the dissection. Time clicked on in mini-seconds dressed, in costumes of eternity. The arterial blood startled me as it began to pump from the center of her face, surprisingly hot spurts ejaculated onto my arms as I held her, for the last time.

Crystal

A petite red head, Crystal is all of five feet tall, no more than 98 pounds. She's a regular at Planet Fitness. She looks 14 but is 32. A married mother of an accomplished 13-year-old daughter who adds a sparkle to Crystal's eyes when she speaks of her. 

Crystal has MS, her muscles don't do what her brain tells them to. She came to PF about two years ago in a wheelchair, extremely overweight and unable to walk. She works out every day. Now, two years into it, she has lost 80 pounds and gets around with only the help of a cane. I often see her on one of the machines, eyes closed, not sleeping but rather, willing. Willing her muscles to relax, to end the horrifically painful body cramps that seize her without warning. She lives with pain every day and although in the long run, her determination and hard work at PF has transformed her, it is an unending struggle. Working out hurts more, much more, than sitting still, but it gets results over time. If she stopped, she would cramp up permanently and be a twisted mess in that wheelchair for the rest of her too short life. So she comes in for a daily dose of excruciating pain, every day, with a smile. 

Crystal never complains when we talk, but I see it when her eyes are closed, sitting alone at one of the workout stations as if in prayer, willing the body to relax and behave, willing the pain to take a back seat, just for now. 

Last week she was laboring along in front of me, wobbling slowly forward, her cane shaking with each step. An invisible switch was thrown, and she crumpled to the ground, a marionette whose strings were cut by an unseen evil. Rushing to her, a friend and I helped her up. She was all smiles as I lead her over to her next battlefield, a leg machine. It was a leg day for her. Helping her onto the machine and adjusting it to fit her tiny frame, she spoke of her daughter with pride, she spoke of having to finish up soon to meet her husband who was coming to pick her up, she didn't say a word about her fall. 

Walking away, as I looked back, Crystal was sitting still, eyes closed, the sweat on her forehead glistening under the harsh florescent lights, willing...