About My Birthday (The Cat's Pajamas)

I believe I'm repressing the incident.

I must ask you to listen to this song while reading the rest of this post:

"Love Cats" by The Cure. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbe47WQ6Rs0. You might actually start with Stray Cat Strut. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoG62Wi8twU. I'll have to find some cat songs.

For all my talk about the loud caterwauling outside my bedroom window one night, which, I decided, was a foretell of my future with some Big Deal Man, it may have only been a premonition or foretelling of what would be in store for my birthday.

Dear God/stop/please bring big dog man/stop/please tell me my future isn't as a spinster cat lady/stop/thank you God.

There wasn't even a full moon, but strange things happened that day. I hadn't smoked a cigarette for a whole month or so and then ended up wandering, for whatever reason, around a remote corner, to some store I had to pass a chainlink fence to get to, and then I decide to ask THAT man if I could bum a cigarette. Of all things, he happens to have the kind I like, the shorties. So he looks at me like I'm nuts and say casually, as I'm almost leaning up against the wall, "So, what kind of business is this anyway?" He stared at me and said, "It's a gas station." I almost coughed on that one. I said, "What??! It's a GAS station???" I looked around. There were no signs for it and it was a large commercial gas station with huge tanks all around but no brand name signs. I said to him, in awe, "Of all things, I decide I need to smoke and I end up lighting up at a GAS STATION." He wasn't laughing. He just stared at me and said, "Yeah, I was sort of wondering why you'd come all the way over here to ask for a cigarette."

I then walked in and lo and behold, a buffet before me: donuts, popcorn, chocolate, apples, and I took some popcorn and wandered out, munch-munch, looking around and wondering what in the world I'd just done.

That was mid-morning of my birthday, or afternoon. I was looking for work that day and walking past places and ended up at a gas station to light up for the occasion.

The morning, early morning, was lousy. I was told I couldn't stay at this one place any longer, with no notice until THAT morning, and I was going to be dropped off at a hotel. But I said, no, I wanted to be dropped off at the housing place first so I could get an apartment instead. I figured, since he said he wanted to take me out to a birthday dinner later, I could get the room later (without him of course, he wasn't a boyfriend).

So we're driving to find the place and I have to use the bathroom and end up at a retirement home for "memory care". Then we went to the housing place and I was dropped off and then I was meandering down through town afterwards.

So I looked at some places, and I thought I was getting into one of the places that day but the guy said no, it would take a couple of days. This was Thursday. So I call the guy who says he was taking me to dinner and he isn't doing this anymore and is already back in Seattle. So I was stranded, on my birthday, after looking at a rental which I suspected I'd be jerked around on in the long run (and was) and I got on the phone with my parents who said "Happy Birthday" and told me they weren't paying for a hotel room but that when they agreed to pay for a drug hair analysis (to prove I don't use) THAT was my birthday present. So no hotel and no place to go at the last minute, with no notice. My 35th birthday.

I, I, I, I'm stayyin' alive/stayin' alive...I, I, I, I'm stayyhyin' aaaaaaliiiiiiivve... (I don't know, that song just came to mind for some reason)

I didn't know my ex had sent a message by email telling me to have fun and do whatever I wanted to do most on my birthday.

What I'd really wanted to do, was go for a long drive into the country and look at the fall foliage. It had been a beautiful day and the leaves were in color and I just had this idea that I would like to be driving along looking at scenery on my birthday. At least, that day, that was the mood that struck. Then, if I'd had it my way, I would have gone to dinner and then maybe gone dancing.

Instead, all day I was househunting, left in the lurch last minute, and then lighting up at a frickin' gas station. End of day, I was crying on a stranger's porch after hanging up in disbelief after talking to my father. Absolute disbelief.

The cat part is coming up.

But I guess everyone really thinks I'm some kind of swing by the seat of her pants gypsy type when I'm really not. I was supposed to figure out how to find a place to sleep and have fun on my birthday that night. What the HELL did my mom and dad think I was going to do? I have no clue. So I decide, hell, I have enough money for a burger and fries at McDonalds and I guess I'll go to the bookstore and read, what else, about Princess Diana, until I have to trudge over to East Wenatchee or some place and find an all-nighter joint I could have coffee at until dawn.

As for that apartment I looked at, it was as I thought it would be. I was told everything looked good and I was even called on Sunday night and told it looked fine but he just needed some phone numbers because his email wasn't going through. But I had this weird feeling, "I am going to be dragged along for several days and then just told it's not available" when I could only put in money for an application to one place at a time. And that's exactly what happened. I was told no, that I didn't have the right "income" but he already KNEW that when I first talked to him. It was an excuse and I was pissed, rightly so. This has happened to me more than once in this town.

However, at that moment, I thought I might have something coming up. So I walked past McGlinn's, with this beautiful Frank Sinatra music playing and as I did, with my hood pulled over my head and covering my mouth, I passed this man who was standing outside, whom I knew wanted me to approach him. He kept staring and he looked a little bit sad. I felt sadness but I walked right by. I wasn't going to be "entertaining angels" OR demons that night, or any kind of stranger. I was trying not to cry basically. Then I walked past another place with some other guy out there and didn't even see him and then one more, past Bob's and passed someone on the sidewalk and didn't see who it was. I just kept walking, walking, walking, down torwards the McDonalds.

I wasn't going to be pushed into hooking up with some guy just to have a place to stay. Not even hooking up in a "thanks for dinner" way. I was going to buy my own fucking dinner with my own small amount of money, and READ.

So I did. I went to McDonald's and bought a $1 burger and fries and then I took it to go to the bookstore where the first book I almost picked up was about the Holocaust. I had it in my hand and then put it back, thinking, "What are you DOING? It's your BiRTHDAY." So I went back and got one book: "The House On Mango Street" by Sandra Ciscernos. The Princess Di book was gone. There was only one in the entire store and it was missing from it's usual place. So then I ate the burger and for whatever reason, didn't even crack open the book. Just looked at it and remembered it.

Then I left and walked the other direction to go over the bridge to the other side of town, and I had done some blogging about "fuck this and that"...Oh yeah, at the bookstore, after a truly awful day where I kept getting screwed over. So I wrote fuck this and that and then I'm walking by and a few people were driving by staring and laughing and my head was up. Then, this guy comes across the street, acting like he had a GUN in his pocket and all these cars were there with people watching and as he made this face and approached, I lifted my head higher, looked directly ahead and walked on. If he was going to kill me, or try, he would, and then it would be HIS happy birthday in jail for life. That was my moment of dignity and bravery and I thought, Wow You. You are really one to hold up under pressure!

I walked by and saw that all these people had seen my response and that I didn't even flinch. I kept my head held high.

Then I wanted to use someone's cell phone to make a couple calls and I walked a little ways and then took a right. I don't know why. I took a right where some man was pulling away looking sad. I took a right there and didn't go to the front door. I went to the back door. And there! was a man with a gun.

I thought, this has got to be a joke. Well first, I thought, this is a trap?

(My other songs I've played while writing are "Trouble" and "Green Eyes" by Coldplay)

So I had just passed man-on-the-street-with-gun-or-pretending and then I come around a corner and there is man in the doorway with a gun. Unbelievable, right?

So I said, "What have you got there?" in a nice way.

He said, "It's a bee-bee gun. I'm shooting cats." And egad, he was.

He said not to worry, and don't be afraid, he was just keeping these cats out of his yard. He began to fire. Pop! pop! pop! MEMMEEEWwwwwweEEEOOOORRROoowwww! Cats are jumping across the fence like gazelles. Meeeoooowwwwooaaaaawwwwrrrr. Meeoww! Pop! pop! pop! pop!

"Um, would you mind if I borrowed your cell phone?" I asked politely.
"Sure, he said," and handed me his phone. So I call my ex. The guy is standing there in the doorway still. I started telling Alvaro about my horrible birthday after he said, "HEeey! happy birthday! what are you doing?" I told him, "I don't know, I blogged fuck you, fuck you, fuck you three times and I don't have a place to stay and my parents won't even help me and then this MAN comes at me acting like he had a gun...you know "gun"?" Alvaro said, "revolver?" and I said yes and continued, "...So this guy acts like he is coming at me with a gun but I just faced forward, y yo levantense mi cabezza mas y decide camina direccatamente y no mira." So then, the guy in the doorway starts popping his bee-bee gun which my ex could probably hear so I added that then I had come around a corner and I was using the phone of a guy who was shooting cats with a bee-bee gun. Alvaro said I had to find a place to stay that night, after I told him I passed by other men who looked nice but I was too sad to say hello and ask about stuff. So I ended up staying at the place where the guy was shooting cats. There was a whole family there so it was comfortable.

Of all things, there in the right corner was my fucking holy grail cup. I said, "It's the grail!" and it was a golden goblet.

I had a good time actually, just talking over a beer and watching a movie. But then I had to use a phone that serviced not JUST "verizon" as I was told theirs did, so I went to the place behind their house and guess where I ended up?

The frickin' CAT HOUSE. THIS was where all those CATS were coming from. So the guy says I can use the phone and I make a bunch of housing calls. It REEKED of cats and there were about 14 or more that ruled the house but I the music was phenomenol. It was so weird. A really good sound system in this total cat place. They were playing jazz.

I went from the house that shot cats to the house that put cats first. This one black and white one with green eyes really liked me.

Anyway, that was my birthday, and the frickin' morning after.

I hope it's a good year.

ha...haa?

If people really knew what was going on over here, they would fully understand and forgive a few momentary outbursts and complaints from me. They would also understand, if I detailed a few more things, how it hasn't exactly been my fault I cannot get work here and why it's taken so long to find housing. People try to freeze you out or push or pull you into whatever they want, sometimes, even if it's not in your own best interests.