‘Winning Ugly’

Photographer - Tobi Brun

Winning Ugly

Sage:

By the time you read this I’ll be dead.  But as for the present, I’m just trying to get from today to tomorrow.  It wasn’t always like this, but we live in the reality of the day we are in. I want to savor my last few months on earth.  I want to go out with grace and dignity knowing full well that death is death and there’s very little that’s dignified about it. Life is a struggle, no matter who you are.  Everyone has problems of one kind or another.  Mine stem from being poor, mostly because of bad decisions made in the past that I can’t change now; so they are eating me alive.  While a rich person’s problems seems petty and insignificant to a poor person, they are important to them and weigh on them just the same as my problems weigh on me.  For the vast majority of people life is a struggle. You struggle. You struggle. You struggle.  And then you get to the end and wonder why you let the struggle steal your happiness?  For most, just like the poor, struggle will always be amongst us.  Struggle is an affliction that we wouldn’t wish upon our worst enemy; and like cancer it just doesn’t care.  The only good news is that soon my struggle will be coming to an end, but for Kid the struggle is just beginning.

Nobody came to save us, so we had to save ourselves,  This required letting those unwilling to work together for the common good to fall by the wayside.  Emotions got stepped on, egos got bruised, and there was hard feelings all around.  Well…tough shit, and doubly so for the whinners. Pitch in or get the fuck out, and don’t let the screen door hit you in the ass as you’re leaving.  So it’s just me and the step-grandson now, and my only responsibility is to leave him in as good a position as I can before checking out, with the only problem being that if I don’t check out soon the bank will force my hand and foreclose, and he will get nothing.

Kid:

The old man just went crazy.  He threw everyone out, and told them not to come back.  I don’t know exactly what set him off, but I do know that it was a long time coming.  Then he told me that it was us against the world; that I could continue to live here if I didn’t give him any shit and went to school every day.  If I wasn’t down with that he could send me to my mother or call Child Protective Services, either way I would be the big loser, so hurry up and decide.  I fucking hate school, but I know he means it, so I have to buck up and start going back to school again.

My older cousins started calling him Sage as a putdown because he was always giving unwanted advice as if he were some kind of a guru or something.  They didn’t have the nerve to tell him to shut the fuck up, but you could tell that anything that he said to them just went in one ear and out the other.  In private conversations with each other they would make fun of him and laugh at what a fool he was.  Whenever he defended himself  within earshot of Grandma she would tell everyone to calm down, but what she really meant was for him to cool it, and I could see that he hated it. She was surprised when he blew a gasket and told everyone to leave, and she was really pissed when he said that if she didn’t like it, then she could go right along with them.

Sage:

I had enough and hit the boiling point.  Thirty years of putting up with losers and malcontents.  A steady stream of tools and mooches who always say that they will help out and then they never do.  First it was her kids, and then it became her relatives and her grandkids.  They argued with me by agreeing with me.  They would tell me that I’m right about everything just to get me to stop talking.  And then nothing changed.  The folly inherent in believing in the supposed generosity of any communal living situation always presents itself in the kitchen where the dirty dishes get piled sky high and accumulate until there are no more dishes to be had.  Thereafter, paper plates are employed, and any pots or pans that do get washed are for individual meals only and then returned to the pile.  Talk all you want of the brotherhood of man, but in the kitchen it quickly becomes each brother for himself.  In truth, they waited me out, knowing that I’d get fed up and go ahead and wash them just so I didn’t have to keep looking at them.

When it came time to collect rent, they were all broke.  When it came time to split the bills, they were all broke.  Then they went off and ate in nice restaurants.  Then they went off to the movies even though we have satellite TV.  Then they were playing brand new video games.   And the drugs; somehow they managed to score and keep a steady stash on hand. They sure seemed to have a lot of money for someone who was always broke.

Grandma:

I know the situation is hopeless, and I don’t know why he fights it so hard.  If he could just be more accepting, life would be a lot easier for everyone else.  I’m hurt that he thinks of my family as a bunch of losers.  Things are different today than when he grew up.  You have to see that children have self-esteem.  You have to encourage them; you can’t put them down.  I want the kids to be strong-willed and independent, but I’ll admit that it seems that the independent part gets lost in translation.  I can see that they take advantage of us, but we disagree on how much.  Is it that hard to just accept it and keep the peace?  All this contention makes me a nervous wreck.  He tells me that it’s hard to keep the peace when no one cares about peace – just what’s good for them, and if they have to shit on others to get it – so what?

He doesn’t seem to get that people don’t change.  If fact, he demands change.  He expects it.  And he gets upset when it doesn’t happen.  I didn’t like what was going on, but I knew that there was no real solution and that the best course was to go along to get along. But three weeks ago he just went berserk and started screaming for everyone to get out, and when they laughed at him he started throwing things at them and then he said he was going to get a baseball bat and start breaking knee caps.  Then it was shoe soles and assholes as everyone vacated the premises.  It was an ugly scene, and I wasn’t going to put up with it.  So now I live with my youngest daughter in Oklahoma.  She tells me he was always a bastard and that she couldn’t understand why I tolerated it for so long.  Kid didn’t want to go with me, and I don’t know if he is going to make it there, but that’s his decision.

Kid:

I didn’t want to go to Oklahoma because Aunt Laura is worse than Sage.  She’s lazy and manipulative and self-centered.  Grandma will basically be her slave down there.  I know because that’s how it was here, and he hated it that she took advantage of them, and then he had it out with her.  Grandma said that she didn’t like being caught in the middle, and Sage told her that they weren’t joined at the hip, that she had her own car, that she could go over to Aunt Laura’s house whenever she wanted to.  He just didn’t know why he had to put up with her when it was so obvious that she hated his guts.

I have to agree with the old man that Aunt Laura was a problem.  She would come over here with her three kids and plop her ass down on the couch and put her nose in her cell phone while the old folks fed everyone while her kids tore the place apart, and then she would finally come to the table and eat before just getting up and leaving.  She never helped cook or do the dishes or clean up.  I guess she felt that they were guests, and that guest didn’t have to do nothing.  When he bitched about it Grandma just tuned him out.  When Aunt Laura wasn’t around life here was just fine.  They mostly left me alone to play my video games and when I refused to go to school he just gave up which was fine with me until the blowout.  Now I have to either listen to him or live with Ashley, and let me tell you that no one is ever going to nominate her for mother of the year.

Ashley:

I can’t take the kid in.  I get that he’s my son, but he’s fifteen and has a mind of his own.  I live in a fifth wheel and there is hardly enough room for me.  Mom seemed capable of handling him until the old bastard stripped a gear and tossed everyone out.  I hope Kid listens to him because he will throw the child to the wolves.  That asshole is responsible for the way I turned out.  He got with Mom when I was thirteen and he started interfering and telling her  that I was getting away with too much.  I couldn’t stand him and went to live with some people down in the desert who were the parents of one of my friends, and that was okay until her father hit on me and I was forced to move back.  The good part was that he worked all the time and was rarely ever home.  Mom was dependent on him because she had to stay home to look after my two younger sisters.  They didn’t like him either, so he got even by ruining their lives, also.

He tried to buy our love with new cars and other expensive shit.  I got pregnant at seventeen and he gave me an acre lot with a piece-of-shit single wide on it and expected me and the baby’s father to make the $250 a month payment saying I would own it all at the end of five years.  Then he gave me a swimming pool maintenance business that I didn’t really want and expected me to turn it into some big successful enterprise.  I got as much money as I could out of it and then let it drop like a nasty habit.  After the baby came Mom told him that they were going to have to pick up the payments on my trailer.  Then I got hooked on drugs and my life became a blur for the next fifteen years.  Many times I wish that she had never met that abusive bastard because all our lives would have turned out better without him in them.

Kid:

Sage isn’t so bad.  When I started living with him and Grandma at age four, I didn’t like him, and I made every effort to show him just how much until he moved over to the other house and didn’t come around much except to eat.  He helped with the dishes and bought the groceries and just basically stayed in the background.  Mom lives in a fifth wheel up higher on the lot and would come in when he was over here, and they would get in fights that she started, and Grandma would plead with him to just leave.  Kicked out of his own house; how pathetic was that?

I felt sorry for him after a while.  Anyone could see that he was working his ass off, and that everyone seemed to hate him for it.  But somehow time went by, and when I went to middle school he would pick me up every day after school and oftentimes give my friends a ride home.  I got to see that he was okay.  He would use those times to try to talk to me about my future and about how I looked at life.  Like I said, after I started refusing to go to school, he backed away and gave up on me until now. I think I can ride it out. Grandma will come home after she gets enough of Aunt Laura.  All I have to do is listen to him until then, and things will go back to normal.

Laura:

He is the biggest asshole on the face of the planet.  I don’t know how Mom put up with his shit for thirty years.  What a misogynistic prick.  A couple of years back when I got him alone, I let him know just what I thought of him, and he told me to go to hell.  Then he wouldn’t look at me or talk to me for two years until I finally moved away.  He didn’t cause me to move, I was going anyway because that’s what I wanted to do, but I will say that it’s great being away from him.  Mom’s here now so I have someone to take the kids to school and prepare the meals and do the laundry and keep the house somewhat clean so I can concentrate on my new job. 

I heard him tell Mom when I was back there that just having a job wasn’t enough and that I should do more.  Just because he was a workaholic doesn’t mean that I have to be.  The truth is he worked that hard because he was stupid and couldn’t figure out a way to get ahead.  He had the Midas touch in reverse because everything he came into contact with seemed to turn to shit.  He thought that I should be eternally grateful that he bought me a new car; an underpowered, undersized,  and slow Suzuki Forenza.  I hated that car and I hated the double-wide trailer on their lot that he forced me to pay $400 a month in rent for after I got a job.  He always acted like he was some big fucking hero for helping you out when the fact is that he didn’t really help very much at all.  Just ask my older sister Amanda.

Amanda:

Yeah, I know that Laura can’t stand him, and it seems that he has gotten to feel the same way about her.  I felt the same way as Laura until I moved away, got into some trouble, and started to see that he was only trying to help in the best way he knew how.  As for Ashley – she really hated him and feels that he has ruined her life.  What Ashley really hated was that I was his favorite and she felt that that was so unfair.  He would say that there’s a reason that favorites get to be favorites and that he wasn’t going to apologize for being nice to anyone who was nice to him.

I was ten when Mom and Sage got together.  At first, he was a lot of fun and treated her well.  Ashley didn’t like him right from the start, but then again, Ashley didn’t like me either.  Sage saw Ashley bullying me, and put me in karate, and that pretty much backed Ashley off.  I gave him a hard time when I got to high school and went to live with dad for a while.  After that, Laura and I went back and forth depending upon who gave us a better deal.  I got into drugs and partying in general, and didn’t go to school much.  Dad didn’t like the father of my first child so we all went to live with Mom when I was seventeen.  I’ll admit that we weren’t much for working, and that relationship ended after two kids, and I went back to Oklahoma for a while.  I came back with boyfriend number two and Sage tried to give him a job that didn’t much interest him.  After a year we both went back to Oklahoma and split up and I went to prison for a while.  That woke me up.  Now I can see that no matter how hard both he and Mom tried, I just wasn’t ready for any help and that my choices is what the problem really was.  Laura can never admit that she’s wrong, even when she is.  I don’t see Mom lasting there with her for very long.

Kid:

Sage loves Aunt Amanda, and I can see that she loves him too.  When Grandma and I went to see her in Oklahoma she told me that she could have had it all and now regrets that she didn’t take it.  Sage tried to mentor her and set her up in business even accepting that he would have to train and put up with boyfriend number two in order to help her.  But he only wanted to drink, and she was into drugs, and they thought that Sage expected too much of them, and there was an ugly argument, and he told them to move on.  He tells me it broke his heart and adds that she at least had the decency to move away.  Down there she had a change of tune.

Now Sage is telling me that all this dysfunction is a cycle that needs to be broken, and that I’m smart enough to go to college, have a career, and make something of myself.  I don’t want to do any of that shit knowing that it will be easier to be a You Tuber and a gamer and that I’ll make plenty of money doing what I love.  Aunt Amanda works eighty hours a week at a fast food restaurant and says it’s making her old before her time.  She tells me to listen to the old man but I’m not going to fall into the same trap she did.  I’m not having any kids, that’s for sure.

Four Months Later

Amanda:

I helped Mom move back to California, and she’s happy to be back.  I don’t think that Sage is too thrilled.  Sage registered Kid in school and takes him and picks him up every day.  So far he hasn’t missed, but I can see that that will change now that Mom is back in charge.  Ashley is happy to see Mom again, and Kid seems relieved.  As for the others that Sage threw out, Mom will have to see them off site because Sage made her promise not to let them come to their place by telling her that if they ever got back onsite that they would worm their way back in.  She and Sage just look old and worn down and resigned to taking care of Kid until he’s eighteen.  I can see their future that they don’t want to look at.  Kid isn’t going to go anywhere unless they throw him out.

Ashley and Sage mostly avoid each other.  He says he’s happy that she pays her rent and she says that $500 a month is too high even though it includes utilities and trash removal and rides to wherever she wants to go; and she’s invited to supper whenever she wants to attend.  Her presence in the main house makes Sage nervous, and I understand why.  Ashley is like a human ticking time bomb, and no one ever knows what might set her off.  I can tell that Sage will soon retreat to the other house.  He’s seventy-two now with four heart stents and doesn’t need the drama.  An uneasy alliance is what I would call their association, and for all their sakes I hope it continues to work.

Laura:

Mom bailed on me.  Amanda showed up one day while I was at work, and the kids were at school,  and they just loaded up and fled.  Mom called from the road to tell me.  I need her Social Security to make it and now I don’t have it.  How could she do this to me?  The kids had no idea what was going on.  Amanda got on the phone, and we had it out.  Fucking bitch telling me that Mom was tired of me expecting her to do all the house work.  I work!  Jesus, do I have to do everything myself?

I know that bastard is behind it.  Probably got tired of taking care of Kid.  Probably didn’t want to continue on with the cooking.  He only thinks of himself, the asshole.  What about me?  What am I going to do now?

Kid:

It wasn’t so bad living with Sage.  He’s a good cook, and as long as I go to school, he doesn’t give me any grief.  But school is boring.  The first semester I got five A’s and a B, and he told me I should talk to the teacher that gave me the B and see if there was anything I could do to pull it up to an A.  Jesus Christ!  Nothing is ever good enough for that guy.  Then this past semester I got four B’s and two C’s, and he acted like I was falling off the edge of the earth.  I told him I didn’t care about my grades, and he said that the only problem with that was that the rest of the world did.  He said it would lower my prospects for a good college, and he just couldn’t see that if I was capable of getting A’s then why would I ever settle for B’s and C’s?  He admitted that he never did as well in school as I’m doing and that he had tried really hard, so he couldn’t understand why I wasn’t willing to put in a little more effort.  Like I said, school is boring and I don’t care about my grades.

Now that Grandma’s back, and Mom will be coming around more often, I suspect that he’ll go back over to the other house again.  I don’t dislike the guy, it’s just that I don’t want to be anything like him – always busting his ass and not getting anywhere.  This place is a dump, and it’s the best he could do.  Over seventy years old, and this is it.  It’s pathetic.

Grandma:

I missed him and I missed Ashley and Kid.  Laura treated me like the hired help with the sad irony being that I wasn’t paid anything and she pounced on my Social Security payment the  moment I got it.  The grandkids treated me like a maid and they kept me busy constantly picking up after them.  I had to work miracles to buy groceries and put meals on the table, and they all acted like they were doing me a favor just to sit down and eat them.  Amanda stepped in and called him.  He said I could do whatever I wanted to: come, go, stay, leave – just don’t expect him to get too torn up by any of it.  Laura’s my daughter, and I know that she’s dealt him dirt, but what can I do about it?

Kid’s attitude really hasn’t changed much.  He goes to school because he’s afraid of winding up in a foster home.  I don’t know how Sage managed to get him registered this year; not being blood kin and all.  Both of them had very similar childhoods, so I guess that they understand each other.   The passion left our relationship years ago but I think he’s a good man for the most part, and I’m not taking the responsibility for Kid away from him.  Anyway, it’s good to be home.  I had no idea how much I would miss this place.

Ashley:

I’m so fucking glad Mom is back.  I lost count of how many times I had to hold my tongue when he was telling Kid how it was going to be.  He doesn’t get parenting at all.  He says that he isn’t buying all the bullshit the psychologists are selling: everyone gets a trophy, there’s no winners or losers, just competitors,  nobody should ever feel bad about themselves.  He pays Kid $25 for every A and nothing for a B.  Christ!  It’s all or nothing with this guy.  I can see now why my life got so fucked up.  That asshole just needs to take a chill pill.

My fifth wheel is falling in around my ears, and all he’ll do is fix what’s absolutely necessary saying he’s only going to do for me what he would do for any other tenant.  I’m sorry, but I think I deserve a little bit more than that.  He’s always short changed me, and I’m afraid he’ll do the same with Kid.  Mom won’t let him throw my son out, I know that much.  Kid treats me like shit, and Sage doesn’t do a goddamned thing about it.  He tells me that if I don’t like it then I can stay out of “their” house.  This is Mom’s house, not his, I tell him.  Then he says that they have equal shares as tenants in common, and that I have none.  He’s a bully I tell you, a real first class bullying dickhead.

Sage:

Her two daughters are so full of shit that it’s coming out of their ears.  I miss Amanda and wish she lived closer by, but like I say, at least she had the decency to move far enough away.  I’m happy her mother came back because I still love the woman and didn’t like how she was treated out there, even though I could see it coming from a mile away.  But she’s hard-headed and has to find things out for herself.  She says that she won’t interfere with Kid, but I don’t believe it, so we’ll see about that.  Concerning Laura; I could hate her,  but I could also hate a lot of other people, but to seriously hate anyone is hard work, and they just aren’t worth the effort.

The good news is that I held off killing myself because I couldn’t name Kid as the sole beneficiary on the life insurance policy and I wouldn’t dream of assigning any of her daughters as a trustee.  He would have never seen the money.  I had to do some fancy driving on some National Park back roads to mule a few loads of high grade up into Utah to get the money to keep the bank at bay.  Now that I’m old I’m all but invisible to the rest of the world.  Nobody even gave me a second glance.  I’m glad that her money is back in the household kitty and I don’t have to take that kind of risk again.  So she’s now the trustee that I was looking for because I know that she’ll be fair with Kid.  As for Kid; he’s just going to have to figure it out for himself, just like I had to do.  His mother and my mother could have been alter egos, so I know what he’s up against.  If anything, his intelligence will be his saving grace.  He’ll make mistakes and he’ll take his lumps, but I can only hope and pray that he’ll prevail in the end.  In my world that’s known as winning ugly.

John C. Krieg is a retired landscape architect and land planner who formerly practiced in Arizona, California, and Nevada. He is also retired as an International Society of Arboriculture (ISA) certified arborist and currently holds seven active categories of California state contracting licenses, including the highest category of Class A General Engineering. He has written a college textbook entitled Desert Landscape Architecture (1999, CRC Press). In conjunction with filmmaker/photographer Charles Sappington, Mr. Krieg has completed a two-part documentary film entitled Landscape Architecture: The Next Generation (2010). In some underground circles John is considered a master grower of marijuana and holds as a lifelong goal the desire to see marijuana federally legalized. Nothing else will do. To that end he published two books in 2022 entitled: Marijuana Tales and California Crazies: The Former Lives and Deaths of Outlaw Pot Farmers. John’s most recent collection of bios and reviews is: Lines & Lyrics: Glimpses of the Writing Life (2019, Adelaide Books). John’s most recent collection of fictional novellas is: Zingers: Five Novellas Blowing Like Dust on the Desert Wind (2020, Anaphora Literary Press). John’s collection of six political and slice-of-life essays is American Turmoil at the Vanguard of the 21st Century (2022).

‘On the Verge’, ‘Heredity’ & ‘Galveston Bay’

Photographer - Tobi Brun

On the Verge

I discover myself on the verge of an unusual mistake,
whether or not to lean in to the breeze and simply
be carried away on one wind or another to some place
or another where little girls and their mothers sip
nectar from bright white blossoms and there is beauty
in the simplicity of a spear of summer grass.

And it is this that sits, itching at my ears:
What has become of the young and old men?
What has become of me?
Where do I end?
Where am I going and where have I been?

And perhaps it is I, not this bird who beats inside
my chest, that is a bit too tame. Crack the bone of
my breast and peel back the sick and the hurting
and let this one stretch her wings, and maybe
she will be carried away on one wind or another
and I will find myself set down beside my mother,
her soul cool and composed before the horizon
of a million universes.

Heredity

I am half my mother, sipping sadness in the shadow of the moon, but I am not half my father, not
his fists nor his frown.

The other half I am something else, world-rich, filling myself up with all of the things I am not: a
handful of cigarettes, a mouthful of pills, a glass of cold water, a condom, a cat sitting on the
sidewalk corner.

Galveston Bay

What a waste that you came to this slum of a place where we dance and we chase and we drain
out the lake of the grapes and the gray haze of last summer’s grace, where we laugh and we rage
and paint shame on our face, where the girls all in lace with their gay little gaits place a handful
of snakes in a vase and take eight ripened dates off a plate. They wait with their hair all done up
in braids, but the dates taste like paste and the snail on the doorstep is late to the race so they’ve
wasted a day waiting ‘round for their fate. In the garden they’ve taken the down-the-road saint
and hung him by his hands from the spoke of the gate, pinned him in place with a nail made of
jade while they pray and burn sage and it rains in the glade. He goes up in a blaze and in the fray
of the flames they’ve mistaken an angel and misplaced their praise so they cry and they bray but
their wails are in vain -- come the morning what’s left is a gray bit of clay.

Mikayla Silkman is a writer and editor from southwest Connecticut. She predominantly writes speculative fiction and poetry, with the occasional foray into the creative essay. She is also an independent copyeditor. Her work has been featured in Western Connecticut State University's The Echo, Catholicism Coffee, The Hallowzine, and the 2023 CT State Literary Anthology. Mikayla is a devout Roman Catholic, an SVT survivor, and a proponent of literature and the arts. In her free time, she enjoys hiking, playing video games, and cooking. She is currently a student of Western Connecticut State University's MFA in Professional & Creative Writing program. She and her husband, Gordon, currently live in Bethel, Connecticut, and have a rescue dog named Oobi.

‘Fallen Gods’ & ‘Ophidian's Tongue’

Fallen Gods

Gods do not fall gracefully and delicately,
With fire and destruction, they crash and burn.
When you spend your life in beauty and power,
You are not given that luxury when you are cast away.
With chains of bronze, you are led away
Faces you once laughed and sang with, now smirk at the opportunity to take your place.
Gods do not fall with grace,
They poison that which surrounds their crater.
When cast from on high, to live with worms in the mud,
You are given no courtesy,
No clothes to hide your divinity.
No weapon to fight off the dogs of hunters.
You are spared none of your gifts, lest you crawl back up.
A God does not land lightly,
Even when falling, a God is grandiose.
The heavens light up, in cheer of your departure.
The cheering of old friends fills the air,
For the gods do not fall gracefully.
You are cast away, to become entertainment until the world unwrites itself.
The golden ichor of their blood, withers, crimson and dark.
Your face loses its perfection, becoming blemished and bruised. Your wings once snow white, fall into darkness, shrouding your once grand beauty.
The perpetual light above your head fades and shatters.
For gods, do not fall.

Ophidian’s Tongue

If I had but a single wish, to beseech the genie, to ask the star,
I would go back, and tell myself,
Not to sip.
The cup you drink from, is poisoned.
He’ll pinch your nose, and tilt back your head.
Drink up.
He’ll whisper soft as rebar and nails.
Little one, you’ll learn
He lulled you into submission,
With each sip from that blasted cup, he bound you,
Tighter and tighter to him.
He said, through him, you’ll fly and touch the sky,
I already know the ending of that story.
So, I’ll clip my wings, and scatter the feathers like autumn leaves.
Because even after all this time, you still think I remember the smell of you,
But it's you who lusts for another taste.

Colin Donnelly is an unpublished writer, looking to start expanding his roots, and gain more experience in the world of publication, with the hopes to someday become a full-fledged author.

‘CT 2’ & ‘Axial CT’

CT_2

Axial_CT

Katie Pippel is a resident of the Pacific Northwest and is an English Language Arts teacher, writer, and dancer. She's embroidered since 1996 and much of her work features brain imaging of her husband during the course of his epilepsy. Fourth piece features a responsive neurostimulator that monitors his brain.

My Husband’s Restaurant Choices

Photographer - Tobi Brun

My Husband’s Restaurant Choices

Our first date was at Chili’s, a nice chain restaurant in Starkville, Mississippi, not far from our town of West Point. I remember that my husband didn’t say much, so I didn’t say much
either. We had a good meal and even shared a chocolate brownie with ice cream for dessert. I had a nice time. I thought we got along well, and enjoyed each other’s company, even though we
didn’t talk much, when on dining dates. But somehow, after we got married, the restaurants we frequented became less and less familiar to me, further and further away, and more and more like country buffets and soul food, with less ambiance, no style, American Flags, Elvis statues, and old Mississippi flags with the confederate symbol still on them.

What happened?

For Jimmy’s birthday I was invited to eat at a steakhouse in Columbus, Mississippi with some of his family. He chose a few family members to join him for his birthday meal. We went to Old Hickory Steakhouse. This is where he gets his favorite steak. The best steak anywhere around. The best steak ever made. I realized after a while, that Jimmy’s going out to eat had nothing to do with the
restaurant. It was all about the food. And when he got a hankering for a certain food, he would not sit still until we were on our way to go and get that food, everything else be damned. When
he got a craving for catfish, we would either go to Pheba’s Diner, out past our house, or all the way out near Aberdeen, Mississippi to The Friendship House. And Jimmy never talked to me
when we dined out. He just ate. He would ask me where I wanted to eat. I would answer with some really tasteful restaurant that had atmosphere and Pinot Grigio for me to drink and relax, back when I drank alcohol. Then he would suggest a new restaurant that he wanted to try out, way out somewhere, and the question of where I wanted to eat was just a formality. I would go, even though I dreaded the experience, and the food. It became interesting to me to see how these places were built and to see their decor. Outside there was usually a lot of metal siding. Inside, there was wood. Lots of wood paneling. Some of these restaurants were in huge tin warehouses, or small buffets with soul food. There were wagon wheels and signs on the walls with sayings like,

“Welcome, Y’all!”

I was deflated a bit each time we went to one of his restaurants. It chipped away at my soul and didn’t help our marriage. Jimmy would eat and eat and would not speak. I grew weary of this and we finally started eating at places we could both enjoy. The new Longhorn Steakhouse in Columbus was one, with its cattle motif. We ate often at Little Dooey’s in Starkville, which is a hodgepodge of signs and framed photographs and rooms with tables and chairs, added on, but the food was really, really good. And Mexican restaurants were fair game. As the years went by, I coaxed Jimmy to talk some as he ate, to notice the interiors of the restaurants, and to allow me to eat at restaurants of my choosing. I became vegan, so steakhouses were no longer an option unless they had salads. Now when Jimmy gets the sudden desire to go eat at one of his faraway restaurants or a new restaurant that he wants to try out, he asks his family members to go with him. I simply do not go. I reached my limit.

After twelve years of marriage, many years of cooking deer steaks and cornbread at home, and traveling to remote locales to try out a buffet with steak and fried everything, including frog legs, I know what Jimmy likes in a restaurant, and he knows what I like. I stopped cooking for him after a while, and now we get groceries for meals that we can prepare together. He has learned to speak with me when we have lunch or dinner. But he has a few manners that need changing. He will talk with his mouth full, he wipes his nose and mouth with a napkin and doesn’t fold the napkin over, and leaves it on the table, and the worst part of all that I’ve had to get accustomed to, is that he eats like a prisoner. Yes, he hovers over his plate with his elbows or arms on the table on either side of his plate, and he doesn’t hold his fork properly. He shovels it all in quickly, while having to have a piece of bread or cornbread in his left hand the entire time, from which to take a bite, in between feeding his face. I’m sorry, reader, for speaking this way about my husband, but this is so pronounced that I cannot let this go unsaid. I finally learned that the reason he eats this way is because he grew up in a large family with eight siblings. And out of habit. I cannot change this about him. Believe me, I’ve tried. Jimmy was diagnosed with microscopic colitis and celiac disease and was supposed to eat gluten free. He went through a spell when his digestive system was acting up, which doesn’t happen much now, and once, after we ate at La Fiesta Bravo in town, we left the restaurant and he vomited right in front of the restaurant where he was clearly visible to everyone on the highway and many people coming from and going in the restaurant. This was horrible. I felt
terrible for him but we laughed about it wondering what the wait staff at the restaurant must have thought, or the customers—that the food must have been really bad. What an embarrassing thing
to happen, to regurgitate out front. This happened on at least three occasions, which was not a good advertisement for their restaurant.

We dine out quite often now, and we have learned to tolerate many things from each other. Now I care more about the food than before, noticing my own cravings and hunger. We
talk a lot, and Jimmy cares more about the type of establishment in which we dine. I watch his eating habits which have not changed. But Jimmy eats more healthily—more salads and
vegetables. We eat in Starkville quite often, and much to my disdain, we sometimes eat at the Friendship House where the food is good, but the people and atmosphere are foreign to me. Jimmy likes the catfish at The Ritz’s Magnolia Restaurant downtown, thank goodness, because I see people I know, when we dine there sometimes. And as our relationship has improved, Jimmy is eating healthier.

I love to visit Jimmy’s sister and brother-in-law on the Coast. We have our favorite places to go for good seafood. We went to a restaurant called Parish. That’s Paris with an “h.” It was expensive. The food was great, I had a lot in common with the waitress who was an artist, and we drank a lot of wine and beer. And we laughed. We laughed so much it hurt. We had so much fun. As we were leaving we noticed a lounge in the restaurant. We looked in and decided to sit in the lounge to continue our evening there. We ordered dessert drinks. We laughed again non-stop, and had the best time. It was a night I’ll never forget. We have dined out at the ——Oyster, and several other great restaurants, including Commander’s Palace, in New Orleans where our niece
lives. We ate at Lebanon's quite often, and we recently found a great Thai restaurant, Pomelo. Every dining out experience is different with Jimmy. I think I’ve raised the bar a bit for his restaurant selections now. He likes Taste, a really chic restaurant in Starkville, Mississippi, and several other places that seem posh compared to what we were used to. I don’t drink alcohol anymore so that cuts down on the total cost. I like to see Jimmy enjoying his meals. He has become more aware of his surroundings and he likes most of the places I like, which is an achievement on my part. I know we will continue to dine out and hope that our experiences will become more enjoyable.

Jimmy has recently started speaking even more to me during our meals. This is a historic achievement. But he still lacks table manners which may never change, but I am hopeful. I know
one thing: Dining out with Jimmy is never boring. And that makes up for any of his lack of restaurant refinement.

Jane Dill is an emerging writer from Mississippi. She has an MFA in Creative Writing, an MA in French, and a BA in Fine Arts. She travels often to Paris.