I was born and grew up on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula between a rain forest and a saltwater strait. My parents loved the place so much that they named me BlueGrouse, a bird only found in our rain forest. Lucky me. So, of course, as soon as I turned eighteen, I legally changed my first name to Melissa, the second most common one in the United States that year. In partial honor of my parents, I did keep Blue, but lopped off Grouse, as my middle name.
In any event, a woman originally named for a slug-eating bird doesn’t belong in the desert.
One morning late in July, the temperature was already over 100 degrees at dawn. And, minute by minute, it was only getting hotter. I could have hidden in the air-conditioned apartment, but I’d felt the need to challenge myself. I wanted to see how long I could endure that heat.
I was dizzy after a few minutes. And I was so thirsty that everything — the buildings, cars, and mountains — glistened like bottles of water.
And then I saw it.
To the east of the city. And approaching fast.
A massive wave of sand.
It stretched hundreds of feet into the air. And it was at least thirty miles wide.
All around me, my neighbors — none of whom I knew but who must have been watching the morning news — had stepped out onto their decks to stare.
“What is that?” one neighbor shouted to nobody in particular.
“A haboob,” somebody else shouted.
“What’s a haboob?”
“It’s Arabic.”
“Okay, it’s Arabic, but what does it mean?”
“The rough translation is ‘big fucking sandstorm.’”
As it rolled closer, the haboob swallowed the city. I wondered if it was strong enough to destroy buildings. Could the sand be propelled with such force that it stripped metal from cars and skin from humans?
I imagined that a million people — sudden skeletons — were buried and would remain so until an archaeologist discovered them centuries from now.
My neighbors fled back into their apartments, but I remained on my deck and waited for the storm. I welcomed it. But as the wind blew down power lines and exploded a few transformers, I was forced to retreat and watch the storm through the sliding glass door until a fine layer of dust obscured my view.
Later, after the skies had cleared and the electricity had been restored, and the mayor had announced that the city had sustained only minor damage, I remained in my dark apartment and stared at the sliding door. The dust had rearranged itself into ambiguous shapes and lines. It seemed to have formed letters of a strange alphabet. I wondered if God was punishing me by sending a message that I couldn’t read.
I’ve been a member of eleven book clubs in the last twenty years. I’ve read approximately one hundred novels during that time and I’ve enjoyed maybe half of them.
While reading books, I write notes in the page margins and I circle and memorize certain lines and passages. The people in each book might be different, but the plotline is basically the same: Somebody is unhappy and they do dangerous and foolish things trying to become happy.
I’ve been married and divorced twice. No kids. I’m quite positive that I’ll marry and divorce the next man who whispers my name.
Like I said, dangerous and foolish.
In my thirties, I made documentaries.
Or rather, I was the script supervisor for many documentary filmmakers. I kept things organized. I kept track of camera angles, dialogue errors, and continuity. If an actor picked up an apple in the first take, then I made sure she picked up an apple in each subsequent take.
In the old days, they called them script girls. These days, the script supervisors are still mostly women. But nobody comments on that. Not aloud.
I didn’t get paid much, but I enjoyed the privilege of traveling the country.
One autumn, I worked with a director making a short film about cranberry bogs in Wisconsin. He was a soft-spoken white man and he spent most of his time and budget interviewing the Indians who worked the bogs.
“What is the magic in cranberries?” he asked the Indians again and again. And they’d laugh at him. Or they’d say, “There’s nothing magical. It’s just a good job, if you don’t mind getting wet.” One old Indian woman said, “Aren’t cranberries supposed to muscle up your bladder so you pee good?” The director, desperately hoping for a new answer, would rephrase his question in a dozen different ways.
In bed, after good sex, he’d stare at the ceiling and chastise the Indians and himself.
“They don’t trust me,” he said. “I’m just another white guy with a camera. If I were an Indian, I wouldn’t trust me. Do you trust me?”
“Of course not,” I said. He was married and had three kids. I’ve never understood why mistresses fall in love with their married lovers. And I really don’t understand those mistresses who steal away husbands from their wives and children. Why would you want to destroy marriages and families and friendships? I’ve always thought the hottest thing about affairs was the secrecy.
“But I know these Indians think cranberries are magical,” the director said. “They just don’t want to share the magic. But I respect the magic. I want the world to respect the magic.”
He was a calm and kind man. He never lost his temper, but he so desperately wanted the Indians to answer his questions with spiritual force. He wanted the Indians to think of themselves as more than just blue-collar workers.
But they were blue-collar workers, and they were strong and scarred, and many of them made passes at me. I was tempted by a few of them, especially this muscular man with long black braids. His skinny butt looked great in his Wrangler jeans. But I politely declined all offers because I knew I couldn’t hop into bed with an Indian man without thinking of that Indian boy from my past. Even though I’m what the prigs would call promiscuous, I believe in making love to one man at a time. I didn’t want to have a threesome with a real person and a ghost.
On the last day of shooting, the director gathered up all of the Indian bog workers — a few dozen men and women — and organized them for a group shot. Just as he was about to film them waist-deep in a bog, they started laughing. No, they were giggling. And that made me giggle, too. I don’t think there’s anything funnier than a crowd of big Indians giggling so hard that they cry.
The director didn’t understand what was happening. I’m not quite sure that I understood.
“What’s so funny?” the director asked.
One of the Indians, a woman, stopped giggling long enough to speak.
“We’re laughing,” she said, “because white people always want to take photos of Indians. But you’re taking a picture of us at work. It might be the first photo ever taken of Indians working.”
And then she and the others laughed. They laughed so hard that the director realized he was finally capturing a spontaneous moment. He filmed the Indians laughing and slapping one another on the backs and shoulders. He filmed the Indians as they grew weak-kneed and weak-backed from laughter. He filmed them as, one by one, they had to flee the bog to avoid drowning due to hilarity. He kept filming until the only Indian left was that sexy guy with the long braids. He hadn’t laughed as hard as the others, but he was smiling with all of his teeth.
I lived with my second husband in Malibu.
One August, we stood on the roof of our house and fought a wildfire with garden hoses.
Can you believe the madness?
All my life, I’d promised myself that I would never become the kind of person who’d risk her life for material possessions.
Houses can be rebuilt. Your entire fucking life can be rebuilt if you don’t die first.