Kudzu Queen

By Tamara Ducote

What I really need, I decided, is a time machine. I don’t think that’s too much to ask for. I don’t need a deluxe model. You can keep all the bells and whistles and fancy attachments. I don’t plan to travel back to see the dinosaurs (although that would be cool), or swill champagne with Marie Antionette (although that would be cool, too). Naw, I just need a cheap, made-in-Taiwan gizmo. A disposable, one-time-use-only machine would suffice.

I just need to go back to yesterday evening and change a couple of minor details. A couple of details I committed that are going to reverberate in my heart and mind and life for a long, long time.

It’s been a long time since I’ve had a broken heart. I’d forgotten how truly miserable the state of broken-heartedness is. Now I remember why I swore off of dating for so long (besides the fact that Warren Zevon was already dead, so what did it matter, anyhow?).

For the first time ever, I am sincerely glad that the horrible little Chihuahua is here. She likes to be held, and she lets me cry into her soft yellow fur. By the way, she looks really funny soaking wet. I am grateful that despite me trying for years to give the dog away, nobody would take her. I need her right now. If I were dogless, I’d really be up emotional shit creek. The iguana is not sentimental or sappy. No way would he tolerate me hugging him and crying into his scales.

I’m not a bad person, really, although I am selfish and self-centered and sarcastic and am prone to fits of gratuitous cruelty. Oh, hell. Wait a minute. Those are my GOOD qualities.

Maybe I am a bad person.

Certainly I was yesterday evening.

Consequences SUCK, man. Consequences suck Satan’s you-know-what.

I wish there were some third party I could blame for my current situation. If so, I could just go stomp a mudhole in their ass and it would be wonderfully cathartic. But it is physically impossible to stomp a mudhole in one’s own self. It can be done mentally, but something is lost without the visceral thrill of bruising and bleeding and bones cracking. It’s not a complete experience. It’s like watching a movie with the sound off, or eating a meal with a clothespin on your nose.

I’d forgotten the physical effects of a broken heart. The feeling that somebody came and laid an enormous black stone on my chest when I wasn’t looking. The churning stomach that no amount of Mayfield’s chocolate chip ice cream can quell. People, when Mayfield’s doesn’t work, you can consider yourself in some serious deep shit.

The lump in the throat, the tears hovering behind the eyes.

So, back to the time machine. If I had one, I’d zip back to yesterday evening and I’d do two things differently. First, I would not uncork that wine bottle. Because even though I am not necessarily a good person when sober, things get much worse very quickly when alcohol is added into the equation. I am the poster child for that phrase: “Instant asshole: Just add alcohol.” The second thing I would not do is uncork my mouth and allow vile, cruel things to fly out like rabid bats.

Shit, here come the tears. Let me go find that dog.

This one’s going to hurt for a long time. But on the bright side, I’m already 42, which is middle-aged, which means I’m halfway to death. This situation would suck even worse if I were, say, 20, because then I’d have a lot more years of hurting ahead of me.

To continue looking on the bright side, if you ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose. This is little consolation, though. I walk outside and see that the flowers are looking dull, despite their explosion of blooms, and the birdsong is flat, despite the winged creatures’ enthusiastic efforts.

The sky is definitely darker. Even the butterflies look ugly. The generous batch of plant cuttings my gardening buddy gave me sits neglected on the kitchen floor, slowly dying. Good. Die more, faster. Maybe I’ll stomp you, plants. Just to be stomping something. Maybe I’ll catch a butterfly and stomp its stupid guts out.

If I can’t have a time machine, I definitely need one of those special Rolling Stones paintbrushes. You know, to paint it black. Everything.

I think about seriously ill folks who have handfuls of pills they have to swallow. My pills are remorse, regret, shame and sorrow, and they are bitter pills, indeed.

I am not just my own worst enemy, I am my own assassin. I am Special Forces, CIA-trained, take-no-prisoners, DefCon 5 to myself.

Here come the tears. Gotta go. Got to go find that wet little dog and wet her down a bit more.

Contact Tamara Ducote at TDDucote6@aol.com.

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