I got up bright and early this morning and finally got to uploading some of the video I took at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe last Friday night. The time I spent listening to the poets was really good for me, really artistically nourishing. I'm so glad I got a little footage to remind me of the experience.
On the night that I went there, I was having such a good time that I didn't leave till around 2 AM. I gave my husband a call right away so I could rave about the experience. And then I asked him how his day had been.
He didn't want to tell me because he said he didn't want to put a dark cloud on my evening. I made him talk though and he told me a story of complete and total insanity. So crazy, in fact, that it made me feel a little sick to my stomach. Okay, maybe that nausea was just the lurching of the taxi I was in, but still, I'm completely convinced that out here in LA, we definitely do crazy much better than anyone else.
Let me tell you about it:
My eldest son has been friends with a girl we'll call "Emily" for the past two years. He's had an innocent crush on "Emily" since they met in Pre-K and he sometimes tells me he's going to marry her. She's a sweet little girl and they get along really well. They mostly see each other in school but occasionally, since she lives right down the hill, we run into her and her family at our neighborhood park.
Since she's my son's friend, he wanted to invite her to my other son's birthday party a couple of weeks ago. No problem, right? Her entire family came and they had a great time, etc. Emily's mom, "Lucy", suggested that we all go trick or treating together and the kids were psyched about that. Sure enough, the entire family did indeed come along on our annual trick or treating jaunt through Los Feliz.
Emily's father, "Nate", seemed to be in a weird mood on Halloween but I didn't pay too much attention to him because I figured he was either tired or didn't really want to be there. Either way, there was nothing I could do about that. Besides, I spent most of my time talking to the mom about family, balancing life, the neighborhood...you know, "mom" type stuff.
Well, Friday morning, my husband ran into Nate when he took our kids to school. Since they were going the same way, my husband walked home with Nate, and Nate decided to drop this bomb: Lucy cheats on him with other women and has done so for twenty years. She practices the "dark arts" and casts spells on other women so that they're attracted to her. Once Lucy's cast a spell, there''s nothing the target can do because the spell's so powerful.
And guess who Lucy's latest target is? Um, yeah. Yours truly! Great, just great.
I said to my husband, "Did you make it clear that he has nothing to worry about since I'm not down for that kind of thing?"
Apparently that doesn't matter because according to Nate, Lucy's going to put me under her spell by cooking for me. She'll cook and then create a situation where it'd be socially rude for me to not eat her food.
What's she gonna do to the food, you ask? That's a GREAT question!
Here comes the NC-17 part so you can just skip to the next paragraph RIGHT NOW if you don't want to know the "how" of this. But for those of you who are like me, the train wreck watching type, Lucy apparently cooks these special dishes using some "juice" from "down there". (Eww. I'm grossed out just typing that.) Then once the victim eats this doctored up food, they go bananas for Lucy!
I'd be more inclined to believe that her secret ingredient is some of that date rape drug. But that's what Nate claims she does. In fact, Nate talked to my husband for quite some time and told my him all the sordid details of Lucy's past exploits. I'll spare you all the graphic details but it apparently started after Lucy began investigating Scientology. Apparently, she got extra close with her Scientology teacher but finally decided not to become a Scientologist when she moved on to someone else. Nate says he stays for their kids but he just wanted to warn us because he's seen this happen for 20 years and really doesn't want me to fall victim to Lucy's spells.
So after turning this over in my head, I've decided:
Option One: Nate's crazy and making it all up because he's a weird controlling type, and doesn't want his wife influenced by me. After all, when they were over here for the birthday party, I did tell them how I don't really do dishes because my husband has two hands...maybe he's abusive of her and doesn't want her to have friends that don't believe the woman's place is in front of the sink.
Option Two: Lucy's crazy and really believes she has some sort of dark magic power. Yeah, maybe Lucy truly believes she's going to turn me out. This is just so laughable on so many levels, but you never know what fantasies folks can cook up in their heads.
Option Three: They're both crazy and are hoping me and my husband are swingers or something. Maybe Nate was trying to feel out my husband to see how receptive he'd be to some sort of threesome, foursome type ish.
Regardless, the first thing that ran through my mind is that there's no more of my kids hanging out with the little girl, Emily. I don't know what the heck is going on in their house but my primary responsibility is to protect my kids and all that dark magic mess is just a little bit too out there for me.
Like I said, we clearly do crazy really well here in Los Angeles. It's going to be really interesting when I see Lucy and Nate again. I'm sure it'll be this afternoon.
