Sex and the Silos: Chapter 2

Chapter 2: Ann Has a Very Bad Day

As it so happened, while fate was pushing Ruth toward her own personal Americans With Disabilities Act, it was also placing Ann quite literally down in the dumps.

Ann was involved in a long-term relationship with a slightly neurotic and slightly more anxious eco-friendly metal head named Joseph. Most of the time, they enjoyed a comfortable relationship that included discussions about the downfall of society over cups of coffee at Barnes and Noble, attending various pagan functions, and smoking dope in the basement while listening to bands with the word “goat” in their names. Occasionally, however, Ann’s PMS and Joseph’s anxiety swirled together in a cocktail that turned them both into bad drunks.

Such was the case that Friday night, when Ann found herself in the Dumpster, searching with a flashlight for Joseph’s lost bottle of Xanax.

That morning, Ann had been nursing a pot hangover, pre-period cramps and a hormone headache. That same morning, Joseph happened to wake up late for work and couldn’t find any clean pants.

“I can’t believe I don’t have any clean pants,” he said, stomping briskly back and forth between the bedroom and the kitchen, as if his pants could be in the kitchen, or as if they might suddenly appear on his sixth trip through. “I washed a million pants yesterday,” he said. “I thought I set them right here”-- waving both of his hands in the general direction of the couch --”and now they’re gone. I can’t find anything when our house is clean,” he said.

“Could they be in the dryer?” Ann asked through her toothbrush. She wasn’t particularly concerned about whether or not Joseph wore clean pants to work but was hopeful that if he found them he might shut up about it. He had recently stopped taking his anti-anxiety medication because he didn’t want the chemicals in his system, but he -- and Ann--were finding it hard to make the transition to Joseph’s all natural state. “I suppose they could be,” he said, sighing heavily as he stomped toward the stairs. “Of all the days I can’t find my pants,” he said. “I’m supposed to be there in like seven minutes and I can’t find any fucking pants to wear,” he said. He stomped back down the stairs in a couple minutes wearing a wrinkly pair of black pants and went straight past her to the kitchen.

It was at this point that Ann’s day began unraveling.

“Have you seen my Xanax?” Joseph called from the kitchen.

“What?”

“Have you seen my Xanax,” he asked again, looking in the refrigerator where he kept his bottle, which held the last pill of his prescription. He’d been saving it for when he really needed it.

“I,” Ann said, then stopped. “I think I threw it away.” Joseph tipped his head in her direction.

“What?”

“I think I threw it away yesterday when I was cleaning the fridge,” she said. “I thought it was empty.”

He sighed. “I don’t usually keep empty bottles of pills in the refrigerator but whatever,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” she said again weakly.

“Whatever, it’s not that big a deal,” he said, making it clear that it was that big of a deal as he did his pouty stomp out the back door. Ann looked around the fridge a bit even though she could clearly remember the Xanax bottle. She’d tossed it right after the 80-proof orange juice and right before the quarter-jug of lumpy organic kefir. It really had been empty, Ann was sure of it, and was pondering the possibility that perhaps Joseph didn’t realize he hadn’t had any left as she went out to her porch and lit up a cigarette.

Out in the crisp September morning sun sat the ugliest couch she had ever seen, sitting smack-dab in the middle of her little front lawn.

“What...the...fuck,” she said as she saw the couch, old, stained, an orange and green floral nightmare festooned with women’s panties, silly string, condoms and several signs featuring the word ‘pussy.’ A car drove by.

When her cell phone rang, Ann was still reeling from the obscene Barcalounger in front of her house. Cigarette number three of the morning was perched in her right hand so she had to reach in front of the steering wheel with her left to dig for the phone. She heard Babs coughing on the other end of the phone.

Babs was a woman Ann had known for seven years. When Ann met Babs, Babs was working as a nurse at the Mental Health Center, was happily married and had had a little boy about 7 years old. She really had it together. Over the previous six years, however, Babs had become bored with the marriage, divorced her husband, stalked a coworker, started smoking pot during her lunch breaks and spent two years dating a hobo. Currently unemployed, she was dabbling in internet-facilitated prostitution.

“Ann!” she said breathlessly from the coughing. “Hey sweetie! How are you today?”

“Well...” Ann said, her voice cracking in the first sign of a thrice-a-year all-out PMS meltdown, “Well, I got up today and there was a couch on my front lawn,” she said. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about this, would you?”

Babs, currently 43 years old, was known to play ‘jokes’ on people that involved toilet paper, tampons and lipstick. “A couch?” she said, then started laughing, which caused her to start another coughing fit. “Well, no, sweetie...” more laughing and coughing “...I don’t...” A final loud barking finally cleared Babs’ airway. “I just was calling to see how you were doing.”

Suspecting a lie but not having the energy to confront the sometimes downright frightening Babs, Ann’s voice finally broke and she cried into the phone, “I don’t know what I’m going to do with that couch! How am I going to get rid of it? I don’t have a truck! I just didn’t need this this morning! I have PMS, I’m crampy, I have a headache, I threw Joseph’s Xanax away, and I have a disgusting couch on my front lawn!” By this time she’d pulled over to the side of the road to light up cigarette number four and pull herself together.

The ever-compassionate Babs laughed and coughed some more and said, “It’s just a couch, sweetie, don’t be so upset! It’s really not healthy for you to get so worked up. Now just calm down.”

That afternoon, after a barely tolerable day, Ann was pulling into their alley when the dumpster caught her attention. She pulled over, got out, and looking around to see if anyone was watching, climbed up the side of it and peered in. There were only about 10 bags in there, and she thought she could identify one that might be theirs. “What a shitty day,” she thought as she climbed into the stink and gingerly opened the bag that looked familiar. It wasn’t theirs, but the fourth one she opened held a the carton of lumpy kefir. One by one, she tossed out the slimy trash, finally dumping it around her feet. The Xanax bottle rolled past and stopped at a pile of rancid spaghetti. The unmistakable plinking of one lonely pill rattled in her ears as she picked it up.

Clutching the bottle in her hand, Ann pulled the car down the alley and into the garage next to Joseph’s Volkswagen. She trudged slowly up the back sidewalk. The house, usually filled with the black noise of Old Goat, was uncharacteristically quiet. She looked out the front window to assess the couch situation and saw a truck pulling away with the horrid couch in the back, and Joseph stooped over the grass with a trash bag, throwing away the last pair of underwear.

He met her on the front stairs. A piece of silly string hung from his goatee and the trash bag hung at his side. Ann stepped toward him and took his hand.

“You have silly string in your beard,” she said.

“You smell like a trash can,” he said.

“I found this in the Dumpster.” She handed him the bottle and he opened it, spilling the little pill into his palm. She leaned her forehead against his shoulder. He dropped the trash bag and pushed her shoulders back. He kissed both of her eyelids, both of them a little salty, and then lifted her face up with his hands to kiss her.

Then he took the Xanax and placed it tenderly on her tongue, closing her jaw with softly with his fingertips. He smiled, took her hand and led her through the living room to the downstairs bathroom. He set her on the side of the tub and started drawing a bath, adding a few drops of rose oil as the water ran, and then undressed her, careful not to let the spaghetti goo on her shirt graze her hair as he pulled it over her head. He helped her into the tub, then lit a candle for her and moved toward the door.

“Thanks,” he said. She looked at him wondering what he was thanking her for, but before she could ask he answered. “For not pretending that you were right.” He closed the door softly behind him as she sank back into the water.

And this is why Ann and Joseph were still together after approximately 73 shared period prodromes and at least half as many panic attacks.