Some old ass cemetery in Lancaster, PA

Chooch is already asking if we’re going to have our traditional Christmas picnic in the cemetery and I think that’s so awesome that it’s already become a “thing” for him. We didn’t get to do it last year because it rained pretty steadily on Christmas, but we had a little post-Christmas cupcake snack on a drier day.  The cemetery picnics were something that started in ’05 when I was pregnant and we had no where else to go on Christmas because my family was being a basket of dicks. It kind of just stuck after that, even after my family took me back. We grab some snacks, some plastic bottles of eggnog from the convenience store, a blanket if we remember, and eat while shivering amongst graves. I don’t think Henry enjoys it, but Chooch and I do and isn’t it really all about pleasing the children?

All my life, I’ve had encounters with people who think it’s “weird” or “unhealthy” to have a fascination of cemeteries. I’m sure Chooch will eventually run into these same types of people who will crinkle their noses and attempt to make him feel like there is something wrong with him for pointing out the car window and yelling, “Cemetery! Let’s go!” just like he did in Lancaster. But hopefully he will be able to brush that shit off like I do. It’s not like we’re digging up dead bodies, for Christ’s sake.

Christmas 2008

Someday I will make a photobook filled entirely with all of Chooch’s cemetery photos and then all his friends will be like, “Dude, you have the best baby pictures ever!” and I will sneer in the faces of their parents.

What kind of holiday traditions do you have?

It’s not really an unknown fact that I frequent several of the cemeteries around Pittsburgh nearly every day. Cemeteries are my favorite places to jog, to have some peace, to just be. Henry, finally realizing that he receives less bitching/nagging phone calls on days that I get to go on these cemetery runs, has been making concessions to enable me to take a break from Chooch and go to my happy place.

The one I went to yesterday morning is the more deserted of the handful of area graveyards I’ve claimed as second homes. Occasionally, there might be a maintenance man here and there, driving around on his mower, making my skin crawl with the promise of rape. But it’s very rare that I encounter any human life form other than the type that stinks of sweat, gasoline, and molestation.

So imagine, as I stood outside my car all a’pretzel in my pre-run stretches, the fear that ricocheted off my heart when I heard a wet snuffling approaching to my left. It was accompanied by a frenzied panting interspersed with grunts and a soft jangling of chains. I caught a quick glimpse of a shock of black hair.

Ducking behind my car, my first thoughts were:

• Someone is taking their Team Jacob idol-worship way too seriously
• This sounds akin to Henry, being released from a cage after being fed nothing but porn and Pop Rocks for a week. (They used to do that to him in the SERVICE!)
• I am about to witness my first zombie and I hope to god it’s not a child one but I think it’s really going to be a child one

It was a dog. Just some black dog being walked by a girl in (really short) yellow shorts. I laughed a little to myself and began the very scientific process of applying my suntan oil. But my heart never really had the chance to recover from its WE ARE ABOUT TO DIE NOW Indian drum beat; a cop car coasted up behind me as I was making sure I had ample coverage on the back of my neck.

The car slowed its a pace a little as it became parallel with me and my car, then it made the first right, crawling slowly, gravel crunching and twigs cracking beneath its wheels amplified in my paranoia-filled head.

I have a strong dislike for cops. Some might say I even HATE them, but let’s pretend there might be a cop reading this who isn’t a complete fucker and I will try to remain unbiased. But cops and me? We’ve got a pretty storied past.

I was expecting him to turn right onto one of the smaller arteries that would lead him back out of the cemetery, but instead, he turned around so he was perpendicular to my parked car, and backed up into the shadows where the road is cut off by a guardrail. (The rest of that road is crumbling down a hillside. I like to walk on it because I am THAT dangerous.)

“OK, he’s turning around,” I thought, and then realized if that were the case, he’d be driving right past my car in a way where my OUT OF DATE inspection stickers would be visible. So I’m trying to be all casual about this, all “Doo do dooo,” walking stiffly to the front of my car and laying my sun tan lotion and water bottle across the expired stickers with the motion of a robot up to no good.

And then I ran away.

I tried to shake it off, to stop looking like I had a body stowed in my trunk (because who would be at home watching Chooch if that were the case), and proceeded to just enjoy my time in the cemetery. I was down in the lower section, Dance Gavin Dance keeping me all motivated, when I started to ascend a hill and noticed that the cop car was still parked in that dead-end corner. I shook it off again, and lost sight of it for awhile.

But then I came up one of the paths that was parallel to where he was parked, but lower so that I couldn’t see the car just yet. I’m walking along this path and my mind starts churning. I start wondering if there’s something going down. The four main cemeteries I like to walk in are all smack in the middle of the North Side, which is not the best area in Pittsburgh. At all. What if I’m about to be an innocent bystander in some sting operation gone awry? Would I even be able to hear the gun shots with headphones on and one bad ear? (My right ear is in the middle of A Saga right now. This morning I actually looked for a doctor before giving up after five minutes!)

Finally, the path I was on intersected right in front of the cop car. I turned a quick right so that I was walking away from the cop. I could feel that I was wearing my shoulders as earrings, which is typical “Erin is nervous/guilty/tense” fashion. My arms were locked at my sides. I looked less like I was on a casual jog through the cemetery and more like I was being escorted to the gas chamber.

Act casual, act casual, act casual. The more thought I put into it, the more I walked like some leg-braced orphan from 1935.

This particular cemetery isn’t that big, so I inevitably had to be near him again. But this time, I was more curious than frightened, so I pulled my headphones off, perched my sunglasses on my head so he could see my eyes and not feel inspired to shoot, and approached the drivers side of the car with purpose.

And then I spoke to him. It went exactly like this:

Me, in a tone that sounded kind of bitchy even though it wasn’t my intent: “AM I OK BEING HERE?” Seriously, nervous situations make my octave raise involuntarily. I’m a walking suspect.

Him, smiling (OMG cops smile??): “You’re fine. I’m just sitting here reading a book until I get my next call.” He gestured at the big red hardback propped against the steering wheel. He didn’t appear to have a tattered copy of Hustler tucked inside the pages, either. (OMG cops READ??)

Me, laughing nervously, fidgeting with the wires of my headphones, practically asking to be arrested: “OK I WAS JUST MAKING SURE, YOU WERE FREAKING ME OUT (COME SEARCH MY CAR NOW I SWEAR I DON’T HAVE 48956 KILOS AND A DEAD MEXICAN IN A TARP)!”

And then we both laughed. I turned stiffly on my heel and stalked away.

How refreshing! A cop who was not only pleasant, but reading a BOOK and not a menu at a donut joint. The first thing I noticed about him was that he bore a striking resemblance to Eric Van der Woodsen from “Gossip Girl.” Also, he didn’t have that perma-sneer marring his mug like most cops do. (Are they born that way, or do they learn that shit at the Academy?) I never thought I’d see the day that I not only exchanged pleasantries with a police officer, but I shared my haven with one.

Me, little old Oh Honestly, Erin, had a conversation with a cop that didn’t involve Tourettes-level cursing and end with a fat fine.

I did a few more laps. He was still sitting back there reading as I got ready to leave. When I drove away, I beeped two staccato “goodbyes” to him, and then giddily laughed at the fact that I acted like a real person in front of a cop and not some daughter of a fallen Mafia don out for vengeance.

I wish I had asked him what book he was reading. It was probably just some library copy of Twilight.

We decided to take Chooch to the Evans City Cemetery yesterday, where Night of the Living Dead was filmed (even though at least 5 cemeteries in the surrounding areas of Pittsburgh claim to hold that title). I think he was disappointed that there weren’t really any zombies there.

There was, however, a freshly buried body, and two old men hovering atop the loose earth who stared at us suspiciously across the way. I’m sure the locals just love getting visits from assholes like us.

They’re coming to get you, Barbara.

It was about as anticlimactic as you can probably imagine.

Afterward, I was hungry, so hungry; the kind of hunger that’s so intense, it devours any shred of patience and rationality that might still exist somewhere within my dark self, and I turn into the type of woman who might yank the steering wheel from the hands of the driver, causing the car to careen over a bridge into some disgusting river, if only to prove her point that dead bodies do exist beneath the filthy surface.

“How about Hank’s?” Henry suggested. “It’s Mexican.”

He made to pull into the lot and I yelled, “Um, I am NOT eating at a Mexican establishment named after some guy named HANK.” Then I saw that you ordered through a window and were expected to eat outside, at dirty picnic tables. (So maybe I wasn’t close enough to actually see the surfaces of the tables, but I just know. I just know.) “Oh and I am NOT eating outside,” I added, crossing my arms and scowling out the window. This is truth right here, not hyperbole.

“You know, I think you only do this shit to me,” Henry said, on his way to poutsville. “I bet when you’re out with other people, it’s never this hard to find a place to eat.”

At least three dozen traumatic food-finding scenarios with Christina flashed through my mind, but I said nothing.

“If you did this shit to Alisha,” Henry added. “she wouldn’t still be friends with you.

“

This is probably very true.

We settled on a stupid place called Ree’s Family Restaurant. It was bad enough the cheese wasn’t melted on my grilled cheese, but when you bring me a slice of blueberry pie and it’s been over-refridgerated to the point of coagulating into a pie-brick, and the crust tastes like the less-flavorful bastard offspring of one of those packaged Hostess pies, you can go choke on a dick, OK? It’s not often that I pass a piece of pie across the table after one fucking bite.

I should have just buried my food expectations in the Evans City Cemetery. Maybe they could make a cameo in the 8th remake of Night of the Living Dead.

6 comments

I want to go back to filling this blog thing with content. Or whatever the fuck it was that I used to fill this space with. Trust me. But through a fucked-up twist of fate, the job that I thought I was being reoffered has been taken away from me because apparently I have an alter ego that smokes pot. So I have been slamming ass trying to get shit done so that I can perhaps make enough loot to tide me over until my next opportunity to hopefully pass a drug test.

So I have been biding my time with custom work. My favorite of late is a family portrait I painted as a surprise for one of my repeat customers. Her husband contacted me on the sly, sent me a few photos and gave me a list of their interests and I went from there. It was stressful, yes – custom orders always give me heart palpitations but the end result is what keeps me coming back for more.  This one ended up going real smoothly once I got started.

I got the seal of approval from the husband, so I’ve started breathing properly again since Sunday.

In other Etsy endeavors, I had started a shop a year ago with the intent to move my holiday cards there. Mainly I wanted to keep them separate from my art so as not to scare away the “normal” people who are there for the art, but even then I guess my companion stories are enough to black list me from “regular” Etsy shoppers. But really, I wanted them to be on their own so that my main shop didn’t get too variety store-esque.

In between multiple viewings of “Degrassi Goes Hollywood” (OMFG JAY HOGARTTTT!) & freaking out in a near-empty theater after midnight with one Janna Hazelbitch Hustwit to the spastic images of “Demons Among Us,” I sat in front of the computer in 90+ degree heat, redesigning my old serial killer cards. I am finally starting to feel content with them, especially the Lizzie Borden one which always fell flat with me.

I got to go for a really great power walk in my favorite cemetery on Sunday. There is something sadistic living inside me, possibly the devil, that makes me crave exercising underneath a sweltering sun and face-melting humidity. I LOVE IT. And it gave me a chance to really give the new not-yet-released Used album a good, honest listen and I fucking swear it is so near perfection that I would like to purchase it five times when it comes out at the end of August. It’s one of those albums where nearly every song makes me blush because I feel that deeply connected to it, as though Bert has written about something that I might have some experience in. It’s just one of those very relatable albums. You should go get it when it comes out. I think it’s the best material they’ve produced to date.

Listening to it, out there in that cemetery, it made me ache, yet feel really calm within myself for the first time in months. Like when you let out a deep sigh and realize that you were practically holding your breath for what seems like an entire lifetime?

And now I just feel really content.

Christina and I had been going through a rough patch. I was ready to never talk to her again but then Henry morphed into Meddling Mother Hen mode and reasoned with me. Christina is lucky; I had big vengeful plans in store for her.

So she came to visit last weekend. It was the first time we hung out since November and what better way to torture her than by strapping clown shoes on her feet and forcing her to hike all over a cemetery.

At one point, I had her laying supine in front of a verdigris’d crypt, surrounded by piles of dead leaves, when an elderly woman idled by in her Oldladymobile and the look she shot at us was priceless. Her wrinkled lips were all a-twist in horror and disapproval. And then I almost careened head-first over the top of the crypt so we called it a day. I have more pictures, but my master doesn’t give me enough time to actually go through them.

Even though I hate Christina, it was one of the best weekends ever. Especially because Henry actually hung out with us. Usually he deems us “too gay” and juvenile and heads to bed with Chooch, but this time he came back down, got drunk, dropped his “I’m too mature for this” facade, and proceeded to put on what I can only describe as a public access sketch show. He was hilarious and animated, telling us stories from his drinking heyday and other inappropriate yarns.

In other news, Chooch has been playing one of those Jumpstart games on the computer so I’m allotted even less time on this thing. Stay-At-Home-Hell hasn’t killed me yet, but it hasn’t got much easier. There are some nights where Chooch is just a fucking asshole, like Tuesday night when Dyanna was here and all I wanted to do was hang out and watch the hockey game, but Chooch had other ideas in mind. Like repeatedly punching me in the head and doing a somersault off the couch and landing head first against the coffee table. I deducted some points for the sloppy landing.

But last night, he was like a dream. He even sat in my lap, threw his arms around my neck and said, with sincerity I swear to god, “I wub you, Mommy.” AND THEN HE STAYED LIKE THAT. For like, two minutes, he stayed in my lap, hugging me.

I almost felt bad for Googling adoption agencies the night before.

EDIT: Hours later, I glanced at this entry and noticed at least three words where it quite literally looked like I gave up on typing them out in their entirety. I’m fucking tired.

I hope everyone had a lovely holiday/day off. Ours was mellow (meaning I only threw one tantrum) and overall ended up being a nice day. More later; I have a Thomas playset to project my OCD on for now.

Urgent. Will die without reading.

• 15:38 all i want for xmas is for armsbendback to reunite. get on that, fat man. #
• 18:37 a big heart is filling the April 5 block of my calendar.. #
• 21:53 It is weird seeing Henry in his natural habitat. #
• 23:51 Elmer Klump took a dump in his grandmother’s wig. #

• 11:23 Had a spaz attack trying to follow “sticker placement” instructions for a toy airport playset only to have Chooch peel them all off. #
• 11:52 The Thomas Carnival Adventure set comes with stickers adhered. I’m sending a thank you card. Maybe even a fruit cake. #
• 12:52 twitpic.com/wefe – FUCK YOU. Get terrorized, you piece of shit. #
• 14:35 Got Chooch an Edgar Allen Poe doll. His response was “Um. Oookay,” after which he dropped it in favor of, u know, age appropriate toys. #
• 17:08 Chooch is on this odd church-going kick. Whose kid is this? #
• 19:59 Well, if Henry really did marinate my tofu in urine, I’m only alarmed because I liked it. #
• 20:03 The trick to not overeating on holidays is to not have family who invite you over for dinner. #

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So far, Chooch is turning out exactly how I had hoped.

It’s a shame that women just don’t walk around like this anymore. I’d start a revolution, but all my white curtains are mildewy. Perhaps I’ll procure a new one in time for Kara’s wedding and then I’ll debut some old school breast-baring.

In work news, Tina has got to go. She is constantly running over to talk in her high-pitched whiny voice to Eleanore, and I guess it wouldn’t be so much of a problem if Eleanore didn’t sit right behind me. Even with my headphones on, I can sense Tina’s mullet clogging up my breathing space, and if I toss a glance over my shoulder, sure enough, there she is with her high-waisted jeans and protruding pelvis.

I really want to find a way to sabotage her, to make working there so painful for her that she has no choice but to quit or move back to dayshift. Short of cutting off the penises of homeless men and draping them over her work area, I’m at a loss. But can you imagine? "I haven’t seen a penis since I used to ride horses!"

My boss asked me last night how Eleanore has been with the coupon-cutting. "Not too bad," I answered. But after thinking about it for a few seconds, I added, "But it’s not like Tina gives her any time for that." Tina follows Eleanore into the bathroom, Tina goes into the kitchen while Eleanore refills her coffee, Tina trails behind Eleanore every time she goes outside for a cigarette. It’s disgusting. It’s like Tina is Eleanore’s dingleberry.

And then, because she’s Tina and special, she plugs her mp3 player into what I can only assume are portable speakers and listens to her classic rock freely and loudly at her desk. Monday night, she sauntered over to my area, headphones slung around her neck, ZZTop blaring from the tiny buds, like she wanted to impress me. I emailed fellow Tina-hater Bob about it yesterday, and he replied with "She’s got legs."

"Legs of a leper," was my reply.

Now for whatever fucked up reason I’m picturing Tina in the above picture and I pretty much want an acid eye wash right now.

I’d like to say he’s reflecting on life, but he’s probably just pooping or mapping out an escape route. In other dark holes of my brain, I’m planning another for-fun photo shoot so if any of you locals are interested, hit me up. I promise I won’t like, make you bleed or anything. Although, I have been kind of fixated with meat cleavers this week.

A final note: It’s an honor to know that people come to my blog by searching for "cummy-yummy " and "ass rape bitch." Clearly, a job well done on my part.

Two weekends ago, I was at the Quaker Cemetery. Outside of the meeting house, there was this moat made of broken glass shards. Clear glass, amber glass, green glass — it all looked so sparkly and I had an "Ooooh, pretty colorssss" moment, forgetting all about the demons camping out behind me in the decrepit stone meeting house.

For awhile, constructing my own pretty jagged glass moat around the front of my own house seemed like a really brilliant idea. But then I remembered that glass can sometimes be dangerous.

I guess this picture will have to suffice, until the day I live in a house without a small child. Then I’ll have my moat and you all can come wade in it.

One of my favorite cemeteries, the Homewood Cemetery. Henry and I used to go for walks here together regularly, but then as he continued to age, his endurance slackened and I would end up going alone. This is the only cemetery I walk in that has never, on some occasion, made my body shake with that biting sensation that someone’s behind me, something’s watching me, bodies are rising from the earth. Maybe because there’re always people at this one, groundsmen and mourners and visitors fulfilling obligations.

The mausoleum is terrifying though, I take it back. I’ve peed in the bathroom a few times and sometimes the idea of running out with urine streaming down my thighs seems like the better alternative to taking the extra step to wipe. I just get caught up with that Go! Go! Go! Run for your life! subconscious warning, like I’m watching myself in a horror movie. Never go in the mausoleum to piss,  you idiot!

This photo makes me think of spring, like I want to put on a floppy hat and lay out on one of the graves. But then I remember that when I took this photo, it was below twenty degrees and I forgot to bring gloves; within ten minutes of exiting the car, my fingers were so cold that it looked like ten hot dogs were dripping from my hands, so I guess instead of picnics and floppy hats, I was probably thinking about parkas and bonfires, as in roasting my fingers in one.

Now just envision someone crouching next to a tombstone, face all hidden behind a giraffe mask. April 12 and 13, baby.

The first time I was there was the summer of 2000.

“There’s this Quaker cemetery out in Perryopolis. Supposed to be haunted or some shit. We should go.” It was one of those glimmering moments of spontaneity that, on a boring summer’s night, sounded a lot more interesting that the usual routine of getting drunk on my porch. I was a little wary that the person hatching this plan was my friend Justin, who had a bad track record of insisting he knew the exact coordinates of various haunted hot spots, and then like a bad repeating record, we’d inevitably wind up lost  with the gas tank on E and a few empty bags of Corn Nuts.

Our friend Keri wanted to accompany us, so I felt a little better because she was always the responsible one. If you were going to get lost, break down, get a condom lodged inside of you, Keri was the girl you’d want with you. She also didn’t scare easily, so I quietly planned to wedge myself between the two of them once (if) we arrived.

Perryopolis is around 30 miles south of Pittsburgh, but the trip didn’t take long in my Eagle Talon, considering my propensity for driving it like a dragster. As we approached the town of Perryopolis, I silently hoped that we would be unable to find the cemetery in the dark, of that it didn’t exist, or that the Earth opened up to engulf it every night after midnight. Maybe there would be a fence too dangerous to scale, Hounds of Hell snarling and tied to posts at the entrance, an after hours admission fee implemented by Satan.

The area was rural. We coasted past a few farms and even fewer houses. The uneven asphalt was littered with loose pebbles and sticks, which  clinked and snapped under the tires. The streetlights did little to alleviate my uneasiness. Unfortunately, Justin must have polished his navigational bearings, because after having me make a few turns, he told me to pull over.

“This is it,” he said, leaning in between the front seats and looking out my window. We kind of just sat there, real still, not speaking, until Keri finally went for the door handle. We all filed out and crossed the dark, quiet street. It was too dark to see the cemetery from where we stood, and after hesitating to see who would step up to lead us, we finally took the plunge in tandem and began climbing the slight hill before us.

Halfway up, we could make out a wrought iron fence, the kind you would expect to wreathe an old, small town cemetery. My eyes searched for the tombstones, the meat of the graveyard. That’s when I saw it, my first glimpse of the old stone house in the middle of the small plot of land. Suddenly, it wasn’t what lay beneath the ground that frightened me.

“I don’t like the looks of that place,” I whispered hoarsely to Keri and Justin.

“What the fuck is it, a church?” Justin asked no one in particular, squinting his eyes to adjust to the darkness.

“I’m not climbing no fucking fence,” Keri spat, arms crossed. She was always the kill joy of the group. Me, I’d go along with just about anything, no matter how terrified I was, mainly because my adrenaline would overtake my common sense every single time. But Keri, she’d get so far and then stop. Or conveniently conjure up a head ache. That girl has headaches more often than Seattle has rain.

Just then, the dull roar of an engine resounded from further down the road. We all turned to look. Headlights eventually appeared over the crest in the curving road, and the car began to decelerate. We continued to watch as it approached the base of the hill and slowed to a complete stop several yards away from my car, parked along the shoulder.

“Is it a cop?” Keri whispered.

The driver flashed the head lights. We were stapled to the soft ground under our feet. The driver blew the horn. We jumped. The driver laid on the horn, sending an atmosphere-rippling siren through the once-quiet night. All three of us screamed and turned to run back to my car. We shoved each other ruthlessly, none of us daring to be in the back.

My car was parked directly across the base of the hill. The rogue car still idled in the same position a few yards away on the opposite side of the road, continuing to blare the chilling horn. We made it to my car, slamming into the side of it. I fumbled for my keys. I dropped them on the road as I tried frantically to sort through the menagerie of plush over-sized key chains. Keri and Justin were swearing and screaming at me. I was crying.

The bully car continued to intimidate us with the horn-blaring while I unlocked my door and reached across the inside to unlock the passenger door. Keri and Justin both tried to get in my uterus-sized two-door Talon at once, prolonging their success. Once they were in, I gunned it, not even bothering to steal a look at the driver of the opposing car as we squealed past it.

We drove in silence until the poorly-lit country roads spilled us out onto the highway where we took refuge among the traffic.

Only then did anyone dare speak.

“I don’t know what you guys were so scared for. It was probably just some teenager having some fun, trying to scare us,” Justin said, leaning back with his fingers laced behind his head.

*****

The weather was unseasonably spring-like on Sunday, so Henry, Chooch and I piled into the car and drove south to take some pictures and enjoy the rare opportunity to drive with the windows down. Our plan was to go out to Uniontown, a small town at the base of the mountains, and get some nice country photographs.

We took Rt. 51, which leads straight from Pittsburgh to Uniontown. It also passes through Perryopolis on the way.

“Hey, there’s this old Quaker Cemetery out here. We should try to find it,” I casually suggested, recognizing that the right hand turn into farm country was coming up. What better way to spend a beautiful Sunday with the kid and manservant? Field trip  the haunted cemetery! C’mon boy, let’s get our desecratin’ on, I should have hollered to Chooch.

Henry found it without mishap (evidently the road it’s on is called Quaker Cemetery Road, so Henry figured it was a safe bet we were on the right road). When I reached the crest of the small hill, I spotted the stone house with it’s corrugated tin roof, ominously gaping front door and windows that stared out like empty eye sockets.

I wasn’t scared this time, finding bravery in the sunlight, and I marched right through the archway and started taking pictures. Probably, if I was someone other than myself, the first thing I’d do, I’d go straight inside that stone shack and start poking around. But I was cautious. I let Henry go inside first while I admired the various hues of beer bottle shards as they sparkled in the sun. The shards wrapped around the front of the house, like a moat in front of an alcoholic’s castle. I was sad that no one ever invites me to party in creepy cemetery houses.

Henry went inside first, getting some digital shots of the interior. I asked him if he felt scared when he was in there and he gave me that “don’t be an asshole” sneer. Still, I lingered near the door while Henry and Chooch retreated somewhere in the back, behind the house. I thought I heard shuffling coming from inside the house, but I shook the idea out of my mind and went in.

The inside was sheltered by a roof made up of thin wooden slats. It looked unstable, like I could be buried under it at any given moment. The walls were mostly blue and covered in graffiti. I tried to read it all, as much as I could before my bravery reserve was drained, but there was nothing very interesting. No Hail Satans or Human Sacrifice FTW!s to be found; just an abundance of generic “_____ was here”s and ambiguous initials.

Each end of the room had a fireplace. Henry said later that he had wanted to get all up in it and see what was going on in the chimney’s guts, but he never said why he didn’t follow through. Because he was scared, that’s why. I can only imagine how much clenching he had to do to keep from shitting his pants when he was in there alone.

Still afraid of the being impaled by a collapsing slat of wood, I started to walk out. Henry completely doesn’t believe me, and probably no one else will either, but as I started to step through the doorway, I heard a chorus of whispering coming from \the left corner of the room. I SWEAR TO GOD. I swore to God when I was telling Henry about it too and he was like, “You can’t swear to something you don’t believe in” so I changed my pledge of honesty to Satan instead and Henry started in on that bullshit about how you can’t believe in one and not the other and I was like, “Shut up, stop acting like you’re religious” and he said if there was no God and just Satan, then the world would be way worse than it is now and I said, “No, Satan’s just lazy is all” and that’s about as deep as the two of us get into theological debates. Our next one is scheduled for 2030. As if Henry will still be living then.

After the whole whispering episode, I was pretty much in a huge hurry to leave. If you buy into legends and ghost stories, it’s said that the meeting house was where witches were taken to be killed. I really hope the whispering I heard belonged to Glinda.

Later that day, I was reading a website about the cemetery and it says, “There are also stories of certain graves being cursed, meaning that if you stand at them, or read the writing on the head stone, you could have bad luck or die.”

Awesome. Nice knowing you, Chooch.

In the beginning, Henry and I used to go for walks together in cemeteries. We would have so much fun, too. Probably more me than him, but still. I would try to push him down hills and scare him by springing out from tombstones and I would tell him jokes and we (I) would laugh and it was just really nice to have that bonding time together. He’d teach me about moss and the flow of electricity and I would pose mind-exploding queries about fucking Siamese twins.

It was like our thing, you know? Like our habit of watching Asian horror movies before it became a cool thing to do. It was something in our relationship that I could count on. "Oh good, it’s the weekend. Time to dance on graves."

We don’t have any "things" anymore. Now, I go to cemeteries by myself. I listen to post-hardcore and screamo (and sometimes Timbaland) on my Zen and feel aggressive and then I get lost in my thoughts, which turns into contemplating doing really stupid things and puking on graves and it’s just no good. I miss having a cemetery companion.

Today I was on my way to Uniondale Cemetery and as I sat at a red light, two black guys crossed the street in front of my car. One of them looked at me, smiled real wide, and waved. I smiled back — a real, genuine smile — and thought to myself, "I bet that guy would want to have a ‘thing’ with me."

Why doesn’t Henry?

It appears cemetery photo shoots on December 25 became a tradition without me knowing it. Here’s hoping Chooch passes it down.

The rest of the set is here.