The Seashells (Mystery)
Also, how to hide your rank cigarette odor from your child.
First off, huzzah to Emily Gould for her recent piece for The Cut, The Secret Shame of Smoking Moms. It’s rare that I feel so seen by pop culture! And - trying not to go off on a tangent, here, but - regarding huzzah, I went to my first Ren Faire recently, with my medieval-obsessed child, who was decked out in, like, a scarfy hood, with leather wraps on his arms and shins, and a wild leather-shoulder-pad-harness-thing (and when I say leather, I mean whatever cardboardish faux leather one gets when one buys their child the cheapest Medieval Man kit available on the internet). He looked awesome. He had a glass water bottle, with a cork, in a ‘leather’ sheath, strapped to his belt, that was about fifty sizes too big from him and thus wrapped and wrapped and wrapped around his body. He had a blast throwing knives and shooting seamonsters with crossbows and hustling me for swords and dice. I had a blast, too. I think we’re ren faire people now? I am determined to up my costume game next year, and my regular thrifting has taken on new purpose; so far I’ve found a pair of pirate-y pants and a big fake fur piece. I had serious costume envy at all the exquisite nerds who had put so much love and obsession into their lewks. My faves? A crew of plague rats that had the energy of gutter punks about to rob a Hot Topic. A group of intensely judgemental puritans whose sour expressions were possibly the best part of their outfits, carrying signs that read MAY NOT. A man dressed, somehow, as a hay bale - just a walking hay bale. A hay bale with skinny, white man-legs poking out, in a pair of man-sandals. Where were his arms? How did he breathe? I’m still thinking about him, a month later. Also: the queenly women with lots of makeup and voluminous skirts, reclining regally and holding signs that read HUZZAH. The Ren Faire was so much more than I thought it would be. Oh - the person wearing an isopod costume, intensely segmented, with little legs and everything. Why? Who cares. I had a root beer float and a slushie, and accidentally bought a jar of lemon honey from christians. I mean, I knew I was purchasing lemon honey, I just didn’t know it was christian honey. And now I’m sad because I scarfed it right up, it being the most delicious treat I’ve maybe ever had, and I can’t buy it again because I don’t trust christians to use my money responsibly. I tried squeezing lemon juice into regular honey-bear honey the other day and it wasn’t anywhere near as good.
Anyways. Back to smoking. The other night I went out to hear my friend Miles tell a story at the Queer Spaces Storytelling event that happens at North Fig Books here in LA. And after the event - which was quite enjoyable - I had a cigarette on the street, outside a bar. And then we went into the bar and - oh no, I’d forgotten to bring my wallet! I had no ID! I’m 53 years young but it doesn’t matter, the bouncer wouldn’t accept the photo of it on my phone. So I called a car and arrived home much earlier than had been expected, and my child was in bed but hadn’t fallen asleep, and he promptly dismissed his grandmother and called for me to lay down with him and snuggle him to sleep. Stinking like a terrible, poisonous ashtray, giving off waves of toxic second-hand smoke.
Give me one second, I have to pee, I lied, and flipped into decontamination mode. First, I doused my hair with Sol de Janeiro Brazilian Crush Cheirosa 68 Beija Flor (TM) Perfume Mist. I thought this product would smell different than it did, but it’s fine, and it’s actually quite handy when trying to distract people’s noses from the smell of cigarettes on my person. Then, I put my hair up in a bun, so there is just less of it wafting around. I sprayed my face with Pixi by Petra Rose Glow Mist. I love spritzing shit on my face so I have an okay array of face-spritzes, and this one is the smelliest, though face mists tend to be pretty gentle in the scent department. I brushed my teeth. OF COURSE. Duh. Then I rinsed and aggressively gargled with TheraBreath Fresh Breath Mouthwash - Mild Mint. This is my new all-around secret weapon, whether or not I’m smoking, as I am paranoid about my breath ever since a lover told me it was bad back in early 2020. I was polyamorously dating this beautiful and gentle soul who had the unfortunate tic of losing their sexual attraction to people once they fall in love with them. And on account of me being so lovable, they fell in love with me. And then didn’t want to fuck me! It was dark days, reader, as my spouse also no longer wanted to fuck me, being newly in love with their own polyamorous lover. A strange situation, being polyamorously involved with two people, yet receiving no nookie. My lover discussed this problem with their shaman, who sensibly reminded the lover that, since we’re polyamorous and all, why didn’t I just fuck off and get fucked by some other people while lover worked on repairing their internal sex n love wiring. Excellent idea. I met a six-foot Texan trans man on Lex and made a date to meet him at a gay bar on his birthday. And I told my lover, because when you do things like this its best practice to keep everyone in the loop. And the lover said, You should know that your breath is bad sometimes. If you’re going to kiss people.
The lover insisted, and then insisted and insisted, that they were not lashing out at me for making the date with the tall Texan. They were really and truly just being a good pal to me, wanting the best for me, wanting my kisses to be as fresh and invigorating as possible, in order to create the conditions for maximum sexual frivolity. I will never believe them. But as hurt and annoyed as I was, I was - am! - also grateful to receive the info that my shitty mouth of rotting teeth did, in fact, carry an unpleasant odor. After we perhaps inevitably broke up - and then me and my spouse also inevitably broke up - I prayed to the old gods and the new that my next serious lover be a former junkie with a mouth of messed up teeth that would endow them with endless compassion for my sad breath - and, while we’re at it, for the cracked heel of my right foot (why only my right?) and my belly, with its many scars from babies and hernias and fibroids, not to mention the diastis acquired from pregnancy, from letting my belly get too big against the recommendation of my doctor, for I found that I sort of loved getting too big and definitely loved eating a pink of Brooklyn Blackout ice cream every night with my new, pregnancy-enhanced taste buds.
Okay, haunted by the possibility that I have written about this already in this here Substack. Onward! I changed out of my smokey thrifted dress and pulled on some fresh, thrifted pajamas, and then hosed them down with Nenuco Agua de Colonia, which is legit baby perfume, as in perfume for babies, which I bought in Barcelona on my honeymoon. Agua de Colonia is a short-lasting, classic Spanish cologne that is very bright and citrus-y, and they make it for babies. Which is nuts, because babies smell so good, that’s why you have them, so you can sniff their heads and lift the whole chubby mass of them to your face and just huff them and huff them. You do not need to spray baby perfume on a baby. It would be better to try to make a perfume that smells like babies, to spray on sad, smelly adults who stink like stale cigarettes and rotting teeth. I’m sort of trying to do this - when my own child was smaller, I was enchanted by the fact that his breath smelled so slightly of cilantro, a note I detected in a spray of Comme de Garcon Concrete I was testing in a perfume shop. I just ran out of my $5 sample, and splurged on a slightly larger, slightly more expensive bottle from Scent Split , where you can order cheap decants of perfumes you can’t afford. I’m working my way up to someday owning a full bottle.
So, I sprayed myself excessively with the Nenuco Agua de Colonia - you can’t overdo it, because it’s for babies, and it’s all top notes so it fades very quickly. Then I lotioned my hands, paying special attention to the fingers that held my poisonous cigarette, with Lush Karma Cream. Or Karma Kream, as it may be. I love Lush so much, even though their employees are way too helpful. I like to be left alone while shopping, left alone to drift about in a haze, getting more and more into the quasi-fugue state I need to be in in order to drop a chunk of dollars on frivolous potions at Lush. I love the Karma fragrance so much, even though I hate how people name things ‘karma.’ Like, you want to name your exotic product after the philosophy that we are doomed to relive and infinity of lives of great self-inflicted pain and suffering? Sign me up.
Recap - I now smell like jasmine, vanilla, mint, chemicals, roses, lemon, oranges, patchouli, pine, a slutty Brazilian teenager, a Spanish baby, and Kate Braverman. (Kate would dust herself with this glittery gold powder from Lush that smelled like Karma). I climb into bed with my son, and he falls asleep.
But, reader, that’s not even what this Substack is about. It’s actually about the great mystery that has descended upon my household this week. It’s a mystery that actually commenced about a month ago, I just didn’t realize how it.
My kid likes to make my 70-something-year-old mother go out in our front yard with him and play. A sort of slow-motion tag where she actually uses a stick to ‘tag’ him. A hide and seek where he rotates the three or four hiding spots available. She’ll help him measure how far he can jump, or time his sprints around the palm tree. About month ago they commenced a big project - cutting away these scrawny, half-dead rose bushes, and giant, tangled thorn bushes that line our house. They chopped and dug and got rid of the shrubs. A few days afterwards, my son came into the house holding a seashell. It was a big seashell, white, with pearly ridges poking through some ancient, calcium crust. It was a perfect spiral, it sat in my hand, larger than my palm. I’d never seen this particular type of shell before, it didn’t wash up at any of the beaches I’ve ever combed. Somehow it was in our yard, on our lawn. My son thought they’d maybe unearthed it in their digging and cutting, but that was days ago, and this was a large and gleaming shell, it would not have gone unseen. It also had no dirt on it, none in any of its many nooks and crannies. How did it get in our yard? I shrugged. We live on the corner of a pretty trafficked intersection. Cars zoom by, blaring Cher and ignoring stop signs; people walk by, letting their dogs shit on our lawn, leaving literal trash in the shrubs that line our space. The shell was certainly mysterious, but I had other mysteries to ponder, such as the mystery of my declining estrogen and should I get hormone cream from any of the menopause telehealth outfits that keep advertising to me on Instagram. (yes, duh).
But - then. Last week, my son and my mom were on the lawn, playing frisbee. And they both saw a motion out of the corner of their eye, heard a dull but significant thud. They turned to face the part of the yard the commotion came from, and there, on the grass, was a second giant seashell. The same exact type, a fat spiral. This one was slightly smaller though still hefty; it was a different color, more of a coral/brick shade, but still had peaks of opalescent gleam shining through the cracks. This one had visible sand in its interior whorls. My mother and my son looked around. There was no one. No one on the street, no cars cruising by. It just fell out of the sky.
It had landed under the palm tree which is definitely a home to a very ambitious squirrel. Storms in the past month have dislodged some drays that included the old black fabric I’d draped around our lawn flamingos a couple of Halloweens ago, as well as a small stuffed animal. I can’t imagine our squirrel neighbor - Squirrely - lugging one of these giant shells up to their nest. For what? They’re not cuddly, not edible. They cannot be stuffed in a cheek pouch, so how would Squirrely even get it all the way up to the fronds, where they live? I could go on elaborating on the many reasons a squirrel could not transport the shell up the palm. But - they can’t. So where the fuck are these shells coming from?
All I can imagine - and it is too dreamy to consider, really too dreamy, Audrey-Horne-level dreamy, is that it was crows. Of course there are lots of crows in my neighborhood. (Hummingbirds, too, and rando city birds, and coyotes, possums and raccoons, to name all the suspects). They fuck with my palm tree sometimes, not a lot, but they’ve been known too. Recently, after watching one TikTok too many in which a girl feeds a crow and is rewarded in perpetuity with shiny pieces of trash by the bird and her chums, I decided that I would like to befriend a crow and be left gifts. Walking home from Whole Foods, I spotted my local murder Drooging around the parking lot, and fished in my bag for a piece of bread. I was ready to tear the heel inot pieces when a car drove by and shooed them off.
My next opportunity wasn’t for another month, when I was on my way home from Ralph’s laden with sacks of groceries like a burro. There were the crows, farting around by the big church on the corner. I put my bags down, grabbed a fucking eight dollar container of blueberries, hoped that that crows really, really understood how generous I was being, and began tossing and rolling berries in their direction. And they ate them! It felt like a huge win in human-animal communication (yes I know humans are animals), but it didn’t last long before a grandma came shuffling down the street with her own groceries, startling them away.
I can’t stop thinking about that moment. The crows! The blueberries! It didn’t feel like I was close enough to the birds for them to really get a great look at my face, but what do I know? I’m a 53-year-old human whose eyes are deteriorating as I type! Even with my prescription sunnies I can’t see shit! The crows? Birds have great vision, right? I mean, they’ve got to! They spotted those soft little blueberries rolling their way. Did the crows register my benevolent visage with their famous photographic memory? Did they watch me walk home, from some perch up high? Did they already know me, from their various altercations with the wildlife in my yard? Readers, did the fucking crows bring me shiny giant seashells stolen, perhaps, from a neighbor’s porch? They are decorative as fuck. Those nacre spots would surely catch the eye of a bling-happy crow. Unsure if a crow could even lift such a weighty object, I told the writers who’d taken my recent Writing for Witches workshop (starting up again Mondays in June BTW, DM me on Instagram if you’re interested!), and one person shared that a crow had once flown off with his kid’s backpack, because there was a sandwich inside! So yeah, they can fly off with something heavy, at least for a bit.
I can’t think of any other explanation for this rain of shells, even as I realize how totally unlikely it sounds. If you can think of why or how these shells wound up on my lawn, please share. Meanwhile, I will not be leaving the house without my pockets full of birdseed.
It’s totally the crows! 🐦⬛🐚
God this one is so good.