Sinister: stronger than alcohol, more great than song, deep in whose reeds great elephants

[stacey dahling]

Today I tried to subtly mold two impressionable youths into Belle and 
Sebastian fans.

It’s been two weeks since I started being an ‘English-speaking play mate’ to 
two 8-year-old twins. Every time I got home, exhausted, and went into 
#sinister to bitch about the brats, someone would inevitably ask, “So have 
you made them listen to Belle and Sebastian yet?”
“Ha!” I always remark. AS IF I bring a B&S CD with me and slide it into the 
family stereo. AS IF they would appreciate. AS IF.
Well, today I happened to have my laptop with me and as I taught them how to 
play Snood I happened to put B&S on repeat on my media player jukebox. And I 
left it on the entire time. Ahhh. Sweet sounds. So when one throws a tanty 
and the other squeals with glee and throws balls off the ceiling, I have Stu 
telling me it’ll all be okay. Or making some sly reference I know they will 
never understand. Did it calm them down any? No, not really. But by the end, 
the girl was recognizing songs and humming a bit. And when the music 
stopped, the boy asked for more. Oh yes. I shall repeat this experiment.
Today I also got yelled at by the mom.
AGAIN.
Last time she yelled at me it was because I had allowed the twins to run 
around inside the house; when she came in, things were in disarray. My 
lesson: the kids will inevitably run around the house, but clean up after 
them, dumbass. Or lure them outside. Outside = GOOD.
Anyway.
Yesterday, I got yelled at for letting them hide in closets during 
hide-and-seek. Um. Where else are they going to hide??? Hmm.
Today.. what was it? Oh! I didn’t eat enough. Or something.
Something I forgot: yesterday, the mom stayed home and I desperately tried 
to think of something to keep the kids occupied and quiet in their room. I 
thought, wouldn’t it be nice if they wrote little letters to my sister? Yes! 
They will write. They will think they have a penpal. It will be good. The 
girl wrote a nice message, something to the effect of: “I love Stacey and I 
love you too.” The boy scribbled away in earnest. Then I chased the girl out 
of the room into another room to make cutout snowflakes and an hour later 
the mother cries out for the boy (Vangelis) and marches in with the letter 
he had been writing my sister.
“Who is Sandy?” she demanded. “What is this?” she said, waving the letter 
around.
“Er. My sister? They wrote to my sister?” I stammered. Perhaps this sounds 
odd? Hmmm. I hadn’t even read it.
She did.
“You read Greek?” she asks me. I lie and say no. So she reads it out loud to 
me, translating: “Dear Sandy. I love you. You make my body hot. I want to 
have sex with you. Will you have sex with me? Love, Vangelis.”
Oh lordy.
This is an EIGHT-YEAR-OLD. Needless to say, Vangelis was scolded. And my 
role? Um.. uncertain.
Every day as I leave that house I wonder if I am going to be invited back. 
She fired the last girl because she “couldn’t control the kids.” And I feel 
that although the kids love me in some inexplicable way shocking to all 
involved, she keeps giving me little tests and I keep failing them.
Yesterday, for instance, me and Francesca get yelled at because we left a 
mess in Vangelis’ room. She tells us to go clean it up. Francesca refuses to 
go until she finishes a drawing. The mom insists. I stand there, willing 
Francesca to go with my eyes and thoughts. But she does not budge. So the 
mother looks at me and says, “you tell her!” I do, and of course she ignores 
me as well. Does this mean I have no control over them?
Today I took a stand.
I thought it would be fun to bring along my digital camera and laptop so the 
kids could take photos of each other and alter them on the computer and all 
that. It would be educational! Yes! And it would keep them quiet. Yes!
Well, Vangelis really took a fancy to this camera and refused to give it 
back. It eventually ran out of “film” but he refused to believe he could 
take no more pictures. Eventually, there was a showdown in the garden. I 
won! I got the camera back. Then he tried to climb a wall to spy on the 
neighbors. I told him to come down. He did not listen (they do this 
innovative trick where they pretend they don’t understand English at just 
such moments). So I made a face at Francesca and we ran away and hid in some 
bushes so that he would jump off the wall and come find us. It took awhile, 
but it worked. He started crying though, upset that we had abandoned him, 
and marched inside to call him mom and tell on us. I let him, figuring this 
would work to my advantage. He would cry, “Mommy, Francesca and Stacey 
played hide-and-seek when I didn’t want to and I didn’t like it. And, well, 
I wanted to climb a wall and spy on the neighbors and play with her camera 
but she took it away and wouldn’t let me and now she turned off the tv when 
I wouldn’t talk to her.” And the mom would think: good, the girl’s finally 
disciplining the brats. He whined, then Fracesca grabbed the phone and 
explained (she’s got my back! Yay!) and the mom told her to run off and play 
with me and let Vangelis watch TV if that’s what he wanted to do.
FINE WITH ME.
Yar.
Oh, I get mixed signals. Like, she’ll yell at me, then she comes over and 
says she knows some other families who might like my services, am I open to 
referrals? Ha! Hell yeah. And she whispers, “Their kids are better behaved 
than mine,” at which point I grin. She says she’d like to help me, that I’m 
a “good girl.” That she moves in the right circles. Or something. Hmm. Go 
figure.
So next weekend, I meet their friend Fanny, who I already met and who was 
wonderful and sweet and speaks much better English. And then I will become 
Fanny’s ‘play mate’ as well. This is very exciting, because there is good 
money in this play mate business. Spending just 8 hours a week with the 
brats pays my rent. A few more hours a week with a sweet-natured girl should 
cover food and bills. And then there’s any other kids I might pick up 
through her “circle,” and my actual career - writing - which occasionally 
brings in large sums of cash. That should cover fun things - like chocolate 
and cheese. Yes. I’m set. Soon I’ll be able to buy a walkman, so I’ll have 
something to keep me occupied during the 4 hours a day I spend traveling to 
these rich suburbs. Mmmm hmm.
I feel a bit ill. I think it was the greasy potatoes I attempted to make for 
lunch. The mom left out some chicken fillets and a vat of oil, ready to 
receive some raw potatoes. Now, I usually shallow fry my potatoes in a big 
skillet, with very little oil, and they become brown and crisp and not at 
all disgusting and oily. But these potatoes, sizzling away in the vat of 
oil, became mushy and gross. As a last-ditch effort to save them, I drained 
them and threw them in the chicken skillet, but they did not brown. No! And 
the kids looked at them in disgust and refused to eat them. So I was left 
with a big plate of mushy potatoes. And carrots. While they ate the chicken. 
And carrots. An hour later, I felt like I was going to vomit.

Enough about the brats already. Is this all I’m ever going to talk about 
now? Has my life dissolved into mindless chatter about what horrific or 
tantalizing things Francesca and Vangelis did today? Dear me.
There was one other thing that happened this weekend. It was last night, 
after fleeing the brats and waiting 40 minutes for the bus, in the freezing 
night, with the other hired help in the neighborhood.
Get this:  I went - by myself - to a SHOW!
Yes!!! It was only the second show I’ve ever been to in Athens, which is 
quite telling of the music scene here. There was a time when I would be 
going to an average of 10 shows a month. Now - two shows in 7 months. 
Anyway, it was a random band, Tilsbury Cloves or something, in a teeny CD 
store - the only cool CD store in the city, actually. It was a 7” release 
gig. It was awkward. Did I mention the store is teeny? Very. And there were 
all sorts of hip and semi-hip kids there, a rare site for me actually, and 
they all seemed to know each other. Which makes sense, considering how tiny 
the scene must be here, with so few shows and so few fans of such bands. I 
felt awkward going alone as it was, but when entire groups of people stared 
and pointed at me, it made it that much worse.
The band was actually quite okay. They had this semi-electronic/synthesizer 
thing going on, and the singer at times sounded very Field Mice. There were 
a few sad attempts to rock out electronically, but overall, not too bad. AND 
there were visuals. Slides projected, backwards, against a far wall.
Going to shows is such a love-hate thing. There was a time when I was so 
sick of going, and would spend hours debating whether to get off the couch 
and walk 100 feet to see a friend of a friend play drums or sing or.. 
whatever. Many times, if the show involved any sort of drive, it was ruled 
out almost immediately. What’s the point of going to a small little club, 
pay a few dollars to stand uncomfortably in the back of the room and scan 
the same small crowd of faces I had memorized years ago? And the smoke and 
the bad beer and running into the crazy guy I always seemed to run into. Or 
getting annoyed at the little twerps who think they have discovered indie. 
All to hear a few songs I sort of liked, played live.
But now I miss it. So much. I miss the cozy feeling of being in a small area 
with a group of people with whom I have this unspoken bond. It doesn’t 
matter that I don’t speak to half the people in the room, that I never have 
and never will. I know their faces, their names, their stories. I feel part 
of a ‘scene.’ I know who every local musician is, what their day jobs are, 
and the incestual, instrumental, inter-band musical chair games. I see them 
on the street and I nod and smile. We acknowledge each other. We KNOW. We 
all know.
So I stayed at the show. Even though I felt awkward. Even though the doors 
were kept open and my toes had turned into icicles. Even though my back was 
aching from chasing brats and standing too long. I stayed because I needed 
the people to memorize my face, to begin to recognize me in a crowd, to 
acknowledge me, to become part of a scene. And maybe eventually I will meet 
one of them.

I have discovered a good cure for the blues. It’s a song, by Loudon 
Wainwright III, called ‘Pretty Good Day.’ It goes a little something like 
this:
“I slept through the night, I got through to the dawn. I flipped the switch 
and the light went on. I got out of bed and put some clothes on; it was a 
pretty good day so far.
I turned on the tap, there was cold there was hot, I put on my coat to go to 
the shop. I stepped outside, I didn’t get shot; it was a pretty good day so 
far.
I didn’t hear any sirens or explosions, no mortars coming in from those 
heavy guns, no UN tanks, I didn’t see one; it was a pretty good day so far.
No snipers in windows taking a peek, no people panicked running scared 
through the street. I didn’t see anybody without arms, legs or feet; it was 
a pretty good day.
There was plasma, bandages and electricity. Food, wood and water, the air 
was smoke free. No camera crews from ITV.
It was all such a strange sight to behold. Nobody was fightened, wounded, 
hungry or cold. And the children seemed normal, they didn’t look old; pretty 
good day so far.
I walked through a park, you would not believe it. There, in the park, there 
were a few trees left. And on a few branches there were a few leaves.
I slept through the night I got through to the dawn. I flipped the switch, 
the light went on. I wrote down my dream, I made it to song; it’s a pretty 
good day so far.”
Yes, perspective. Does me wonders.
And oh.. Kingbury Manx is lovely too. Who knew? Mr. Howie did. Thanks, 
David.
Any other suggestions, send ‘em this way. Please. Thank you.
Thassall, I promise.
Be good!

MWAH!
~dahling


http://www.geocities.com/dahling007


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