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    The Strange Bouquet: A Collection of Essays
    The Strange Bouquet: A Collection of Essays
    The Strange Bouquet: A Collection of Essays
    Ebook97 pages1 hour

    The Strange Bouquet: A Collection of Essays

    By S.R. Coleyon

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    About this ebook

    The Strange Bouquet is a collection of works including essays, an excerpt of a chapter for an upcoming book, as well as two full chapters for the same upcoming book, Duplicity and Duress. In this unique menagerie expect to find out how to save a soul for less than $500 and what it was like being among the first group of kids to desegregate during the 70s. Also expect to be introduced to an incredibly bizarre story that sends readers on a roller coaster ride of mystery, intrigue and the great unknown. What exactly does 'fake painted flowers,' and 'no bad dog walking' mean?
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBookBaby
    Release dateJun 6, 2016
    ISBN9781483572758
    The Strange Bouquet: A Collection of Essays

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      Book preview

      The Strange Bouquet - S.R. Coleyon

      validated.

      An Excerpt from a Dupicity and Duress chapter called

      No Bad Dog Walking

      THE SILENCE and solitude of Sydney’s office felt much safer than being out on the street stalked by cars with deep-throat mufflers and revving engines. Hundreds of them motored and purred like cougars through center city streets along my dog walking route, their exhausts salivating at the sight of me—the stumbling prey who shook and trembled pretending not to notice as they closed in to eye my petrified soul. But they simply hadn’t made it as far as West Philly. The Schuylkill River made it difficult for them to sniff out my scent and I was free to dart into Hall C located on the University of Pennsylvania campus where Sydney, upon seeing me, offered me an environmentally safe Tupperware container, BPA-free, containing a peas and pasta casserole she’d prepared for lunch. Do you want some? she said, barely mentioning the phone call I made to her desperate to seek refuge. Sure, I said game for any kind of distraction. She warmed up the casserole in a microwave located in the kitchenette just down the hall from her desk on the third floor. She was someone who packed her lunch as a matter of routine on a daily basis. The kind of person who smuggled her own food into movies, sporting events and, yes, Gay bingo, Sydney refused to fuel the consumerist world any more than need be, even at fundraisers. It simply wasn’t her style. I admired that. Discipline, I thought. I followed her to the kitchenette and back, clinging to her like a shadow until she settled into her chair, reclined and began stabbing her spiraled pasta with a metal fork. She worked as an assistant for two University of Pennsylvania professors, scheduling travel plans and arranging their appointments. I sat on the leather couch facing her desk and trembled in horror from a culmination of all the terrorization that had been going on for days. Bizarre events had been unfolding since the beginning of the week, but the stalking of cars happening on this day pushed me closer to the point of no return. The spoon in my hand could barely pick up the peas and pasta from my bowl without peas and pasta rolling off and dropping back down into the bowl. The muscles in my wrist were petrified yet limp. All I could think about were the cars, so many of them, creeping along, watching. They were overwhelming, so much so I became disoriented and confused. More damaging was the inability to understand why, who, or how so many people would participate in such a strange activity. To drive their cars en masse along my path. To feel ostracized on that level. Targeted and maybe hated, by so many, in one fell swoop. My brain could not process. After successfully eating one spoonful of peas and past, I glanced over at Sydney wondering why she wasn’t pumping me for information. She tapped and clicked away on her computer like a happy chicken pecking its grains and wasn’t working so much as Facebooking her former roommate Lacy while bursting out into laughter between taps and clicks. Did she not want to talk about why I called, for the second time this week, in absolute fear? I asked her if she knew anything about what had transpired the past few days, to which she replied contritely, There’s a new kind of activism out there. Have you heard of it? It’s called hactivism!

      Sydney, I assumed, was very intelligent and well-read. Despite saying things like I think it’s an overarching statement to say all lesbians can fix cars, she often questioned her education. But using the term ‘overarching’ meant her education was far superior to mine. I also considered her a sensitive person because we initially met while training for Women Organized Against Rape in 2005. It seems, however, she wasn’t sensitive at all because on that day, there in her office, with me trembling on the couch spilling peas and pasta all over the floor, she appeared as though she was repressing laughter. Just then, one of the professors returned to his office situated next to Sydney’s desk. I feigned a smile using every muscle in my body to keep still. But he knew something was off. After ducking behind his door to remove his coat, he made a call and popped his head back out while holding the cell to his ear and examining me as I shook and tried to lift the spoon with peas and pasta up to my mouth, hunched over the bowl, concentrating so as not to let any of the peas and pasta roll off the spoon. Shook isn’t the best word. Jerked. That’s what my body was doing, jerking in convulsive terror while trying to balance peas and pasta on a spoon being lifted from the bowl on my lap to my mouth as I sat with my torso curled over my trembling legs desperately trying to eat.

      It was only a couple hours before the end of the workday, after which, Sydney needed to stop by the grocery store before heading home. Not once did she ask me if I’d settled down or felt more comfortable, or what exactly it was that frightened me on that day. Even with the obvious trauma I was experiencing, she asked nothing. I wanted her, Sydney, to be more attentive, more supportive of my situation and consequential condition. To ask more questions in order to calm me, or to find out what could cause such a state of fear in another human being. Instead, it was business as usual for her. She proceeded down the necessary isles of The Fresh Grocer looking for items on her list. Where’s the almond milk? Oh, and I need some bananas…and I need to go down here for some bread. I tagged along like an accessory, or maybe even a trophy—the wounded prey toting around with Sydney the hactivist in the grocery store. I wanted to hurry up and get to her apartment so I could explain all that had unfolded that day, but as we began to walk toward her place, which was on the third floor of a very large house in the far western region of activist West Philly, she stopped, almost on cue, in front of a sign attached to a fence. The sign itself was a basic No Dog Walking sign, but the graffiti it bore offered a different message: "No Bad Dog Walking." My eyes widened. Dread pored over me like a wet blanket.

      Oh No! I’m a bad dog walker! I thought. This message, internalized in my mind, meant I had been a bad person. A really bad person. I was a dog walker and I must be a bad person because this thing is happening. All these incredibly terrifying events that feel like a punishment are messages from the universe that I need to rethink my life and my decisions. I read the sign out loud, cringing, and turned to Sydney. No BAD dog walking! Oh my God! I’m in trouble!

      Well, it depends on how you read it, Sydney said, gleefully. She seemed so exuberant she might as well have performed a brief tap dance complete with a top hat and a cane to point to the sign in question. To me it means ‘Don’t walk bad dogs here..’ She then pointed at the words and read them with barely a pause between bad and dog. See. No…bad dog…walking. Tada.

      This idea, of how written words are interpreted, would become a recurring theme in this strange affair. It’s all about how you read it, how you react to it. But these actions left me feeling like I should be chastised and punished. That I had been a bad dog, or I had been bad in my dog walking. The weird thing is I used to own a favorite shirt, which I wore a year before this maddening circus descended. It actually said Bad Dog with a super cute graphic of a dog set against an azure blue background. The shirt went missing sometime in 2010. I’m convinced someone from this parade of calculating brainwashers stole it, stirred it into a stew, waved a wand, lit a candle and placed a demonic curse over my life. No bad dog walking, no bad

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