Tasty Phase Magic Bran—Put Something Good In Your Mouth

"In her autobiography," Brandy Alexander testifies, "in Miss Rona, published by Bantam Books by arrangement with the Nash Publishing Corporation on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, California ... ," Brandy takes a deep breath of new-car—smelling air,

"... copyright 1974, Miss Rona tells us how she started life as a fat little Jewish girl from Queens with a big nose and a mysterious muscle disease."

Brandy says, "This little fat brunette re-creates herself as a top celebrity superstar blonde whom a top sex symbol then begs to let him stick his penis in her just one inch."

There isn't one native tongue left among us.

Another billboard:

Next Sundae, Scream For Tooter's Ice Milk!

"What that woman has gone through," says Brandy. "Right here on page one hundred and twenty-five, she almost drowns in her own blood! Rona's just had her nose job. She's only making fifty bucks a story, but this woman saves enough for a thousand-dollar nose job! It's her first miracle. So, Rona's in the hospital, post—nose job, with her head wrapped up like a mummy when a friend comes in and says how Hollywood says she's a lesbian. Miss Rona, a lesbian! Of course this isn't true. The woman is a she-god so she screams and screams and screams until an artery in her throat just bursts."

"Hallelujah," Seth says, all teared up again.

"And here," Brandy licks the pad of a big index finger and flips ahead a few pages, "on page two hundred and twenty-two, Rona is once more rejected by her sleazy boyfriend of eleven years. She's been coughing for weeks so she takes a handful of pills and is found semicomatose and dying. Even the ambulance—

"Praise God," Seth says.

Various native plants are growing just wherever they want.

"Seth, sweetness," Brandy says. "Don't step on my lines." Her Plumbago lips say, "Even the ambulance driver thought our Miss Rona would be DOA."

Clouds composed of water vapor are up in the, you know, sky.

Brandy says, "Now, Seth."

And Seth says, "Hallelujah!"

The wild daisies and Indian paintbrush whizzing past are just the genitals of a different life form.

And Seth says, "So what are you saying?"

"In the book Miss Rona, copyright 1974," Brandy says, "Rona Barrett—who got her enormous breasts when she was nine years old and wanted to cut them off with scissors—she tells us in the prologue of her book that she's like this animal, cut open with all its vital organs glistening and quivering, you know, like the liver and the large intestine. Such visuals, everything sort of dripping and pulsating. Anyway, she could wait for someone to sew her back up, but she knows no one will. She has to take a needle and thread and sew herself up"

"Gross," says Seth.

"Miss Rona says nothing is gross," Brandy says. "Miss Rona says the only way to find true happiness is to risk being completely cut open."

Flocks of self-absorbed little native birds seem obsessed with finding food and picking it up with their mouths.

Brandy pulls the rearview mirror around until she finds me reflected and says, "Bubba-Joan, sweetness?"

It's obvious the native birds have to build their own do-it-yourself nests using materials they source locally. The little sticks and leaves are just sort of heaped together.

"Bubba-Joan," Brandy Alexander says. "Why don't you open up to us with a story?"

Seth says, "Remember the time in Missoula when the princess got so ripped she ate Nebalino suppositories wrapped in gold foil because she thought they were Almond Roca? Talk about your semiconscious DOAs."

Pine trees are producing pine cones. Squirrels and mammals of all sexes spend all day trying to get laid. Or giving birth live. Or eating their young.

Brandy says, "Seth, sweetness?"

"Yes, Mother."

What only looks like bulimia is how bald eagles feed their young.

Brandy says, "Why is it you have to seduce every living thing you come across?"

Another billboard:

Nubby's Is the BBQ Gotta-Stop for Savory, Flavory Chicken Wings

Another billboard:

Dairy Bite—The Chewing Gum Flavored With the Low-Fat Goodness of Real Cheese

Seth giggles. Seth blushes and twists some of his hair around a finger. He says, "You make me sound so sexually compulsive."

Mercy. Next to him, I feel so butch.

"Oh, baby," Brandy says, "You don't remember half of who you've been with." She says, "Well, I only wish I could forget it."

To my breasts in the rearview mirror, Seth says, "The only reason why we ask other people how their weekend was is so we can tell them about our own weekend."

I figure, a few more days of increased micronized progesterone, and Seth should pop out his own nice rack of hooters. Side effects I need to watch for include nausea, vomiting, jaundice, migraine, abdominal cramps, and dizziness. You try to remember the exact toxicity levels, but why bother.

A sign goes by saying: Seattle 130 miles.

"Come on, let's see those glistening, quivering innards, Bubba- Joan," Brandy Alexander, God and mother of us all, commands. "Tell us a gross personal story."

She says, "Rip yourself open. Sew yourself shut," and she hands a prescription pad and an Aubergine Dreams eyebrow pencil to me in the backseat.

Jump way back to the last Thanksgiving before my accident when I go home to eat dinner with my folks. This is back when I still had a face so I wasn't so confronted by solid food. On the dining room table, covering it all over is a tablecloth I don't remember, a really nice dark blue damask with a lace edge. This isn't something I'd expect my mom to buy so I ask, did somebody give this to her?

Mom's just pulling up to the table and unfolding her blue damask napkin with everything steaming between us: her, me, and my dad. The sweet potatoes under their layer of marshmallows. The big brown turkey. The rolls are inside a quilted cozy sewed to look like a hen. You lift the wings to take a roll out. There's the cut-glass tray of sweet pickles and celery filled with peanut butter.

"Give what?" my mom says.

The new tablecloth. It's really nice.

My father sighs and plunges a knife into the turkey.

"It wasn't going to be a tablecloth at first," Mom says. "Your father and I pretty much dropped the ball on our original project."

The knife goes in again and again and my father starts to dismember our dinner.

My mom says, "Do you know what the AIDS memorial quilt is all about?"

Jump to how much I hate my brother at this moment.

"I bought this fabric because I thought it would make a nice panel for Shane," Mom says. "We just ran into some problems with what to sew on it."

Give me amnesia.

Flash.

Give me new parents.

Flash.

"Your mother didn't want to step on any toes," Dad says. He twists a drumstick off and starts scraping the meat onto a plate. "With gay stuff you have to be so careful since everything means something in secret code. I mean, we didn't want to give people the wrong idea."

My mom leans over to scoop yams onto my plate, and says, "Your father wanted a black border, but black on a field of blue would mean Shane was excited by leather sex, you know, bondage and discipline, sado and masochism." She says, "Really these panels are to help the people left behind."

"Strangers are going to see us and see Shane's name," my dad says. "We didn't want them thinking things."

The dishes all start their slow clockwise march around the table. The stuffing. The olives. The cranberry sauce.

"I wanted pink triangles but all the panels have pink triangles," my mom says. "It's the Nazi symbol for homosexuals." She says, "Your father suggested black triangles, but that would mean Shane was a lesbian. It looks like the female pubic hair. The black triangle does."