lemons

our gums are spongy | short fiction

Sep 12, 2024

Dearest Maisie,

You remember the sweet old lady over in 3110, right? The one who baked that god-awful fruitcake when you came for Christmas? Well...when I came back from my weekend trip, her place was empty 🙁

Seeing the bare walls made me sad (she kinda became the de facto grandmother of the community, lol) but I can’t say I’m surprised. Most nights I’d hear her shuffling around the complex topless, trying to breastfeed the raccoons, cursing when they ran. Word on the street is her family got sick of all the complaints and hauled her off to some assisted living place...

I’ve been thinking about her a lot...If I ever try to breastfeed a raccoon (or anything for that matter...), you have my permission to put me out of my misery—-I’ll do the same for you, okay? 

Anyway, this morning, one of those U-Hauls with a faded illustration of a salamander pulled in the old girl’s spot, so it looks like I’ll be getting some new neighbors 😫... 

Question: does this mean I’ll have to get the n00bs some “welcome to the neighborhood” gift? It’s been so long since I’ve had new neighbors...do people still do that? The whole welcome gift thing? or is that cringe now?

tbh, things are tight out here, and I’m lazy these days, so I’m praying it’s cringe, but seeing that you’ve always been better with that type of stuff, I’ll default to your wisdom...

Yours in helplessness,
Damian

P.S. How are things with your Mom? 🤞

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Mais!

I’m so happy to hear your Ma’s out of the woods! Wonderful news to start the day with 🥳...I feel a pep in my step already! How long will she have to be on chemo? 

re: the neighbor situation, I took your advice. I waited a few days for the new guy to settle in before bringing over some (not cheap!) Whole Foods scones. 

The whole thing was super awkward. For the record, I blame you, and you'll soon be hearing from my lawyer re: my pain and suffering 🤓...

I knocked and waited on his porch and, well—-you know how nosy I can be (I believe the word you like to use is “snoopy”), so this will come as no surprise lol—-as I waited, I peeked through his window. To be fair, there were no fixtures or blinds...no nothing; I was practically invited to peek. All that was in there was a beach chair (the really crappy kind you can rent at the beach) and a super SUPER old TV—-one of those ancient yesteryear clunkers our science sub (Mrs. Tarby? Turby?) rolled out and stuffed with Bill Nye tapes lol

Eventually the door opened. The new guy is def sketchy. He’s probably mid-40s (don't get all horned up, Mais...he's a balding, didn’t take care of himself mid-40s...not an Oceans Clooney mid-40s haha) I did the whole "hello, here are some treats, I’m a few units down, welcome to the neighborhood" thing you suggested but he didn’t say much—-he just kinda grunted hello and chewed his gross mustache. He didn’t even make eye contact with me! He like...couldn’t--his eyes kept twitching to the TV. Being the “snoop” I am, I (of course) followed his gaze to peek at the TV, and things got weird real quick—-the TV was playing old news footage of the 9/11 attacks...It caught me off guard, and I think I stuttered mid-sentence when I saw it. But, like...how random is that?! It’s been, what...25 years? and it’s not even an anniversary or anything...it’s mid-March! lol but here I am handing gluten-free scones to a freak and watching the north tower burn on VHS...

Do you remember that day? Remember how school let us off early and we biked up Route 17 to that ihop? The one near the Allendale exit, on the hilly part of 17 where you can see manhattan? People were crying in stopped cars and hugging strangers on the highway. We stood for a bit, watching those smelly black plumes fill the sky and then ate so much ihop you puked up a near-whole pancake 🤮 haha... 

You remember that, right? It’s not one of those things I just made up, right? I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately and I’m unsure..it’s just—-it’s just I see the whole thing so clearly, ya know?

Anyway, he (he didn’t give a name...) thanked me, took the scones, and shut the door. And that’s that—-the tale of my new neighbor...I just hope he makes a decent fruitcake for the Christmas pot luck!

Yours in snoopiness,
Damian

P.S. tell your Ma I think she’ll look cute bald 👩‍🦲💅

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M.

Yes! That’s it--Mrs. Turny! I wonder what she’s up to these days...she’s not the sub who lit her family on fire, right?

re: my new neighbor—-lol I’m glad this fellow piqued your interest and yes, if you must know (and apparently you must!) he’s only gotten weirder...

Alright, so...the dude in 3110 is right on Daisy and I’s walking route. We walk by his place at least three times a day. He’s been here for a month now, and every time I walk by (no joke—-literally, every time...), the windows are undressed, and the TV is all 9/11 coverage...yesterday it was a loop of flight 11 crashing the north tower over and over (the freak must have edited the VHS to make it loop like that...), the day before it was a shaky handheld video of people in the street running as one of the towers collapsed. He does seem fixated on the towers though...I only saw him watching the pentagon or flight 93 stuff a handful of times. He seems to have collected every newscast from that day, showing the towers from every possible angle.

And yes, he just sits there, watching...sometimes Daisy will poop right by his window, and I’ll have a chance to observe him a bit...I don’t think I’ve seen this dude blink, smile, eat, drink, or...anything really...he just sits in his beach chair, watching, munching on his stache. I haven't a clue why but sometimes he’ll rearrange where the beach chair and TV are in the room, like he’s into some wacky 9/11 feng shui or whatever, trying to find harmony with that day--yesterday morning he had the TV against the far wall, sitting as close as possible, bent over, eyes no more than a centimeter from the screen... then in the evening he had the TV kitty-cornered by the kitchen while he sat clear across the room, his bald spot right against the window.

I don’t know what to make of all this...do you still think he’s “sketchy but harmless”? lol I think you should reconsider...

And re: ihop, whew, 😅 it feels good to hear you remember it like that too...I thought I was losing it for a moment haha

Yours in disbelief,
D.

P.S. tell your Ma I was right—-the bald pics of her on insta are cute! Give her a nice smooch on the cranium for me. 😘👩‍🦲

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Maisie,

I’m glad to hear Mrs. Turny wasn’t the one who lit her family on fire! I knew she didn’t have it in her haha...

Anyway, to answer your question, I’m doing alright...I haven’t been sleeping too well tbh...I’ve been thinking about the dude in 3110 a lot, perhaps a bit too much. I can’t get the taste of pancakes and the smell of smoke out of my system...

I took your advice and tried re-routing Daisy’s walks, but you know how stubborn she is, so that was a failure...we’re still walking past 3110 at least three times a day, and it’s always 9/11 in there. This week, he kept the TV stationed in the center of the room. I saw him standing behind the TV, bending over it like a bat so he could watch flight 175 upside down...

I spent a few hours watching 9/11 videos on YouTube the other night, trying to figure out the appeal, but I just don’t get it...I saw a video of little people leaping from the windows and it made me so queasy I had to stop. 

I’m starting to worry, Mais. Someone like this can’t possibly be stable. Other people in the complex are complaining to management but they say their hands are tied and "it's a free country"... the only way I can get some sleep is to move the couch in front of the door for extra protection.

Anyway, enough of that, I’m delighted to hear about your mother!! How have you been?

Yours in sleeplessness,
Damian

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My Dear Mais,

Hmm...maybe you’re right...maybe he lost someone in the towers, and it like traumatized him or something, but...like...why the constant viewing and rearranging of furniture? I guess grief can be weird but, I’m like pulling my hair out over here. Some of us in the complex got together and tried knocking on his door but he wouldn't answer. We saw him sitting there watching the city burn...ignoring our faces in the window...

I’d like to buy that he’s just in a long period of mourning...I want to give the benefit of the doubt, but (and I don’t know why) I just can’t...something tells me he’s a loon...one of those nut jobs obsessed with that day. Hell, he might be married to it—-I mean, if there’s people who marry carnival rides and the Eiffel Tower, it’s not inconceivable someone would marry a terrorist attack, right? Or maybe he's married to the TV and not the event itself?...idk, obviously, I’m losing it...I’m trying to distract myself from the fact that the freak three doors down is most likely a conspiracy nut doing his “own research” getting ready to release a massive treatise on 4chan before strolling into the pre-school strapped to the hilt and going ape shit.

I took your advice and started doing teletherapy to figure this all out and start getting some sleep...it’s nice to talk to someone and I hope it works 🤞💤

Oh! I listened to that podcast you sent about the history of cancer...really nasty stuff but super interesting, and the production was great (I loved the host’s voice, btw, very Howard Stern-like, haha)...How is your Mom doing these days? That picture you sent of her with that fuzzy newborn hair coming in is heartwarming...she kinda reminds me of a chia pet! 😂

Anyway, when the hell are you getting your butt out here to save me from myself?!

Yours in waiting,
Damian

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Maisie!

I’m just going to spew here, I’ve got no time to edit, I’ll try to tack on a tl;dr at the end for your sake (yw). So...you know how I’ve been losing my mind over this dude in 3110, right? Of course you do. I’ve been trying to figure him out...if I just knew why he’s doing what he’s doing I think I’d be less skeeved out. Yesterday I was walking Daisy on her usual route and Spotify started playing a podcast from the same host that did the cancer one, it was an episode about scurvy. Did you hear that one? You got to listen to it cause as I was listening, I passed by 3110 and something just kinda clicked...actually, I don’t have time for you to listen so I’m just going to go ahead and spoil it...ok...so...scurvy was a huge deal back in the day like, by the time Columbus came over here, it had killed like two million people or something. These days, everyone knows all you have to do to avoid spongy gums and brain hemorrhages is stroll into a Safeway and suck a lemon...but that’s not the important part. The important part is that apparently some sailors in 1497 or whenever (don’t quote me…) figured this all out on one of their voyages (people were sick, they had lemons, voilà!...they're cured) but the medicinal power of lemons kept getting lost, forgotten, or mucked with for generations. This scientist named Lind (I think it was Something Something Lind…idk, doesn’t matter) even proved it. He did a study with 12 sailors back in 17something and found that yup the citrus cure was legit and then he published a 400 page treatise on scurvy but (for some reason…) only dedicated four pages out of the four HUNDRED to his experiment. Then, to make it all worse, sometime between 1799 and 18whatever, some dumbass sailors decided lime juice must be as powerful as lemon juice and this led to some incident where lime juice and copper tubing killed a whole bunch of British sailors in the arctic so everyone freaked out and abounded the whole circus cure thing...It wasn’t until the ‘30s...the 1930’s (!) when the power of lemons was rediscovered and (finally) accepted. Why was it rediscovered you ask? That’s obvious...because, guinea pigs. Okay, sorry...I know, I’m all over the place so...what does it have to do with 3110? I keep coming back to this Lind guy—-how he had it all figured out, saw the cure with his own eyes, knew that citrus could prevent millions of people dying at sea and wrote four measly pages in a 400 page tome. That’s like, what, 1% of the whole damn thing? That’s a needle in the stack, hen’s tooth sort of situation right there if I ever saw one...sure enough, no one knew about it and if they did, they didn’t believe it—-they thought is was too simple, too stupid, it must be an old wives tale so they started looking for other cures while gums were free to bled, brains free to hemorrhage, while the cure patientally sat in market stalls. If only someone sifted the chaff to get to Lind's 1% that mattered...lives would have been saved...There was this brief flash of enlightenment where there was a cure for something horrible and then it was buried for hundreds of years, ignored and forgotten. The whole thing makes me think of those first days after 9/11...the people crying in their cars on 17 and hugging strangers, how the ihop waitress rubbed my shoulder and asked how we were doing with everything—-that odd little post-9/11 Weimar period where everyone seemed to reach out and lend shoulders and pay attention and ask if you’re okay and feel some sort of deep obligation to the community...the empathetic blip that lasted maybe like three weeks before the world became what it is now...I know this is stupid but what if—-what if thats what the dude in 3110 is up to? He’s sifting through the chaff of the horror of all horrors, turning it in his hand like an apple, observing it from every conceivable angle, perspective, distance—-scouring the tapes to find that 1%...the reason we, as a whole, gave a shit about one another for that brief period of time...the 1% that is known and probably so simple but tragically forgotten by all of us—-maybe there’s something in those clips, some lemon to stop our bleeding gums and when he finds it and tells the world there will be this one big collective aha! and then we’d all turn to one another and invite each other over for dinner and agree to not kill each other and be able to work in a high-rise without keeping one eye trained on the windows for a rouge Boeing. Idk...I may have finally gone batty but, I guess this is what I like to think. I have to give him the benefit of the doubt...otherwise he’s just a crazy person next door, liable to loose his shit at the drop of a hat.

Yours in insane revelation,
D.

P.S. tl;dr lemons—-he’s wants us to remember the lemon.

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Mais!!!!!!

IGNORE MY LAST EMAIL...EVERYTHING’S CHANGED!

so, right after I sent it I took Daisy for her walk and when we passed by 3110 we saw the dude and like always he was in the beach chair watching a clip where some college students are sharing a drink in an apartment as the north tower burns and then they scream and the camera pans as 175 crashes. I was tying up Daisy’s poop baggie and snooping through the window and freaked the hell out...his pants were around his ankles and his pecker was out--out on full display...his belt was tightened around his neck...there were lotions and tissues on the floor, his face was all blue, his eyes open--I didn’t know what to do so I just called the police and tried knocking on the door yelling for him. A few minutes later there were sirens and the complex manager came up with officers and medics and let them in. An officer told me to stay put so I could give my statement. I’m standing here now, typing like mad, one of the medics just said his Aunt was in the second tower but managed to get out, while the other's saying something about hyperspermia and now they’re putting on extra gloves, laughing as they zip him up. Oh shit, the officer is back and walking over, I got to go...

Yours in relief,
D.

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you okay??? I tried calling like three times...

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???

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Dearest Maisie,

Your brother just told me...I am heartbroken to hear about your mother. We will chat when you're ready. I was so pleased to hear she was taking life by the horns and going to the theater for the first time since the operation. She was a warm, lovely woman...I considered her family, and my thoughts are with all of you. I’m here if you need anything...anything at all, just ask. I’ve been trying to follow the news; please update me when you can. Did they catch the shooter yet?

Please let me know when the funeral will be. I'm booking the first flight to Newark.

Yours,
Damian

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