Not Bad Dan Not Bad Stories

Much has been said about family members monopolizing conversations at holidays like Thanksgiving and changing the mood of things from festive to combative. Many people will say that they hope their uncles don't get drunk this year at Christmas, because they’ll start talking about crime statistics and keeping Muslims out of NASCAR. Some people go to family gatherings like they’re preparing for battle when they know they will see their less-desirable family members, coming up with retorts and rebuttals to inflammatory statements that will almost certainly be made by an aunt who has fallen down some strange internet sinkhole. I was lucky--the person in my family who would take pleasant conversation and make it their own was not a conservative uncle or a crackpot third cousin, it was my grandma. I would drive to family gatherings excited, not because I particularly like the formality of those kinds of get togethers, but because I knew my grandma would do something to make everyone uncomfortable, and that made all the strange handshakes and mindnumbing platitudes worth it. I was a little disturbed as a kid, and there's an old saying about art that applies to my relationship with my grandma perfectly if you replace the word “art” with “grandma:”

“Grandma comforts the disturbed and disturbs the comfortable.”

When I was about 14 years old, I saw a copy of the book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I've grown to really like Hunter S. Thompson, but at the time I had never read a word of his work. It was the cover that interested me. The cover depicted two psychotic, vaguely human-looking characters in a car driving down a stretch of road to a city in the distance. The image is trying to evoke the erratic, unyielding psychosis drugs can induce, but it didn't have that effect on me. When I first saw the book cover, I thought this reminds me of when Grandma would pick me up from the bus. The only difference being that one of the characters is throwing a beer can out the window. My grandma abhorred many things, littering being towards the top of the list.

From what I understand about grandmothers, mine is fairly unique. First off, she's still alive. The women in my family have two things in common: their husbands die, and they live to 100 years old. I think if a doctor were to study my family and give me health advice, they would probably tell me to start knitting and get a husband. The second thing that sets my grandma apart is that she functions as more of an uncle at family gatherings. On holidays or celebrations, it's usually an uncle who gets too drunk and too political and is talked about in hushed tones by the rest of the family as the leftovers are scraped into tupperware. My grandmother shows a woman can do anything a man can, and she could do it sober, or at least off of only two white zinfandels.

My grandma is also staunchly political, but not in the same way most elderly people are. Her opinions oscillate between center left and far left, but she's militant about all of them. For example, she has what I would call an "abortion first" protocol when it comes to hearing about someone getting pregnant. If you tell my grandma "Oh my god! I just found out my sister is pregnant," my grandma will say, "is she going to get it taken care of?" And when you reply, "Um... no, she and her husband have been trying for a baby for months," my grandma will go "Oh, well that's wonderful dear, congratulations." It may sound dark to some, but to me it’s sunk in and is sort of a hopeful thought. Whenever I see a woman who gave birth, my thought isn't “she had a baby,” it's “she didn't have an abortion.” It puts a little more agency on the side of the mother, and it lets the baby know it was lucky.

When I was twelve, I transferred to a school in Barrington, Rhode Island that catered to special needs students. There was a van that would bring us back and drop us off in Dartmouth, MA, but that was still about a fifteen minute drive from my house. Both of my parents worked, so often my grandma would pick me up. Those fifteen minute spurts of dialog constituted my formal introduction to politics, history, and true crime. I would be sitting in the bus on the way to Dartmouth, thinking of what subject I wanted to bring up to Grandma in the car. This was still before the internet flooded the formative experiences of America's youth and caused a flattening of information. Much like the internet, I could ask my grandma about any subject, and she would answer quickly and succinctly. “Why are we in Iraq?” I would ask, and my grandma would answer, “Because the president is an evil piece of shit who wants to give all his friends who work for Lockheed Martin and Blackwater a taste of blood money.” She would say this while driving the car directly in the center of the median. I think the things my grandma said stuck with me because I was in a life-or-death situation in the passenger seat every time she would answer my questions.

My grandma didn’t only talk to me about politics. When I was 11, I asked her, “Where do babies come from?”

Without hesitation, she responded, “A man gets an erection, and has vaginal intercourse with a woman. Once he ejaculates--”

“Woah, woah. Slow down, Grandma--let me get a pen and paper.”

You might be uncomfortable with the idea of a 75-year-old woman describing to her 11-year-old grandson what sex is, and you might be right, but let me tell you from experience that I think it's a great way to ensure that your sex talk doesn’t lead to your child becoming interested in sex. I didn't have sex until my much later teens, well after all of my friends. I think it's because when the subject of sex came to mind I thought, “what, that thing grandmas talk about? No thank you, ma’am.”

A lot has been said about people being “unfiltered,” but I think that's a misunderstood term. When someone is said to be “unfiltered,” it usually means they will say a few rude things if you go out to dinner with them. From my experience, these people actually tend to be extremely filtered. They just filter out kind or generous thoughts and tell you the negative ones. My grandma was truly unfiltered--you got the good and you got the bad in equal parts. I would be in the passenger seat of her car and she would tell me about her vacation to Algeria when she was 35: the stunning architecture and beautiful food, the enchanting history and mesmerizing music. Then suddenly, she would say, “but one night, we got a meal at a restaurant on the outskirts of town and had diarrhea for five days. I thought I was going to waste away and flush all my internal organs down the drain.” I thought to myself, as she swerved, barely missing a man who was crossing the street, someday I’ll go to Algeria and bring my own food.

Maybe it was because I got to experience my grandma one-on-one over many years, but I always felt like I took to her personality more than many members of my family. I remember one dinner, after she’d had her maximum allotment of white zinfandel, she started talking about notable murders that happened in New Bedford, the city she lived in her whole life. I believe the dinner was a celebration for my mother, who got her bachelor's degree after decades of having to put it off due to life obligations, but when Grandma starts going she has an uncanny ability to shift a conversation to her own agenda. My cousin, aunt, uncle, and mother all tried diverting the conversation away from death to anything else, but Grandma wouldn't have it.

“--and that's when he took her body to the attic and started to dismember her. This all happened on the south end of New Bedford, so the houses were more spaced out and it was harder for people to hear her scream,” she said.

Then my uncle tried to interject by saying something like, “The south end has really good fishing; it's hard to launch your boat though, because there are so many jagged rocks.”

My grandma then immediately grabbed the reins back by saying, “You think that's hard? Try dragging a body into an attic. I mean, why would you not take it into the basement? Was he making a point?”

Eventually my family gave up, replacing conversation with knowing conspiratorial glances with one another, their expressions conveying frustration as if to say here we go again. I, on the other hand, was enthralled. My grandma would often speak to me about historical events involving death and atrocity, and it impressed me that she could keep so much carnage in her head at once. Her intent was certainly not malicious--she simply did not have the barriers in her brain that separated horror from the rest of life. To her it was all the same thing; a dismembered body and her daughter's graduation occupied the same plane of existence.

We drove home with my aunt and cousin. My cousin, Rick, barely waited for the car door to close before saying, “wow, that was a lot from Grandma, huh?” Everyone in the car agreed, but I stayed quiet. The reason I appreciated my grandma's interjection of blood and guts was because to me it perfectly encapsulated the issues I've always had when it comes to the sterility of my east coast, tight-lipped upbringing. I suffered through so much boring conversation when I knew in my heart there were so many more interesting things bubbling below the surface, if only they could be addressed. I'm not saying you should browbeat people with your harrowing life events, but you also shouldn't ignore them completely. My grandma would kick open the door of pleasantries and say, “look! Look at all this stuff we aren't talking about! Isn't that interesting?” And it was--to me, at least.

I understand when people are made uncomfortable by their inflammatory family members, but I pose the question: what else would you be talking about? Say what you will about my grandma, but when she's at the table the question of “what else do we talk about?” has never come up. She's in her 90s now, and has lost a bit of her zeal for conversation, but she’s still all there--you just have to kick start it all a little bit. Recently, I saw her when I visited home. Soon into the conversation I said, “Hey Grandma, what do you think about this administration?” and she quickly replied, “Well I'll tell you what I think about this administration!” And I sat back and relaxed, knowing she would take it from there.

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Brian sat at a far table in Bar Bandini, and waited for his date. Brian felt Bar Bandini was a perfect spot to take a woman when you're meeting her for the first time. It was dark and sexy, but cheap enough where he could buy the first round and not have to run into the bathroom to check his bank balance after. Brian reached for his phone, then remembered he told himself a week ago that he was going to try and be more mindful. He resigned himself to looking around the bar. He felt that it was odd to not look at your phone in a place like this when you were by yourself. The only thing he could do was look around the room and judge people on dates, which didn't seem much better than just playing online poker. He saw two women on a date arguing loudly, and wondered if their disagreement was over who would pick up the check. He wondered who would customarily pick up the check on a date between two women. Maybe the one with the shortest hair, he thought. He imagined one of them going, "see, 1/4 inch long, drinks are on you tonight." He then immediately felt bad for thinking that and looked away. He saw a large, lurchy man on a date with a small woman who looked like she wanted to be anywhere but across the table from him. The man was leaning over imposingly, his face lit from below by the candle on the table like he was telling a ghost story. By the expression of the woman across from him, it seemed that whatever tale of vampires and werewolves he was spinning was too much for her. It looked like she wanted to run to the bathroom and lock herself in there until daylight came.

To Brian's immediate right, there was a man who looked about fifty and a girl who looked about 18. He tried listening to their conversation, but when he heard the girl say "Yeah, I really love horses and I used to ride in high school, so not too long ago," he immediately tried turning his attention elsewhere. He hoped his date would go better than the ones happening around him. He thought of an excuse to look at his phone, and he took it out and went on Violet's profile again. His excuse was that he needed to remind himself what she looked like in case she walked in without him noticing, which was nonsense because if she was as striking as her pictures it would be impossible to miss her. She was tall, with long black hair and tattoos down the length of her arms all the way to her hands. He stared at one particular picture of her in a white tank top smoking a cigarette outside a coffee shop. She looked beautiful, but also intense, like her eyes could look through objects. It was hard for Bryan to look away from the photo. Finally, his attention was pulled from the picture by a loud noise behind him. It was a groan of disappointment.

They had set up a television on the back patio so people could watch the Dodgers game. The Diamond Backs had just hit a two run homer, and things were looking bleak. Brian didn't care about baseball, so he turned back to the bar, and there, scanning the room, was Violet. He forced himself to look back at the television in a panic. Violet probably hadn't seen him yet. He didn't want her to think he was just sitting there staring at the door waiting for her, even though that's exactly what he was doing. He pretended to watch the game for a second while he formulated a plan. He would look at the TV for about five more seconds, then turn around and walk up to her. She would probably be turned away from him facing the bar. He could approach her from behind and say something cool like, “looking for someone?” This seemed like an excellent plan to Brian, but when he turned to execute it, she was standing right in front of him.

"Hey!" he blurted, standing to greet her. He got up clumsily, bumping his hips against the small table in front of him, and when he stood at full height, he realized they were eye to eye with one another. She wore a black dress that came down to her knees and wrapped tastefully snug around her waist. She extended a long arm, and he shook her hand. They both sat down. Brian couldn't think of what to say, so they just sat for a moment. It was hard to read her face--it was calm and observant, like she could see into him and read how flustered she made him. He noticed there was a light sheen of sweat on her face and neck from the unseasonable humidity, but it just made her look glistening and angelic. Brian still hadn't said anything after his stammering introduction.

"Im glad you picked this bar," Violet said, putting her purse down on a chair next to her. "I was right by here so I was able to walk."

"Oh, that's why you're a little sweaty?" Brian asked.

"What?" Violet responded, her brow furrowing and a look of concern falling over her face.

"No, no--not in a bad way!" Brian stammered, shocked at his stupidity to throw off a date before it had even really started. "I just mean it's pretty humid to walk right now. Being sweaty isn't a bad thing, you look…good sweaty."

There was a terrible silence. Then, all of a sudden, Violet laughed, and Brians's nerves released like a shot of morphine.

"Wow, what a compliment," she said.

"More where that came from," Brian said, impressed with his own smoothness. "Do you live near here?"

"No, my friend does, we were doing some political organizing." Violet said. She seemed a little shy to say it. Brian thought she was probably just trying not to grandstand.

"Oh, that's cool! I've been trying to get into more of that kind of stuff since I moved here."

"Really? What kind of activism are you into?" Violet asked.

"Well, back in Boston I was in a student organization that was focused on health care reform."

"No way!" Violet said excitedly, "That's what I'm into!"

Brian was exaggerating a little--he went to a couple of meetings and fell off. He never took part in any of the student protests or fundraising drives. But when he saw Violet light up like she did, he thought that a little exaggeration on a first date wasn’t the worst thing in the world.

"Oh that's cool, yeah I just think it's awful that we don't at least have single payer healthcare, while those insurance companies make billions," Brian said. He didn’t know exactly what single payer healthcare was, but seeing Violet’s eyes light up let him know he was on the right track.

"Exactly," she said. "I mean, the CEOs of insurance companies are no different from murderers."

"I agree," Brian said. "Mass murderers."

"Mass murderers, right," Violet replied, leaning forward. They spoke of the injustices of the American for-profit healthcare system for about half an hour. Brian was out of his depth for most of it, but Violet's passion guided him through the conversation. He always tried to avoid talking about politics on dates, but this might have been the exception to the rule because he’d never had a date go better. At one point, while Violet was talking about the price of HIV medication being increased, she met his eyes and said, "can you imagine how hard that must be for those patients" while touching the top of his hand. He nodded and agreed, but the way she looked he would have agreed even if she’d made the point that HIV medication was too cheap--she was magnetic in her resolve.

By the time she excused herself to the bathroom, Brian had to exhale to release the tension that had built up in him. He really liked her, and he felt like she liked him. Finally something was working out in his dating life. He looked back out at the bar and had a new perspective on the dates happening around him. Maybe those two women loved each other so much they didn't care who bought drinks. Maybe the lurching guy was saying something the small woman was interested in. Maybe the old man who was on the date with the extremely young woman...well that one continued to seem a little weird, but still. He suddenly realized that the young woman next to him was showing the old man something on her phone. “Look, someone got shot outside Dodger Stadium,” the young woman said, turning the phone to the man, who shook his head in disappointment. Brian considered how close he was to Dodgers stadium, but his train of thought was interrupted by a loud, shrill beeping noise. It sounded like an Amber Alert, but when Bryan turned he saw that it was an emergency broadcast on the television. The screen had gone black with white writing on it that read, "Suspect of terrorist attack at large in Echo Park. Be on the lookout for--"

"Hey!" Violet said. Brian turned abruptly to see her standing in front of the table.

"Hey? What's up?" Brian stammered. She did not take her seat, and her eyes scanned the patio. The game was back on but the crowd shifted nervously now, looking from side to side and talking to one another.

"Do you want to get another drink?" Brian asked.

“Attention everyone!” The music stopped as the bartender suddenly shouted, “Were closing early, Police have declared a state of emergency. Sorry for the inconvenience, settle up your tabs and please file out the front.

There was a commotion throughout the bar, people who were watching the game booed, but all the same they shuffled up to the bar and paid their tabs. Brian was deflated, but it was typical. He felt nothing ever worked out for him when it came to dating, and now, just as a genuinely beautiful woman was starting to take an interest in him, there was a state of emergency. Brian reached for his wallet and put thirty dollars on the table.

“Well, that was a quick date. Wanna call it?”

"No, I want to go somewhere else. Back to my place?" She said, smiling, “did you orchestrate this terrorist attack to try and rush the date along?”

Brian swallowed hard. He didn't know why they were evacuating, Bar Bandidi was an unlikely target for anything except a pop up spoken poetry night, but the thought of taking Violet back to her place excited him so much he could start doing cartwheels.

"Want me to drive?" Brian asked.

"Yes, yes I do, let's go."

Brian fumbled to put his wallet back in his pocket as Violet grabbed her purse, turned, and made her way to the front door. When they were outside she asked, "where's your car?"

"Uh, it's pretty far down Sunset that way." Brian pointed west. Violet nodded and grabbed his hand, leading him towards his car. Brian mulled the date over in his head, pleased that he had charmed Violet to the degree that she felt safe with him driving her home. He guessed he did a better job than he thought convincing her that he was knowledgeable on the subject of healthcare. He assumed she must be some sort of sapiosexual. She marched with stalwart determination as they passed the various coffee shops and thrift stores on the strip, then she stopped suddenly and turned around to look at Brian. She grabbed him by the waist like an aggressive middle school dance partner and pulled him towards her as she backed up into the window of Stories Bookstore. Then she started to kiss him with a desperate passion that short-circuited Brian's brain. Chemicals reacted in his body like fireworks, and he did his best to kiss her back, so focused on the action he didn't notice the several passing squad cars as they ripped by in the direction of Bar Bandini. She broke the kiss.

“Sorry, I’m just really scared right now, being scared kind of excites me.” She said, then she grabbed his arm, and dragged him once more west down Sunset Boulevard. The taste of her lingered on his lips and mouth, and almost in a daze, he said, "That was really nice."

"Oh, yeah, it was great." Violet replied in a far off tone like she wasn't really listening. Brian unlocked his car with his key fob and Violet slipped through the passenger side door before Brian could even make it into the driver's seat. When he closed his door, he noticed Violet was sitting low in the seat.

"What are you doing that for?" Brian asked.

“Sorry, the police just make me so nervous.”

“Ya, I hate the cops.” Brian said, trying to fill his voice with conviction.

“Me too,” Violet said, looking over at Brian “they arrested my friend at a protest last week and because it was a Friday they held her for 3 days with no charges.”

“Fucking pigs.” Brian muttered. Violet smiled, and put her hand on his thigh. In reality, Brian was on the fence about police officers. He thought it was bad when they shot unarmed people, but he liked that he could call them if he got scared, and he thought a lot of them wore cool sunglasses. But, he had learned that when you’re on a date with a woman who has tattoos in LA, and you say something like “fucking pigs” it goes a long way.

He took out his phone, and typed “LA terrorist” into the search engine to get more information. Violet was on her phone too, and didn't look up until Brian spoke.

“Wow!” Brian said, scrolling through the headlines of several articles. “It was the CEO of Blue Cross!”

“Wow really?” Violet said, putting down her phone.

“Ya, it's funny, we were just talking about that.” Brian said, as he pulled out of his spot and drove down Sunset. Violet was quiet for a moment, she took her hand off his thigh, and looked pensive, like she was trying hard to put her words in the right order.

"What do you think about it?" Violet asked. They were stopped at the first of many red lights on the way from Echo Park to Hollywood.

"The shooting? What do you think about it?" Brian asked. So far he had done well on the date adjusting his opinions to suit hers.

"You first,” Violet said.

Brian hadn't thought about the subject of assassination in depth. If asked about it in other circumstances, he'd likely brush it away by saying something along the lines of, “well, killing is always bad,” but considering the circumstances, he felt like that might not be the right answer.

"Well, I think healthcare CEOs are responsible for a lot of deaths."

"Yes," Violet said quickly.

Brian knew he was on the right track and continued. "And maybe it will scare other healthcare CEOs, and they'll stop denying so many treatments for people."

"Yes exactly--that's exactly how I feel," Violet said. Brian kept looking forward, but a small grin had sprung up on his face. The grin was only temporary, however. As they stopped at another red light, Violet opened her purse. When Brian looked over, she had a handgun sitting on her lap. "Help me get rid of this," Violet said.

It was good they were parked. If they were moving, he almost certainly would have crashed the car. He shrieked and covered his head with both hands. Violet put her hand on his shoulder.

"Dont worry, I wouldn't hurt you--we’re in this together."

"What?!" Brian yelled, still cowering. He heard something shift in Violet's lap.

"Brian," she said gently. Brian looked up, and the car in front of him had moved. Just then, the car behind him honked. He looked over at Violet and saw she now had the gun in her hand.

"Lets get out of here." Brian gulped hard for the second time that night, but he took his foot off the brake and his car started rolling down Sunset. He felt his heart banging in his chest, sending blood to every corner of his body in preparation for some great exertion, but he sat perfectly still, moving only his arms and right foot to perform the motions of driving. The only time Brian broke the law beyond minor traffic offenses was when he and a couple of his friends snuck into their college's gymnasium while it was still under construction. The basketball court was already completed, and they shot the ball around in almost total darkness. Afterwards, Brian felt such a thrill he couldn't sleep. The fear and endorphins merged in his brain, and gave him a sensation that was better drinking while taking counterfeit adderall, which he also did a lot of at the time. Now, with his hand gripping the steering wheel, and Violet's hand again on his thigh, he wondered if he would ever sleep again.

He had often wondered how he would fare in a life or death situation. Would he run, would he fight, would he urinate, would he do a combination of all three. Now he was sitting there, with a loaded gun in the hand of his passenger, and he was shocked at how his body moved regardless of the alarm bells going off within. He drove, he slowed down in traffic, he used his turn signal. Everything was working just fine, even with possible death sitting right beside him.

“I planned it for months.” she said, taking a peak out the window. “I thought something would go wrong, but it all went so smoothly, like it was meant to happen.”

Brian took a deep breath. “Was I part of your plan?”, he asked, as neutrally as possible.

“Sort of, I just needed an alibi, but when we started talking, and I realized you were with the cause, I started seeing you as something more.”

Brian wondered if she meant she saw him as an accomplice or a romantic partner. He shuddered at his own mind. Maybe it was a panic response, but as she told him to turn left on La Cienega, and then told him to stop in front of her nondescript apartment building, he couldn't help but wonder, am I still gonna get laid?

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A story about the sadness and humor of divorce. Please share if you like it!

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This is a short fictional story set in the future, a little different then what I usually write but I really liked it. If you liked it consider joining the paid tier to get access to more writing and to help me.

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Here is the audio version of my last story, Thank you so much for being a paid subscriber.

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