After getting back from my ten year reunion, which doubled as my coming out party—after I decided to bring Sherman, the big black bear I have been boarding with in the forest ever since my car broke down and I was too cheap to fix it—I was pretty wiped out. Unfortunately, the problem with dating a big black bear that lives in the forest is, he is probably going to hibernate in the near future.
“You can sleep with me,” Sherman smiles, as he hands me the chai tea latte he has whipped me up from scratch. He does this every morning. I think he really does love me, which makes the thought of losing him all the harder.
“Thanks Martha,” I smile. I am beginning to suspect that he knows me better than I know myself. “I wish I could just snuggle into you and camp out for the winter. Unfortunately, I like to think of myself as an award-winning journalist. I really should be working.”
“I like to think of myself as She-Rah, Princess of Power, but it doesn’t make it true,” Sherman replies. “Besides, I don’t think employee-of-the-month at Staples would qualify you for that title.”
To be fair, my journalistic career has been in a bit of a slump lately, and by that I mean I haven’t been published in over a year. Even that was writing for a trashy tabloid magazine…on the internet.
“That might be true. And I mean might. But, someone still needs to feed Ms. Richard Hatch while you are in your multiple-REM-season,” is the best that I can come up with. Ms. Richard Hatch is our female cat. She was named after the first winner of the legitimate award winning show, Survivor, because, like her name-sake, she likes to bitch at people from trees and refuses to wear clothing. “But, you are right. I am kind of a failure.”
Sherman looks at me quizzically. We usually rip on each other. It is one of the things that make me think this might actually be a stable relationship with legs. But, there is something about losing him for four months that makes me sad and vulnerable. He is obviously confused that I am taking it personally. He comes over to me, picks me up and sits me on his lap—nose-to-nose.
“You listen here…” he starts into me with more authority than he usually boasts. Maybe this is She-Rah talking.
“Oh, Sherman, your breath!” I moan. He ignores this.
“You are not a failure. Sure, so you didn’t quite make it through law school and you don’t exactly have a job at the moment, but big deal.”
“Big deal?”
“Yes. Big. Fucking. Deal,” Sherman continues. He is so hot when he gets riled up and protective of me. Like when his sister lumbers into our cave and tries to eat me. She is a real-time cougar. “The only thing worth finding on this planet is love. If you are happy and healthy and can bring those things to another human being, then you are a success story. One of the few true winners.”
“Like Charlie Sheen?” I tease.
“No,” Sherman says, hugging me. “It makes you a real winner.”
“Oh, so more like Lisa Lampanelli.”
“Who?”
“Never mind.” But seriously, Sherman should know who Lisa Lampanelli is. I’ll have to put it on his play list for hibernation season.
“Anyway,” Sherman continues, trying to pull the moment back to something real. “You make me happier than anyone ever has.” I find this statement to be suspect. Sherman is obviously a catch and I am sure he has had hordes of traulups trolling through this pimped-out cave.
“You probably say that to all the blokes who come through here,” I chuckle. I don’t do well with commitment.
“I love you and hope you never leave me.”
“So, what does that mean?” I ask. “Do you want me to deactivate my account on Match.com?”
Sherman just stares at me.
“I’ll take that as a yes, then,” I say, pulling out my BlackBerry. Not like I ever used it anyway. For all the pretty people they have on those piece-of-shit commercials promising true love, the only match I ever had on there was a 58 year old lesbian who asked how I felt about leather—I am all for it, but not on either of us. “Okay, it’s done.”
“I want more than a deleted account on Match.com,” laments She-Rah. “I want the fairy tale.”
“You’re right, this is the fairy tale Julia Roberts,” I groan. “Man meets bear. Man falls in love with bear. Bear leaves man to sleep for four months. I am shocked that Paramount hasn’t optioned it yet.”
“This is my fairy tale,” smiles Sherman. “You are obnoxious and annoying and I am completely in love with you for some reason.
“Do you have the plague?”
“No, I checked,” he laughs. “I think this is for real-z. I mean, I have met your friends and everyone from your hometown. You’ve met my sister.”
“She tried to eat me!” I scream.
“Yeah, but I saved you,” he says, oh-so-sweetly. Maybe this is the Pretty Woman script coming to life. “All that’s left is for us to meet each other’s parents.”
He is serious if he wants to meet my parents. They aren’t exactly the dream that I am. “If you want to meet a couple of back-home lesbians I am not going to stop you, but it’s not going to be a party.”
I imagine Sherman’s parents are both brilliant, enchanting beacons of encouragement. Look what they got to work with as a minion. That’s right, if he sleeps with me, he’s got a little minion in him. But, he probably never gave them any trouble. Sherman’s parents never had to deal with his parole officer—who is invited to more family functions than I am I might add. And Sherman’s parents never had to deal with their son telling them he’s a vegetarian that doesn’t believe in their god. No, Sherman’s parents had it easy and they are probably perfect.
“My parents are in jail, so we’ll have to go up on a weekend,” he sighs.
“No wonder your sister is such a mess,” I say, before kissing him. Secretly I love that his family is fucked-up too though. It’s sad, but it’s true. I also love that his sister thinks she is a Power Ranger. I mean, how 1990s. Now, that’s sad.
As I begin to think about the ramifications of meeting Sherman’s parents more, I wonder about their thoughts on god. I also realize I don’t really know Sherman’s. He did compare himself to She-Rah, so it’s probably not a man, but I should really know this about the man who I am going to go to jail for—even if it is just to visit his parents, who, as it turns out, are serving time for not paying taxes on their honey. Not cool. Not cool at all.
“What do you think about God?” I blurt out.
Sherman thinks for a minute. “I think God is probably four people, really. They would have to be famous—God doesn’t seem to like anonymity.”
“Yeah, the whole love no one else before me rule is kind of a give-away. I mean, seriously, open the freezer and chill the fuck out dude. No one likes a god-complex.” Sherman just raises an eyebrow to this.
“So, we’ll go with Oprah, Brad Pitt, Will Smith and Mon’ique,” he continues. “But, mostly Mon’ique. I wouldn’t have thought actors either, but if all the world’s a stage, then being an actor would be a clever disguise.”
“God would be smart…but not too smart,” I conceded. “She did invent Republicans and slavery, so she is definitely not a genius.”
“I think Martha Stewart could be the devil. She’d make a good one,” Sherman says. “Like in Paradise Lost, she is sympathetic even though she is villainous. Kind of a happy-go-lucky Lucifer.” Ironically, our cat, Richard Hatch, chooses this moment to claw her way up the side of the bed and hop onto Sherman’s belly. She then gives a war-like cry. “I believe it is feeding time,” Sherman chuckles as he rolls out of bed and fetches her a ripe apple.
She might not be subtle, but Richard Hatch is pretty crafty. She always has been. I wasn’t really looking to pick up a cat to trapes around the forest with me but when I saw her I simply couldn’t resist. I was driving up the highway when she darted out into the street with three staff members from the local pet shelter chasing after her with a butterfly net and a can of tuna.
She was obviously trying to commit suicide I thought, but her belly disproportionately dragged on the ground and I cannot live without that sight in my life. So, I skidded Elvira (my dilapidated Hyundai) to a halt, opened my passage door and watched Ms. Richard Hatch leap into my life.
“Kind of sounds like the rabid bunny from the Holy Grails movies,” Sherman had laughed the first time I told him the story.
“I kind of think they stole that from us,” I said, staring down at my little doppelganger. It was only after calling the shelter to get Richard’s inoculation records that I realized she had opened her own cage before hopping down, scurrying to the front door and convincing a renegade huskie to help her escape to freedom.
“Do you think Richard Hatch might be one of the gods?” I ask Sherman, hopefully. I know Sherman doesn’t know these things any more than I do, but there is something reassuring in his statements. It might not be that the things are right or proof of anything more than that his support comes from love. Maybe that’s the only real truth we can ever touch—that the people we need love us so unconditionally that they are willing to protect us. That they are willing to move mountains to make this world an okay place to be.
“Well, of course Ms. Richard Hatch is one of the faces of god,” smiles Sherman in that sweetness that I far-to-often confuse with innocence. “She brought us together.”
“How so?”
“You stopped to pick her up on the side of the road.”
“Yes, but not here.”
“No,” affirms Sherman, “but if you hadn’t stopped to rescue Richard from the animal shelter, you would have driven by this forest long before your car broke down.”
I wonder what my life would have looked like if I had made it to the next forest before me and Richard had gotten stuck. Would there have been a lovely animal to help take care of us there too? Or, would something have eaten us whole? Maybe I would have gotten bored meandering through the wilderness or my IPOD would have died and I would have gone back to law school. “You just never know.”
“Roar…” Richard trails off, leaping from Sherman to me.
“Okay, okay,” I laugh, as Richard licks my face with her old-lady-cat tongue. “You knew all along. I get it! Maybe you are one of the faces of god…or the face of Mumra.”
The truth is, I’ve been lucky enough to see several faces of god in this lifetime. One of them probably is Ms. Richard Hatch. That wouldn’t be so bad. But, another one is definitely Sherman. I mean, if you are really set on praying to anyone, why wouldn’t it be the one person who protects you when you are at your lowest? How could it be anyone other than the one who believes in you when the rest of the world has given up? The one whose gentle presence and grizzly voice put your heart into a flutter and your mind at peace simultaneously.
“I don’t think it’s Mon’ique after all,” I say, curling up into Sherman’s lap. It’s so fucking cozy.
“Elvira, Mistress of the Dark?” Sherman asks.
“Nah,” I smile, rubbing his hairy belly. “Too much of a fame-whore.”
“Obama?”
“Nope.” But, of course, he’ll never get it. He’ll never know it’s him. The one I don’t pray to out of fear or come back to out of pity. The one whose life redefines my own every day. The one I feel so comfortable with I can fart in front of. Now, that is love.
“It’s you, my big black bear.” And that is when I let one rip.
“That’s so gross,” screams Sherman.
You know what? It is. But, I know he won’t love me any less for the reality behind the glossy illusion I never bothered to put up for him. That is more than love. That is the fourth face of god and it’s why I’ll probably introduce Sherman to my lesbian mothers next weekend.
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