NIGHT OF THE SCREAMING LESBIANS (Re-post)

A few years ago I decided to take a road trip and rent my cottage for a month. I posted an ad on Craig’s List as a, “romantic getaway for artist or honeymoon couple.” I received a response from a woman in Boston and she wanted it for two weeks. We spoke on the phone and she told me that she needed to ask me some questions. “I’m coming up with my partner – and she’s a woman. Is that a problem?” “Boy, did you get the right number!” I chirped. “I’m sorry you even had to ask.” On to the next question. “We’re going to be having guests on the weekend, is that okay?” “Sure, you can have guests,” I assured her. Then she confides, “I should tell you about the guests.” Uh-oh. A long-distance pause. “I’m a therapist and I’m going to be holding a weekend clinic at your place.” I tell her, “It’s only supposed to be used for vacation purposes, not business.” That’s what came out my mouth. But in my head and bank account I couldn’t afford to lose a two-week rental. “So what is it you’re going to be doing?” I queried. She replied, “I’m having ten women come up from Toronto and we’re going to be doing Release Therapy.” Now it was my turn to pause. “Release Therapy. That’s screaming, isn’t it?” She concurred. I pressed on, “You’re going to have ten lesbians screaming in the woods? Do you know how quiet it is here? I can hear the Clarksons doing their dishes across the lake.” She explained, “It’s only ten women for ten minutes each.” I exhaled. “Oh. Well, I happen to have a guest cabin conveniently called, the Bates Motel. If they’re going to scream they should do it in the Bates.” She agreed. And I agreed, as long as I alerted my neighbors that there would be ninety minutes of screaming on the weekend. I should have alerted Vancouver.

I was on my road trip when email reports started trickling in from my wooded neighbors. The women screamed for two days – from 7AM until 7PM – and not in the Bates. They screamed in the woods, at the lake, on the deck. Now these weren’t screams of glee and merriment. They were soul-wrenching screams of pain and anguish, life-curdling wails from the tormented souls of wooded banshees. And it wasn’t just screaming. It was also hours of, “FUCK MY MOTHER! FUCK MY FATHER! FUCK MY LIFE!” Now there happened to be a wedding going on across the lake at the end of a dock. I could only imagine their wedding video, “Do you take this man to be your lawful wedded…FUCK MY MOTHER! FUCK MY PARTNER! FUCK IT ALL!” The wedding party phoned my neighbors and requested that they stop screaming for the duration of the wedding from 3-7PM. The lesbians acquiesced. And then it started again – until the police arrived. Needless to say, they thought women were being murdered in the woods. There was nothing the police could do except ask the women to take their therapy indoors and close the windows and doors – which they did.

Peace and quiet returned to the lake where once again you can hear the plaintive cry of a loon and the Clarksons doing their dishes. Except in the still of the black star-splattered night around a crackling bonfire you can hear the strum of a guitar and the singing of a new campfire song, “Night of the Screaming Lesbians.” Now if they would just keep it down. (Excerpt from, “NUT MAGNET – An Autobiographical Assortment of Fruits and Nuts”)

BUUUUDDDD COLLLYERR!

I’m particularly sensitive to noise.

In fact, I would consider myself a noise phobe and with good reason. Having lived over Manhattan’s only scrap metal yard for fifteen years my daily wake-up call was a giant magnet dropping cars outside the window. In the street, two fork-lifts beeped out of sync for ten hours a day while homeless people were paid to bang metal radiators apart as percussion to trucks dumping tons of aluminum outside the front door. It was like living with the soundtrack of a Road Runner cartoon. Add to this heavy metal cacophony, basic New York sirens, boom-boxes, drilling and car stereos and it’s no wonder my ears would take refuge at my summer cottage on Haliburton Lake in Ontario, Canada.

Water carries sound. I’m not talking about yodeling into a glass of Evian. I’m talking about conversations that can be heard across a wide expanse of water. The lake is five miles long and maybe two miles wide, dotted with pine-crested islands. When the sun slips into its pink negligee for evening, the lake turns the color of borscht dotted with loons rather than potatoes. And except for their plaintive warble all you can hear is blessed silence.

The day after Labor Day, it seemed every door on the lake slammed and summer was over. It was a lonely autumn day. Then, a rare serenity drifted in and I stepped out on to my deck for my morning coffee. It was so quiet I could hear the caffeine coursing through my veins – – and a faint conversation on the lake. I gazed far across the water and saw two dots in the distance. It was two women in two canoes. They were about a mile away on the other side conversing at a normal sound level. I heard one woman from her canoe ask her friend in the other canoe, “You know that game show in the 50’s, Beat The Clock. Who was the host of that show?” It was as if they were sitting next to me. So I yelled across the lake, “Bud Collyer!” A mile away the woman exclaimed, “Bud Collyer! Yes!” A pause of bewilderment, “Where did that come from?” She must have thought it was the Great Indian Game Show god. To this day I don’t think they ever realized it was some guy sipping coffee on his deck with a head full of useless vintage information. That, my friends, is an endangered species named, ‘quiet.”