Matador Records | Mecca Normal I Can Hear Fine

Joelle is listening to a phone-in radio show. The host of the show says the switchboard is jammed.

"I'm thirty-five, my name is Helen, actually that is my middle name. I want a guy who is sensitive, honest, likes the outdoors, movies, going for walks. I was married once, ten years ago. I haven't met anyone, you know, really met anyone since. I guess I just want a guy to call my own. Maybe we'll have kids one day."

"OK, that was Helen," says the host. "She wants a guy who likes the outdoors, she's a lonely gal who hasn't met anyone for ten years. OK, here's our next caller. Hi, go ahead."

Joelle is twenty and the ball is coming right at her. The guy from third base is running towards her yelling, "I'll get it, I'll get it."

The example is walking towards Joelle. He is talking about health. Complaints. He is talking about his wife. Divorce. He is talking about money. Taxes. He is talking about his plans. Grandiose.

Joelle is dancing with the example, she stops to listen to how much his legs hurt. He is spitting in her eyes. He should be quiet for ten years.

It is dark out. Joelle walks across the parking lot and meows at a small white bag of garbage. She opens the door to her apartment. From the living room she hears, "I feel like balling."

He has been sitting on her couch for two days wrapped in a yellow sheet. He has great hair.

"Bowling?" Joelle goes into the bathroom. Her whizzing pee sounds exactly like the Flight of the Bumblebee. She pulls up her pants, leans across the sink towards the mirror and spreads lip gloss over her mouth, turning her lips into slices of roast beef. They shimmer that same blue-green as the roast beef at a deli, like oil on wet pavement.

Joelle goes into the bedroom to find dry socks. One foot is wet. She tried on a cowboy boot at Value Village. It was soaking wet inside. Joelle goes back to the bathroom, draws black lines around her eyes and puts on her brown leather jacket.

Downtown, in a club, faces as smooth and dry as sand dunes float past her. Joelle listens, she wants to know what people are talking about. They are motioning above their heads; bursting, twisting, smoothing motions. They are talking about hairdos.

-- excerpt from I Can Hear Me Fine by Jean Smith. ISBN 0-9697112-0-4. The book can be ordered from K Records (360-786-1595) or through better bookstores everywhere.