More about Peggy

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I suppose, like me, being a reasonably sensitive person, you were appalled by Peggy’s heartless response to the gigantic and extremely dangerous insect that landed on my chest when I was sleeping like some sort of nightmarish apparition, threatening the very fundaments of my mental and physical health. Peggy’s family, in the not so distant past, were Germans. The came from Pomerania and settled in Oklahoma, where they opened a small chemists- Bienenzüchter’s- which later translated, not entirely accurately, in a patriotic - or perhaps cowardly, given local pressures? - gesture into “Feelgood’s Drugstore” during the First World War and which still stands, serving ices, coffee, preserved food, and remedies on the corner of 8th and Main Streets, Choctaw, OK. After the World War Two, the cheapness of motor cars facilitating, Peggy’s parents' moved from the cramped flat above the shop to a suburb, where she grew up with two sisters and no obvious misfortunes. They attended the local Lutheran church with clockwork regularly (happily insensate to its teachings), and tried to earn as much money as possible while simultaneously spending as little. The children attended the local high school and graduated with neither honours nor shame. They were not especially respected or liked, nor disliked either- they were quite the sort of people essential to sustain any normal, working community. Perhaps seeing the lines of moaning, malingering Choctawans bleating for cold remedies or listening to them griping about minor complaints, affected young Peggy as she helped in the family shop at weekends, without respite, year after year, all the while her school friends were skipping or constructing elaborate picnics for their dollies, or later experimentally necking with other pustulous adolescents under the bushes of the nearby park? Did the endless work of stocking shelves, breaking down boxes, mopping spillages and running little local errands, while painfully mindful of her schoolchums’ frivolities, make her bitter; unusually indifferent to the distress of others? Did the business at the pharmacy counter teach her to regard human suffering as nothing more than a potential source for commercial gain? I cannot say. And I detected no callous traits in her parents when I met them- indeed, they seemed rather conscientious people: sympathetic, if a little earnest. * I sit here, writing this now on the computer this cool evening. Peggy is over at the drinks trolley (again!): more whisky than ice, that’s for sure. This is a follow up to The Giant Bee, posted here on October 30 last year: http://tadeuszderegowski.blogspot.com/2009/10/giant-bee.html

The Giant Bee

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The Giant Bee

The beast was about 3 inches long, I could see its yellow-black stripeyness fuzzily tickling my chest.

Yes, I awoke to find a giant bee crawling on my chest.

I’d fallen asleep on the sofa, listening to music. 9.pm now. I lay there trembling, feeling the beast`s legs move across my chest.

Peggy was there. She was sarcastic, I shouted “Peggy, there’s a giant bee on my chest.”

No response.

“Peggy,” I shouted again, there’s a giant bee crawling on my chest.

Peggy laughed, "well I’m sure its not even half your size" She was referring, I think, cruelly, to some slight weight gain that I have sustained in the last few months.

When we first met I was turned on by Peggy’s sarcasm and unkindness, especially when we spoke about my career as a portrait painter. We were at a party to celebrate the opening night of an poorly written and performed play, and she had said with a smirk, "I’m sure you’re going to be a great success, the next Michaelangelo," and laughed. This was an especially ignorant joke given that Michelangelo never painted a single portrait, but it nevertheless succeeded in being annoying and flirtatious: we made love that night, and I forgave her, as I was to do many times thereafter.

“Peggy, you bastard,” I shouted, ‘It’s a giant fucking bee, get the fucker off me!”

And she laughed again, “Haha, you big baby”. So it was with tremendous courage and force of will that I had to shake the thing off myself, it fell heavily to the floor, I leapt up, got a kitchen knife, and in one swoop cleaved  the monster’s thorax from its abdomen.

I knelt down to in inspect the beast- it was huge; oddly some limbs kept moving after detachment- most alarming. I’ll probably have nightmares about that for some years to come, detached bee parts visiting me in my sleep.

Peggy came in then, as I was kneeling there, “you turned Muslim or something, honey. Think Allah will save you from the killer bees?”. “Oh ha ha, Peggy, more wit.” But she was drinking coffee and munching toast and totally nonchalant, perusing the TV programme, not seeming to care in the least what I thought.

Myself, I got the knife and lifted the two sections of giant bee onto an atlas which was leaning against the sofa, and which I’d been looking just before I dozed off (looking at Finnish lakes, to be precise) and I went up to Peggy. and said, “Here. Huge..”

“Eah,” she said, not bad, “They are showing "The Lord of the Flies” tonight, the original.”

Well, that is my Peggy. All sarcasm and unhelpfulness. She is originally from Oklahoma.

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