Contributor: David Macpherson

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Disaster Doll the First was late for our interview where she was to discuss the history of roller derby. I was informed that she removed her feeding tubes, left her room and was up on the roof of the nursing home pitching donuts in a wheelchair she stole from the basement storage closet. How she got herself down the four floors to the basement and up to the roof froze the Duty Nurse with dread. “She should not be able to do this. She’s 97 years old.”

She was going to say more but was interrupted by an orderly who said, “Not 97. She told me she’s 108 this April.”

The Duty Nurse glared, “WHy are you correcting me with numbers and not trying to get her back to her bed. 108. She’s not 108. No one at the age of 108 is going to be drag racing a manual wheelchair on the roof.”

“And that’s an acceptable practice in someone 97? Also, ain’t she supposed to be vegetative after that last stroke of hers?” The orderly asked.

The Duty Nurse unstuck enough to point her arm up to the heavens. “You are talking and not going up and stopping her. For the love of God, stop her before she goes back to taking hostages again.”

The orderly ran to the stairwell, say me and my pencil scratching at my notepad and stopped. He said to me, “You need to write that last part down. About the hostages. She always returns them. Mostly. And the folks she takes, they swear its the most fun they’ve had in ages.”

“Go!” the Duty Nurse shouted and he headed out. She finally looked at me and said, “Now why are you here?”

I told her that I was to write about Disaster Doll the First and her century of experience in the roller derby. “It’s a think piece,” I explained.

She shook her head with weary resignation. “She never mentioned anything about roller derby. I don’t know anything about her and that. That’s a crazy sport. Only crazy people would do that and we have genteel ladies and gentleman in this establishment. You must be mistaken.”

It was a great joy then when we both spied out the window at the end of the hallway to see knotted together bedsheets fall down to the ground. Soon after a small emaciated elderly woman with full sleeves of tattoos and wearing a pink dressing gown slid down past the window and was soon gone from sight. Seconds later I heard an engine start and tires squeal. “She stole the ambulance. She always steals the ambulance,” the Duty Nurse said as she slowly reached for the phone and called the police. She gave me one final look to tell me the interview was postponed.

Before I left I went into Disaster Doll the First’s room. I wanted to see how such a legend lived. Her side of the room was neat and generic. The bed was unmade and the tubes on the floor, which was understandable due to her speedy exit. Taped on the wall was only one poster. In block letters, it spoke of the dramatic return of the only true Disaster Doll to the ring. It was ripped and yellowed. “Are you my son?” I heard a voice say.

I turned to see the other resident of the room, a small shriveled woman residing in a hospital bed. He hair was thin and she had no teeth. “Are you Richard? You my son come back to see me?”

I told her that I was a reporter wanting to know about her roommate. “Why you asking about her Richard? She’s a mad one. She never settled down. She never had herself a family. Not like our family. She wasted her time trying to have too much fun. That’s mad. So come and talk to your mother and don’t make me wait one more minute.”

I probably should have sat down and gave her my time. But I only considered deadlines and roller rinks. I had leads I could track down. I told her goodbye and that I still was not Richard.

When I got to the parking lot, I discovered that Disaster Doll the First had not taken off in the ambulance. She had hot wired my car. I sat on the curb, waiting for the police, staring at my notes in the belief that that would return us all to order.


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Author: David Macpherson

Contributor: David Macpherson

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She used to work at a high end dress boutique called Tsunami. Well, high end for a store in a mall. I didn’t know her. This was the only time I ever met her. She was the girlfriend of a guy who was kind of a friend of the circle I hung with. For New Year’s Eve 2004 we all met to drink in 2005 at the Olde Village Pub. It was dark wooded like an Irish Bar, but the only food you could get from the kitchen was burritos.

She was in this short black dress that I guess was stylish. I told her it was nice. She whispered the designer’s name to me as if she was giving me insider info on a stock. She said, “I haven’t worn this thing since the store I worked in closed up, like 5 years ago. Can you believe it still fits so good?” This was not a question you would want to answer with her boyfriend leaning into her. I drank my beer.

She said, “It was a second job, to cover my bills. Part of the deal of working at Tsunami was you had to wear clothes that were sold there. So I had to buy one. My first 4 paychecks went just for this dress. For a month I was working for free. Every day I was there I was in this. I would let it go pretty ripe before I’d dry clean it. It was a pain in the ass. That life at Tsunami, really boring and very stylish. Do you know what the death toll is?” she asked.

I stared at her. “Death toll,” I asked, “Is that a band?”

“No,” she said, “The Death toll in Asia. With the tidal wave. With all the flooding. The one in the news.”

I looked at the group of friends and shrugged. Pete said, “Last I heard it was a hundred thousand but it's too early to say. “ With Regis Philbin on the TV at Times Square, it was the first time in days we hadn’t seen the footage, watched the wreckage.

The girl said, “I haven’t worn this dress since the store closed. I was supposed to look good, make the customers want to look like me. Buy dresses like this. It still looks good.”

After midnight, we hugged and sang the 7 or 8 words we knew of Auld Lang Syne. We decided to go to Jay C’s for some serious drinking. We danced into our coats and hit the cold air. The girl put her hand on the neck of her dress and said, “This thing is so hot and awful.” She pulled down and the fabric ripped halfway down her front. She pushed it off her and was naked. Without another word she ran up the street towards Franklin Ave.

Her boyfriend raced to catch her, taking his coat off as he ran so he could put it around her when he intercepted her. It seemed like a well rehearsed motion, as if he had practice doing it. After a second, the rest of us silently headed towards our next bar. I looked back once towards the broken dress crumpled on the sidewalk and turned again, leaving it behind us like the rest of last year’s bad news.


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Author: David Macpherson

Contributor: David Macpherson

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I tell a bartender I hear tips is an acronym for “to insure professional service.”

The bartender, still taking orders, says, “I heard that too and I think that’s bullshit. It can’t be true, and if it is, it shouldn’t be. It’s saying I need your bar change so I’ll do my job in proper like. It’s the latest Insurance racket. You got car insurance, health insurance and now you have mixed drink insurance, with an annuity rider for cocktails and personal injury in case you get hit by a champagne cork. Really. To insure professional service. I got more pride than that. I do professional service because I am a fucking professional. It’s what I do. I’m not an actor filling time between auditions. I ain’t a novelist working on my steampunk manuscript. I tap kegs. Pour stouts, mix drinks and talk up thirsty mouths and tell bad jokes. I’ll do that if I get a tip or not. You stiff me on a tip and next time you come in, I still will smile and serve and do the whole fucking routine, I might not mean it, but you still get the song and the dance and the beer. That acronym is saying that the only way I’ll do what I am supposed to is if you bribe me. It might be offensive if it mattered. Truth is some will tip, some will not and some will order another. Sometimes I am having the best time with a customer, we’re like old friends and they leave me a quarter and a dime. And then there are others on a limited budget, counting out every penny and still tipping me twenty percent. Who can say.”

He stops. Notices a customer leaving without settling a tab. He probably just forgot, we are sure.The bartender mumbles “Watch me insure professional service” as he leaves the bar area and follows the guy out the door to politely remind him of what is expected in these moments of transaction.


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Author: David Macpherson

Contributor: David Macpherson

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The YMCA swim class had a strict philosophy on how to teach five year olds the ancient art of swimming: laps. Swim laps of the length of the pool back and forth and you will learn to swim. This made little sense to my five year old brain. I will learn to swim by swimming? Was this how they taught fighter pilots? Surgeons? Did you just give them a scalpel and all the patients they could want and wait for brilliance to occur?

We learned kicking and the arm movements, they just didn’t teach floating. Some kids in class, like Mike Anderton, could do those laps like he was a fish. But who cared about that little know it all with the perfect posture and designer swim goggles with the prescription lenses. I wasn’t like him.

When they proclaimed it was time for laps, I went hand over hand on the edge of the pool. When I reached the end, I turned around and moved myself laboriously back. I did this every week for the entire summer. Sometimes my path was hampered by another five year old non-swimmer hand holding down the length. I didn’t learn swimming, but my upper body became inexplicably toned.

My mother dropped me off every week amongst my tears and pleas. She thought I was just being stubborn and that secretly I really loved that swim class.

One time, the swim instructor looked down at me as I scuttled slowly down the pool. She said, “You need to stop doing that. You need to let go and start swimming.” It astonished me that I, at five years of age, had a better understanding of gravity and drowning than my supposed authority figure. Maybe, I thought, I should just let go. Maybe it was better if the water just embraced me.

On the last day of class, the instructor looked down at us chattering cold as we stood in the shallow end. She said, “Its been a long summer. Some of you refuse to swim, like it’s hard. So we teachers have decided to give you some motivation.” She turned to her assistant instructor and nodded.

That’s when they released the pirahna.

They came swirling toward us from the diving area. Mike Anderton, little know it all, said, “Don’t worry fellas, I saw on Wild Kingdom that pirahna don’t eat humans, they just eat dead skin.” The swarm of hungry fish got him first. I guess the fish didn’t see that episode of Wild Kingdom. There was an explosion of red and all that remained on the surface was his prescription swim goggles and the occasional finger bone.

The piranha turned towards me and suddenly I began to swim. The crawl, the butterfly, the breast stroke. I didn’t learn to float, I was literally levitating over the water, like an underage waterlogged messiah. I was going fast enough to make an Olympic trial.

I leapt out of the pool and saw that the rest of my compatriots made it out as well. The swim instructor smiled. “See, you could swim all along. You just needed me to nudge you.” That is when me and the other five year old pushed her into the pool right where the piranha were. As we stood above and watched the water churn and the blood geyser, we shouted at her with mania and triumph, “Stroke! Stroke! Stroke!”


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Author: David Macpherson

Contributor: David Macpherson

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My father was beside himself over the dirt bikes. A bunch of the neighborhood teenagers had dirt bikes and they rode through our subdivision late at night, every night. Because our house was on the corner of Hemlock Lane and Elm Street, they cut through our lawn, tearing up the grass every time.

His first course of action was talking to the dirt biker’s parents. Did he really think that was going to help? It seemed that the ruts in the lawn got deeper.

Next, my father reasoned that he should make the lawn less appealing to the dirt bikers. He bought a large landscaping rock and placed it in the middle of the lawn, the place that the bikes always appeared to go through. In the morning, we woke to see that this large half ton rock was rolled up right next to the house. Like a giant Easter egg roll, they pushed the offending lawn obstruction away from their preferred bike path.

My father had the rock returned to its place and planted pricker bushes all around it. The bikers responded. The bushes were pruned down to the roots and the rock was now just gone, never to be seen again.

It was here that he stopped seeing them as annoying kids with dirt bikes and only as the enemy. He taught my sister and I a new word, proliferation.

From a Korean War buddy, he scored a half dozen or so landmines and as a family activity, we planted them in the lawn. It was similar to our gardening chores, if the geranium bulbs were hollowed out and filled with nitro glycerine.

We were awoken by two shattering explosions and pleas for help. No one was killed, but two of the kids were without dirt bikes and one was missing a pinky finger. That was the last time they tore through our yard.

The only thing, my father was not in ordinance back in Korea; he was a desk jockey. His ability to retrieve unused armaments probably was a tad underdeveloped. My sister discovered this fact as she ran through the yard for the school bus. She heard the distinct click of a landmine being stepped on.

She stopped and and cried for help. She stood there for seven hours. They had to call the bomb squad from Chicago to deal with it. When she was finally taken off the mine, she had no more tears to weep. She was haggard and exhausted.

My father swept her into his arms and bombarded her with apologies. He was so sorry. How can he prove to her he was sorry? What can he get for her so she will forgive him?

My sister looked at him and said, “I want a dirt bike.”


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Author: David Macpherson

Contributor: David Macpherson

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A guy at the bar let the girl go. Tells us she was hot, she was tight, she was worth drawing on a fresh piece of good paper. He tells us she was into him, she smiled and fluttered and hummed desire. When they met for designer hot dogs and Fresca, he gave her up though. “Drool was coming out of her mouth,” he says.

We don’t get what he means. “So was she really hungry,” one of us asks.

“No,” he says. She wasn’t that bright. Dumber than a bagful of poorly chosen metaphors. “I need a smart girl. A girl who can talk and not just talk. She got to have thoughts about politics. And a job that does more than pay the rent. “So after the restaurant I said goodbye and that’s it.”

We married guys see this a minor sacrilege. For we are casual sex rubberneckers. We are tourists in the land of promiscuity. We take pictures, buy postcards, mouth off that its not as good as it used to be, too commercialized. We will not concede he may have done the right thing. “How can you let her go,” we ask.

“She wasn’t for me. She and I had nothing to talk about.”

We look at him. We stare at the words sailing past us. We speak different dialects. We almost comprehend was the other is attempting to confess.


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Author: David Macpherson

Contributor: David Macpherson

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On the edge of the beginning, Moss Child crawled to the pickling fields for something to eat. This land was owned by the creators. The storytellers and cloth-spinners that chose to create this world, this beginning. They would not want her eating what was theirs, but Moss Child was hungry and hunger didn’t stand on polite expectations.

With soft green fingers, she dug out the first jar that gravity and divine edict nestled under the earth. The jar was cast from the hide of old Gods. It was brittle and broke to the touch.

She took out the second jar. It was made from black ink. Inside she found a giant ossified heart. She gnawed at that organ for two days and stopped only when she thought she might tire.

She took out the third jar, made from the caul of infant stars. Inside were people, the we. She put one in her mouth, found it bitter and spit it out. She upended the jar and all the people tumbled out.

To their fleeing forms she shouted blessing, "Be free you bad food. Ruin the taste buds of those who should never have harvested you. Worship them, but never forget to get a decent wage for the adulation. Never be satisfied. When that happens, your flesh will mellow and taste sweet and they will greet you with smile and fork."

Moss Child found the other jars empty and went looking onto the next page for something new to please her.


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Author: David Macpherson

Contributor: David Macpherson

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The knuckles crash my cheek and one of my teeth loosens. Later, I will spit blood. But now I swing from my side and connect with somebody’s ear. My shoulder twinges from the compression of the impact. I hope I didn’t hit one of my own. My bros: Joey, Mac and the other guy. The guy whose name I don’t know. He sits by himself most nights at the end of the bar. But when the swinging starts, he usually swings for us.

Mac clobbers the bearded dude with the frosted beer mug, clubbing him on the top of the head. Joey takes an elbow to the chin. We are all backing up to the fire exit. We’re not surrendering, its just that we can see the bouncer heading our way and its best to take it outside then to be taken.

I aim my foot for the little guy’s knee and I get nothing but air. I can’t do any of that karate shit. I grab the front of his collar and swing him to the side, hitting the broken bowling game. I step outside to the alley and now I’m doubled over from a shot to my gut from some fist.

The assholes run. The only one left is the one we’re all kicking on the ground. The one that stumbled. He moans long and low like a fog warning. We step back and I guess he crawls away. I don’t know the assholes we swung at. I just saw Mac moving hard and jumped in.

The bouncer pours into the fire exit door. “This shit keeps happening and you’ll be out for good. Not just the night.”

“Fuckers started it,” Mac says.

“They always do,” the bouncer says.

“We can’t help it,” the guy whose name I don’t know says. “It’s part of the DNA of every bar goer. It’s a royal tradition. Hell, a king of England died in a bar fight. King Edmund the Magnificent died in a pub fight in 943 in Pucklechurch. This thief Leofa was giving one the King’s bros some shit and wouldn’t leave and they had at it. Leofa knifed Edmund. But at least the King’s men got Leofa too, Evens it out. If it’s good enough for kings, who the hell are we to stop?” He wipes the blood from his lip.

I don’t know what he’s talking about, but I know he’s right. The way I feel now, the pulsing of the blood in my veins, it’s not just my blood, I feel all my bros and all the bros before me, like a line going way down the years.

The bouncer thinks its funny. He almost smiles as he shakes his head and steps back to close the door on us, leaving us heaving for breath in the alley. The click of the door’s lock telling that we’re exiled again.


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Author: David Macpherson

Contributor: David Macpherson

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Two days after my grandmother died, we were in Neptune, New Jersey, where she was spoken about by people standing behind a podium. My father's best friend growing up was there with the wife he was soon to divorce. He spoke of the importance of family, God's ever loving gaze. Things like that.

Afterwards, we grandchildren were deposited on the Ocean Grove boardwalk, while the parents went to handle the paper work that survived the old lady. We talked for a while about college and work and things we did. The wind did not allow such autobiography and we walked down a frigid December gang plank in silence, heading to the Playland we went to when we visited as kids. It was shuttered closed. Not for the season, but for the ages.

We spoke about the funhouse we loved. The tilting room, the hall of mirrors. The pre-recorded shrieks of horror that startled me every time. On the plywood that covered the Playland entrance was spray painted the words Die Big, in large block letters. Fearing omens, we turned round.

On the boardwalk, the Devil his own self stood on a soap box selling whatever was desired, wanted. Anything at all, cheap, only the price of a soul. They didn't even have to be our souls. They could be lingering in our pockets, stuck on our shoes, sent to us in the mail by mistake.

It was too cold to be tempted and we walked on, finding our parents. My Aunt was in tears. She wanted her mother's engagement ring. The nursing home said it was missing. It had not been stolen, goodness no, just missing. These things happen.

They said my grandmother probably was the one to lose it what with the state she was in at the end. My aunt didn't care, she said, “It's not even that nice a ring, I just want it back.” With nothing to give her, we bid our goodbyes.

For the next week, I found myself inspired to do stupid, drunken acts with no knowledge of why I might do such things.


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David lives in Central Massachusetts with his wife Heather and son George.

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Author: David Macpherson