ghost stories
The first thing I saw when I pulled up to Wayne’s house was Hummer with Trump 2020 bumper sticker. It may surprise you to learn that I, a woman with a shaved head who is riding a bike across the country to try to convince an Ivy League school to give a full scholarship to an African Muslim, disagree with Trump’s politics.
But contrary to popular belief, liberals and conservatives can get along! Thanks to my many years of hitchhiking[1], I’ve developed a strategy for exactly this sort of situation: Be their friend. Friendship starts with common ground, which in our case was alcohol and ghosts.
“Do you believe in ghosts?” I demanded.
He laughed. “Not really.”
“Wait — no or not really?”
“Well…”
“DID YOU SEE A GHOST?”
“… I’m a logical man. I’m analytical. I need the facts.”
“Dude, of course. Everyone knows ghosts aren’t real.” I paused to take a long sip of the anise wine. “Oh my god, did you really make this?”
“I did!”
“This is the most delicious wine in the universe.”
“You think so?”
I nodded. “Where was I?”
“Logically, we know that ghosts aren’t real.”
“Exactly. But there are things in life that we can’t explain.”
“I’ll give you that.”
“So with that being said… dude, my house growing up was totally haunted.”
And then I launched into my favorite ghost story:
Jill and I were young when this happened — as in, not only were our parents still married, we also still had cows[2]. Mom and Dad were off doing barn chores, and we were deep in a game of Crash Test Dummies, which largely consisted of running face-first into the wall. We were gearing up for another round when we heard the unmistakable sound of plates shattering in the kitchen. It sounded like a shelf must have given out. We both looked at each other — we both heard it — and then wordlessly ran to the kitchen.
Not a dish out of place.
“That’s a good one!” said Wayne. His cat Lea, half-blind with a single long snaggle tooth, jumped up in his lap.
“So even though we’re both rational adults and we know they’re totally not real… have you ever seen a ghost?” I asked. “Besides this bottle of anise wine, I mean?”
“Wanna open another?”
“Do I?!”
After perusing the dozens of bottles in his cellar, I decided on the cherry-rhubarb. And then he told me his tale:
He was in the bathroom at work. It was small, just a urinal and a single stall, so he checked under the partition to make sure he wasn’t interrupting someone taking a dump. Coast clear.
“So I whip out Little Wayne—” (this gets a laugh) “and I start doing my thing, and then I hear a grunting noise in the toilet stall like someone’s taking a shit.”
He figured whoever was in there must have had their feet up... but when he glances through the crack in the partition, the stall is empty.
“DID YOU RUN AWAY??”
“No, but I’m just sorta confused, you know? I wasn’t scared, I was just baffled. And then, while I had soap on my hands, I heard clearly the rustling of a newspaper.”
“WHAT.”
“My mind is going through loops, and it’s overwhelming. So I ran out of the bathroom. And I never went in again. Six months later, I found out that a guy had a heart attack on that toilet and died.”
“WHOA!”
We were up past midnight, and the strong coffee and Puerto Rican pancakes he made for breakfast the next day took only the barest edge off my hangover. But I left his house smiling. A headache is a small price to pay for the knowledge that even in these contentious times, ghosts are more powerful than conflicting political beliefs.
And everyone knows ghosts aren’t even real!
[1] It’s the safest way to travel in Malawi, and the easiest way to get to town when you’re hiking the Appalachian Trail, and a perfectly acceptable mode of transportation in wild Alaska.
[2] Our parents split up when I was 9 and Jill was 7. They haven’t spoken in 20 years, and our mom now freely admits she fucking hated farming.