Orphans
Here you will find answers we have already purchased; we call these answers orphans because we hope to eventually find artwork to illustrate them. We update this page weekly, and remove answers as we find corresponding art. To read the questions and learn more about the project, please see our submission guidelines.
Answers posted Monday, May 12, 2008:
Answer 185:
Q: What door do you wish you never opened?
A: My divorce attorney, who was married, took me out for coffee. Suddenly, I felt a hand on my upper leg. It was no mistake; he was under my skirt. His hand was so warm. My husband hadn’t touched me for years.
Details for artist: The incident took place in Bakersfield, California, at a small café near Truxtun Avenue downtown. The place mostly served the lunch crowd, but was a bit out of the way so it was usually not crowded. There was a lot of artwork on the walls. I have long, red hair and green eyes, and I weighed 105 pounds. The table was small and round and for two people. I remember exactly what I wore – a white cotton peasant blouse with a muted, printed skirt. The attorney had dark hair, dark eyes and strong features with some scars on his face from acne when he was a teenager.
Answer 184:
Q: What is the worst betrayal you have ever experienced?
A: Saturday afternoon. He leans against the log and unzips his black trousers, smiling. “This is our special secret.” He cups the back of my head and pushes it down, smiling.
Sunday morning. He places the Eucharist on my tongue, smiling: “The body of Christ.”
Details for artist: I was a 10-year-old girl in Washington state in 1982. First incident took place at secluded park; second in Catholic church during mass.
Answer 183:
Q: What is the most gracious act of kindness you have witnessed?
A: Nineteen years old. On the El. Drunk, depressed, inconsolable. Yes, me: sobbing. Over love; over everything. She took my hand, this stranger. Pulled me up, away. A diner. Cheesecake. Her story: Fleeing Iran, fleeing abuse. A refugee. Rebuilding a life. “It can be done,” she said. “It can be done.”
Details for artist: Spring, 1992, on a not-very-crowded El car in Chicago, heading towards Evanston. We sat diagonally across from each other on bench seats. I am Caucasian, small, with long dark hair, probably was wearing a flowered tank-top and cut-off shorts; she was Muslim, late 40s, conservative yet professional-looking, in dark blue business attire.
Answer 182:
Q: If you could relive a single day or moment, what would it be?
A: Do you remember when you took me to that wild orchard behind the Shell gas station, made love to me, and then rained apple petals on me? In my whole I’ve never felt more beautiful. Thank you.
Details for artist: May 2002, Łódź. Apple orchard in May; it was very green. From afar the Shell gas station logo was visible. I was sitting there with my boyfriend, we were having a kind of picnic there. I was 18, he was 19.
Answer 181:
Q: What is the worst betrayal you have ever experienced?
A: It was to have been a holiday, that weekend at the beach with Juan. But a storm blew in and the tide rose like a waterfall in reverse. I was no match for the waves. “Sweem, mamacita, sweem!” Juan cried from high ground. Weeping, he raced along the shore, tore his shirt, his hair, fell to his knees … and never wet the tips of his shoes.
Details for artist: This took place in the 1970s at Playa Blanca, a tropical Mexican paradise development had yet to touch. Juan was a well-muscled young man with a Zapata mustache. The incident very nearly cost me my life.
Answers posted Monday, May 5, 2008:
Answer 178:
Q: What is your most obsessive thought?
A: I am terrified that I will perpetuate the cycle of sexual abuse in my family. I fear every diaper or bath. My therapist told me fear should be a comfort. The real comfort is if I ever felt that compulsion, I would end my life rather than risk giving in.
Details for artist: I’m a 30-something father of a toddler daughter and infant son. My childhood was rough. My wife and children are my life. Not a day goes by that I don’t renew my resolve to be the kind, caring, loving father my dad wasn’t able to be.
Answer 177:
Q: Under what circumstances have you been closest to death?
A: “You will never take them from me.”
The barrel of the .40 caliber Smith and Wesson is against my lips.
I say, “Please don’t do this; they need their mother.”
He uses the gun to punch me in the face.
My nose feels broken. I count my teeth.
He says, “Then I will just cripple you,” pushing the gun into my stomach.
With my hand on his chest I say, “I lay protected in your arms for 6 years,
how could you watch me bleed?”
He walks away.
My daughters still ask how I got that scar under my nose.
Details for artist: January 2004, in an alley. I was in a white 2002 Silverado. He blocked my exit by parking his Blue Tahoe behind me and walked up to my window and ripped the keys from the ignition and threw them down the alley. I was 23 years old. I have long, dark hair.
Answer 176:
Q: What is the most bizarre thing you have seen or done?
A: A weathered-looking woman walks in and asks, “Do you have Jesus candles?” The shopkeeper answers in broken English, reciting available Gods and deities. “Just Jesus, has to be Jesus.” She finds what she’s looking for and purchases six. Walking home, I see her smashing the candles on concrete, one by one.
Details for artist: Mission District, San Francisco. Partial clouds, heavy fog. Sometime in 2007, before the poppies.
Answers posted Monday, April 28, 2008:
Answer 175:
Q: What is the most gracious act of kindness you have witnessed?
A: A woman boarded a plane. Seeing an African American gentleman next to her seat, she balked, “I can’t sit next to him.” A stewardess addressed the man: “Sir, please come with me. I have an open seat in first class. I wouldn’t want you sitting next to a bigot.”
Details for artist: Mid-1990s (perhaps 1994) at Dallas Fort Worth airport, on an airplane during boarding, with passengers stowing luggage overhead, taking their seats, etc. I am pretty confident in my memory of the woman being blonde.
Answer 173:
Q (open): Growing up, how did you know you were poor?
A: Around 1986, deep Arkansas Delta. Lots of cotton fields around our small town. Mama never said we were poor as we dug in the ugly orange plaid couch for change. She wanted bread for potted meat sandwiches. A buddy of daddy’s was outside, thanking him for buying a round last night at ‘The Getaway Club.’ I cut my finger on a protruding spring.
Details for artist: This took place when I was a young girl, under 10. Our house was visibly poor but neat, thanks to my mother. We had an old, orange plaid couch with sagging cushions and the old wood trim on the arms. This is where we searched for the loose change. My father always wore a T-shirt with one pocket and some type of baseball cap. The drinking buddy wore a John Deere cap and overalls, nice car - apparently more money than we had.
Answer 172:
Q: What is the most gracious act of kindness you have witnessed?
A: Poorer than dirt for a while. Mostly health problems. Kind of shabby sometimes. Shop at the Safeway where the VFW occasionally collects contributions. One day, the vet offered me the money in the collection box. Said, “For once, let me be the one who has something to give.” I understood.
Details for artist: I am a woman. The vet was sitting at a small card table with a locked box with a slot on the top and at least on small American flag on the table. He was African American, probably around 65 to 70, thin, and very neatly dressed.
Answer 171:
Q: What is the most meaningful “I love you” spoken by you or to you?
A: There is nothing like throwing up every 15 minutes for the better part of five hours. With every retch, part of my dignity was hurled into the toilet. “I love you,” my husband whispered, holding my hair. There also is nothing that says “I love you” more than sitting up with your wife as she endures opiate withdrawals.
Details for artist: This story took place Dec. 24, 2006 (I refer to it as my Nightmare Before Xmas) in the bathroom of our apartment in Southern California, and lasted through to the next day. I can only imagine what my neighbors must have thought. Chronic pain issues had let to a physical dependence on opiate painkillers, and as my body was turning on me, my husband’s love and support never wavered.
Answer 170:
Q: What is your greatest talent or accomplishment?
A: One week before the midterm deadline for my graduate thesis, my computer screen went gray. My hard drive had crashed; none of my files were retrievable. Instead of screaming, drinking rat poison, or crying into a bottle of vodka, I rewrote my thesis. I met the deadline.
Details for artist: Tampa, Florida: the living room of my sparse one bedroom apartment. It was a Saturday, a week before the midterm deadline; I think early November. I was taking three graduate classes plus thesis hours, and teaching two sections of Freshman English, none of which could be put on hold while I rewrote. In addition to coursework and teaching, I typed about 45 pages of manuscript in one week and met the midterm deadline. Unfortunately, retyping cut into valuable editing time for my committee, so the thesis wasn’t approved that semester, but I am still proud to have finished the first draft in only a week.
Answers posted Monday, April 21, 2008:
Answer 165:
Q: What is the most gracious act of kindness you have witnessed?
A: My father’s former mistress enters his room at Hospice House, not knowing my mother and I are with him. I expect my mother to freak out in a rage. Instead, Mom walks over to The Other Woman and embraces her in a prolonged hug. Dad watches and weeps.
Details for artist: I am a woman. This took place at the Hospice House Concord, New Hampshire, in November 2000.
Answer 164:
Q: What is the most painful moment you have experienced?
A: I did everything to help my daughter prepare for the SAT. We argued the night before because she stayed out late. Sarcastically, regretfully, I advised her to forgo the test and fill out a Walmart application. She ran away the morning of the test.
Details for artist: April 2003, late evening. The next morning she was gone from our home in Columbia, Maryland.
Answer 163:
Q: What is the most painful moment you have experienced?
A: My uncle stumbled into the apartment. My 8-year-old cousin told him to lie down, drink water, and eat some bread to curb the inevitable hangover. She is used to caring for drunk parents. Why did she have to lose her innocence so early?
Details for artist: This took place in my aunt and uncle’s house in 1998 or so.
Answer 161:
Q: What is the worst betrayal you have ever experienced?
A: June of 1991, Beaufort, South Carolina. After sharing many sexual intimacies with several of my fellow Marines, I was picked up, arrested, and ultimately booted out of the Marines with an “Other Than Honorable” discharge. One of my screw-buddies had freaked out and confided in our deck sergeant, who in turn called the MPs. That almost destroyed me. I’ll never forgive that guy, or the Marine Corps, for judging me to be less than the man I know I am.
Details for artist: I met the guy two weeks after we first left each other messages in a store men’s room. The first time we met we were both so nervous we could only sit there and talk briefly. I threw up that night because I was so nervous. Several months later, we were rounded up by military police at the very same place we first met. The next day I remember overhearing the officer who would plea my case in military court as he talked to someone on the phone. “It’s no problem. Just some ‘faggot.’ We’ll do him fast, and then we can tee off on time.”
Answers posted Monday, April 14, 2008:
Answer 159:
Q: What is your greatest accomplishment?
A: I haven’t had a drink in 72 hours. A lot can happen in 72 hours. Cities are built and destroyed. World records are broken. Lives begin and end. Millions of babies are born, thrust into living, their faces all red and scrunched, arms and legs reaching out for something, for anything.
Details for artist: I am a female. This took place inside a fourth-floor walk-up apartment in Harlem, Summer of 2005.
Answer 158:
Q: What is the most bizarre thing you have seen or done?
A: In the ER I was cutting the clothes off of a 16-year-old boy having a heart attack so we could defibrillate. Yet all I could think was, I wish my penis was bigger than this kid’s. He died.
Details for artist: This took place at the end of my first day working as a volunteer at the ER of St. Francis Hospital in Poughkeepsie, New York, in early December 2004. I was standing over the kid while he was still on the gurney, fresh off the ambulance.
Answer 157:
Q: What was the single most terrifying moment of your life?
A: Calmly watching a 60 Minutes piece on “Patient Zero,” the gay flight attendant that many think started the spread of HIV around the globe because of his travels, good looks, and hundreds of sex partners. When Mike Wallace finally flashed his picture on the screen I recognized him as the man who picked me two nights before.
Details for artist: My late partner and I were sitting in our study watching TV. The night was damp but the sun was attempting to peak through. My stomach lurched and my mind exploded when Patient Zero’s picture came on the screen. I felt sucker-punched. To better draw me, feel free to refer to images on my website.
Answers posted Monday, April 7, 2008:
Answer 151:
Q: What is the most bizarre thing you have seen or done?
A: While traveling on business with my boss, a famous fashion designer, we had to share a hotel room in Hong Kong. I woke up in the dark, opened my eyes, and realized she was masturbating in the bed next to mine. Paralyzed with shock, I pretended to still be asleep.
Details for artist: I am a woman. This took place at the Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong, 1986.
Answers posted Monday, March 31, 2008:
Answer 149:
Q: What were the strangest circumstances under which you have been intimate?
A: Summer Theatre.
Summer love.
A long play with nothing to do.
In a fit of youth we take our lust to the catwalk above backstage.
Then to the grid over stage.
I look down between his legs at the actors acting below.
Don’t drip.
Details for artist: It was the summer of 2003. The South. We were working backstage. If you’ve ever been on a stage with fly space there is a grid near the ceiling above the stage, which generally consists of 4-inch-wide beams about 3 inches apart from one another. It’s scary.
Answer 148:
Q (open): Adapted from a longer Common Ties story, All Dressed in Black.
A: When I finally discovered the hole,
an ancient scream ripped through me.
I knew instantly where my lifelong depression began:
Croatia, in the spring of 1942.
The Germans threw 11,000 people into this abyss.
Screams were heard for days.
Nobody survived.
Answer 146:
Q: What was the single most terrifying day of your life?
A: Sunset, Little Grassy Lake.
Debby and I wade waist deep, alone, holding hands:
Teen-fire.
Motorcycles roar up then stop.
Black-jacketed bikers dismount and charge,
Grab Debby,
Strip her naked,
Drag her to the beach,
Touch girl parts I have never seen.
She wails: “Gene!”
I stand helpless, moaning.
They leave.
Details for artist: The incident occurred at Little Grassy Lake State Park, in southern Illinois. There is a heavily wooded public campground there and a steeply-hilled sand beach for swimming. The Park is surrounded by the 40,000-acre Shawneee National Forest, a beautiful wilderness. The girl of the story lived in a nearby town. I believe we were 13 or 14. We were wading around close to sunset, waiting for her sister to pick her up, when along came about 30 motorcycles. When the leader spotted us, he turned to his men and they dismounted, ran down the hill and encircled us. They dragged the girl onto the beach and stripped her. A terrifying, booted man waded into the water and held me by the shoulders. They fondled her silently but did not rape her. My impression was that the leader changed his mind because so many tents were nearby. They drove off. I picked up the girl’s swimsuit and gave it to her, then walked a few yards away and turned my back. I was sobbing; she was silent. She dressed and walked into the woods. Her sister arrived in the dark, and she ran up the hill. I never saw her again.
Answers posted Monday, March 24, 2008:
Answer 141:
Q (open): Adapted from a longer Common Ties story, Last Right.
A: She had esophageal cancer.
Wanted to end the pain from a high hotel window.
Asked if I’d drive.
I did.
We exchanged I love yous.
I drove away.
Now, I feel neither punishment nor reward.
But I am not at peace.
Answers posted Monday, March 17, 2008:
Answer 139:
Q: What is the most gracious act of kindness you have witnessed?
A: Group foster home, empty dining hall, a little girl sits, fried liver before her. A boy, wiping tables.
Boy: Whassa matter? Don’t like liver?
Girl shakes head, fighting tears.
Boy (checking for adults): Here. (Making a face, he gobbles her liver, gives her a shove.) Go on.
Details for artist: The incident took place in the early ’70s in a dingy dining hall with eight long tables in rows. The little girl was six, the boy about 12 or 12, probably native Alaskan, since most of the Home’s inmates were. A door and a large pass-thru window led into the kitchen on one end of the room and on the other end another door led outside. All the other kids and staff had left the dining hall to return to their dorms for the night.The older boys had cleanup duty that week.
Answer 137:
Q: What is the worst betrayal you have ever experienced?
A: April 20, 2003
Four years eight months before
Was my life’s happiest day
Wiped away her first tears
Saw the look of joy on her mother’s face
Gained the ability to love like never before
Then a DNA test stole my life away
Answer 136:
Q (open): Adapted from a longer Common Ties story, The Glovebox Tale.
A: Tommy got all the girls in school. I didn’t. When I bought my first car, dad climbed in, chewing gum like it was an Olympic event, and put a condom in the glovebox. Said I could always have more, no questions asked. Months later, Tommy thanked me for the daily condom dispenser. I was still a virgin.
Answers posted Monday, March 10, 2008:
Answer 132:
Q: What is the worst betrayal you have ever experienced?
A: My boyfriend of eight years tells me he is interested in someone else, and is leaving me to date her. That someone is one of my clients, whom I’d been counseling for six months. I can’t wait until he finds out she has vaginal herpes.
Details for artist: I am a therapist. My office was painted red and gold, with lots of candles and pillows everywhere, and we used to sit at a little table with matching chairs, with her crying, and me consoling. I found out later that after her sessions with me, she and he would meet up for “lunch.”
Answer 131:
Q: What is the most bizarre thing you have seen or done?
A: Two 19-year-old girls, out of gas.
The grocery store is brightly lit and humming with activity as we scan the shelves for numbers significant enough to justify theft.
Black Label canned ham. $19.99.
We slice it in fours, saran wrap it, and return each piece to a different store claiming illness.
All the way across California and Nevada.
Answers posted Monday, March 3, 2008:
Answer 126:
Q: Where is your favorite place in the world, and why?
A: The storm smacks our canoe sideways and passes.
I say we should stay on this river forever.
“All right,” you say.
“So, will you marry me?”
“Yes.”
A big bear swimming across just downstream stops in the middle on a flat rock and shakes
Blackfoot diamonds from its fur
into the stream.
Details for artist: Blackfoot River, Western Montana, September. Fir- and pine-cloaked moutains flank the river, Ponderosas on benches above the river. Smoothed and pollished river rocks, predominately red, blue, purple, yellow, green and grey are visible through the clear water and where they lay uncovered by the low flow of late summer. The black bear was chocolate brown and, though pretty big, probably only about three years old.
Answer 125:
Q: Under what circumstances have you been closest to death?
A: We passed the scene. Trees were cut in a wedge. When their scissor reached the ground, it bore a trench to the trailer in its path. The family, perhaps huddled, as the beast finger approached them. When it was over: no more oppression, no more poverty. All of them, dead.
Answers posted Monday, Feb. 25, 2008:
Answer 120:
Q: What is the most painful moment you have experienced?
A: Earl loved me, but I was too young to know. I went to college; he went to Vietnam. His youth was shot; my innocence was raped. Even in love unrequited, I stayed with him all of his life. He carried my picture in his wallet to his dying day.
Details for artist: All his life Earl tried to find me again. Happiness eluded him through two marriages because he could never stop yearning for me, for the beauty of purity. When he died, at age 54, they found my photograph, taken at 16, faded in his wallet. Ironically, he lived only 20 miles away.
Answer 119:
Q (open): What is the most shocking thing you’ve ever witnessed?
A: I saw a girl bouncing like a rag doll down a 100-foot rocky waterfall to land lifelessly in a stagnant pool of water. Her boyfriend cried in horror at the top while their dog, who’d fallen as well, yelped painfully next to her body. The scene still haunts me.
Details for artist: It was the late spring of 2006, at Helen Hunt Falls in Colorado Springs, Colorado. I was on a rest area on a steep path when, stopping to take a photo with my girlfriend, I heard some excitement up the trail. The couple was on the heavy side - the girl fair-skinned, blonde, dressed casually for hiking in jean shorts and a T-shirt; the guy was her equal male counterpart. The dog was mid to smaller in size. The waterfall was but a trickle. Mostly damp rock and moss. She landed in a small 10-by-10- level rock area. My girlfriend and I were the only present spectators besides the boyfriend.
Answers posted Monday, Feb. 11, 2008:
Answer 111:
Q: What were the strangest circumstances under which you have been intimate?
A: In high school I had an unusually vivid dream in which I was giving my brother a blow job. I realized upon waking that it was a flashback to events that had happened when I was 7 years old. Before that my mind had completely blocked out the memory.
Details for artist: My brother is 3.5 years older than I am, making him 10 or 11 at the time of the incidents.
Answers posted Monday, Feb. 4, 2008:
Answer 106:
Q: What door do you wish you never opened?
A: I stood in the gravel of the rest stop on I-85 and contemplated the shiny red door of the tractor trailer before walking off toward my beat-up old Toyota. I had just turned my first trick with a smelly, overweight man in the cab of his truck. I had made $50 and my toddler boy would eat for a few more days.
Details for artist: This was a grey, overcast, bleak day in a graveled area of a rest-stop on the side of the interstate.
Answer 100:
Q: What’s the one thing your parents don’t understand about you?
A: I cut open my arm one time,
then another time,
then other times.
I eat too much, or not enough.
My parents ask, Is something wrong?
I tell them I love women.
I show them my arm.
My mom says, I love women, too.
Details for artist: Chicago with my parents: sitting on my bed, talking. White comforter, white walls. My mother has brown eyes, my father blue, and neither of them is afraid to cry. When I do, I look away; they try to hold my hands. Then, when my mother answers me, we are alone. She shrugs her shoulders, like we are talking about flowers or the next-door neighbors. It is hard to know, sometimes, which response is a relief.
Answer 98:
Q: What was the single most terrifying moment of your life?
A: Seven miles in the dark across a semi-frozen lake.
House lights too far away to matter.
Lost and sinking in full gear.
Muffled screams and heavy choking fear.
A watery grave inches away cheated by a random
decision that leads us to land. Dry, solid, land.
We kiss it…
and cry.
Details for artist: The terrifying snowmobile adventure took place on Piseco Lake in the Adirondacks of Upstate New York the winter of 1985. After six-plus hours on the heavily wooded snow covered trails we had to cross the lake from its farthest points near midnight to get back to our lodging. There were seven sleds in a row trudging through the deep snow that had settled on the lake. The only light was from the moon and the tiny houselit specks that tickled the horizon a lifetime away. I was riding on the back of my boyfriends Artic Cat and our friends were also coupled up on their snowmobiles. We had miles to ride to fully cross the lake and as we approached the middle of it the snow and slush got deeper. The machines begin to bog down and struggle as if they were being sucked down deeper every foot we drove. I’ll never forget the sound the engine made as the back of the sled sunk in the snow and ice and as I screamed for my boyfriend to go faster. We had no idea whether we were only in slush or if the ice was open. The only thing we could do was gun the sleds as fast as they would go and keep moving. Just when we thought the worst was over our leader could not find the spot we had gotten on the lake earlier that day. Not wanting to stop but scared to keep moving in fear of getting even more lost we all just kept circling the shoreline until finally we spotted the trail we needed to hook up to. All seven machines bumped up the snow bank on the shoreline and parked. Everyone climbed off and hugged each other, tears flowing, thankful we were alive.
Answers posted Monday, Jan. 14, 2008:
Answer 91:
Q (open): Adapted from a longer Common Ties story, Plans of World Domination.
A: In 1979 I met with a young architect to design a new fireplace. We talked over tea. He said he could start soon, unless he returned to Iran to help take over the US embassy. I didn’t report him. A month later, the US embassy was overthrown.
Details: Read more about the Iranian Revolution here.
Answer 86:
Q: What is the most painful moment you have experienced?
A: During a moment of infidelity in the family car, the woman straddling me accidentally hit my phone and dialed my wife. The pain came when I realized her phone was on speakerphone, and my young daughters heard everything.
Answers posted Monday, Jan. 07, 2008:
Answer 82:
Q: What is the most painful moment you have experienced?
A: My cancer-ridden wife should have slipped gently into eternity. I had no warning that she would spring upright and yowl, jaws impossibly wide, teeth full-bared in a snarl, arms and legs thrashing, or that I would have to pin her down, my mouth clamped on hers in a violent farewell.
Details for artist: This shattering event took place March 16, 2001, exactly as I have described it. Doctors assured me that my 54-year-old wife, who was on a morphine pump, was experiencing no pain. It seems that she was responding to a great fear of death.
Answers posted Monday, Dec. 31, 2007:
Answer 77:
Q: What were the strangest circumstances under which you have been intimate?
A: A muddy field at the bottom of a hill. My car got stuck, so we did it right there. Getting the car back up that trail was tough. My lover got pregnant, and 30 years later, the son hates me. Now, forever, I’ll always be struggling up that slippery slope.
Details for artist: The location was a rural area in San Diego County, on a hill covered in brush, near a muddy dirt trail on the outskirts of town.
Answer 72:
Q: What were the strangest circumstances under which you have been intimate?
A: Daytime in the graveyard. We sat beneath a tree, pawing and kissing. Suddenly, my thong was on his head, and he was hot inside me. Then, a grieving family arrived. Terrified of our discovery, I pulled away, fixed my skirt, and gave him a blowjob behind the bushes.
Answer 70:
Q: What is your earliest, most vivid memory?
A: My dad hated to be late for church. My brother kept meandering from his potty chair, led back by my dad, who was shaving at the sink. Finally, Dad beat him savagely against the floor, roaring randomly as the heavy leather belt tore into the tender baby skin.
I was only 5, and have not been inside a church since.
Details for artist: This happened in our three-bedroom, early-’60s ranch-style house, when I was a little girl. My youngest brother was a fat, happy, gregarious child who smiled all the time.
Answers posted Monday, Dec. 24, 2007:
Answer 69:
Q: Under what circumstances have you been closest to death?
A: Her pilling pink Star Trek iron-on nightgown is peeking out from the starchy hospice bed sheets. Morphine is dripping. My mother’s eyes startle open, focusing on the right corner of the ceiling; that’s where she’s going. A stream of hot sunshine is accompanied by three drawn-out death rattle breaths, and her hand goes cold.
Answer 66:
Q (open): What was your first time like?
A: i love you, he said
earnestly, joyfully, held my gaze.
no you don’t
–half-joking–
you love that
you’re finally having sex with me.
sudden cold.
fuck off,
he told me,
pulled out
and turned away.
i curled up
close to the wall
then showered in water so hot it stung.
Answer 64:
Q: What door do you wish you had never opened?
A: I wish that I had never, quite literally, opened the cabinet door in my dad’s workroom. I was looking for a misplaced tool but I found a stack of gay porn DVDs instead. Since he’s still married to my mom, this makes my interaction with them very awkward.
Details for artist: I am female.
Answers posted Monday, Dec. 17, 2007:
Answer 60:
Q: What is the most gracious act of kindness you have witnessed?
A: The taxi driver asked if I was OK.
Said he’d come back for me.
Amid the protesters, I walked into the clinic.
The driver was more concerned about me than the man who helped land me there.
Months later, a letter arrived.
It was the driver, wishing away my sadness.
Details for artist: This story first appeared in longer form here.
Answer 55:
Q: What is the most joyful moment you have experienced?
A: I was hanging upside down from a locked seat belt, water pouring into the car, my entire door wedged against an embankment, my father unconscious with his head underwater. As a bystander pulled me from the wreckage, I heard my dad coughing and realized we’d both survived the accident.
Details for artist: It was a rainy, foggy November morning on a two-lane road; we ran a stop sign that seemed to suddenly pop out of nowhere, then were T-boned by a van and flipped upside down into a water-filled ditch. The memory of going by the stop sign is particularly vivid, but I also clearly remember looking out my window and seeing nothing but grass. (I am female.)
Answer 54:
Q: What was the most joyful moment of your life?
A: I had not been in contact with my daughter for her 26-year life. I had been looking for her for 5. The attorney called. My daughter wanted me to write her. The call came on her birthday. I mailed a letter. She responded. It was the most magical moment.
Details for artist: This first appeared as a full-length story in October 2006. Common Ties learned that the mother died the day it was published. It was her first, and only, published writing. She never got to meet her daughter.
Answer 52:
Q (open): What door are you glad you opened?
A: Mom told me she was gay. I was 10, and felt embarrassed and angry. We found a Playboy in mom’s bathroom. I claimed it was my uncle’s. The closet is a horrible place. It leads to anger, depression. After high school I opened my own closet door, and told people mom was gay.
Details for artist: This story first appeared in longer form here.
Answers posted Monday, Dec. 10, 2007:
Answer 49:
Q: If you could take back one thing you have done, what would it be?
A: “No insurance…. We’ll pay cash,” she said to the receptionist.
At the ATM my conscience whispered through the fluttering stack of twenties.
“Can’t allow thisss….”
Outside the clinic I begged her.
“Be strong for me now,” was her only reply.
We were both adopted.
Now I regret we were born.
Answer 48:
Q: What’s the one thing your parents don’t understand about you?
A: My mother has never understood that I am a person.
I’d have a fever; she’d decide I wasn’t sick.
I’d ask for corn flakes; she’d buy shredded wheat.
My prized possessions would be missing; she’d sold them.
She’ll need care in old age; I’ll drive her to the nursing home.
Answer 39:
Q: What is the worst betrayal you have ever experienced?
A: My boyfriend was over when my sister’s vindictive ex called and said he had AIDS (a lie). I hung up and noticed my boyfriend had disappeared. After three days of not hearing from him, I realized he had slept with my sister and overheard the conversation.
Answers posted Monday, Dec. 3, 2007:
Answer 34:
Q: If you could relive a single day or moment, what would it be?
A: A sold-out Giants’ Stadium in 1990, singing in one glorious, unified voice the chorus of “Hey Jude,” Paul McCartney cheering us from the stage. As a non-religious person, that is the closest I have ever come to a spiritual experience.
Details for artist: I was a 12-year-old female with my mother in nosebleed seats.
Answer 27:
Q: What is the most bizarre thing you have seen or done?
A: I saw my dad’s belt beat me for a long time for jumping on the bed too much. I saw my dad pull a gun on my mom and force her to do the dishes. I saw 25 states through the passenger side window of a station wagon.
Details for artist: This began when I was a 4-year-old boy in Lancaster, California. Mom saved money from her side job (a whopping $300) and took me and our blind German Shepard Angie in the station wagon east. We lived on an Indian reservation in Nevada. I don’t know why, but mom decided to not only go back to the same state but the same town. I tried hanging out with my dad a few times, even after I saw him do the same kind of things to his next wife and my new half-brother, but when I was 11 and all he wanted to do was teach me dirty jokes, I decided I didn’t really need to know my real father. I haven’t seen him since.
Answer 13:
Q: What is the most painful moment you have experienced?
A: I am giddy
Cold goo on my growing belly
My husband’s warm hand in mine
He’s a boy, a little brother
Measurements look good, match dates
Last check’s the heart
But the tech can’t quite capture it
The radiologist comes
All’s not right, probably quite wrong
There is a hole
Details for artist: At my 20-week ultrasound, we discovered the baby’s heart was displaced to the right side of his chest due to a hole in his diaphragm. This condition is called a congenital diaphragmatic hernia (CDH), and is often fatal as the pressure in the chest does not allow lungs to develop well. In addition, it is often associated with malformed organs and chromosomal problems. We were told we would need to speak to a genetic counselor the next day and begin making decisions about whether to continue the pregnancy. This was the worst day of my life; I went from feeling giddy to dumbstruck to overwhelmingly sad. Fortunately, in the end, we were able to rule out chromosomal and other typical problems, I continued the pregnancy, and gave birth to a little boy who did remarkably well and is now a seemingly healthy 3-year-old who enjoys chasing after his older brother.
Answer 9:
Q: What was the single most terrifying moment of your life?
A: I was in the Barings Office in Singapore the night it collapsed. The Sultan of Brunei had removed his offer to purchase. The only woman present, I was sent to deal with the commotion at the door. I looked through the glass to find men dressed in green pointing M16s at me.
Details for artist: The Barings Bank collapsed in February 1995. A few days before I was sent from London to Singapore to unravel the mess and in the process discovered a secreting trading account that revealed large losses that could not be covered. Barings Bank financed the Louisiana Purchase, allowing the US to purchase the territory from the French Government. This loan was only recently repaid.