23. Absinthe and Cliff, Part 1

Both employees at Duane’s pretty good Smokehouse Salsa, the similarity between these two star-crossed lovers ends there. One might say had it not been for Duane’s pretty good Smokehouse Salsa, they very likely would not have found any other means of meeting each other—even if they had lived next door to each other.

Let’s start with Absinthe. Absinthe is now somewhere in her late forties. On her application form for Duane’s pretty good Smokehouse Salsa, she put “old enough to know better” in the box where her DOB was supposed to go—Hawkinson was amused by that and let it slide while other prospective employees were shown the door if they so much as had a smudge on their applications (one might say that Hawkinson was somewhat arbitrary in his employee selection, but enough about him). To continue, Absinthe was raised by her mother and her mother’s three sisters in what could be called something of a commune, one that prohibited men in any form, including the male of any species of livestock they had planned to raise, along with fresh organic vegetables, in what might be called today a hobby farm. But it was no hobby to them.  It was serious business.

The prohibition against men became problematic at times, especially for occasions requiring a plumber (the consensus was that they could work around the loss of a plumber’s services) or for getting the mail. Back then, most mail carriers—no, all of them—were male, and if a package had to be delivered to the door, well, god help the poor soul. He’d have to drop it on the front step and outrun a barrage of eggs and the freezing cold stream of the water hose. Of course, he never waited for a signature, and he never complained to his supervisor—men back then didn’t complain, or even bring it up in casual conversation, about being attacked by women. That would reflect poorly on their manliness, and eventually it would get back to their wives, who would then begin to wonder what kind of men they had married—and that was never a good thing. People would inevitably stop inviting them to social occasions, their names would stop showing up in the society column of the local newspaper, causing all sorts of ugly rumors, including questions about who’s really “in the closet” which often led to references to the “Big D” word, until eventually people’s attention would turn to even bigger disasters. Depending upon farm accidents or international crises, that could take some time, which only protracted the period of tension between the couples in question. The 1960s were a different time, in some ways a less forgiving time.

There were two reasons for the anti-male sentiment in Absinthe’s mother’s commune. First, as history would show, in the decade of sex, drugs, and rock & roll, Absinthe’s mother—before she was her mother—was more than a little willing to squeeze the marrow out of that particular decade, including attending Woodstock in 1969, hooking up with the man who would not be her husband, and conceiving Absinthe during a Jimi Hendrix guitar solo. After they shared some weed (one of its many names back then), Absinthe’s mother, now within minutes of becoming Absinthe’s mother, passed out and never felt again the embrace of the man who would not be her husband. If he had hung around, the result would have been the same (she didn’t even know his name, for god’s sakes), so her resentment and years of bitterness and hostility may have had more to do with the “hit and run” nature of the encounter and the lack of manners in not saying good-bye or in giving her cab fare home. Absinthe’s mother was also not crazy about becoming Absinthe’s mother; she had a lot of living left to do—she wanted to follow the Grateful Dead and panhandle on the corner of Haight-Ashbury--and not with a baby strapped to her body. That covers the first reason—and that covers enough for now about Absinthe.