Sim Carter: Past Tense Imperfect

You know those couples who say they can’t live without each other? Sometimes they mean it. Undying Love The Coleus under Bob and Helen’s front porch window look a little scraggly, nothing but tall leggy stems bending in their bed of dry cracked earth. The gardener would never let them go like that if Bob hadn’t been so sick. If Bob had been up and around, standing tall the way he used to, those plants would be standing tall too, their leaves firm and perky, the ground blanketed with a soft, moist layer of mulch. Well tended, that was the best way to describe Bob’s garden, and come to think of it, Bob too. I try to remember if I saw the gardener this past Wednesday, his usual day to mow and blow. Who will notice if Bob’s plants die now? Not Bob who is sick in bed. Not Helen who uses a walker and rarely ventures outside. Bob told me once that Helen wouldn’t allow him to get her a wheelchair. She couldn’t stand the idea of looking like an invalid. That sounds like Helen, the kind of w

The Improv is a fairly famous LA comedy club on Melrose here in L.A. where hundreds—thousands—of comics have sometimes bombed and sometimes soared to new heights on its' stage over the years. I've been to the Improv countless times, but rarely for the laughs. For me, The Improv belongs to that period in the mid-eighties when I was in the last stages of a long, flagging relationship with an old boyfriend. For once, the nomenclature fits; I was twenty seven when we met, Ben was twenty five years older than me. Hardly a 'boy' friend, some might say. We were living together, fast approaching the suffocating, seven year itch mark, and I was twitchy, longing to find a way out, but lacking the guts to get out. Telling myself staying was the more noble course, that I didn't want to hurt him, that I couldn't leave after everything I'd done to get there, that he deserved better. What a load of crap. I was just a little coward. A passive aggressive whiner.