For the next week or so I am traveling, and traveling light. Please find my Sunday Story on  Facebook.

Thank you!

When I met my future ex-husband it was summertime in England, and he lived with his mother. She hated me on sight. I was the writer obsessed with adventure, he the painter obsessed with retracing the paths of the masters. Perfect for each other, we thought, we married and moved to Montmartre to a friend’s empty studio. We stayed until winter when the corrugated plastic roof over the kitchen collapsed from snow.

Next we landed in Marrakech where I read Bowles and he hoped to mimic Delacroix. We moved into a marvel being built by a friend who lived in Rome. The place was empty because it was still under construction. The house was encircled by adobe walls, and beyond that the desert tantalizingly looking like freedom. I set off toward the horizon, wandering through lemon groves, and felt suspicious eyes trailing me, filling me with unease. I begged the husband to accompany me, but he preferred to paint.

Nights were ablaze with dogs howling. Mornings heralded by donkeys braying. Days were a clatter of Arabic shouting. I watched the workers finish a wall with egg whites swatting it with cloths drawing out a silvery luster. I sensed they didn’t like me watching them.

The husband set up his easel around the grounds and painted under a huge straw hat. He wasn’t much into conversation. Eventually I retreated to an attic and wrote stories, and read and declined to scrutinize my unexpectedly restrictive situation.

Christmas arrived and for dinner the husband wore a dress. I gave him a pair of live chameleons.

After Morocco we moved to a friend’s spare dwelling in Colombia. A Conquistador mansion in the old section of Cartagena, with two monkeys and four parrots. I loved Colombia, but gradually I accepted I preferred the excitement of traveling to the suffocation of my mute companion. I delivered him back to England and his grateful mother, who still hated me, “All yours!” I said, and I never saw either of them again. I’ve been traveling light ever since.

For more Christina Oxenberg please visit: Amazon.com

She awoke feeling woozy and blamed it on the scary nightmare. She often had nightmares, everywhere she lived, and she had lived most everywhere. People called her impulsive. She thought of herself as a wanderer.

She sat up and shook out her long hair. She wrapped her body in an orange sarong and brewed coffee. Suddenly she couldn’t remember anything. Where was she, she wondered? She hoped it was somewhere exotic.

Unseen he watched her. He’d been waiting for her.

Hers was a life of impetuous traveling which meant relentless packing and unpacking. How many times had she done this she couldn’t even count.

Coffee mug in one hand, box cutter in the other she sliced straight lines down the binding tape. Debussy filled the background.

He was a patient man, if he was a man at all.

She didn’t feel it when she cut herself, but she saw the smudges on the cardboard; ochre orange fingerprints, ‘Pretty!’ she thought, and then she noticed the scrawled address on the side of the box. Jaipur. It wasn’t a dream, she almost laughed out loud from relief.

All day she retrieved belongings, slipping clothing onto hangers and into closets. Closets that smelled of disuse. Her fingertips hurt from the many tiny cuts.

All the while he kept as quiet as the fluttering wings of a moth.

At last she tossed the box cutter aside. She stripped and entered the shower. Later, in her nightdress she sank onto the bed. She switched on her laptop and found her favorite crime show, ‘Fang’.

Inevitably she drifted off to sleep. That’s when he oozed from the shade. From his waistband he pulled free a long stemmed white rose, and placed it beside her sleeping face, “Welcome home,” he murmured, and he evaporated.

Image by supersonic talent

Momčilo Moma Bjeković

 For more CHRISTINA OXENBERG please visit: Amazon.com

In French ‘en retard’ means to be late. Literally, not figuratively. So I apologize for being ‘en retard’ with the posting of my stories here.

I’ve been posting on FB for years, but more and more I’m liking LinkedIn which has no ‘friends’ limit and is seemingly better adapted to posting stories with images.

Here, on my Ye Olde website it seems an ever more outdated affair. Private websites like mine may become a thing of the past ahead of their time.

Without a team of techie ingenues I’m stuck with a dull static boring page. And for that too I apologize. My goal is simply to post funny stories, mastering cute technology is not in my lexicon. As you can see from how the images get loaded -I can’t even sort that out!

Just thought I’d explain why I was so ‘en retard’ with my latest post, and warning it may happen again. Please join me at:

 LinkedIn or Facebook

MANY THANKS

YOUR FRIEND KRISTINA OX

Boxes and busted suitcases held closed with straps everywhere.

Friends had helped with the move yet details blurred. Exhausted, she hardly knew where she was. She’d unpack tomorrow. Flicking on a television she found her favorite true crime show, ‘Fang’. She undressed and tucked into bed.

Later, she awoke she had an urge to go out. She exited and she was in a courtyard. She didn’t remember a courtyard. She locked her front door and started across a courtyard except she heard a noise and spun round. She saw a man in fatigues gripping a machine gun. Perhaps the last bolts of sun made her invisible because he said nothing.

She followed a path of shimmery pebbles, wandering past statues, ponds and follies. Up an incline she found a pavilion of stone with wide arches from which to see views of hills. On a table stood a flute of champagne. She sipped the effervescence and slowly her eyes focused on beds of white roses.

A noise like thrashing splintered her tranquility. Then the sight of a man, the man in fatigues. “Who are you?” he demanded. He raised his gun.

“I live here,” she replied, unsure.

She saw him sliding his index finger around the trigger. She replaced the champagne flute. She saw the trigger squeezed.

“But why?” she managed as she felt the slicing bullet. She grasped for her chest and the oozing blood. She sagged to the floor, knocking over the flute, spilling the drink, the cold liquid splashed her skin and suddenly she realized she was naked. When had that happened, she wondered vaguely, champagne mingling with her oozing blood. From sheer will she jerked her body upright.

Then she was upright. Sitting on a soft bed. Wide awake and sticky with sweat, slowly her eyes adjusted to the flickeringly light. Light from the television blaring her favorite crime show.

image by supersonic talent Momčilo Moma Bjeković

For more CHRISTINA OXENBERG please visit  her Amazon.com page.

HIS MATES CALLED him Fang. He didn’t like it, then again he didn’t much like his mates. He worked the metal file on his épée.

She awoke and had an urge to explore her new surroundings. She exited the front door and she was in a courtyard, next to a gate. She did not remember a courtyard or a gate. But she’d only just moved in, perhaps she hadn’t noticed.

After locking the door she started across the courtyard, but she heard a loud noise and spun around. A man in a military uniform was holding a machine gun. She figured the last bolts of sun had made her invisible because the guard looked right through her. He was resisting the urge to destroy her. She reminded him of someone and rage swelled in him, but he stayed perfectly still.

She carried on down a path, passing statues and follies. The park was gigantic with immense trees of blues and greens. “Ouch!” Something scraped her ankle leaving a bulbous coagulant of blood.

Up an incline she found a circular pavilion of stone. At the center on a table stood a filled champagne flute. She sat and sipped the sweet effervescence and gradually her eyes focused on a structure of she figured and columns with a tiled roof, all of it ending faraway in a chapel, topped by a glinting gold cross.

Then a thrashing sound splintered her tranquility. It was the guard.

“Who are you?” he demanded, pointing the barrel at her face.

“I live here,” she replied, unnerved. Quickly she replaced the flute.

He slid his finger around the trigger.

“Why?” she whimpered, and braced for the bullet.

From nowhere a man wearing similar military attire appeared swinging a sword and struck the guard, scattering his gun. Who was he? She didn’t care, he was her savior. She didn’t know what to do so she offered him the glass of champagne, and he accepted it and when he smiled she saw his gleaming fangs.

Somewhere in Scotland, and I was eight years old, I remember there were children running about, and we were near a lake. The late Princess Margaret, sister to the Queen of England, was one of the guests. Perhaps it was Easter.

My cousins were there along with one of my three sisters. None of us sisters have much in common, they’re ladylike while I was always a tomboy. My favorite cousin Dimitri and I are a few years apart in age but when we were together we were always looking to stir up fun. Some of us kids got into a small boat and rowed to the center of the lake.

When we were far from land Dimitri and I started to rock the rowboat as violently as we could so that water splashed in over the sides. Soon my sister was screaming, “I am too young to die”. This made us laugh and we rocked the boat all the harder. We forced her to beg for her life. When we tired with our game we rowed back to shore and released her. Because we were wet and my sister was crying grownups came over and told us we needed to change into dry clothes. For some reason Princess Margaret offered Dimitri her knee length brown leather coat. This was the late 60s, it was probably the height of chic. I remember her saying to him to please not ruin the coat.

Part of the entertainment was an ice cream cart and all you did was lineup and receive a cone with a ball of whatever flavor you wanted. Dimitri and I received our ice creams and then immediately hunted my sister, she saw us coming and started running. We chased hard and caught her. “Not my hair!,” she wailed, “I washed it today!” We pinned her down and spread our ice creams into her tresses.

A battle ensued and Princess Margaret’s brown leather coat got the worst of it. But Dimitri and I couldn’t stop laughing for the rest of the holiday in Scotland.

image by talented Serb

MOMČILO MOMA BJEKOVIĆ

From an early age it was clear I was culinarily-challenged.

As a teenager at boarding school in England I once smuggled in an illegal instrument for the purpose of home cooking in my dorm room. The contraption was a metal rod the length of a finger and attached to an electric cord. The idea was you stuck the metal part into a cup of water and then rammed the plug into a socket. Theoretically one could make a cup of tea this way, and I say theoretically because the drawback is you need to pay attention to when the water boils as that’s when you unplug and remove the device, drop in your English Breakfast, steep and sip.

…for more Christina Oxenberg follow the link to Amazon.com

One time I had a boyfriend who liked to play golf.

Any female in my position knows the tedium of trailing behind the avid golfer and the near impossibility of feigning interest.

Luckily for me this golf course in Westchester where BF was a member was near his country house and this house was filled every weekend with contingents of both of our friends.

So one weekend I decided to jazz things up by encouraging my girlfriends to join me at the golf course.

These girlfriends, one a niece of a former American president, the other the daughter of a Middle Eastern arms dealer and the third a prostitute with a heart of gold or at least a bank account full of gold, and soon we agreed we needed to find a way to liven things up.

We commandeered the golf carts of my BF and his golfing buddies and each of us sped off in the buggies.

We raced away across the greens, ripping up divots, we revved the tiny engines to get us out of the sand traps and charged down dell and up hillock. We intentionally smashed into each other’s carts jockeying for first place. Loudly we howled and cried from laughter.

Reckless and fearless I soon lost control of my cart and rammed it and jammed vertically up a tree trunk.

Responding to this chaos groundskeepers chased us down and aggressively admonished us for our grotesque behavior.

Exaggerating my most British of British accents I lectured the groundskeepers that we were a VIP British team training for the world-class golf cart racing championships.

Unbelievably they accepted this shameless lie, “At least please try not to do too much damage.”

We assured them we would do our best but that we were in full training mode and that if we won the cup back in England we would be sure and dedicate the win to them.

Mercifully the BF never got wind of our activities and while we giggled all through dinner, we never explained ourselves.

Image by talented Serb painter, Momčilo Moma Bjeković

For more…CHRISTINA OXENBERG

My first husband, the painter, and I and our Persian cat traveled from Fire Island to New York City, we were headed to visit my mother-in-law at her place on East 62nd Street.

The boat we motored from our little dock to the ferry quay sank, with all of our possessions, including the husband’s paintings.

I saved our cat stuck in her carrier with its front grill quickly filling with water. She clung to my head, welded there with claws sunk into my skull. Just before all our bags slipped beneath the waves, I saw my purse, and I snatched at it, figuring if we lived we would need it.

Luck was on our side and the tide swept us to shore. Watching us, though powerless to help, were a platoon of firemen who escorted us to their firehouse. They dried our cat with a towel and gave us cups of coffee and then drove us to the mainland, dropping us at a train station. We rode the train to Penn Station and there we transferred to the subway.

The lady at the booth refused our wet dollar bills. But we explained we had just seen death face-to-face and begged her and eventually she relented and sold us two tokens.

When we got to my mother-in-law’s apartment we found her having tea with a handsome gentleman. 

Like a Vaudeville duet the husband and I, still hyped, recounted our story, each filling in details as we went. We spoke hysterically, our look was that of refugees, and our cat had an Afro from the seawater. Meanwhile the good-looking gentleman merely yawned, thoroughly unimpressed.

He introduced himself as Peter Beard, a man who would slice his own skin for blood in which to dip a quill to sketch the pages of his diary. And then he told us that on his recent trip to his camp in Kenya he had been charged and gored by an elephant he was attempting to photograph.

Perspective is everything.

Image by yet another talented Serb NENAD ANDRIĆ

For more CHRISTINA OXENBERG