Etta opened her front door and stood there in the doorway, looking. She did this every morning, and she made sure to dress accordingly in a morning gown and men's dress shoes and something hand knit on her head. It amused her endlessly- it was a great way to start your day, she'd say to her other aged friends. They would look askance, down or around the room, having learned nothing since high school about dealing with awkward statements. Fine women all, thought Etta; but not forthright in the right way. They were always forthright in the wrong way, dependably; they would offer nasty casseroles and tell sympathetic stories about whatever the conversation was tut-tutting that day. Her friends were practiced and veteran in these ways, which was great when someone died but left them speechless when Etta made her pronouncements. It was a shame, she thought.
There was a listener in the group. Her name was Jackson, "as in Michael" was her standard response when asked if it was a family name or her hyphen name or what it meant. "Jackson doesn't mean anything, it's a name" she said whenever asked, and she'd get cross if someone didn't accept that answer as the full one. Etta liked Jackson and vice versa. Jackson sat with her eyes on Etta when Etta made her pronouncements, and she had gained Jackson's friendship by holding still for the whole spiel: "everyone should dress like a crazy person on a daily basis," Etta half-bellowed, adjusting for the deafness of the audience. "People are wary of you right away. You can do what you like with that feeling, like make nice with some neighbor's boy or take some body's trash cans back in for them. It confuses them- it's a hoot. watch the faces when you do it. Pure entertainment."
"Etta you're not being nice, doing that. That's pretty...I was going to say snide, but that's not it. Manipulative, there you go. You're terrible." Jackson said this when everyone else was checking their feet or their Rummy scores.
"True, but I always think that doing the favor for them cancels out the bad intention- the ill will, if you like. I don't like that phrase, but since I don't know any other that fits- there it is. You can just talk to folks instead, but dressed like that makes me feel like I've gotten the jump on things. Like I put the day on notice." Jackson laughed, and the ladies at the table laughed with a one-second delay, following her lead. She came to Etta's house in the morning when they weren't at the YMCA for their aquacise and their card table. Jackson took her life, and the lives of others, in her own nubbled hands when she drove over. This was almost every day. "People wander in, have you noticed that? People just wander to your doors or sometimes right in your windshield. In your sight, I mean- as if you weren't on the road. I realize that the podestreens"- Etta also liked when Jackson mispronounced words, because it was inexplicable, and she liked the inexplicable things in life- "yes, I know they have the right of way. Or we have to yield that to them. They get to walk wherever, to be specific." Jackson sighed and shook her head for less than a second. "But Etta! What is wrong with some of them? Why would they walk in front of an oldie behind the wheel of a large car? I'm a stereotype! Right there people should be careful." Etta laughed and laughed, and Jackson shone a smile back and didn't take offence.
This morning Etta didn't stand around silently challenging neighborhood acquaintances to remark on her hat, as per her usual. There was a giant sinkhole right in front of her house, in the street, so thorough that she could practically see seeping up from it the smoke from the bomb that must have put it there. It was a Bugs Bunny image, but a compelling one, and she ran in to call Jackson before her friend drove over and straight into it, yelling at out her window to alarmist, arm-waving podestreens that they should just clear a place for her the whole way. She caught her on the third ring, and started talking right away.
"Jackson, you have to not come to the front of the house this morning, or probably not the afternoon either. There is an enormous mouth in the street."
Jackson took this in her placid way, but Etta couldn't figure out if it was the compressed type of Jackson who would give some lip service to the notion of not coming and then come to right there, travelling five miles per hour faster than usual or if it was placid because of her poor sleep habits and lack of a quality cup of coffee. "Ok, honey, I'll not come to the front of your house. Because of a mouth. You said mouth, right?"
"Yes, right, don't come to the front. Let me check the alley in back." Etta put the phone down and went to look at the disappointing pot holes in the paving behind her garage. "The back is fine. But this hole-"
"Oh, it's a hole." Jackson's voice was still maddeningly placid.
"Yes, it's a big damn hole, and I saw not one but two cars just get swallowed. The first was just parked there- I'm serious, don't come to the front, Jackson- and the second was some dummy who drove up to it like he was on a dare. One should not fuck with nature's mouths. One should recognize them for what they are, dummy dum dum." She sighed. "They got him out by throwing some rope someone had in there to the dummy and he just grabbed hold, and they pulled."
"It's a nice neighborhood you have there." Jackson was compressed, so Etta let her get off the phone so she could come over. "Not the front, and be careful in the back, because who knows?"
Jackson was careful, for once. She came in the kitchen door, almost silently. "Did you see it?" Etta asked.
"Not yet. Give me the tour, then." Etta walked Jackson to the front, and then they both stood there in the door jamb, mouths barely ajar so that a sidewalk observer might think they both had taken a bite of something simultaneously and then stopped chewing. "That's a mouth, yes. It cannot be described any other way. And nature's mouths should not be ignored, like you say" Jackson whispered, needlessly. "What to do, though?"
Etta had thought about this. "It's getting bigger, Jack. It's gotten rounder, and smokier-"
"I don't see any smoke, darling-"
"Look for longer. Don't let your eyes get unfocused and trick you or anything, but just keep them lasering at that mouth for an hour and you'll see smoke. Anyway- it's bigger, it's widening so that it's creeping closer to the other side of the road, because there are more cars there. Look: It came to the curb on this side, and now it's lost interest. Sidewalk holds no interest for our Mouth."
"It's looking for cars, then." Jackson tilted one hip out like a cool kid.
"Yes, that's it I think. I can't see it wanting people, anyway- it's just pulling in the cars, and so far it doesn't really go for people, unless they're just idiots who can't comprehend it."
"I don't know what one could misinterpret."
"Me neither" Etta agreed. Then they went into the kitchen to make coffee, which she never drank more than a half-cup but which her friend would chug like a record-holding career drinker. It always reminded her of pitchers of light beer for $5 on weekdays.
"Let's watch the news. Did you watch any? We should just take a look, maybe there's some scientist explaining everything for us" Jackson said after two mug fulls. They moved to the parlor, which had the front windows facing the street-now-hole and the television. They turned it on, and, after a moment, Etta said "holy shit" in a stage whisper.
There were mouths everywhere, in every area of the city: downtown was the worst, and there had been the most cars consumed by a three-to-one margin compared to everywhere else. The north side was also a Daliesque hell scape of pits and disappeared cars and people not understanding, staying too close and getting sucked in because they just couldn't believe this weird new road feature was doing what it was doing. One of the more profound stories was of a deliver truck packed with new refrigerators and clothes dryers- that one was on the West side, and that hole had just opened beneath the truck, full-sized and apparently ravenous, grabbing and holding the whole thing as if it were a doomed cruise ship. The two deliverers were taken down with it, since they'd had little to no time to forge a plan of escape. There were rescuers at the scene, dangling a rope ladder from an adjacent tree and yelling downward, since their ambulance had been swallowed, too.
The ladies ran to the front of the house for another, now adrenalised look: their hole had widened, and deepened, and there were no cars anywhere near it. That morning the street had been parked out, but either the owners were canny enough to identify an approaching force of nature and moved their own cars, or the mouth had taken them. It came right up to the sidewalk, which it had left almost entirely unmoved. There was one square that had a wee upward tilt, so small that it could easily have been caused by the previous evenings' pre-crater hard rain. Etta took it upon herself to walk right up to the edge. Her friend ran back to the pantry, took the ladder from it and jogged back up to the front door. She waited. Etta stood there, looking into it and then looking around, and then looking into it.
"There's no more cars, and I don't really want to wrestle with alternate routes at my age" she said. Jackson sighed and went kitchenward again. Etta stood. A WGN helicopter went by, and she waved at it with a serious expression on her face. Jackson came out the front door, carefully letting her leg hang back so the screen door wouldn't bang (because she hated the sound.) She had the coffeemaker, still steamy, in her hands.
"Here." she said.
Etta took it and heaved it into the hole all in one motion. It made a lovely arc, and the cord twirled around above it so that for a second, at it's height, it looked like art. "I don't think that's enough."
Jackson went back and forth, taking anything electrical she could find, any technology, to bring to Etta: her iron ("I have no idea why I have this thing in the first place,") her straightening iron ("ok, good, I can't help but burn my face any time I try to use it anyway, I know it's strange what with the design being safe and compressed, but I do it,") the computer that Etta's son-in-law had brought and lovingly installed that she used all of once a day to check the weather ("uh-huh.") By and by there was nothing left to pitch: Etta's house was as bare as it had been when she and her husband had set themselves up in it, when one just waited for water to boil rather than using a microwave and they only had a radio to listen to because they could afford neither the television nor the floor space to put it on. Etta had shooed her friend back when she'd appeared with the old radio. "It still works on a few stations."
Jackson turned around, saying "and it was yours," meaning it belonged to Etta and her departed. There were things that nature's prerogative would have to forgive.
Nothing happened for a long while. They went back in eventually. They'd both thought there would be some sign, some tic of noise from the earth, but there was nothing so they turned and walked back into the house, where they sat down in the front room. It was dim in the room since the sun had gone westward, and warm, and so the two friends ended up dozing, sagging toward each other on the dusty chintz sofa. They were woken by chopper sounds, closer and louder than they'd been before, and more consistent. The ladies sat up- slowly, decrinkling themselves- and stood. They looked at each other before they went to the door.
"This had better be good" said Jackson. Etta nodded.
Outside there were two helicopters hovering close to the hole. The first thing the women did was wave at them, arms all the way above their heads and back as if they were each the President of the United States. It was a fitting gesture: the day was saved, because their ministrations had coaxed the mouth into closing. It was clamping itself shut and making the expected ticking noises, which satisfied Etta and relived Jackson. Then they went back inside and turned on the old radio, which was glad to be of service, and heard: all around the city people had seen footage taken from the first news copter of Etta chucking things up and in, and Jackson enthusiastically finding new appliances, running into the house and back tirelessly, stronger than many half her age. The populace had taken the hint, and things were disappearing into the mouths of the city. There was even some nervous tittering from a TV anchor about them not having jobs if no one had televisions to watch.
"Yours didn't have a mouth, did it? When you left?"
Jackson stretched. "No, but I think I'll go home just the same. I have some donations I can think of right in my basement. It's like they've been waiting down there, I never use them, but today I can let them go."
Etta smiled and stretched herself. "Well I'll see you in two days, then. Promise me you'll drive safe, maniac." It was the same thing Etta said to Jackson every Tuesday, but this time they went back and stood in the doorway, walking there calmly and silently. They stood and watched.
Sunday, April 28, 2013
Sunday, April 21, 2013
I Love You Guys
Being the one who is left, abandoned, made lone, is worse than doing the leaving. Which is a truism, yes? Which is something we know, and with certainty. The perpetual need to re-learn basic lessons is baffling, though. One would think that one might get to the point when one says "Ah yes! I feel prematurely bereft, because I'm anticipating the absence of my friend/lover/family member/anyone else, and this is the part when I'm to begin shopping for pity party favors (pity party favors: to-go packs of extra thick tissues for crying, mixes of music that remind you of the soon-to-be-gone person's ring tone, giant box of Animal Crackers, fresh can of whipped cream to put on Animal Crackers, box of wine.) It would be more efficient, at least: one could just proceed with the Festivus of Poivre Moi and skip that startled feeling that denotes your sense of total unpreparedness. What? you think. Sure, I've felt this way before, but that was years ago, and it was when I broke up with That Fucker What Stole My Personalized Cue Stick, and it was before I knew He/She stole it! That was completely different!...and it is completely different.
This time, you just sit there and remind each other how awesome things were when you met, even though neither of you can really recall the details. Just "I remember your haircut! You wore it that way for seven years! I thought your hair only did the one style and refused to grow on principle!"... and "There was a house party. Was it at Sherla's? No, she was with Derrick at the time- that was before she flipped the coin... Yeah, she was with Suze for a while there- they almost bought the studio in ORLANDO, which I thought was just strange since she was a CPA and she was a genius with other people's money...OK, so the party was at Ki Ki's then. Ki Ki. Come on, Ki Ki! Sorry: Ferdie. Freddy. Gerdie? What was her name, and didn't she have the operation yet?...no that was Kidzie. Yeah, the nurse/"nurse", and I can't figure that out because you'd think after all day jogging after stretchers and listening to baby doctors tell you how it is, the last thing you'd want to do is slide on your five-inch heels...Good point, maybe that's exactly what you want to do... Anyway, anyway- party, party... Right, but now I'm not sure it was in someone's house. We went to that warehouse- it was a warehouse, and that was our first rave, remember? It was so small, there were twenty people there- we were so lucky, weren't we? There was only those half-tabs of X- oh, remember X?- so we didn't experience the nervous system shutdown the five others did. Maybe it was thirty people. So it must have been more like seven other people just spent fifteen minutes falling down, one limb at a time, and we had to drag them over to the pit that was in the corner of that warehouse- it was little, and we'd put our coats down and dragged them each into the pit and layed them on the coats...are you sure? That was a show we saw? Well shit!...Was your brother in that show?" and "I love you, and it might be in a gay way."
Then it's almost time. Then it's time. Then they leave.
So it's different because your anger is fruitless, whereas the anger you have toward some dumb ex is full of delicious fruit that is satisfying. You get angry with the timing and the taxi driver and the spouse they're going home to and the fulfilling job they have that requires they do this horrible thing to you. There you are, holding the Phone of Friendship which is sounding with the Busy Signal of Bereftness, which you can't just hang up because the Cradle of Resignation is under all of the laundry that you ignored while your friend was in town. You put the phone down, still beeping, on the Get On With It Table of daily tasks; the signal is like tinnitus, barely audible and constant. So you do what anyone, what everyone, does: you turn on the Telling Television to watch a Show of Cosmic Self-Anaesthetising...and your writing becomes god-awful.
The loneliness of losing a friend this way, in a way that's no really losing them, is humbling: if this were high school again, you would be the hanger-on, the apprentice pariah, the stag at the Prom, and your friend would be their splendid, magnanimous, quietly talented self with all of the friends. Among their friends are the school assholes who transmorgify into smiling, approachable humans when they're in line or at a party with them; the nerds, who together form a phalanx of the smitten; every teacher in the school, and every administrator; the Maintenance Engineers, who laugh with them about the formality of their titles ("what's wrong with being called a janitor? It's ridiculous!"); and you. They like you almost as much as you like them, which is a miracle. And, despite what many insipid movies would have you believe about your natural thirst for status and equal amounts of adoration from all and sundry, you are just fine with it. What difference does all this make, anyway? You are friends, and because of it, you are lucky.
This time, you just sit there and remind each other how awesome things were when you met, even though neither of you can really recall the details. Just "I remember your haircut! You wore it that way for seven years! I thought your hair only did the one style and refused to grow on principle!"... and "There was a house party. Was it at Sherla's? No, she was with Derrick at the time- that was before she flipped the coin... Yeah, she was with Suze for a while there- they almost bought the studio in ORLANDO, which I thought was just strange since she was a CPA and she was a genius with other people's money...OK, so the party was at Ki Ki's then. Ki Ki. Come on, Ki Ki! Sorry: Ferdie. Freddy. Gerdie? What was her name, and didn't she have the operation yet?...no that was Kidzie. Yeah, the nurse/"nurse", and I can't figure that out because you'd think after all day jogging after stretchers and listening to baby doctors tell you how it is, the last thing you'd want to do is slide on your five-inch heels...Good point, maybe that's exactly what you want to do... Anyway, anyway- party, party... Right, but now I'm not sure it was in someone's house. We went to that warehouse- it was a warehouse, and that was our first rave, remember? It was so small, there were twenty people there- we were so lucky, weren't we? There was only those half-tabs of X- oh, remember X?- so we didn't experience the nervous system shutdown the five others did. Maybe it was thirty people. So it must have been more like seven other people just spent fifteen minutes falling down, one limb at a time, and we had to drag them over to the pit that was in the corner of that warehouse- it was little, and we'd put our coats down and dragged them each into the pit and layed them on the coats...are you sure? That was a show we saw? Well shit!...Was your brother in that show?" and "I love you, and it might be in a gay way."
Then it's almost time. Then it's time. Then they leave.
So it's different because your anger is fruitless, whereas the anger you have toward some dumb ex is full of delicious fruit that is satisfying. You get angry with the timing and the taxi driver and the spouse they're going home to and the fulfilling job they have that requires they do this horrible thing to you. There you are, holding the Phone of Friendship which is sounding with the Busy Signal of Bereftness, which you can't just hang up because the Cradle of Resignation is under all of the laundry that you ignored while your friend was in town. You put the phone down, still beeping, on the Get On With It Table of daily tasks; the signal is like tinnitus, barely audible and constant. So you do what anyone, what everyone, does: you turn on the Telling Television to watch a Show of Cosmic Self-Anaesthetising...and your writing becomes god-awful.
The loneliness of losing a friend this way, in a way that's no really losing them, is humbling: if this were high school again, you would be the hanger-on, the apprentice pariah, the stag at the Prom, and your friend would be their splendid, magnanimous, quietly talented self with all of the friends. Among their friends are the school assholes who transmorgify into smiling, approachable humans when they're in line or at a party with them; the nerds, who together form a phalanx of the smitten; every teacher in the school, and every administrator; the Maintenance Engineers, who laugh with them about the formality of their titles ("what's wrong with being called a janitor? It's ridiculous!"); and you. They like you almost as much as you like them, which is a miracle. And, despite what many insipid movies would have you believe about your natural thirst for status and equal amounts of adoration from all and sundry, you are just fine with it. What difference does all this make, anyway? You are friends, and because of it, you are lucky.
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
Dollars of the Soul
My husband and I went out for Chinese years ago, and one of us got a fortune that said: If Cheap Things Have No Value, Valuable Things Are Not Cheap? I took it home and hung it on our fridge by one end, pinned under a Power Puff Girls magnet. I loved it for many reasons- I take delight in weird syntax, from a translation or locally sourced, because it's just like watching English change in the moonlight- but most of all because it practically spelled out the continuation. If you read it aloud you can't help saying "I mean, help me out here" at the end.
I've been trying to put a mental frame around that fortune for years. Until recently, I've been thinking about it in metaphysical terms: Indeed, I ask myself, if cheap things- cheap to me, cheap to my community of artists or friends or barely tolerated bus co-habitants, cheap to the Universal We- if cheap things have no value (and here I pause to pre-emptively congratulate myself on my huge, huge intellect,) are valuable things not cheap? Since I was thinking in the abstract and mainly silly Plane of the Important Ponderings, I would try to come up with the cheap things in question: to me, spitefulness; to the immediate community, self-medication with celebrity baby-bumps and pancreas-busting amounts of sugar; We, the ability to forget all about the man behind the curtain without even being asked...Then what would the valuable, potentially not-cheap things be? Me, self-acceptance, immediate community, a bucket-passing fire brigade; We...uh...an imagination big enough to dream up childhood vaccinations?...What was the question again?
If cheap things have no value, valuable things are not cheap? We are about to move to a different continent, and so there are a million things (about 998,210 more than I thought we had) in our house that need to be sold. And now I realize what it really meant: clearly the person who wrote it was also trying to sell everything they owned, and lacking a creditable means to comparison shop, they went to work and wrote it in cookie-fortune form in the hope that if enough of those cookies went out and were read by compassionate diners, a few of them might hunt him down to help him price the Ikea cabinet. I mean, it was their top-of-the-line when he bought it three years ago but now is missing a widget and has no badly-translated instructions to go with it- what is that worth? Craig's list is the only place where people who really need furniture and have bitty budgets go for the self-torture of shopping used and online- and Craig's list is unreliable. Ikea cabinets look exactly the same in every picture. They are described with very different adjectives. You see a lot of "brand new" and "still in good shape" and "okay" and "worked great for us for fifteen years" in the descriptions, and you'll see many prices that don't really match up with your unrealistic pricing-hopes, even though you got real with yourself while drunk on lite beer and knee-deep in receipts from a cobbler's bill that you put on the MasterCard that you closed out seven years ago, and the pictures of these Ikea Kaarlupvstoorgaart cabinets are identical.
I believe the trick is to do it piece-by-piece, which is hell on your TV time. Who wants to be sticking price tapes on your broken two-legged tripods (Still works! $38 30 24 15 3!) when you could be watching anything at all in marathon form, courtesy of Netflix's library of unasked-for Friday night network sitcoms from the 90's? No one, that's who. Escape is not an option, though; not even stupid escape. So one must wade in, and one must find out which are the not inexpensive valuable things and which are the cheap cheap things through one's intuition. Which is a nice way of saying desperation.
Broken futon frame? Since it's not just broken, it's busted up- I will sell this as firewood. I may be able to get a cord of large-sized kindling out of it (for those not raised on a farm, a "cord" of wood is a smallish pile. The determination of what constitutes a smallish pile is reserved entirely for career farmers who will look into the distance, take a pull on their PBR, and declare one smallish pile a cord and a twin smallish pile right next to it "a little light." It's just what they do.) There are area rugs- and what area rugs they are, with their thin spots from the household pet's lovin' spot (love to the rug, not to each other- you degenerate,) and their spill-free corners...these I shall price at $150 each, and I may just get away with that price because I plan to sell it to my daughter's friends by telling them brilliant adventures that may happen to them if they have the things in their bedroom. Then I'll sit back and let the calls from their parents overwhelm my voicemail...Or $50 for two. It depends on which plan is less work... For the table with the heap of my daughter's various artworks that she doesn't want to pack up and take- the table is $.25 (three-year-old Ikea particle board is basically table-shaped dust,) the artwork ONE MILLION DOLLARS. Does that sound high to you? I can't tell, because it is both valuable and cheap. So, yeah, a cool million, payable in cash or monopoly money, whichever is the better offer.
What I'd like to do is have an open house, letting friends and family and friends of friends come and wander around the place for a while, sipping on the delightful adult beverage that will be served to them by my child in a clean white tuxedo shirt, and then have an auction on the entire thing. One lot, folks, and a great deal may be had with the bid of just $1000, think of all the be-yoo-tiful furniture from Sweden yours in your own home and the vases that came with the bouquets from 1800flowers and the Blackberry phone only five years old and the other Blackberry folks, that's right two Blackberries with their chargers and these five Trader Joe's shopping bags full of alkaline batteries, you'll never go batteryless again simply go to your bag and start licking the nipple-like tops to find the ones with charge left in them and there are these ugly-ass heirlooms that have no use but were kept to avoid guilt- do I hear $1000? A great deal here folks you don't want to hesitate do I hear $800? Come on now you will not find a better array of random house furnishings for $750, $700 do I hear $700 let's get this thing going for $500, $500 is a steal for these plastic toy-bases, and you can spend be-yoo-tiful family time with your spouse and your children trying to figure out which base goes with which broken toy, better than any picture puzzle- Can I get a bid of $400?...
It will be all right. I will be in the back, pacing while my brother-in-law mixes stronger and stronger drinks in the vain hope that someone will get drunk enough to pipe in with "I'll take everything for $15,000! Woo!" and then pass out, arm up, hand holding out an envelope full of fifties. And sure, even though that won't happen, it's nice to imagine it all being done and wrapped up in a little Britain-bound bow. It's more than nice- it's invaluable.
I've been trying to put a mental frame around that fortune for years. Until recently, I've been thinking about it in metaphysical terms: Indeed, I ask myself, if cheap things- cheap to me, cheap to my community of artists or friends or barely tolerated bus co-habitants, cheap to the Universal We- if cheap things have no value (and here I pause to pre-emptively congratulate myself on my huge, huge intellect,) are valuable things not cheap? Since I was thinking in the abstract and mainly silly Plane of the Important Ponderings, I would try to come up with the cheap things in question: to me, spitefulness; to the immediate community, self-medication with celebrity baby-bumps and pancreas-busting amounts of sugar; We, the ability to forget all about the man behind the curtain without even being asked...Then what would the valuable, potentially not-cheap things be? Me, self-acceptance, immediate community, a bucket-passing fire brigade; We...uh...an imagination big enough to dream up childhood vaccinations?...What was the question again?
If cheap things have no value, valuable things are not cheap? We are about to move to a different continent, and so there are a million things (about 998,210 more than I thought we had) in our house that need to be sold. And now I realize what it really meant: clearly the person who wrote it was also trying to sell everything they owned, and lacking a creditable means to comparison shop, they went to work and wrote it in cookie-fortune form in the hope that if enough of those cookies went out and were read by compassionate diners, a few of them might hunt him down to help him price the Ikea cabinet. I mean, it was their top-of-the-line when he bought it three years ago but now is missing a widget and has no badly-translated instructions to go with it- what is that worth? Craig's list is the only place where people who really need furniture and have bitty budgets go for the self-torture of shopping used and online- and Craig's list is unreliable. Ikea cabinets look exactly the same in every picture. They are described with very different adjectives. You see a lot of "brand new" and "still in good shape" and "okay" and "worked great for us for fifteen years" in the descriptions, and you'll see many prices that don't really match up with your unrealistic pricing-hopes, even though you got real with yourself while drunk on lite beer and knee-deep in receipts from a cobbler's bill that you put on the MasterCard that you closed out seven years ago, and the pictures of these Ikea Kaarlupvstoorgaart cabinets are identical.
I believe the trick is to do it piece-by-piece, which is hell on your TV time. Who wants to be sticking price tapes on your broken two-legged tripods (Still works! $
Broken futon frame? Since it's not just broken, it's busted up- I will sell this as firewood. I may be able to get a cord of large-sized kindling out of it (for those not raised on a farm, a "cord" of wood is a smallish pile. The determination of what constitutes a smallish pile is reserved entirely for career farmers who will look into the distance, take a pull on their PBR, and declare one smallish pile a cord and a twin smallish pile right next to it "a little light." It's just what they do.) There are area rugs- and what area rugs they are, with their thin spots from the household pet's lovin' spot (love to the rug, not to each other- you degenerate,) and their spill-free corners...these I shall price at $150 each, and I may just get away with that price because I plan to sell it to my daughter's friends by telling them brilliant adventures that may happen to them if they have the things in their bedroom. Then I'll sit back and let the calls from their parents overwhelm my voicemail...Or $50 for two. It depends on which plan is less work... For the table with the heap of my daughter's various artworks that she doesn't want to pack up and take- the table is $.25 (three-year-old Ikea particle board is basically table-shaped dust,) the artwork ONE MILLION DOLLARS. Does that sound high to you? I can't tell, because it is both valuable and cheap. So, yeah, a cool million, payable in cash or monopoly money, whichever is the better offer.
What I'd like to do is have an open house, letting friends and family and friends of friends come and wander around the place for a while, sipping on the delightful adult beverage that will be served to them by my child in a clean white tuxedo shirt, and then have an auction on the entire thing. One lot, folks, and a great deal may be had with the bid of just $1000, think of all the be-yoo-tiful furniture from Sweden yours in your own home and the vases that came with the bouquets from 1800flowers and the Blackberry phone only five years old and the other Blackberry folks, that's right two Blackberries with their chargers and these five Trader Joe's shopping bags full of alkaline batteries, you'll never go batteryless again simply go to your bag and start licking the nipple-like tops to find the ones with charge left in them and there are these ugly-ass heirlooms that have no use but were kept to avoid guilt- do I hear $1000? A great deal here folks you don't want to hesitate do I hear $800? Come on now you will not find a better array of random house furnishings for $750, $700 do I hear $700 let's get this thing going for $500, $500 is a steal for these plastic toy-bases, and you can spend be-yoo-tiful family time with your spouse and your children trying to figure out which base goes with which broken toy, better than any picture puzzle- Can I get a bid of $400?...
It will be all right. I will be in the back, pacing while my brother-in-law mixes stronger and stronger drinks in the vain hope that someone will get drunk enough to pipe in with "I'll take everything for $15,000! Woo!" and then pass out, arm up, hand holding out an envelope full of fifties. And sure, even though that won't happen, it's nice to imagine it all being done and wrapped up in a little Britain-bound bow. It's more than nice- it's invaluable.
Thursday, April 4, 2013
School, and the U.K.
Schools are like women: they are fickle; they will make you wait and wait; they will sleep with all of your friends starting the fucking second you leave town to go to Boise on business for three days, the slag. ("Slag" is British for "Slut" and "Hag" combined, except when followed by a prepositional phrase. I'm assuming. I've never actually heard that term used by anyone British, but you read a few pamphlets and watch a few episodes of MI-5 and you're willing to say anything that smacks of United Kingdomness, even if it has no basis in their actual linguistic practices. It's jimmy-sine gobsquattle, what what!)
So: Schools. I'm looking at some. They seem, without exception, fabulous. Each of them is housed in their own historical manses and abbeys and they each have their own wood, which is Brit for "forest." So, to repeat, each school in Great Britain comes with its' own forest. Many of the academies that I've been googling have their own Ents,who operate the canteens during 8th-year Girls' Rugby home games. Also these schools have a pool, as a matter of course. Some of the less-fortunate village elementary schools have to share the heated outdoor swimming pool with the village darts club, but each school I've looked at so far has listed a pool amongst its' facilities, much the same way one of ours might enthusiastically list girls-and-boys toilets. Their libraries are imperial, and if I were casting someone to stand in one of these libraries for, say, a fifteen-second public service segment on the telly, I would cast no none less than Dame Dench to stand there. I might have her read something aloud for that fifteen seconds, and no matter what outmoded reference book about mid-nineteenth century tulip bulb technology she'd be reading aloud and no matter what reform school's holding cell/cafeteria she were standing in, it would be classy beyond any American measure. The reform school libraries here have armchairs. Because when you are reading, you need armchairs. The Brits know this, and provide.
Also their applications are relatively benign, with simple questions and easily-translatable initialised abbreviations and forward-thinking lines to fill out that actually match the questions... Getting to said applications is proving to be not as civilised. There are a great many cross-referencing web pages and almost inaccessible links that lead to completely inaccessible other links, as is only proper on any government-run website. I got on a page that told me to begin an application by putting in a birthday (not necessarily my child's) which then told me I had to log in, so I logged in and it told me in order to create a log-innable account I had to begin an application. All of that brings about a warm glow, much like the glow of an abuse victim who's found that new, special, abusive someone. Oh, you think. Look, they wrote some enraging code right into the program so that I could spend hours trying to trick the website into letting its' guard down and taking me to one of its' mysterious links. How sweet! Those British people are so polite they thought of all the aggravations of home. I didn't even have to ask.
And so these schools are like women. No, wait- I mean men. Boys. They are like boys at camp on Sadie Hawkins day, before the dance, when it was the girls' humiliating job to find dates by outrunning a boy- at first it's the Populars, those who's hair has been bleached in the sun by all the volleyball playing and joshing around with other boys in a completely non-sexual way, then it's the future Counsellors, made so by their reflexive naming of plants they pass during their walks to the Mess, then someone's brother, then the quiet freaky guys who only burn and peel and refuse to talk to anyone- and then tackling him like he's in the midst of stealing Gemmy's antique brooch and they the only one who can stop him. The schools dodge and weave and sometimes let you get close, but not get them. The bastards.
Who made that up, anyway? Who thought it would be good fun for us to desperately sprint around the football field until someone took pity on you and let you get their sleeve? I don't know who did, but I know this: it wasn't the British. Or if it was, they would have the decency to hide the smirking behind a book in one of their red-velvet and stained-glass libraries.
So: Schools. I'm looking at some. They seem, without exception, fabulous. Each of them is housed in their own historical manses and abbeys and they each have their own wood, which is Brit for "forest." So, to repeat, each school in Great Britain comes with its' own forest. Many of the academies that I've been googling have their own Ents,who operate the canteens during 8th-year Girls' Rugby home games. Also these schools have a pool, as a matter of course. Some of the less-fortunate village elementary schools have to share the heated outdoor swimming pool with the village darts club, but each school I've looked at so far has listed a pool amongst its' facilities, much the same way one of ours might enthusiastically list girls-and-boys toilets. Their libraries are imperial, and if I were casting someone to stand in one of these libraries for, say, a fifteen-second public service segment on the telly, I would cast no none less than Dame Dench to stand there. I might have her read something aloud for that fifteen seconds, and no matter what outmoded reference book about mid-nineteenth century tulip bulb technology she'd be reading aloud and no matter what reform school's holding cell/cafeteria she were standing in, it would be classy beyond any American measure. The reform school libraries here have armchairs. Because when you are reading, you need armchairs. The Brits know this, and provide.
Also their applications are relatively benign, with simple questions and easily-translatable initialised abbreviations and forward-thinking lines to fill out that actually match the questions... Getting to said applications is proving to be not as civilised. There are a great many cross-referencing web pages and almost inaccessible links that lead to completely inaccessible other links, as is only proper on any government-run website. I got on a page that told me to begin an application by putting in a birthday (not necessarily my child's) which then told me I had to log in, so I logged in and it told me in order to create a log-innable account I had to begin an application. All of that brings about a warm glow, much like the glow of an abuse victim who's found that new, special, abusive someone. Oh, you think. Look, they wrote some enraging code right into the program so that I could spend hours trying to trick the website into letting its' guard down and taking me to one of its' mysterious links. How sweet! Those British people are so polite they thought of all the aggravations of home. I didn't even have to ask.
And so these schools are like women. No, wait- I mean men. Boys. They are like boys at camp on Sadie Hawkins day, before the dance, when it was the girls' humiliating job to find dates by outrunning a boy- at first it's the Populars, those who's hair has been bleached in the sun by all the volleyball playing and joshing around with other boys in a completely non-sexual way, then it's the future Counsellors, made so by their reflexive naming of plants they pass during their walks to the Mess, then someone's brother, then the quiet freaky guys who only burn and peel and refuse to talk to anyone- and then tackling him like he's in the midst of stealing Gemmy's antique brooch and they the only one who can stop him. The schools dodge and weave and sometimes let you get close, but not get them. The bastards.
Who made that up, anyway? Who thought it would be good fun for us to desperately sprint around the football field until someone took pity on you and let you get their sleeve? I don't know who did, but I know this: it wasn't the British. Or if it was, they would have the decency to hide the smirking behind a book in one of their red-velvet and stained-glass libraries.
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
The Parents of Spring Break
We were hanging out at Maria's, because she has a bar by her pool. Installed by the previous owners, so that when she and Todd moved in- before Ari and Phillipe became the blessed focal point of the household- there was already shelving and reinforced-canvas bar stools and Tiki embellishment waiting to resume it's previous existence as a social hub. They only used it during Spring Break.
All the children were gone- they were gone away, they were gone on vacation to various all-inclusive resorts in Cancun, Mexico. The neighborhood association had done its' math a few years back and realised that if all of the parents pooled their airfare money, they could hire a charter flight to bring their precious cargo to the babysat vacation clubs on the peninsula; this way, the offspring could practice some beginners hedonism within the assured confines and the parents could save some bucks. It had become the Grand Tradition that someone hold the week-long adults' sleepover in their house. The hosting parents were given the funds raised during regular Neighborhood Association shake-downs that happened at hotel conference rooms and Monday-night restaurants during the rest of the year. The hosting couple had full discretionary power to spend it outfitting their homes with the necessities of the week.
That power- the spending power, and more importantly the power to design themes for the Spring Break Sleepover- had been used poorly before: there had been strippers, of course (someone was going to be offended, no matter what sex the stripper was and no matter what costume they wore,) and there had been well-intentioned community "projects" involving the hire of a cement mixer to re-pave the path across one of the 48" wide strip of grass that separated the two halves of Willow Boulevard, and there had been mounds of PCP that was heavily cut with baby laxatives. There had been hyper, mildly hallucinating adults shitting in each other's yards for a week straight. At the next forum, it was agreed by all but one household that the association money would not be available to purchase street drugs. The couple that had voted Nay contended that they'd never had such a good layer of manure on their rose beds before; it had turned out to be a banner year for their yellow-and-pink All Americans. Still: only legal drugs would be allowed at any future Spring Break at-home parties.
"I'm not sure I know exactly where they are. I mean where on a map." Maria was saying. It was 3rd-Day brunch, so everyone's hangover was well established but not yet rooted in their stem cells, like on the 7th-Day Bar-B-Q Finale. Maria's face was tense. Todd reached over me and across the table, grazing my chest on the way like he always did, and put his hand over hers.
"We have a call later. We checked online this morning, remember? They are having a ball."
"I still couldn't find it on a map. That's what I mean- it makes me- it gives me this sense of unease," Maria finished. We all nodded. We were worried, and it was about the time in the festival when everyone started talking about the kids. There was a custom that we all followed instinctively, like lemmings, and it was to not talk about the kids at all until 3rd Day. The 1st-Day Kickoff Skinny Dip and Barn Dance was about nothing except letting the chaos of the mind that is subsumed during the rest of the year- for the sake of wholesomeness and just running a household- burst out in sketchy behaviors and at least one small, almost ceremonial accidental fire. 2nd-Day was somewhat mired in the neighborhood's first traditional steps toward pacing itself- it was the day when most of the workshops and professional lectures were scheduled. Most attended these things because they'd paid for them in association fees, and felt that they were going to get their god damned money's worth, though it was anyone's guess how many attendees were awake beneath their gigantic Jackie O sunglasses, worn by women and men for their voluminous and uncommunicative lenses.
"I told them they couldn't have any scuba time this year because of finances, but it was mostly me freaking out. I just could never get that story about those tweens who were trapped in that man-made coral configuration for five hours." This was Josie talking, and she was definitely a fusser. She was on the other side of the long table, too, and Todd took it upon himself to let go of his wife's hand so that he could reach over to her. He managed to boobgraze me again while he repositioned his arm to be heading in Josie's direction.
"That was smart. Limits. Kids respect them and all that." He twinkled sardonically. Josie smiled for the first time since the Dip-and-Dance, as it had come to be called. "Ari wanted to get a two-day club pass, have you heard about these things? You can buy this pass that lets them get into any club- and I mean any club- on the hotel strip, entrance fee pre-paid, and it comes with a traveling janitor."
I startled as if I'd been touched by a third, mystery arm Todd had been hiding. "Janitor?"
Maria leaned over and took my hand, possibly swiping the side of the breast attached to the woman sitting next to her. "They travel with the kid- yeah, it checks out- they come along to clean up. They clean up puke on any surface. You can get them cleaned up personally, like with a fresh T-shirt and that, but that's a la carte."
"The gouging, my God!" I half-squealed, and we all winced at the sound. "Sorry, too loud" I whispered loudly.
Josie was nodding. "I'm not surprised, I'm not surprised at all. Can you just see a bunch of teenagers in some ridiculous club, all the black-light on, the neon going, and next to every other kid is a janitor." We laughed. She continued, "I can picture they are all in coveralls- blue coveralls- except instead of Eddie on the name tags, it says Juan- right?" We laughed again, hard, and then abruptly stopped because of the racism.
Then, to make up for Josie's not-funny imaginings, we all started talking about how magnificent each other's children had turned out. We complimented each other on their child's bravery on the archery range that fall when that freshman had gotten scored by an errant arrow; another parent on how much compassion their kid had shown over the entire marking period when she offered to give calculus lessons to the less-gifted (that girl was too smart,) and how all the catcher-uppers she'd taken on had jumped one and a half grades that quarter; how another one's mind was so open and unassuming, basically just open to experience in a way every other child had not managed to retain past their pre-school years (this was lovingly intoned to Barbara and Angela, as predictably as taxation, whose sperm donor had been less than his dossier had described and whose child was merely average.) Then we made another pitcher of Greyhounds and took ginger bites of the catered stuffed french toast.
Spring Break Week tripped on, flashing by, and every day we would enthuse about our flock of underlings more and more. Stories became Bunyan-esque, so that the children were triathletes and had been scouted by Princeton, which did not normally scout for students but had just heard about little Turmoix/Evenellena...And we glowed, we did- we remembered, through the haze of recently-decriminalized pot smoke and perfumed Mohitos, how much we loved them. We remembered our pasts with those little imps with near-accuracy, and though we knew those re-tellings were full of air we kept our mouths shut about it. The inventions were too much fun, were a slumber party game that took all week to finish. We missed them, in the abstract.
On 6th-Day, there was a banquet. Everyone had become unusually still (despite the perfect champagne fountain that beckoned from Maria and Todd's front yard,) waiting for the host's toast. Todd stood, messily dressed in a 70's-era ruffle shirt tuxedo, and almost told everyone what we didn't want to know:
"Ok, all right, ok. Thanks for coming, you all. Maria and I had the best time ever of any of you. I don't say that to rub anyone's face in it, but as a compliment, because it was the most fun hosting our little crowd, wasn't it hon?" Maria nodded too enthusiastically to cover for Todd's lack of clarity. "Anyway." Todd looked around at all the puffy grown-up faces around him, and then sat down. He held a piece of paper to his wife. People looked at each other with wary, bloodshot eyes.
"So the limos are going to be here soon. They're sooner than expected, you guys." There was murmuring from us all- this had happened once, maybe twice before, and it was unwelcome news. "There's really more, guys." Maria swallowed. We all watched her throat work- her green lame minidress highlighted her neck so well it was hard not to. "I'd better just jump in. The limousine back from the airport is coming in almost exactly two hours."
There was silence, of course. No one wanted to give this thing any credit, so we played possum by not making a peep for thirty seconds. Finally someone said, "Are you kidding?"
Maria looked down at the paper her husband had been unable to bring himself to read, then back up again. "No, it's not a joke. The hotel had to evacuate late last night, and the kids got sent home early. They called and everything, but I guess no one was around." The association had thought itself clever when it had designated a singular land line as the contact phone number from the hotel or the charter company. That way there would be no repeated phone-calls that would take us from our 5th-Day Full Bacchanalia- the hired band, the beloved game of Orgy Charades that was anticipated with such pleasure during the year, the pup-tent vomitorium- to listen to details of sullen sun burnt highschoolers mistreating the local lizard population. Maria took a breath, exhaled it, took another one and said "two hours and zero minutes, people."
The place practically erupted in a fireball right then, fueled by the panic-sweat and pure adrenaline of a neighborhood's worth of very high responsible adults, flinging themselves out of their settees and laps that didn't belong to their spouses to run to the nearest service table or globe-sized water bong and make it go away. Fortunately, Maria and Todd had followed the prescribed emergency measures and kept their basement stocked with tarps, talcum powder, and three empty bathtubs; we managed to get everything put away or hidden, including the really shitfaced, who'd been thrown into a bed with their evening wear still on. There was no time to get changed, ourselves. The limousine arrived.
Fiona, the single mom from the very bottom of the cul-de-sac, suggested those not already in their underwear strip down, and that we would all get in the pool, except for Martin the widower, who was already in swimming trunks. He was stationed behind the Tiki bar, as if he'd been there making blender drinks all night.
Someone's child walked in, followed by everyone else's child. They were practically asleep on their feet, and the tans that we'd all paid for were indistinguishable under the group pallor. "Where is everybody?" the child said.
We all looked child-ward, as if we'd only just noticed them. Todd spoke first. "What was up with the hotel, sweetheart? You didn't get your last day!" This worked perfectly: all of the kids started up, saying the same thing about the unfairness of the situation and passing blame around like a tray full of crab-salad stuffed mushroom caps. We looked around at each other, wet and making plans to get out of the pool with unaccustomed poise, and there was an unspoken group spark: next year there would be a new fee, maybe- something to pay for the actors to play us, should this ever happen again, so that we could properly sober up while the children were telling their woeful tales and eating like caterpillars and someone else could be nodding their heads, listening.
All the children were gone- they were gone away, they were gone on vacation to various all-inclusive resorts in Cancun, Mexico. The neighborhood association had done its' math a few years back and realised that if all of the parents pooled their airfare money, they could hire a charter flight to bring their precious cargo to the babysat vacation clubs on the peninsula; this way, the offspring could practice some beginners hedonism within the assured confines and the parents could save some bucks. It had become the Grand Tradition that someone hold the week-long adults' sleepover in their house. The hosting parents were given the funds raised during regular Neighborhood Association shake-downs that happened at hotel conference rooms and Monday-night restaurants during the rest of the year. The hosting couple had full discretionary power to spend it outfitting their homes with the necessities of the week.
That power- the spending power, and more importantly the power to design themes for the Spring Break Sleepover- had been used poorly before: there had been strippers, of course (someone was going to be offended, no matter what sex the stripper was and no matter what costume they wore,) and there had been well-intentioned community "projects" involving the hire of a cement mixer to re-pave the path across one of the 48" wide strip of grass that separated the two halves of Willow Boulevard, and there had been mounds of PCP that was heavily cut with baby laxatives. There had been hyper, mildly hallucinating adults shitting in each other's yards for a week straight. At the next forum, it was agreed by all but one household that the association money would not be available to purchase street drugs. The couple that had voted Nay contended that they'd never had such a good layer of manure on their rose beds before; it had turned out to be a banner year for their yellow-and-pink All Americans. Still: only legal drugs would be allowed at any future Spring Break at-home parties.
"I'm not sure I know exactly where they are. I mean where on a map." Maria was saying. It was 3rd-Day brunch, so everyone's hangover was well established but not yet rooted in their stem cells, like on the 7th-Day Bar-B-Q Finale. Maria's face was tense. Todd reached over me and across the table, grazing my chest on the way like he always did, and put his hand over hers.
"We have a call later. We checked online this morning, remember? They are having a ball."
"I still couldn't find it on a map. That's what I mean- it makes me- it gives me this sense of unease," Maria finished. We all nodded. We were worried, and it was about the time in the festival when everyone started talking about the kids. There was a custom that we all followed instinctively, like lemmings, and it was to not talk about the kids at all until 3rd Day. The 1st-Day Kickoff Skinny Dip and Barn Dance was about nothing except letting the chaos of the mind that is subsumed during the rest of the year- for the sake of wholesomeness and just running a household- burst out in sketchy behaviors and at least one small, almost ceremonial accidental fire. 2nd-Day was somewhat mired in the neighborhood's first traditional steps toward pacing itself- it was the day when most of the workshops and professional lectures were scheduled. Most attended these things because they'd paid for them in association fees, and felt that they were going to get their god damned money's worth, though it was anyone's guess how many attendees were awake beneath their gigantic Jackie O sunglasses, worn by women and men for their voluminous and uncommunicative lenses.
"I told them they couldn't have any scuba time this year because of finances, but it was mostly me freaking out. I just could never get that story about those tweens who were trapped in that man-made coral configuration for five hours." This was Josie talking, and she was definitely a fusser. She was on the other side of the long table, too, and Todd took it upon himself to let go of his wife's hand so that he could reach over to her. He managed to boobgraze me again while he repositioned his arm to be heading in Josie's direction.
"That was smart. Limits. Kids respect them and all that." He twinkled sardonically. Josie smiled for the first time since the Dip-and-Dance, as it had come to be called. "Ari wanted to get a two-day club pass, have you heard about these things? You can buy this pass that lets them get into any club- and I mean any club- on the hotel strip, entrance fee pre-paid, and it comes with a traveling janitor."
I startled as if I'd been touched by a third, mystery arm Todd had been hiding. "Janitor?"
Maria leaned over and took my hand, possibly swiping the side of the breast attached to the woman sitting next to her. "They travel with the kid- yeah, it checks out- they come along to clean up. They clean up puke on any surface. You can get them cleaned up personally, like with a fresh T-shirt and that, but that's a la carte."
"The gouging, my God!" I half-squealed, and we all winced at the sound. "Sorry, too loud" I whispered loudly.
Josie was nodding. "I'm not surprised, I'm not surprised at all. Can you just see a bunch of teenagers in some ridiculous club, all the black-light on, the neon going, and next to every other kid is a janitor." We laughed. She continued, "I can picture they are all in coveralls- blue coveralls- except instead of Eddie on the name tags, it says Juan- right?" We laughed again, hard, and then abruptly stopped because of the racism.
Then, to make up for Josie's not-funny imaginings, we all started talking about how magnificent each other's children had turned out. We complimented each other on their child's bravery on the archery range that fall when that freshman had gotten scored by an errant arrow; another parent on how much compassion their kid had shown over the entire marking period when she offered to give calculus lessons to the less-gifted (that girl was too smart,) and how all the catcher-uppers she'd taken on had jumped one and a half grades that quarter; how another one's mind was so open and unassuming, basically just open to experience in a way every other child had not managed to retain past their pre-school years (this was lovingly intoned to Barbara and Angela, as predictably as taxation, whose sperm donor had been less than his dossier had described and whose child was merely average.) Then we made another pitcher of Greyhounds and took ginger bites of the catered stuffed french toast.
Spring Break Week tripped on, flashing by, and every day we would enthuse about our flock of underlings more and more. Stories became Bunyan-esque, so that the children were triathletes and had been scouted by Princeton, which did not normally scout for students but had just heard about little Turmoix/Evenellena...And we glowed, we did- we remembered, through the haze of recently-decriminalized pot smoke and perfumed Mohitos, how much we loved them. We remembered our pasts with those little imps with near-accuracy, and though we knew those re-tellings were full of air we kept our mouths shut about it. The inventions were too much fun, were a slumber party game that took all week to finish. We missed them, in the abstract.
On 6th-Day, there was a banquet. Everyone had become unusually still (despite the perfect champagne fountain that beckoned from Maria and Todd's front yard,) waiting for the host's toast. Todd stood, messily dressed in a 70's-era ruffle shirt tuxedo, and almost told everyone what we didn't want to know:
"Ok, all right, ok. Thanks for coming, you all. Maria and I had the best time ever of any of you. I don't say that to rub anyone's face in it, but as a compliment, because it was the most fun hosting our little crowd, wasn't it hon?" Maria nodded too enthusiastically to cover for Todd's lack of clarity. "Anyway." Todd looked around at all the puffy grown-up faces around him, and then sat down. He held a piece of paper to his wife. People looked at each other with wary, bloodshot eyes.
"So the limos are going to be here soon. They're sooner than expected, you guys." There was murmuring from us all- this had happened once, maybe twice before, and it was unwelcome news. "There's really more, guys." Maria swallowed. We all watched her throat work- her green lame minidress highlighted her neck so well it was hard not to. "I'd better just jump in. The limousine back from the airport is coming in almost exactly two hours."
There was silence, of course. No one wanted to give this thing any credit, so we played possum by not making a peep for thirty seconds. Finally someone said, "Are you kidding?"
Maria looked down at the paper her husband had been unable to bring himself to read, then back up again. "No, it's not a joke. The hotel had to evacuate late last night, and the kids got sent home early. They called and everything, but I guess no one was around." The association had thought itself clever when it had designated a singular land line as the contact phone number from the hotel or the charter company. That way there would be no repeated phone-calls that would take us from our 5th-Day Full Bacchanalia- the hired band, the beloved game of Orgy Charades that was anticipated with such pleasure during the year, the pup-tent vomitorium- to listen to details of sullen sun burnt highschoolers mistreating the local lizard population. Maria took a breath, exhaled it, took another one and said "two hours and zero minutes, people."
The place practically erupted in a fireball right then, fueled by the panic-sweat and pure adrenaline of a neighborhood's worth of very high responsible adults, flinging themselves out of their settees and laps that didn't belong to their spouses to run to the nearest service table or globe-sized water bong and make it go away. Fortunately, Maria and Todd had followed the prescribed emergency measures and kept their basement stocked with tarps, talcum powder, and three empty bathtubs; we managed to get everything put away or hidden, including the really shitfaced, who'd been thrown into a bed with their evening wear still on. There was no time to get changed, ourselves. The limousine arrived.
Fiona, the single mom from the very bottom of the cul-de-sac, suggested those not already in their underwear strip down, and that we would all get in the pool, except for Martin the widower, who was already in swimming trunks. He was stationed behind the Tiki bar, as if he'd been there making blender drinks all night.
Someone's child walked in, followed by everyone else's child. They were practically asleep on their feet, and the tans that we'd all paid for were indistinguishable under the group pallor. "Where is everybody?" the child said.
We all looked child-ward, as if we'd only just noticed them. Todd spoke first. "What was up with the hotel, sweetheart? You didn't get your last day!" This worked perfectly: all of the kids started up, saying the same thing about the unfairness of the situation and passing blame around like a tray full of crab-salad stuffed mushroom caps. We looked around at each other, wet and making plans to get out of the pool with unaccustomed poise, and there was an unspoken group spark: next year there would be a new fee, maybe- something to pay for the actors to play us, should this ever happen again, so that we could properly sober up while the children were telling their woeful tales and eating like caterpillars and someone else could be nodding their heads, listening.
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
Stupid Questions
One of the things that the UK wants to know is if I'm a terrorist. It seems worried, because it asks repeatedly. It uses almost identical language every time:
Are you now or have you ever held beliefs that were in support of any actions that have led or might lead to acts of terror perpetrated upon the people or peoples of the UK?... Have you now or did you ever in the past or do you think you might some day in the unknowable future collect materials that could actively or subliminally sway a young and/or stupid person to perpetrate violence or concoct violent plots against a person or the peoples of the UK?... Will you now or might you ever or did you ever or do you think you might if you had a time-bending machine ("TARDIS") think about one day becoming/became/will become violences that might/did/may one day hurt or irritate or generally inconvenience a person or people of the UK?...How about now?
The questions seemed written expressly to fail at what they intend to do. I now believe that these inane, counterintuitively overt questions about the applicants' ideological leanings are designed to be such a barrage of ridiculousness that the terrorist-to-be will simply laugh themselves into answering one of them honestly, as a joke.
Terrorist: Ha ha ha ha ha- ah ha ha ha ha! Woo! Uh huh huh ha ha! Boy these questions are idiotic! I'll just put down "yes" right here, just to make it interesting for them! Morons!
If you see it that way, you understand that the second- the very second- the Terrorist answers affirmatively, National Security, Scotland Yard, The Queen's Guard, Agatha Christie and Lord Peter Whimsey will show up, taking the room from every possible direction, bursting through walls and windows and ceiling (except Agatha and Lord Peter, who will come in through the door,) grab the Terrorist and begin beating them gently about the head and neck in a very civilized way. Then there will be reading of rights- every right that was ever written down, from the defendant's rights as stated by the Vikings (consisting entirely of hitting on the head until the defendant no longer feels like protesting, or is dead) to current Alabama State law (wherein the defendant is asked about their local lineage and the answers duly recorded until one of two things happens: the defendant runs away and dives into the municipally-maintained gator pool, or everyone waits for the lawyer, who brings a pitcher full of whiskey lemonade so that they can whet their whistles.)
And Then: the Justice. Slow, slow justice- but justice nonetheless. Right?
It brings to mind other stupid questions of the bureaucracy. The multiple-choice questions on any Driver's Tests, like whether or not you should stop when you drive up to a stop sign at a four-way stop signed intersection? There are the questions at a doctor's office, asked by both the nurse who brings you to the real Waiting Room (only after you've passed the Waiting-Room test in the novice's Waiting-Room Facade out front,) about swelling and fever and vague feelings of unease when you're there with a kitchen knife buried in your ankle. (For the record, I loves me some doctors and nurses. Some of my best friends are health care professionals.) There are sheets you must sign and send back to your child's school IMMEDIATELY, stating that you received the sheet you just signed. The Chicago Public School system is masterly at sending papers home that you must sign and return so that the system has it on record that you received the paper you just signed... it's as if there's a secret society of public school administrators who've made a sacred vow to collect those piles of dead tree shavings so that they have some of every one's DNA on file (the blood from your pen-bruised writing fingers puts it there)...just in case.
Answering these queries- these stupid, stupid queries- has also brought to mind some questions that I really should be answering.
Are you sure you want to do this?
Does anyone really care if you look your age?
What constitutes "clean", anyway? (Please answer individually: laundry; carpet; family silver; hair.)
Do you now, or have you ever, used Ignoring Things as a viable life action?
Multiple Choice: what is Love? A. the power that fuels all things good in the world, B. A warm blankie and a chilly dessert, C. The terrible propaganda that the infidels spread to lull the believers into a false sense of possibility, D. Love is the Universe, and the Universe is Love, E....Puppies! Gandhi! The opiate of the masses! PASS! NEXT QUESTION!
Are you sure you want to do this?
And, finally: Hey terrorist! I really think you'd like the show Dr. Who. Have you ever seen it?
...sorry, that last one snuck in there; it's from the UK's Visa application. Or it should be.
Are you now or have you ever held beliefs that were in support of any actions that have led or might lead to acts of terror perpetrated upon the people or peoples of the UK?... Have you now or did you ever in the past or do you think you might some day in the unknowable future collect materials that could actively or subliminally sway a young and/or stupid person to perpetrate violence or concoct violent plots against a person or the peoples of the UK?... Will you now or might you ever or did you ever or do you think you might if you had a time-bending machine ("TARDIS") think about one day becoming/became/will become violences that might/did/may one day hurt or irritate or generally inconvenience a person or people of the UK?...How about now?
The questions seemed written expressly to fail at what they intend to do. I now believe that these inane, counterintuitively overt questions about the applicants' ideological leanings are designed to be such a barrage of ridiculousness that the terrorist-to-be will simply laugh themselves into answering one of them honestly, as a joke.
Terrorist: Ha ha ha ha ha- ah ha ha ha ha! Woo! Uh huh huh ha ha! Boy these questions are idiotic! I'll just put down "yes" right here, just to make it interesting for them! Morons!
If you see it that way, you understand that the second- the very second- the Terrorist answers affirmatively, National Security, Scotland Yard, The Queen's Guard, Agatha Christie and Lord Peter Whimsey will show up, taking the room from every possible direction, bursting through walls and windows and ceiling (except Agatha and Lord Peter, who will come in through the door,) grab the Terrorist and begin beating them gently about the head and neck in a very civilized way. Then there will be reading of rights- every right that was ever written down, from the defendant's rights as stated by the Vikings (consisting entirely of hitting on the head until the defendant no longer feels like protesting, or is dead) to current Alabama State law (wherein the defendant is asked about their local lineage and the answers duly recorded until one of two things happens: the defendant runs away and dives into the municipally-maintained gator pool, or everyone waits for the lawyer, who brings a pitcher full of whiskey lemonade so that they can whet their whistles.)
And Then: the Justice. Slow, slow justice- but justice nonetheless. Right?
It brings to mind other stupid questions of the bureaucracy. The multiple-choice questions on any Driver's Tests, like whether or not you should stop when you drive up to a stop sign at a four-way stop signed intersection? There are the questions at a doctor's office, asked by both the nurse who brings you to the real Waiting Room (only after you've passed the Waiting-Room test in the novice's Waiting-Room Facade out front,) about swelling and fever and vague feelings of unease when you're there with a kitchen knife buried in your ankle. (For the record, I loves me some doctors and nurses. Some of my best friends are health care professionals.) There are sheets you must sign and send back to your child's school IMMEDIATELY, stating that you received the sheet you just signed. The Chicago Public School system is masterly at sending papers home that you must sign and return so that the system has it on record that you received the paper you just signed... it's as if there's a secret society of public school administrators who've made a sacred vow to collect those piles of dead tree shavings so that they have some of every one's DNA on file (the blood from your pen-bruised writing fingers puts it there)...just in case.
Answering these queries- these stupid, stupid queries- has also brought to mind some questions that I really should be answering.
Are you sure you want to do this?
Does anyone really care if you look your age?
What constitutes "clean", anyway? (Please answer individually: laundry; carpet; family silver; hair.)
Do you now, or have you ever, used Ignoring Things as a viable life action?
Multiple Choice: what is Love? A. the power that fuels all things good in the world, B. A warm blankie and a chilly dessert, C. The terrible propaganda that the infidels spread to lull the believers into a false sense of possibility, D. Love is the Universe, and the Universe is Love, E....Puppies! Gandhi! The opiate of the masses! PASS! NEXT QUESTION!
Are you sure you want to do this?
And, finally: Hey terrorist! I really think you'd like the show Dr. Who. Have you ever seen it?
...sorry, that last one snuck in there; it's from the UK's Visa application. Or it should be.
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
Artistry
Singe’s boyfriend was handsome once she’d done him up. She gave him a scar, because she’d always thought scars were handsome and rugged and made charming new creases in a face, if it was a lucky face. And she made him darker: she’d start with a wash, a gentle wash, of a slate-y blue that would offset the proclivity toward orange in almost every foundation. She would layer some bases, starting with the darkest one which she would brush upward from his neck with a Kabuki brush that she used for damp work. Then she would sponge a light base, on top of the brow ridges and cheek bones and chin, in tiny splots; finally a layer of medium base would be smoothed down with her fingers. It was an unorthodox approach- most artists would insist that it was not possible to get that kind of depth for any up-close screen time, but Singe let her boyfriend’s face speak for itself.
She talked him into eyelashes. Brian was reasonable about all of it- he was indulgent and calm when she’d first tried the scar, for example- but he’d balked at false eyelashes. “I’m sorry, I just think it will make me look like a girl” he said.
“You should try looking like a girl. I could make you into a very pretty one- you already have good eyes for that, which is why I want to put these little things around them.” She held up a few single false lashes. “But not like a girl. I’m thinking of Sean Connery lashes, Ricardo Montalban lashes. Carey Grant lashes, honey. He was beautiful but not a girl, get it?” Singe twirled a bit around the canvas chair that Bri was on, in front of her work station at TATT Studios, her regular gig that required she make young actors look older and old actors look infantile. In the past year she’d started to make her young people look older and her older people look interesting. It had been subtle, just minute changes involving highlighter in pinpricks around a few lash lines, so that there was a naturalesque brightness; at the same time and on the same person she would add a drop of solution that made some capillaries pop up in the whites of those eyes. It made her people look like they were right at the peak of a smoky and fascinating party.
The mention of a Bond Man had worked its dependable magic. Brian looked at the lashes on her fingertip. “I always thought false lashes were- y’know- all in a line, like they were attached to a string. I keep thinking of that. Those are like the legs of some bug.” Trevor took one of the lashes from her fingertip by licking his own and pressing it to hers, like she’d mimed it.
“Yeah, they come like that and you cut them up. I just want to put these few on those peepers of yours.”
Brian sighed and decided to be charmed. “You can do it if you promise to always call them peepers.” So Singe got her wish, and put the almost unmanageably small, elegant false lashes on her boyfriend, and it was just as she’d promised: he was an exotic, a rapscallion; he was certainly a criminal and devastatingly good in bed. He was trouble, once the makeup was on. He liked it. They went out for the dinner that he’d been waiting to take her to. He pulled out Singe’s chair, which was new.
“You’re acting different.” Singe settled in and watched his behavior- sweet but distractable by day, the same by night- slide into a different gear, or plane, or something (she wasn’t willing to commit to which kind of change she thought it was by describing it too meticulously.)
“I don’t think so.” He said, relaxed and beckoning the server with a lowered brow and even gaze. Singe had never seen him lower his brow with any seriousness before. Once the server- a funny woman that needed a good concealer and concealer brush and a blue-red lip stain instead of an orange-red lipstick- came over, Brian ordered for the both of them.
“You just ordered for us.”
He smiled. He took her hand. "I thought- it just suits the mood-" he told her, and blushed, which she could discern because she knew what to look for.
She thought about blushing- her own blushing. She knew what kind of skin she had, and where she would blush (around the neck, seeping upward past her jaw to make two Medium Tuber Rose III saucers on both of her cheeks, low.) She hadn't felt the spark in the nerves under her collarbones that signified a coming blush yet. Then Brian kissed the palm of the hand he was holding. There was blushing from her, in discreet and indiscreet places on her body. When the food came, she ate it from the fork he offered- he refused to let her feed herself, and he smiled while he did it, and his fringed eyes shone in the glare of the poorly chosen three-bulb chandelier that was over their table, loitering just at forehead level. Then she ordered them both dessert and they took turns feeding each other, which resulted in dripped-upon shirts. They both thought of going back to TATT Studio to ostensibly wash their shirts in Costume/Wigs washers. The machines were part of any good TV studio's equipment, as were the union cots. There were three of those. They were kept in a supply closet, folded and expectant.
Singe and Brian put their dirty tops in the washer and Singe ran it. "It'll be a half-hour. We got them in early enough so I don't think they'll need any more than that- any soaking time and all that." She was looking at Brian's chest as she said it, watching the line at his neck where the foundation ended and half-thinking about what she needed to add (some Ochre, Some Nutmeg Series L mixed with it,) and half not-thinking. Brian watched her eyes.
"Does it need something? I see you planning more of this-" He indicated his own neckline in a strong, fiery way. She put her hand on his chest, between the pectorals and their tell-tale nipples.
"Yes," she said, and instead of her leading him to the cots, he took her forearm and led her. They got to the supply closet (someone on the set who had a sly and patient sense of humor had put spotless hand towels and spray cleaner on the shelf directly behind the cots- just at eye level- where there were normally broken printer parts and black computer screens,) and pulled out a cot and unfolded it in the hallway. There was a dressing room not fifteen feet away, but rolling it there, bent over in an unsexy way for pushing, was too much to ask them; they took off their respective pants and lay down and kissed and petted and nipped (Bri had never nipped before, but he was somehow a sensate and knew just when to widen his jaws again, preventing a biting bruise that was not easy to render unrecognisable, no matter how much putty and Siren Pink One was used.) Singe was gratified by her success: he had changed, under her hands, into someone who was less considerate of her feelings and more considerate of her needs. She was absorbed, too: her mind layered colors like waves, washing up and down and back and forth, thinking about textures and false hairs or moles or contact lenses (not contacts, she decided during a change in position.) She thought, or half-dreamed, and then came hard.
The next week she was listless from too much imagining. Her job was the same, it paid the bills; it was a way to pass time, which made it unfulfilling. Brian was somewhere warm for business- he was gone for six days. She'd told him to bronze himself in sunlight, not visit a tanning booth of any kind, and to put a washcloth on his face when he was laying out. "So cover my face? Is anything OK, do I have to use the washcloth or is it just anything, keep it covered?" He knew there were distinctions. He was beginning to name some materials, like latex and talc and eyebrow templates.
"It has to be a washcloth. It covers, but not entirely, so some UV gets under the edges and through the weave. The tan is more natural. You don't have the farmer's arm pattern, the hard line." He accepted this, and smiled, and they'd kissed and he told her she was crazy just like he would have said something romantic, like I'll Miss You or some such. She felt his leaving as a small deflatement. She'd spent two days mooning and mixing up palettes like the eternal walnut-shell guessing game, which was something she did regularly to see what might pair itself and make its' suggestion for a new shadowing taupe or reverse-cat-eye liner color. Nothing took her fancy. On the third day she picked up a brush for eyes ( a brush for creases, large, used for base vanillas and yellows to build bruises upon,) dabbed it in A Rose This Way Comes, and began rounding her cheeks, in efficient quarter-circles. Singe had phenomenal, almost childish, skin and so could afford to leave off the foundation. Still she picked up a liquid base brush, one of the tiny ones, and did pointelle over her jawbone with something luminescent and colorless. Her long, angled cheekbones widened with these effects and it made her look Slavic, or like one with some Slavic in the family thrown in with her natural light Jamaican. It was strange, and she liked it, so she continued: She was Slavic-ish and an insomniac with Deep Taupe gel under too-light concealer. The next day she played with scars until she'd created the old fused damage of a motorcycle crash survivor, with barely perceptible white hash marks to connote the 54 stitches she'd gotten on her face and neck. The next day there were the markings of 77 stitches, and poorly done so that the split cheek hadn't healed well and puckered deeply. After that she gave herself the bone-deep pallor of one who'd barely escaped drowning.
Her workmates were amused until the drowning one, so she made the next day a happy face, opening her eyes with liner and lash and over-glossing her mouth so that she looked giddy and coked up, which everyone found almost as bad. On Friday she made her masterpiece: she aged herself thirty four years. Age makeup is the most artful of all cosmetic devices, though there were some that disagreed with that assessment ( like Farrah at LTX, who had made her own periodic chart of bases and blushes and shadows and pigments, so that she could treat each of her people like they were science experiments; her people left her chair looking like changeable dolls, exact and lifeless. They each had a healthy respect for the other. ) But Singe approached ageing like a professional dowser, looking at the subject for an hour before starting, making unconscious notes about pores and dullness and blood patterns. Singe looked at herself for two hours before she started.
She layered all kinds of things, building her old skin with the usual Bone and Mint pre-bases and the liquid latex and the carefully chosen blend of foundations that were lighter than her present skin. She lavished her cheeks with the wrinkler and patted it into her brow lines and chin creases, which was the opposite of the standard application. Her face became striated with fine vertical lines on her cheeks and curving around the eyes. The crow's feet she made with moulded latex were so thin they were transparent, and she used a putty mixed with a toner to glue them on. The foundation was layered like veils or kerchiefs, covering some areas and not others, leaving skin open to a different interpretation with a different color. The whole round was five hours in her canvas chair, including the preliminary staring and the clean-up. A co-worker walked in.
"Have you seen Singe?" the co-worker said.
"I'm right here" she responded, in her natural voice. The co-worker looked around the room once and then left. Singe looked in her friendly behemoth of a mirror and smiled. The makeup moved with her as her skin would move with her in thirty-four years. Give or take, she thought.
Brian was due to come home that night, late, and he wasn't expecting her; she paid to park and waited for him at the baggage carousel. She hadn't changed: She had her work shirt- an old white men's button-down- and a skirt that was non-descript. Her hair was the same as she'd worn it to work, with the addition of a few tiny rhinestoned snaps. She waited for Bri- she was excited to see him.
Brian came down the escalator leading to the baggage area. He didn't see her. He went to the carousel and waited for his case. Singe wanted to say something, to jump up to him and smile, but she held herself back. He found his suitcase, leaned, grabbed, and picked it up and turned around. She was right in front of him.
He was tanner, but not too tan- he'd taken her advice and shielded his face. She looked directly at him, and he looked directly at her.
"You," Brian said.
He smiled. He took her hand. "I thought- it just suits the mood-" he told her, and blushed, which she could discern because she knew what to look for.
She thought about blushing- her own blushing. She knew what kind of skin she had, and where she would blush (around the neck, seeping upward past her jaw to make two Medium Tuber Rose III saucers on both of her cheeks, low.) She hadn't felt the spark in the nerves under her collarbones that signified a coming blush yet. Then Brian kissed the palm of the hand he was holding. There was blushing from her, in discreet and indiscreet places on her body. When the food came, she ate it from the fork he offered- he refused to let her feed herself, and he smiled while he did it, and his fringed eyes shone in the glare of the poorly chosen three-bulb chandelier that was over their table, loitering just at forehead level. Then she ordered them both dessert and they took turns feeding each other, which resulted in dripped-upon shirts. They both thought of going back to TATT Studio to ostensibly wash their shirts in Costume/Wigs washers. The machines were part of any good TV studio's equipment, as were the union cots. There were three of those. They were kept in a supply closet, folded and expectant.
Singe and Brian put their dirty tops in the washer and Singe ran it. "It'll be a half-hour. We got them in early enough so I don't think they'll need any more than that- any soaking time and all that." She was looking at Brian's chest as she said it, watching the line at his neck where the foundation ended and half-thinking about what she needed to add (some Ochre, Some Nutmeg Series L mixed with it,) and half not-thinking. Brian watched her eyes.
"Does it need something? I see you planning more of this-" He indicated his own neckline in a strong, fiery way. She put her hand on his chest, between the pectorals and their tell-tale nipples.
"Yes," she said, and instead of her leading him to the cots, he took her forearm and led her. They got to the supply closet (someone on the set who had a sly and patient sense of humor had put spotless hand towels and spray cleaner on the shelf directly behind the cots- just at eye level- where there were normally broken printer parts and black computer screens,) and pulled out a cot and unfolded it in the hallway. There was a dressing room not fifteen feet away, but rolling it there, bent over in an unsexy way for pushing, was too much to ask them; they took off their respective pants and lay down and kissed and petted and nipped (Bri had never nipped before, but he was somehow a sensate and knew just when to widen his jaws again, preventing a biting bruise that was not easy to render unrecognisable, no matter how much putty and Siren Pink One was used.) Singe was gratified by her success: he had changed, under her hands, into someone who was less considerate of her feelings and more considerate of her needs. She was absorbed, too: her mind layered colors like waves, washing up and down and back and forth, thinking about textures and false hairs or moles or contact lenses (not contacts, she decided during a change in position.) She thought, or half-dreamed, and then came hard.
The next week she was listless from too much imagining. Her job was the same, it paid the bills; it was a way to pass time, which made it unfulfilling. Brian was somewhere warm for business- he was gone for six days. She'd told him to bronze himself in sunlight, not visit a tanning booth of any kind, and to put a washcloth on his face when he was laying out. "So cover my face? Is anything OK, do I have to use the washcloth or is it just anything, keep it covered?" He knew there were distinctions. He was beginning to name some materials, like latex and talc and eyebrow templates.
"It has to be a washcloth. It covers, but not entirely, so some UV gets under the edges and through the weave. The tan is more natural. You don't have the farmer's arm pattern, the hard line." He accepted this, and smiled, and they'd kissed and he told her she was crazy just like he would have said something romantic, like I'll Miss You or some such. She felt his leaving as a small deflatement. She'd spent two days mooning and mixing up palettes like the eternal walnut-shell guessing game, which was something she did regularly to see what might pair itself and make its' suggestion for a new shadowing taupe or reverse-cat-eye liner color. Nothing took her fancy. On the third day she picked up a brush for eyes ( a brush for creases, large, used for base vanillas and yellows to build bruises upon,) dabbed it in A Rose This Way Comes, and began rounding her cheeks, in efficient quarter-circles. Singe had phenomenal, almost childish, skin and so could afford to leave off the foundation. Still she picked up a liquid base brush, one of the tiny ones, and did pointelle over her jawbone with something luminescent and colorless. Her long, angled cheekbones widened with these effects and it made her look Slavic, or like one with some Slavic in the family thrown in with her natural light Jamaican. It was strange, and she liked it, so she continued: She was Slavic-ish and an insomniac with Deep Taupe gel under too-light concealer. The next day she played with scars until she'd created the old fused damage of a motorcycle crash survivor, with barely perceptible white hash marks to connote the 54 stitches she'd gotten on her face and neck. The next day there were the markings of 77 stitches, and poorly done so that the split cheek hadn't healed well and puckered deeply. After that she gave herself the bone-deep pallor of one who'd barely escaped drowning.
Her workmates were amused until the drowning one, so she made the next day a happy face, opening her eyes with liner and lash and over-glossing her mouth so that she looked giddy and coked up, which everyone found almost as bad. On Friday she made her masterpiece: she aged herself thirty four years. Age makeup is the most artful of all cosmetic devices, though there were some that disagreed with that assessment ( like Farrah at LTX, who had made her own periodic chart of bases and blushes and shadows and pigments, so that she could treat each of her people like they were science experiments; her people left her chair looking like changeable dolls, exact and lifeless. They each had a healthy respect for the other. ) But Singe approached ageing like a professional dowser, looking at the subject for an hour before starting, making unconscious notes about pores and dullness and blood patterns. Singe looked at herself for two hours before she started.
She layered all kinds of things, building her old skin with the usual Bone and Mint pre-bases and the liquid latex and the carefully chosen blend of foundations that were lighter than her present skin. She lavished her cheeks with the wrinkler and patted it into her brow lines and chin creases, which was the opposite of the standard application. Her face became striated with fine vertical lines on her cheeks and curving around the eyes. The crow's feet she made with moulded latex were so thin they were transparent, and she used a putty mixed with a toner to glue them on. The foundation was layered like veils or kerchiefs, covering some areas and not others, leaving skin open to a different interpretation with a different color. The whole round was five hours in her canvas chair, including the preliminary staring and the clean-up. A co-worker walked in.
"Have you seen Singe?" the co-worker said.
"I'm right here" she responded, in her natural voice. The co-worker looked around the room once and then left. Singe looked in her friendly behemoth of a mirror and smiled. The makeup moved with her as her skin would move with her in thirty-four years. Give or take, she thought.
Brian was due to come home that night, late, and he wasn't expecting her; she paid to park and waited for him at the baggage carousel. She hadn't changed: She had her work shirt- an old white men's button-down- and a skirt that was non-descript. Her hair was the same as she'd worn it to work, with the addition of a few tiny rhinestoned snaps. She waited for Bri- she was excited to see him.
Brian came down the escalator leading to the baggage area. He didn't see her. He went to the carousel and waited for his case. Singe wanted to say something, to jump up to him and smile, but she held herself back. He found his suitcase, leaned, grabbed, and picked it up and turned around. She was right in front of him.
He was tanner, but not too tan- he'd taken her advice and shielded his face. She looked directly at him, and he looked directly at her.
"You," Brian said.
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