There was a woman in the trailer park whose father had bought her trailer for her; though she had done nothing in her life to earn the requisite cash she'd have needed to at least put down on a trailer, she referred to it as "hers." She was house proud- she had a garden, her own larger-than-normal bit of land, owing to the trailer's position at the end of a row. She'd planted chrysanthemums and irises right next to each other and it looked weird. The plants were randomly assigned, so that when you were in her garden you had to walk around the flowers, which were frequently hidden in robust clumps of weeds. Her name was Chryssie.
There was another person in the trailer park- a young man. He was definitely a man, no longer the age where other adults referred to him as a "young man" to his face but who still called him a kid when speaking to each other. His name was Wolfgang. He'd inherited it from an uncle who'd passed away years before, and Wolfgang remembered this uncle as being the kind who'd come over three times a year and drink something he'd brought, usually something in a single bottle and fancy, comparatively speaking. He'd make jokes that were funny every other time. So the young man had no objection to being named Wolfgang. He would walk around Standish Estates and look at his neighbor's units and their picnic tables and their foraged stones that they'd put in neat lines bordering the paths to their doors (it was a popular look.) He would slow down at Chryssie's trailer to watch her.
She was almost always outside when he walked, and for a while he imagined that she was doing it deliberately because she had a secret crush on him. She certainly waved hard enough when he walked by, using both hands and arms with vigor, moving them across space almost presidentially; also she smiled. "Hi Wolfgang! Hi there, I see you! Hiya Wolfgang! You should say Hi back- look at me, I'm waving so hard you should say Hi back!" she'd say, but all he managed was a small smile. Ostensibly he did this so that he didn't encourage the presumed crush she had on him.
There came a day when she wasn't there, and then one immediately after. This turned into a week, maybe eight days, and Wolfgang thought while she was absent. He realized that, of the two of them, it was more likely that he had the crush- he didn't feel the way he supposed a crush was supposed to feel- there was nothing tingling on him, neither high nor low, and he didn't lose track of his intent to walk his usual Standish Estates perimeter. However- well, he kept looking for her, and that must have been what a crush was like. He decided he had the wrong idea of what a crush was in the first place. He walked and searched for her at her place and then around, generally.
On that eighth day, he decided to pace. He'd done his round, and he just could not let his unease settle into mild detachment, so he paced back and forth in front of her trailer. When he saw Virginia Cravach looking at him as intently from her next-door kitchen half-window, he moved into Chryssie's yard, which was fenced (a luxury) and gave him semi-privacy. He shook his fists at Virginia's kitchen because he knew there was greater privacy in the world outside the trailer park. During the gesturing, a car pulled up in front of Chryssie's trailer. Wolfgang jogged the twenty feet from the end of her yard to her front path, and she was being helped out of the sedan by a man older than her by a few decades, at least. Chryssie herself was quiet and kept looking at the man with a sour expression to make him leave.
"Oh great, you're here already. Linda must have called the service while I was at Shadytown-" said the older man. "Could you just grab her here- by the arm is good, she associates it with the center and it's soothing."
Chryssie looked at Wolfgang slyly, a look that he'd never seen on her face before, and that was including every time he'd seen her in the ten years he'd lived there. She then said "I associate it."
Wolfgang piped up. "I'm not from a service." He felt he should have said more, but didn't.
"Oh god, I'm sorry." Older man held out his hand. "I'm Desmond, Chryssie's father. thank you so much for being here- thank you so much. I need to go. I hate that I need to go, Chryssie. but I have other plans for us soon, and you know I'm good for it."
"Aahh- plans" she replied.
Desmond smiled, and Chryssie suddenly smiled back and the sour expression wasn't even a memory on her face. :"Plans! Plans, Chryssie!" Then he made an awful villain face and rubbed his hands together, saying "Plans for you, my dear." Then he got in his car. "It was nice to meet you."
Chryssie, after an appropriate pause, looked at Wolfgang. "Could you take me by the arm anyway? I do actually find it soothing, but I hate to admit it in front of him." Wolfgang could think of no reason to hesitate. "Thank you. Also it's not because of the center. Who could be properly brought down in a place called Shadytown, anyway? What a name."
"It's a ridiculous name. Why would they name a health center Shadytown?" He'd carefully left out the word "mental' before "health center". He hadn't been raised by wolves, after all.
"It's only called that because it has no shade. None. The Commons is just an overheated fish tank without water when it's sunny." She sighed. He was still holding her arm, and he gently put it down next to her side before he let it go. "Oh, that's all right" she whispered both tenderly and dispassionately. And that was it for Wolfgang: he fell, somehow- he fell for Chryssie, who was a bit older than him (he had no idea how much older) and just come back from a mental institution after being treated for nerves or depression or bipolarism. These were the mental illnesses he was familiar with, and he'd read about them in Time or whatever news magazine his other uncle subscribed to. (Wolfgang lived with his other uncle, who was named Sid after no one in particular. He'd lived with Sid since his mother died and left him the trailer- Sid had come with it, a permanent inhabitant with the only steady employment to speak of. It was a good arrangement, but a juiceless one: Sid preferred to watch the same stuff on television every night, and spent his weekends on the couch, watching more of the same stuff in marathon form. Occasionally Sid would go square dancing with his regular date, who seemed to be Sid's girlfriend except that she was never around and Sid never spoke about her. When she came over, and crammed her gigantic crinolines and cowgirl snap-down shirt into the trailer, taking up more than half the width of the living area, Sid seemed happy; still, no telling.)
So he fell, somehow. Again it didn't feel like falling or twinkling or giving his heart or anything else to her (he wondered how that expression came to be, since it was so bogus.) He did feel proprietary. He would be the arm-taker, now. He would be the one to soothe her and determine how she was soothed, and he would listen to her. He felt a strong need to listen to her and whatever she said, and to think about what she'd said. He supposed that he'd got it wrong about love all around, not just about what constituted a crush.
They were together for months, sailing along, together- visiting for days at a time, with no thought from either side of moving in. Chryssie was exuberant and weird and a good sport. Wolfgang was focused and smiling and kinder than he knew he could be, which he supposed was what love was (he was always adjusting his definition.) There were a few times when she herself grew quiet, and had a pained expression on her face, and drank. There was a lack of regular sleeping hours- she became narcoleptic and slumped into herself any time, doing anything. Wolfgang got out of bed and got dressed when she passed out like that during their "sexy times," as she put it (they had both been virgins when they decided to slip downward and consummate their unspoken love- they'd told each other the next morning when they woke up still on the floor, and they'd both found it hilarious.) But when she'd fallen asleep like that, he got up and got dressed and woke her half-way so that he could half-lift her into a cab.
He went to Shadytown with her in his arms. He wasn't alarmed. He'd read about this in Time or whatever, and he'd decided even then- even before they'd spoken- how he would act if and when the need arose. So he stayed calm, and he admitted her easily as the yet-more-calm lady who admitted Chryssie had her own pet name for his girlfriend. That was slightly unsettling, and he thought about being unsettled while he quietly waited for someone to come out and tell him what to do next. He sat in the separate waiting room and was gently shaken awake by someone in a lab coat sixteen hours later.
"You're Wolfgang" proclaimed Lab Coat. This person's demeanor was almost intimidatingly calm and definitely professional.
"Hey there" said Wolfgang. He felt very awake now.
"Thanks for bringing her in. It's the narcolepsy that's the surest sign of a peak coming, and I've never seen you for Chryssie before but you caught that right away."
Wolfgang blushed like a schoolchild. "It was pretty obvious."
"Good. So, anyway- she's here, she's in need of a stay for a few days. I think 'til Monday would help." Said Lab Coat. It was Wednesday. It seemed an inordinate amount of time to him, but he didn't say so- he just went home. Sid was there. He mentioned what had happened to Sid- in a glancing way, something about taking her to the doctor's and how he intended to shower and get a good night's sleep. Sid made soothing noises of his own. Wolfgang slept and paced, waiting until Monday. The morning came and he picked her up in another cab, which was paid for by a standing account of Chryssie's father's.
She was quiet and contemplative on the ride home. When he asked her, as he'd been meaning to ask her, in his most exact, most diplomatic words, what was wrong with her, she turned to him and smiled. She looked at him for a few minutes that way, just sitting there, like she was stuck. Wolfgang sat with the most dignified cab-seat posture he had, and waited and looked back. He didn't break eye contact. Then she said "it's schizophrenia, if you must know." She then leaned over and kissed him, and he was relieved and kissed back, which turned into a full clutch in the back of the car with the cab driver looking in his rearview with a mildly disgusted expression for the rest of the ride.
When they got home, Wolfgang moved his few things into her trailer and notified Sid that that's where he could be found now. Nothing else would change- just that he'd be with Chryssie. "You're already over there all the time. Congrats" said Sid. So: there were times, and there was sleeping, and there was wine, which appeared all by itself while he was sleeping, and which Wolfgang got rid of almost as soon as he woke up. He took her to Shadytown when she needed it- they had many a running joke about the name by the time she really, really took ill.
He'd set the alarm early, so that he could check for wine or wine coolers hidden about. There had been a building, an erection of some kind of bubble around Chryssie that was palpable, and visible- there was a sort of shimmering when she'd talked her self hoarse and fell asleep on an armless chair so that she slid sideways and Wolfgang had to catch her and haul her back to sitting on her couch. He had noticed it, and had ignored it; he was proud of how well he could read her and understand her needs and triggers and ecstasies before she did. So: ignore the shimmer, ignore the aura she had that she'd never had before. He'd just gotten her back from Shadytown and didn't want to give her back, he wanted her in her bed and possibly with some delivered Mexican (they both had the stomach of a walrus and could eat bones, if necessary. It didn't bother them, which was an achievement for Chryssie considering how much prescription medication she'd ingested in her life.) So: he woke up, and she had a knife.
"Chryssie, did you cut something?" Wolfgang said, past alert, before fear.
She was cutting long lines into the wall in some orderly fashion- it looked like she was rendering a spread sheet in the bedroom's fake wallpaper. "Honey, I wasn't. I'm trying to cut this, but it won't go very deep. I picked a dull knife in case my hand slips, so my hand would be intact." She pulled the knife up- it was the dullest one in the place and he absorbed that information.
"What's going on?" he asked. Futility, because he knew, but he couldn't stop himself from wanting an explanation.
"Wolfgang Wolf Wolfie. I love your name so much, it's a fantastic name for a boyfriend. I don't think I mentioned." This statement warmed him, so he watched her knife the bedroom and just asked her questions. He expected something to sound like reason or just her usual form of charm, which included her wandering thoughts. But it was more of the knife-woman, his Chryssie encased in her pod or bubble that waved like heat on a horizon. She began attacking the floor, in long and thoughtful pulls, and the carpet was no match; she talked about her plan and its' dissemination via the carvings. Wolfgang finally got off the bed. He picked up his phone and dialed Desmond. Chryssie was making the gouges smaller, and she stood up to get another knife- "a paring knife for the fine work here. It needs a paring knife. Fine fine-" but Wolfgang blocked her, and when she protested he reached around her waist to trap her. He kissed every time she tried to break in, on her neck or her nose or her ear, and she learned it and started pushing her head toward his every time he bent near. She clocked him on the mouth. It bled a little, and discreetly on the inside.
"What did you do that for?" In the little crash of mouth and skull, he had forgotten she was sick. He had a flashing thought that she was just picking a fight.
Desmond slammed into the trailer- unwise, considering the situation. "Wolfgang, when did it start?" he asked, all automaton, looking at his watch.
Chryssie began to rock her shoulders in a real effort to get out of Wolfgang's circle. He got a look at her face, her beautiful face, for the first time since he'd held her back- and realized that this was what love was: his heart breaking in two parts that were themselves breaking. One half was flooded with a compassion that demanded he stay with her until her face relaxed, and she could look at him without that rictus of imprisoned hurt- he would die at her bedside if it meant she might become happy- and the other was bleeding out his own life.
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Tuesday, May 7, 2013
Are You RRREADY to RRRUMBLE??
One day, one blessed day, you may come to the decision that a long-distance relationship is an okey-dokey relationship. Your love is fair and fabulous, and so it can withstand the mild quirky bits of the separation and all of the communication snafus that will attempt to snarl things up. You are not alone. There are millions of others already doing just that: bucking that trend, building that intimacy that would not naturally be built were you in each other's space all the time, being centered and exuding love from your pores even when Skype is making each of you speak five seconds after the other has already started talking and also looking like you lost an eye since the two of you last spoke.
But one day, one ugly day, you'll get in a fight with your long-distance beloved. You just will. There is a particular energy that builds between those trying to keep it together via telephone and computer, like static electricity. And some day that static love frisson will surround the balloon life head of your talks, and it will have to come out in the air, and then it will hang in the air while one of you looks confused at the live video on screen while the sound catches up. In order to make it good- to ensure that your slow-motion fracas can go on for days, if not weeks- you'd best follow these steps.
1) Make it Small!
A common mistake of the newbie is to hash things out and especially to keep things in context or in the big picture or whatever. That is such a common mistake that you might even feel good about it, like you'd just been chosen for some Olympic Fight Avoidance Team and your partner is your team mate- you might even be online, shopping for matching sparkly unitards complete with sequined headbands. What you really want to do here is forget all those high-falutin' dreams of gold-medal glory and start looking back at your discussion.
Pick some point (you may develop a method for choosing, but don't be afraid to wing it at first) and then pick at that point. Was it fair that they brought up your expensive stock car racing when you were really talking about your five-year plan? Did they actually refer to that racing as a "hobby"? Because that is just not cool, now that you think about it. Haven't you already had the conversation where you described how the burning rubber smell and the unhealthful heat and the team of spandex-clad co-eds spraying water into your mouth while you waste gas making the motor go R-R-R-RAAAAWRRRR is the only way you feel really free? How dare they say that's a "hobby"! The fact that it costs more per annum than the asking price of a small rural home is not the point! A"Hobby"!...If you look at it this way, you can bicker about the diplomacy of that particular choice of words for hours. And it will feel longer, which is just gravy.
2) Forget Your Progress!
Look, every couple has had it's fights, right? And every couple has figured it out, in some way. Perhaps you went to therapy for months on end and came out slightly more calm and much more broke. Perhaps you just decided the best way to go about this involved a fifth of whiskey per person and a series of shot glasses until one of you falls down first, enabling the other one to crow "I'm the winner!", throw up, and collapse on top of the body of that beautiful, wonderful person who is the loser. Maybe it involved a referee and a closed cage- I don't know what you kids are into these days. But I know this: for the kinds of fights that must be fought over long distances, you have to just let that go. Let it go.
The trusty Keep of Bitter Snipery cannot be conquered through politeness and thoughtful response. Revert to old, bad habits, such as mentioning previous fruitless bickering about something completely off topic ("This is just like when we went snorkeling. You were such an asshole. I swear every time we go to a reef and you get anywhere near some neoprene, it's just like snorkeling with Uncle Ted, because he was such an asshole.") Or you can make half-empty ultimatums ("If you mention my insignificant, completely controlled coke habit one more time I swear I'm going to have to consider whether or not this relationship is as solid as I thought it was." If you're Skyping while you do this, don't forget to make a haughty face!) Works like a charm!
3) Just Hang Up!
Someone taught you not to do that, didn't they? You listened while some well-meaning authority intoned about some golden rule and what constitutes being horrible, didn't you? We all did. And we believed, with our whole half-wit hearts that it was our duty to extract ourselves from a conversation by listening and responding with kindness to the jerk on the phone or the computer that we're trying to correct. If we must, said the nice lady/gentleman, we might write a letter filled with the all that vitriol- and then rip it up. Which is downright crazy.
Listen, well-intentioned people told you not to play with yourself, too, but you didn't listen to that bit of wisdom, did you? Of course you didn't! No one did! And the "be nice" rule is the same. Sure, it makes sense that one must give love to receive love, and you may feel just a wee bite of conscience trying to make you reconsider, but you must take that gnat-like conscience of yours and spray it with your anger spray. Then, just when the conversation you're having with your combatant lover is reaching its' apex and therefore its' possible resolution, get off. You can choose to inform them that you're about to hang up and then do so before they have a chance to "communicate their feelings"; or you can simply disappear. Either way is going to really, really piss off the one who's on the other end- and that's the whole point. The next time you are in touch with them, the tension will be tenser and the rage will be awful and the fight will continue, except the stakes will seem even higher! Woo!
...well, that covers the basics of long-distance relationship fighting. The rules listed above are really just guidelines, so don't be afraid to improvise. As long as you stick to your stupid, self-defeating metaphorical guns, you can be brawling with your loved one for a span of time that is measurable but will feel like many many eternities. Good luck, and remember: only one of you can win the luggage set, and by god, it's going to be you.
But one day, one ugly day, you'll get in a fight with your long-distance beloved. You just will. There is a particular energy that builds between those trying to keep it together via telephone and computer, like static electricity. And some day that static love frisson will surround the balloon life head of your talks, and it will have to come out in the air, and then it will hang in the air while one of you looks confused at the live video on screen while the sound catches up. In order to make it good- to ensure that your slow-motion fracas can go on for days, if not weeks- you'd best follow these steps.
1) Make it Small!
A common mistake of the newbie is to hash things out and especially to keep things in context or in the big picture or whatever. That is such a common mistake that you might even feel good about it, like you'd just been chosen for some Olympic Fight Avoidance Team and your partner is your team mate- you might even be online, shopping for matching sparkly unitards complete with sequined headbands. What you really want to do here is forget all those high-falutin' dreams of gold-medal glory and start looking back at your discussion.
Pick some point (you may develop a method for choosing, but don't be afraid to wing it at first) and then pick at that point. Was it fair that they brought up your expensive stock car racing when you were really talking about your five-year plan? Did they actually refer to that racing as a "hobby"? Because that is just not cool, now that you think about it. Haven't you already had the conversation where you described how the burning rubber smell and the unhealthful heat and the team of spandex-clad co-eds spraying water into your mouth while you waste gas making the motor go R-R-R-RAAAAWRRRR is the only way you feel really free? How dare they say that's a "hobby"! The fact that it costs more per annum than the asking price of a small rural home is not the point! A"Hobby"!...If you look at it this way, you can bicker about the diplomacy of that particular choice of words for hours. And it will feel longer, which is just gravy.
2) Forget Your Progress!
Look, every couple has had it's fights, right? And every couple has figured it out, in some way. Perhaps you went to therapy for months on end and came out slightly more calm and much more broke. Perhaps you just decided the best way to go about this involved a fifth of whiskey per person and a series of shot glasses until one of you falls down first, enabling the other one to crow "I'm the winner!", throw up, and collapse on top of the body of that beautiful, wonderful person who is the loser. Maybe it involved a referee and a closed cage- I don't know what you kids are into these days. But I know this: for the kinds of fights that must be fought over long distances, you have to just let that go. Let it go.
The trusty Keep of Bitter Snipery cannot be conquered through politeness and thoughtful response. Revert to old, bad habits, such as mentioning previous fruitless bickering about something completely off topic ("This is just like when we went snorkeling. You were such an asshole. I swear every time we go to a reef and you get anywhere near some neoprene, it's just like snorkeling with Uncle Ted, because he was such an asshole.") Or you can make half-empty ultimatums ("If you mention my insignificant, completely controlled coke habit one more time I swear I'm going to have to consider whether or not this relationship is as solid as I thought it was." If you're Skyping while you do this, don't forget to make a haughty face!) Works like a charm!
3) Just Hang Up!
Someone taught you not to do that, didn't they? You listened while some well-meaning authority intoned about some golden rule and what constitutes being horrible, didn't you? We all did. And we believed, with our whole half-wit hearts that it was our duty to extract ourselves from a conversation by listening and responding with kindness to the jerk on the phone or the computer that we're trying to correct. If we must, said the nice lady/gentleman, we might write a letter filled with the all that vitriol- and then rip it up. Which is downright crazy.
Listen, well-intentioned people told you not to play with yourself, too, but you didn't listen to that bit of wisdom, did you? Of course you didn't! No one did! And the "be nice" rule is the same. Sure, it makes sense that one must give love to receive love, and you may feel just a wee bite of conscience trying to make you reconsider, but you must take that gnat-like conscience of yours and spray it with your anger spray. Then, just when the conversation you're having with your combatant lover is reaching its' apex and therefore its' possible resolution, get off. You can choose to inform them that you're about to hang up and then do so before they have a chance to "communicate their feelings"; or you can simply disappear. Either way is going to really, really piss off the one who's on the other end- and that's the whole point. The next time you are in touch with them, the tension will be tenser and the rage will be awful and the fight will continue, except the stakes will seem even higher! Woo!
...well, that covers the basics of long-distance relationship fighting. The rules listed above are really just guidelines, so don't be afraid to improvise. As long as you stick to your stupid, self-defeating metaphorical guns, you can be brawling with your loved one for a span of time that is measurable but will feel like many many eternities. Good luck, and remember: only one of you can win the luggage set, and by god, it's going to be you.
Wednesday, May 1, 2013
Party at My House!
The movers are coming in six days. They come for our stuff, which I think of as my stuff for practical purposes. It is mine; it is all in my control; I am fully responsible for it. Also, it is terrifying. I have moved to well into the point that some dude on cracked.com smarmily pointed out for me and for anyone like me: it's just a mind-boggling array of shit, and I will be happy- kicking my heels together, frozen-in-time-with-a-rictus-of-joy-on-my-face-just-like-in-that-Toyota-commercial-of-old happy- to let total strangers take my things away from me. As long as I can't see it five minutes after they've left, and provided they don't set fire to anything (anything other than my own stuff, I mean) they can ha-ha-have it.
People have been very kind- in-laws, blood relations, people I only see every three years, weirdos that I know only peripherally, friends- and they took my bait. I sent out an evite a few weeks back inviting folks to come over and help me sort through my precious old bar coasters and Alan wrenches to furniture that I never had, and they did. On time and everything. I opened the door to each of them, mouth already working except that no sound was coming out, desperately trying not to appear desperate, which I now believe cannot be done unless you are Helen Mirren. Not that I'm comparing myself to HM, because that would be pure rot. Pure, distracting rot. So once the person came in and I, ever the thoughtful host, forgot to offer them a glass of friggin' water, fer chrissake, I would say something like this:
ME: So, you guys, I think that I'm not Helen Mirren. I mean, I know I'm not Helen Mirren, I'm not fooling myself, because she was so good in The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover- that was the first Mirren movie I ever saw. But I think I must have seen more before that, you know? I mean, were the type of geeky family that would watch Masterpiece Theater re-runs, and that was in the 80's when she was becoming Mirren. So I must have seen her before CTW&L, and that's why the line "Try the cock- at least you know where it's been" resonated with me so much...
FRIEND: Jenn, these are my kids. They are five and three-and-a-half.
ME: Are you telling me that they've seen a Helen Mirren movie? It must have been The Queen, because she's so damn good, and it's a great HM primer. Bit much for the kiddos, in my opinion, but what do I know? One could argue that there is no time that is too young for watching-
FRIEND: So, hey, what do you need us to do? Kids, why don't you go downstairs and play with the cat-
ME: Be careful, love bugs, she's a biter!
FRIEND: -or why don't I go down with them, because you have stuff there too, right? That needs to be packed, right? Jenn?
ME: ...Oh, right right! But it's not packing, 'cause the people are doing that, they pack it up for us, which is amazing, so I just need sorting, and I can't be in every room at once, so why don't you just get started on the DVDs? There are the obvious ones, like The Wiggles Christmas- hey, why don't you take that with you home with you, because you have children and you own a DVD player I'm sure, so there you go, I'll just bop downstairs and get it and make sure I put it in your purse-
FRIEND: - WHAT ELSE CAN I DO? There must be something else, honey, I can see a giant pile of coats and t-shirts and what appears to be wet towels over there in the corner. I could just throw that in the washer, or did you want that all folded? I could put it in separate piles, towels coats t-shirts- would that be ok?
ME: That would be great! I think that would be great, what a big help you are! I think that pile is my daughter's safety place, though- she might be buried under there, I haven't seen her in a while. So, again, be careful about the biting. Oh and hey! I just remembered I also have Ice Age 14: Trouble Tectonically (Again) downstairs too, so I'll just put that in your purse with the Wiggles and these clearly used but unmarked VHS tapes! Brilliant!
FRIEND: I am considering leaving now.
ME: Great, because we haven't done a donation run yet, and you could run it for me, and I could just weed out those dozen or so movies that the kids are really going to love- you've already got them watching R movies- it's really too much for them, sweetheart, you know that developmentally they aren't really ready to recognize great acting yet, which is something I know from this book right here, which I will put over by your purse with the box full of the DVDs! I was going to say that it's a different direction, to be sure, but maybe your children will like Fight Club, because I have two copies-
FRIEND: I was told there would be beer.
So the next few hours were torture for all of us, but no more so than for people who aren't me. I blathered like that for hours- I blathered well after everyone was gone, sick to their stomachs to see another human being reduced to such collateral idiocy. So, now, there are lists per room. The lists in themselves are terrifying; they are no more specific than my ranting about cookie cutters and taxation and paper cuts. An example:
Living Room
* Get bowls to put plates in/move- see studio; Antoine?
* Gouges
* S & D 1 truck stockade lamplamp; S & D 2 same
* CARD TABLE!!!!!!
* Neighborhood Assoc. needs paper jambos, must put jambos on curb second Tues but not with recycling so ask racist lady two buildings down schedule for jambos
* Def. move cabinet (**cat in there**)
* Sell cat
* Girl to dentist wed with goo snacks absent (she will know!!)
* fish fixtures frustrating: farm factory Ferarra @ Fulton (Thurs?)
Right now I'm wondering if I'll remember what each line means in one years' time. Could be fun to find out. Have to put "list packing" on the list, but for which room?
People have been very kind- in-laws, blood relations, people I only see every three years, weirdos that I know only peripherally, friends- and they took my bait. I sent out an evite a few weeks back inviting folks to come over and help me sort through my precious old bar coasters and Alan wrenches to furniture that I never had, and they did. On time and everything. I opened the door to each of them, mouth already working except that no sound was coming out, desperately trying not to appear desperate, which I now believe cannot be done unless you are Helen Mirren. Not that I'm comparing myself to HM, because that would be pure rot. Pure, distracting rot. So once the person came in and I, ever the thoughtful host, forgot to offer them a glass of friggin' water, fer chrissake, I would say something like this:
ME: So, you guys, I think that I'm not Helen Mirren. I mean, I know I'm not Helen Mirren, I'm not fooling myself, because she was so good in The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover- that was the first Mirren movie I ever saw. But I think I must have seen more before that, you know? I mean, were the type of geeky family that would watch Masterpiece Theater re-runs, and that was in the 80's when she was becoming Mirren. So I must have seen her before CTW&L, and that's why the line "Try the cock- at least you know where it's been" resonated with me so much...
FRIEND: Jenn, these are my kids. They are five and three-and-a-half.
ME: Are you telling me that they've seen a Helen Mirren movie? It must have been The Queen, because she's so damn good, and it's a great HM primer. Bit much for the kiddos, in my opinion, but what do I know? One could argue that there is no time that is too young for watching-
FRIEND: So, hey, what do you need us to do? Kids, why don't you go downstairs and play with the cat-
ME: Be careful, love bugs, she's a biter!
FRIEND: -or why don't I go down with them, because you have stuff there too, right? That needs to be packed, right? Jenn?
ME: ...Oh, right right! But it's not packing, 'cause the people are doing that, they pack it up for us, which is amazing, so I just need sorting, and I can't be in every room at once, so why don't you just get started on the DVDs? There are the obvious ones, like The Wiggles Christmas- hey, why don't you take that with you home with you, because you have children and you own a DVD player I'm sure, so there you go, I'll just bop downstairs and get it and make sure I put it in your purse-
FRIEND: - WHAT ELSE CAN I DO? There must be something else, honey, I can see a giant pile of coats and t-shirts and what appears to be wet towels over there in the corner. I could just throw that in the washer, or did you want that all folded? I could put it in separate piles, towels coats t-shirts- would that be ok?
ME: That would be great! I think that would be great, what a big help you are! I think that pile is my daughter's safety place, though- she might be buried under there, I haven't seen her in a while. So, again, be careful about the biting. Oh and hey! I just remembered I also have Ice Age 14: Trouble Tectonically (Again) downstairs too, so I'll just put that in your purse with the Wiggles and these clearly used but unmarked VHS tapes! Brilliant!
FRIEND: I am considering leaving now.
ME: Great, because we haven't done a donation run yet, and you could run it for me, and I could just weed out those dozen or so movies that the kids are really going to love- you've already got them watching R movies- it's really too much for them, sweetheart, you know that developmentally they aren't really ready to recognize great acting yet, which is something I know from this book right here, which I will put over by your purse with the box full of the DVDs! I was going to say that it's a different direction, to be sure, but maybe your children will like Fight Club, because I have two copies-
FRIEND: I was told there would be beer.
So the next few hours were torture for all of us, but no more so than for people who aren't me. I blathered like that for hours- I blathered well after everyone was gone, sick to their stomachs to see another human being reduced to such collateral idiocy. So, now, there are lists per room. The lists in themselves are terrifying; they are no more specific than my ranting about cookie cutters and taxation and paper cuts. An example:
Living Room
* Get bowls to put plates in/move- see studio; Antoine?
* Gouges
* S & D 1 truck stockade lamplamp; S & D 2 same
* CARD TABLE!!!!!!
* Neighborhood Assoc. needs paper jambos, must put jambos on curb second Tues but not with recycling so ask racist lady two buildings down schedule for jambos
* Def. move cabinet (**cat in there**)
* Sell cat
* Girl to dentist wed with goo snacks absent (she will know!!)
* fish fixtures frustrating: farm factory Ferarra @ Fulton (Thurs?)
Right now I'm wondering if I'll remember what each line means in one years' time. Could be fun to find out. Have to put "list packing" on the list, but for which room?
Sunday, April 28, 2013
The Mouth
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.
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 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.
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