Boo! It is nearing the end of winter. I am moody. My hands are dry and rough. My cuticles are fringed like a suede jacket from the 1970s. My outer thighs are red and chapped from rubbing against my pants, but I will not do anything to fix this condition because that would require acknowledging it. What I wouldn’t do for some picnic weather.
Me: I think we’re in too deep if we’re seriously considering this.
Robbins: He’s the only source we have! If we don’t make a deal with him, Couglin’s a dead man. So’s anyone else who gets caught on the inside.
Me: Couglin knew what he was getting into when he started.
Robbins: So you’re willing to leave a man behind?
Me: All I’m saying is, I don’t negotiate with criminals.
Robbins: I know. But you’ve got to look at it my way.
Me: I am, I just—
(Pause)
Me: Is that my stapler?
Robbins: You have to—what? Is that…are you serious?
Me: You heard me.
Robbins: It—no! It’s not…I brought it from home.
Me: It looks an awful lot like one I used to have that went missing.
Robbins: Can we please get back to—
Me: Look, there’s some sticky stuff on the top where I had a label with my name. You even peeled off my label!
Robbins: Would you mind if we did this later?
Me: I’m just saying. That’s not a cheap stapler.
Robbins: He’s the only source we have.
After a morning of exertion in my walk-in humidor (Mother Riche’s illustrious collection of the hand-mirrors of silver screen legends do not archive themselves), I like to begin the day with a hearty breakfast; namely, a raisin floating in a snifter of Grey Goose. I do not as a rule enjoy the sensation of physical effort, but I find that there are certain tasks which must be personally undertaken—especially those of a more delicate nature. (Joan Crawford’s mirror grew legs the last time I trusted my collection to a corrupt concierge.)
Yes, I have learnt my lesson well. Employ a single unsavory professional to dust and organize your jars of urine, and the scandalous unauthorized biographies practically write and publish themselves. As a side note, the unethical leaders of Butler University should be charged with criminal conduct for their school’s completely deceptive and misleading moniker.
It is thoughts such as these that leave me wistful for the simple, carefree days of my youth. My adopted Micronesian sibling and I summered with our Uncle Donald on West Egg for several weeks every August. Roughing it, good-naturedly, we fed ourselves by hand, slept in the same room on beds with only one sleep number, and showered under a single massaging jet.
Uncle Donald (or ‘Baron’, as he preferred to be called) was a roughneck tradesman who had a share in a modest sixty-acre alpaca ranch, a bootstrapping upstart business that was the first to corner the market on the alpaca wool nappies that have long enjoyed popularity on Park Avenue bottoms in cathedral-ceiling Park Avenue nurseries. Alpaca wool is said to have both soothing and odor-absorbing properties— after all, when was the last time you smelled an alpaca? There could have been one sitting right next to you on the Friday afternoon jet to Montenegro, reading an advance copy of the Times Sunday Book Review, and you, on the phone scheduling an emergency hot stone massage, would have thought to yourself, “Why, Diane Keaton is looking better than ever these days,” as it ordered a wheatgrass martini.
I flew on a tiny airline this weekend. The stewardesses wore T-shirts. A small bottle of water was $2, and according to Brian they didn’t allow you to bring any food on board with you. I disobeyed this rule and smuggled a Twix bar in my carryon, worrying that the delicious caramel would interfere with radio and navigation frequencies.
I ate the Twix fearfully, in secret. I imagine that the stewardesses, upon discovering contraband Outside Food items, snatch them away and eat them immediately, right in front of you. “Mmmm!” they say exaggeratedly, with their mouths full. “This tastes like homemade! Thanks a lot.”
Things They Should Have, Addendum:
Bullion Sport! For when you crave that meaty taste and need that extra boost of sodium. Available in Chicken and Beef flavors.
Maybe my list of Things They Should Have ought to become a list of ‘Things That Should Have a Sport! Version”.
I have decided to plumb the depths of my ancient Livejournal for magical moments from one of my favorite jobs: working behind the counter at the Bird Watcher’s General Store. We sold birdseed, bird feeders, bird stuffed animals, you name it, we sold it. The following incidents occurred during a typical workday in the Birdstore during the summer and fall after I graduated from college. Here they are, in no particular order:
Today at work I hit the boss in the chest with a stuffed chicken and told him it was the only chick who would ever throw herself at him.
I like work. Except when there are fruit flies everywhere. Yesterday they were even in the microwave. Apparently you can microwave fruit flies and nothing happens to them. That should be the message on one of those “The More You Know” spots on TV.
The following exchange should have gotten me fired anywhere else. (Mike is my boss.)
Erin: ‘Don’t you like the sound my sexy plastic pants make when I walk?’ (they’re board shorts)
Mike: My kid made that noise when he walked for the first five years of his life.
Me: And you’re going to make that noise when you walk for the next twenty.
Mike: I’m going to tear your bones out.
Jill asked her sister to buy her a pair of jeans like the ones I was wearing, and asked me to show her my pants. I started dancing around, indicating my pants and posing. Eventually I started doing the running man and singing, “Jill wants to get in my pants.” A customer with a young daughter noticed her staring at me, and ushered her away with a curt “Come along, honey”.
Other than that, it was a pretty typical day. Except for this exchange:
Jill: “What did that woman say she had in her bush?”
Mike: “A woodcock.”
Me: “……”
Jobs I have had since then have certainly had their moments. But nothing beats the Birdstore.
Products I think they should make:
SportPeeps: For when you need that extra burst of energy and fat. With sugar sweatbands around their little peepy heads.
Caffienated Scotch: Because regular scotch makes you sleepy in the mornings, and regular coffee makes you sober.
That about covers it for now.
This morning I awoke with a start and the unsettling realization that I’d had strange dreams. I tried to recall them before they faded and poked Brian, who was already awake. Immediately telling someone about my scary dreams tends to help dispel any lingering feelings of unease.
“I had weird dreams,” I said. “My best friend from high-school had had a daughter through artificial insemination, and the kid was somehow five. She’d named her Scotch.”
Brian said, “Strange,” and I went on.
“Then I had another dream where I was a younger member of this huge family, and I had to hide around the house, because if they found me they might hurt me. I was just scared all the time.”
“That’s upsetting,” Brian said soothingly. “Last night I dreamed we rented snowmobiles. We were snowmobiling everywhere. It was great!”
He added, “Vvvvvroooom-vroom! Weee!”
“Wow, that’s nice,” I said sourly. “My dreams are full of disturbing subtexts and free-floating anxiety, and your dream was all ‘We have snowmobiles! High-five!’ ”
“Well, the only one I could remember was.”
“Right. Probably the other ones were full of serial-killers, but you forgot them.”
Kristyn Meyer folds her long legs beneath her in the coveted corner booth of Le Crepe Beret, a Manhattan hotspot that boasts a waiting list of several hundred hopeful diners each night. She orders a cup of bay leaf tea and a baked raisin, spreading her napkin gracefully over shapely knees.
“I love this place,” the dainty twenty-three year old says, leaning forward with impulsive charm. “I wish I could live here.” I nod, and she continues. “I’ve actually looked into buying one of the apartment buildings across the street, just so I can be closer. You never know when you’re going to be hit with a craving for one of Beret’s moss dumplings.” She chuckles ruefully.
“Unfortunately, the apartment deal fell through. They didn’t allow animals in the building, and I really love animals. I can’t live in a building that doesn’t have animals in it. They just contribute so much good emotional energy to a place, you know?”
With her shining eyes and laughing hair, it is difficult not to love this vivacious honey-blonde upon first meeting. Hollywood is well aware of Kristyn’s widespread appeal, which is why she has been cast as the female lead in the last four box-office smash romantic comedies, as well as the upcoming Sassy Dames, an eagerly anticipated contemporary remake of Gone With the Wind.
When I bring up her recent successes, though, her sunny disposition becomes overcast.
“It’s not easy being a celebrity, you know?” she muses. “If you wear the wrong pants out one day, then the next day, it’s like, everybody’s talking about it.”
Kristyn’s face now shows a ten percent chance of rain.
“My friends tell me I need to just live my life,” she muses, with a faraway gaze. “And I’m like, ‘you know what? That’s easy for you to say. Nobody cares what pants YOU wear!” She laughs. “I mean, am I right?” Her good humor is contagious; I notice that customers at surrounding tables are looking at us with bemused smiles.
The food arrives. “They make the best raisin here!” Kristyn says, clapping her hands excitedly. “I order it every time. I always tell myself, ‘Kristyn! Try something else! The fig looks good too!’ But then the when the waiter comes, I’m like, ‘I’ll have the raisin.’” She grins ruefully.
I ask her what her favorite food is.
She looks at me. “The raisin.”
Kristyn tells me that a combination of yoga, walking, and natural laxatives keep her looking trim and fit.
“I don’t know what I’d do without that regimen,” she says. “Walking just keeps me feeling so balanced. It’s like, whenever there’s stress in my life, I just walk around a little, and I can feel myself forgetting about it. It’s so soothing.”
I ask about the natural laxatives, and she looks at me sharply. “I didn’t say that. I don’t do anything like that.”
I decide to change the subject. Tabloids have recently reported that the percentage of celebrities undergoing plastic surgery and other extreme measures to maintain their looks have skyrocketed in recent years, to nearly 85%. Asked what she thinks of this, Kristyn shakes her head and puts down her last forkful.
“I just don’t understand it,” she says disdainfully. “I mean, putting plastic in your face and your boobs so they look better? Disgusting. And so pathetic. It’s like, if God wants you to be wrinkly and old, then you better be wrinkly and old, because that’s what God wants, you know?”
“Plus,” she adds impishly, “What’s so bad about wrinkles? Some of my favorite things are wrinkled.”
She winks at me, and quips, “Like raisins!”
(With Super Tuesday fast approaching, I thought I would reprint my only politically-tinged column to date, which was written just before the last presidential election, in response to the presidential debate.)
Have a cupcake for breakfast, and the day will be downhill from there. I should have listened to that age-old saying. Or rather, people should have started saying that ages ago, so that it would have been around today, to warn me. But then again, it would have taken more than a stupid saying to keep me away from that cupcake this morning. Perhaps a stupid saying hanging on an electric fence around the cupcake. But then I would have been killed. In any event, that morning cupcake was by far the best thing about my day. And it was over by 8 a.m.
The cupcakes were left over from the night before, when they were whipped up for an event I called “Have Beer and Cupcakes and Watch the Presidential Debate”. Contrary to popular belief, beer and cupcakes do not help one focus on the issues. They do, however, make one dwell obsessively on the fact that President Bush was drinking from a much more masculine water glass than Senator Kerry. It was a short, sturdy, good-old-boy tumbler. (Although it was rather reminiscent of the kind of glass you might drink whiskey from, which is perhaps not the image he wanted to project).
Kerry’s glass, on the other hand, was more akin to a goblet. It was tall and delicate. It had a stem, for God’s sake. Who drinks from a glass with a stem when they’re trying to convince millions of viewers how they’re going to get tough on terrorism? The Democratic nominee may have carried the debate, but he failed the water-glass showdown, which makes me uneasy.
I could already see the spin: Two twenty-something, microphone-bearing Fox reporters with jovial smiles and gimlet eyes. “Did you get a look at that stemware Kerry was holding? What does he think this is, a wine-tasting? How very French of him, am I right Jean? That’s some kind of French thing he’s got going on there. With that wine glass.”
“It’s very girly, Craig. You’re right. I don’t know how Kerry expects to fend off terrorist attackers with that thing, unless it’s by distracting them with a plate of brie and crackers.”
Although I suppose the knife could cut both ways, with liberal news media offering the President their congratulations on his mastery of drinking out of a breakable glass that lacked a tight lid, handles on both sides, and a silly straw.
It never would have occurred to me to place any importance on the style of drinking-glass a candidate uses during a debate, but in a race as heated and close as this one appears to be, I suppose the two opponents need to press every possible advantage. President Bush might have done well to have a Bald Eagle perched on his shoulder, a water-cup grasped in one of its taloned claws. Or, even better, how about bringing Saddam Hussein out in chains, one hand freed to hold a velvet pillow bearing his conqueror’s drink? More subtle, perhaps, but still striking, would have been for the president to sip water from Saddam’s hollowed-out skull.
John Kerry, on the other hand, might have taken the opportunity to stir his drink with a purple heart.
After this debate, I fear for the future, friends. I really do.
I Heard Tell 