Inadvertent Advert

If I could beg your indulgence* for a few moments, I’d like to direct your attention to Jen’s site.  Those of you who click the links on the right border of this page already know her as my favorite artist, and you probably also know why.  

She has an astonishing eye, and she sees things in ways I cannot begin to understand, but the images she captures speak to me like a supremely enigmatic but infinitely patient teacher.  Now that I think of it, her pictures are rather like she is, in that respect.  

Today, at last, Jen is making her pictures available for purchase.  This is a big step for her, and I hope you’ll enjoy her work as much as I do.

*She hasn’t asked me to write this.

A Cherry Tomato Is A Sensual Thing

It is.  Try this: Gently take one in your mouth, all at once…and bite down on it.  That, my friends, is pure sensuality.

I’ve been thinking about sensuality quite a bit, lately, but mostly in a distracted and steadfastly self-absorbed way.  Everywhere I turn, the Universe is taunting me with images of what Meg described as “all the true love [I am] looking for in life.”  And, as I may have mentioned, I am a tad frustrated with the taunting.

Last week, after a particularly hard couple of days at work, I felt the need to have someone serve me dinner.  This was a purely selfish thing, but trust me when I say I deserved to lay on a chaise longue and be fed a variety of tasty morsels by what Michael Palin calls “maidens of the Orient.”  

(“…and there, strokéd was he by maidens of the Orient.  For sixteen days and nights strokéd they him.  Yea, verily, and caresséd him.  His hair ruffléd they, and their fingers rubbeth they in oil of olives, and runneth them across all parts of his body, forasmuch as to soothe him.
“And the soles of his feet licketh they, and the upper parts of his thigh did they anoint with a balm of forbidden trees.
“And with the teeth of their mouths nibbleth they the pointed bits at the top of his ears, yeah, verily, and with their tongues thereof make themselves acquainted with his most secret places.”)

There is somewhat of an art to eating alone in a restaurant.  The trick is to look as though you want to be eating alone.  You can’t go empty-handed into a sit-down restaurant and eat a meal by yourself.  That’s just creepy.  

A book takes the curse off it.  If you’re reading while you eat, then while you may still appear sad and lonely, you at least seem to have the means at hand of coping with your solitude.  

Choosing the right restaurant is essential.  If it’s noisy, there is no hope of actually reading anything, and no amount of subterfuge can hide the fact that you’re basically just watching the people around you like some urban version of Dian Fossey.  You might as well start snapping pictures and taking notes for “Coffee Drinkers in the Mist”.

I knew of the perfect restaurant, of course, because during my divorce, I lived in the barracks for a while and solitary dining out had been a way of life.  I stopped at the Bookstar on my way there, and picked up “How To Be Good” by Nick Hornby.

Now, back when I was solitary more often (before my daughter came to live with me), I ate dinner in this particular restaurant quite frequently.  It’s safe to say that I read a fair portion of Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin series (all twenty of them) while dining alone there.  

So it was a bit like returning to the womb.  Maybe that’s not a good analogy.
The waitress I always hoped for back then is now the manager.  It took me a moment to recognize her: she’s gone blonde.  While I was admittedly staring at her, trying to place her, she caught me and gave me a quizzical look as she asked me if I had everything I needed.

Later, at the register, I smiled apologetically and said, “I’m sorry about that.  You totally caught me staring at you earlier.”

“No worries,” she said.  “I just hope everything was okay.”

“You don’t remember me, do you?” I asked.  She narrowed her eyes and looked closely at me as I continued, “I remember when you first started here as a waitress.  I used to come here a lot and always tried to get seated in your section.  That was, what, five or six years ago?”  I never could figure out her schedule, so I never got to be one of her regulars.

She smiled.  “That would be about right.  I’ve been working here for five and a half years.  I’m sorry I don’t remember you!  It’s been a while since you were here, hasn’t it?”

I assured her that it had been, and she told me to come back soon.  “Don’t be a stranger,” she said.

So, facing dinner on my own again this evening, I grabbed Hornby and headed there again, hoping that Tuesday nights were a regular night for her.  

They are.

Better, she greeted me with a coy smile and a warm, “You’re back!  I remember you this time!”

Now, some guys might have said something like, “…and I’ve never forgotten you,” but I’ve never been that much like Sean Connery.  Besides, that kind of a remark only sounds good if you speak with a bit of a slur in your Scottish accent.

I settled for asking her how her Christmas was, and after she’d seated me, I basked in the warmth of being remembered, which is, it turns out, also a sensual thing.

See, it’s such a small deal, being remembered by someone whose job it is to make her customers feel special, but I’m learning to relish those tiny flickers.  Moments like that are like cherry tomatoes – you should take them in whole, bite down, and savor the burst of Connection.

Five Things That May Surprise You

Lord knows that I have given Betty enough reasons to slap me. With a meme, that is.

So here’s the deal: I have to share five things you don’t know about me, and because I can’t just leave this concept alone, I’m going to bump it up a notch and say that the five things ought to be surprising or unexpected in some way. I’ve been pondering this for a while, because you deserve something more than a rehash of things I’ve already written…but it’s not easy. I do admit that I don’t always share everything on my blog…but those are generally pretty deep-seated and not the sort of thing you’d like to read about unless you also have a particular fondness for NASCAR because of the crashes.

So, here goes.

1) I am a pack rat. I have things packed in boxes that have been in those boxes without being moved for three years. They’d have been there longer, I’m sure, but I have only lived in this apartment for three years. I keep vowing to get rid of the stuff with a strict Six-Month Rule, but when I make a run at it, I’m overwhelmed with sentimentality. For things. I know: I need help.

2) I have an angry undercurrent that I have trouble with. I just seem to let it out, rather than waiting to vent it in some more productive way. I bark at people, and though I am not violent, apparently my size alone can be imposing enough to give the impression that I would sooner rip off someone’s head than give them the time of day. It would be too obvious to say that I am still angry at the drubbing I took in my divorce, and since then in all of my dealings with my ex-wife. I am angry as much at myself for putting up with so much shit as I am with her for giving me shit she had no right to give in the first place. As often as I’ve reacted angrily to someone (whatever the reason), there have been at least as many times when I’ve been abrupt simply because I’m tired or busy and I just don’t want to deal with anything but what’s on my mind at that moment. Most of the time when someone says to me that I’ve said or done something rude or unkind, I’m completely flummoxed, because I hadn’t been angry or tired, and I hadn’t thought I was being short at all. Whenever I realize I’ve been that way, I am much more deeply sorry than anyone ever knows.

3) I have seriously contemplated suicide twice. What saved me the first time was the realization that my ex-wife wasn't worth it. The second time, it was the thought of my father’s face if he learned I’d killed myself.

4) Ed used to be one of my favorite TV shows. At the end of the episode when Ed proposed to Carol, I wept like a baby for more than an hour.

5) I am multi-orgasmic.

These things need some continuity, so I’ve gotta tag a few of you…

Lisa
Condoleesa
Wordnerd
Erica
Binsk

Things I Do Not Understand, Volume 2

Once again, I find myself bewildered by certain things, so I thought I’d share them with you.

Aggressive Holiday Shoppers.  What the hell was I thinking?  I went to the mall on the second-to-last payday before Christmas.  I suppose I should not have been surprised by the asshole who cut me off in the parking garage and then slammed on his brakes and flipped me off for having the audacity to jam on my brakes to avoid hitting him as he ran through a stop sign without looking.  Oh, that’s right, I jammed on my horn, too.  Because it’s Effing Christmas and I was trying to get into the Christmas Spirit.  I could have gotten over it, because I love my fellow man and this is the season for that and all, but the crowds (and there were crowds) acted as though I had personally pissed on their mistletoe.  Ignoring for the moment how big my bladder would have to be to have done such a thing to the thousands of people thronging to the trendier of the two malls in Mission Valley, how ironic is it that people will slash at each other like velociraptors over a fresh kill in order to get their prizes home a week and a half before the Big Day?  Since everyone seems to hate their families, I have to wonder why they bother.  Because you just know that Penelope Pertnipple is going to jam a brightly-wrapped gift box into Uncle Lecher’s hands and snarl, “I know you don’t smoke, but I thought you’d look so distinguished with this Meerschaum pipe.  They said you shouldn’t actually touch it, so I got the gloves with it.  Where are the gloves?  GOD DAMNIT, THEY DIDN”T GIVE ME THE GLOVES!  Oh, well, I hope you enjoy it.”  Quick, someone grab their new digital camera and take a picture.

People making a living at writing badly.  Whatever happened to the cigar-chomping editors who used to make life hell for the reporters and copy writers?  Consider this story from Reuters (a well-respected news agency) about the racial violence in Sydney.  It says, “racial violence first flared last Sunday” in one paragraph, then a few paragraphs later, says, “Racist text messages and emails have been circulating calling for violence this Sunday – the one week anniversary of the unrest…” I’m sorry, what?  Apparently, Reuters is now hiring junior high school girls to write for them.

When the media drops all pretense.  Another story in the news this week was about the FBI questioning a fourteen year old boy in California who had scrawled PLO slogans on his notebook.  The OfficialWire news desk wrote that “the entire experience left the student badly shaken, and he has since been hesitant about expressing his political views in any context.”  The article does not elaborate on why I should care that a fourteen year old boy is hesitant to express his political views.  I was fourteen once, and I was hesitant to express my political views, then, too.  Not because the FBI asked me to step out of class and answer a few questions, but because I was fourteen!  I was also hesitant to ask Debbie Dosh to the Halloween Dance, but no one gave a fart in a windstorm about that.

The instructions printed on my socks. Yes, you read that right.  No, I am not making it up.  Yesterday morning, while putting on a brand-new pair of socks, I noticed that next to my big toe, there was a little mark in yellow ink that looked like this: 7.  I wondered what this mark could be for…some sort of indication of where my foot ought to end and my toe begin, perhaps?  To keep myself busy while I pondered this question, I donned my other sock.  In a similar location, the other sock was marked with this symbol: R.  The “R” was, of course, upside down from my vantage point, but its presence provided the necessary understanding to solve the riddle of the hieroglyph on my other sock, which was not a “7”, but an “L”.  I wonder, am I paying more for socks that come with the instructions printed on them?  Did the sock company lose a lawsuit by some poor, tortured soul who spent a day with his socks on the wrong feet?  Is there anyone out there dumb enough to care which sock goes on which foot, but smart enough to read the instructions upside down?

The Economy in a Cardboard Box

Erica’s post set me to thinking this afternoon about Customer Service. After all, Kalbfleisch’s Economic Razor states: The strength of the economy is inversely proportional to the quality of service in any fast food restaurant. This is because when the economy is good, all the good workers have good jobs and the fast food places have to scrape the barrel to meet their staffing needs. When the economy is bad, you end up with rocket scientists working the cash register at McDonalds, and except for the guys in the O-ring division at Morton-Thiokol, you can pretty much count on an engineer to give you a Perfect Sandwich. For several years, I’ve joked that if I ever decide to become a doctoral candidate in Economics, that will be my thesis. Until recently, I thought of this as an immutable law, cast in stone as much as any economic theory could be, and would someone please nominate me for a Nobel Prize in Economics? Armed with this understanding, Alan Greenspan could get caught up on years of back episodes of “The West Wing” simply by stopping at Burger King on his way to testify before Congress.

(Please permit me to digress for a moment on the subject of Nobel nominations. It seems that Stanley Tookie Williams, co-founder of the Crips gang, has been nominated five times for the Nobel Peace Prize while he was on death row. I didn’t know this, but apparently you can go to any US Post Office and ask for a Nobel nomination form, and they’ll give it to you. All you have to do is fill it in, and they’ll do the rest! They used to have those forms at 7-11, but it got to be like a whole gang initiation thing, you know, to, like send in some upstart, punk-ass, wannabe gang-bangin’, glock-passin’ dogg, so he be, like, “Yo, muthafucka, gimme one o’ yo N-to-tha-izzobel Prizzize forms, NOW, muthafucka, befo I put tha fo’-fo Desert Eagle to yo muthafuckin’ dome, Cuz.”)

Word.

So, where was I? Oh, yeah. Economics.

So, last week, my daughter got a job at McDonalds. I like this job. It’s a block from our house (let’s not talk about the weird zoning laws that put a McDonald’s just four blocks from a neighborhood filled with five and ten million dollar homes), so she doesn’t have to go from newbie driver to Mario Friggin’ Andretti the day she gets her license.

On Thursday, after a terribly long day at work, I headed over to Mickey D’s to grind my sizzelf a burga…sorry, to get a burger. I order my usual: quarter pounder with cheese combo, hold the onions. My daughter is in the dining area, doing paperwork, and after I said hello, I headed home with my prize. Yyyyummyyyy. Burger.

I had checked the bag before I left. Yes, the custom order slip was taped to the outside of the excessive packaging box, and it said, “QTR PDR W/O ONION”. No worries. I had even observed the manager open the box containing another customer’s burger, check to make sure it was correctly assembled, and send it back to be remade when it turned out to be non-compliant burgage.

I assumed, given all of this evidence, that I could safely take my burger home and eat it there. I assumed that when I got it there, it would be The Burger As I Ordered It.

Big mistake. Big.

No, it had onions. Not only did it have onions, it apparently had been covered in onions. It had, where do they grow onions? Wisconsin? Roughly all of the onions grown in Wisconsin this year were on my quarter pounder.

Now, I like onions on my burger. Grilled onions, thank you…not the big, honkin’, chunk-o-onion pieces they put on burgers at Mickey D’s these days.

I just snarfed the burger, cursing the air between mouthfuls, while silently thanking the Great and Benevolent Oz for the strength of our economy. I took consolation in the fact that I had sent Mickey my revenge for years of bad service: my sixteen year old daughter. I rolled my eyes with glee, even as I washed the putrid taste of onion out of my mouth with Mr. Pibb. Yes! I will soon get exactly what I order at McDonalds! My daughter will make sure I do! Ha-a-a-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!

When she got home, I told her about the Onion Burger From Hell and said that if I hadn’t already dumped my fries into the top half of the over-packaging box, I’d have taken it back and asked them to fix it.

Because clearly, they’d heard my order correctly.

“Oh God, Dad,” said my daughter, “then they’ll remember you, and when you come in, they’ll ask me, so is that, like, your dad?”

So, there you have it. I have been spared the ignominy of sharing a Nobel Prize with a guy named Tookie. My ironclad theory of economics has been dashed on the rocks at the base of the Cliffs of Insanity.

You see, the quality of service at a fast food restaurant isn’t based on the strength of the economy. It’s much more personal than that.

Apparently, it’s embarrassing to provide good service.

Hold the pickle, hold the lettuce,
Special orders WILL upset us,
All we ask is that you let us
Serve it our way…

Pride and Privilege

Last night, I took my daughter to Disneyland.  We spent more time on the road going to and from than we did actually in the park, but it’s a once-a-year thing, and something special we could do together.

See, it’s the Disney Family Christmas shindig this week, and because my sister and her husband both work for Disney, they invited us to go along.  

Naturally, on Sunday night before she went to bed, my daughter complained that she was coming down with a cold.  It’s something of a tradition that someone in our family experience some minor illness or discomfort whenever we go somewhere, and it was her turn.

So, I wasn’t surprised at all when she called from school around noon, her voice heavy with snot, asking if she could get a ride home.  I was crestfallen.  It was no fault of hers, but she’d put me into a bit of a bind: should I get her out of school early and cancel the Disneyland thing, or should I tell her to tough it out if she expected to go up to Anaheim with me?  I thought for a moment, then decided that she should come home, sleep for a couple hours, and then go with me to Disneyland, but only on the understanding that she’d have to go to school today.  

She agreed.

So, as I said, we had a terrific time at Disneyland.  We rode the Pirates of the Caribbean and the Haunted Mansion, ate a fantastic dinner, and in general, acted like pals.  I loved every second of it, in spite of the fact that every time I looked at her, I was also checking to make sure that she felt okay.  She was fine.

And then this morning, she knocked on my door to say that she really felt too sick to go to school.  I sort of expected it, even if I wasn’t happy about it.  “Okay, you can stay home, but be sure to pump fluids,” I said.  I didn’t fawn over her, or even check on her.  She’s a big kid, and a good one, and I’ve always trusted her to know when she’s not well enough to go to school.

Now, I know, some parents will insist that trusting my daughter this much isn’t healthy, and that she needs to be followed up on.  Ridden, if necessary.

Hogwash.

One of the things I’ve always done with both my daughters is to speak to them like adults who have earned my respect.  I started this while I counted my older daughter’s fingers and toes the first time, which would be roughly 6.23 nanoseconds after they finished cleaning her up and asked me to take her to her mom.  I’m not sure how much of the quality of our relationship I can attribute to this habit, but I will say that neither of my girls sass me nearly as much as they apparently do their mother, which is approximately a hundredth of how much other kids seem to sass their parents these days.  It’s a simple philosophy: treat the children with respect and they will grow up respecting themselves and other people.

As I always do when my daughter is home sick, I called her to see how she was feeling.  I did it to let her know that I was thinking of her, and that she was important enough to stop what I was doing…she knows how busy my job can be…and also to see if she needed me to bring her anything when I headed home.

Her cell phone was off.  This is not unusual, as she turns it off during the school day to avoid having it taken away, should someone call her during class, and she also keeps it turned off when she’s home, because she’s got her own land-line phone.

So, I called her land-line, and got her answering machine.  No big deal, she could be in the other room, so I talked mindlessly into her answering machine for a minute or so before it cut me off.

I figured that when she got the message, she’d call, and when she didn’t call, I assumed she’d be sleeping.

When I got home, she wasn’t there.  

It turned out that she’d gone to the mall for Christmas shopping with a friend.

I called the friend’s cell phone, and asked to speak to my daughter.  I was on the war path already.  She couldn’t explain why she’d gone to the mall, nor could she say how long she’d been there.  If I had been snarling angry before, I was now in another dimension.  The top of my head flew off, the rest of my skin fell in a heap around my ankles and I began channeling R. Lee Ermey’s Gunnery Sergeant Hartman.  I am not entirely sure that I did not scream, “What is your major malfunction, Numbnuts? Didn’t your mama and I give you enough attention when you were a child?” but I did shout “DO I MAKE MYSELF CLEAR?” more than once.  

I was calm by the time she got home half an hour later.  I was no less angry.

She was very upset.  I sat her down and told her I was disappointed, mainly that she’d lied to me about how bad she felt that morning, and that she should have known that permission to stay home from school was not permission to go to the mall.

She said, “I didn’t think we’d be gone so long.  I thought I’d be home before you got home.”

That was the part that hurt.  She didn’t just lie, she put some thought into it.  She weighed the consequences of her actions.

I’m not looking forward to talking to her mother this evening, because I’ve never known her mother to go along with any decision of mine, and I suspect that I’ll have to endure a lecture about parenting skills.

Because she’s Dr. Bloody Spock.

This leads me to the lesson in all of this for me.  Lisa wrote about regrets recently, and though I fully agree with her, I do have one major regret this evening (and for a long time to come).

I regret that I am a single dad.  

I regret that I have to be the hardass and the nice guy, that I have to straddle the line between good cop and bad cop.  

And if I have ever taught my daughter that it’s okay to be dishonest as long as you don’t get caught, I regret that, too.

HCOD

A friend and former shipmate had a thing on deployment that he called the “PCOD”.  It’s pronounced “pea cod”, and it means, “Pussy Cut-Off Date”.  He defined it as the last date he could get laid, catch something, realize he’s caught something, get it treated, and be clear of it before getting home to his wife.

Now, I’m not going to debate the relative morality of the concept, and anyone who wants to know where I stand on the subject of infidelity can just browse around in my blog for a while to find that particular answer.  Also, this was clearly in the days before enjoying a piece of strange could net you a disease that guaranteed an ugly death.

No, I’m actually extending the concept to my current situation, namely that I’m facing the eighth Christmas of solitude since my marriage ended.  I realized this morning that it’s well past the Holiday Cut-Off Date today, three weeks until Christmas.  Anything less than six weeks and including each other in family plans on the Big Morning are uncomfortable and weird.  Everyone will just end up trying to be polite while sitting unshaven, unwashed, and unkempt in their slightly-fuggy PJs, and that’s too much pressure to put on the family.  

And if I were to opt out of the Christmas Eve or Christmas Morning festivities (nog or coffee, as appropriate), in favor of someone my family hasn’t met, I’ll get the Third Degree, beginning with the editorial question, “So you’ve known this woman, what?  Three weeks?  And you’re spending your Christmas with her?”

If I were to say that I was indulging myself in the possibility of Christmas Morning Sex (or the fantasy of it, at least), something I have not had in oh, say, ten years, I’d have to deal with the disapprobation of my parents, who have said on a number of occasions that I shouldn’t “get serious” for at least a year.

Don’t get me wrong.  My family wants me to find someone to be with, but not three weeks before Christmas.

The problem is that when you find someone who really trips your trigger, you really want to be with them as much as possible.  You don’t want to miss a single second of the process of getting to know them.  You hope that this is the person you’re going to spend the rest of your life with and you want the rest of your life to start right now.

The truth is that you’re in danger of being more lonely on Christmas day if you’re in a truly new relationship than you are if you just accept that this is the eighth time you’ve been a fifth wheel for the family holiday celebrations.  You can’t be with your new love, and you can’t not be with them, so you slip quietly into spare rooms to make furtive phone calls in the hope of getting to say, “Merry Christmas,” without having to endure any ridicule.

And then there’s the whole problem of what to give your new love as a Christmas gift.  It should have meaning…it’s the first Christmas Gift Ever for the two of you.  Sweet, thoughtful and non-committal; it’s a hard combination to come by.  

Some years ago, I gave a new girlfriend a book entitled “All About Me”, which was simply thought-provoking questions and blanks for my answers.  I spent several evenings on that book, and answered every question truthfully.  After all, I have nothing to hide, and if she was going to be with me in the long term, I wanted her to know that I would always be honest with her.  The message of this gift was not that I was giving myself to her, but that I was willing and able to open myself up to her.

When she broke up with me a month later, she said that my Christmas gift was one of the things that killed it for her.  I was too honest.  Romance lives in a world of illusion, she said, and that simple, heartfelt book had filled in blanks that she wanted left to her imagination.

So for now, I’m resigning myself to the fact that this will be another Singleton Christmas.  

Maybe next year.

“No way November will see our goodbye
When it comes to December, it’s obvious why
No one wants to be alone at Christmas time.
And come January, we’re frozen inside
Making new resolutions a hundred times.
February, won’t you be my Valentine?

And we’ll both be safe ‘til St. Patrick’s Day.”

-- John Mayer