Where I Came From

I bought myself a birthday gift today.

I don't know much about it, but that doesn't bother me.  The seat is covered in a coral-hued fabric, there's wicker underneath the cloth.  The back is punched leather, and there's wicker behind that, too.  The little sticker from the antique mall just said, "Swivel Chair - Oak.  $85".  I offered to pay cash, so they gave it to me for $70.  Life is good, you know.

I saw it a week ago, and I wanted it then, but my wife and the babies and I left the antique mall last weekend and I let myself think about it for a couple days.  See, I'm a pretty impulsive guy, so I thought I'd see if I still wanted the chair come, Wednesday, say.  I did.  Ten years ago, I bought a wooden swivel chair from K-mart and, well, it's just not the same.  There's no character, no history.  No one's ever farted in that K-mart chair besides me.  I like things that have been farted in, apparently.  You should see my trouser collection.

So, today, I put the babies in the car and, on a whim, I picked up the phone and called my father.

"Hey, want to take a ride with me and the babies?  We're going to an antiques mart to pick something up."

"Where?" he asked, "you mean, like across the street, or like, New York?"

"Well," I hedged, pulling up to their house, "it's somewhere in between."

The antiques mart is 23 miles away from where we live, and is around a 45 minute drive.  The babies were blissfully quiet in the back, and my father did what he does best-- which is keeping conversation going.  He asked me questions about the babies he already knew the answers to, or had forgotten, he chatted about a conference for entrepreneurs he attended where he met the mayor and inadvertently put his foot in his mouth-- this happens a lot.  He talked about successfully suing a local radio station, for what I have no idea, and his thoughts about possibly suing his web design contractor.  My father also wants to sue the hospital where my brother-in-law was diagnosed with and treated for the cancer that quickly killed him, but thankfully that subject didn't come up on this leisurely drive down Route 1.

"I hope this thing actually fits in the car," I said during a silence, "I didn't take any measurements."  I never do.

"What are we picking up?" he asked.

"Oh-- it's an office chair, an antique office chair with a cloth seat and a leather back."

He looked at me.  I looked at the road.

"Where did you come from?" he asked, shaking his head, "I mean, seriously-- an antique fucking chair?  Where did you come from anyway?"

I shrugged.

"You know, I ask myself that question a lot, too."

"I mean, I know I have family on my side that liked music and things-- and my cousin, you know, the one that was in love with my brother, she had an antique show in South Africa a while ago.  But you?  I just don't know what it's all about."

And he never did.  But one thing that was always understood was that, however bizarre and off-the-wall my latest interest was, he would be there to indulge it.  During the late eighties, when the Olympics were held in Seoul, I decided, at age 8, that I was going to grow up to marry a Korean girl.  The language fascinated me, so I would have my father drive me to Darby-- 69th Street-- where there was a small Korean enclave, and I would look at all the strange neon signs on storefronts and windows, and I would make him buy me Korean language newspapers that I would take home and study, and copy onto lined paper.  My lust for antique VW Beetles raged unquenchable for years and, when I was fourteen, a 1966 Beetle-- Bahama Blue-- somehow ended up in our driveway.  I sometimes went off to summer camp dressed in a dark blue, heavy wool three-piece suit in 100-degree weather.

No one ever said "no" to me.  But they probably always wondered "why".

I don't know who they would have asked.

"Look," he said to me as I piloted my wife's Honda Fit towards through the towns leading to the antique mart, "just be who you are-- you always were who you are.  The minute you start to change, you can't live in your own skin.  I never changed for anybody."

"Yes," I said, "you did.  You changed a lot."

It was quiet for a second.

"Yeah-- okay, yeah, I did.  But I knew if I was going to stay in this country, I'd have to change-- otherwise it wouldn't be fair to anybody."

I've changed, too.  I'm a husband, and I'm a father, two times over.  I'm no longer chasing dreams of policing the streets as a genteel beat cop, and I'm satisfied with the humble life of the occasional community theatre performer.  I'm no writer, I'm a blogger, and that's okay with me.  When my wife was pregnant, she was worried that the babies would change us into some unrecognizable entity, that they would supplant our identities.  It happens, you know.  Just look at the Facebook profile pictures of the people you went to school with-- many of their profile pictures have been replaced with pictures of their offspring.

But that's supposed to be you.  There's still a you in there-- isn't there?  That's what identity is, I think; who we are and what we love and what piques our interest.  My identity is comprised of my preferences and my proclivities and my habits and my collections.  My sillies.  And I suppose I'm glad I'm still bringing back silly things from antique malls.  And I think, in his way, my father's glad, too.

This Post Is About Sex

Actually, it's not about sex. I just thought I would put that as a title to try to get more people to read the post. Call it marketing.

What this post is about is surprises, and I suppose the only way surprises could really be related to sex is the charge facing Julian Assange, which is "Sex by Surprise," which sounds like it could be the title of a Neil Diamond album.

(Fortunately, it isn't.)

As I write these words (5:43pm, Thursday) my wife is planning on taking me somewhere special for dinner. I'm not quite sure why, of all nights, we're going out for dinner somewhere special. I don't think May 19th is some sort of event in our history together. If it is, I'm going to be in the shit. But I don't think it is. I don't think she has some kind of good-for-one-night-only coupon to Applebees or something. We're way too uppity for that shit.

Nevertheless, Mrs. Apron texted me while I was at work with a rather cryptic message, stating, "I have an awesome idea for something you really would like to do tonight. It involves food, no carabiners, and no harnesses. Lots of vaseline and ropes, though."

I think she's kidding about that last part. But, just in case she's not, I've got our vinyl facemasks with the zipper mouth openings tucked away in the glovebox. The mention of "carabiners and harnesses" is a not-so-subtle reference to the surprise my wife planned for my birthday which was...

(Drumroll, please...)

Indoor rock wall-climbing.

......................................................

I figured out where she was taking me the night before it was scheduled to happen.

Me: "What am I supposed to wear to this alleged surprise?" I asked my bride.

Her: "Um... comfortable clothing..."

Me: "Okay. What about on my feet?"

(Pause.)

Her: "Sneakers."

(Pause.)

Me: "Are we going rock-climbing?"

(She looked at me.)

Her: "Yes." (Pause. Cue Mrs. Apron tears.) "You don't want to go, do you?" she whimpered.

Truthfully, she was right, and she knew she was right. I didn't want to go. Why the fuck would I want to go? What about my personality, my fears, my proclivities, my preferences, my tendencies, my interests, my frail sanity would make anyone think I would want to strap myself to a harness and climb up a fucking wall and then come down, only to have to do it again?

I wanted to flip out at her and ask her that very question, but, instead, I sucked it up, because the woman I loved was crying pre-emptively because she knew she had disappointed me, and so I did what I had to do and I said,

"I do want to go." And I plugged the dam. Frankly, I don't think she believed me, but it was enough to quell the tears, and it sealed the deal. The next day, I was going indoor rock-wall climbing.

Surprise.

I didn't really enjoy myself. Surprise. I was way too preoccupied with judging the speed (or lack thereof) with which I acclimated myself to the harness, knot-tying, and (to me) complex instructions delivered in a rote fashion by the staff member at the rock wall gym. When I was the climber, it was no problem. In spite of my predictable fear of heights, I zoomed up the fucking wall-- aided in that vertical venture by my monkey arms and legs. It was when I was the belayer, responsible for the safety of the woman I love more than anything in the world, that I freaked out inside, sweating like a bastard, hands trembling as I clutched onto the rope and the break for dear life, absolutely panic-stricken that something stupid I would do would send my beautiful Mrs. Apron plummeting to earth, damaging her skull and our marriage.

Fortunately, none of the various disaster scenarios I violently and graphically saw in my head throughout the afternoon came to pass, and, after three hours, we were sitting together, bathed in steep sunlight at a sidewalk café, she enjoying a veggie-burger, me plowing into fried clams and cuban-style egg rolls. Which was definitely more my speed.

Surprises are funny, you know-- rather like sex, I suppose. You build them up, trying to discern what the other person is going to like, and sometimes you get so wrapped up in thinking about it and planning it and obsessing over it, you forget just a little bit about what you're doing (or why you're doing it) in the first place. But, even when they're not quite what you wanted or expected, surprises generally turn out just fine.

You know, like sex.

Up My Conch

Some people think I’m a snob. And, maybe, they’re right. After all, I haven’t worn a pair of overalls since I was four, I don’t say things like “How you’s doin’?” and “I gots fitty cent,” and “I enjoy watching Dr. Phil,” and I’ve never driven a car with rust accents, spinners, or a confederate flag license plate.

I’ve also never eaten at Red Lobster.

You can’t get away from their commercials though. They’re insidious and infectious and invading one’s subconscious. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched a “Red Lobster” commercial and viewed a powerful hand crushing a lemon slice, sending orgasmic spritzes of juice hurtling towards an unsuspecting lobster tail or succulent shrimp piled high on a bed of fluffy rice.

It’s sealicious.

Be that as it may, however sea-ductive (okay, I’ve got to stop that now) the commercials may be, I’ve never been moved to enter a Red Lobster. They’re… around, sure, and I loves me my Sebastian legs, but, for whatever the reason—attribute it to snobbery if you must—I’ve abstained up until this point.

No one’s ever said, “Hey, Apron-fucker, let’s pile into the Volvs and head on over to Red Lobster.” Of course, I’ve never said that either.

Sometimes, I feel guilty about this… call it avoidance of Red Lobster. I mean, what’s the fucking problem? I like seafood. I like reasonable prices. There really shouldn’t be any reason why I wouldn’t go there. Is it the chain-ness of it? No. Chain-ness doesn’t stop me from lustily mouth-fucking a #7 at McDonalds on certain inauspicious mornings.

Maybe it’s the feeling that seafood is somewhat more… special? That it shouldn’t be reduced to some corporate formula, passed down to dozens and dozens of restaurants nationwide?

Why not?

When we were younger and smoother, my parents used to take us all out for dinner maybe once a month at a restaurant called The Little Inn. It wasn’t terribly far from our house, and it was mainly a place that catered to the hearing aid/diaper population. Elderly men would take their wives there to indulge their social security checks and enjoy the waning hours of their autumn years by sleepily sucking down some lobster bisque. The men would dress in impossibly-hued green blazers the shade of astro-turf and the ladies wore Mennonite-style floral dresses and purple hair was the order of the day.

Oh, and there were fucking animal heads and guns on the wall. Lots of guns. Lots of heads.

You’d think that dead deer and fucked-up fowl taxidermized and staring at you would freak one out as an eight-year-old child, but it didn’t bother me in the slightest. I greedily wolfed down surf-and-turf like it was nobody’s business. Inevitably, there would be sibling squabbles, which eventually got so heated that we were banned from returning. Banned, of course, by my parents.

Maybe having never been to Red Lobster was due, at least in part, to the Little Inn Effect (“LIE” – ooh!) I might very well have been… conditioned, in a way, to believe that seafood was something that ought only to be consumed at tables dressed in starched white whilst being stared at by dead… voles, or whatever the fuck those things were on the walls.

Yesterday, though, in honor of my birthday, my Red Lobster cherry was popped. By my father. At 12:05pm, I arrived for our lunch date at a park located down the street from the hospital where I work, and, as I got out of my car, I noticed my father standing by a picnic table, and on it were two enormous take-out containers. As I walked up to him, I artfully inquired,

“What the fuck is all this shit?”

“Red Lobster, Mummy. You can choose which one you want—shrimp scampi or shrimp jambalaya.”

And so, two tall, dark, handsome Jews sat in the park together, on the younger one’s birthday, eating seafood from Red Lobster. And, you know what? It was fucking great. Those cheddar biscuits? Amazed my balls off. My father, who must have been in a nautical frame of mind yesterday, remarked,

“I asked your sister if she wanted to come to lunch with us, but she said, ‘no’, which is okay, because she has been so fuckin’ up my conch lately.”

Bottoms Up. To Life. Up My Conch. Happy Birthday. I love you.

The Pyramid Scheme... Birthday Party

So, it's Valentine's Day, which means nothing in our house.

Oh, not because we don't love each other-- we do love each other, very much (don't you pay attention when I write about my Mrs. Apron?) but because we started cyber-courting on February 16th, which gives us a very convenient excuse to say "Fuck you" to Valentine's Day. We celebrate our love for each other on February 16th-- and pretty much whenever we remember to do it. Like while we're in the car together, talking about linguistics, or operetta, or cop-killing, while we're baking or watching "Teen Mom 2" or whatever.

And, as I was driving to work yesterday morning (yes, I work every other weekend-- Saturday AND Sunday, which is gay. And by "gay" I mean that the fact of me working every other weekend is akin to a gentleman inserting his penile shaft into the anus of another man and moving it around and stuff.) I was thinking to myself, "Gee, if the anniversary of the beginning of our romance together is on February 16th, what holidays/special events in our lives come after that?"

I like to think ahead, see.

My sister's birthday is March 31st. But that doesn't really count. If you don't know why, read a couple posts ago. The one where I write about her moving across the street from me. They just signed papers yesterday. Kill me.

My father's birthday is April 2nd, as is my mother-in-law's.

And then, whoo, babytittycakes: It's mine.

Thirty-one.

Everybody knows that a person's thirty-first birthday is about as exciting as an eleven-year-old Mercury Sable. With cloth interior. Of course, the only birthday of mine about which I've ever gotten excited was my sixteenth birthday, because I could drive and was finally able to legally buy a jar of Vaseline and a box of Kleenex at the same time at CVS. It's been pretty much downhill from that point on as far as my birthdays are concerned. Excitement and joy for my wife's birthday (October 9, in case you're curious) have far supplanted any interest in my own natalness.

Because I don't drink, 21 was just... awkward. As were pretty much all the ones that followed-- except for my 26th, which I celebrated with my wife in Bali on our honeymoon, which easily kicked all of my other birthdays right in the dick. We went on a 20-mile bike ride and I opened presents on a gigantic pillow-top bed in a hotel that we could never afford in America unless I worked 86 hours a week for a year and sold my blood and semen for five months straight.

My 30th birthday was pretty cool, too. My wife kidnapped me and took me to a folk music retreat. I met Nathan Rogers. If you know who he is, you know that's pretty cool. And if you're Nathan Rogers and you got here by Googling yourself, it's okay. I do it, too. But, funnily enough, I never end up here.

But seriously, Crash Bandicoot, knowing that my birthday is a mere three months away got me kind of thinking about my birthday, which sounds like a really annoying thing to say but, hey-- you must be used to that sort of thing by now. I was thinking about how I'd like to spend my birthday, and all I could come up with, while driving to work on a Sunday morning, was "at home with my wife." I could care less about the dogs. They could be there, or not. Actually, maybe if they were somewhere else, that would be better.

Just looked at the calendar for May. My birthday's on a Thursday. Unless the world alters drastically, I will be working from 7a-3p. There goes that idea.

While making preparations for my thirtieth birthday, my wife sat me down and, with seriousness uncustomary, said, "You know, if you want me to invite a bunch of friends over for a party, I hope you'll be honest with me and let me know so I can plan it." I looked at her. "if... you know... that's what you want."

"Sure," I said, "that's actually a good idea. And then, instead of a cake, maybe you can jam a fork into my left testicle and twist it around like you're wrapping spaghetti around a meatball."

And we all had a jolly good laugh.

It's not that I don't like my friends, it's just that I barely have any. And the friends that I do have are all from such disparate sections of my life that I am convinced a gathering with all of them would probably be one of the most awkward, bizarre, unfortunate events with cocktail weiners to occur since Bill Gates was knighted. I mean, can you imagine the painful attempts at small-talk at that shindig?

We decided that what would be in order for the two of us would be a Pyramid Scheme Birthday Party, (it's the only way we'd amass enough people for a, um, party) where ambiguous yet exciting invitations were sent out to a select group of individuals. These unfortunates would be given a time (probably, like, tomorrow) and place (probably, like, some warehouse) to show up, but they had to bring with them at least three other people who would benefit from this once in a lifetime opportunity.

And there would be pie-charts on butcher-block paper on easels and some guy in a monochromatic shirt-and-tie combination with pit stains and thinning hair talking about widgets and things. And then we'd all eat cake.

Maybe I'd like that. Except for all the people.

May 12th - Day of Justice

As you all know, it's my birthday today.

Now, I may be a 20something blogger, ("the bloggers with the biggest mouths") but I don't have my arrogant head so far up my taut, young ass that I don't recognize that there are other things going on out there in the greater, larger sphere today that bear striking import on the workings of our world.

(It is my birthday, though.)

May 12th, 2009 is not only the date in which I turn 29 years old, oh no-- it is a date that rings loud with the peals of justice. Today, accused former Nazi Ivan "John" Demjanjuk arrives in Munich to begin the arduous legal process of charging him with war crimes. Of course, we all know how slowly the wheels of justice move when it comes to prosecuting... well anyone, really-- especially elderly Nazis. Shithead McGee was first identified as a Nazi back in 1977. We all know he's going to keel over and die before any charges are ever formally brough against him, but the fact that he is arriving on German soil today, arriving in a country that once rewarded him for his brutal deeds-- now a country that wants to knock his flaccid dick in the dirt, well, I think that's pretty significant.

And I'm glad such a weighty event is happening on my birthday. Add that to the May 12th list, wikidorks!

Another significant event is going to happen today and it is also an event that would make even the most staunch arbiters of justice quake and quail, it is an event that is momentous in its portent and its power. It's not a Supreme Court decision, but, in the realm of our American culture, it's far more important-- for the only person who talks about Supreme Court decisions is NPR legal correspondent Nina Totenberg. Everybody, though, will be talking about this decision.

Today, ladies and gentlemen, on May 12th, the anniversary of my dubious birth, the decision is going to be made. THE decision. The decision about whether or not to strip Miss California, Carrie Prejean, of her sash. (Prejean, by the way, is no relation to famed death-penalty abolitionist Sister Helen Prejean, which should be obvious to anyone who's seen them both naked.) We all know Carrie Prejean's crime: being photographed while topless. First, she said she was never photographed topless. Then, once one picture came out, she said that's all there were. Then three more came out. She's starting to sound like a politician!

Well, today is the day where all the world will finally know whether or not you can slut it up and lie about it in this country and still walk away with a sash and a crown. Not only is the momentously awesome decision going to be made today, on my birthday, but it is going to be made by a man with a sterling judicial and moral compass, no less an authority on decency and virtue than Mr. Donald Trump, the "owner" of the Miss USA Pageant.

Trump said that he "planned to review the racy pictures of Prejean" and that he will render a decision once he's all cleaned up. Well, I don't know about you, but the fact that I know without a shadow of a doubt that Donald Trump is, possibly right at this very moment, masturbating to pictures of some vapid, homophobic beauty queen on my birthday and will then undoubtedly say "Carrie, you're fired" to her while sitting in his ox-blood leather chair, with crumpled tissues stuck in between the seat cushions-- all on my fucking birthday-- is just pretty goddamn impressive to me.

I mean, wow. Weighty things are happening on my big day!

And a 29-year-old blogger just couldn't ask for more than that.

Beeeeeeee-day

It's almost my birthday.

May 12th. Buy me things.

I'll be 29 years old. I wonder if 20 Something Bloggers will take back my membership card a year from Tuesday. I won't give it up without a fight.

I don't know quite how I feel about my birthday these days. It's funny. See, on the one hand, I'm an attention whore. I am coming to terms with this. I mean, if you examine the things I like to do in my life (principally-- act and blog) my attention whoredom is pretty obvious. I'm only now just coming to terms with it, and I thank you for your assistance-- although that seems kind of ass-backwards, but that's okay. I don't thank you guys nearly enough.

So, being a self-proclaimed attention-whore, you'd think that I would eat my birthday up with a red plastic spoon and wash it down with some sugary cake. But the attention-whore in me is in competition with the influence of 28 years of my father poo-poohing his own birthday.

Dad: "Why do I give a fuck about my birthday?"

Me: "Um, because it's nice?"

Dad: "Nice? Please. Fuck that!"

When my father was growing up in Israel, they didn't used to have birthdays. They imported them from America back in the mid-seventies, after he'd come and gone. He doesn't understand his birthday-- the point, the purpose. He doesn't like being fawned over and, if we ever bought him a tie, he'd strangle us with it. A "World's Best Dad" coffee mug? He'd break it over our heads. He thinks all that shit is gay, and it is. The funny thing is, he understands the concept of the birthday perfectly well when it's my birthday, or my mother's birthday, or my sisters'. He just doesn't get his. And it's not just him, either. His sister doesn't even know her's, so they picked a day in early April-- you know, for the hell of it.

Dad: "I don't want a fuckin' birthday. Do you tell me that you love me every time we talk?"

Me: "Um, yes."

Dad: "Good. Then every day is my fuckin' birthday."

So there are these two parts of me working against each other. Part of me wants loving cards and pressies and, yes, attention-- and part of me kind of is sort of non-committally rather ambivalent. Well, it wants to be.

29 is going to be an interesting year. It's the first year where I'm starting to really notice changes in my body. As I look in the mirror, a cluster of ten or so white hairs is clearly visible near the front of my hairline. Mrs. Apron used to pull them for me, four or five years ago, in those heady days of youth when there were only two or three-- when we thought we could beat them. I've since asked her to stop. No matter how early you wake up, you can't beat the clock.

I was standing in the airplane-sized bathroom on our first floor a couple days ago and, in the tragic lighting situation I noticed horizontal lines going across my forehead. What does Joan Rivers call those things? Wrinkles? Yeah. I guess they're wrinkles.

I'm very fortunate, I realize, to have gone through almost the entirety of my twenties without my physical appearance changing very much. I was 134 pounds and 6'0" when I graduated high school, and I'm 136 pounds and 6'0" now. Thick head of brown hair then, thick head of (98%) brown hair now. Skin basically smooth. Penis goes up and down as specified in manual. Time has not ravaged me yet, but I do feel like it's picking my pocket.

Since it's my birthday soon, that means I get wishes, right? I guess my father gets wishes every day of his life. I hope he uses those abundant opportunities wisely. I know the big wish, the sacred wish, the one that just absolutely has to come true has to be uttered in silence before the blazing birthday cake, or else it won't come true. Don't worry, I know the rules.

Here, though, are my other birthday wishes. Are you listening, Santa Claus & Jesus?

* I want my athlete's foot and toenail fungus both to go away this year. I've tried Lamisil and baby powder and tough-actin' Tinactin and prayer and seances and nothing seems to work, so I think I'm going to try birthday wishing it away. I'll keep you updated.

* I want to go hot, one last time.

* I want to kick this bitch, right in the pussy.

* I want to still be writing this blog a year from now.

* I want to gain some weight. This is a tricky one, see, because Mohandas & Pete, the Birthday Gods, to go overboard with this particular request. So, I'll be specific: seven pounds or fewer please, thanks.

* I want reality television to be uninvented.

* I want Barack Obama to ditch the limo and start riding around in a car that is more befitting the first African-American president.

* I want to learn at least ten chords for the banjo, and I want to learn how to pick.

* I want happiness, health, safety, love and laughter for Mrs. Apron.

* I want more white hairs. Bring 'em on, motherfuckers.

Bring it.