Suck It

I'm a little distracted right now-- and I ought to be at the gym seeing as I have a police physical agility test on Saturday morning, so, if this post is a little disjointed and weird, um, I'm sorry.

See, at this very moment, I am wracked with guilt over blogging instead of gymming. Not only that, but there's a goddamn mosquito landing on my right hand approximately every fifteen seconds, and it's trying to suck my motherfucking blood, give me West Nile Virus, and it'll never even write or call again.

It's just this shallow, thrill-seeking, sanguine-hungry daredevil who is incredibly good at fleeing and eluding, has that unfair advantage of flight (as Captain Hook so famously said, "It isn't fair! 'Tis some fiend fighting me-- Pan, who and WHAT art thou?")

Yeah, yeah, yeah-- youth, joy, and freedom. Go fuck yourself, Peterbilt.

If you can fathom a good reason why mosquitoes exist, then you're clearly smarter than most. And you probably don't get bitten by them either, and I hate you. I don't know what it is about me. Maybe they love half-bred Israelis with scoliosis, Eeyoretitudes and questionably-aligned dentition, but these sumbitches are all over me. I go out wearing long-sleeved shirts and trousers and I get the bites in the most covered of places.

It's a tad irksome to think of some bastard-assed mosquito flying up your pant leg and noodling around up in there. I've never gotten a mosquito bite on my peen, though. Not that I'm complaining-- but, why is that? Is my wong not biteable? I mean, there's plenty of blood in that mother-- sometimes much moreso than others. But, seriously, like-- what the fuck, mosquitoes? I'm beginning to get a complex.

I don't know if mosquitoes think, but, if they do, they've got to be pretty single-minded of purpose. "Blood. Blood. Blood. Blood. Blood. Blood." Sort of like men. Except, with us, it's "furry triangle, furry triangle, furry triangle, furry triangle, furry triangle."

Jesus-- there he goes again. I can't kill him. I'm trying, though-- trust me, but he's very, very good. I'm using the CLAP method, hoping to annihilate him between my two palms, but it's not happening. Alternatively, when I see it land on the desk, I'm ramming down my hand but all it's doing is hurting my hand. And messing my blogging game up.

The sound they make when they're right by your ear is absolutely sickening-- it's even more revolting than the fact of them landing on you, shoving that pike-looking proboscis inside you and gorging on your blood. I think. Maybe I'm an auditory guy. Who knows?

Furry. Triangle.

I'm sorry-- what were we talking about again?

I Love

This may seem gay, (this is why you read me, isn't it?) but I think that, sometimes, you've got to step back from the grit and shit and unattractive tit of the world (yes, they exist) and express a little bit of appreciation for the things, or people, in life that you love.

Two nights ago, my wife stated emphatically that "People do not go around singing, 'O, my adored one!' and 'Beloved boy!' in real life, as they do in Gilbert & Sullivan operettas (The Sorcerer, to cite the exact quotations like the insufferable pedant that I am) and, while I am inclined to agree with her on that point, I only do so to an extent.

Sure, singing the praises of your new Woolrich coat whilst entering the post office in the morning or lustily informing passersby of your extreme fondness for banana and raspberry lowfat yogurt smoothies or your Aunt Velma might seem extreme or odd; I would posit that, should the proper occasion and venue arise where you can shed some light on a love of yours, then you'd be a dickslapper to not do so at once.

Jesus-- was that last paragraph really all one sentence? And I call myself a writer.

Bah.

Woody Allen

If anyone's still reading, I'm going to take some heat on this one. I don't need to relate the rather unfortunate facts of Mr. Allen's personal life that make him a very undesirable character to those with morals; we all know the deal there. And it's gross. I won't pretend that it isn't. And I also won't pretend that I'm not a big hypocrite for liking him AHA* (*and his art) in spite of his nasty sexual proclivities. But every time my wife and I watch "Manhattan Murder Mystery" (and it's been a couple) we can't help snuggling into each other on the couch saying, "God, I hope we're like that when we're sixty" or however old he and Diane Keaton were supposed to be when that was filmed.

And I can't watch "Sleepers" or "Bananas" without cracking the hell up, and the scene in "Take the Money & Run" where they talk about how Woody Allen's character was in his high school band, briefly, and then they show a six second clip of him in full band-geek uniform, holding a cello, and attempting to play it while the band is marching, and he moves the goddamn chair two inches every two seconds... well, if that isn't poetry, then just shoot me in the face and we'll call it a day.

And, yes, I haven't seen a "new" Woody Allen film since I saw "Deconstructing Harry" in the movie theatre and thought it was a piece of shit. Before you shoot me in the face, you can say, "Die, Hypocrite." I won't mind.

Blogging Without Pictures

They'd just... get in the way, and end up coming between us, and I can't have that.

Big, Old American Cars

Most of you know that I drive a (used, eight-year-old) Volvo. It's small, and fast, and leather-swathed, and its steering is tight and nimble, and it's a wonderful automobile. Most of you also know that I'm incredibly self-conscious about it-- and I was never moreso than the one-and-a-half weeks where I wasn't working. We went out to dinner with a bunch of friends, and random people, and this girl visiting from Spain walked up to my car.

"Oh! I looove Volvos. They are so beautiful," she said, taking a rather sexual drag of her cigarette.

"Um," I said uncomfortably, "it's old."

I really like my Volvo, even though it makes me feel weird. But I don't LOVE it. I probably won't ever love it, because I love big, old American cars. I love crushed velvet seats, or velour, if crushed velvet isn't immediately available. I love doors that have elegant-looking, chrome-plated push-button handles on the outside. I love when the shifter is on the steering column, so there's that looooong, luxurious bench seat, perfect for napping, or cuddling, or.... more... um.... fornicatious...... activities.... I love V-8 engines, even though they're not P.C. or eco-friendly or economical or even sane, really. I love mobile sofas. I love faux wood on the dashboard and the door inserts. I love the smell of vinyl, and the springiness of seats that were created when people thought it was okay to wear plaid suits.

To work.

When I'm driving an old, American car, I know that it won't go three months without the muffler falling off or the electric window falling down into the depths of the door, but, when you mash your foot down on that pedal, if the sound of that burbling, gargantuan 351 cubic inch engine doesn't send your eyeballs rolling up into your head, well, I guess it's Prius time for you.

My wife

This hasn't been an easy time for us-- this whole job transition thing. Mrs. Apron and I both started new jobs on Monday, and that's challenging. She's accepted a school-based job with lavish vacations, and I have accepted a job at a psychiatric facility that is open 24 hours a day, all week, all year. My existence is rather blue-collar at the moment, and time off is rigidly structured, but it is a means to an end-- a stop on the way to, hopefully, a more permanent career. Through the course of this transition, we have had our struggles, but we support each other every day, and we rise to meet these challenges together.

Easily the most intelligent, thoughtful, and insightful person I have ever met, Mrs. Apron challenges me in ways I have never been challenged before, and that's sometimes scary, but it's always with the right motive-- the desire to exist side-by-side, to flourish, to create an environment comfortable and safe and fulfilling for a little Apron-face to exist in some fine day.

When we were dating, I bought my wife a gorgeous mirror, in the shape of a star, that is painted blue with little flowers on it, and, carved into the wood is the word, "GROW." Every day, I feel, we are inviting each other to grow. And, even though any plant or child will tell you that it's hard, I love that.

My Eyebrows

"Those can't possibly be real!" an elderly audience member said to me after a production of Patience. They are. And they're a comic actor's best friends.

Watches

I collect things. Old telephones, antique typewriters, old (and not quite so old) eyeglasses, hats from bygone decades, and sometimes centuries, but I am absolutely a bit crackers about watches. It used to be only pocketwatches in which I was interested. I bought one off of ebay for my wife, but, when it arrived, I saw it was about the size of my fist, and so I ended up wearing it, even though I had it engraved for her. Added it to my collection. I've belabored her with an antique tri-color gold pendant watch, an early American wristwatch, perhaps from 1910 or so, though I've given up (I think) on trying to find the exact replacement for an antique Hamilton that she lost in France years ago when it got caught on a sweater she had taken off and was never seen again. (There's still a drawing of that watch in my wallet-- just in case I start feeling ambitious again when antique-hunting...)

Now, I also collect wristwatches, apparently. I love automatic watches-- oh, I also bought her one of those-- it's orange. Automatic, or "self-winding" watches work on kinetic energy, or the movement of your wrist to keep them going. The technology is old, but they're becoming fashionable again, because they're suddenly eco-friendly, not requiring a battery. I bought myself a Bulova self-winder from 1954 a couple of years ago, and I decided that it brought up bad memories/associations for me, so I gave it to an old friend for his birthday. He has a habit of buying watches from drug stores, and I thought, "I have to put a stop to that." Of course, it was just a convenient excuse to buy myself a 1967 Seiko 5 Automatic.

What a dildo, right?

Fall Clothing

Square-bottomed knit neckties. Soft sweatervests. Vintage sportcoats. Corduroy trousers. Earthtones. Toggle coats. Plaid scarves.

God, let that barometer fall. I love you, Autumn.

You

Thanks for hanging around. You knew I'd get to you-- didn't you?

Sperm Donor + Vag Hag = Hollywood Gold

If you've turned on your television set (do they still call them "television sets" and, if so, do they still turn them on?) or gone to the cinema (I know they don't still call it that) recently, then you've most likely seen a TV show or a movie about at least one lazy, incompetent dumbshit, maybe two, hamhandedly having and/or raising a child, as a couple of rodeo clowns might do so after a month-long boozer.

Film:

Knocked Up
Juno
The Backup Plan
Expecting Mary

I'm sure I'm forgetting about some, or am ignorant of the existence of others. Please feel free to chime in, like a fucking doorbell, you ridiculous hottie, you.

Now, television's getting jealous, or getting smart, so they're coming out with "Raising Hope," featuring a hapless, white-trash dunderhead who wears opened plaid shirts and feeds his baby out of a rubber glove filled with milk.

Oh, men! How did we all make it into adulthood without mandated bike helmets?

Then, of course, there's all the "Didn't-Know-I-Was-Pregnant", "I'm-16-and-Pregnant", "My-Boo's-Pregnant", "I-Took-an-Extreme-Trembly-Shit-and-a-Motherfuckin-Baby-Fell-Out" choice television programs on MTV. Again, what's the common theme? Immature retards diddling around with same and the existence and future of a precious, precarious infant hangs in the balance.

We as a culture are, apparently, eating that shit up-- you know, like a pregnant chick. The question is, why? Why are we so fascinated by watching an ignorant bumpirate leaving a child asleep in a carseat outside a locked apartment door for twenty minutes? Is it shock value? Sure. Is it so we can nestle back into our couches and our choices and smugly report to all who care to listen, "Well, I would never do that!"

Of course not. And my mother would never forget to pick up my sister at school and my father would never run my foot over with the car.

Oh, wait.

I took a playwriting seminar in college, and it really was a seminal event (heh heh-- I used "seminar" and "seminal" in the same sentence, and, yes, I am still twelve) in my life as a writer. It was in this class where I learned about the importance of raising the stakes in comic and dramatic writing for the stage. Don't just make the main characters about to get divorced. Let them have a fourteen-year-old son who's a target masturbator with Aspergers and have Dad about to lose his job and let Mom pop Vicodin so much she calls them her "Little Vickies." Mix in pedophile Uncle Thad who has a beer gut, eczema, wears Bermuda shorts with the fly down all the time-- oh, and the house as about to be foreclosed on by the bank and NOW you've got yourself a show.

The stakes, motherfuckers, hath been raised.

So, maybe that's what this new phenomenon is about. I mean, television and film are both media formats that have been saturated with d-bags and bullshitfaces for decades upon decades. Remember "Married with Children"? That show was what it was, but, had the head writer (was there a head writer?) decided to throw a newborn baby into that mishegoss, well, he probably would have been fired. The times were.... different. Nobody was prepared to quite go there.

So why are we prepared to go there, and so frequently it seems, now? What's changed? My very smart and cutie-patootie'd wife suggested that we've now become thoroughly accustomed to the two-income family, and, with mom and dad off doing their job things, now our generation is growing up either being or feeling as if they are totally inept and not exactly up to the task of child-rearing.

I'm not sure if that's true, but I am becoming increasingly sure that Hollywood is trying to make us think that we, Generation-Y'ers (I'm 30 and so I still count. Barely.) inept and stupid and incapable of raising child, and all we are confronted with are similarly fucked up models on television and film. Now, granted, that's interesting to watch. There's nothing particularly interesting about watching two income-earners in their early thirties semi-successfully juggling work, fun, occasional intercourse, and parenting. I get that. We'd much rather watch 16-year-olds picking up their children by their feet as if they were gorilla babies.

Wouldn't we?

Surely, You Jest

There are two types of people in this world: those who hear jokes, take care to remember the jokes they're told, and take pleasure in relating them to others, and those who do not.

I do not.

Not to sound like a prig, but I have frequently been referred to as funny, but as any funny person will tell you, there are lots of different ways in which one may be funny. Sometimes, it's as easy as a well-timed eyebrow lift. Careening down a flight of stairs without getting a head injury and/or a Greenstick fracture is funny. Peter Sellers proved that in "The Pink Panther Strikes Again." If we take him and that further, getting randomly attacked in your own apartment by an Asian manservant whilst destroying every piece of furniture you own is also, well, comic.

Time has proven that referring to said manservant as your "little yellow friend," while perhaps at one time may have been funny, today, is not. Oh, Burt Kwouk. You can jump out of my kitchen pantry screaming at the top of your lungs as you karate chop me between the shoulder blades any day...

Anyway, there are lots of ways one can be funny. Of all the ways to be funny, I think joke telling might be one of the oldest forms of humor, though I'm not sure it's especially holding its own. People who tell jokes are also people who remember jokes. Lots of us get told jokes, I suspect, but those of us who have no intention of ever using the joke again let said jest gently waft through our short-term memory and then get flushed as easily as yesterday's Special-K.

The joke-teller is a special breed of humanoid. I had always thought that old people told jokes, but that's not always true. When I was a boy of nine or ten, my uncle would often call the house to speak to my mother. When I would answer the phone, he would tell me a joke, usually a racist joke involving the rather unkind Yiddish word for black person, "schvartze." I would pretend to enjoy the joke, and then I would hand the phone over to my mother. I guess my uncle was in his late thirties at that time, maybe a little older.

He's an asshole, and I'm pretty sure I knew that back then.

There are people I know who tell only certain kinds of jokes. My uncle only told racist jokes, because he is an asshole who wears Docksiders with no socks and sunglasses indoors and polo shirts with the collars turned up, and he works with a bunch of assholes who did likewise. Another older guy I know only tells sexual jokes, usually involving older men, who just happen to be impotent. Go figure, right?

I don't know what it is about people who tell jokes. Maybe they do it because they're not especially good at interpersonal communication, and this is their way of connecting with each other, with you-- with me. Maybe that's what it is, because, generally speaking, joke-telling never really results in gut-busting hysterics. It's a way of connecting, of identifying, of cliquiness, of aiming outward-- at another group, person, class. It's communication, or the supplanting of communication. I don't really know what it is, because I don't do it. I'm just on the receiving end. I'll listen to any horseshit you've got to spill on my bib-- I don't care.

I just... don't get it. Why do joke-tellers do it? Why don't they stop? Maybe because people like me laugh through our warped little false smiles. If I'm the one to blame, I'm sorry.

Last night at rehearsal, I was in the hallway going over my music when another performer, a man in his early sixties whom I like very much, came up to me and gently touched my shoulder.

"Did you ever hear the one about the little girl in the barbershop?" Not waiting for me to say yay or nay, he continued immediately. "Well, her father was getting his hair cut and the barber said, 'Oh, you sweet little girl, here's a cupcake for you.' And so the little girl was eating the cupcake and, you know, she's watching her daddy get his hair cut and she's standing, like, right under the chair, you know, and the barber's cutting away and he notices the little girl standing right under the chair and the barber says, 'You know, sweetheart, you're going to get hair on your cupcake.' And the little girl says, 'I know! And one day my breasts are gonna get real big, too!'"

Goodnight, everyone. I'll be here all week.

Aw, Shewt...

So, I've been learning a lot about myself lately.

One thing that I've learned, looking at my resume (as I have been doing quite a bit lately) is that I've had many jobs, but no careers. A dear old friend of mine has been trying to convince me that many people my age are this way, and that, if this were the 1920s, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

He's probably right on both points. A great many people my age flit from job to job, wandering directionless well into their late twenties, searching for a place where they fit, whilst spinning their wheels in a lot of places where they don't. And, were this the 1920s, I most likely would have apprenticed in some trade, and stayed with it for the rest of my life, or perhaps changed paths once, if at all.

This friend, by the way, decided that he wanted to be a physician when he was 24, requiring a post bac year to get himself up-to-speed. So I guess he knows what he's talking about. As much as anyone I know, at least.

But I still can't help feeling, I don't know, insecure. Singular in my inability to prove myself on a career path. Different. I guess that what comes from your parents telling you you're special, unique, apart. Didn't your parents tell you that, too?

And so I've got my job, and I'm using it as a place-holder until the career in law enforcement starts. To prep myself, I've been lifting weights-- turning my spindly little arms into, um, less spindly little arms? I've been running, jogging, sprinting, sit-upping....

Oh, and shooting.

A month ago, I had never fired a gun. Seven years ago, when I tried to become a cop the first time, I took apart a 9mm semiautomatic handgun, and I put it back together again in a small classroom in front of a retired police officer. Oh, and I also did a fill-in-the-blank ditto sheet, identifying the parts of the gun. I never fired it. Realizing that I would be amongst individuals who are ex-Army types, and huntin' types, and people who've been popping off rounds since before they had any peach fuzz to speak of, I decided that it was time to bite the bullet.

Ha.

My wife and I are fortunate enough to live in what I feel is a sort of neighborhood that is on the cusp of upper-middle class. In any case, you have to drive for a while before you can arrive at a destination where people shoot guns on a regular basis. The closest firing range open to the public that I know of is around fifty minutes away. I've been twice, and Mrs. Apron went with me both times. The first time was after a very strenuous hike, and Mrs. Apron had slid down a rocky embankment, mostly on her butt, but some of it on her arm, which she managed to gash up.

"Did he do that to you?" the gun shop clerk asked with a wry grin on his face the first time we went. We were covered in dirt, gravel dust, and sweat. He was dressed in a denim collared shirt, denim shorts, and he wore a Glock in a holster on his hip. I guess it's like waitresses at Flingers needing to wear 36 pieces of flair. I was surprised he wasn't wearing 35 other guns. I'm sure there was at least one other one that we couldn't see.

Mrs. Apron vacillated on whether or not she wanted to shoot or watch. Finally, she capitulated. The clerk was very friendly, in spite of the Tea Party literature all over the place and a sign that said, "Gun Control = Two Hands on a Gun" and he didn't make us feel like the incompetent Jews that we were. He started us out on a .22 caliber handgun, which felt extremely dangerous.

Until we went back the next time and fired a .38. That motherfucker was big, and heavy, and loud.

Firing a gun is very strange if you've never done it before. Then again, I guess anything is strange if you've never done it before. While we were at the firing range the first time, I can remember putting the bullets into the gun and thinking about my "firsts." I couldn't remember the first time I was behind the wheel of a car, and what that felt like. I do remember the first time being behind the wheel of an ambulance, totally convinced that I would kill my partner, the patient, and myself. I remember the first time I had sex. Let's just say shooting the .22 went better. It lasted longer, too.

I felt much more confident the second time we went, and I kind of got a little smitten with the .38, even though the ammunition cost a LOT more. I'm, of course, ashamed about the fact that I enjoyed utilizing an instrument of death and destruction. In Tad Friend's book, "Cheerful Money: Me, My Family, and the Last Days of Wasp Splendor" he writes of a choice abbreviation that his mother frequently employed: "NFOCD."

"Not For Our Class, Dear."

When I first approached my mother at the tenderish age of 22 and announced my intention to take the police officer exam and enroll at the academy, that is, essentially, what she said to me.

"That's not for you," she informed me seriously.

"Oh, it's okay for some other mother's son, but not for your son?" I asked, expecting that to be a retort that would sting her into a shocked silence. It didn't.

"That's exactly right," my mother replied, before descending into the basement to do laundry, which was, and still is her way of avoiding any unpleasantness more unpleasant than laundry.

She's doing a lot better seven years later. Now, she actually asks me questions about my preparations, she wants to know timelines and takes an interest in where I am faxing resumes and when tests are coming up. When I told her I had applied to the FBI, she didn't flinch. Maybe it's because I'm older, or because she's older, or because my middle sister is the squeaky wheel-- with a baby that my mother is basically raising and a marriage on its way to dissolution, and my eldest sister having moved back home under topsy-turvy circumstances.

"I guess I just don't know where to start worrying first," she told me this week.

"Oh, mom," I said, "you started decades ago-- and you'll never finish, so just kind of start in the middle, in the thick of it all. Maybe you'll stop worrying when you're dead."

She laughed.

"Maybe."

"I guess that's why some people call it their 'sweet release'," I said, pushing out the screen door after a brief visit with her and my nephew.

"Well," she said, ever the pragmatist, "I'm not especially looking forward to that either."

I'm Back, Bitches

The astute and non-visually impaired of you might have noticed that I, um, blogged yesterday.

From August 5th to September 10th it was mighty quiet 'round these here parts. That was because I didn't have a job, and I felt like a sort of assmonkey sitting around blogging when I was supposed to be lurking around on Craigslist, searching for if not meaningful than at least gainful employment.

As luck would have it, I may have found both. I don't know yet-- I start on Monday. So... we'll see.

It's going to be kind of a different scene for me. Going from working with talented children to the mentally ill is a tad of a shift, but some of the same techniques and personality traits of mine may prove just as useful with my new, er, population. And, I mean-- how different could it really be, right? Children bite. Psych patients.... um.... bite.

Yeah....

Of all the jobs I have held since college, this may end up being the one for which I am the least qualified, and I've never really been totally qualified for any of the jobs I've held. But, oddly, that doesn't worry me. I supposed I'm used to being under-qualified. The woman interviewing me for this position referred to me as "overqualified," but then, she doesn't know me very well. Prospective employers know what they see on paper and, if you wear a tie, they get a little horny. Wear a sterling-silver tie-bar, and you can practically watch their trousers get soggy.

I suppose I'm also not too concerned because I know that this job is only a stop-gap on my way to securing a career in law enforcement. Once the economy turns around and police departments really kick their recruitment/hiring initiatives into high gear, I will be ready. I have been kicking ass and taking several names at the gym, and I can now successfully lift 83% of my bodyweight. Admittedly, that's only a couple of bags of dog-food, but it's still an accomplishment to me.

Mostly, I'm proud of the fact that I have secured employment at all. In this economy, it's no small feat. It's maybe even large-ish. The fact that there were three job offers (well, two-and-a-half if I'm completely honest) on the table shocked even me. I guess that's what happens when you aim low while wearing a sterling-silver tie-bar. The trousers of many an H.R. representative got moist in southeastern P.A. over the course of the last two weeks, I'm proud to say.

One of the things, of course, that lightens my spirits these days is the fact that, now that I have a job, I feel a bit more "right" about blogging again. Sure, it wasn't something that took up huge amounts of my time during the day, but it was an admitted distraction, and something I knew the world could do without.

(You all survived, didn't you? God, you're beautiful.)

It feels very, very good to be doing this again. Married as I was to stalking such inglorious sites as Craigslist, Careerbuilder, Monster, and whatever other awful sites, it feels a little weird to not be checking those sites out anymore on a near constant, eye-drying basis. Reading banal, non-descript postings for jobs I didn't want, but applied for anyway. Easily the most colorful job offer I got (oh, wait-- that's three-and-a-half!) was an erectile-dysfunction clinic that wanted to hire me to give IV infusions to flaccid patients.

"You'll be proud to witness men get their first erections in years," I was told, "right there in the office in front of you!"

Better than behind me, I thought.

No Coffee

I had my first cup of coffee when I was... eight, I think. It was regular, high-test, as they say in BP-parlance. Israelis don't wait around for silly things like, say, adolescence. Why wait, when your precious world and your precious family could be blown up tomorrow?

Coffee has become customary at my parents' home. It follows every meal, and it doesn't matter if it's 103 degrees out and the truculent sun is blazing through the imitation shoji window screens in the dining room-- there. will. be. coffee.

I expect it. My oldest sister demands it. Since her epiglottis or whatever got all fucked up a few years ago, she eats very, um, particularly, and coffee is her one real pleasure in life. Her vice. Her sanctity. Her holy water. And she laps it up as if she were crawling on the desert floor of the Kalahari for weeks and in that ceramic cup were the last drops of moisture in the world. She licks the mug. It's actually quite disgusting. They're not dainty little mint julip licks either. They're lusty, rye bourbon licks, tongue flat against the mug's interior. It's a bit like pornography, and watching your sister behave like that, at the dinner table no less, is a bit disconcerting.

But, hey-- it's coffee. Liquid gold.

A while ago, my wife alerted me to the fact that I don't actually like coffee. She evinced this by pointing out that I put enough sugar in my coffee to send the air molecules around the mug into a diabetic coma. "You like coffee-flavored candy-water," she said.

"Ah. You're probably onto something there," I said, re-filling the banana-yellow Fiestaware sugar bowl for the third time this week.

When dining at my parents' house, I don't always want coffee after the meal, but I always take it, because it's always offered, and a meal there just doesn't feel.... right without it. You know when something just doesn't feel right, don't you? A handshake, or a kiss-- a hello or a goodbye. Walking down an unfamiliar alley after the sun's set or buying a used mattress. Well, dinner at my parents' house without coffee sort of feels like that. It's foreign, or absurd. Maybe incomplete is more of what I'm looking for. A bit... off.

It's Rosh Hashanah today. We were all together at my parents' house-- me, my wife, my two sisters, my sister's husband, their beautiful baby boy, my father-in-law and, of course, my parents. A much bigger gathering than usual. There was chicken, Israeli-style sauteed vegetables and rice, pecan and apple pie and ice cream-- but no coffee. It just... didn't happen. The baby was uncustomarily cranky, with diaper rash on his tussie as we call it, and there was a flurry of activity to alternately quiet him and entertain him. There was hide-and-seek and chasing and the calming water of the bathtub and a quick jaunt to CVS by my father to get Desitin or Chèvre or whatever you rub on a baby's ass to get it to stop crying, and I had to leave to drive my father-in-law back to his car so he could get back to his job, and, when I came back, well, the opportunity had been missed.

It's funny how everything changes. My oldest sister mused, as there was jubilant banshee-like screaming (my mother) from the living room, what family dinners were like, you know, before.

"They couldn't have been this loud," she declared, her hand to her forehead.

"No, they were-- they just weren't cute loud," I replied, sinking into my old seat like a slice of bologna on bread. "This is what we always were, just more fucked up now."

Of course, there was always coffee-- to take the edge off.

Now there are new family members, both young and not quite so young, and sometimes they sit at our dining room table and sometimes, just sometimes, I can't quite always believe I'm staring at who's staring back at me, and sometimes, just sometimes, I'm pleasantly surprised at whom I'm staring, and sometimes I'm stunned or appalled or frightened or horribly pissed. And sometimes I actually catch myself staring, and remember that, if I'm very, very good, maybe-- just maybe, there'll be coffee again.