The Lap of Luxury

I've recently written a couple posts where I reference the fact that I look at internet porn. Obviously, if I were Mark McGwire, this would be something worth holding a press conference about.

Fortunately, I'm not Mark McGwire, and, in seven months, my testicles won't resemble a pair of Grape Nuts.

I don't want to give you the idea that I'm constantly seated at my computer with my trousers keeping my ankles warm as I troll mercilessly through the seedy underworld of the internet, replete with its endless supply of pearl necklaces, money shots and weird shit involving frozen marmalade, a yardstick, and feet pajamas that I won't go into here without an attorney present. I think I have a relatively healthy libido for a 29-year-old male, and I won't say much more than that without my wife present.

(Hi, Bobber!)

So, while it might seem like all I do with the assistance of a computer blog or something less socially appropriate, that's just not true.

I spend way, way too much time fantasizing on http://www.ebaymotors.com/.

Some of you have heard about this somewhat irregular and possibly disturbing aspect of my personality, and you stick with me anyway-- and maybe that says more about you than it does about me, but we won't go there. For your sake.

Most people who visit http://www.ebaymotors.com/ have, I suspect, at least some intention, however passing, to actually purchase a motor vehicle at some point in the forseeable future. I am not one of those people. While I oftentimes wish it weren't the case, I am here strictly for the carnography.

My tastes in motor vehicles runs from the adorable to the absurd. Most of you know that my undying passion begins and ends with the antique Volkswagen Beetle, somewhere in the 1963-1967 area.

But my tastes vary widely. Here's a brief, partial list of the vehicles I have considered purchasing at some point in the last calendar year (again, not that I'm actually considering it, but, you know, considering it):

2003-2005 Subaru Forester
1999-2002 Subaru Legacy Outback
2002-2006 Toyota Camry
2006-2009 Chevrolet Impala
1995-2009 Ford Crown Victoria
1998-2003 Honda CR-V
2008 Nissan Versa
2003-2006 Volkswagen New Beetle
2003-2009 Volkswagen Golf/Rabbit
2009 Toyota Yaris 5-Door
2005-2007 Honda Accord
1996-1999 Honda Odyssey
1988-1989 Dodge Diplomat/Plymouth Gran Fury
1994 Saab 900-S
2009 Scion XB

Remember-- that's a partial list. I'll think of others as this post goes along, but I'll spare you.

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about luxury cars because, in this affluent area in which I am fortunate to live, I am bombarded not only with commercials for BMW, Mercedes, Lexus, Audi, Acura and such, but I see their hood ornaments, their sculpted lines, their ceramic brakes and their supple moo-leather everywhere I turn-- in supermarket parking lots, on the streets, in driveways and in the "Car & Driver" that I read religiously-- and this time I actually am reading a glossy magazine for the quality of the articles, Mother.

Seriously-- if it's cheap thrills you want, Motor Trend is happy to take your money.

Car commercials love to present you with the oxymoronous dichotomy "affordable luxury." They present you with this finely-executed machine, expertly-tuned and methodically crafted, they work very hard to create this mystique and air of exclusivity surrounding the sleek, usually black four-door sedan whose slightly bulbous hood encases the mammoth, sophisticated engine that, thirty years ago, NASA scientists would have struggled to understand.... and then they tell you that you can afford it.

A few years ago, some fucking genius who has probably by now drunk himself to death inside a locked motel closet coined the phrase "Certified Pre-Owned Vehicle" and the used car was reborn. The notion of the Certified Pre-Owned Vehicle was created to further the notion that luxury is somehow affordable to shitheads like you and me, when we know perfectly well that it isn't. However, sifting listlessly through the vastness of http://www.ebaymotors.com/, I have found a more viable way to attain status, image, prestige, and ample amounts of cowhide fanny.

Behold, my bloggerboos; the 1973 Mercedes Benz 220.

Wouldn't you just shit yourself if this cutie-poot were in your driveway every morning?

Squee, right?

Now, I don't think Mercedes would certify this car, but the owner says that it's only got 14,296 miles on the odometer! Now, granted, it's only a 5-digit odometer and, at thirty-six years of age, this car is officially seven years older than yours truly, but why should that stop you? So, it's 140,000 miles. Or 240,000-- who cares? It's a Merc, right? It'll be around after your grandchildren are dead.

It's funny, though, as I looked at this car, pined for it, actually (Buy It Now - $2,995!) I thought long and hard about what the word "luxury" meant in 1973 and what it means today. Today, so-called "luxury" cars do everything for you but wipe your ass, and, as an apology for that unfortunate inability, most of them warm it for you, and a select few massage it.

This Mercedes has roll-up windows, for Christ's sake.

Cars today are 100% plastic-- sleek and smooth-- the dashboard of a modern luxury car looks no different from the fascia of a modern high-end oven or refrigerator. Here's a good example of what you'd see if you entered the cabin of a modern Mercedes:

I mean, really-- there's a Goddamn TV in there. Or maybe it's the internet. I don't know. And I don't want to know-- because the internet, and/or TV, has nothing at all to do with driving a fucking car.

Maybe I'm a dust-covered relic from another era, but I would probably cry if someone handed me the keys to that crackled, ancient Mercedes 220 and this is what I saw upon opening the door:


Because this doesn't look like a refrigerator. This looks like a car. A beautiful, graceful, sensitive, well-made, tailored, thought-out, serious car.

Can you say "car," Modern, Brushed-Aluminum-Hoarding, Avatar-Loving World?

CaaAAAaaAAaAAAAr.

Very good. I knew you could.

I feel like today's automotive consumer is getting the leatherette pulled over his eyes. There isn't anything on the road that is well-made and truly "luxurious" today, not anything that the average num-num who isn't Shaquille O'Neal or Ben Bernanke can afford, anyway. There is just this endless parade of the same old fucking desperately boring sheet-metal over plastic contrivances plopped over a never-ending sea of soft-touch plastic interior components and enough buttons to control Robocop's orgasmatronics. The gadgets are mindblowing and redundant and unnecessary in an object that's intended purpose is to transport human beings from one place to another in comfort and safety.

A 1973 Mercedes 220 didn't need a fucking TV inside it to prove to you that it was a luxury car. Hell, it didn't even need power windows. You knew it was a luxury car by the way the button on the door handle felt against your thumb as you gently depressed it, and it sank down as if you were pushing down on warm butter. You knew it was a luxury car by the way the door gave that satisfying, hearty, soulful *THUNK* when you shut it. You knew it was a luxury car from the way the immensely circumferenced and yet thinly elegant steering wheel felt against the curl of your fingers. You knew it was a luxury car from the way the controls slid and clicked into place with definitive, expert confidence.

You knew.

Now, you need to be told.

You're My New Pal!

Simon Cowell is leaving his job at American Idol.

Sarah Palin is accepting her job at FOX News.

Mark McGwire used steroids.

And, in other news, I just thought about sex twice and my right foot's asleep. Oh, and I'm thirsty. Get me a Caffeine Free Diet Coke, please.

Sometimes I get so aggravated with the news and pop culture and people and things in general and my right foot that I just want to bitch slap somebody or choke the balls off somebody's kid. But I would never do either of those things-- so I blog instead. It seems to do the trick, but maybe that's the reason that I haven't missed a day of blogging in 337 days (on this blog) because my level of ire is rather like the limbs of a freshly eviscerated starfish-- just keeps coming back, don't it?

I've thought about other outlets for aggression, and I don't think any of them would work as well as blogging. I've thought about joining a church choir, but I think I might be too tall. There's always book clubs, but then we're getting back to situations where the urge to choke people's balls off continues to pass for a good idea. My guy friends, if I had any, might suggest I up the frequency of my mastubatory engagements, but I don't see how that would be possible. I've thought about taking up the cello, but I have a rule about musical instruments that resemble blood relatives. Working out might be a possibility, but gyms are very expensive and my skin is a veritable magnet for life's various fungi. Plus, I look like a concentration camp survivor in a singlet. You're required to wear a singlet at the gym, right?

I did have one idea that I thought might alleviate stress and provide me with a creative outlet at the same time, and I think I may be kind of a genius for coming up with this so, if you think it's stupid, just be careful with my fragile self-efficacy here, please. Okay, here goes:

I think I should get myself a pen-pal.

Right?

Now, before you get all indignant/protective/alarmed/uppity, please know that a pen-pal wouldn't be instead of the blog, it would be in addition to. A supplement, as it were. However, this brilliant goddamn idea of mine is not without its thorns. Let's examine them, me and you:

* Who would this person be?

After I spend five minutes with most people, I want to remove their eyes with a lobster fork, hog-tie them and mate them with a rabid horse. I realize that this says more about me than it does about "most people" but the problem is still there, like a deceased insect caught underneath your windshield wiper. Is there really a person out there with whom I could correspond, with regularity, feigning interest in their inane prattlings about the weather in Belgium or their mom's radical hysterectomy or the pubic lice they found in their Kraft Bologna & Cheese or the laugh-a-minute antics of their autistic guinea pig, Fredo? What kind of person would I like to be pally-wals with over the written word? The last person I was sort of pen pals with was my wife-- we courted over email for a long time before we ever even met in person. Is there anybody out there who could compete with that?

* What would we talk about?

The autistic guinea pig, I guess.

* Do people even have pen-pals anymore?

The last time I had a real, honest-to-God, paper-and-pen pen pal, I wore sweatsuits seven days a week and was working on both sarcasm and cursive. I don't remember much about her, but I'm pretty sure her name was "Jill." She lived in some other place that was so far I couldn't get there, not even in my new Reebok Pumps, which I made my mother buy for me because, when I pumped them up in the fitting room and pushed the little rubber button that made the air come out, I thought the sound was hilarious. Jill and I wrote to each other about Christ-knows-what, and, I'm sure, if her parents ever read the contents of my letters, they would have been convinced Jill was writing to a seriously ill forty-five-year-old with a tremor. Jill is probably in women's prison now, with lots of pen-pals of her own.

* How do you go about getting a pen-pal?

I don't want to write to somebody who's in prison, even if it is Jill and, short of that, I don't know of any organized way for a twenty-nine-year-old of relatively normal intelligence and capabilities to go about scoring a pen-pal. Putting an ad on Craigslist will likely conclude with either or both of us ending up on "Dateline" and I think a local rectory message board is the wrong way to go for a gaggle of reasons.

* What if my pen-pal is a better writer than me?

I mean, that would piss me off. They've got to be good enough to hold my interest and so I don't post their letters on this blog and make fun of them, but they can't be too good or I'll get really turned off, go into my bedroom closet and cry while pulling all my clothes off the hangers and covering myself with them, gumming onto various shirt sleeves until they are soaked and bloodied. I'd like a famous pen-pal, because most famous people are almost guaranteed to not know how to write particularly well. I mean, have you ever read some of Al Pacino's tweets? He must do them drunk.

* Do I sign my letters to my pen-pal with my real name, or "Mr. Apron?"

See, if I sign them with my real name, then the smarmy little fucker can't ever know about my blog, because we don't mixy-matchy. Then again, if you sign a letter "Mr. Apron" the pen-pal will be like, "What the fuck? Your family name is a dingy, crusted piece of cloth people wear to get their crotch area so as not to be covered in cocoa powder when they're making cupcakes?"

And that's awkward. So, I think the solution is:

One of you has to be my pen-pal.

Any takers?

No Comment

You guys are really super-doop good to me-- you know that?

You read-- you're loyal. You comment, some of you, and they're mostly insightful, interesting, engaging comments. Every now and then I'll get innocently flirted with, and that's always good for my ego. Sometimes you'll crack a joke, or reference an item in a column that's 200 posts ago, and that's pretty good for my ego, too. You're nice to me and respectful of each other, and you never ever whine that I'm not much for commenting on comments, probably because you know it's kind of a pet peeve of mine and that, if I have a comment that I feel requires one back, I'll leave one.

In short, you don't expect a lot of me and, in that respect, you're rather like my middle school math teachers. Except that I'm sure most of you shave regularly.

And there are a couple of you out there who stand up to me, calling me out on my rampant, AIDS-like hypocrisy, and I'm most grateful for those of you. (Not that I want all of you to start doing it, that would be a total suckfest.) Yesterday, Colleen was catching up on some of my blogs after returning from her vacation (I know that because, all of a sudden, seven comments showed up in my inbox on blogs from a week ago, not because I look through her mail and obsessively finger her kitchen utensils while she's at work) and she left a comment on a blog of mine about how much I hate my job-- a subject I touch on with frequency and aplomb. After reading my tautly-paragraphed whinings about my passive-aggressive chair and my boss that smells like farts, she responded with:

"'Boohoo, I'm one of the 90% of Americans who has a full-time job.'

Quit your bellyaching. And be grateful for your malodorous chair."

Oops. Was it something I said?

Of course, Colleen's right-- I'm a complete and utter crybaby because, no matter whether my office chair smells like fresh-baked croissants, industrial varnishing, or goat excrement, at least I have an office chair to befoul forty hours every week. Did it ever occur to me that under or un-employed individuals might take exception to a post about how much I hate work in a climate when 10.2% of Americans are unemployed? Yes-- the same way some of my pathetic, acne-ridden, hopelessly single readers might get turned off when I write schmoopie blooperings about my disgustingly adorable marriage, the same way my poor, unfortunate reader who tools around in a funkified, rusted out shell of a1987 Ford Festiva might get his panties in a barb when I complain about the fate to which I have been consigned-- a 2001 Chrysler PT Loser.

Here's the thing-- Colleen said something. She even managed to do it in a cute, hey-you're-a-jerk-but-it's-okay kind of way. In case you haven't realized, I can be pretty insensitive sometimes, I can run off at the mouth and I can alienate-- it has been known to happen. Hey-- I lost my best friend simply by opening my mouth. So, I know that.

I know.

And I don't want to lose any of you. I've lost too much in my life already. So, long story short, stick around. And open your mouths when you need to.

I still hate my job, of course-- that doesn't change a thing, and nothing changes.

Better Red Than Dead

Maybe it's because Aunt Mickey is wasting away to nothing down in Florida.

Maybe it's because I just had lunch with a bunch of my wife's old suite-mates at a Kosher, Indian, Vegetarian restaurant in New York City.

Maybe it's because steak is so goddamn expensive, and so goddamn excessive, and so goddamn... American.

I don't know what it is, and I don't know if I'm sliding off the deep end whilst sitting on a giant slab of London Broil, but I am giving up red meat.

And I'm a little bit frightened.

I haven't had to give up a lot of things in my life. I never started drinking alcohol, so I never had to give that up, and I never smoked a real cigarette-- only candy ones as a dubious youth and clove ones as an even more dubious college-level actor. I never opted for pot, LSD, cocaine, crack, E, shrooms, acid, cough syrup, air duster, heroin and life's other fun injectables.

I did smoke cigars for a little while-- from the time I was seventeen until my last one at twenty-three. I was in the underground parking lot of a casino, only there because of my friend, only smoking the cigar because of my friend, and I thought to myself as I sucked in the acrid, thick, foul smoke, "I might as well be performing oral sex on the tailpipe of an idling 1977 Dodge Monaco."

And I put the cigar on the pavement underneath my shoe and I crushed the bejesus out of it-- and that was my last cigar.

So, while I don't have tons of experience in giving up vices, (I still have a very soft spot in my heart for free, streaming internet pornography), I think I'm probably pretty good at it-- and, truthfully, I don't think giving up red meat is going to be especially too difficult for me. Of course, red meat tastes a damn sight better than cigar smoke, especially when it has been lovingly marinated over the course of many a succulent, savory hour, and I respectfully acknowledge that. Red meat, thou art a worthy adversary, but I shall emerge from this fight victorious.

Actually, I'll emerge from it victorious and dead, as opposed to a failure and dead, but I'm hopeful that I'll emerge victorious and dead a few years later and healthier than I would if I failed-- my arteries as saturated and cracklicious as a Bloomin' Onion.

"So, is this one of your schemes to avoid dying?" my wife said to me when I brought the topic of my carnivorous abstension this evening in the car ride back from New York.

"No," I said, "I know I'm going to die-- but I love my life with you so much that I want to live it as long as possible, and I want to be as healthy as I can be for as long as possible."

See-- the key to this battle is not my willpower, it's the fact that I don't eat red meat very much. When I sat back and evaluated the situation objectively-- I haven't been to a steakhouse in at least seven years. I have only brought a steak home to cook once in my life. I enjoy making salmon burgers and turkey burgers and even lamby burgers, but I've only made actual hamburger once. I haven't eaten flank steak or London Broil since before my Bar Mitzvah, back when my mother used to both cook and eat. If I'm stopping at a rest stop, I more often than not order a chicken sandwich, so, really, what the fuck is the big deal?

Of course, the flip side to that is-- how is giving up something I really don't eat that much going to improve my length/quality of life? Well, um.... what are you, a lawyer?

Maybe it's just symbolic. And that's okay, isn't it? My heart's in the right place, isn't it? I don't want to be one of those self-righteous, obnoxious, in-your-face, oh,-I-don't-eat-red-meat kind of people and, if I get like that, you have permission to rape me with a cattle-prod (talk about symbolism!) because my wife has been a vegetarian since forever, and she's not like that. She doesn't mercilessly grill every waiter and every party host about every single ingredient in a dip or a chili. She doesn't say, "Well, I'm a vegetarian!" with that tell-tale annoying emphasis and tell-tale-ier smug, organic, whey-based, gluten-free imitation shit-eating grin.

I want to be just like her when I grow up. Except that I want to continue eating pork, chicken, venison, hen, quail, pheasant, pigeon, lamb, fish, crabs, scallops, shrimp, lobster, squid, plankton, siamese fighting fish, sponges, starfish, and whatever the fuck the Incredible Mr. Limpet was supposed to be.

Glasses and hat and all.

How Entertaining

Let's just be clear about something right up front:

Martha Stewart doesn't live here.

If she did, she'd probably be either handcuffed to a pipe in the basement lavatory, or her severed head would be the centerpiece on our dining room table.

Hungry?

In our house for a little less than a year, my dear, sweet wife and I are newly minted entertainers. Actually, we're more like probationary entertainers. If entertaining were more heavily regulated, as it should be, there would be a Field Training Officer stationed in our kitchen to closely supervise us on those dubious and exciting and rare Saturday nights when we decide to get a little frisky and admit a non-blood relative into our abode for a little chinwag and some home-made grubbage.

Now, at the risk of offending some "group" other other, my wife and I are social retards. Give us a Honda Fit and a six-hour ride to Rhode Island, or a sofa and two cups of tea and an episode of "Intervention" and we know just what to do-- very, very well. Throw a third or, God forbid, fourth person into the interior walls of our house, and our brains simultaneously catch fire.

Preparation for a guest is never fun, but I'm sure it helps to have several Dominican servants, a Roomba, or that mechanized bitch with the feather-duster from "The Jetsons " who, I think, would be the perfect combination of both. In the Apron home, it's just the missus and I, and our various, colorful mental profundities. And, at times, a dry Swiffer cloth.

The prospect of having anyone enter our home instantly turns me into a raving maniac. The thought of people who have the ability to observe, perceive, smell, judge, and then return to other people with similar capabilities and then report their and observations findings turns my stomach into eight-month-old ricotta cheese. I am able to see the disorder, clutter, and chaos that comes from activities of daily life engaged in by two busy, creative, harried, well-meaning though absent-minded people, but when I know someone is coming to our home, every item that lies in disarray suddenly has a bawling four-year-old child standing on it, screaming incessantly, wailing at the top of its lungs, begging to be changed or whatever four-year-olds scream about. In essence, every clump of dog hair, every coat carelessly thrown on the back of every dining room chair, every out-of-date Jo-Ann circular on the coffee table is instantly, suddenly, and dramatically calling out to me, loudly, to be dealt with immediately.

This is not pleasant for my wife.

I rush around like a wild animal, scooping up fur-coated dog toys, dragging my shoe-covered foot against the entire length of the living room rug to pick up dog hair (why vacuum when this is so much more... athletic?), I have three coats, three hoodies, one jacket, two hats and one scarf in my hands as I stumble upstairs and downstairs like a fucking lunatic. My wife, meanwhile, is in the kitchen, calmly wiping down the countertops, methodically making lists of everything we need from the supermarket, and trying her best not to get run over by the coat-covered freight train that is careening throughout the house.

Because I am obsessed with time, I am also constantly preoccupied that the concentration camp-style cleaning operations, the food shopping and, most importantly, the meal preparation will not be completed on time. Insecure, panicked and sweating out my ass, I pepper my wife with maddening questions and unhelpful comments.

"How much time does the lasagna have to cook for?"

"Shouldn't we have set the table already?"

"I wish this didn't have to cook for so long."

"What time is it?"

"Let's just scrap the bread."

"What time is it?"

"What if she gets here and it's not done?"

"These zucchini aren't going to be done in ten minutes."

"Why don't we have a bigger saucepan?"

"What time is it?"

That I have not yet been stabbed in the neck with a salad tong is a fucking miracle.

Of course, our guest, who was supposed to be at our house at 5:00pm, called at 4:54pm to report that she was just leaving her apartment, a mere 20 minutes away.

"Oh, so you mean you're going to be late?" I asked her. She laughed.

I'm glad people know me so well.

Entertaining is supposed to be entertaining, I think, but not for the people who are doing it. Once the company gets there, I'm usually more relaxed than I am before they arrive. I'm able to let down my guard, I can be funny and self-deprecating and spill liquids on my trousers and make awkward sexual comments or absurd cultural references that nobody else understands. This is what people expect out of a dinner with me, so they're not usually surprised, or disappointed. When my wife is involved, they know to also expect much cuteness, laughter, and delectable desserts. Tonight was chocolate-covered pecan bars, still warm and soft.

Thank God she's here. Because, when I get really nuts before the guests arrive, she's always there to soothe me, reassure me, give me some task to do that's nearly impossible to ruin, or shove a chocolate chip into my mouth to shut me the fuck up.

Limousine Farts

As I type these words, my great-aunt is dying in Pompano Beach, as the great-aunts of many other sensitive, Jewish boys have done for years.

It's nearly impossible for me to think of my family as a thing, as a thing with many different parts, each one in its place, without Aunt Mickey. But soon, very, very soon, she'll be gone. Her stomach is riddled with holes. Her colon is torn to shreds. She's lost thirty pounds in two weeks. It seems that years of taking care of her erratic, bombastic, obscene, unpredictable and Alzheimer's-ridden husband has taken its toll and, while he is still going strong and physically healthy as a thoroughbred at 93, she will be finished, mentally brisk but physically in tatters, at 82.

She was told at the hospital that bowel surgery might save her, but she elected not to be saved-- a pretty predictable choice for a zealous atheist.

"Why should I go through all that?" she asked my father, who went down to Florida to visit her in the hospital, "my children don't need me, my grandchildren don't need me, my husband doesn't know me. I have no friends. Why can't I just decide that it's time to go now?"

Why indeed?

"Look, Mickey is a ball-buster," my father said to me in my dining room last night, coming over for an impromptu pow-wow. I smiled at that, because it's apparently true, and true to the last. "Nobody can tell her what to fuckin' do-- ever. I've known her for thirty-five years-- she was never sick-- not even one day. So, what? Now all of a sudden she's going to have nurses asking her, 'Do you have to make?' Stick some thing up her ass twice a day? Feed her like a baby? Fuck that. Mummy, she's doing it her way, and she's very happy."

A ball-buster is how Mickey will always be remembered in our family, and she would be proud of that moniker. In fact, she might even have left instructions for it to be carved onto her headstone, because that's how she rolls. She was a legend in the music industry far before it was commonplace to see a woman at the head of a Board Room. She had no problem telling men half her age or twice her age to go to hell and I have no doubt that, when she ran meetings, pit-stains and swamp-ass were the order of the day for her underlings.

She was the only person I ever knew who kept a black cook in her house, like Jack Benny or something. Back when she lived in New Jersey and would only summer in Florida, she and her husband would take the train and her "boy" would drive her Cadillac down to Florida so it would be there for her to maneuver erratically throughout the palm tree-lined streets.

And did she ever.

I can remember being in the backseat of Mickey's many Cadillacs as a child and silently praying and nearly wetting myself as she careened through the opposite lane of traffic and acquainting the barge-like car's wire-rimmed wheel-covers with the sidewalk. I also remember, as a very young boy, taking extreme delight in removing my shoes at her place in Jersey and running down her expertly-waxed parquet floors and sliding at least eight or nine feet. I remember watching Three Stooges shorts while lying on her enormous bed with my sister, and I remember finding the first piece of pornography I ever saw in my life: a Beta-Max videocassette called "The Hornymooners."

I remember the bathroom at her place in New Jersey, which was mirrored wall-to-wall, and the inside bathroom door was completely mirrored so that, when the door was closed, you saw your own reflection approximately eighty-seven thousand times. The mirror above the sink was also completely framed in gigantic theatre dressing-room high-wattage lightbulbs, so that you thought you were defecating directly on the Equator.

As we aged, one special treat we looked forward to as kids was going to stay with Mickey at her place in Florida for a week or two weeks, I forget. This event would happen when we got to be around sixteen. My eldest sister went first, of course, and took one of her best friends at the time. They behaved so poorly, and made Mickey scream so ballistically, that they were summarily banned from ever coming back. A few years later, the same exact thing happened to my other sister, who brought our cousin.

I never got my Florida vacation at Mickey's place, but I've made my peace with that. Chances are that it might not have had a happy ending anyway.

My oldest sister and Mickey repaired their relationship and it was better than before. For years, they spoke on the phone nearly every week, and, because my sister is the oldest, Mickey often talked to her like a friend, a confidant, and it indeed harkened back to the early days of my sister's life when Mickey played such an active role in bringing her up after my mother divorced her first husband. My sister is taking Mickey's decision to end her life this way extremely poorly, and with a lot of hostility and frustration. She loves her great-aunt, her last link to her grandmother who died so very young. And Mickey loves my sister.

"I'll never forget," Mickey told my father at the hospital in Florida, "taking your daughter, maybe when she was seven or nine, to a play on Broadway. Had my boy pick her up in a limo... and I was farting all over that limo's beautiful leather seats, and she was horrified! She said she never knew that Aunt Mickey farted! 'Aunt Mickey,' she said to me, 'you can't fart in here! This is a limo!' And I said, 'Honey, I fart wherever I want!'"

I don't know exactly where I'm going with this-- which is unusual for me-- usually the post kind of just pours out and writes itself. I'm not asking for "Awww, I'm so sorry" comments, though I'll take them, but I'm not really pining for sympathy. I'm not terribly sad, it sounds strange to say. As Mickey's son said on Thursday when she was sent home from the hospital with hospice care, "Friday's my mom's birthday, and I think it's going to be her best birthday ever."

And so maybe I just want to send out my wish that I hope Mickey's birthday, her last birthday, was her best ever.

Working Lunch

If you're a Non-Profit Organization's cumrag like I am, you no doubt spend some inglorious portion of your workweek at Staples, searching vainly for the generic equivalent of the prescription-strength Avery 3160 labels or, worse, shackled in endless misery to a photocopy machine the size of a Volkswagen Jetta.

That's me. That one.

Oftentimes, I am dispatched to Staples with some bizarre photocopying assignment that I screw up with greater frequency than I screw up a supermarket run.

"I need 12 copies of this, front only, 25 copies of this, double-sided, one righthand corner staple-- this one is Sally's copy, so it has to be 3-hole punched, I need 16 copies of each of these, three pages, double sided, non-collated, and this one 14 copies, the first page I don't need double-sided, but the second and third pages should be double-sided with just a paper-clip, because, you know, why waste the staple?"

The usual duration of my photocopying session at Staples is anywhere from 35-50 minutes. It's an utterly soul-deadening experience, like sitting through an elementary school Thanksgiving recital or being married to Tom Brokaw. Sometimes, to insert a little pleasure into the monotonous escapade, I'll stand really close to the copier, with my pressed groin up against the warm machine. Don't worry-- my fly's always up. And I don't undulate.

But, really, it's about the only joy I get out of a Staples run, and it's a small, socially dubious joy at that. But, on Wednesday, I learned that there are some people in this world who get far more out of a workday jaunt to Staples than do I.

Like, for instance, the woman who was at the copier across from me. I hope you enjoy this photo, which I took great risk in taking.


Seriously-- I had to make sure that not only was the flash turned off, (yes, my cameraphone has a flash!) but that it was on silent mode so it wouldn't make that stupid fucking faux shutter click when the picture's snapped. I think she would have caught on that I wasn't checking my email and I was taking a picture of her and her, *ahem* work-station.

And let's look at that work-station, shall we?

You will, no doubt, observe the delicious-looking, lovingly toasted bagel (I believe it was an onion from its waftings) coated generously, but not gloppily, with vegetable spread*.

(*N.B.: I use the term "spread." I do not use the term "cream cheese" because it reminds me of the substance one finds between one's toes/ham-pies after a week of non-bathing. So I hear.)

You will also, I am certain, notice her not one, but two beverages. A fruity water (why does water need to be fruity? Why does Splenda need to be fiberry? Why does orange juice need to be calciummy?) and a coffee. Hot and cold. I guess she just couldn't decide what sort of mood she was in. A Surf-n-Turf action kinda gal.

Now, maybe you'll think I'm a bad little Apron for making cracks at the expense of a chubby black lady with a big cross around her neck photocopying community action ditto sheets at Staples on her lunch hour. Well, if it makes you feel better, I wasn't positive I was going to use the photograph of her for anything other than amusing my wife until she ran out of toner. She started waving her arms about like she was Gilligan going down with the S.S. Minnow and then, when that didn't get Jannette's (the sassy, black Staples Copy Center employee) attention, she snapped her fingers.

And I thought the Mayans were going to be off by two years.

Lesson for the day: you don't snap at Jannette. At the risk of sounding like a Dilbert cartoon, I've been going to this Staples for a long time, and I've gone toe-to-toe with Jannette and I've always ended up backing down, sometimes trembling. But I'll be goddamned if Jannette didn't respond immediately with a big thing of toner for that lunchonette counter woman's copier. At the risk of sounding like a Boondocks cartoon, maybe it's a black thing.

I continued making my copies, dutifully, diligently, deadeningly and, as I pressed my nether regions up against the machine, slumping there like a deflated sex doll, I eyed this munching, brunching, coffee & fruity water-swilling copywench with a mixture of palpable disdain and, yet, definite envy.

For a very brief moment, children, I admit that I wanted to be her.

Well, not her, exactly. I think a cross would look a bit silly, and maybe offensive, between my boobies, but like her. I'm the guy at the Starbucks fixins bar who deliberately makes himself as small as humanly possible, keeping his arms and hands directly in front of him, never daring to reach in front of the person next to me for an eleventh packet of sugar, or the little glass shaker marked "CHOCOLATE." God forbid I try to toss my stirrer stick into the trash can in front of you. But, for that instant, in Staples, I wanted to be the one who spreads his fucking shit all over the goddamn place.

I steadfastly refuse to enter any retail establishment while holding a cup of coffee. I think it's rude, disrespectful and, frankly, asking for an expensive accident, to walk into somebody's store that they try to keep clean, with brown, staining, hot liquid. This policy of mine often requires me to thrust lashings of piping hot coffee down my gullet in the car in the parking lot of Anthropologie so I can go browsing for clothes with my wife, only to see at least six leggy, slutty twenty-somethings swilling greedily from white and green paper cups.

And, in that instant, I thought to myself, "Self, judge her not. She is just refusing to be pigeonholed and curtailed and sidelined by a world that will bowl you over if you do not assert yourself. She is saying, 'I am here!' She is proclaiming that she and her accoutrements have value and worth and a place."

And then she reached all the way over my photocopier and started taking handfuls of paperclips from my copy station.