7/03/2006
Sick of This, Part Two
This morning, I made a nice entree pasta salad with beer-broiled flounder and called Annie to invite her over for a 1 p.m. lunch of that and ice cream. She called at 12:55, at which time, having given up on hearing from her at 12:40, I was just finishing lunch, and she suggested that maybe I'd like to pack the pasta salad and take it to a church potluck picnic with her. I dislike all churches, but reserve an especially high level of vitriolic, vehement hatred for hers; The Church, or, as I like to call it, The Church of the Walking Wounded.
Many years ago, when I was dating Annie, before she was diagnosed, I attended church with her. You see, it was her birthday, and I'd tried to buy her a thoughtful gift and be nice and do everything one is supposed to do, and then I asked her what else I could do to make her natal event, which happened to fall on a Sunday that year, special.
She told me I could go to church with her. I reminded her that I considered church congregations to be slack-jawed, superstitious mobs of like minded, no-minded morons and that I did not, on my own, wish for one instant in their company. She reminded me that I'd asked her what else I could do for her birthday, and off we went to the cheaply constructed, hexagonal frame building with the skylight over the sanctuary gummed with years of sap from the tall, skinny pine trees near the building and crap from the birds that made their homes on the upper branches ... the very phlegm of God, reserved for just such ridiculous clusters of contemptible idiots as was promised by the shark smiles and fake squeals of how-did-I-get-through-the-week-without-you delight echoing noxiously through the parking lot as shallow, needy people greeted one another with what they sincerely hoped was a good imitation of the fellowship they'd heard so much about.
We entered through the library, devoted mainly to liberal and arts periodicals, and I was surprised to be grabbed in near assault-level enthusiasm by an effeminate man in ambush near the door. He was part of a receiving line awash in fellowship and aslosh, judging by the malevolent tang in the air, in residue from successful men’s room encounters in some bar probably called “The End Zone,” but without sports paraphernalia or big screen TV sets tuned to ESPN, the night before.
As soon as that bastard turned me loose, I was mauled by a character so similar, he could have been having his rectum stretched in the very next stall during the starry, mimosa filled previous evening, then another. The whole goddamn receiving line was made up of extroverted gay men reeking of the little inconveniences resultant from destroying one’s ability to close one’s anus with any certainty or confidence, then fermenting acid-Ph semen there overnight, then standing in a church lobby and pressing against a hundred or so entrants.
Served by a husband-and-wife ministerial team with rhyming names and nary a college degree, the church also featured a Lucite podium in lieu of a real pulpit and an overhead projector / transparency rig instead of a hymnal. Said hymnal included, to my certain memory, “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “Try to Remember,” “Inch by Inch” and “The Impossible Dream.”
I strongly suspect it included “YMCA,” too, but we didn’t have to join hands and sing that one the day I attended services. No, our blessings were limited to a sermon backed up by a television remote used as a prop so that Renee and Penee could explain how walking God’s path was like watching TV, and how it was necessary to sit through the commercials along the way and not channel surf, or else some of Life’s lessons would otherwise be missed and one would come back as an armadillo or some damn lower species that’s probably not overly given to homosexuality, and that would be a shame, so sit through those commercials, boys and girls, and then there were prayer concerns from the congregation, announcements, silent prayer and a swaying, handholding version of the church anthem, “Let There Be Peace on Earth,” and then a stampede for coffee and the glory holes that I was pretty sure were in all the men’s room stalls.
I am no homophobe; I simply do not want to know as much about anyone’s intimate life as I ascertained quickly, whether I wanted to or not, about these people. The whole congregation wasn’t gay. Some were just recovering junkies, recovering Catholics, unemployed actors in search of attention, recovering alkies, slumming Unitarians, mental outpatients and zealot tourists who were confused and had
gotten the wrong address out of the local phone book. It’s just that the receiving line made that impression and smelled that way … bad planning on the part of the Church Newcomers’ Committee, especially if they ever expected me to contribute my good flounder pasta salad to one of their flyblown goddamn potlucks. That shit was not in the cards.
Church potlucks. That’s where they film all those commercials about children being filthy little beasts who need to be hosed down with anti-bacterial sprays before they’re let near civilized adults or anything civilized adults will come into contact with. I’ll be a ring-tailed son of a bitch if I’ll let children pet stinking dogs that asshole Christians just will bring to potlucks in the park and then wipe their snotty noses and then paw my food as it congeals under a hot sun and swarm of flies and is offered to these church members like pearls to swine. Fuck them. They need to go to Hell right now, hands joined and an earnest version of “The Impossible Dream” on their lips.
I wanted, for some goddamn reason, to spend time with Annie. I did not want to tag along to a potluck and see those assholes from her church. By the way, the church's ministers slyly assign their members to “church families,” which are supposed to function as effective little support groups for their members, which is cool as long as they’re supporting problems like trauma over which dress to wear or lost sleep over whether or not Jesus was Jewish, but those fuckers dropped Annie and pretty much blocked her calls as soon as she was committed all those years ago.
Instead of food whoring out, going, “Wow, wow, wow” over crappy, bland, flyspecked, child infested bullshit at a hot park in Whackjob County in summer with a bunch of phony, self-indulgent, shallow creeps who’ve proven they will only put up with her until she actually needs to call on them, she should have fought down the self destructive urges her own sister and mother keep trying to put her back in an institution for and spent some time with me … better company, better food, more deserving, more comfortable, less crowded, less risk of infection.
I am sick of this shit.
Many years ago, when I was dating Annie, before she was diagnosed, I attended church with her. You see, it was her birthday, and I'd tried to buy her a thoughtful gift and be nice and do everything one is supposed to do, and then I asked her what else I could do to make her natal event, which happened to fall on a Sunday that year, special.
She told me I could go to church with her. I reminded her that I considered church congregations to be slack-jawed, superstitious mobs of like minded, no-minded morons and that I did not, on my own, wish for one instant in their company. She reminded me that I'd asked her what else I could do for her birthday, and off we went to the cheaply constructed, hexagonal frame building with the skylight over the sanctuary gummed with years of sap from the tall, skinny pine trees near the building and crap from the birds that made their homes on the upper branches ... the very phlegm of God, reserved for just such ridiculous clusters of contemptible idiots as was promised by the shark smiles and fake squeals of how-did-I-get-through-the-week-without-you delight echoing noxiously through the parking lot as shallow, needy people greeted one another with what they sincerely hoped was a good imitation of the fellowship they'd heard so much about.
We entered through the library, devoted mainly to liberal and arts periodicals, and I was surprised to be grabbed in near assault-level enthusiasm by an effeminate man in ambush near the door. He was part of a receiving line awash in fellowship and aslosh, judging by the malevolent tang in the air, in residue from successful men’s room encounters in some bar probably called “The End Zone,” but without sports paraphernalia or big screen TV sets tuned to ESPN, the night before.
As soon as that bastard turned me loose, I was mauled by a character so similar, he could have been having his rectum stretched in the very next stall during the starry, mimosa filled previous evening, then another. The whole goddamn receiving line was made up of extroverted gay men reeking of the little inconveniences resultant from destroying one’s ability to close one’s anus with any certainty or confidence, then fermenting acid-Ph semen there overnight, then standing in a church lobby and pressing against a hundred or so entrants.
Served by a husband-and-wife ministerial team with rhyming names and nary a college degree, the church also featured a Lucite podium in lieu of a real pulpit and an overhead projector / transparency rig instead of a hymnal. Said hymnal included, to my certain memory, “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “Try to Remember,” “Inch by Inch” and “The Impossible Dream.”
I strongly suspect it included “YMCA,” too, but we didn’t have to join hands and sing that one the day I attended services. No, our blessings were limited to a sermon backed up by a television remote used as a prop so that Renee and Penee could explain how walking God’s path was like watching TV, and how it was necessary to sit through the commercials along the way and not channel surf, or else some of Life’s lessons would otherwise be missed and one would come back as an armadillo or some damn lower species that’s probably not overly given to homosexuality, and that would be a shame, so sit through those commercials, boys and girls, and then there were prayer concerns from the congregation, announcements, silent prayer and a swaying, handholding version of the church anthem, “Let There Be Peace on Earth,” and then a stampede for coffee and the glory holes that I was pretty sure were in all the men’s room stalls.
I am no homophobe; I simply do not want to know as much about anyone’s intimate life as I ascertained quickly, whether I wanted to or not, about these people. The whole congregation wasn’t gay. Some were just recovering junkies, recovering Catholics, unemployed actors in search of attention, recovering alkies, slumming Unitarians, mental outpatients and zealot tourists who were confused and had
gotten the wrong address out of the local phone book. It’s just that the receiving line made that impression and smelled that way … bad planning on the part of the Church Newcomers’ Committee, especially if they ever expected me to contribute my good flounder pasta salad to one of their flyblown goddamn potlucks. That shit was not in the cards.
Church potlucks. That’s where they film all those commercials about children being filthy little beasts who need to be hosed down with anti-bacterial sprays before they’re let near civilized adults or anything civilized adults will come into contact with. I’ll be a ring-tailed son of a bitch if I’ll let children pet stinking dogs that asshole Christians just will bring to potlucks in the park and then wipe their snotty noses and then paw my food as it congeals under a hot sun and swarm of flies and is offered to these church members like pearls to swine. Fuck them. They need to go to Hell right now, hands joined and an earnest version of “The Impossible Dream” on their lips.
I wanted, for some goddamn reason, to spend time with Annie. I did not want to tag along to a potluck and see those assholes from her church. By the way, the church's ministers slyly assign their members to “church families,” which are supposed to function as effective little support groups for their members, which is cool as long as they’re supporting problems like trauma over which dress to wear or lost sleep over whether or not Jesus was Jewish, but those fuckers dropped Annie and pretty much blocked her calls as soon as she was committed all those years ago.
Instead of food whoring out, going, “Wow, wow, wow” over crappy, bland, flyspecked, child infested bullshit at a hot park in Whackjob County in summer with a bunch of phony, self-indulgent, shallow creeps who’ve proven they will only put up with her until she actually needs to call on them, she should have fought down the self destructive urges her own sister and mother keep trying to put her back in an institution for and spent some time with me … better company, better food, more deserving, more comfortable, less crowded, less risk of infection.
I am sick of this shit.
Sick of This, Part One
It should have been a peaceful, perhaps even restful weekend. On Friday night, I spoke, somewhat productively, with my roommate, had a few beers, read a couple of Damon Runyon short stories and went to bed early.
Before seven Saturday morning, I tightened bicycle brake cables in anticipation of a ride to the 'burbs later to meet with Mojo Collins about a proposed slide guitar festival and then to have dinner with a friend and his ex-wife, who I introduced more than 20 years ago and who seem to be enjoying a reunion since I put them back in touch with one another a few months back.
After visiting with them, I was to go to a big Fourth of July party hosted by friends from work, and I'd even been offered a car ride to that event, a real plus since one can't see bike tire-puncturing nails and glass in gutters in the dark and because I do hate to drink responsibly.
The plan began to unravel when I got out of the shower at about 2:45, preparatory to leaving home at 3:15 to stop by a bank to make a deposit and by the grocery store for wine or flowers or something to take to Larry's house, where I was due at 5:30, as a dinner guest gift and then get to Mojo's house, near Larry's by four. As soon as
I turned the water off, I heard knocking on the front door. Hoping it was UPS bringing me those yopo seeds I'd ordered mid-month and looking forward to the hallucinogenic snuff one makes from them, I tugged on some shorts and went to the door.
It was Annie, offering to show me the new highway bypass around Loonville that had just opened that morning in return for half a tank of gas. She promised to get me to Mojo's house by four and we left my house at 3:10. Well, I've seen highways bordered by swamps before and got no aesthetic joy out of the road, but it was nice to see Annie positive and excited about something harmless and, since she'd worked for the highway department before yanking a cigarette out of a co-worker's mouth while driving a departmental vehicle (which was supposed to be nonsmoking space, being government property, but an official board of inquiry later decided would have been a shitload safer with a little cigarette smoke going out the open window than
with Annie careening all over an interstate highway while assaulting one of her colleagues), I could understand how the beauties of new pavement might not be so subtle to her.
Looking at my watch, I told her that we didn't have time to stop at the county line produce stand that marked the end of our tour, so she pulled into the produce stand parking lot and began asking me, "Don't you want a watermelon to take to Larry's?," and then, when I declined, asking me if I wanted tomatoes, then peaches, then every
other goddamn sonofabitching fruit and vegetable under the palm-thatched awning before us.
I kept saying,"No," and reiterating that we didn't have time to shop there, but since I'd been dumb enough to have handed her $25 cash back at my house for the requested gasoline, she got out of the car, went into the stand and immediately found a gay, male couple from her church to hug and annoy before starting her leisurely, melon thumping bullshit. I stood in the sun and smoked a cigarette.
You see, these fuckers on mental disability have no concept of time. They don't have to work, they've got all the time in the world to fuck around, sleep late, have to have their coffee shop coffee before they can do absolutely nothing in the morning and so on and so forth.
A few weeks ago, I watched "Dirty Filthy Love" with Annie, and her take on the film, which would be a "Sleepless in Seattle" quality chick flick if the protagonist wasn't an obsessive compulsive paranoid with Tourette's Syndrome, was that the people around this irritating, mentally ill, screwed-up mess should have just listened to him.
Yes, Dirty Filthy Love" is probably a good test of sanity, guys. Watch it with a woman you're getting to know -- If she thinks people with lives and loves and responsibilities should listen over and over again to some crazy fucker tell the story of how his wife
left him because he wanted to leave Istanbul and return home early from their vacation because he'd accidentally broken an aftershave bottle on the bathroom floor and might have gotten a microsliver of glass in his foot, then she's fucking crazy, herself, and you should either start running, keep running and don't stop to shit or be the constant victim of crazy women that I am. It's your choice. Don't say I didn't warn you.
Of course, her estimated half-pound of peaches weighed in at just less than four pounds (yeah, anybody could make that mistake), and so there was an ugly confrontation with the bewildered new arrival from Honduras at the checkout station, and we got back in her car fifteen miles from Mojo's house at 3:50.
Originally, we were to stop at my bank so that I could make a deposit, but that had to be abandoned, and I hate being late, especially to a meeting at which other participants have to think I have my shit together enough to, oh, let's say, be able to goddamn tell fucking time, and I explained all this to Annie, which made her do 70 in a 45 zone until I agreed that I'd rather be late than die in a loud car crash/ball of fire/disaster film epic, and she let me out at Mojo's at 4:10.
He was great company, positive, full of ideas (starting with moving our meeting to the cafe tables outside the Trendies-A-Plenty bookstore coffee shop, where I could smoke) and in all ways the right man to start planning this festival with. At 5:20, he gave me a ride the three blocks to Larry's house. Everything was clicking along, back on track. I yucked it up with a contented, domesticated Larry and delightful, bright Cindy and put down more beers than were really necessary to stave off dehydration. Larry generally followed directions given by Cindy, visiting him from her base in Confederate City, with the results one might expect from "generally following
directions" in a kitchen. There are some of foods I don't care for fresh, but am quite fond of frozen or canned or otherwise processed by others.
Asparagus, spinach and mangoes are on that list. I can't get the fibrous threads out of asparagus and don't give a damn about the satisfying crunch. Fresh spinach tastes like dirt no matter what,
and mangoes ... well, if they'd grow on trees pre-peeled, in chilled, glass jars of heavy syrup, then I'd have some serious mango mania, but they don't. They grow on trees or bushes or wherever the hell they grow before reaching grocery store bins in the form of sorry-ass substitutes for unripe apples with acrid, bark-thick peels.
"Oh well," must have thought Larry, at least if I make them into tricky shish kabobs, alternating slices of mango with the barklike peel still in place with unpeeled shrimp, everyone will be concentrating so much on wrestling the chitinous, clinging shells off
of hot, greasy shrimp without destroying the meat while fighting back tears of pain from having to handle piping hot shrimp fresh from the grill with one's bare fingers in the first fucking place that they won't even notice these cocksuckin', underdone mangoes. If you let them spend a little, but oh no, not enough time on the grill, mangoes develop the flavor of a boot heel that's trod on unripe apples, yet still retain their feisty, fibrous, annoying raw character.
And, of course, they caramelize just enough to make the neighboring, searing hot shrimp exoskeletons flanking them on the kabob skewers stick to your hands when you try to take them off the goddamn shrimp in order to make your meal become actual food. Oh well, my life has taught me that not all dinners lead to actually having a meal, so what the fuck. They were smoking cigarettes during the meal, anyway,
and that's an appetite suppressant for me. I smoke cigarettes; I do not eat them. Cigarette smoke in a kitchen will ruin chopped lettuce or onions for me. The company was good, and they gave me a ride to the party at about 8:30, which was great, and the party was a grand time. I stayed late and drank epically.
Before seven Saturday morning, I tightened bicycle brake cables in anticipation of a ride to the 'burbs later to meet with Mojo Collins about a proposed slide guitar festival and then to have dinner with a friend and his ex-wife, who I introduced more than 20 years ago and who seem to be enjoying a reunion since I put them back in touch with one another a few months back.
After visiting with them, I was to go to a big Fourth of July party hosted by friends from work, and I'd even been offered a car ride to that event, a real plus since one can't see bike tire-puncturing nails and glass in gutters in the dark and because I do hate to drink responsibly.
The plan began to unravel when I got out of the shower at about 2:45, preparatory to leaving home at 3:15 to stop by a bank to make a deposit and by the grocery store for wine or flowers or something to take to Larry's house, where I was due at 5:30, as a dinner guest gift and then get to Mojo's house, near Larry's by four. As soon as
I turned the water off, I heard knocking on the front door. Hoping it was UPS bringing me those yopo seeds I'd ordered mid-month and looking forward to the hallucinogenic snuff one makes from them, I tugged on some shorts and went to the door.
It was Annie, offering to show me the new highway bypass around Loonville that had just opened that morning in return for half a tank of gas. She promised to get me to Mojo's house by four and we left my house at 3:10. Well, I've seen highways bordered by swamps before and got no aesthetic joy out of the road, but it was nice to see Annie positive and excited about something harmless and, since she'd worked for the highway department before yanking a cigarette out of a co-worker's mouth while driving a departmental vehicle (which was supposed to be nonsmoking space, being government property, but an official board of inquiry later decided would have been a shitload safer with a little cigarette smoke going out the open window than
with Annie careening all over an interstate highway while assaulting one of her colleagues), I could understand how the beauties of new pavement might not be so subtle to her.
Looking at my watch, I told her that we didn't have time to stop at the county line produce stand that marked the end of our tour, so she pulled into the produce stand parking lot and began asking me, "Don't you want a watermelon to take to Larry's?," and then, when I declined, asking me if I wanted tomatoes, then peaches, then every
other goddamn sonofabitching fruit and vegetable under the palm-thatched awning before us.
I kept saying,"No," and reiterating that we didn't have time to shop there, but since I'd been dumb enough to have handed her $25 cash back at my house for the requested gasoline, she got out of the car, went into the stand and immediately found a gay, male couple from her church to hug and annoy before starting her leisurely, melon thumping bullshit. I stood in the sun and smoked a cigarette.
You see, these fuckers on mental disability have no concept of time. They don't have to work, they've got all the time in the world to fuck around, sleep late, have to have their coffee shop coffee before they can do absolutely nothing in the morning and so on and so forth.
A few weeks ago, I watched "Dirty Filthy Love" with Annie, and her take on the film, which would be a "Sleepless in Seattle" quality chick flick if the protagonist wasn't an obsessive compulsive paranoid with Tourette's Syndrome, was that the people around this irritating, mentally ill, screwed-up mess should have just listened to him.
Yes, Dirty Filthy Love" is probably a good test of sanity, guys. Watch it with a woman you're getting to know -- If she thinks people with lives and loves and responsibilities should listen over and over again to some crazy fucker tell the story of how his wife
left him because he wanted to leave Istanbul and return home early from their vacation because he'd accidentally broken an aftershave bottle on the bathroom floor and might have gotten a microsliver of glass in his foot, then she's fucking crazy, herself, and you should either start running, keep running and don't stop to shit or be the constant victim of crazy women that I am. It's your choice. Don't say I didn't warn you.
Of course, her estimated half-pound of peaches weighed in at just less than four pounds (yeah, anybody could make that mistake), and so there was an ugly confrontation with the bewildered new arrival from Honduras at the checkout station, and we got back in her car fifteen miles from Mojo's house at 3:50.
Originally, we were to stop at my bank so that I could make a deposit, but that had to be abandoned, and I hate being late, especially to a meeting at which other participants have to think I have my shit together enough to, oh, let's say, be able to goddamn tell fucking time, and I explained all this to Annie, which made her do 70 in a 45 zone until I agreed that I'd rather be late than die in a loud car crash/ball of fire/disaster film epic, and she let me out at Mojo's at 4:10.
He was great company, positive, full of ideas (starting with moving our meeting to the cafe tables outside the Trendies-A-Plenty bookstore coffee shop, where I could smoke) and in all ways the right man to start planning this festival with. At 5:20, he gave me a ride the three blocks to Larry's house. Everything was clicking along, back on track. I yucked it up with a contented, domesticated Larry and delightful, bright Cindy and put down more beers than were really necessary to stave off dehydration. Larry generally followed directions given by Cindy, visiting him from her base in Confederate City, with the results one might expect from "generally following
directions" in a kitchen. There are some of foods I don't care for fresh, but am quite fond of frozen or canned or otherwise processed by others.
Asparagus, spinach and mangoes are on that list. I can't get the fibrous threads out of asparagus and don't give a damn about the satisfying crunch. Fresh spinach tastes like dirt no matter what,
and mangoes ... well, if they'd grow on trees pre-peeled, in chilled, glass jars of heavy syrup, then I'd have some serious mango mania, but they don't. They grow on trees or bushes or wherever the hell they grow before reaching grocery store bins in the form of sorry-ass substitutes for unripe apples with acrid, bark-thick peels.
"Oh well," must have thought Larry, at least if I make them into tricky shish kabobs, alternating slices of mango with the barklike peel still in place with unpeeled shrimp, everyone will be concentrating so much on wrestling the chitinous, clinging shells off
of hot, greasy shrimp without destroying the meat while fighting back tears of pain from having to handle piping hot shrimp fresh from the grill with one's bare fingers in the first fucking place that they won't even notice these cocksuckin', underdone mangoes. If you let them spend a little, but oh no, not enough time on the grill, mangoes develop the flavor of a boot heel that's trod on unripe apples, yet still retain their feisty, fibrous, annoying raw character.
And, of course, they caramelize just enough to make the neighboring, searing hot shrimp exoskeletons flanking them on the kabob skewers stick to your hands when you try to take them off the goddamn shrimp in order to make your meal become actual food. Oh well, my life has taught me that not all dinners lead to actually having a meal, so what the fuck. They were smoking cigarettes during the meal, anyway,
and that's an appetite suppressant for me. I smoke cigarettes; I do not eat them. Cigarette smoke in a kitchen will ruin chopped lettuce or onions for me. The company was good, and they gave me a ride to the party at about 8:30, which was great, and the party was a grand time. I stayed late and drank epically.
