The Transporter Couch

Now there’s a charming disorder! It springs to mind because a friend of mine …. I guess he’s a friend …. operates a cat rescue organization or, something like that. I mean, when the SPCA or other facilities get overrun he takes in cats. And he eventually gets rid of them but at any given moment he will have 25 cats in his house. And it’s WORK! All the litter needs cleaning, and they need feeding, and they’re not allowed outside (it’s a miracle the place doesn’t reek but remarkably, it doesn’t).

Just now I was playing with my own cat, Aretha, my one and only cat, and I was encouraging her to play rough and she was responding to the challenge. She’s working out her frustration at being left outside last night but she insisted on it and out she went. You have to know, we had a GORGEOUS thunderstorm last night, lasting hours, lightning and thunder and, high winds and hail and tornado threats and all that good stuff. Aretha was antsy through it all. She’s relatively young (one year old basically) and this was new to her. So she paced and made noises and generally generally didn’t know what to do with herself, but she would stand at the door and yowl from time to time as if to say “I want to go out there.” And I would say, “No.” At last the storm subsided and she was absolutely, positively, completely and utterly ready to go outside so I let her out. I myself was absolutely, positively, completely and utterly ready to go to bed. So I did.

So she came in this morning looking a liiiiiiiiittle bit the worse for wear. She’d managed to get sopping wet and I saw two dead birds on the porch and I haven’t seen a fish in the pond for a week! Anyway, I toweled her off and left her to her own devices and she napped for a little while and then she initiated her attack on me. Systematic, unwavering and ruthless. So at last I engaged her and she took me to the cleaners! I’ll spare you the grizzly details but just know I actually have a band-aid … a big-ass fuckin’ band-aid on my left hand. And I used up half a tube of Neosporin over various parts of my body. Now she lies beneath the bookcase, supine, “les jambs en l’air comme une femme lubrique.” She’s happy.

I like playing rough with the cat. I never would actually BEAT her or HARM her but it’s just kind of fun to mess around. And it’s 5% of the time. The rest of the time she just lies around the house or goes outside and does what she does. Aretha is very affectionate and will sleep cuddled up with me if I let her, though I don’t like to because I move around a lot and she has to be displaced and I worry that in the middle of the night I’ll squash her or something. I do worry that she might not limit her intensity to just me but will take on a relative stranger. She’s very friendly and affectionate and readily approaches people. My fear is that one day she’ll just go to town on a visitor. We’ll just be sitting here having tea and crumpets and talking about the vicissitudes of life and the tribulations of the unwashed masses and suddenly Mrs. Uppington-Smythe’s stockings are in shreds and she’s reaching for her digitalis! Or, knowing Mrs. Uppington-Smythe, her pistol. “What IS in that handbag, my dear?”

I was the PICTURE of sex.  I was wearing a white shirt and white flat-front plants and black shoes and a black belt.  The shirt unbontonned my waist.  My body lean and tan.  My hair …. you already know I have movie star hair.  I heard Air singing “Sexy Boy” evereywhere I went.

 And I was a sexy boy.  Self-absorbed though I was in that moment (and am in general), I was HOT.  People looked at me.  Looked and liked what they saw.  It was a breezy day and the breeze, like a blue silk sheet, would come along and drag open my shirt and expose a nipple.  Few confess but everyone likes a little nipple. 

 That’s all.

There’s a scene in “Sunset Boulevard” in which Joe Gillis says to Norma Desmond, “I didn’t know you were planning a comeback.” Her response is fast and furious and should have won her an Oscar (but the movie was up against “All About Eve” and it prevailed.) Anyway, whether you know the movie or not, the dialogue is,
Joe: “I didn’t know you were planning a comeback.”
Norma: ” I HATE THAT WORD!”

She goes on about things, since it’s all about her…. but in that moment, in that moment in the movie, in her facial expression and her vehemence, I connect with her. It is a moment of utter disgust.

I have a rather large parking area that is more or less publicly accessible, but it’s gravel … or …. grass and dirt I should say. And my living room windows face it. I live on the 2nd floor, and there are trees, so it isn’t an ugly view but I can HEAR when a car pulls in. I’ve learned to sort of tell whose car it is that is pulling in, by the sound of their tires on the ground. And, also, I’ve learned to detect a “strange” car by its unfamiliar tire/ground sound. Mind you, the crunch of the dirt parking lot isn’t invasive, just … distinctive to my relatively well-trained ears.

Sometimes I will be sitting here writing and I will hear, in the distance, an unfamiliar tire sound, and I feel a bizarre compulsion to look and see who it is, for it could be all sorts of people. Usually it’s a visitor to one of my neighors. Today, my client was sitting opposite me waiting for me to finish a project, and I’m intent because I’m under the gun and she’s sitting there in dark glasses, waiting (not unlike Norma Desmond!) and suddenly I hear a VERY unfamiliar crunch out there. I looked up and looked at my guest and said, “I HATE THAT SOUND!” and delivered it with my best look of frustration and disgust. And I meant it. It happened at an odd hour….. I mean there’s always traffic at 8 and noon and 5 but this was like 10:30. The time when the only person going anywhere is usually me!

Unexpected traffic always makes me think it’s either my mother or the cops. Neither of whom I care to have banging on the door when I’m in the middle of a project. Actually, in a little side note, the cops have never been here but once the Secret Service banged on my door because my building was on George Bush’s parade route (blah blah blah). But in any case, I value my privacy in a way that is hard to describe, and won’t answer my door if I’m not expecting company. Which of course makes me all weird and sweaty when the bell DOES ring when I’m not expecting company. So …. by extrapolation, it explains why I get uneasy when I hear unusual tires out on the parking lot.

Maybe I’m a freak, but I’m just very sensitive about these things. That’s not the point. The point, for what it’s worth, is that when I said, “I HATE THAT SOUND” and pushed myself away from my desk and walked to the window, I realized …. I realized the frustration and annoyance that Norma Desmond conveyed in her utterance “I HATE THAT WORD!”

Which of course led me to start thinking about that movie, which has been carefully examined by greater minds than my own. But that line happens realatively early in the movie and the whole thing spirals into unreality, so it gets all convoluted, but I would wager that’s the only moment in which Norma is true to herself. She is often emotional but half the time it’s an act and the other half the time it’s insanity but in that ONE line I think she’s …. honestly responding to her true self. I’m sure there are psychological terms for this. I don’t know them.

So I sat, pensive, chewing gum, actually, and my client finally snapped me out of it. “Brian! I don’t have all day.” Oops.

Happy birthday to Harper Lee and Sadam Hussein.

This morning, very very early I called the tortilla factory and misdialed. I called a wrong number, and I swear to god the voicemail/auto-attendent whatever it’s called answered and said, “Thank you for calling wenches.com. If you know your party’s extension blah blah blah.”

I was so taken off guard I hung up and hit redial. Yep, that is what it said. Now it might have been winches, but I prefer to think it was wenches. I’ve been giggling over it for an hour. I’d like to open a catering company / cleaning service and call it “Wenches R Us” or “Wenches 4 Hire” and hire a bunch of buxom girls to serve cakes and ale. And spitted fowl legs. Let’s not forget those.

Eric’s Birthday
My friend Eric turns 20 in three days. I call him my friend. I don’t know what else to call him. I met him when he was 10 and a little kid, and I’ve been around to witness the beauty of his youth, not entirely unlike my own. And the fallout of his reckless youth, not entirely unlike my own. But he’s not a little kid now and hasn’t been for quite some time.

I used to just be “Brian” but recently he referred to me as “my friend Brian” and I liked that. It’s peculiar. I’m 40 and he’s 20. And I’m his mother’s BEST friend (second to her husband, of course). At least he doesn’t call me “Uncle Brian” which would really annoy me. So I guess I’m a “friend of the family.”

I like Eric. Well, of course I love him like a brother but I genuinely like him and enjoy his company. If I could have a son, I would want him to be like Eric. He’s very very very very much like me. He’s enthusiastic but lazy. He takes residence in moments. He’s sort of perpetually in that in-between phase of “cute” and “handsome.” He’s gonna get fat if he isn’t careful. He’s kind, but moody. He’s sensitive and generous. He has GREAT hair! Almost as good as mine. He’s me 20 years ago. He just hasn’t quite yet learned how to work it. Which is just a different way of saying that he hasn’t learned to take himself seriously.
And why should he? Nobody else does. His parents spoiled him and I certainly am no role model and people who COULD BE role models are authority geeks that haven’t earned and don’t much deserve his trust or respect.

Eric, I can’t give you a birthday present. You have everything and you lack for nothing and anything I could hand to you would be immaterial to your life and your folks probably already gave it to you anyway. So I’m going to take you seriously. I guarantee that. I’m going to give you some advice. (Don’t you love this part?) Get out of here. The world is large and complicated and you of all the people I know can do amazing things in it. I understand you’re looking at moving to California or Wyoming.

Go.

Don’t fear that people will forget you. We won’t. You’re truly unforgettable. Don’t fear that you won’t survive. You will. You’re truly a survivor. Don’t fear that you won’t measure up to the challenges. We will support you. And you haven’t even tapped your resources. You will be amazed at the vast, deep pool of life at your disposal.
Happy Birthday! I love you.
Brian

Someone seriously recommended that I wax my arms.

My arms are hairy, but they’re not atrocious! I was very very offended.

Here’s a picture….. it’s old, but you can get the idea:
http://www.ktc.com/personal/brwrakk/desk.jpg

I’m a hairy guy, I guess. But I’m not sweaty and gross. No offense to sweaty, gross hairy guys. Some people love playing with the hair on my arms, and on my legs. And frankly, I like it when people touch me because of the hair allure. When I lived in Japan, where children in particular but grown folks as well tend to NOT have hairy bodies, I would catch people checking it out. Adults would be reserved but I can think of a couple of housewives who ached, ACHED to touch the hair on my arm. Children were less conservative and would readily touch my, I learned it was called, “fur.” And no this isn’t a Michael Jackson moment. It was just cool to observe their utter fascination with something so different.

My face is hairy, too. If I don’t shave for two days, I look like SHIT. I mean I look like I just got out of jail! But this is good. I can change my style in a heartbeat. And what’s even better is that I have GREAT hair! On my head. Completely clothed and clean shaven, the third thing people notice (after they notice my eyes and my gentle demeanor) is my hair. And I can work it. And I do. My hair, wherever you might find it, is the manliest and most beautiful thing about me (aside from my eyes and my gentle demeanor). That someone would suggest I WAX my arms …. was so completely antithetical to my personal aesthetic. Well, it was sufficiently so that I am here talking about it.

I started this post, “how do your friends cease to be your friends?” And it was sort of an attack on some people I wanted to lay blame on, and whom I wanted to accuse aof abandoning me. But the truth is I abandoned them. I wouln’t presume to conclude that they needed me in their life, but I liked them in mine and it was I who walked away from them. Regardless whether or not it was warranted, it’s on me to embrace it. To savor it. To deal with it.

I just got a little harder.

I got a little buffer, too. I tanned a bit today …. in the actual sun. I don’t tan in beds. My dermatologist tells me I have too many moles and I tell him he has too many BMW payments. For the RECORD I have lots of moles but they’re all at the surface level and once upon a time they were “harmless.” I have, rather, a whole bunch of OTHER shit going on that is expensive and I don’t need my derm horning in on my miseries let alone creating them.

Apologies.