"Oh, You Write?" He Asked.

This piece is dedicated 

to every man that has ever looked me in the eye, 

asked “how was your day?” 

and meant it.

He couldn’t have been more handsome.  Spikey hair, sharp glasses, chiseled jaw; my date had angles that would be a cubist’s dream.  However, his features must have been sculpted by the great masters in pale marble with the most deliberate hand.  When he smiled at me, my knees pulsed a rhythmic, "I'm not worthy. I'm not worthy"  The only motivation I could find to take another step towards him was by accepting the fact that I didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of being this guy's type.   But that didn't matter because he was stuck with me.  First we were going to eat and then we were going to the theater.  This man was completely mine until just past curtain call, which was still hours away.

We hugged me hello so compactly that the fuzz of our cheeks scruffed against each other.  When we took our seats, he reached for the wine list and I pushed a candle closer so he didn’t have to strain his eyes.  “Feh,” I thought.  “Let him get drunk.  If his eyes cross, you'll look svelte.” Meanwhile, he was so poised and well-structured.  Being with him made me feel as large as a grand prize at a carnival.

I ordered myself a vodka and what-the-fuck-ever to get over it and keep up. After a few sips, I was prepared to dazzle.  Frankly, my conversation that evening was epic. I spoke about bullshit with such authority, you would have thought I’d been competing in a middle school mock trial.  The more I would coo and cluck, the more the wattage of his smile would flicker and surge.  Just knowing that I was the cause of that visage was the definition of a good day.  His teeth shined so bright that I could see them glimmer even as he put his hand to his mouth whenever he needed to laugh or chew.   

Dinner ended at five minutes to curtain, so we had to make a dash for the theater.  We would have never had the problem of dodging the throngs if he hadn’t left his Pegasus at home. 

The theater tickets were a favor from a friend that likes to know she helped get me laid, so, naturally, we were spitting distance from the stage.  It was one of those evenings in the theater that you enjoy for no real reason besides being in the right place at the right time.  That night, I let my nose stay parallel to the floor instead of holding it high in the air.  

We had a marvelous time.  His hand was on my knee and my palm was on his neck.  As the music swelled, we were transfixed by the lights and colors of musical comedy.  We swooned when the hunky hero got his glamour girl.  I was elated as he clutched at my hand to watch other lovers’ dreams come true.  When they lived so happily ever after and the actors bowed, so we stood and smiled and clapped and cheered. 

We pushed up the aisle and I tugged his sleeve to lead him through a door that deposited us in a breezy alleyway to the side of the theater.  I wrapped his hand in mine and suggested dessert.  The night was young and I refused to let him go.

We ducked into some diner on Ninth Avenue that was likely owned by Greeks.  It had a display of pies spinning behind glass. I pointed at my selection and signaled for two spoons.   The owner pushed us into a small table in the front that was so close to the table next to it, they could have shared a straw.

Still, he stayed connected to me in a strange little world that had an atmosphere made of booze and showtunes.  He stared at me from across the table with eyes so direct they almost never focused.  It was impossible to tell if he was looking at me, in me or through me.

“Oh, you write?” he asked.

“Sometimes, yeah.  I usually keep it pretty quiet.  I mean, it’s not like… a blog or anything.”

“Well,” he says,  “I would love to read it.”

That was out of the question.    

“Maybe one of these days,’ I nodded.

“You know, you can use me in one of your stories if you want.  But if you ever make a penny off it, you’re gonna owe me big!”

I knew in that instant that this was not going to work.  Requesting to be my subject is like feeding my creativity a curry.  Instead of my work coming out nicely formed, I get a spray that I have to scrub up after.  You would think his mother would have taught him: to act as a muse, you simply must be. 

“I write too,” he motioned. 

Dear God, no. 

“Actually, I may have something here with me.”  Without searching to the count of ten he says, “yeah, I do.  It’s a poem.  I suppose it’s a little personal.”

He produced a scrap of paper from his jacket pocket.  I started getting nervous that he was going to want me to read it.  Reading in front of people is a lot of pressure.  My eyes would be forced to gloss over his words until enough time had passed before I was allowed to look up and nod.  

And then he cleared his throat.

“It’s called ‘Grandmother’s Garden’.”

Dear Lord, I’m ready.  Please take me now. 

I wish I could tell you exactly what happened next, but I think I went into a K-hole.   He began to speak in such a booming voice that it was as if he imagined himself a shepherd competing with the bleat of sheep in the distance.  He read to me with such emphatic diction that the other patrons started to shift in their seats.  The room needed to find a better vantage to simultaneously plant their eyes in the back of my skull, which had already begun to throb.  I came in and out of consciousness over the next few stanzas. 

His wild gesticulations manipulated the flow of air as I heard in a whoosh:

 “Soft flower that I must water, 

 Now that you’re not here. 

My drops of salt will wilt your petals,  

But you’ve left us yet to grow.”

It was the most ashamed I had ever felt.  He paused triumphantly to wait for praise.  I barely had time to finish mumbling my response before he announced that he had a companion piece to read as well. 

At that moment, you could have held a gun to my head and I wouldn’t have been able to tell you how many toes there are on my left.  He finished reading poem number two and I trembled as I pushed away the plate of pie.  For the first time in 6 months, I had lost my appetite.   

“Check please.”

Naturally, I was surprised when I offered to walk him to his train. Perhaps it's because I was a lot less of a cunt back then (although doubtful).  Maybe there was still time back then for such acts of propriety.  Also, being Jewish, it was far better to leave him nothing negative to say about me to strangers despite the fact that I was never going to see him again.  And yet, perhaps I offered to walk him to his train because I needed the closure of seeing him encased in a jagged metal can as it screeched toward the center of the Earth. 

During our walk to his stop, I made a note to keep my body language tense and disinterested.  Sensing that something was wrong, he grabbed my hand to stop me from rushing so far ahead.  We were outside of the Snapple Theater.  There were giant bottles of iced tea spinning on a billboard several stories above our heads.

That’s when he kissed me.  Yes, honestly.  If he'd bothered to observe any of the context clues, he would have known I would rather push his face into dirt.  

That’s when my body recoiled.  I put my hands up like I was catching myself from a fall and I shoved him so hard he had to take a few steps back to regain his balance.  Mind you, I'm not enthusiastic about whatever thought process led me to that reaction.  But, as far as I am concerned, that kiss was rape.  Therefore, he had it coming. 

When I looked at him now, something had changed.  Our pupils locked like he was trying to eat my thoughts.  I finally had his attention.

He ambled down the stairs and faded away beyond the turnstiles.  It wasn’t until he faded out of sight that I was able to see him for exactly what he is: a spec among specs, so insignificant that even a Hoover would suck the other way.

Tonight on my walk home from the train, the city had been kissed by rain like it looks in the movies.  The sun had set and the humidity had cut.  The back of my neck had finally stopped weeping.  

As I looked up into the night sky, I fixed my gaze on the only sparkling dot I could see.

“Starlight, Starbright…”

Who knows?  It probably wasn’t even a star- it was probably a planet, like Venus, or some shit like that.  But I made my wish anyway.  Even Venus should know I had fucking earned it.

It smiled back a prophesy:

Lie to yourself until it is true. 

You will be loved again, 

and more sincerely than ever.

That Time I F*cked a Sooth-Sayer

A few years ago, some putz I was sleeping with inadvertently changed my life forever.  Please; allow me to explain.

There was something sort of magnetic about this guy from the moment I met him.  Granted, I was drunk at the time, however he still seemed to have the most infectious personality I had ever been exposed to.  He possessed a superpower: was able to immediately transform any passerby into his best friend, willing to take a bullet for him.  That power resides within the confines of his seductive, know-it-all smile and crystal blue eyes. 

Our time together was brief and harried with his merciless commitment to mirth making and merriment. It was an attractive quality to me at the time, now it seems relentless. It was always an unnatural fit, me being an apprehensive, social-climbing nebbish and him being the Prom King.  

Still buried deep in my journals from years past, I have pages upon pages of stilted prose about the size of his hands as compared to my torso and the way his cigarette smoke danced around our bodies intertwined.  He brought out an ethereal quality in my writing that has been somewhat lacking since.  The day I met him, I stole his ring that was made from a bent spoon that I pawed at mindlessly throughout the two months that I devoted entirely to him.  I liked to think that by wearing his ring, I would be inhabited with his magical powers of congeniality.

We had met on New Year’s Eve a million years ago at Don’t Tell Mama’s, which is this faggoty tourist trap of a piano bar on West 46th Street and named after a lyric in the musical “Cabaret”.  Moments before the ball dropped, the bedeviled charmer flashed me that hypnotic smile and I could instantly feel the butterfly chrysalides form on the lining of my stomach. He sweetly begged to be my New Years’ kiss and I was more than happy/drunk to oblige.  We had just the right amount of champagne to pretend to know all the lyrics to Auld Lang Syne and caterwauled gibberish along with the crowd as the ball dropped just a few blocks away.  He then sweetly begged for me to go back to his his apartment and, again, I was more than happy/drunk to oblige. 

The next morning when I woke up in his arms, I could feel the caterpillar pupa in my gut as it began to push through its chrysalis casing and emerge as a butterfly, taking flight through my digestive system. The creature, having learned to flutter its wings amidst the sour remnants of champagne and vodka cocktails was likely dealt an irreversible shortening its already brief life expectancy.  Regardless, I wasn’t entirely sure of what to blame for my nausea, so I quickly coated the bile with a fine layer of brunch.  As I sopped up my runny eggs with burnt toast, he took the opportunity to stare across the table and into my soul with his remarkable crystal blue eyes.   

In the two months that we carried on (that is, before I sent him off to join the rest of my misbegotten ex-lovers on the boulevard of broken dreams), we went back to that same shitty piano bar where we met to relive some nostalgia for the day-and-a-half gone by. He walked into the bar like the pied piper about to buy a new fife.  He hurriedly set to work endearing himself to all those people he would never see again, which to me still sounds like a lot of misspent effort and anxiety.   

If you’ve never been to this joint I’m talking about (and who could blame you), there is a long row of tables that heap on top of one another running along the wall to the right of the entrance and a piano on a platform.  The drinks are watered down and the wait staff is often violently rude. 

This one particular night we went, we were ushered to a cramped but prime position in the middle of the long banquette.  It wasn’t a few minutes before the people sitting to our right and left were transfixed by the swinging pendulum that lay behind my boyfriend’s eyes.  He tired of this group and, still basking in the glow of his recent converts, broke his gaze as he set his sights on more challenging prey. There was a table of unsuspecting middle-aged ladies sitting in the back corner singing the “bah, bah, bah” part of Sweet Caroline. He desired to make them his. Forever. 

He excused himself and climbed around the mountain of people that now surrounded him and stealthily approached his bridge and tunnel specimens. I was left to swirl the ice that was melting at the bottom of my glass.  I eventually excused myself from the polite conversation I got stuck with to find out where the hell my date was hiding.  As I reached the back of the bar, I heard my name as a shrill exclamatory cry, 8 voices in perfect unison.  He’d had his way; the women were already his. 

They quickly regurgitated all of the information they had been taught about me, their leader’s betrothed.  They clamored with glee and celebrated their celebration.  It was girl’s night in the big city!  I made pleasantries and they told me how lucky I was to be going home with the most popular guy at the bar and precisely which aspects made them drool with envy. This is when things started to go from “Twilight Zone” to “X-Files” on the barometer of crazy. 

As I mentioned, there were 8 women sitting at the table.  My arrival at their table prompted the attention of 7 but the dude, let’s call him “Rasputin”, was looming over the woman sitting at the head.  Periodically throughout juggling the advances of the 7, I would steal glances at the sequestered one and her new overlord.  The two of them looked so deeply connected that it felt as though they could levitate above the crowd.  His hands were on her shoulders as she stared back at him, doe-eyed.    But then the next time I looked over, she was crying.

I worked to shrug off the heebie-jeebies that were then attacking my spinal column after I saw that.  Seemingly, I was the only person in the room that noticed; perhaps in our time together I had become immune to his particular brand of conjury while all the others drank the Kool-Aid.  As she wiped the tears from her chin, I wiped the furrow from my brow.  I kept on jabbering with the gals, pleasure as usual.  Soon, he hugged her, paid our tab and led me by the hand into the bitter winter winds of Restaurant Row. 

As soon as we got outside, I was able to call into question his patented blend of shameless and creepy.

“What the hell happened back there?” I demanded. 

He played dumb at first and eventually offering a dismissive, “Oh, THAT!”  He went on to explain, “It’s something that I don’t like to discuss, but, well, I am gifted.  With communication.  You know.  Like, with the dead.”

Buh?  “And what exactly did you say to that woman to make her cry?”

He grabbed my hand and pulled me over to a parking meter at the curb.  “That woman’s husband spoke into my ear when I walked back to that table.  He told me what she needed to know.  She should have been enjoying this night with her friends instead of fretting over all that’s come and gone.  This is her only now.”

I went on to treat him as if he were a guest on my brand new talk show that was filming on the curb on Eighth Avenue. I was inherently eager with my questions.  “So, you can communicate with the dead and that woman’s husband spoke to you?  Does this type of event- and we can call it an event- happen often?”

“Not too often. No,” he assuaged me, hoping that I wouldn’t label him as some kind of freak. “But I can identify people’s guardian angels and sometimes I can be contacted by someone that just wants to deliver a message, like tonight.  Honestly, I didn’t want to tell that woman what her husband had to say, but he insisted.  And I’m glad that I did.  Afterwards, she seemed so relieved.”

This is when I realized that any favors I had paid him in the past few weeks now indebted him to me in the form of a public private reading.  I began to call his powers into question: 

“If you think you’re so gifted, what can you tell me about me?  Is there some phantom that watches over me; that makes sure I leave the house at the right time and I find my keys at the exact moment I needed them?” 

“Yes,” he said. “More or less.”

“Wait.  I have a guardian angel?”  He nodded.  “And you’ve seen this person appear as some ghost that floats around me?”  He nodded.  “Well, you’re going to have to be a little more specific.  Like a name.  Tell me its name.”

Without so much as blinking, he replied.  “Ida.”

That was when I had to pucker my ass cheeks to make sure I didn’t soil my manties.  The hair on my arm would have been easy to braid if I had a moment; it was standing straight up and fully exposed as my skin had regressed due to the gooseflesh.  

Ida was the name of my great grandmother.  She was my mother’s father’s mother. To my knowledge, I had never engaged anyone in a conversation about Ida seeing as I had never met her.  My grandfather never said much about his mother and she died many years before I was born. 

Oh, and she was an artist.

My footsteps stuttered.  “What is it that she wants me to know?”

“That you’re not living up to your potential.  Great things will come from you if you choose your way correctly.  You picked the wrong path at a fork in the road some time ago.  You’ve been walking away from your capability and soon will lose your way completely.  You need to turn around.  Now.  You need to head back.” 

I gulped cold air back in.    “What is the most powerful image in my family’s past that influences my present and future?”

“Jeremy,” he said, “there are things you cannot unlearn.  Make sure you truly desire the answers to the questions before I continue.” 

I clicked my tongue. “Go on, Zoltar.” 

“Fine,” he guffed. He touched his ring on my hand.  “The gates of Auschwitz.”

(At this stage in my writing career, most of the people reading my work know the precise time of my last bowel movement and how much the water splashed in the bowl.  However, if you for some reason have stumbled upon this without knowing me from Adam, allow me tell you a crucial moment in my family’s history.  My grandfather’s entire immediate family was murdered at Auschwitz.  There.  Now you’re all up-to-speed.  And stupefied.)

He and I had never discussed these details. 

Still, he went on.  “I don’t know if you can feel it, but there is an entire army of the fallen that marches behind you.  They perished while you have been chosen.  You are the chosen one.  You are the one that will have his name in history books because theirs have been forgotten.  You are now their voice, so you must speak.”

This news sent me into a complete tailspin.  I mean, he should have known better to say something so severe to a stupid 23-year-old that couldn’t make artistic vomit if he stuck his finger down his throat.  Now it’s my responsibility to vindicate the dead.  No pressure.  Apparently they want me to know that there is so much work to be done.  It took weeks for me find solace in the words atop the gates of Auschwitz. “Work Sets You Free”.

Two weeks later, that same boyfriend told me saw a dead girl floating around my bedroom.  He was right, there are some things you cannot unlearn.  I slept the night sleeping in a ball and then dumped him the next morning. 

The great work had begun.

Pubic Enemy

I am constantly reminded that I don’t live in the best neighborhood.  It’s not safe.  It’s not quiet.  It’s not pretty.  Fuck, it’s not even convenient.  Because the cons far outweigh the pros around here, my ongoing decision to renew my lease year after year has forced me to perpetually assure my friends and family that I am not, in fact, Tommy the Pinball Wizard.  Contrariwise, I am well aware that this neighborhood is a total shit hole. 

What needs to be realized by those that bother to return my calls is that this is the very best neighborhood I can afford on my salary of Broadway dreams.  Maybe (just maybe) when musical theatre is discovered to be the official cure for ovarian cancer, I can move somewhere that I don’t fear getting mugged while on my way to the bodega to buy rat poison to kill whatever the fuck is living under my sink. 

Inevitably, I am the first person to make a distasteful joke when something goes terribly wrong- but not often when my pride is at stake.  I like alone.  I pay my own bills (sometimes even on time).  However, something happened the other day that made me slightly too nervous to laugh.  I saw a newsflash when I was sipping my morning coffee that a young woman had been dragged off into the woods and raped near the ball fields in Inwood Hill Park. 

That’s where I jog. 

Granted, I know that I’m probably not too much at risk of getting raped (at least not in this neighborhood- or galaxy), but hearing news like this still makes you crane your neck to look over your shoulder on every third or fourth step when you walk to buy a slurpee at 10PM.  You can’t help but ponder what exactly is standing in your way of becoming a statistic.  Hopefully the recipe for safety is some combination of common sense and not making any eye contact with anyone ever. 

Yesterday I was practicing this recipe as I was getting off the subway and starting my self-contained walk down the hill to my apartment.  At the station exit, I was met by an unavoidable commotion.  A dozen women were there with stacks of flyers with a crude police sketch demanding that everyone beware of the Inwood Hill rapist.  They were shoving the flyers in people’s palms as they looked them straight in the eye. 

It turns out that the image of the rapist was so generic that it could have easily been 60% of the people in my zip code, but bearing witness to this act of upward mobility made me so momentarily proud to live exactly where I do.  Even if the police could care less about our problems, we could take the matter into our own hands and demand our justice be served rape-free (and with a side of chorizo). 

Tonight I was at Columbus Circle waiting for the A train to take me back uptown to the boulevard of broken dreams.  After a few minutes of distracting myself with Plants v. Zombies on my phone, a train pulled into the station at a glacial pace.  The conductor’s window was open and I heard a cop tell him, “Don’t you open those doors.”  The conductor nodded as the cops began to pace the platform and peered in every window.  The people stuck inside the train were smirking and shrugging their shoulders.  After 15 minutes, some old woman standing next to me on the platform gave me a, “What’s going on?” look with her eyebrows. 

I said, “They’re looking for somebody.  Or something.  I hear there’s some serious stuff going on in Inwood and Washington Heights,” never actively admitting that this is exactly where I live.  One of the cops put a key in the side of the subway car and opened the door I was standing in front of.  Several people struggled to push their way out, including this homeless guy that I see a couple of times a month.

When you see the same homeless people over and over again on a continuous loop, you can usually monitor their vital signs and make some guess at how they’ve been holding up.  Having first seen this guy in the dead of winter, I’ve always seen it as some sort of miracle that he’s even still alive.  I have never seen shoes on his feet and he can barely lift his legs when he walks.  His hair is matted in dreads and his beard extends halfway down his bent torso. 

As he pushed his way out of the single door that was open, the cops grabbed him by the elbow and put him in cuffs. 

I said to the old lady, “I see this guy all the time.  Whoever they are looking for, it sure as hell isn’t him…” 

She grimaced and said, “I know. I’d bet half of this platform could vouch for him.  Still, maybe he’s better off with a roof over his head for the night, even if there are bars holding it up.”

It made me so sad to see him taken off.  It felt like he was merely a scapegoat- that the cops had wasted everyone’s time and they needed to cart someone off to prevent getting any egg on their uniforms.  None of us said a thing as we watched them go. 

When I finally got off the train uptown, I called my mother and made mention of all the crazy goings-on.  Police cars slowly passed on the streets by my apartment.  I told her that even though I didn’t like the reason that they were there, it still made me feel better to see them than it would not to. 

I got home and started to round up the trash that needed to be taken down to the dumpster.  Reaching over to the small mesh wastebasket in my living room, I saw a jolt of moving fur- another grey mouse, my third.  I screamed and threw the basket into my larger kitchen trashcan and turned Mommie Dearest white as I grabbed the hammer.  I started swinging while it repeatedly tried to climb up the sides to escape.  My mother said she could hear the thumping like I was Lizzie Borden with her axe. 

Now, before you all freak the fuck out and call PETA on me, I don’t even know if I killed the thing.  To be honest, I was sort of squeamish and sort of crying and I don’t think I ever made contact once, which leads me to believe that he is now on the shores of Montego Bay sipping Pina Coladas before the limbo competition. 

I trembled as I ran the trash downstairs.  Thankfully, I bumped into the super. 

“You’ve got to do something.  I just killed a fucking mouse with a hammer.” 

He laughed.

“No, seriously,” I said.  “I’m not made up for this shit.” 

He said he would be up in 20.

He came to my door with a flashlight and started opening cabinets and throwing their contents on the floor with his overbearing, muscled arms.  He pointed to two holes under my kitchen sink and told me, “They come from there.”  I nodded as he comforted me and said that he would stop by tomorrow evening, how he was going to patch them up and how it was going take care of everything.  I showed him to the door and sighed as I looked down at the mess that lay in his wake.  While picking up after him, I reached down to move my tabletop Christmas tree and found a bundle of paperwork sticking out of its branches.

Ironically enough, it was my lease renewal form.  I had forgotten that I stashed it under the sink several weeks ago.  It was due a while back and I had devoted 30 frantic minutes of every day this week to trying to find it. 

Looking down at the document, I saw the shape of whatever it is that’s been lurking in the shadows.  The latest newsflash would make it hard for a hyena to laugh.  However, I know I’m going to sign the damn thing, lick a stamp and mail it back in.   And when I do, it is going to be pretty hard for me to keep a straight face. 

Meredith Vieira Has Left Me Forsaken

As some of you know and some of you don’t care, today was Meredith Vieira’s last episode of the Today Show.  As always, she was a stunning vision.  There were a lot of sappy clip montages and they even carted out Carole King to serenade the Heavenly Angel’s departure with "You've Got a Friend". 

What surprised me most about the proceedings was how emotionally swept up I had become.  I’ve spent 5 years waking up and having coffee with this lady and, as I mention often, change scares me. So, I’m sitting and eating my Cheerios at 8:20 in the morning while swiping away tears like an idiot.  I suppose the joy of those moments is that they only appear as a surprise.  They can only sneak up on you.

Meredith offered a terrific speech that validated my vulnerability: 

“But, you know, it’s funny.  That Virginia Tech story, when I talked about those kids- what I remember, and it really says something about the Today Show and why this is such an important show.  They did a candlelight vigil- I’ve talked about this before- and these kids started coming up to me and they said, you know, in that terrible massacre there, and they said, “can we please hug you?” And that they watched the show every day.  And they didn’t have their mothers or their fathers next to them.  I realized in that moment what was so humbling about the power of this show to really reach people.  And it’s such a blessing to have had that ability.  I am so honored to have sat with all of you.  Well, most of you.”

 And then she gave Matt Lauer a playful tap, ultimately demonstrating her ability to transition between sincerity and fluff (as is the goal of the Today Show, which originally got ratings in 1953 because it had a live monkey on the air every day named J. Fred Muggs).

You thought I was kidding?

I still have no idea what I'm going to watch tomorrow morning.  Whatever I choose, it's no doubt that Meredith will be sorely missed. 

The Shaken Baby Song

When I was a baby, my grandfather used to bounce me on his knee and sing a song in German that I assumed was gibberish (as was most language to me at the time).  He’s been gone for a few years, but this particular rhyme has always stayed with me particularly because the ending is accompanied by an action that has the adult “drop” the child on the floor in a playful oh-my-Gott-in-Himmel-I’m-falling kind of motion.  While I still don’t speak German and have no plans to start taking lessons, I was able to use the sounds of the song that I still remembered to track down the rhyme on google.  The internet is totally amazing. 

Withing 30 seconds of searching, I learned that the song was called “Hoppe, Hoppe Reiter” and it sounded a little something like this:

As you can tell by the video, it's true that the Germans have a song for everything. Even Shaken Baby Syndrome.

In actuality, the song’s translation is (sort of) as follows:

Bumpety bump, rider,

if he falls, then he cries out

should he fall into the pond,

no one will find him soon.

Bumpety bump, rider...

should he fall into the ditch,

then the ravens will eat him.

Should he fall into the swamp,

then the rider goes... splash! ("Drop" child)

OMFG.  That’s what that means?  Seriously, I am glad I didn’t speak German.  Even their nursery rhymes are evil.  

Still, thinking of our unbridled laughter on that "plumps" line reminds me of the last time that I may have ever been considered an innocent.   Remembering him fondly. 

Three Coins in the Fountain

I had a boozy brunch today by the World Financial Center with a handsome gentleman caller.  The sky was perfectly overcast, yet his smile seemed to be tattooed above his flawlessly dimpled chin.  He is the type of person that seems unflaggingly happy, so I am still unsure if I was ever his smile's cause or if it was indebted to the several rounds of Bloody Marys.   

We were seated on the outdoor patio with a view of bobbing yachts in the marina.  Our waiter was a handsome young man whose skin shone like wax in the blurred-out sun.  I wore my sunglasses whenever he stopped by our table for fear of being blinded by his disco-ball radiance.  After he came with our drinks, he asked if we were ready to order and we asked for a few more minutes to look over the menu.  A short while later, he came back to the table and paused before he greeted us with, “So... did you have a few minutes?” as if he worried we may have been caught in a vortex while he was in the kitchen and had lost all concept of time.  It felt like the kind of question a nurse's aid would ask when you awaken from a coma.  Then, when I ordered the Eggs Benedict, he asked how I wanted them cooked to which I said, “Uh… poached?”  Later, when we ordered our coffee, he brought us two separate canisters of milk and two separate sugar caddies.  I almost hoped he had drawn a line down the center of table with the wrappers of our straws and hummed the opening of "West Side Story".

This waiter's whole existence seemed to be an indistinguishable blend of tragic and hilarious, but my date seemed to be so polite that he refused to notice.  With that, the rules had been clearly defined that my making a joke at the waiter’s expense was entirely off-limits.  So, the conversation stayed as light, like my POACHED eggs. 

Luckily, some children wandered over to the fountain next to our table and distracted me by being cute.  They’d been given pennies by their granddad and were instructed to toss them into the water and make a wish.  The girl was older and more methodical with hers while the boy quickly lobbed his like a hot potato.  They both watched transfixed as the coins rocked back and forth until they sank to the bottom with a "plunk". 

The boy immediately asked the girl what she had wished for.  She looked at him like he'd spit in her face and told him that she couldn’t tell him her wish or it wouldn’t come true. 

Even though I have heard that same line of flim-flammery more times than I have blown out candles on a birthday cake, I celebrated the boy's defiance. 

“Yeah?  Says who?”

“Everyone,” she sighed.  “ That’s who.”

“Oh,” he said as they began to amble away, fully contented to accept the girl’s word as gospel.   

It made me realize that whoever first thought up the idea that you cannot reveal your wish must have been a modest coward.  And those that preach that your wish cannot be revealed until after it has come true are merely opportunistic at hedging their bets. 

Hearing that exchange made me want stand up and take a fistful of everything that jangled in my pocket and throw it with abandon into the Hudson.  And you want to know what I would wish for?  I'd be happy to tell you.  I would have wished for the permission to make fun of that shitty waiter until my date grabbed at my forearm while his jaw unhinged with laughter so I could finally rest assured that I was, indeed, responsible for his irrepressible smile.   

Some People Can Be Content Playin' Bingo and Payin' Rent

I had a chat with my mom on the phone tonight because, well, I’m Jewish and it’s obligatory that we talk to our mothers every day lest it be assumed that we are face down in a ditch.  She was telling me about a conversation she had with my father over dinner about the acting class that she signed up for (if you’re not up to date, more on that here:  My Mother, the Star).   

Mind you, my father is the kind of person that gets his feather ruffled by any talk of change, so this acting class is already cause for his concern.  To prevent any further disturbance, my mother has adapted a technique where she will gradually layer on new information to an old story as to not overwhelm his irritable senses.   In tonight's update, she was to tell him that if the acting class goes well, it might give her the courage to consider auditioning for a show.  He, in turn, responded with his usual blend of apprehension and ferocity.  

He told her that he by no means a fan of that idea.  He didn’t like to think of her being out and about, going who knows where with who knows who.   She reminded him that this was merely a hypothetical situation they were discussing and she would have to see how the class went before she could consider auditioning for something.  And, even then, that wouldn’t mean that she would automatically get cast just because she showed up to the audition. 

His defense was as supportive as usual, stating, “Of course you’d get a part.  They’re not going to be paying you.  They’ll let anyone in that wants to give up their time.”

Years of variations on this theme had her respond with, “That’s not necessarily true.  I’ll have to be good enough first.  They’ll have to want me.  Besides, what difference would it make if I had somewhere to be?  Every single night we watch two separate TV’s in two separate rooms.  It’s not like we would miss any time we spend together.  Besides, you play golf a couple of times a week.  I don't think this is any different.”

“Yes, it is,” he glowered.  There are times when I am certain that Armageddon wouldn’t stop him from excreting the final word.

“You’re right,” she replied.  “That is different because it’s you…”  At this point, I imagine her pushing her food around her plate and not making eye contact with anything but her mashed potatoes. 

To be fair, I have a million and a half things to say about this particular moment as well as the basis of their entire relationship.  But this is another one of those moments where their shared dynamic upsets me and my reaction is still better left unsaid.  It's simply not my battle.  

So, instead of going through my usual laundry list of expletives about how shitty he was behaving, I told her, “You just can’t write this shit.” 

Well, I lied.

And, oddly enough,  I’m not the first person to write this shit either.  I remembered while I was on the phone with her that their conversation was practically line-for-line from an episode of “All in the Family”.  

The set up is pretty simple:  Edith is late getting dinner on the table because she had been volunteering at a retirement home.  Archie is furious and expects her to quit her volunteer efforts so that she can devote herself to house and home.  As you might have guessed, this episode becomes a social commentary on the independent woman's role in the home.  It was all very 1970's, which is why it frightens me all the more that this thematically still applies to my family's household. 

I know I’m asking for a lot in expecting you to watch several minutes of a TV show that wasn’t even made in this century.  Seriously though, this clip is up there as one of my favorite moments from any sitcom ever.  And if you’re really that bored, you can start at 1:10 and still get my point.  

 

It's Official; I'm a Murderer

There are several evils that all Manhattanites must perpetually endure: pedestrian traffic at Christmas, improper umbrella usage in the rain, the scenic views of New Jersey, off-off Broadway, the aroma of human feces in the subway.  To a cynic, the list is practically endless.  I'm not trying to say that these issues are entirely unique to New York City, however, if you ask any one of its egomaniacal residents on the street,  you'll be promptly told that our problems are a particularly bountiful promontory.  

The good thing is that after a while, you get totally numb to it.  You barely notice the teenagers breakdancing dangerously close to your forehead on the 6 train, or the homeless man picking a fight with a telephone pole, or the gangs throwing glass bottles at cars.  There’s simple too much crazy here for you to notice it every time and, thankfully, most of the unpleasantries you tolerate happen when you encounter the throngs of assholes outside your door.  Which is why it is all-the-more upsetting when you must face a threat within your very own home.  

That’s right; I’m talking about vermin. 

Mice, cockroaches, bed bugs; you've seen it on the news and there is absolutely nothing you can do to protect yourself. They live in your walls, your sheet, your inner ears.  They consistently rank as the one leveling factor of status in this city.  Irregardless of income or location, any resident of any urban dwelling can stand idly by as their home rapidly becomes a festering cesspool of infestation. 

My story starts a few weeks ago.  

I'd gotten home from work and I was watching Pawn Stars, minding my own business when, all of the sudden, something moving caught my eye.  It was running, so I didn’t get a good look.  I didn’t know what it was. I was startled, but I tried to shrug it off.  I couldn't get it out of my mind.  Whatever it was that just ran past had gone behind the sofa that I was currently sitting on.  I could feel it ready to attack at any moment.  My muscles completely froze.  And then, I saw it come for me. 

I looked down at my foot and there he was.  He was a chubby grey mouse and he was staring up at me with his khaki tail and crablike eyes.  My foot seized and I kicked the coffee table across the room as I screamed to meet my maker.  The mouse disappeared into the abyss under my sofa. I ran into my bedroom and stood on my bed screaming.  That's when a plan was born.  

First, I put on my galoshes for protection.  Then, I grabbed my umbrella with a curved hook arm and ran to the kitchen to find any kind of weapon.  I grabbed the Swiffer and crept slowly back into the living room.  I stood on the far side of the room and used the hook on the umbrella arm to tug at the legs of the sofa, trying to pry it away from the wall.  Having disturbed his hiding place, the mouse came running right at me.  I screamed at the pitch of a rape whistle, threw the Swiffer like a tribal spear.  Mind you, this is the only time it is apropos to stand on your sofa wailing like a banshee while wearing knee-high galoshes.  

   

I saw him make a run for the kitchen.  I followed him, squealing all the while.  I watched as he crushed his body into the size of a pin and folded himself under the oven.  Immediately, I turned on the broiler.  Honestly, I'm not sure what my thinking was here or how this would help.  Maybe I was hoping that he would catch aflame.  Maybe, in my heart of hearts, I was expecting his flaming body to gallop around the kitchen like Speedy Gonzales during the Battle of the Alamo.  That was the first time a thought of murder had ever crossed my mind.  In my first fifteen minutes, I was already Dr. Mengele of the modern rodent holocaust. 

He had escaped with his life that night.  However, with the devastation he had caused, this moment became my Pearl Harbor.  Now, this was war.  

That night I had a dream about a mouse crawling up my nightstand and across my head as it lay resting on its pillow.  I awoke in the morning with a flash and hurried to investigate my apartment to see the tell-tale signs of mouse intrusion.  Surely enough, filth pellets were strewn everywhere and crackers crumbles adorned the kitchen counter.  I went to grab my shoes so I could head out the door and, as I lifted one up, the mouse was clinging to my shoe as I innocently brought him closer toward my mouth and eyes until he leapt off and scurried away. 

I did what any New Yorker would do: I waged a violet campaign.  I ran to 99¢ USA to buy whatever tools of death were prominently displayed on their walls.  I came home with a bag full of glue traps.  In order to determine where the traps should be place, I needed to think like a mouse.  I examined all of the intricate places that he was likely to run.  To fit the traps into his assumed path, I ruined a pair of good scissors while trimming through glue so I could place the traps as close as possible to the wall. 

Then, time went by.  I would come home from work and peek at the traps like a toddler watching Amityville Horror.  It was exhilarating and distressing all at once, like Purim at the dentist's office.  I never saw the mouse.  Over the next few weeks, it's lifeless body didn’t turn up in any of my traps.  The only thing that I ever found in one was a cockroach the size of an Almond Joy and, strangely enough, that didn’t bother me at all. 

When my mother planned a visit to town, she was naturally going to stay with me.  Before her arrived, I had to tell her my dirty secret, that there was a furry fugitive on the loose, like a sleeper cell waiting for a moment to attack.  She said it would sleep on the sofa instead of the air mattress on the floor, but that she would be fine.  I took all of the necessary precautions from clearing out all of of his hiding places to vacuuming out the dust and crumbs from under the fridge and stove.  I even put out some tasty poison for him to snack on when he got hungry. 

Naturally, the weekend went by without incident.  I suppose that the mouse, too, was taking Memorial Day off. It had been so long since I had seen him that I thought he had moved on to dirtier homes. 

Then, this morning, I woke up early to go for a jog (don’t ask) when I saw a ball of grey fuzz rush past my bedroom door.  Like Shirly MacLaine in 90% of her movies, I was all screamed out.  I no longer feared this revolting pest.  Rather, I just wanted him fucking dead.  At that moment, I would have stepped on his skull with my bare foot if it meant never seeing him again.  As I later headed out the door for work, I dreamed about a way to put an end this madness.   

That was when I launched the final solution. 

On the way home from work, I stopped at the store for a surplus of traps.  When I got home, I used the scissors to form them into a barrier that I placed under the broiler of my oven, having learned that's where he was entering from.  After my ambush was in place, I went in the other to watch Audra sing on PBS.  That's when I heard a terrible noise in the kitchen.  I entered slowly, fearful of seeing my enemy in his final moments of treachery.  and sure enough, there he was, his ass and feet and tail glued firmly in place as he sang an aria of death in the key of screech.  I prepped a trash bag to help clean up the crime scene, but I paused.  After all the time that I wanted this mouse dead, I couldn’t help but notice how cute it looked dying there.   I didn’t know how I would be able to follow through with committing this act of voluntary mouse-slaughter.  Meanwhile he just lay there, howling. 

I texted the dilemma to a friend.  His response: “Yeah.  They do that.  You need to take it outside and bash it on the pavement.”  Revolted, I knew I needed to follow through to make this an official "Game Over".  I picked up the trap and ceremoniously threw it in the bag.  I pinched the bag between my thumb and forefinger and ran down the stairs of my building.  The bag spasmed all the way as I carried it to the dumpster and tossed it in.  Let me tell you, if you’ve never killed an innocent creature, the whole experience is less glamorous than pissing in one’s pants. 

With that behind me, I can rest easier.  Now, his Reign of Terror has come to an end.    The King of Mice that wore the seven crowns has been defeated and may God rest his vile soul.  And may this be a lesson to the rest of his loathsome kingdom; if you ever think to threaten a New Yorker where he lives, you just may leave writhing in a Glad Bag. 

Glee; That Lovable Harpoon to the Soul

"You will come first of all to the Sirens, who are enchanters

of all mankind and whoever comes their way; and that man

who unsuspecting approaches them, and listens to the Sirens

singing, has no prospect of coming home and delighting

his wife and little children as they stand about him in greeting,

but the Sirens by the melody of their singing enchant him.”

- The Odyssey, Homer

Never has a show expected me to so liberally suspend my disbelief as Glee.  It is a cruel mistress, luring you in with its auto-tuned siren song just to leave your rotting flesh floating in Poseidon’s domain.  Remember that it may always be tempting, but it’s usually best sail on by, lest you suffer the crimes of time wasted at its nimble hand. 

I have almost never had the desire to write about a TV show before, let alone this one.  However (stick with me here), Glee could potentially be monumental for the future of Broadway.  When people of the theater ask me if it is important that they follow the show, I reluctantly say yes.  Think of it this way: many generations ago, the movie musical was in the forefront of popular entertainment.  Showtunes topped the top forty.  Until the storytelling techniques in entertainment became more realistic and the attraction the musicals became more compartmentalized.  By the time I became involved in the theater, the idea of liking a musical was gauche and theater news was rarely followed or maintained.  It's gotten slightly better in the past several years, but compare it to the phenomenon that was Spider-Man.  By the time I got home for Thanksgiving this year, it was the only musical that the average American could even tell you was on Broadway.  I've sat in on research groups about theatrical awareness where housewives from New Jersey said they wanted to get tickets for their family to a show that closed 7 years ago.  If the demographics for Broadway were going to skew any older, every performance would have to be a matinee. 

And then came Glee.  Now, all of the sudden, today’s generation thinks its sort of cool to be un-cool and that makes musicals a-ok!  This news delights the theatrical community because it confirms our future employment.  The only trick is going to be maintaining a connection with the audience based on the expectations that Glee has supplied on our behalf.  These will be the ticket-buyers of tomorrow and to not pay attention would be doing the community a disservice.  

Also, this shit happens to be the guiltiest pleasure known to man. 

This season was a rocky one.  Typical boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets boy, boy gets girl, boy loses boy, etc.  It offered a little too much Gwyneth Paltrow and Sue Sylvester, which, in both cases, a little goes a long way. But that’s not to say I don’t get suckered in every single time.  This week’s season finale was no exception. 

The Good: 

This episode had me right off the bat with the panoramic views of Times Square while “Rhapsody in Blue” twinkled in the background.  I am glad that this footage exists because now I have proper documentation of the formation of billboards during the end of the 2010-2011 Broadway season.  Whenever I see a movie that takes place in New York, I can date it within a month of when it was shot based on the marquees, so this could prove useful down the line.  

We were treated to the best Sardi’s scene caught on film since The Muppets Take Manhattan.  Patti LuPone does a charming cameo with a lovely throwaway joke as she exits.  It’s been so long since I’ve Patti do television that I had almost forgotten she knew the meaning of "underplay". 

One word: Charice.  If you don’t know who this girl is, watch this video:  (skip to :57)

Granted, she doesn’t do so well when they let her talk.  But when they let her sing, it’s always a home run.  This is the best Filipina teenage vocalist the world has seen since Lea Salonga hit the scene in 1989.  We're talking goosebump vocals here.  

There was a lovely little scene with Kurt and Rachel where they were having breakfast at Tiffany’s and “Moon River” swooned in the background.  Then, the duo breaks into the Gershwin Theater (my disbelief was so suspended that it almost snapped- in reality, Nederlander security would have brought them to their knees) where they got to stand on the stage of Wicked to sing one of its duets.  I suppressed my thought that this was Lea Michele’s attempt to (yet again) use this as a platform to audition for the movie adaptation of Wicked.  I let the emotion of the moment take over, which it did.  Like in every three episodes of the show, the characters express their sincere joy for performing and it become so truthful of everything I lived in high school that I can’t help but lose myself in blind emotion that I instantly regret. 

Also, Quinn got a haircut. 

The Bad:

Not even one minute into the episode and  I was frustrated.  The glee club jumped through hurdles all season long.  They finally succeed and they make it to New York City.  So do you know what they reveal?  They don’t have any material to sing.  I don’t mean to say that they hadn't yet chosen their material.  No, in this ridiculous case, it’s not even written yet and they only have two days to dream it up.  And then write it.  And then learn it.  And then orchestrate it.  And then choreograph it.  And then tech it.  Oh, I’m sorry- that's what would happen in reality, not in Glee.  The audience for this show must always remember above all that Glee is a magical land where the writers will try to feed you total malarkey about the process of theatrical production.

There were a few original songs this week which were totally non-descript.  I even took notes on this shit and I couldn’t tell you a thing.  The song I vaguely remember is the one the group performed in the competition.  You know, the song that sounded like Ke$ha by way of Kidz Bop.

During a montage, reality was out the window yet again as the club traveled from the Intercontinental Hotel Times Square to Duffy Square, Lincoln Center, Washington Square Park, back to Lincoln Center, 56^th and 5^th, Central Park, back to Washington Square, and the TKTS Booth before they ultimately finished in Lincoln Center.  I checked this one out on google maps; that’s a total of 16.4 miles.  This all took place in 2 minutes which were supposed to represent a single afternoon.  This is the stuff that makes me pull my hair out one strand at a time.  Then, at the end of the number, Artie’s wheelchair was perched dangerously above the perimeter of the fountain at Lincoln Center.  Did the the group him up there?  That couldn't be safe. And just how is he going to get down? 

And then we get to the plot.  This season, we have been given every single relationship combination we thought possible, some of them 2 or 3 times.  But just when you thought they had exhausted their options, get Mercedes and Trouty Lips.  What the hell is that all about?!  In terms of story, the most interesting thing that could have happened at the end of this season would have been for Mr. Shue to have taken that much-debated job on Broadway.  But because this is Glee and every time the plot takes one step forward, it has to take two giant leaps back, Shue loves the kids too much to go and he ultimately stays put.    As for the group not making it to nationals, allow me get into the headspace of the Glee "faculty".  What is going to happen now that New Directions didn’t make the cut?   Well, they're going to have to spend the summer making up a cute story about how, although the group was ranked #12 and the cut-off is #10, it's likely that teams #8 and #9 with both mysteriously be disqualified.  If you think that sounds totally bizarre, keep in mind what show we're talking about here.  

Anyway, enjoy the summer totally free of new episodes while you secretly set your DVR to record the reruns.  Until next season's big Glee-miere, we'll just have to imagine the new ways they dream of to frustrate their loyal audience.