I'm Flying

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 15, Verse 7

"Only the good can give good advice.

Rebels can't."

---

CHIPPED WISDOM:

I just broke up with my therapist via e-mail.  Isn't that trashy?

Well, I suppose it's more avoidant than trashy.  I told him that I was discontinuing our sessions over e-mail instead of during our regularly-scheduled session on Tuesday because I'm an "errant coward and a sappy pussy", and I don't know why I said that, because he knows both of those things.  I think they're my Axis II.

Even though he keeps trying to make me listen to sandal-wearing shamans masturbating on their podcasts, that's not the reason why I'm not going to therapy anymore.  It's dollars and cents.  If it were free, like it was in college, I could probably go talk about myself once a week until my dying day, because that's the kind of humanitarian I am, but our finances are taking such a concussive hit from childcare that it is necessary to make some sacrifices.  

It's funny to think of giving up therapy as a sacrifice.  It's such a New York, Woody Allen, pedantic, East Side, Jewish, pencil-prick thing to say, but it's true.  The plain fact of the matter is that ceasing therapy will save our family $1,200 a year-- a damn sight more than shitcanning my iPhone was saving us.  That, by the way, amounted to a $240 a year savings, and, last weekend, I caved in and re-activated the iPhone.  In spite of our draining bank account, I haven't looked back on that one.  iT's niCe to have an iPhone.

Maybe I'll go back when the babies start "school" in the fall and we're actually able to save a little money.  But maybe I won't.  I don't know.  I'm feeling pretty good of late.  The Viibryd seems to be doing its thing, making pirouettes in my brain or whatever the fuck it's doing to my seratonin, I have more energy around the babies, I'm more sprightly and ridiculous.  Sure, I still think about death pretty much all the time, but I don't know that there's anything or anyone that's going to necessarily be able to help me out with that.  I think that's just kind of my thing, unfortunately.

I was thinking a lot about death this weekend, especially.  That's what happens when you go to see a high school production of "Peter Pan" on a Friday night.  One of my private acting students was in the show and I went to go support her, and also, more selfishly, to go back to Neverland.  It's a place (where dreams are born and time is never yea yea yea) where I never, ever get tired of going-- either as an audience member or as a mustache-twirling, bewigged, Captain of misery, murder and loot ("eager to kill any who says that his hook isn't cute).

"Peter Pan", for me, is the most emotionally complicated show with which I've ever been involved.  For most people, it's about never growing old and the magic of fairy dust.  For me, it's about nostalgia, love, pain, and death.  

I was cast as Captain Hook when I was in seventh grade and, not to be immodest, I rocked out in a pair of Girl Scout boots that belonged to the costume lady's daughter, a Michael Jackson wig and a handlebar mustache drawn on with eyebrow pencil.  It was the role and the show that made me and theatre shack up together in a big way.  The applause during my curtain call rained down so hard it almost made my little 12-year-old heart freeze up-- it was narcotic.  But I got brought down hard a few months after the show closed when one of the Indians, who was a close friend of mine, went to go have her wisdom teeth out.  She went into cardiac arrest during the procedure and she died.  Shellshocked, I went to her funeral with the director of "Peter Pan".  I stood in the receiving line absolutely terrified-- I had no idea what I would do or say when I got up to her parents.  When I got up to her mother, she looked at me and said, "Oh, Captain Hook-- she loved you so," and she hugged me so hard I thought we would both break.

Seventeen years went by before I got cast in "Peter Pan" again, as Captain Hook again, directed by the same woman who directed me in the show in middle school.  I called my mother and told her I was going to be playing Captain Hook once more and she said, "Oh that's wonderful, honey-- are you going to play him gay again?"  

Not one to miss a set-up, I replied, "Of course."

I suppose even someone who's not obsessed with death can't help but think even a little bit about mortality when you're playing a role as an adult that you once played as a child.  You can't help but think about how much has changed, and how much has stayed the same.  I was delivering lines in exactly the same cadence as I did as a thirteen-year-old, which doesn't really say much for how I've grown as an actor.  At least my voice changed.  It was wonderful, though, I'll admit-- to be surrounded by love and wonderfully talented children and a show that I hold so very close to my heart.  Standing off-stage every night, listening to the overture, waiting for the clock to play "Tender Shepherd", and the curtain rising, wondering whether the audience would applaud for the set, waiting for Wendy and John to dance-- "playing at Mother and Father".  That's my favorite part of the show.  

On Friday night I was back in Neverland again, watching that high school production-- trying not to compare myself to the Captain Hook on the stage (he played it very dark-- sorry).  I was really taken with the vocal abilities of the girl who played Peter Pan-- an astonishingly powerful performer-- capable, competent, confident, commanding-- everything Pan needs to be.  

It wasn't until intermission when I learned that, in January, she became an orphan under horrifying circumstances-- in an instant-- a terrible, shocking, disgusting instant-- a life changed forever.  And suddenly, all the lines she spoke and the lyrics she sang in Act I were searing through my brain.  Lines about mothers and fathers and Lost Boys and Act II was an absolute blur.  I just wasn't there.  I tried to be there, but I was far, far away.  And "Peter Pan" just got a little more emotionally complicated for one more aging Captain Hook.   

I probably would have spent a good part of Tuesday talking about this to my therapist, but, instead, I'm talking to you.  And I'm okay with that, because I love you and talking to you is free and I know I have to work on not judging myself and being mindful and keeping perspective and noticing my emotions and my tendencies and making little changes and accepting and acknowledging and just being. 

I know.  

And I also know that, some day, I have to be in "Peter Pan" again.  Maybe I'll be forty, or fifty, or older, and that'll only add another layer on top of what is already there for me.  But that's alright.  Because it's not all youth, joy, and freedom, and it's not all Christmas and candy, Michael.  Sometimes you have to take your medicine, just like Father.       

Sweet Sixteen

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 18, Verse 15

"The intelligent man is always open to new ideas.

In fact, he looks for them."

---

CHIPPED WISDOM:

If you listen to anything a sixteen-year-old says, that makes you stupider than a sixteen-year-old.  Though I'm often lauding his brain-power, my father must not have been too bright seventeen years ago, because, when I told him what kind of car I should own once I got my driver's license, he not only listened, he allowed me to go ahead and buy it.  

A 1990 Ford Crown Victoria, late of the Delaware State Police, I reasoned, was the perfect car for a horny, impulsive, emotionally unstable teenager with knobby knees and an addled brain.  In arguing my case, I emphasized that police package vehicles had beefier brakes than their civilian counterparts and were therefore safer.  I judiciously omitted the fact that the car was hiding under its runway-sized hood an obscene 5.8 liter V-8 engine that produced a testicle-trembling 285hp.  Note: police-package engines and undeveloped teenage brains should not be combined.  

It was very early on in my motoring life when I realized my innate knack for killing cars.  That Crown Vic, having survived years of abuse at the hands of the Delaware State Police (Dover barracks) died after just four months of having my name on the title.  My name on an automobile title, I soon came to understand, may well have been written in poison.

In the years that came rolling along, I went looking for the new experience.  I owned a Volvo, then a Taurus, then I wanted the old experience again, so I got another Crown Vic.  Then a Chevy Impala.  Then a New Beetle.  Then I rolled into anonymity in a Ford Focus.  Switched over to my wife's PT Cruiser.  Got another Volvo.  Went all Japanese and shacked up with a CR-V for a bit.  Now I'm in a Volvo again.  Hey, at least it's fewer than one per year, right?  

"It's a good thing you're not about women like you are about cars," my wife has sometimes remarked.  

Or glasses.  

Or watches. 

Or breakfast.

Ideas and ideals, though, are pretty constant with me.  It takes me many, many years to change my mind.  I'm not sure why, really.  I'm definitely rigid, but I wouldn't call myself totally impervious to reason or rational argument.  Unless, of course, I think you're an asshole, in which case pretty much anything you say I'm going to turn up my nose at.  But if I respect you, I'll listen, if I can bring myself to attend to what you're saying and not get lost thinking about sex or the next time I'm going to ingest bacon.  I find it so hard lately to pay attention to anything-- it's not you, dear; it's me.  

My views have softened on some topics and issues, but mostly I'm still whacking away at the same windmills and running myself ragged trying like Christ to prove to myself I'm not a bad man, and violently shutting my eyes and ears to anyone who tries to convince me otherwise.  And that's exhausting, in case you haven't tried it.  I'm still trying to prove I'm socially active.  Still trying to prove I'm a writer.  Still trying to be a good boy.  And I don't know especially why-- nobody seems especially turned on by my efforts, and I guess that's okay.  I'm not trying to make anybody's pants sticky, but I don't exactly know what it is that I am trying to do.  

There are days when I want to leap back into the velour bench seat of a 1990 Crown Vic, turn the wheel with my pinkie finger, mash down the accelerator and be treated to a symphony by Dante from under the hood.  But these days I know I'd be fixated on watching the gas gauge needle go down as the speedometer needle moved toward the right.  It had the coolest horizontal speedometer.  God, I loved looking at it.  

        

Now gas is $3.61 and I'm feeling the pinch and I'm terrified of everything.  I mean, that car only had ONE airbag.  Can you believe we were so CRAZY?  

We were so crazy, my loves.  Gas was $1.50.  We didn't know.  We didn't care.  We were so young.  We didn't have children.  We had pimples and anxiety and schoolbags and sneakers and I really wore sneakers back then-- really, I did.  But not shorts.  It wasn't that bad.  

It was horrible.

I like to think that I've smartened up since those days.  In group sometimes I read a "This I Believe" essay written by a woman who'd had one published during the original Edward R. Murrow days, and then, fifty years later, wrote another essay called "Have I Learned Anything Since I Was Sixteen", the age she was when she wrote her first TIB essay.  

As for me?  In many ways I think that, no, I haven't.  The only thing that I'm learning, though, is to be okay with that.  

Psst-- Come Here. No, Closer.

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 12, Verse 5

"A good man's mind is filled with honest thoughts;

an evil man's mind is crammed with lies."

---

CHIPPED WISDOM:

It's funny how ideas evolve over time.  I can remember back when being "good friends" with someone meant that, when you had dinner at their house on Friday night and his father went around the table and kissed everyone on the top of the head, that he kissed you, too.  Later, being good friends with someone meant that you got invited to the sleepover where Cinemax softcore would be showing on the extravagantly-sized basement TV.  For years, we didn't have a TV in our basement.  We had shuffleboard.  Because of this, and other factors, I knew I had to work an angle or two in order that I might secure a friend or two.

So I decided, pretty early on, to be interesting.

I would have opinions that were outside of the norm, I would spout invective and slander, I would make shocking remarks and comments of questionable taste.  People, I figured, would be interested by someone who said interesting things, especially things he had no business saying.  You know, as a nine-year-old.  

When I was very young, I learned that I could make my barber double over in paroxysms of laughter by imitating Pee Wee Herman, Moe Howard, and the incompetent Yugoslavian shampoo girl that he had recently fired.  She barely spoke English, and she would mutter what I guess she thought was casual conversation at customers in her incomprehensible, garbled clamor as she quite literally climbed on top of them and all over them while she struggled to hold the sink nozzle and control the pace of the shampoo bottle's output.  I thought perhaps my impressions, or international and neighborhood celebrities, could win me over friends.  

Maybe I was right-- I don't know.

Something I'm only recently realizing is that what friendship is, by and large, if it's anything, is the act of getting close enough to someone such that they let their guard down enough to share with you what they really think.  You know what I mean: what they really think.  

Really.

Those quiet 1am conversations where truths are revealed due to casual, un-careful openness.  To be close enough to not be afraid, or what they might say or think or tell.  To be able to look someone in the eyes over a plate of questionable food at a suspect diner and lay your heart bare as if it were an item on the greasy, laminated menu.  To not hear qualified thoughts or apologies in advance, or caveats or political correctness.  

Goddamned political correctness.

Sure, you can never actually know someone, but I think it is possible, with a friend, a real, true friend, to know at least what he or she thinks about some things.  Their real and true opinions, and to see them, in some moment or other, as other people cannot: stripped of pretense and image-crafting.  The Unstagram.  And I don't know how many people you get a shot at having that with over the course of a relatively appropriate lifespan-- four?  One?  I suppose, if you're terrifyingly unlucky, you never know what that's like.  I'm definitely fortunate to be able to say that I've had it with one person, and lost it.  I may have it with one or two others, sometimes I'm not sure.  And I guess the other question that makes me slightly uncomfortable is: does anybody have it with me?  

I mean, okay, if you look at the 97 posts on this blog, it looks like I'm a pretty straight up person, I kind of put it all out there in a way that looks and smells very much like I don't give a shit who thinks what about it.  But I don't know if that's true.  I don't know if that's who I am.  What if this is all just a bunch of nonsense I spew and it feel like the real thing at the moment but then I go to sleep and wake up and it's all different, that everything I really am is locked away so deep inside even I don't know it's there.  

We're so careful.  So afraid.  We think that, if someone tries too hard to get to know us that we'll break.  And maybe that's true.  But I love knowing the truth-- that moment when someone leans across the table and whispers, "Psst-- come here.  No, closer," because they're going to tell me something real, and I think in this plastic, photo-shopped, status update time we're all drooling and desperate for something unlocked, something unguarded, something unedited, something breathtakingly real.

Ready, or not.

You Fuck Up Games

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 12, Verse 17

"A good man is known by his truthfulness;

a false man by his deceit and lies."

---

CHIPPED WISDOM:

It's fun to pretend, isn't it?

It is, you know.  The world of make believe, of Peter Pan-ery, of faerie dust and cardboard boats escapes before we even know it's gone and, once we do notice its absence, we don't care.  Because we've discovered tits.  Of course, until we get our hands on a pair, there's a rather prolonged and fortuitous return of make believe to help get us through, though we don't call it "make believe".  We call it "the internet".

Today, I pretended like I was going to buy a car.  I had taken the day off work, because my dog needed to be put under anesthesia and I didn't know when she'd be waking up and requiring transport back to our domicile for rest, repose, repast and recuperation, so I had some time to kill.  I went to the bookstore, hit the thrift shop (and scored a dynamite pair of powder-blue Ralph Lauren trousers for $5.00) had lunch with my mother (she still thinks Velveeta is cheese) and then I headed off to the local Toyota dealership and pretended like I was going to buy a car.  

I told them that my Volvo wagon was killing me at the gas pump (this is not part of the make believe) and that I was looking to purchase a bite-sized Prius C because of its outstanding fuel economy (50mpg combined city/highway).  My car averages 16mpg combined, which is pretty abysmal and would make Al Gore want to curb me.  I'm a pretty convincing actor (read: liar), so I gave them my driver's license, insurance, and owner card and they put me behind the wheel of a 2014 Prius C and a 2014 regular Prius.  I loved the Prius C.  It was nimble, agile, frugal and surprisingly comfortable.  Yes, hard plastics surrounded me like Federal troops during Pickett's Charge, but it's 2014 and you're going to be swimming in plastic unless you're piloting a Rolls Royce.  The question is: are the plastics going to be hard or soft to the touch.  

It's all fucking plastic.  Who cares? 

The regular Prius feels heavy and sad.  And it looks like a spaceship inside.  If I want to be at the controls of a spaceship, I'd have cheated off David Kim's science tests in 7th grade with a little more aplomb and consistency.  

I filled out all their forms.  I sat at the table and waited while the salesman had hushed, urgent-sounding conversations with the manager.  I watched their body language.  I did my own research on my phone.  They undervalued my trade.  I got angry.  Nobody insults the car I'm pretending I'm trying to get rid of.  

"We made phone calls to Volvo dealerships-- people aren't jumping up and down to give us $6,000 for your car."

"Jason," I said, leaning in.  Sometimes it's nice when you use people's first names.  Other times, it's condescending.  You decide.  "My car is 13 years old.  No Volvo dealership is going to want a 13 year old car on its lot.  Take a look around this place.  Do you have any 13 year old cars around here, Jason?"

Jason frowned.  

"I'm not a dummy, Jason.  You're going to ship my car off to some auction house in East Moofongong, PA to be bid on by some farmer's wife.  So let's get real, okay?"

Let's get real.  Pretty funny words from someone who's just there trying to kill time until his Basset Hound wakes up at the vet's office.  But, hey-- Jason didn't know that.  

"Let me see what I can do," he said, scooting his chair back.

Ten minutes later, they came back with a better value on my trade, but not much better.  They gave me lease numbers and purchase numbers.  They kept asking for "what number are you looking for" as far as a monthly payment.  I refused to give a figure.  They didn't like that.  There was more negotiating.  Then, abruptly, I announced that "this is a lot to think about" and told them that I needed to talk to my wife, "as our finances are joined-- legally and spiritually."

They didn't laugh.

"Maybe I'll be back tonight-- who knows?"

The funny thing is, if my wife had somehow had a stroke this afternoon before I talked to her about my day's adventures and she said, "go for it", I would, even though I bought the Volvo in October (that's October of 2013, in case you were wondering) because, let's face it, I'm crazy, and I'm trying, apparently, to be the guy who owns the most cars (consecutively) before he dies.  I think I'm up to fifteen or so.  I have no idea really-- I lost count at around 11.  It's disgusting.  Hopefully there's a lot more to come, because, as fun as it is to pretend, there's nothing more fun than the thrill of the chase, watching the guys in the shirt-and-tie combos sweat a little, and shaking hands on a deal.  

Everything I learned, I learned from my father.  Going to car dealerships with him as a boy as the greatest thrill there was.  He was an absolute bloodthirsty animal in an auto showroom.

"DREW!" he once screamed, prowling in between shiny cars and metal desks until he found the one with the name-plate of a salesman who had wronged him in some way, "WHERE THE FUCK IS THIS DREW?!"

"I am DONE with this BULLSHIT!" he screamed at one Saab dealer.

"How can you sit there and lie to me?  What kind of PERSON are you?"

"Are you FUCKING KIDDING ME?!!!" he frothed in the face of a Buick dealer who had the audacity to not offer him the appropriate value on his Oldsmobile Cutlass trade-in.  That salesman chased him down into the parking lot and begged him to come back.

"I DO NOT HAVE TIME FOR THIS!  I DO NOT HAVE TIME FOR YOU FUCK-UP GAMES!"

Of course, I don't roll exactly how he does.  I'm casual.  I'm lazy.  My specialty is appearing disinterested and disaffected.  If they know your heart isn't in it, they know you'll walk like it's no big thing.  I remember when I purchased my Volvo S40, two-or-so cars ago, I walked around the parking lot appearing almost stoned.  A cluster of salesmen were outside chain smoking and one of them pointed at me with a huge grin on his face and said, "Now there's a guy who looks like he's leaving with a new car today-- he could give two shits about what happens here."

And you know what?  Whether I'm pretending or not: he's right.

Let's Go Meditate on Brachback Mountain

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 12, Verse 22

"God loves those who keep their promises,

and hates those who don't."

---

CHIPPED WISDOM:

I'm supposed to be meditating right now, but this is far more fun.

AIIIEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  

WHOOPIEDOOP-DOOPATY!  

Look at me, way up high, suddenly, here am I, I'm blogging!!!

I mean, seriously.  Meditating?  What's that going to get me?  Inner peace?  Christ.  What do I need that for?  And chances are, I wouldn't get it from meditating-- that's what I eat corned beef for.

I feel bad, though, because I promised my therapist two weeks ago (well, two weeks ago tomorrow) that I would listen to a Tara Brach podcast and meditate.  Actually-- no, that's not even true.  I promised him that I would listen to a lecture by Tara Brach: not even one of her guided visualization meditation exercise.  

"Because," I now remember my therapist saying, "I know you won't do that."  I guess he figured he would try to get out of me what he could.  Sometimes, I don't know what I'm striving for: to be the best patient, or the worst.  Maybe it's both.  I can't quite accept that it might be neither.

I made the mistake of reading Tara Brach's Wiki.  It all went downhill from there.  

Apparently, Tara Brach is an "American psychologist and is well informed about Buddhist meditation. She set up an Insight Meditation Community in Washington. It is a spiritual community that teaches and practices Vipassana meditation. This group's Wednesday night meeting in Bethesda, Maryland, which is taught by Dr. Brach, regularly attracts hundreds of people per week."

Did you read that last part?

"regularly attracts hundreds of people per week."

I know, that's supposed to engender confidence, because hundreds of people who learn at her sandal-enshrouded feet every Wednesday must be onto something.  In my head, though, it says "cult leader."

In sandals.

Want more?

"Brach's talks are downloaded free nearly 200,000 times each month by people in more than 150 countries."

UH-OH!

I'm sure, if David Koresh were around today, his podcasts would be pretty popular, too.  You know, with a certain se(c)t.

I'm sorry, I know I'm being a penis-pimple about all of this, and I also know that a huge part of my reticence has to do with how popular this woman is and my ardent belief that anything lots of people get gooey in the pants over must automatically be full of shit, but it is a philosophy that is so terribly hard to break free from.  I mean, remember how many people liked "Titanic"?

(Estimates have it at between 200-250 million people saw it in theatres, and 60-100 million saw it on DVD.  Sorry, Sandals; you've got some catching up to do.)

I think there is, too, a little bit of the oppositional streak in me at work, too.  I don't like it when people tell me what to do, even if they couch it as a suggestion-- especially if they believe that suggestion is going to be "good for me".  But, my tiny hamster mind thinks, if I've lived with me for thirty-three years and I don't know what's good for me, how the fuck does some handsome guy with a knit bison on his shirt who isn't even half Jewish going to know what's good for me?  Because he has Psy.D. after his name?  Believe me, I have MAEd after my name, but I know sure as shit I shouldn't be let anywhere near a classroom.  Even if hundreds of people wanted to flock to it every Wednesday.

I don't know.  Lying down on somebody's floor kicking and screaming, "I DON'T WANNA!" till your face turns as red as a hemorrhoid just isn't acceptable at my age, even if you've just paid the guy $50 and he's got the sound machine on, but that's what I want to do during my sessions.  I don't wanna take meds, I don't wanna do meditation, I don't wanna "find my inner sanctuary of peace and wisdom in the midst of difficulty" because that's what DIFFICULTY IS.  It's supposed to feel difficult.  Difficulty isn't supposed to feel peaceful and you're not supposed to find wisdom in getting fucked over at work or sprinkling your pants with pee-pee dribble right before a meeting or when some cocksmoke is tailgating you and your family is in the car and everybody has a gun and the lights are all red and the waiter fucks it up and the house is too cold and the money is tight and the girls are all hot and the idiots just want to talk about "Titanic" and how Leo has matured and really come into his own and Vipassana meditation and mindfulness and finding the core and finding center and finding Neverland and Johnny Depp's another one and God give me a fucking break already.

Please.

I don't wanna.

I know I'm going to disappoint my therapist tomorrow when I tell him I haven't done my homework.  Or maybe he won't care one way or the other.  In school, I did the homework I was excited about, and the other homework I either did on the bus on the way to school, and it looked like it was done by my great-grandfather who had advanced stage Parkinson's-- or I just didn't do it at all.  No one ever called my parents, or, if they did, my parents never told me about it.  My teachers were all pretty chill.  They must have meditated like motherfuckers.       

Old Balthasar

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 14, Verse 35

"A king rejoices in servants who know what they are doing;

he is angry with those who cause trouble."

CHIPPED WISDOM:

My wife and I stopped watching "Downton Abbey" after the conclusion of Season 3.  Not because they killed off Matthew Crawley-- we didn't give a shit about that.  We stopped watching it for the same reason we stopped watching "E.R." all those years ago: because helicopters kept falling on that one-armed bastard.  We stopped watching "Law & Order" because, really, how many times can you watch Olivia get raped or Stabler get shot in the shoulder.  In a courtroom.  It's like, I don't know-- there comes a point where it just gets to be too much.  And we had reached that point with "Downton," where Maggie Smith's cutting quips became as predictable and formulaic as the fare on a hospital dinner tray, where characters and situations repeated themselves until they became absurd and, frankly, unwatchable.  Like Muppets getting raped. 

Nobody wants to watch that.

What did stick with me, though, about "Downton Abbey" was a feeling that I very much did and do want a butler.  He'd be leathery-- far more leathery than Carson-- and he'd be impossibly ancient.  He'd be stooped over and bent up like a pretzel, his gnarled and gnurled fingers crippled and his stroke-stricken jaw would be slack.  My butler would drool ever so slightly-- never enough to cause anybody alarm, but just enough that I would give him a barely perceptible look and lift my left eyebrow just a jot and that would be his cue to reach into the threadbare pocket of his black-and-gray wool striped trousers, pull out his yellowed handkerchief and dab his lower lip.  Or shuffle aimlessly over to the living room window curtain and rub his face up against it.

His name would be "Old Balthasar."  Well, what his name is actually isn't important-- but that's what we'd call him.  When you have a butler, you get to name them.  They're rather like guinea pigs in that respect.  And you can make them sleep on the floor covered in pine shavings.  As long as you pay them I'm pretty sure that's legal.  

Old Balthasar would be forgetful and occasionally incontinent-- only of urine-- and he would drop things of moderate value.  His eyebrows would resemble two snow-kissed forests and he would have a war wound, a slight head injury that would cause him to sporadically slip into some mysterious Asian language and fall down the stairs.  At ritzy dinner parties, Old Balthasar would sometimes sit down at the table, preferably on the lap of one of the guests, and butter his lips with a gravy spoon.  He would eat only roots, persimmons, and Lucky Charms.  He would sleep in Dr. Dentons and never button the butt-flap.  Old Balthasar would polish the limousine with a diaper and corn syrup.  He was sure he owned a dog-- it was... somewhere.  His sweater drawer.  Never mind, sir.....

From my description of Old B, I guess you can pretty readily figure out that I don't want a butler for the reasons people traditionally want butlers; you know, to help.  I want Old Balthasar around because nobody else does.  Because people look clear past all the good and value contained therein, and because butlering is meaningful work that has gone from this corner of the world.  Did you know that Asia is the continent with the fastest growing demand for butlers?  And Buicks?  This should surprise no one.  

My mother-in-law saves people-- cast off wretches and borderlines, kids who cut themselves and cut school, kids who've given birth and have been molested and are on drugs.  Kids who are deaf and foreign and homosexual-- the undesirables of the world.  And the reasons for which she performs this Mother Theresa-like service are slightly less-than-saintly, and, yes, I begrudge her for it.  But I suppose there's a little bit of savior syndrome in me, too.  I can't bare to see a quality gentleman like Old Balthasar be put out to pasture just because he sometimes wears his dentures as a hat and makes crepes out of hard taco shells.  Because, in his day, he was sharp as a tack and no helicopter or courtroom shooter could take him out.  So, if he wants to spend his autumn years wiping my ass and pre-chewing my food for me: I'm all over it.  

Balthasar?  Let's roll.

Not Pretending

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 19, Verse 13

"A nagging wife annoys like constant dripping."

---

CHIPPED WISDOM:

Eleven years ago, I took a short girl who squeaked a lot out for Kosher vegetarian Chinese food.  Today, she's downstairs on the couch aimlessly trolling Pinterest with her mouth slightly agape, waiting for me to finish this post so we can watch the Olympics together.  At this moment, she's also, once again, digesting Kosher vegetarian Chinese food.  Yes, I re-created (sort of) our first un-chaperoned date today.

Yes, this is your cue to melt into a dithering pile of estrogen-engopulated goop.  Gosh.  Wymym.

This post will be short, because, like I said, the Olympics are on, and watching a bunch of athletigods soar through the air wearing Spandex onesies is way more interesting to me than writing a blog post.  My wife understands that I "need" to blog, and she supports it.  She also is supporting me in my "need" to express myself onstage by flitting and mincing around like some sort of avian abstraction, and is putting her money where her mouth is by giving me her blessing to audition for yet another Gilbert & Sullivan operetta on Wednesday.  

(God, I hope I get it.  How many Aspergers do they need?)

I love that my wife loves the Olympics.  I love that we don't have to have ethical discussions about how Russia oppresses homosexuals and debate about how we're feeding into something negative by tuning in our lowly television set to watch.  I'm glad I can plow through snowbanks on poorly-plowed Philadelphia streets as I aggressively blow past SEPTA buses and that I can yell "COCKSUCKER!" without my wife having a fit.  She does make hearty use of the Oh-Shit handle, but there is very little chastising, no back-seat driving, no censoring.  I'm free to scream what I need to, be who I have to, pass who I've got to.  

It's all very refreshing.  

Part of the time we spent today was passed bee-bopping around South Street and Bainbridge, ducking into cute little antique and thrift shops.  There were overpriced skinny ties and saddle shoes for grown ups (?), blazers with elbow-patches and knurled buttons, glasses your Zayda wore because he had to, not because he wanted to, boots upon boots upon boots after boots, "kooky" acrylic sweaters and those bowls made from old, melted records.  

While we noodled and doodled our way around cluttered shelves and knick-knackery, I did what all heterosexual men, happily married or not, do: I checked out women.  You know, while looking for that perfect six-button vest.  And what I saw was what I saw, and what I saw was what it was.  I saw girls who were ugly and girls who were plain, girls who were nice looking, a couple who were hot, and not really much more than that.  But the thing of it is-- what I saw were girls trying to pretend they were something, or someone, they were not.  Comically oversized glasses, piercings that were pierced, affectations and carefully chosen accessories designed, it seemed to me, at least, to loudly call attention to themselves.  Look at me, drinking out of this mason jar, standing around looking affected by nuclear winter.  Look at me.   

And, you know what?  As I mentioned earlier, I looked.  Because that's what we do-- that's what I do.  But I was never more content, more filled and more fortunate than when I looked across a table at a thrift shop into the eyes of my wife, as she staunched a rampant nosebleed with a pack of vintage Hallmark store $2.40 napkins (they didn't charge us).  She's not pretending.  She is what she is.  And I am so, so grateful for that.

Okay.  It's time to go watch the Olympics with my buddy.  I hope it's the bobsled.  I love that shit.