I'll Keep You Posted

It was so damned cold.

First the heater didn't work and I didn't notice and I sat for hours trying to focus on grading papers in the freezing cold of my basement apartment before V came home and said, "The heater doesn't work." The pilot light was out. I lit it the next day. First time. Felt like a man (not for the first time).

Then there was water all over the bathroom floor coming from the laundry room on the other side of the wall where the furnaces and the water heaters are, too. The next day there were ice sickles hanging from the pipes and the washing machine was full of water that was cold but not frozen and there was nothing to be done. By me. The washing machine guy couldn't fix it until the ice thawed.

Then the landlord's mother, Margie, brought a space heater that I was to keep on low in the laundry room until the ice was gone so I told my upstairs neighbor that if he smelled smoke coming from the stairs while I was gone it was smoke coming from the stairs and that he should call the fire department.

Then we woke up to a bubble in the bedroom ceiling that was getting bigger and coming from the bathroom-side wall and the landlord in New York was worried that maybe whatever had caused the washing machine problem had caused the ceiling bubble, too, so he sent a plumber over. Two, actually. But not for two more days because the landlord in New York did not "sense" that this was an urgent problem.

The plumbers tore open the bubble in the ceiling and decided that the upstairs neighbor's toilet was leaking because they could see the base of the toilet and there was water all over it but the upstairs neighbor was at work so they couldn't do anything until he showed up to open his place which was the next day. So I moved the couch up against the little Christmas tree and dismantled the bed frame and moved our mattresses into the living room. I feared the mold.

Then the plumbers came back and got into the upstairs neighbor's place and fixed the toilet and convinced the landlord in New York that, due to the fact that the dripping in my bedroom had stopped, the toilet in the upstairs neighbor's place was the cause of the dripping and not the laundry room problem. He was skeptical but they were right.

The upstairs neighbor informed me that he was ready to do his laundry again.

Then the water damage people came and examined the water damage and told us they'd have to rip out the ceiling and the bedroom wall and the bathroom wall and maybe some of the bathroom ceiling and some of the upstairs neighbor's floors and walls and dry it all off and dehumidify it and sand off the mold and then put it all back together again and that this would take weeks. Weeks of living in the living room, which sound more appropriate than it seems.

Then the washing machine guy came back in the morning and almost fixed the washing machine but not all the way because he had forgotten to check whether or not the valves in the washing machine had been affected by the freezing and one of them had but he didn't have the part so he had to come back the next day.

Then another water damage person came from another company and waved his magic wand around and rubbed the walls and the ceiling and said pretty much the same thing that the first water damage people said but made it sound a little bit more fun and shaved about a week off of the time-frame so the landlord in New York decided to go with him even though he's scheduled a third water damage company to examine the problem on Monday. This, of course, will be a waist of time for the third company.

An insurance leach is coming on Monday, too.

The washing machine repair man came again, then, and fixed the valve in the washing machine but noticed when he turned the water back on that the water valve in the wall was also damaged and leaking most likely as the result of the original freezing problem that may or may not have caused the washing machine problem and that the landlord in New York had wrongly decided had caused the ceiling bubble.

This means that we will be calling the plumbers again.

On the bright side, the landlord in New York isn't too worried about the water damage being repaired right away because the general fear of mold was not so general even a few years ago and, in fact, he has friends in New York that eat stinky cheese--moldy cheese--and try to get him to try it so he does but it makes him gag but he's making an effort and so eating mold isn't a big deal so it's not dangerous and so we're set.

What was your finals week like?

An Encounter in the Chocolate Shop

C. Kay Cummings. This is where it happened. C. Kay Cummings. But the story starts in my bathroom, around noon, as we readied ourselves to face the day.

Vanessa had gone to the gym and then to work while I read and then took a shower. It’s fall break. I’ve spent the entire week not showering until the PM, reading comic books, and not playing with Sully, the cat, who seems to like me, but only because it’s been thus far convenient for him to do so. He may have fleas; however, they are discreet, keep mostly to him, and have therefore avoided notice except for some scabbing around Sul’s neck. I’ve asked him, repeatedly, why he doesn’t take care of this problem, to which he replies, every time, “Step off my nuts, Henriksen, you’re out of touch.” Although I’m trying, I cannot help but be offended by his cavalier disregard for civility.

Vanessa was putting on some makeup. In her “work clothes” she doesn’t even think about putting makeup on, but when she’s wearing what she wants to wear, she can’t not do it. It’s compulsive, and we’ve often been late as a result of it. I walked into the tiny bathroom and waited for her to notice my “skinny jeans.” The legs were so tight the seams of my underwear were clearly visible underneath the denim. Vanessa had been wanting to see me in them for weeks, but on account of their constrictive nature in certain regards, I had been reluctant to indulge her. Now, I was forced to make a move:

“Do you like my jeans?”

It was a little petty to direct her attention so boldly, but I was impatient. She laughed, but I could see what she was thinking, and a moment later she said it right out loud:

“I couldn’t even fit into those things.”

She could.

Of course she could, but this is how Vanessa works, and, in my experience, most other women as well: they’re never slim enough if they could conceivably be slimmer. The vast majority of them are wrong, perhaps, and it’s annoying either way, but there it is.

She was looking at the mirror again, applying mascara. I pushed my body up against hers, rested my head on her shoulder, and watched her.

“You want some?” she asked, gesturing with the wand.

“Sure,” I replied.

Never ask a David Bowie fan if he wants to try mascara, even in jest.

She told me to open my eyes and look at the ceiling and then slowly moved the wand toward me, waiting for me to tell her I was only kidding. I wasn’t. She began to apply it to my left eye lashes.

“I haven’t done this to someone else in years,” she said; “it’s weird.”

I looked at the mirror as she finished that eye. It was truly unsettling to behold such a strange change to my own regular features. The black lashes were weird and freakish, drawing attention and somehow darkening the left side of my face entirely. It was unnatural next to my red beard and blondish hair. My eyebrows are white. The mascara threatened to take over the entire scene.

“What about the right eye?”

“No,” she said. “I don’t think so. This is weird.”

So I guess that means I won.

***

With my glasses on it was perhaps less obvious. Perhaps.

We went to 9th and 9th so that she could return the bracelet I bought her for her birthday. I’m clueless about that sort of thing, but I try. I always try.

The one I had purchased was a bunch of beads—blues and greens and black—, haphazardly stacked, one on top of the other, and overflowing with spontaneity. She exchanged it for a pink thing that my grandmother would wear.

I told her this.

After, we drove over to C. Kay Cummings. C. Kay Cummings is a chocolate store. We live nearby and had talked about going several times. The storefront is very small and packed with all kinds of chocolates and sweets. Vanessa busied herself with finding chocolate bees for Barb, the Queen Bee of Boston, while I walked over to the large windows looking in on the factory portion which took up most of the building. One woman near the glass was busily adding tiny chocolate swirls with nothing but a gloved finger to the tops of little truffles of some kind as they came out from under a falling drape of molten chocolate. Each one received her personal attention.

“How tedious!” Vanessa said suddenly. She had been standing by my side, unbeknownst to me.

“Ready?”

“Almost,” she said, and we walked over to the counter. A girl had begun to package and weigh the few things we had picked—chocolate covered peanut butter cream, chocolate covered grapes, chocolate covered strawberries; the chocolate bees—when a man in a suit walked into the store and stood beside us in line.

At first I only glanced at him. He was slightly taller than average, shaped rather like a pear, and old. He was standing in such a way that all of his energy seemed to project forward and out; as he looked ahead, he took in the whole room; when he spoke, he spoke to the whole room.

It was him.

A few women had come in after us and before him, accompanied by a handful of young children. One of the women walked between the man and me, stopped, and extending her hand said, “Hello, President Monson, how are you?”

It was him.

“Oh, I’m fine, thank you. We just got my wife out of the hospital; she’s in the car. I thought we’d stop and get her something nice.”

Everyone mumbled congratulations and awkwardly decided how to best comport themselves. I decided against any action whatsoever and continued to lean against the counter. Vanessa continued to talk to the girl helping us behind the counter, periodically glancing at him and then at me as her eyebrows attempted to reach her hairline. One of the women asked President Monson for a picture with her children, to which he acquiesced. He glanced once or twice at every one in the room, pleasantly, confident.

As we were leaving, President Monson turned to one of the children. The boy didn’t notice at first; he was four or five and unaware of the significance—if any can be attributed to it—of the interaction.

“Blondie!” President Monson said; the boy was very fair. “Hey! Blondie!”

The boy slowly looked up at the older man.

“Look what I can do,” President Monson said, and his great ears began to quiver and wiggle of their own accord. “Can you do that?”

Intently, all the while staring at President Monson, the little boy raised and lowered his eyebrows several times and then, embarrassed, turned toward his mother.

“Well, said President Monson, “You’ve got your eyebrows moving.”

And we were outside, walking to the car. In the parking lot, there were one or two well-dressed men who I assume were body guards paying absolute attention to everything that occurred within the small store. We got into my car and I happened to see my reflection in the rearview mirror.

With my glasses on it was perhaps less obvious. Perhaps. But there was no getting around the fact that the Vicar of Christ—the Moses of our time to tens of millions of people around the world—had seen my mascaraed eye (not to mention my conspicuously tight jeans) in the chocolate shop.

There was a lesson in this.

I was sure of it.

SSB

Hey folks,

Check out "Thinking About Music: Andrew Bird Live" at http://www.severalsuchbuildings.com.

Because why not?

Regards,
Me

SSB

Hey folks,

I've got another post up at http://www.severalsuchbuildings.com/. It's called "Thinking About Cooking: Brownies."

It's because I love you.

Regards,
Me

SSB

Hey folks,

It's been a while, so I thought I'd let you know that my new post just went up on http://www.severalsuchbuildings.com/. Check it out. It's called "Pogo for Pyros."

Cheers,
Me

Insincere Confessions

This probably comes as a surprise to no one, but, as it turns out, I am a bad person.

This semester I'm teaching two different sections of my Intro. to Academic Writing course (something that I am feeling less and less well-qualified to do) back-to-back on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. I am coming to realize that this is ridiculously complicated. It is complicated because I am an idiot and I cannot recall what I've said or announced to which section at which time. Among other things.

On the first day of class, last Monday, in my second section, while I was taking role, I happened upon a very strange looking, very foreign name that I could not for the life of me even begin to fathom how to pronounce. I looked up, helplessly, and - to my eternal embarrassment - a lovely young woman, originally from China, intuited my dilemma and pronounced her name on my behalf. I asked her, twice, to repeat it, in a vain attempt to master it myself through audible exposure, only to be forced to drop my head in shame and admit that it was beyond my best efforts.

"You can call me 'Elle,'" she said patiently - the kind of patience that announces to the audience, I am being patient with this sad, mildly offensive man. Or maybe that was just her accent.

"Elle? As in E-L-L-E? Elle?"

"Yes."

"I will. I know it's a cop-out, but I'm going to do it. I'm going to call you 'Elle.'"

"It's OK."

"Thanks."

On Wednesday I arrived early to class and attempted to make small talk with the students who were already there. We talked about how exciting Tuesdays are (they aren't) and whether anyone had Big Plans for Thursday (no one did) as the rest of the students arrived, slowly, already broken by the imagined weight of a semester that had only just begun. All at once, as the class was now quite full, I stumbled upon an opportunity to impress upon them the fact that I care about who they are as individuals (which is not entirely bull-shit) and seized it:

"Elle, right?"

I had recognized her immediately and, due to the length of our exchange on Monday, I assume, recalled her "name."

The girl looked at me, shocked. I looked at her, confident. The rest of the class was going about their business, unloading bags and checking their phones, until she spoke:

"Um, it's 'Ella,' but that was a really close guess.... We haven't met before?"

She looked at me, enquiringly. I looked at her, confused. Confused as hell. The rest of the class was paying attention.

"'Ella'? Not 'Elle,' as in E-L-L-E?"

"No." She laughed - a sincere laugh, but betraying a hint of nervousness and perhaps irritation at not being let in on a joke.

But the joke was on me. I looked at my role, frantically searching for the indecipherable name, and realized in an instant that Elle was in my second section. This was my first.

I looked up again at Ella. She was probably of Chinese decent, at least. Maybe Korean. Or Japanese?

"I'm a good guesser, I guess. Weird! You ... uh.... You must just remind me of someone else." I laughed, uncomfortable, and began to shuffle papers. The class chuckled, good-naturedly. Or did they suspect?

"That is weird," said Ella, already forgetting my super-human ability to conjure a stranger's name from the ether as she unzipped her bag. She had a perfect American - Utahn, at that - accent.

And I bailed. I took role and added Ella to my list of not-yet-registered students and pretended as though nothing had ever happened.

As though I'm not a racist. Because I'm not.

Just a bad person.

Elle didn't even show up to my second section.