| down the drain sunday |
[Jul. 16th, 2006|07:07 pm] |
| [ | *part* of my current mood is: |
| |  contemplative | ] |
| [ | soundtrack of the moment is: |
| | inhead, Hair soundtrack, "Hair" | ] |
up 605 in dim light to find a roach sucking at my showerstall soapdish from a perch along its rim -- the sopadishes here are actually little chineserestaurant saucers that j's grandmother secreted in her purse as addedvalue during eatingout expeditions in the fifties through the seventies -- but with a translucent oval plasticprickle soapsaver embedded, j realized a good two decades ago they make fine soapdishes; and apparently even roaches are in accord --
what to do? what to do? still groggy and sleepbleary, i wait for it to sense me and get spooked -- nope, nope, cmoncmon: and i'm getting grumpily tired of standing here waiting generously on this undistinguished bug -- i pluck the entire soapdish up and wash the insect ploop right off in the warming shower stream -- thoughtless? i tell myself that quite possibly it will simply drag itself forth again from the steamy drainwash onto a porcelain, a china, beach; those buggers are as indestructible as horrorfilm monsters -- but meanwhile also feeling a twinge of guilt at my highhandedness -- it's done, though: i'm tired and maybe cross like the dawneyed -- and even glassesless i can spot the slim black lozenge circlingcirclingcircling, dreamily dancing contemporary choreography with a sizable hairwad along a somehow busbyberkleyesque ballroom floor of porcelain and white suds, my entire short shower -- and mulling, as so often it seems: was i mean? the porchbug and porchmoth i tried to help a few days back -- guilt? or is that silly? later in the morning i see the roach is still now, seemingly drowned after all, a well --
i kind of naughtily report to j that when, as usual before her shower, she lifted the drainclump to her innerfront tubcorner storagespot she had to have touched it -- she's not that thrilled :-) seems i'm messing with everyone today, but j is actually still alive :-) i shoulda been more considerate; after all, last weekend j donated me a set of three little pink veryintensely rosesmelling soaps in a lightpink-lightgreen harrod's box (3 x 100g) that she told me, upon bestowal, she had purchased as a vacation souvenir present or the like for a student employee at work, and then for some unclear reason had not given her (unclear, because if i ever ask her even an extremely innocuous question she will usually take her opportunity to point out that she might have questions x, y, and z that i avoid commenting on -- so i didn't want to know why the gift thing hadn't worked out quite badly enough to invite that foreseeable gambit...) -- anyhow, she knows i like european floweryscented soaps, not the usually fairly puritanical medicinalsmelling american soaps -- haven't been to europe in a year, don't have any eurosoap left at this point -- and yea, like, that damn roach was sucking on my eurorosesoap. the bastard. die.
630: out front of the house, i put last night's new nonrecycling garbagecan out at the curb, because two parallel cans from next door are already there, and have been since thursday night, unemptied on friday garbageday, and hence seemingly curbside now for the duration anyhow (i.e., tuesday's next scheduled pickup) -- and why do i bother? because on friday morning i had something i knew would be smelly in the kitchen if i stuck it in the inside garbage (maybe it was watermelon rind?) -- so on the way out friday morning i stuck it in a grocery bag and tossed it atop the gayguys' incan garbage -- and then j asked me to put a big heavy soggy smelly bag of catlitter in there too, from upstairs (see friday morning entry) -- slightly dicey, because some people do not care what is done with their garbage cans as long as their garbage disappears without any extra mess or fuss for themselves, but other shallwesay fussier people are extremely garbageproprietary and, so to speak, anal about it -- back on friday morning (ancient history now), i figured that during the day the garbage would come and no one would be the wiser -- and i still didn't even have a nonrecycling garbagecan at that point -- but then there was no pickup friday, bestlaid plans and all that shit --
so with a brandspanking new can, as well as something else to carry out this morning to avoid kitchenstink syndrome, after taking my can to the curb i open the lid of the relevant nabecan and fished out the fridaymorning cuckoodeposit -- hmm, my little deposit now has more presumably nabegarbage overlaid; i have to fish a tad -- wonder if they noticed the 'outside' intrusion or were annoyed, or guessed at the source --
anyhow, naturally just as i am putting the lid back on their can and then closing my own new one, mission accomplished, naturally naturally one of the gayguys is coming down the intersecting side street about to cross over the main road to where the garbage and i stand at the curb -- "what are you doing?" he asks, in a way that i can't fix firmly as just friendly curiosity or veiled annoyance, but definitely somewhat whiny -- so i explain quickly about the garbage guys taking our can and what i'd done friday morning and now saturday night we got a new can and so i'm trying to make sure i don't have anything of mine in their can -- (i don't necessary want some thing of mine in a gayguy's can, i think for a moment but then mentally slap myself and say "focus!") -- he's like, o that's annoying, no it's no problem, etc., very nice and almost apologetic -- aha, so he *was* a little annoyed :-) there can be no reconciliation of there has not first been a sundering --
on my way from there to get the paper, as he and his dog head back up the walk to the house, i reflect a bit on the phenomenon of boozhiehood: in a way, it lies at the heart of a lot of gayagenda political and cultural stuff these days: gay marriage, f.e. -- if you feel that you are 'different' and that some mainstream of people consider you outside or weird in some way, one understandable mental trope, and hence personal and class tendency, is to do things to show that you are just like them, sometimes almost hypercorrectively so: to do boozhiehood right or better than right, to outboozh the boozhies -- i recall that when the lesbian couple moved in, the tougher guyone would talk with me about how to put the garbage out properly and carmaintenance stuff -- and obviously i know the gayguys are fussy about their garbage being just so and not being messed with --
and i am considerate, mostly try to be: but i am simply long past worrying about fussy what's-appropriate selfimposed otherjudging boozhie rules -- bourgeois: in a sense i tried that (the boho rebel intellectual felt like such a cliche when i was in my twenties and thirties) -- but in the last five years i feel: boozhie, hmm, definitely tried that, married, no sexual complications, work hard, don't cause trouble, take care of practical stuff, etc.: it let me focus on accumulating information and ideas and skills, while foregoing complicated interpersonal interactions that i didn't want to expend time on and actually was shy and scared of -- but in the final analysis, for me it just didn't work, or work out -- still gotta write that wheremigoingnext lj entry, yes -- soon, soon... -- probly after classes end -- they're half over now: twopointfive weeks down (ten classes), ditto to go --
j up eightish -- after ninethirty, on dogwalk, j and i can't go to the place we've gone the last two sundays: they have the sidewalkfacing doors closed due to a/c on, it's gotten warmer this week (or, to get rid of us? technically we probably shouldn't have been doing that, but she said they'd told her she could) -- there is no 'us just inside, dog just outside' seating -- on we pass two more blocks or so to mickeyd's, where i desperately need to use the loo, and do -- swisheronline.com sticker on the top of the urinal, heavy red plastic swisher pad in the bottom of the urinal, with white lettering: 1-800-444-4138 -- same exact company that does the stop and shop bathrooms -- wonder if that's the company that wanted me to take digital photos of bathrooms?
anyway, after i'm out j leaves me with the dog and goes inside to try the iced coffee they have just rolled out and have been promoing: out she comes six or seven minutes later with two icedcoffee drinks that would have cost three or four dollars each at sb, but here the medium is 1.99 and tax, the large 2.29: so both drinks together were barely over what one sb would be --
and designwise they are trying to be starbucky ('hey, whatever works') -- the largest logo and largest lettering are blackblack sandybeige reddishbrown, i.e., coffee colors rather than the crayony simpsonsfaces yellow of the mcd arches and logo -- and the large logo says "PREMIUM ROAST COFFEE" -- the name mcdonalds appears nowhere in the design elements: just a small sort of disclaimersize brownyellow (not cartoonyellow) arch down low on the glass, above the company's current "i'm lovin' it" tagline in something like 4 or 6 point white sansserif type, plus a white silhouette of a clown perhaps a third of an inch tall dashing past a wiremesh garbage can and discarding a used cup -- and all three of these elements have a circle-r registered trademark stamp next to them, in plain white -- the name mcdonalds only appears up the side in such small type it might be taken for a black seam in the plastic, but it's actually a "how are we doing" query with an 800 number and the company name and website; to read it you have to turn the glass on its side, which makes it hard to do without having finished with the glass first --
j decides it's really not bad, not quite as good as sb flavorwise, a bit more of a bitter overnote, slightly less smoothandsweet -- but after all lowercal, and half the price -- ok, i can go with that -- but that means nearly a mile dogwalk each way to get up here and back, as opposed to maybe the fourtenths of a mile to sb -- on the way home i finish it, dump the ice down a stormdrain, and dispose of the class as i exit the parkinglot i usually walk through on weekday morning dogwalks --
home, read three sunday papers, typing, email --
and there's lastnight's sushireport to write; but j, who i figure should be aroundish for consultation on some points when i fill it out, is more or less gone all day (homeprep and dogwalk 8-10, breakfast during 10am hour, then upstairs to nap till noon; leaves in the car (why? i asked and she wouldn't say; see earlier comment in this entry about j not answering innocuous questions) -- then, after she arrives home near six, i remember that i'd forgotten about her telling me days ago re her childhood friend with now 90yo parents and their big lunch date to catch up on old times for the first time in many years -- not back till 7, no cellcall to tell me how long things were running (they went and hung out in a greek diner that j and I sometimes went to in the late 90s) -- then she is home and into laundry -- will have to do the report early in the morning, though it should have been done today --
and when she gets home just at seven, a mess: she immediately wants me to find her glasses, which she says she has lost and cannot find -- whether or not i betray it, i always get annoyed about that kind of thing, b/c for all these years i have been telling her how easy it is to get into the habit of leaving things where you know you will find them, thinking about where you would tend to look or where you will be sure to spot them when you need them -- but she always feels this is nerdy and drudgy and not worth the effort, especially when you can always just ask someone else who has no idea where something was left (when you after all do) to look for you instead -- to get it over with, I dash down to look, and it is quite a little tussle: on the car seats, in the various dashboard spots and slots, under the car seats, leaning and squeezing and twisting -- and after a good five minutes kneeling on a cement sidewalk or beached on carseats, there they are: they have slid down between the deathseat and the passengerside door, must have been placed on the seat and then slid sideways during a turn --
meanwhile, a message i'd set up to send right at 7 that evening ends up being some minutes late, because between 650 and 655 is when she'd showed late from oblivion with her unanticipated immediate emergency problem -- but life goes on somehow --
for several days now j has been asking me where the scots book is that i gave her when i saw it while at the immigrant/tenement museum with a.; she's been reading it for weeks -- it always bugs me that she creates so many problems for herself by carelessness; i tell her to leave things where she knows she will see them, but she just can't get it together to do that, and then will ask me where something is that she herself has left somewhere and doesn't know where, and i don't spend that much time where she spends time (her job, her commute, her bedroom upstairs) -- ta-da! she finds it at 730ish when she's finally starting the weekend laundry: she left it in the laundry basket mixed in with the clean folded clothes last sunday night, so she could carry everything up together -- but then since she'd never put away the clothes, she'd never seen the book all week --
a bit later, as she comes back up from a laundry run to the basement, she tells me she's run into the guy i ran into near the garbage so early this morning, and he wants to send me a hi -- ok, hmm, what's up with that?
and now j offers a haircut -- which seems like not much, but isn't not much -- a bit of haircut history:
i got barber haircuts the first three or four years i was married, and then in grad school j offered to take over, which i was ok with b/c i didn't have to deal with public situations i wasn't in control of, and could save money and travel, and meanwhile she was starting to go to $60-70 haircutters in manhattan ("the same person that cuts mario cuomo's hair!"), which was a lot scratch for a cut in the early eighties -- by saving on me the household hair budget remained in the 'not totally unreasonable' area -- and there was a certain intimacy to it, too: i had to sit nude on a wooden chair in the kitchen (all to make vacuum cleanup easier), and then afterwards she'd shave my neck while standing on the bathmat as i stood in the shower with my back to her -- and telling me i needed a haircut also allowed her to have good taste and be controlling, so anyhow it kind of worked all around for that long long phase of the relationship (controlling through rules to be followed on one side, and on the other side pleasing so as to avoid being disliked while avoiding having to do any uncomfortable stuff) --
fast forward to late 2005 -- i wrote just recently about how the money arrangements shifted in spring 2004 due to rnl, and how the driving thing changed on my initiative in 2002-03 when we started to split openly: well, when i started being gone overnights saturdaysunday for more weeks in a row than could be explained by socializing with friends and the like in late 05, she silently stopped doing haircuts, even though she had all through the rnl period of 2004 and 5 -- in dec. through may she'd pass comments every week or two like 'it's really long in the back, you should go to a barber' and, less subtly i'd say, 'why don't you have your gf do it for you' -- and i'd not respond or shrug or say 'whatever' or assert that it still looked basically ok (i can be stubborn and figured i'd see what would happen if i waited her out) -- but her idea was 'if you are gonna have a gf, even though i said that's fine with me, i'm gonna exact a price every time, and this is the price this time: no more haircuts' --
it's just like she refused to spend any money on the car (insurance, repairs, etc.) after i started driving with it late almost every night in 2004, and refused to talk about getting something newer when the car was passing from fifteen toward twenty years old and needing 300, 600, 900 dollar repairs more than once a year -- why does she want to have a better car when i might end up seeing other people with it?
anyways, after she finishes my neckshave i am left alone to take a shower and clean all the cut hair off me, all around, swish swish swish -- and i gaze again at my hair swirling around, and some of it round and round and down the drain -- |
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