I’d just sat down to dinner with a friend of mine when I heard that Michael Jackson was dead. My heart was already heavy, as a close co-worker’s ex-husband had died after a terrible terminal illness. He’d been in an out of the hospital for months and left behind two daughters, ages 12 and 17.
Earlier that evening, I was in a quickie writing class at a local Barnes & Noble. Most of the time had been spent trying not to laugh at some guy in the crowd who kept saying trite stuff in a voice that reminded me of Mike Tyson. That and learning that a fatal flaw is essential to character development.
And if anyone could be the poster boy for a really disturbing fatal flaw, something so bizarre you can’t quite pinpoint it, it would be The King of Pop.
Don’t make me type, “You’ve been naughty, now go to my room.”
Okay. So I just did anyway.
I like going to other people’s dwellings and poking around. If the dwelling is in NYC, it’s even more interesting, because you can get ideas for how to artistically (or not) cram furniture into a decaying apartment building you can barely afford.
It’s now been over a year since I moved into my place, and I still haven’t posted pictures of it. Why? Because there was an unfortunate leak, which left an unfortunate stain on the wall. My super, who is also unfortunate, screwed up the paint job, and I have to do his job for him someday when I have the time, some help, and a prescription for anti-anxiety meds.
Even at 2:15, there’s a long line at Subway. I order my six-inch turkey, bacon, and cheese on roasted garlic bread before I can see the human conveyor belt that stacks, smears, and slides everything.
I get to the veggie area, and there’s no sandwich. People before and behind me are getting their sandwiches serviced, and I’m standing in line looking at the pickles.
My friend Jeremy refuses to evolve past the social networking dinosaur Friendster. I think it’s a little weird to be of typing age and not have a Facebook profile and a network that includes at least six people you’ll never actually talk to again. How else do you stalk people? Or put yourself out there for others to stalk?
Jeremy just responds that he’s past all of it, that he was a social networking O.G. (original gangsta), and can thus, rest on his Internet laurels.
They say you can find everything in NYC, but that’s not true. You know what you can’t find? The same scent of Caress body wash that your family in Theylivethurr, Texas uses. The one you fall in love with when you visit and then never get to experience again.
You call out its name in the middle of the night. Eventually, you forget if it smelled of water lilies or jasmine. But oh, how it moisturized!
Without a doubt, English bulldogs are my favorite canines. Little dogs tend to irritate me, as do dogs with boundless energy. This is pretty much the same reason I once chose to teach middle and high school students over those cute elementary school ones. I prefer droopy spirits, laziness, and body odor over “I heard a noise! What’s that noise?! Did you hear the noise?! Let’s explore the noise! NOISE!”
My friend Elizabeth’s two Pomeranians challenge me to the core. I visited her in Connecticut last weekend and got to play with Bogie and Fergie before I left. And my God, those dogs are cute.
My friend Jeremy teaches me something new each time I see him. We were hanging out earlier this year, and he mentioned that white dogs are more likely to get cancer than black dogs. I don’t remember why. Maybe I’m getting it wrong, but he said something like that.
Another time, he said Cher was not actually a blow-up doll, which I later confirmed on Wikipedia.
We had dinner Saturday night, and he dropped a bombshell: Not everyone’s pee smells funny after they eat asparagus.
I stopped by a Bank of America ATM center in Chelsea a few weeks ago and was delighted to see an inky bramble of graffiti above the little table with deposit slips, envelopes, and the obligatory crappy pen on a metal leash.
After withdrawing some money from my account, I paused to admire what a few average vandals had decided to share.
