Ladies* & Germs, i have received the following communiqué via spam radio from an underground bunker somewhere in Chestnut Hill, Pa. Furthermore, i have no idea what spam radio is, only an impression that -in this digital era of ours, with its blogs, IM chats, and telepathic mutants- it is pitifully anachronistic and obsolete, and therefore a source of derisive humor, much like the telegram or Geneva Conventions. Happy procrastinating, worker bees!
*-purely theoretical
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My Blog
I want to write for the blogspot even though I have none of the qualifications. First of all I don’t drink. And when I say “I don’t drink” I don’t mean literally I don’t drink. What I mean is drinking is not the frame in which I draw the hazy picture of my life. Drinking would not be a topic, a mood, a coloration, a sport, a life-style, not the way I do it. Drinking, for me, is, “I think I’ll have a drink.” A drink would be a glass of wine, only red. On a crazy night, I might have two or maybe three. Second, I don’t have an encyclopedia of popular culture references ready and waiting like an over-stocked fish pond at the edge of my brain. For example, that example. “ready and waiting like an…” and what do I come up with? An ‘overstocked fish pond?’ Weak, by blogspot standards. Not only will the fish in my little under-stocked fish pond be metaphors and cliché’s of the dingiest variety, probably involving only monosyllabic words and images from nature, whereas the overstocked fish pond of the blogger is filled with neon fish, glowing green and psychedelic orange to say nothing of electrified stripes and probably wearing satellite receivers on their wavering fishy antennae (do fish have antennae(and at least I am educated enough to know the plural of antenna)).
I’ll tell you what though. I love the idea of a parentheses game. I hate competition, but that’s a game I can really love.
My next point of disqualification is in matters sexual. Don’t panic! I’m nothing if not a liar, but in this case I’ll tell the awful truth. I am a middle aged female, at worst a horror, at best invisible, and not about to go anywhere near this obsession of the twenty-something male. Let me just say one thing, and I quote one of your best and brightest.
“Consider the slick reasoning behind ‘this is my first drink since three drinks ago.’”
My version: this is my first year of marriage since twenty eight years ago.
And all that that implies.
Ask your mothers.
Look to your fathers.
But really, don’t bother.
One more disqualifier for me. This whole misanthropy attitude. I don’t have it. I should have it I guess from standing more 24 hour segments on the earth-crust than any of you, but then i haven’t had as many years of television so I’m guessing the mathematics balances itself out.
I have to tell you: I find much more to like than to hate in my fellow humans.
My (what is the word for an inarguable truth? (and yes I do have an Ivy League education as well and double yes the most useless expenditure of time and money ever except I must say, when it does come up at the occasional dinner party which because I have been married so long to a TRUE misanthrope, no kidding you guys don’t know the meaning of the fucking word anyway when it does come up it serves as a short buttery slide through several moments before the person I’m talking to realizes I have nothing else to say but because this dinner party thing very rarely happens, ( in other words I go silently to restaurants because God forbid I should be married to a lawyer all these years and cook dinner every night) because it rarely happens I do not get to often avail myself of my Ivy league degree.))) And maybe I got the number of parentheses wrong, but if I did I know that Joe will be sure to tell me.
I just hope he tells me in an e mail, not to my face.
Let me just say: it’s a cold beautiful afternoon here. Winter is giving us its last best shot, but defeat is in the air. Retreat is inevitable, as always. Poor old winter! Always the loser. Everyone always glad to see him leave, unhappy when he shows back up at the door. On this cold clear afternoon I went out for lunch with two mothers from my teenage daughter’s class. One of them told me, ‘I saw your daughter at a concert Martha, with a boy, his arm was around her and her head was resting on his shoulder and they were talking and I have to tell you, she looked very happy, very relaxed, very comfortable.’
My lunch companions and I, we all sighed.
Remember those days? We said.
None of us admitted that we didn’t.
We left the statement hanging there like cigarette smoke hovering gently on the air (which of course none of us do, smoke cigarettes that is, more disqualifiers, but my friends are not even trying to qualify.)
I came home.
My darling son is living here lately, great for me, probably less so for him. We spend all day every day together, poor sap. We pretend to be creative beings, each in front of our own window, our own screen. He listens to the Shirelles, I listen to Howard Stern. Howard had a rumor today that Bruce Willis got with Lindsay Lohan at a party last night.
You might wonder about the relevance of this, but believe me, it’s huge. HUGE!
My sister-in-law and niece were at that very party. You see jesse was a waitress at café central back in the day, when bruce willis was just bruno, the charismatic bartender. So he always invites her to his premieres and every once in a while she goes. She went to this one. I was hearing all about it on IM late last night, back and forth with Jesse, about the after-party at the Peninsula Hotel for this new Bruce Willis movie, the name escapes me but I know it isn’t relevant.
Something with Blast and Die.
Might have involved Hostage.
She was telling me, “so nell and I were at the bruce willis premier last night. Nell hung with Lindsay lohan. Can you believe? And some young actor, first or last name tucker, I don’t know which, nell is in love with him. Bruce told Lindsay to look out for nell, and she was so nice. All night long, we didn’t get home til two thirty. I hung with bruce and Harvey Weinstein, you know that Miramax guy?”
Wow, writes me. Was tom there?
Oh god, writes she. Disaster.
What happened?
Tom didn’t go with us, he was having dinner with the Lauders—
Who?
‘lauders—‘ you know as in Estee—
your life is ridiculous
I know
Lol—so anyway, dinner with the lauders took precedence over partying with the willises?
Well, yeah—tom said there was literally a billion dollars worth of art in their apartment
Whatever—what about the food
Didn’t ask
So anyway, he didn’t come to the Hollywood bash
Well he wanted to, kept calling and saying ‘can you get me in?’ and we said ‘no can’t get you in’
Uh oh
Exactly
Double uh oh
Double exactly, so today we had the biggest fight I’m not kidding Martha what am I gonna do I can’t live with him he’s screaming at me all day ‘you can’t even help me spell a word, you’re just too important for that?’
Oh man
What am I gonna do? I can’t afford to move, I’d have to move to fucking fort green…
Is that where sammy just moved?
Yes—
Hmm—I see your point
Nell would be miserable
Although it’s not as far as Canada
No, true
But in Canada you have a life
Yes, true
But—
But?
Bruce willis, your old pal, I bet he would lend you money think about the amount he’s got
Unthinkable amount, he loses more at poker in a night than I earn in five years
So…
So…?
You should ask him for help—I know his type,
Lol—you know his type
No I’m serious those guys love helping their old friends who are down on their luck they love to pretend to still be connected to the strugglers and stragglers of the world
Yeah—well maybe—I mean he did give me his e mail, and he did tell Harvey Weinstein he’d been in love with me, years ago…but still, he was drinking. It’s never good when an alcoholic drinks—
I’m telling you—
Well—if he sends me the pictures from last night—
Even if he doesn’t you should write him—I’ll write him for you, I know exactly what to say—
lolol
No really! I do! I know how to handle those Hollywood types
LOLOLOLOL!
You’re writing to him and that’s that
Fine. I’ll write to him.
Which is why when I heard howard gossiping that Bruce Willis might have hooked up with Lindsay Lohan at his party the other night I was filled with dread. I do not want Bruce Willis to be distracted by some ridiculous scandal, having sex with an 18 year old, not this week, not when I need him to write a check for $100,000 to help an old friend and waitress climb out of the well and into the upper air.
Next week I’m happy for bruce if he has sex with 16 year old red headed triplets, if that’s what he wants to do.
But this week he needs a clear head, a clean conscience, a sense of self-righteousness, and a checkbook.
Afternoon is waning.
Joe’s old friend calls and says he is coming by.
You wanna say hi ma? Says joe. He’s coming over to smoke some weed. He’s bringing his dog
I’ll stay up here, says me.
But joe gets a phone call so I have to get him. I go down, open the back door, feel the cold clear air. The sun has come out. Snow is sinking like cold cream into the earth. Three boys sitting on the yellow bench, two dogs chasing a neon orange Frisbee with the imprint of a dog bone.
One of those big glass contraptions on the metal table in front of the bench filled with glowing organic green.
Hugs and hellos all around.
I give joe his message.
Come back upstairs to my window and my screen.
And what I was going to say about this misanthropic tendency was to teach you The French Theory.
That was the inarguable truth which the word for I still can’t come up with.
I could ask Joe.
But then I’d have to ask Joe.
Picture is worth a thousand words, which isn’t true, but in this case better than asking Joe.
In my high school there were three sisters with the last name French.
Debbie French, Naomi French, Sarah French.
They were three ugly gnomes I am so sorry to say.
They were short, and fat, with mustaches and beady black eyes.
When they shaved their legs bristles grew immediately back, like when Jason sowed the dragon’s teeth (I think, but again only alternative since I can’t figure out Google is asking Joe).
Everyone made fun of them.
But I had a theory.
I believed that when each French sister looked at herself in the mirror she saw something to love.
Debbie would look and think, “I am the thinnest and have the whitest teeth.”
Naomi knew she had the clearest skin.
Sarah had the least mustache and was aware her long hair was dark and prettiest.
That is the French Theory.
In even the gnomiest, ugliest, nastiest human being, there is always something to love.
But in the end, I’ll tell you what boy bloggers.
The thing that concerns me most about you is not your rampant alcoholism. Not your relentless desire for strange sexual encounters in any shape or form. Not even your unflagging hatred of your fellow man.
What concerns me most of all, what makes me fear most for you, is your sentence structure.
Think about it.
