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mallorys_cameraWhere did this summer go?
I'm fifty-six years old. I'm due to die on October 14, 2036. One of these days, I better start paying attention.
###
Anyway, it's been a bad week. With Robin in the mix, everything becomes undoable. This is not Robin's fault – obviously he should be my Numbah One priority, he's my kid, he's my boo and I ache for him having this crazy, frazzled pauper for a mother. "Oh trust me, Mom, you're not half as bad as ____'s mom," he tells me as though this is some kind of compensation. "____'s mom is always high! Or maybe she's drunk. How can you tell the difference?"
"Well, you can smell it," I say.
"Kind of like burning leaves?"
"She's high," I say.
He giggles. "I ran into her at Troia's and she's like all, 'Oh, Robin. Would you like to talk to ____? Here! Let's call him!' So then she gets on the phone and calls him up and gives me the phone. And he's like, 'Dude! What's this all about?' and I'm like, 'I don't know, man. It's your mom.'"
"She was probably just trying to relate to you," I say.
"But that's so whack!"
After our big blowout fight at the beginning of the week, Robin was very sweet and conciliatory. He spent his entire allowance on treats for me – chunks of English toffee, apricots, Pepsi, gum; he spread them out on the desk in my office, I saw him peering out the window as I drove home from the beach in the dark with the dogs. Not your average I-will-buy-Mommy's-love scenario, no; I think this may have been the first genuinely generous impulse of his young life: he's always been a rather pragmatic child has Robin, pragmatic and therefore selfish.
I made a show of appreciating it but honestly I was too out of it to feel much.
It had been a bad day, starting with the scream fest with Robin (before my first cup of coffee even) and ending with Xena getting lost at the beach.
My necklace broke at the beach. The gold chain with the New York subway Y token. I managed to snag the gold chain but the subway token – talismanic significance, my one link to the true NYC homeland through all diasporas – was lost in the sand. I climbed the bluffs looking for it, Milo followed. But when I got back down to the shoreline, Xena had vanished. Very rough surf and the sun had set, the dark was rapidly crowning.
So I was well and truly panicked.
Ran up the beach. If she'd gotten off the beach, wandered off on to the bike path, she'd survive – someone would find her, take her home or call Animal Control. She'd be okay.
But if she was on the beach…
What would a tiny Jack Russell terrier do in pitch black with a rough rising tide?
Well drown, most likely.
I jogged about a mile. The dying sun's rays caught on something every now and then, turning it (from a distance) into the simulacrum of a small white creature. But it was always just a rock when I caught up to it. Then about a quarter of a mile up I saw the only other two people on the beach crouching down for ninety seconds or so. Some enchanting shell formation? Or maybe Xena?
They were walking my way and in another five minutes they'd caught up to me.
"Are you looking for the dog?" the man asked. "Xena?"
"You read her collar?"
"She's moving pretty fast," the man said.
"I told you we should have picked her up and brought her with us," said the woman.
I started running even faster. I'm not in the best of shape for sprinting. I was calling her name but the surf was so loud I could barely hear my own voice. But there on the rocks just before the big hotel I finally saw her.
Put both dogs on their leashes and jogged two miles back to the car.
I was exhausted. And cold.
And here my child had prepared a big treat for me consisting of sugary, high caloric treats which he plainly expected me to consume while he watched.
I'm sure I've felt more horrible in my life. Childbirth – pretty dreadful. Cocaine crashes: not fun. That time I was coasting down Strawberry Canyon Road on my bike going 40 miles per hour without a helmet and I hit a rock – not pleasant.
I felt pretty fucking horrible though.
And the next day when I woke up I'd come down with the mother of all colds.
###
I don't know how it works for other people but for me it works like this: I get sick when my psychological defenses are down.
I mean, think about it. It does make sense. You're always surrounded by germs and pretexts for the most horrible kinds of accidents. It's when your resistance is down that you become vulnerable to them.
We had a date for dinner with Max that night in Santa Cruz. He wanted me to meet Molly with whom he has become very serious in the past few weeks. I couldn't cancel.
Plus I'd finally saved up the cash to get the red Veedub fixed – the only car I've ever loved – and I was happy to have an excuse to actually drive it.
But I felt horrible the whole evening. Was aware that I had become something of a buffoonish character to Max, he was showing me off to Molly as his eccentric mother and I was happy to play along. I was sure after we said goodbye and they drove back up to Palo Alto and the ivied Stanford halls, he would tell her how I'd been to Woodstock and then to Altamont and how I'd dropped more acid than Timothy Leary. And possibly even he'd misascribe Tim Ware's classic quote to me: I wish I'd bought real estate first and then dropped acid.
It really, really hurt to breath.
Over the next few days I stumbled through what needed to get done. I sold a very expensive mask to a doctor in South Carolina, there was a lot of auxiliary scut work around that. I edited my Secret Shopper reports. I tried to oversee Robin. I played wack-a-mole with the bills. I sold hot sauce. Lots of hot sauce – oddly enough we've been doing better during the week from the rich Europeans at the new hotel (which must be being promoted aggressively on some European version of Travelocity) than we do on weekends when the tourists are all sad sacks from the Central Valley whose houses are being foreclosed and who are paying three-quarters of their salaries on gas so they can keep commuting to work.
I stopped sleeping. My chest hurt so much that at night when I lay down I couldn't breath.
Finally Friday night I got this idea that I could drink myself into a stupor and that stupor would double as sleep. So I went out around ten o'clock in search of a six-pack.
I don't like alcohol all that much so I hardly ever drink. It fuzzes my mind and makes me have to pee – what's to like?
So searching for beer at ten o'clock at night was a very big deal.
Monterey has a nightlife! Who knew? Alvarado Street was crowded with all these beautiful twenty-somethings coming in and out of the converted adobe that used to be Viva's and is now something else except the music and the menu haven't changed. And I walked invisible amongst these gorgeous twenty-somethings and I wanted to weep – I so wanted to be one of them! I was one of them in my own mind, I mean – that's always been the problem with me as an adult, hasn't it? Developmentally I'm still around twenty-three, I never bought into this pair-off, get a job, get a mortgage, reproduce shit although I've done all those things. But really all I've ever wanted to do is float the night streets with the other vampires. And take notes.
I wanted to grab each and every one of those beautiful twenty-somethings by the shoulders. Look at me! I wanted to hiss. You'll grow old, you'll grow tired, twenty – no! even ten years from now, it will be someone else's turn to be young.
The cycle never stops.
But suddenly I was terribly, terribly tired of the cycle. I wanted out in the worst possible way.
Still do…
But the beer did help me sleep.
I'm fifty-six years old. I'm due to die on October 14, 2036. One of these days, I better start paying attention.
Anyway, it's been a bad week. With Robin in the mix, everything becomes undoable. This is not Robin's fault – obviously he should be my Numbah One priority, he's my kid, he's my boo and I ache for him having this crazy, frazzled pauper for a mother. "Oh trust me, Mom, you're not half as bad as ____'s mom," he tells me as though this is some kind of compensation. "____'s mom is always high! Or maybe she's drunk. How can you tell the difference?"
"Well, you can smell it," I say.
"Kind of like burning leaves?"
"She's high," I say.
He giggles. "I ran into her at Troia's and she's like all, 'Oh, Robin. Would you like to talk to ____? Here! Let's call him!' So then she gets on the phone and calls him up and gives me the phone. And he's like, 'Dude! What's this all about?' and I'm like, 'I don't know, man. It's your mom.'"
"She was probably just trying to relate to you," I say.
"But that's so whack!"
After our big blowout fight at the beginning of the week, Robin was very sweet and conciliatory. He spent his entire allowance on treats for me – chunks of English toffee, apricots, Pepsi, gum; he spread them out on the desk in my office, I saw him peering out the window as I drove home from the beach in the dark with the dogs. Not your average I-will-buy-Mommy's-love scenario, no; I think this may have been the first genuinely generous impulse of his young life: he's always been a rather pragmatic child has Robin, pragmatic and therefore selfish.
I made a show of appreciating it but honestly I was too out of it to feel much.
It had been a bad day, starting with the scream fest with Robin (before my first cup of coffee even) and ending with Xena getting lost at the beach.
My necklace broke at the beach. The gold chain with the New York subway Y token. I managed to snag the gold chain but the subway token – talismanic significance, my one link to the true NYC homeland through all diasporas – was lost in the sand. I climbed the bluffs looking for it, Milo followed. But when I got back down to the shoreline, Xena had vanished. Very rough surf and the sun had set, the dark was rapidly crowning.
So I was well and truly panicked.
Ran up the beach. If she'd gotten off the beach, wandered off on to the bike path, she'd survive – someone would find her, take her home or call Animal Control. She'd be okay.
But if she was on the beach…
What would a tiny Jack Russell terrier do in pitch black with a rough rising tide?
Well drown, most likely.
I jogged about a mile. The dying sun's rays caught on something every now and then, turning it (from a distance) into the simulacrum of a small white creature. But it was always just a rock when I caught up to it. Then about a quarter of a mile up I saw the only other two people on the beach crouching down for ninety seconds or so. Some enchanting shell formation? Or maybe Xena?
They were walking my way and in another five minutes they'd caught up to me.
"Are you looking for the dog?" the man asked. "Xena?"
"You read her collar?"
"She's moving pretty fast," the man said.
"I told you we should have picked her up and brought her with us," said the woman.
I started running even faster. I'm not in the best of shape for sprinting. I was calling her name but the surf was so loud I could barely hear my own voice. But there on the rocks just before the big hotel I finally saw her.
Put both dogs on their leashes and jogged two miles back to the car.
I was exhausted. And cold.
And here my child had prepared a big treat for me consisting of sugary, high caloric treats which he plainly expected me to consume while he watched.
I'm sure I've felt more horrible in my life. Childbirth – pretty dreadful. Cocaine crashes: not fun. That time I was coasting down Strawberry Canyon Road on my bike going 40 miles per hour without a helmet and I hit a rock – not pleasant.
I felt pretty fucking horrible though.
And the next day when I woke up I'd come down with the mother of all colds.
I don't know how it works for other people but for me it works like this: I get sick when my psychological defenses are down.
I mean, think about it. It does make sense. You're always surrounded by germs and pretexts for the most horrible kinds of accidents. It's when your resistance is down that you become vulnerable to them.
We had a date for dinner with Max that night in Santa Cruz. He wanted me to meet Molly with whom he has become very serious in the past few weeks. I couldn't cancel.
Plus I'd finally saved up the cash to get the red Veedub fixed – the only car I've ever loved – and I was happy to have an excuse to actually drive it.
But I felt horrible the whole evening. Was aware that I had become something of a buffoonish character to Max, he was showing me off to Molly as his eccentric mother and I was happy to play along. I was sure after we said goodbye and they drove back up to Palo Alto and the ivied Stanford halls, he would tell her how I'd been to Woodstock and then to Altamont and how I'd dropped more acid than Timothy Leary. And possibly even he'd misascribe Tim Ware's classic quote to me: I wish I'd bought real estate first and then dropped acid.
It really, really hurt to breath.
Over the next few days I stumbled through what needed to get done. I sold a very expensive mask to a doctor in South Carolina, there was a lot of auxiliary scut work around that. I edited my Secret Shopper reports. I tried to oversee Robin. I played wack-a-mole with the bills. I sold hot sauce. Lots of hot sauce – oddly enough we've been doing better during the week from the rich Europeans at the new hotel (which must be being promoted aggressively on some European version of Travelocity) than we do on weekends when the tourists are all sad sacks from the Central Valley whose houses are being foreclosed and who are paying three-quarters of their salaries on gas so they can keep commuting to work.
I stopped sleeping. My chest hurt so much that at night when I lay down I couldn't breath.
Finally Friday night I got this idea that I could drink myself into a stupor and that stupor would double as sleep. So I went out around ten o'clock in search of a six-pack.
I don't like alcohol all that much so I hardly ever drink. It fuzzes my mind and makes me have to pee – what's to like?
So searching for beer at ten o'clock at night was a very big deal.
Monterey has a nightlife! Who knew? Alvarado Street was crowded with all these beautiful twenty-somethings coming in and out of the converted adobe that used to be Viva's and is now something else except the music and the menu haven't changed. And I walked invisible amongst these gorgeous twenty-somethings and I wanted to weep – I so wanted to be one of them! I was one of them in my own mind, I mean – that's always been the problem with me as an adult, hasn't it? Developmentally I'm still around twenty-three, I never bought into this pair-off, get a job, get a mortgage, reproduce shit although I've done all those things. But really all I've ever wanted to do is float the night streets with the other vampires. And take notes.
I wanted to grab each and every one of those beautiful twenty-somethings by the shoulders. Look at me! I wanted to hiss. You'll grow old, you'll grow tired, twenty – no! even ten years from now, it will be someone else's turn to be young.
The cycle never stops.
But suddenly I was terribly, terribly tired of the cycle. I wanted out in the worst possible way.
Still do…
But the beer did help me sleep.
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Date: 2008-08-31 09:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-31 10:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-01 02:46 pm (UTC)