Tuesday, October 26, 2010

To know enough's enough is enough to know...

I'm getting to the point now where I'm realizing that I don't have an "off" switch, especially when it comes to disgusting humor and practical jokes. My victims have the "off" switch for sure, but I seem to miss the cues sometimes...or most of the time. Even Anna has a stern face reserved just for me. And she's not afraid to use it.

"Mom, why do you let us say 'crap' and 'hell' and 'friggin' and stuff?" Lucian says between bites of cereal, most of which end up in his lap, half-chewed and soggy.

"I don't know, Luca. 'Cause they're fun to say and they're not swears really and you can get them out of your system." Mind you, I barely have three sips of coffee in my body.

This is the precise moment at which Anna, her hair wild from sleep, gives me a steady, cool glare and speaks, slowly, as if she is the final word on the matter.

"I think it's because you don't even know you're saying them," she says. "Dad doesn't let us say crap or the other words. He says they're inappropriate."

That's when I pull the writer card. Otherwise I'd pull the go-f*ck-yourself-you-f*cking prude card.

"Well, Anna, as a writer I need to use all the words in the English language because each word expresses a very important idea." I was proud of my thesis for it being so early in the morning.

"I friggin' hate school," Lucian sighed, brushing the cereal blobs off of his shirt.

Who can argue with that?

Even the supposed grown-ups can only take so much. Yesterday I was eating a little cup of Italian ice watching the Godfather trilogy with the Sisco kid. Of course, what normal human being can resist putting the cup on the flesh of another, especially the stomach or the neck, just for a little laugh and to watch them jump about 50 feet into the air. After about 3 attacks Sisco turned to me, his face flushed and unblinking.

"I'm gonna kick you in the d*ck if you do that again."

"No one's ever said that to me before."

"No one's ever tortured me this much before."

Duly noted. I will refrain and/or wear an athletic cup for the next joke.

Friday, October 22, 2010

The mind is a terrible thing to waste

Lucian has not blinked in 45 minutes. Upon literally jumping out of the shower (in which he whistled, screamed and sprayed nearly all of my shaving cream on the walls) he shook his wet head like a dog and spoke...wildly, of course.

"My mind feels like it's going to blow up!" Shake, shake, jump.
"Um, well, what did you have for dinner?"
"Just pizza." Shake, shiver, shake, dum-dee-dum.
"What did you have to drink with your pizza?"

His eyes lit up like an Iraqi oil well.

"Oooh. I had root beer."
"I thought so." He darted off naked into his room where he then emptied the contents of his dresser, throwing each and every pair of boxers into the air.

Thank you, daddy-o, for giving them root beer. The last time he took them out Lucian came home holding his guts, greener than the Hulk. Guess what. Two cans of Coke. Again, thanks. I want to exact a sweet revenge but I feel like it would be cruel to the children. He doesn't have the patience to deal with the fall out if I did finally decide to give the kids that giant slab of flourless chocolate cake.
At least I have a sense of humor...sort of.

Even Anna was being defiant about the shower, which is alarming because the child gives off a pretty strong scent, even for being nine.

"Anna, if you don't go take a shower now, I swear, I will beat you senseless."

Long, contemplative pause.

"Well, you can beat me, but you still have to pay your taxes."

Thanks for reminding me, babe.

Oop, gotta run, I just heard a chair being dragged across the kitchen floor. Lucian must've spotted the cider donuts on top of the fridge.

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Aaaaah yeah

I am done pretending, even for a minute, that human beings aren't total animals. We are driven by instinct and survival, the rest (like writing, music, technology) is just a thin cover that barely conceals our horns and tails. We tried, with various gigantic religious texts and talk about sin and hell and enlightenment, to deny the beast within because it's embarrassing, especially to the intellectual set. But in the end, we are all, in some way, cave men.

Here's how I know.

Last week, I went to a dignified theater because of my dignified appreciation for world music. I wore make-up and heels and sat in a plush velvet seat and tapped my foot and snapped my fingers to the music. But then, about 15 minutes into the show, my intellect crumbled like the Soviet bloc. Why, you ask? What was it that snapped the Yale graduate and compelled her to jump on stage with a bunch of other women and to dance in front of the WHOLE audience, including her son's pediatrician?

Hips, people, hips. And not just any hips but the mad, gyrating, dancing hips of a lean Cuban singer who must have known, very early in life, that it's pointless to fight against the animal, against lust. The back of his blue shirt was dark with sweat and every woman dancing on the stage was watching the slight movement of muscle under the drenched material, as well as the way his pants stretched, ever so slightly, revealing an ass that was as close to perfect as I've ever seen.

So, yeah, you think you're smart, but lust is smarter, I assure you. Even my most professional, intelligent moments, where I am deep in thought and writing/contemplating are easily broken by lust and its design. There is fire everywhere! Look around you!

Not too long ago my "gentleman friend" as my therapist calls him, looked at me through very sleepy eyes and just shook his head, I couldn't tell if it was disbelief or disgust.
"What," I said, defensive, "Do I scare you?"
"No, you don't scare me," he said. "But that look does. That's the look of a wolf right before it sinks its teeth in."

We cannot rationalize it, we cannot give in fully to it, so, we call it love, which it is. And love, contrary to popular belief, is not civil, nor is it patient, nor is it kind. At least not the love of animals. I was watching "Closer" the other day and Jude Law, who plays Dan, an overly intellectual writer is trying to explain that Larry, a brutish doctor, knows nothing about love. "You don't understand the heart," he says to the doctor.
"Have you ever seen a human heart?" Larry roars. "It looks like a human fist wrapped in blood."

There you have it. We're not fooling anyone.

Saturday, October 9, 2010

Vignettes of a different sort

Time will, if you are good to it, stand still long enough so that you can take a deep, penetrating look into some of the moments which happen to make up the weird mosaic of your life (of course, in this case I have a sneaking suspicion that my mosaic is comprised mostly of porcelain from broken toilets, but I can't prove that yet).

For instance, at a stop light, while rocking out to "Lady Marmalade" with the kids, I happened to glance in the rear view mirror. Anna was slumped in the backseat reading a battered copy of the New Yorker and Lucian was struggling to remove something from the tips of his fingers.

"Hey, Luca, what's on your hands?"

Dead silence.

"I said, what's on your hands, buddy?" He could hear the threatening venom in my voice; it's not hard to detect even for a grown man.

"Um, plastic grapes."

So that's where he disappeared when Anna and I were mulling over what kind of spinach to buy.

His first shoplifting; display grapes. What do you even say? Of course, I told him it was stealing, but then, how many times have I absent-mindedly started gnawing on a green bean or a REAL grape while in the drone of the grocery store?

Fake grapes. Of course, the next question begs to be asked. What'd Anna think of the New Yorker?

She loves it, by the way, especially the poems and the illustrations for the movie reviews. She is also starting to read the "About Town" section with almost a sense of longing. She did tell her therapist that she was going to get a job in the city and ride her motorcycle to work and get a tattoo that's bigger than mine...

These are odd children, I know it, you don't have to tell me twice. Or once even. One likes to eat frozen brussel sprouts the other wears one fingerless glove to school everyday with a white pimp fedora. Thinks nothing of it. I wince when she gets off the bus, but what the hell, the kid is very comfortable with her style.

I can't tell you how many mornings in a row she asks, "Hey, Ma, are my skinny jeans clean yet?"

As strange as this may seem "on the outside" I prefer it to the life that I have tried overly long to strive for. I was having coffee with a very down-to-earth friend of mine the other day and we both revealed a few of the dark truths of our lives over the past few years. Truths about abuse and infidelity and depression and suicide. It was a relief to let go of the farce for both of us.

"I just wanted to have the perfect life," she said, pulling her coat around her even though it was 75 degrees outside.

"Yeah, me, too," I said. But it doesn't exist. That life doesn't exist." At least, not for me. Not in the way that it was presented to me for so many years.

Yes, I owe my children my love and my protection and my undying loyalty. But above all they are, for the sake of their happiness and confidence in their own skin, I owe them the truth. Always. Even if it is painful.

They know a few things now. About friends I've buried, about wars that are unwinnable, about love that fades, and yet, somehow, because they are children and because they are resilient, their innocence remains. Better to gradually understand life's raw material than to be hit by its slag as you approach thirty...