Theft

[I found this piece I'd written while packing some boxes in my closet. When Mike procrastinates, you win!]

After the breakup of '99/'00 (complete with commemorative plates, sure to go up in value), I had a series of Very Bad Dates. I didn't set out, of course, to have these Very Bad Dates. The idea Bridget came up with was something called "A Year of Dates." Nothing serious. "You're not ready for serious dating, Mike," she told me. "You're still mourning. But that doesn't mean you can't make other people take you out to places and show you a nice time. You know, movies, dinner. Maybe even a little sex if the situation seems right and the guy understands that this is Year-of-Dating sex, and doesn't mean anything."

Well, the world turned and time passed and turns out, I was only capable of going on Very Bad Dates. I tried going for Good Dates, God knows I did. And sometimes the Very Bad Dates were tricky, and started out as Almost Okay Dates. Soon, though, I'd get blindsided and the date would go horribly, horribly wrong. One in particular was with a guy my brother called Cannibal because he drove a panel van, cut hair, and wouldn't let me look in his 'frig the one night I came over.

"We need a code word," Joe Bevel said. "Something that, if you have to call for help, he won't know you're calling for help. You should use 'toast.'"

"Toast?"

"Yeah -- it's innocuous; toast never raises any alarms. And all you have to do is call and say something like, 'Hey, Joe! Make sure you don't burn the toast tomorrow morning. You know how much I hate burned toast.' And then I'll know that you're about to become a statistic or something and I'll try to send help."

"Try?"

"I'm not promising anything. Just don't take to long to give the toast call."

I never had the chance to use "toast" as a safe word -- though I'd periodically call Joe Bevel and whisper frantically "toast! toast! toast! until Joe said, "You're going to need to use that some day and I'm not going to believe you 'cause you keep fucking around with it."

And the 'frig part of the story is true. On the third date we went back to his place. He excused himself to the bathroom and I said that I'd help myself to a glass of water in the kitchen. "Do you have a pitcher in the--"

"DON'T OPEN THE 'FRIG!" he yelled, hastily zipping up his pants and running from the bathroom. I looked around for a phone to call Joe Bevel on, but we ended up not staying long and he drove me home soon afterwards.

"You got in a car with him after that?" Joe asked. "You're the reason TV movies are still being made."

Admittedly, I wasn't very discriminating about the guys I chose to go on dates with. Pretty much all someone had to do was ask and there I'd be, trapped in a crappy restaurant or trapped in a bad movie or trapped in the back seat of someone's Dodge Dart, trying to pretend that no, really, I love guys who use a lot of spit when they kiss. And stubble burn? I can't stop quivering with the sexy.

I didn't stop dating, though. I didn't even do much to try and make the dating better. Instead, I started stealing their CDs.

At some point during a date where you find yourself back at his place ("his place" ranging from a studio apartment in the city to a mobile home decorated with ceramic kittens holding balloons to his bedroom at his parents' house), he'll no doubt have to leave you alone for a few minutes to pee, maybe, or to bring back a couple of drinks, or to whatever. Sometimes guys aren't clear about why they have to leave the room. And anyway, that's no longer of concern. What's of concern is raiding the CD library.

The first CD I took was an unfortunate impulse steal. I hadn't yet honed my skills enough to not end up with R.E.M.'s Monster. The more dates I went on, though, the more comfortable I got slipping, say, a Eurythmics bootleg from the shelf and into my bag, say, or cool movie soundtracks.

"Why not porn?" my friend Bill asked. Bill was obsessed with porn and with me -- but I liked Bill and liked knowing Bill and knew that if Bill and I ever slept together that would be the end of our friendship. I explained to Bill that porn collections usually weren't as out in the open as CDs were and besides, stealing porn felt trashy. Like it was somehow more illicit than my CD kleptomania.

As I got better and better at lifting CDs, I realized the selfishness of my ways. This stealing was only really serving me, I thought, and not the greater good. I couldn't be so self-centered anymore. I had to think about people other than myself.

In a 4-month period, I disposed of 28 Backstreet Boys CDs, 6 Whitney Houston soundtracks to the film The Bodyguard, over 30 various Celine Dion recordings, 2 Bette Midler collections, and a copy of Patsy Cline's greatest hits. (Not because I hate Patsy Cline but because I didn't feel that particular guy deserved the Patsy Cline CD that he had.) Sometimes I would just leave with the CD in my bag, throwing the offending object out later. Other times, though, I would leave a different CD behind in place of the purloined one. A better CD. Some early Bonnie Raitt, maybe, or Deacon Blue or my favorite Rickie Lee Jones. I no longer thought of myself as a thief (though, to be honest, I don't know that I ever really thought of myself as a thief). Instead, I was unselfishly giving to the world -- or at least the gay world -- what it seemed to be so painfully lacking: taste.

I think I tired of the Very Bad Dates before I tired of the music-stealing. My grumpiness and general apathy while out with someone new usually kept me from being invited back to his place. Plus, I was moving to the East Coast soon, and didn't have a lot of room for extraneous CDs picked up from guys who would probably never even miss them anyway. Instead, I boxed them up and gave them to Bridget the Knitter as a going away present. I figured she would appreciate the gesture, seeing as how the previous Christmas she had given me a stocking full of shoplifted items.

I don't know if there was any sort of deep-seated psychological need I had for stealing. I don't know that I was trying to fill any loneliness or achy-ness with stolen goods. Or maybe it was that. Maybe I was so deeply unhappy that I couldn't see any way to be good at all. Mostly, though, I blame the guys and their bad taste: in the long run, it was really their fault.

Mary Crawford

But before we get to Mary Crawford, a character in Jane Austen's Mansfield Park, a letter:

Dear Irritating Old Guy at the Deli:

They're soda choices, not ancient Coptic script. It shouldn't take you 5 minutes to peruse them all. Helen Keller could have filled her soda cup (finally) faster. This is why we are bitter enemies: I don't care that you're in a walker.

Huffily,

Michael Bevel: British Adventuress

_________________________________________________________
Mary Crawford should be the hero of Mansfield Park. She's funny, flirty, interesting, and intelligent. Instead, though, Jane Austen sticks us with Fanny Price. Because for some reason, Jane Austen hates us. Probably because of all the mean things we said about her in high school -- but that was years ago and we were stupid. We didn't mean any of it. Seriously, Jane: call me.

To explain why Mary Crawford should be the hero of Mansfield Park and not Fanny Price, I'll need to bring you all up to speed:

The Ward sisters of Huntingdon marry different men (because this is Mansfield Park by Jane Austen, not V.C. Andrews -- in which case all three sisters would marry the same man, and that man would be their brother. And they'd have gigantic heads, like that one sister who didn't make it out of the attic). Two of them marry well, one marrying Sir Thomas Bertram and the other marrying the Rev. Mr. Norris. The third sister, Frances Ward, though, marries recklessly (maybe for love; maybe for spite), and ends up in Portsmouth with something like eleven kids and a husband who needs to meet the pointed end of a boot-to-the-ass toot sweet.

Mrs. Norris comes up with the great idea of "adopting" one of Frances's kids, a girl named Fanny. Fanny is uprooted from her home in Portsmouth and treated like so much extra baggage among the Bertrams (who have four kids of their own: two boys, Thomas and Edmund, and two girls, Maria and Julia -- and why are they at the Bertram's instead of with Mrs. Norris, who came up with the idea? Because Mrs. Norris is awesome in her passive-aggressive splendor). Now, at this point, you might be thinking, "Jesus, Mike, give the kid a break. How'd you like to be uprooted from your home and shuffled around like someone else's good deed?" And the answer is, I wouldn't like it at all. And if that's where the novel stopped then yeah: sucks to be Fanny and we should all feel sorry for her.

But Fanny? She is evil.

She's not evil in the way Rhoda Penmark is, or these kids are. But she's channeled all of her neediness into a very annoying passive-aggressive stew. And whereas Mrs. Norris's passive-aggression is fun and entertaining, Fanny's is simply long-suffering and enervating. She lets herself get left out of things like balls and outings, staying at home with Mrs. Bertram and her annoying pug. Instead of telling someone that she's feeling a little sun-strokey after picking goddamned roses for everyone else's lazy ass, she waits until someone notices that she's looking peaked and then kinda revels (midrashically) in the extra attention to her illness. And rather than remind Edmund that she needs the horse for horseback riding for her health (no, seriously), she just sighs a lot and lets Edmund use the horse as a stand-in for his own libido as he uses it to woo Mary Crawford.

Mary Crawford is the half-sister of Mrs. Grant, whose husband is the new reverend after Mr. Norris bites it (no doubt to get away from Fanny's whining). Mary Crawford asks for things if she wants them. Mary Crawford says what's on her mind when she wants to. Mary Crawford would totally smoke roll-your-owns with you behind the shed out back. Fanny Price would simply cough weakly, hoping you'd notice, and then find some way to tattle on you without actually tattling on you.

My point: Mary Crawford is the bomb.

The thing is, I think Jane Austen likes Mary Crawford more than she likes Fanny, too, even though she tries not to. I don't want to give the end of the novel away, but Jane has to jump Mary Crawford through some awkward hoops to bring it about -- and I don't know that I agree with Austen's conclusion. But that's what I love so much about this novel: there's stuff to grapple with as a reader. There's an actual argument here, rather than just a nice love story, like in Pride and Prejudice.

Here's a current scene that I just read that illustrates the difference between Fanny Price and Mary Crawford beautifully. The set-up: The gang is visiting this guy's estate. Edmund Bertram (whom Fanny has a crush on), Fanny Price, and Mary Crawford are walking about the grounds; Fanny has non-complained complained that she's tired:

"I shall soon be rested," said Fanny; "to sit in the shade on a fine day, and look upon verdure, is the most perfect refreshment."

After sitting a little while Miss Crawford was up again. "I must move," said she; "resting fatigues me. I have looked across the ha-ha till I am weary."

You Did Not Just Take a Phone Call in the Bathroom

I mean, yeah, you totally did. But you shouldn't.

I'm even more sensitive to cell phone abuse since Zach and I have totally swallowed our pride and our Luddite street cred by signing up for a cell phone plan. "But we can never, ever use them," Zach said. "I don't want to be one of those people."

When I first moved to Virginia, Cult Leader Josh met me at the airport with a cell phone. "You'll need this," he said. "In case we need to get in touch with you or in case you get lost. The D.C. area's a lot bigger than Oregon."

I was one of Those People with my first cell phone. I talked on it loudly. I thought, "Folks totally want to hear what I have to say because The Playwright Shawn Marie and I are the funniest people I've ever heard." It's because of my extended phone calls with Shawn Marie that I now probably have a tumor the size of Rhode Island nestled somewhere above my hippocampus.

When Zach and I first started dating, I had the cell phone. "I wish you wouldn't call me on it," he said. "I hate it. I can't hear anything you say, which is odd, because it sounds like you're yelling." It was then I started to remember that no one ever seemed to be all that amused by my loud cell phone conversations on the Metro. I never saw anyone stifling a laugh or leaning in to hear more. Instead, when I thought about it, I think I actually recalled people glaring at me.

When Zach and I finally broke down about the cell phones, we had a talk about the whens, wheres, and whys of how we'd handle our cell phones. "No just calling to see where the other person is, like it's a big game of Marco Polo," Zach said. "At least not after the first week," I said. "And no using the cell phone when you're next to a non-cell phone." "Right." "And we must use our powers of wireless communication for good, never evil." "Agreed."

I don't know how we're going to do with these phones. They've come a long way, and include things like cameras and music and those loathsome ring tones. We may have waited too long to jump on the technological bandwagon; we have no idea how to use most of those things. "Why would I want a phone that can take a picture, but gets no reception in the Metro?" Zach asked. "I mean, how about you make the phone work well before you dress it up in fancy pants." The phones we have also have the option to make the ringing for the other person sound different. Like, sound clips might play, or our favorite Top 40 song. My mom has a hard enough time with voicemail to begin with; that just seems needlessly cruel.

If all goes as planned, we'll be spending $71 a month on phones we're too self-conscious and afraid to use.

Bring on the future.

Gay Cowboys

Remember this name: Mary-Lou Green-Benvenuti. Ms. Green-Benvenuti puts Brokeback Mountain’s Anne Hathaway in a series of exquisitely over-the-top wigs. Hathaway’s character, Lureen Newsome, starts out in what’s probably Hathaway’s own hair; as the movie progresses, however (at a snail’s pace, I might add: the movie is 12 years long), she shows up with blonder and blonder hair that is feathered and sprayed and feathered again until her head resembles nothing if not a gigantic swan in mid-flight – majestic, awesome, and free.

The movie itself? Meh. Mostly what I came away with was that it sucks to be a gay cowboy in Wyoming – but that seems a foregone conclusion, and I don’t know that I needed 14 straight hours in a movie theater to reach that conclusion on my own. And for a movie about gay cowboys in love having gay cowboy sex – well, there’s very little sex. Actually, there’s some at the beginning, but it’s both preposterous and dark so I couldn’t tell if it actually was gay cowboy sex or if Jake Gyllenhaal was merely having a tough time with his blankets.

Hi, Ang Lee: they’re called halogens. You should use them.

Brokeback Mountain shares a lot in common with Walk the Line: they’re both “moments” films. In Walk the Line, I spent the moments of the film where Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon weren’t singing hoping they’d start singing. Same goes for Brokeback Mountain, only replace singing with gay cowboy sex and replace Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon with Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger. I mean, yeah, it’s sad in places and the ending is a little heartbreaking – but I guess mostly I’m tired of gay guys having to die in movies and I’m tired of gay love stories always having to be morbidly tragic.

Also, Heath Ledger sounds like he’s channeling Karl Childers from Sling Blade.

In other news, Zach and I are doing Chanukah for Christmas this year. Or what amounts to Chanukah for a half-Jew and a lapsed Assemblies-of-God-cum-Southern-Baptist. We’re lighting a menorah Zach brought home from work, I get to read the blessing (emphasizing the “ch” sounds because dude, why not?), and we’re opening a gift a night. Or, in the case of today, two gifts. Today’s gifts:

Manon Lescaut -- it’s a little French ditty about “three infidelities, three escapes, three abductions and two murders.” I don’t read much from the French. I’ve got some Hugo under my belt; The Count of Monte Cristo is one of my favorites books; and I’ve got plans to finish Stendhal’s The Red and the Black. Anyway, Amazon.com took some time out of recommending the films of Harmony Korine (and Mr. Korine? Two words: sham. poo.) to suggest I might try reading Manon Lescaut and Zach pulled it off my wish list (yay!).

Christopher Marlowe: The Complete Plays. It’s easy to forget that Shakespeare had box office competition. The Jew of Malta is my favorite, mostly because of my high school sweetheart, Mr. Kielsmeier. The only Marlowe play I’ve ever seen performed is Derek Jarman’s Edward II.

Demonic Possession

It's a truth universally acknowledged that office holiday lunches suck. Even if you're lucky enough to work in an office setting where you might enjoy some, or even most, of your co-workers -- still: it's awkward. There's the noise, and the food can be an issue, and then what if you end up sitting next to that one guy who quietly belches all the time? I'd rather be given a gift certificate or better yet, just more cash. I'll treat myself to food somewhere else, and I'll think nice thoughts about my boss while I'm eating.

This year, I sat next to [redacted]? And [redacted]? Talks with one of those annoying uplilts? At the end of each sentence? So that everything? Sounds like a question? Granted, he's only something like 22, maybe, or 23. And I guess I'm making excuses for him because he's really an okay guy; it's just, my ears bleed any time we have a conversation.

Oh, and [redacted]? Thinks he may have almost been possessed by the devil.

Yeah, I know. It came out of left field for me, too. One minute, we're having bland lunch time talk -- words come out of your mouth that mean nothing, but have something vaguely to do with the only thing yuo really have in common with your co-workers: work -- and then he launches into this story (punctuated? by those uplilts?) about how one night he woke up, couldn't move, and then saw a shadow go by his bed that dissipated when he began to pray.

I don't believe in demonic possession. I don't believe in demons or devils or The Devil -- and I'm not so clear on the whole God thing either. The only thing I could think about after seeing The Exorcist was that I expect more from Evil than a girl who pees on the rug and masturbates with a crucifix. And like I've mentioned before, I just don't see why Evil has to make things so complicated on itself. This one soul at a time business just doesn't make sense.

But [redacted]'s convinced. "I mean, I know? It sounds crazy? But I was there. And I know what happened? To me? And it was some freaky shit, man." I don't want to be his killjoy. I don't want to play Dr. Science to his spook story. But I also don't want to be put in a position where my silence somehow implies tacit approval. Because while I believe he may have experienced some sleep paralysis, and that he may have had a terrifying experience that way, and that the emotions were certainly palpable: I just don't believe in demonic possession.

And dude: the fuck kind of Christmas Lunch conversation is that anyway?

My Thighs

I have a pimple on my inner right thigh. Or an ingrown hair. Point is: ow. Another point: my sedentary lifestyle is starting to make itself known in other ways, like in thighs that scrape together when they used to not so much scrape together, causing me to feel, with every step, the new existence of this pimple/ingrown hair.

Of course, I didn't think much about this last night, say, when I was consuming my weight in mushroom-and-olive pizza, or stuffing Jelly Belly after Jelly Belly into my greedy mouth. And I didn't think of it yesterday at lunch when I went back for my second helping of Mongolian barbecue (which wasn't so much barbecued or made with Mongolian anything, oh, and thanks, guys, for not making a big deal out of cooking my bowl of noodles and tofu on the non-meat grill. Only not.). Or when I found myself in the kitchen at work for the third time to grab a couple more rice-crispie treats.

But in the wee small hours of the morning, when it's just me and my pimply, sore, fat thighs -- then I'm all, "Regrets...I've had a few..."

"Ah, but New Years is coming," I tell myself. Because New Years is going to make it all okay. I'll make a resolution to do something active in the mornings before work; and do something active in the evenings after work; and to spend my weekends being so active people around me will start to lose weight because I just won't have any more weight to lose. I'll be heralded as a hero by fat people the world over. And all this exercise will somehow kill my cravings for cheese and butter. All this activity will make my body demand better foods. I'll finally start having the breakfasts I've read about in all the diet books: half a slice of dry toast, weak tea, non-fat yogurt, and a fistful of laxatives.

[Mostly unrelated, but I love how my eyes are babies. While typing this entry, a stray lash or a bit of sleep got in my eye, and my eye's are all: "We need everyone in this body to immediately stop what they're doing while we and the fingers try to rectify this situation. We repeat: everyone in this body needs to stop what they're doing." Because it was totally like that. As soon as the foreign object entered my eye -- my body went stock-still and all I could think about or do was anything to get whatever it was in my eye out of my eye. Now, let's talk about my poor, be-pimpled right thigh for a second. That mofo hurts, too; but you don't see him over-reacting like my eye does. Which is fortunate, since that pimple's here for the long haul.]

Though it's probably little more than another in a long line of "I don't really want to be healthy" excuses, I feel like once Zach and I finally move already, it'll be easier to start implementing some lifestyle changes. I don't do great in flux in general, and I think that if I also start limiting calories while in the middle of upheaving my life from one apartment to another, my brain will pull an eye and stop everything until I come to my butter-and-cream laden senses.

Stupid brain.

In other, non-Mike's-a-lardass news, I'm re-reading Mansfield Park which might be my favorite Jane Austen novel (in spite of Fanny Price). I've got this whole reading plan in mind for 2006 -- but more on that another time. When I'm not so fat and feel less guilty discussing a plan where I sit on my ass reading Victorian literature.

The French Lieutenant's *Yawn*

At some point in almost every episode of Three's Company, Mr. Roper, the cranky landlord, would say something awful about his wife. This would cause a laugh from the "audience" -- and Norman Fell would turn to the camera and do this awful mug. "See!" That mug said. "That's how funny is done!" Only even to my unsophisticated 10-year-old's ears, the line was never all that funny. And I hated that he turned to the camera. I didn't like being taken out of the moment. "You stay on that side of the glass, Norman Fell," I would think, "and I'll stay on mine."

The last time Zach and I went to the Luray Caverns, we talked about how stupid people are. We talk about this even when we aren't at the Luray Caverns, so, to make this germane, what we were talking about specifically is how the tour guides couldn't just let people marvel at the natural wonders -- the way rock and mineral could look like draped fabric; the variety of color; the staggering size -- they had to make the marvels somehow relevant by saying, "And that stalactite? That one looks like Bart Simpson!" [insert astonished audience gasp here, followed by laugh/chuckle/chortle/wince of pain (if you're me)] Or "If you look really closely, you'll see Snoopy! On his dog house! Isn't nature commercial?" [lather, rinse, repeat from above.]

I didn't like The French Lieutenant's Woman because it reminded me too much of Norman Fell's camera mugging and stupid Virginians. I read it against my better judgment, thinking my friend Steve (who recommended it) only had what's best for me in mind. I was also feeling slightly embarrassed about lugging a frickin' vampire book all the way to Staunton when we visited Steve and Jamie a couple of weeks ago, and realized that my list of unfinished Steve books was getting a little long. So I came home, picked it up, and finished it.

The French Lieutenant's Woman's not bad in the way, say, The Da Vinci Code is bad; or in the way the experimental fiction of Ben Marcus is bad; or the way Cormac McCarthy, Anne Proulx, and Don DeLillo are bad; or in the way my vampire book was bad. (And by the way? That vampire book? So bad I couldn't finish it. I found a website called The Book Spoiler, where I was able to read how it ends. Boy am I glad I didn't finish that fucker. But boy, am I even less glad that I started it in the first place.) The French Lieutenant's Woman's bad because it didn't have to be.

"How long ago did you read it?" I asked my friend Steve in an email. "I know I've often suggested novels or movies or songs to people, things that I haven't necessarily heard, seen, or read in 10 or 15 years -- only to find out that had I taken a couple minutes to refresh my memory, I could have saved a friendship. You've spoken highly of it every time it's been mentioned -- and I felt guilty enough about this that I made the effort to go back and rectify my unreading. But I'm not clear on what's so great about the novel."

I can compare it a little to The Name of the Rose -- a novel I still re-read occasionally, even though I think Eco is a fluke of a writer. In The Name of the Rose, if you strip away all the really cool historical research stuff, you're left with a pretty vague and bland mystery. Something that would have filled maybe 100 or so pages. Same thing with The French Lieutenant's Woman: take away all the post-modern, self-referential, "experimental" stuff and you're left with a not very interesting novel. Man leaves fiance for another woman. Trouble ensues. It's a rough draft of a better book by Thomas Hardy. Or Edith Wharton.

I didn't enjoy the post-modern stuff. I hardly ever enjoy post-modern stuff. It's clever -- but that kind of clever doesn't have a long shelf-life. That kind of clever doesn't warrant a re-reading. I would be reading along, just about to lose myself in the story, and there's John Fowles: noted author, breaking in to tell me about the novel I'm reading. "What are you doing here, John Fowles: noted author?" I'd ask. "Well, I'm here to tell you about the novel you're reading," he'd say, giving me a sly wink. "But... but... I know about the novel I'm reading. I know about it because I'm reading it. The way one does. With novels. I mean, thanks for stopping by and all, but I don't think I need your services." "Oh, but you do," he'd counter. "I put a lot of work into researching the Victorian period. Did you know that most authors of that time attributed silent h's to their lower-class characters when that wasn't even the case? Those lower class characters never spoke that way! Can you even believe the calumny?" "I guess not. But, mostly, I don't care, John Fowles: noted author. If it's all the same to you, I'd like to go back to--" "I've got a lot more things to share with you." "I was afraid of that." "Have you got to the part about the computer in her heart? Did you catch that? The computer? In her heart? They didn't even have computers back then -- but there I go, writing about the computer in her heart. I'm brilliant!"

I hated that "computer in her heart" shit. A lot. Because I know what literary hearts do. To have him explain a Victorian way of thinking with a modern equivalent felt too much like being told by a Luray Caverns tour guide that the caverns look a lot like Disneyland. Or that the best use of some of the hollow rock tubes is to play "A Mighty Fortress is Our God." Mostly, though, I wish they wouldn't. Both John Fowles: noted author, and the tour guides.

Steve is also on me to finish Bartleby the Scrivener. I love Steve; but I may have to kill him.

(Mis)Overheard in Our Rental Car

Dottie West: [singing] "Somebody's gonna give you a lesson in hurtin'
Somebody's gonna leave you with your fire burnin'
With no way to put it out."

Zach: Wait, what? "Prior burning"?

Mike: No. "Fire burning."

Zach: Oh. I thought it was about female trouble. Down there.
___________________________________________________

We spent the weekend in Staunton/New Hope, Virginia, visiting our friends Steve and Jamie. Staunton is an oasis of L.L. Bean and J. Crew in the middle of darkest Virginia. Everyone has a full collection of his or her own teeth and feels that "antiquing" is an okay verb to use. (It isn't. It grates.) They have a Shakespeare Theatre, nary a Starbucks in sight, and beautiful houses that are all cheaper than what our apartment would cost us if we buy. (For serious: we passed mansions that sold for about the same price as our 2-bedroom, 2-bath apartment in the middle of frickin' Rockville for the love of Christ. I mean, these are houses. With land. I don't understand capitalism.)

New Hope? Has a gas station and a grocery store. In the same building. And two churches.

Steve and Jamie actually live in New Hope. Or rather, on what amounts to the outskirts of New Hope next to a predominantly black Baptist church. We were able to hear them all filled with the spirit on Sunday morning, which was charming in that "How adorable! They think that Bible stuff is true" kinda way but I can forsee Sunday mornings where you might not necessarily want to hear that much praising that early. Hi, Baptists? It's Mike: God can hear you just as well if you use your indoor voice.

I also had an ill-timed meltdown in front of our hosts. See: we're moving. Like, soon. Like, in three weeks and while yeah, three weeks is a fairly healthy chunk of time -- tomorrow it'll only be 2 weeks and 6 days or something. Each day is one day less for packing. And, because I'm still learning how to have emotions (like I'm some kind of robot-person from the future), it doesn't take much for me to become all anxiety-ridden.

And boy, is that an attractive trait.

So, we were talking about the move and how it will suck, and it was fine and pleasant in a jokey kind of way. "You'll never get it done." "Boy, you're move is going to suck." And then, all of a sudden it stopped being something I could joke about at all and I immediately became a nightmare about the futons. We have three; we've never taken them apart or put them together; they have to be moved. And I wanted someone else to do that part. You know, hire someone to come and take care of all that. Only Zach's research into movers proved that this was a bad cost-effective way to do this, since all movers apparently start the bidding at around a frillion dollars. And that? Is too many dollars for these homos*.

So, I flipped. I hurt Zach's feelings. And I looked like a bit of an ass in front of people I like. The nice thing is, because they're people I like, they didn't think much of it. Yeah, it was uncomfortable -- but it wasn't one of those "elephant in the room" moments where we had to pretend like it wasn't happening.

I blame Virginia.

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* Word's spellcheck gave me a grammar squiggle under homo. Not a spell squiggle -- turns out, homo's a fine way to spell homo. Word's spellcheck was worried I had forgotten to end the sentence with homo in it with a question mark. Because it starts with Is.

Umberto Eco/Christian Slater's Ass

My friend misfitred/teaspoon mentioned this about Umberto Eco in my last post:

"Oh, The Name of the Rose... How I love that book... But then I'm a medievalist. I'm supposed to love that book. The end breaks my heart (all those books! oh the humanity!) but it's apocalyptic so I guess it's okay. Have you seen the movie? With Christian Slater looking like a deer in headlights for THE ENTIRE THING? Much as I love Sean Connery, I think Ron Perlman did the best job in that one..."

We'll get to Christian Slater and the miscast (in everything because I hate him) Sean Connery later -- let's start off with Umberto Eco.

I have this weird relationship with Eco. After The Name of the Rose and Focault's Pendulum (or "Fuckoff's Pendulum" as my friend Urian the Cranky Reader calls it. Clever? Maybe not. Does it make me laugh every single time? Yes, oh God yes.) -- his novels kinda fall off into the crapper.

I wanted to like The Island of the Day Before. And I purchased Baudolino thinking maybe this time the book wouldn't suck. But it did. And now I have this shelf full of Eco, like I'm a fan or something. (I also own a copy of Kant and the Platypus, a book that is too smart for me to read because, dear reader, I am dumb*. I'd rather you hear that from my own mouth than reading it on some bathroom wall where all the smart people hang out.)

The thing I've come to realize about Bert is that he's frustrated by fiction. Not the idea of fiction, the way Ben Marcus is; I mean that Eco wants fiction to do certain things -- and it won't. Not for Bert. And maybe because it can't. Let's take The Name of the Rose. Strip away the every-frickin'-page history lesson (and I kid a little there with the "frickin'" -- I loved that medievalist stuff, and the stuff about Inquisition, and that peek into early monastery life) and all you really have is a pretty lackluster mystery. A lackluster mystery that someone like James Patterson can only dream of writing, sure, and for serious, Jim? Enough with the nursery rhyme titles. But mostly what Eco wants to do is to cram as much of his research into the novel as possible. Characters aren't necessarily developed; insights into human nature aren't so much forthcoming; what you do get, though, is a lot of history. And, if'n you like the period Eco's writing about -- that can make for an enjoyable read. Elevated beach read, if you will.

I just couldn't bring myself to be terribly interested in The Island of the Day Before. I always found something else to read when I should have been reading it. Backs of cereal boxes. Two issues of Martha Stewart's Living. (Hydrangeas? Who knew?) The instructions for how to use Zach's Neti Pot. Mostly I think it's my fear of maps. And Baudolino was another failed experiment, even with the dangling literary carrot of a meeting with Prester John.
The thing is? The thing that sucks? I'll probably buy The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana when it comes out in paperback. And I wish I had a good reason why. It's the same impulse, I think, that keeps me fanning my goodwill towards Eugene Levy, even though he doesn't seem to care that this goodwill is tested every time he plays a white man interacting with black/youth culture. Eugene: you don't need to say "Fo' shizzle" to make me like you. I already do. Now go find Christopher Guest.

In closing, the movie version of The Name of the Rose is good for only one reason: Christian Slater's ass. Sure, I'm creeped out that he was only 15 when he made the film, and that 15-year-olds probably shouldn't be showing off their nekkid backsides on film. (I imagine somewhere after this film first opened, someone found Roman Polanski in a fit of paroxysm muttering, "But...! But...! But...!") My only excuse? I was 14 when the movie came out -- so in my mind that makes it less creepy, my fascination with Christian Slater's ass. As I've grown older, it has grown older.

Sean Connery? Feh. I don't get the appeal. I don't think he's a good actor. And, at least according to IMDb, several much better actors were talked about for the role of William of Baskerville -- including Michael Caine (another on my goodwill short list) and Ian McKellen.
It's nothing personal, Sean Connery: but I hate you.

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* Mini-entry as a footnote: Kant and the Platypus may be one of the scariest books I've ever read. It's about language (which is a bit like saying that Moby Dick is about sailing, and about as useful), the way we speak and understand things and each other -- stuff I feel like I do every day. And yet -- I don't get how we do it. Umberto Eco apparently does. And Umberto Eco wrote this book to explain. But I can't understand a book about how to understand language -- and yet I speak every. single. day. How can I do something I don't know how to do? And even this time here, with you, in this footnote? I'm not even really explaining myself well. Why you're even reading this and not someone smarter who will actually help you in the world is beyond me. Just say nice things about me as you go; and give my love to James Taylor...

Bad Literature & Big-Print Books

I don't have a good excuse for reading Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian. She's a bad writer, it's a plodding read, and it's not really my genre. Actually, that's a little bit of a lie. I love supernatural stories in theory. Gothic novels from Charles Robert Maturin, Anne Radcliffe, Henry James are great fun and well-written. And as far as contemporary writers go, I had a good time reading Arturo Perez-Reverte's The Club Dumas and Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose and Foucault's Pendulum. I mean, I don't really understand what Eco's trying to do, necessarily, in FP -- but the ride is fun.

I know exactly what Kostova's trying to do, though, in The Historian: be as boring as possible while drawing the whole narrative out like she's Dickens or something. Only, Liz? Hi, it's Mike: you're not Dickens. You're a baby step up from the aggressively awful Dan Brown -- but he's looking up your skirt and I think you kinda like it.

I'm in the middle of a scene in the novel where one of the protagonists is arguing with a mysterious Romanian woman with flashing eyes the color of honey. Mysterious honey. What are they arguing about? They're arguing about how the protagonist needs a copy of Bram Stoker's Dracula. And the Mysterious Romanian with the Mysterious Honey Eyes has the library's only copy. And she doesn't want to give it back. Because she's mysterious.

In the world of this particular novel, apparently, there's only one library in the world and there are no book stores that sell books. It's not like the protagonist needs that particular copy from that particular library -- he just needs any old copy to find out how to protect himself against vampires.

Did I mention this guy's supposedly a grad student? Yeah: I'm a college drop out, and this guy has the problem-solving skills of [insert political humor here].

You know what? Whatever Lizzie Kostova. Your book is dumb. The novel also suffers from Convoluted Bad Guy syndrome, where the Bad Guy acts like he's controlled by Rube Goldbergian forces so that, instead of taking the easiest way (e.g., killing the protagonist and destroying all the evidence that leads to the Bad Guy), he does things like strangles cats and appears mysteriously in paintings. Maybe Evil needs some time management courses; maybe Evil is suffering from some kind of low self-esteem. What I want Evil to know is: Dude -- you can totally do it! You can go out there, and you can get the job done in one fell swoop, rather than in these awkward step-by-steps. I believe in you, Evil! GO GET 'EM!

The copy I'm reading is a large-print version that I got from the library. I didn't know, when I put it on hold, that it was going to be large print. I also didn't know it was going to suck so much my ears popped. But I'm mostly troubled by the large print. See, I read it on the bus or on the subway -- and for some reason, the large printedness of the book has me convinced that people think I've got some kind of vision problem, which I do, I wear glasses, but I don't have the kind of vision problems that would warrant me reading large-print books. Only now, I feel that not only do I look like I need large-print books, but that I went out of my way to get this book. Which, I mean, yeah, I guess I did kinda since I had to put it on hold.

Mostly, I'm just ashamed of my reading choice. It's all well and good to blame Elizabeth Kostova for her terrible skills as an author: but I'm the one reading this crapfest.

Go me.

Dear Quick Turn Luke,

Hi. In the three months that I've worked at [redacted], I've seen your penis more times than my own boyfriend's. That I've seen your penis at all, though, is more alarming, really, than the frequency.

Though the frequency truly is alarming.

I'm a guy. You're a guy. We both use the men's room. But then, you have to go and get all quick with the turning and: penis. Actually, penis, and also your troubling taste in "seasonal" boxer shorts. If you're not choosing your own clothes, someone hates you.

The reason I've seen your penis and your boxers is because you have this habit of turning to look in the mirror as you tuck everything back in to its proper place. There you are, your face all distorted with the effort of keeping your shirt out of the way by holding it with your chin, penis out for all the world to see. And you're methodical, too. The penis goes in a certain way; and then you rummage with that weird pee-flap that I've never understood how to use (seriously: it's like genital gymnastics trying to get a penis in and out through those flap-things. Clearly, our forebears who used those were smarter than we); and then there's the shifting of the pants before you zip, button, and belt; and then, finally, there's the shirt tucking.

Oh, and all this is accompanied by whistling. Or humming.

I know what you're thinking: Who's this perv? No one's forcing him to watch. And I'd totally agree with you if this were a one-time occurrence and then I totally Rain Man-ed on your jock. But it's every. freakin'. day, sir. And really, it's gotta stop. I wish I had a solution for you, some way for you to accomplish the proper putting-away of your...stuff...without the quickturn and all that -- but frankly, I've thought too much as it is about you and your penis. You're going to have to figure this one out on your own.

And God willing? It'll be before I have to pee again in the next hour.

Sincerely,

Mike Bevel
Suite 700

Why Evil Shouldn't Live in Skulls

Back when I was a young British Adventuress, there was this show, He-Man, about this sort of fruity-looking strong man in a fur loin-cloth. He-Man was a Master of the Universe, and protected his world from the evils of the treacherous Skeletor. He-Man lived (unmarried, mind you -- and no sign of a girlfriend) in this clean white castle with his friends Man-at-Arms, Teela, and his pet tiger Cringer. Skeletor? Lived in a skull.

Good has to be impossibly stupid to allow Evil to build homes that look like huge gaping skulls. Like, at some point, someone would have said something about the choice of architecture. And Evil also has to be impossibly stupid, since there's nothing subtle about enormous castles, surrounded by bats, in the swamp, in the shape of a gaping skull.

Also -- they don't ever look comfortable, Castles of Evil. They look like they were hewn out of caves, and they look drafty and dank. If I were evil, I'd want something easy to heat in the winter and cool in the summer. I'd want walls that were walls -- not cave walls or walls made of bone. I'd choose flattering fabrics and comfortable chairs. If I'm evil, and I want to spread evil, I want to make sure that evil is seductive and easy to slip in to -- like last year's sweater or a good pair of slippers.

Shakespeare gets it right. Macbeth's castle is pleasant. It's a home. And Duncan is dumb, but he wouldn't be so dumb that he'd want to stay in some place that smelled like death and looked like a tomb. "Methinks the Macbeths aren't quite ready for our stay," he'd say. "P'raps we could find a Holiday Inn in town. And send the Macbeths some candles. Scented candles. And a lot of them."

Maybe the argument is that evil has so corrupted the souls of those in its clutches that they've lost all sense of goodness. All of a sudden a chair made of aborted babies and a tinkling fountain of pus seems like just the thing. But I don't think that's the case. I think evil can corrode a soul and not influence the soul's design taste that drastically.

Evil has to be seductive. It has to be allowed in your home. There's that wonderfully creepy line from the Cain and Abel story where God says to Cain, "Sin is crouching at your door." If Evil looks or smells distasteful -- I mean, blatantly, skull-dwellingly distasteful – you’re probably not going to let it in. And if you do? Then you're soul isn't just corrupted and corroded: you're completely blind as well.

Also, I don't know that evil twists forms into ugliness like that. I'm thinking back to Tolkien and his orcs. I understand that the evil wizards Sauron and Sauraman both needed an army of some kind to do their bidding (i.e., eeevil) -- but it seems to me just making normal looking human warriors who are maybe just a little bit quicker and a little bit stronger would work just as well. I don't know why evil monsters have to be created.

I think monsters are our safety net, so to speak. We have this fiction that evil will be easily recognizable -- that we'll know it when we see it -- because we're lazy and scared. Mostly lazy. And we should be scared. Evil is you and me and everyone we know; it sits at our door and at our table. And when evil is presented to us in art in this homogenous form -- I think it makes us less able to recognize and respond to it when it's in our government. Or in our church. Or ourselves.

The Shower

The building that Z and I live in has gone condo. The building that Z and I live in that has sketchy elevators, frequent fire alarms, odd smells, and that one creepy girl who talks to coats has gone condo to the tune of $550,000 for our two-bedroom, two-bathroom unit.
That's a lot of dollars.

Z heard about the building going condo first from Bebe the Track Suit Walker who accosted him on the treadmill to demand his age. Turns out, when a rental building goes condo, something like 20%* of the senior citizens can't be forced out of their units. They get to stay, rent-controlled, 'til they die. Bebe wanted to make sure Z wasn't part of the competition.

That was late spring. By mid-summer -- mid-summer of one of the hotter summers in the D.C. area -- our building had cut an 8-foot tall hole in our living room wall, effectively disabling our air conditioning. "This is part of our scheduled maintenance per our sell agreement," the notice slipped under our door read. "This could take up to 10 weeks." After consulting a calculator, I said to Z: "That's too many weeks."

Three weeks ago, they fucked with the water pressure. What had once been a satisfyingly strong shower in the main bathroom was now little more than a mist. To get any kind of water accumulation, one had to stand very still and hope for enough condensation. Which never really happens.

So there I am. Naked. Covered in soap. Shivering in a shower with little hot water. And this is an apartment they want to sell to us for $550,000. Or rather, they know we won't buy this apartment because hi: have you met me, my zero dollars, and my non-existent/not-so-great credit? So now, they're playing all Gaslight-y on us, hoping to drive us from this apartment and this building and the weird girl who talks to coats.

Which, of course, they did.
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* Statistic entirely pulled from my ass. Enjoy!