Hurricane Irene is about to knock our power out.
I write this with near certainty, partly because the media weathercasters have told us to expect it, as has our local power company via robo-call. But mostly I know this because we lose power pretty much any time there’s a wind gust or a rain burst. It’s mid-afternoon now, and overnight tonight we’re due for a least three inches of rain and wind gusts of up to 40 miles per hour.
I won’t name our power company, but I will say its acronym seems to stand for "Piss-poor Entity Provokes Consumer Outrage."
Anyway, so, I’m typing fast here. Actually I’m not, because I type with one finger and have to look at the keyboard while doing so, and if I try to type fast I make a lot of typos that then must be cleaned up. Which kind of defeats the purpose of typing fast. More importantly, however, typing faster would force me to think faster, which history has proven is a non-starter.
It is accurate to say that I’m trying to write and post this entry before the inevitable power outage shuts down our PC for God knows how many days. Before that happens, I'd like to recap the first blow in the D.C. region's natural disaster one-two punch this week.
Tuesday afternoon at about 2 o’clock I was eating my lunch behind my closed office door when a rumbling commenced that suggested one of those big storage chests in which my employer ships things to conventions was rolling by in the hallway. Either that or someone was rushing to get to a Weight Watchers meeting, or possibly a Biggest Loser audition.
Then my windows started rattling the way they do when the window-washers sometimes crash their raised platform into them. The rattling quickly intensified, and the floor began shaking as if if a CSX train had jumped the nearby tracks and somehow made its way the 50 yards or so to my building’s foundation. Because I am a college graduate, at that point I figured out what was happening: The Biggest Loser audition was being held in the building, and jumping jacks were involved.
No, what I realized was that we’d just experienced an earthquake. I emerged from my office to find coworkers standing around in the hallway, looking more startled than upset. Earthquakes you can actually feel are unusual in the DC area, although one of my very first blog entries made note of a lesser one we’d had last summer. We were instructed to evacuate the building while it was inspected for damage, and assemble near some tennis courts a block away.
Nervous parents called their family members while smug, childless idiots like me said things like, “This doesn’t seem like a big deal” and longed for the rest of their Swiss cheese sandwich. People who’d lived in California predictably pronounced our seismic event—a 5.8 magnitude quake, smartphones revealed—a sorry excuse for an earthquake. Their dismissive tone conveyed that they had carried delicate glassware or maybe performed painstaking heart surgery during worse. One woman found the quake quite exhilarating, as if she’d unexpectedly been kissed by the cute guy on whom she had a secret crush, and now hoped to be goosed gently on the ass by a moderate aftershock.
Anyway, we hadn’t been standing out there for more than 10 or 15 minutes when we got the all-clear to return inside. That bespoke to me a rigorous inspection regimen consisting of our maintenance team finding no cracks in the walls big enough to stick an arm into. But, whatever. Again, I wasn’t in the slightest concerned that our modest and brief (20-second?) temblor had done any notable damage. So, I had no trepidation about going back inside—or staying inside until proceding to my scheduled 4 p.m. haircut, even though we were told we could take the rest of the day off.
(An aside: I’ve delighted in the opportunity the past few days to employ the word “temblor.” It has long intrigued me—reading and sounding, as it does, like an odd bastardization of “tremblor.” I mean, it’s all about things trembling, is it? The word also, for me, hints at "Simon Templar," the stylish rogue played by Roger Moore on TV’s The Saint in the 1960s. Temblor, temblor, temblor, temblor! OK, I’m good now.)
Upon returning to my office, I scanned it for signs of destruction or disarray. At first I saw absolutely nothing: no broken glass, no pictures on the floor, no reference books loosed from the shelves. And my sandwich was right where I’d left it, thank goodness. But then, as I looked up, atop the bookcase, I indeed saw evidence of the devastating Earthquake of 2011.
Gamera was down.
In the unlikely event you are not familiar with Gamera’s body of work, he’s a giant, fire-spitting flying turtle who battled various other monsters in a series of low-budget Japanese films of the 1960s and 1970s. In fact, I believe he literally was embodied by a Japanese man in a turtle suit. Nevertheless, he makes for a fine plastic action figure. So, when I happened to find myself in a Tokyo toy store in 2008, I felt compelled to purchase plastic versions of both him and Godzilla as mementos of my trip. (This despite the fact that each, naturally, bore a “Made in China” label.)
Full disclosure requires me to reveal that, although Gamera and Godzilla face off against each other atop my office bookcase, they actually were the creations of rival movie studios and never fought each other on film. (Strangely, no visitor to my office ever has called me on that.) Anyway, what I noticed when I looked up there was that although Godzilla remained erect—steadied by a tail that functions as a third leg—Gamera, who normally stands on his hind legs, was lying face-down. Yes, a mighty radiation-mutated reptile, felled by Mother Nature’s fury.
When I arrived home that evening, Lynn inventoried a similar swath of earthquake-related devastation: Trinkets from a wall-mounted shadowbox scattered on the guest room floor and, in one case, gnawed by our grateful dog. In our sunroom, a TV remote on the floor. In the living room, an unframed artwork that had been standing atop a cabinet, now lying flat. Oh, the humanity!
Truthfully, this might a case where we assume everything’s fine until our cracked and weakened roof caves in during the winter’s first measurable snowfall. Who knows? The point is, we quite handily survived the earthquake.
Meanwhile, however, the wind is kicking up outside the window, and the rain has turned more intense. Soon it will be nightfall, and that’s when Irene is supposed to be at her worst here. Power loss is all but inevitable, and we’ve already experienced the destruction of one of our cars by a fallen tree under far better conditions. Which is to say, I’d better get this account posted.
At least we’ve got water, nonperishable food, a couple of powerful lanterns and plenty of reading material in the house. And if I start feeling bummed out after several days of no lights, hot water or air conditioning, I've still got than funny word to cheer me up.
“Temblor.” Ha!
Saturday, August 27, 2011
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Unbidden
I hereby state unequivocally that I never will seek the presidency of the United States of America.
Never mind that I have no money, credentials (although history suggests that’s no disqualifier) or constituency. (Lassitude Come Home readers are awesome, but the dozen of you do not, frankly, a “springboard” make.) I’ve concluded that, even if I had those advantages, I’d make past fringe candidacies like those of cult leader Lyndon LaRouche look like comparative juggernauts. My views, you see, make me anathema not only in the red states, but in swing and blue ones, too.
This is something I’ve long known, but it really hit home the other day when I read an article about the upcoming 10-year anniversary of “God Bless America” being sung in major league baseball stadiums. This was a practice instituted in the wake of the 9/11 attacks that continues today, as a manifesto to the terrorists skulking about the hot dog concessionaires (while defiantly boycotting Hebrew National) that Americans will “never forget” that awful day and, with God’s endorsement, will yet kick Muslim extremists’ pajama-covered behinds.
The article noted that, at most ballparks, the song no longer is sung during every home game. In most cities, including Washington, it now precedes “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” before the seventh-inning stretch only on Sundays and select holidays. At Yankee Stadium, however, it’s still sung during every game—New York having been where the Twin Towers fell, true, but the perennially full-of-themselves Yankees also deeming themselves more patriotic than we lesser Americans in other baseball markets. It was Yankees management, after all, who stopped physically preventing fans from leaving their seats during the non-National Anthem only after losing a lawsuit in 2008 that had been filed by an ejected fan. (Who may or may not have been a terrorist.)
Indeed, tomorrow afternoon I’ll be among baseball fans at Nationals Park who will be asked by the public address announcer to rise and sing about how the Deity “shed his grace on thee” (us) and how, thanks to Him, we Americans enjoy “brotherhood from sea to shining sea.” Never mind that we’ll be singing the song as code for “eat our missiles, Allah-lovers.” Then, there’s also the fact that tomorrow the hometown nine will be hosting the Philadelphia Phillies, whose busloads of drunken, xenophobic partisans can be counted on to enforce their own stay-in-your effing-seat policy during that Patriotic Pause.
You may be picking up by my subtle hints that I am not a big supporter of the singing of “God Bless America” during major league baseball games. That is true. And since we’ve already put to rest any thought of my seeking votes for president of this great country, I’ll go ahead and state my reasons.
I understand that baseball is seen by many people as synonymous with America. I mean, there used to be a rally-‘round-the-flag car-company jingle that lauded “baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet.” That’s fine, even though I personally could see the Almighty choosing something sportier, like perhaps James Bond’s Aston Martin. I have no issue with the communal singing of “The Star-Spangled Banner” before the start of each game. It is the national anthem, after all. Besides, the fact that it’s comically hard to sing poses the intriguing specter of disaster for every guest singer tackling it.
But, as I already noted, “God Bless America” is not the national anthem. It’s just another song that brags about the United States. Which we’ve already done at each game’s outset, by singing about how, despite the Brits’ best efforts to defeat us during the War of 1812, our resilient flag survived their cannon volleys and firepower to continue waving o’er “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” After all that bluster, do we really need to belt out a self-serving paean to the beauty of our mountains, prairies and “oceans white with foam,” too?
Then there’s the whole God thing. I love my country, and one of the things I love best about it is that it was founded on the principle of separation of church and state. Not coincidentally, one of the things I like most about our national anthem—aside from the tune’s origin as an English beer hall song, which kills me—is the fact that it mentions a supreme being exactly never. Conversely, it’s my personal belief that the use of religion toward nationalistic ends is one of the biggest underlying causes of strife and misery in the world today. As benign as “God Bless America” may sound to a lot of people, to me, it’s a slippery and well-worn slope from proclaiming that God blesses America to everyone from evangelists to politicians declaring—and inciting other people to believe—that nonbelievers aren’t “real” Americans, and that non-Americans, from Muslim Middle Easterners to secular Europeans, are guilty by theology of being our moral inferiors.
I’m not saying by any stretch that “God Bless America,” in and of itself, is evil, or, for that matter, that Kate Smith, who made it her signature song, didn’t have a helluva set of pipes. What I am saying is, we don’t need to be singing “God Bless America” at baseball games. In fact, my chances of becoming president now being roughly equal to those of Texas Gov. Rick Perry being endorsed by the ACLU, I’ll even add this opinion: “Honoring” the 9/11 dead by declaring that God is on our side (not yours, al Qaeda!) was a mistake on Major League Baseball’s part from the start.
So, let’s review. Thus far in the year-plus I’ve been writing this (obscure but nonetheless Google-able) blog, I’ve come out as an religious agnostic, a pro-choice liberal, a strident advocate of gun control and a harsh critic of the idea of American exceptionalism. If all that hadn’t been enough to ensure I never could win the presidency even with money, skills and a voter base, now I’ve gone ahead and dissed a 9/11-related sacred cow on the virtual eve of that dark event’s 10th anniversary.
You know what else? I’m so completely in the tank for women’s right to choose on abortion that Clinton administration Surgeon General Jocelyn remains one of my heroes for having once stated—and being excoriated for saying—“We need to get over this love affair with the fetus and start worrying about children.” (She also thought masturbation was healthy, and suggested schools consider teaching it. No more trial and error! I love this woman.)
And I’m going to go ahead and this put out there, too: I wouldn’t stop at gun control. I’d campaign on a platform of repealing the Second Amendment and jailing NRA President Wayne LaPierre for life without parole unless he agreed to disarm, disavow private gun ownership and, last but not least, personally lift James Brady out of his wheelchair and kiss his ass.
OK, I think my work here is done. Sorry if I disappointed anyone who was hoping someday to work on my campaign. I still may call on you as a character witness at my future treason trial under President Rick Perry.
Never mind that I have no money, credentials (although history suggests that’s no disqualifier) or constituency. (Lassitude Come Home readers are awesome, but the dozen of you do not, frankly, a “springboard” make.) I’ve concluded that, even if I had those advantages, I’d make past fringe candidacies like those of cult leader Lyndon LaRouche look like comparative juggernauts. My views, you see, make me anathema not only in the red states, but in swing and blue ones, too.
This is something I’ve long known, but it really hit home the other day when I read an article about the upcoming 10-year anniversary of “God Bless America” being sung in major league baseball stadiums. This was a practice instituted in the wake of the 9/11 attacks that continues today, as a manifesto to the terrorists skulking about the hot dog concessionaires (while defiantly boycotting Hebrew National) that Americans will “never forget” that awful day and, with God’s endorsement, will yet kick Muslim extremists’ pajama-covered behinds.
The article noted that, at most ballparks, the song no longer is sung during every home game. In most cities, including Washington, it now precedes “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” before the seventh-inning stretch only on Sundays and select holidays. At Yankee Stadium, however, it’s still sung during every game—New York having been where the Twin Towers fell, true, but the perennially full-of-themselves Yankees also deeming themselves more patriotic than we lesser Americans in other baseball markets. It was Yankees management, after all, who stopped physically preventing fans from leaving their seats during the non-National Anthem only after losing a lawsuit in 2008 that had been filed by an ejected fan. (Who may or may not have been a terrorist.)
Indeed, tomorrow afternoon I’ll be among baseball fans at Nationals Park who will be asked by the public address announcer to rise and sing about how the Deity “shed his grace on thee” (us) and how, thanks to Him, we Americans enjoy “brotherhood from sea to shining sea.” Never mind that we’ll be singing the song as code for “eat our missiles, Allah-lovers.” Then, there’s also the fact that tomorrow the hometown nine will be hosting the Philadelphia Phillies, whose busloads of drunken, xenophobic partisans can be counted on to enforce their own stay-in-your effing-seat policy during that Patriotic Pause.
You may be picking up by my subtle hints that I am not a big supporter of the singing of “God Bless America” during major league baseball games. That is true. And since we’ve already put to rest any thought of my seeking votes for president of this great country, I’ll go ahead and state my reasons.
I understand that baseball is seen by many people as synonymous with America. I mean, there used to be a rally-‘round-the-flag car-company jingle that lauded “baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet.” That’s fine, even though I personally could see the Almighty choosing something sportier, like perhaps James Bond’s Aston Martin. I have no issue with the communal singing of “The Star-Spangled Banner” before the start of each game. It is the national anthem, after all. Besides, the fact that it’s comically hard to sing poses the intriguing specter of disaster for every guest singer tackling it.
But, as I already noted, “God Bless America” is not the national anthem. It’s just another song that brags about the United States. Which we’ve already done at each game’s outset, by singing about how, despite the Brits’ best efforts to defeat us during the War of 1812, our resilient flag survived their cannon volleys and firepower to continue waving o’er “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” After all that bluster, do we really need to belt out a self-serving paean to the beauty of our mountains, prairies and “oceans white with foam,” too?
Then there’s the whole God thing. I love my country, and one of the things I love best about it is that it was founded on the principle of separation of church and state. Not coincidentally, one of the things I like most about our national anthem—aside from the tune’s origin as an English beer hall song, which kills me—is the fact that it mentions a supreme being exactly never. Conversely, it’s my personal belief that the use of religion toward nationalistic ends is one of the biggest underlying causes of strife and misery in the world today. As benign as “God Bless America” may sound to a lot of people, to me, it’s a slippery and well-worn slope from proclaiming that God blesses America to everyone from evangelists to politicians declaring—and inciting other people to believe—that nonbelievers aren’t “real” Americans, and that non-Americans, from Muslim Middle Easterners to secular Europeans, are guilty by theology of being our moral inferiors.
I’m not saying by any stretch that “God Bless America,” in and of itself, is evil, or, for that matter, that Kate Smith, who made it her signature song, didn’t have a helluva set of pipes. What I am saying is, we don’t need to be singing “God Bless America” at baseball games. In fact, my chances of becoming president now being roughly equal to those of Texas Gov. Rick Perry being endorsed by the ACLU, I’ll even add this opinion: “Honoring” the 9/11 dead by declaring that God is on our side (not yours, al Qaeda!) was a mistake on Major League Baseball’s part from the start.
So, let’s review. Thus far in the year-plus I’ve been writing this (obscure but nonetheless Google-able) blog, I’ve come out as an religious agnostic, a pro-choice liberal, a strident advocate of gun control and a harsh critic of the idea of American exceptionalism. If all that hadn’t been enough to ensure I never could win the presidency even with money, skills and a voter base, now I’ve gone ahead and dissed a 9/11-related sacred cow on the virtual eve of that dark event’s 10th anniversary.
You know what else? I’m so completely in the tank for women’s right to choose on abortion that Clinton administration Surgeon General Jocelyn remains one of my heroes for having once stated—and being excoriated for saying—“We need to get over this love affair with the fetus and start worrying about children.” (She also thought masturbation was healthy, and suggested schools consider teaching it. No more trial and error! I love this woman.)
And I’m going to go ahead and this put out there, too: I wouldn’t stop at gun control. I’d campaign on a platform of repealing the Second Amendment and jailing NRA President Wayne LaPierre for life without parole unless he agreed to disarm, disavow private gun ownership and, last but not least, personally lift James Brady out of his wheelchair and kiss his ass.
OK, I think my work here is done. Sorry if I disappointed anyone who was hoping someday to work on my campaign. I still may call on you as a character witness at my future treason trial under President Rick Perry.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Mr. Clean
I finished drying my hand and paused for a moment in front of the sink. I could’ve—maybe should’ve—walked out the door without saying a word. But it seemed like one of those moments in life that demand comment.
“I thought I’d seen it all,” I said. “I guess not.”
No response.
A couple of minutes later, I was upstairs and almost out the door without having uttered another word. But I couldn’t stop myself from walking back down the steps to the mall atrium and seeking out the security guard I’d seen walking around. I did feel conflicted. What I’d seen was inappropriate and disturbing, but was anybody being hurt by it? I didn’t particularly want to get the protagonist in trouble.
But I so wanted to say the words I felt forming behind my lips, and I knew I couldn’t say them to anyone but a law enforcement, or at least a mall enforcement, officer. He was uniformed, of course, and he was of the authority-by-posture school—standing very straight, arms behind his back, eyes scanning.
“Sir,” I reported, “there’s a guy in the bathroom with his pants down, washing his dick and balls.” (I later wished I’d added the word "vigorously," as that would’ve described the situation more precisely and added some descriptive zing.)
Clearly startled, the mall cop said only the words “Thank you” before striding with urgency toward the restrooms. Out on the street a minute later, walking toward my car, I found myself hoping that the guy had completed his testicular hygiene and cinched up his belt by the time the gendarmerie arrived. His jeans still would be wet and perhaps partially lathered, but I didn’t want the guy literally to be caught with his pants down. I hoped the only fallout would be his ejection from the premises. Having accomplished what he’d presumably come to the mall to do, I imagined Mr. Clean of the scrotum scrub would be OK with getting the bum’s rush.
I did wonder what, if anything, the guy would say to the security guard, seeing as how he’d said nothing to me.
Anyway, here, in full, is what I saw and heard.
I have this Saturday-morning routine—not every Saturday morning, but many—where I park my car near Mazza Gallerie in upper Northwest DC at around 7 am, run for an hour in that area of the city, settle in at Chevy Chase Pavilion’s atrium with a Starbucks coffee and a bagel, read the entire Washington Post, and occasionally look up from my table long enough to get annoyed at other people for being preoccupied with portable technologies and speaking in languages I don’t understand. Yesterday, having taken care of all that, I walked down the long hall to the men’s room, knowing from experience that, having drunk a pint of coffee and another pint of water, a good draining would be necessary to keep my running shorts dry until I got home.
In the Chevy Chase Pavilion men’s room, there are two urinals next to the door, and two stalls next to the urinals. In from of the stalls are two sinks with a large mirror in front of them. I entered the room and stationed myself in front of urinal number one, closest to the door. As I let loose, I heard sloshing sounds behind my right shoulder, as if somebody was washing his hands in an incredibly sloppy and loud way.
I glanced over as to see a rather thin, shirtless man energetically massaging his own manhood, which thankfully was obscured by soap lather. The guy was not so much washing his penis as he was drowning it and wringing it out. He was taking handfuls of water from the sink, heedless of how thoroughly it was soaking the denim that was pulled down around his knees. He was kneading his johnson as if were dough and the timekeeper of a Food Network competition had just shouted “10 seconds!”
He paid me no attention, either then or seconds later as I washed up at the adjoining sink. His face was utterly expressionless. He looked straight ahead at the mirror—not at the squeaky-clean wiener he was creating below, nor at the pants that looked like they’d been through a thunderstorm and, weirdly, fire extinguisher spray. I know homeless people (if that even properly described this guy) often wash up in public facilities. I’ve seen that a number of times, in fact. But why the complete focus on the groin? This was entirely unique to my experience.
And I guess that’s one reason I ended up saying what I did. Although it sounded clichéd to me even as it came out of my mouth. And besides, it couldn’t have been less accurate.
“I thought I’d seen everything.” Really?! Because frankly, I don’t kid myself that I’ve seen much of anything. I grew up on a suburban cul-de-sac, I lead an insulated middle-class life, and I’m so poorly traveled that when I hear the world described as a global village I sometimes feel like its sheltered idiot. What I really meant by saying what I did was, “Now, this is something you don’t see every day.” And I’ll bet you don’t regularly see men uninhibitedly and publicly washing their wangs, even in the public bathrooms of Odessa and Khartoum and Soweto and all the other corners of the Earth I’ve never seen. (But I could be wrong.)
But it wasn’t as if I’d expected the guy to stop what he was doing, look me up and down and reply, “Actually, this is part of a Javanese pre-wedding ritual I’d read about in National Geographic.” But I had hoped to elicit some response. Even if it was just, “Fuck off!” Or “What’s it to you, chief?” Or, “Hey, look who’s talking—Mr. Dirty Dick.” For one thing, I wondered what his voice sounded like.
But, as I noted earlier, he said nothing. Maybe he didn’t even speak English. He did look toward me when I spoke, but more through and beyond me that at me. He never stopped scrubbing.
So, I left, and you already know the rest. I hope that man is free and clear of the law today, and feeling good about his state of testicular cleanliness. Unless, that is, his behavior was some strange sideshow to a bent toward sexual predation. In which case I hope my alert got a note added to his record that might someday be to society’s advantage.
Personally, I savored the opportunity to tell another human being, “There’s a guy in the bathroom with his pants down, washing his dick and balls.” It’s certainly something I don’t get a chance to say every day.
“I thought I’d seen it all,” I said. “I guess not.”
No response.
A couple of minutes later, I was upstairs and almost out the door without having uttered another word. But I couldn’t stop myself from walking back down the steps to the mall atrium and seeking out the security guard I’d seen walking around. I did feel conflicted. What I’d seen was inappropriate and disturbing, but was anybody being hurt by it? I didn’t particularly want to get the protagonist in trouble.
But I so wanted to say the words I felt forming behind my lips, and I knew I couldn’t say them to anyone but a law enforcement, or at least a mall enforcement, officer. He was uniformed, of course, and he was of the authority-by-posture school—standing very straight, arms behind his back, eyes scanning.
“Sir,” I reported, “there’s a guy in the bathroom with his pants down, washing his dick and balls.” (I later wished I’d added the word "vigorously," as that would’ve described the situation more precisely and added some descriptive zing.)
Clearly startled, the mall cop said only the words “Thank you” before striding with urgency toward the restrooms. Out on the street a minute later, walking toward my car, I found myself hoping that the guy had completed his testicular hygiene and cinched up his belt by the time the gendarmerie arrived. His jeans still would be wet and perhaps partially lathered, but I didn’t want the guy literally to be caught with his pants down. I hoped the only fallout would be his ejection from the premises. Having accomplished what he’d presumably come to the mall to do, I imagined Mr. Clean of the scrotum scrub would be OK with getting the bum’s rush.
I did wonder what, if anything, the guy would say to the security guard, seeing as how he’d said nothing to me.
Anyway, here, in full, is what I saw and heard.
I have this Saturday-morning routine—not every Saturday morning, but many—where I park my car near Mazza Gallerie in upper Northwest DC at around 7 am, run for an hour in that area of the city, settle in at Chevy Chase Pavilion’s atrium with a Starbucks coffee and a bagel, read the entire Washington Post, and occasionally look up from my table long enough to get annoyed at other people for being preoccupied with portable technologies and speaking in languages I don’t understand. Yesterday, having taken care of all that, I walked down the long hall to the men’s room, knowing from experience that, having drunk a pint of coffee and another pint of water, a good draining would be necessary to keep my running shorts dry until I got home.
In the Chevy Chase Pavilion men’s room, there are two urinals next to the door, and two stalls next to the urinals. In from of the stalls are two sinks with a large mirror in front of them. I entered the room and stationed myself in front of urinal number one, closest to the door. As I let loose, I heard sloshing sounds behind my right shoulder, as if somebody was washing his hands in an incredibly sloppy and loud way.
I glanced over as to see a rather thin, shirtless man energetically massaging his own manhood, which thankfully was obscured by soap lather. The guy was not so much washing his penis as he was drowning it and wringing it out. He was taking handfuls of water from the sink, heedless of how thoroughly it was soaking the denim that was pulled down around his knees. He was kneading his johnson as if were dough and the timekeeper of a Food Network competition had just shouted “10 seconds!”
He paid me no attention, either then or seconds later as I washed up at the adjoining sink. His face was utterly expressionless. He looked straight ahead at the mirror—not at the squeaky-clean wiener he was creating below, nor at the pants that looked like they’d been through a thunderstorm and, weirdly, fire extinguisher spray. I know homeless people (if that even properly described this guy) often wash up in public facilities. I’ve seen that a number of times, in fact. But why the complete focus on the groin? This was entirely unique to my experience.
And I guess that’s one reason I ended up saying what I did. Although it sounded clichéd to me even as it came out of my mouth. And besides, it couldn’t have been less accurate.
“I thought I’d seen everything.” Really?! Because frankly, I don’t kid myself that I’ve seen much of anything. I grew up on a suburban cul-de-sac, I lead an insulated middle-class life, and I’m so poorly traveled that when I hear the world described as a global village I sometimes feel like its sheltered idiot. What I really meant by saying what I did was, “Now, this is something you don’t see every day.” And I’ll bet you don’t regularly see men uninhibitedly and publicly washing their wangs, even in the public bathrooms of Odessa and Khartoum and Soweto and all the other corners of the Earth I’ve never seen. (But I could be wrong.)
But it wasn’t as if I’d expected the guy to stop what he was doing, look me up and down and reply, “Actually, this is part of a Javanese pre-wedding ritual I’d read about in National Geographic.” But I had hoped to elicit some response. Even if it was just, “Fuck off!” Or “What’s it to you, chief?” Or, “Hey, look who’s talking—Mr. Dirty Dick.” For one thing, I wondered what his voice sounded like.
But, as I noted earlier, he said nothing. Maybe he didn’t even speak English. He did look toward me when I spoke, but more through and beyond me that at me. He never stopped scrubbing.
So, I left, and you already know the rest. I hope that man is free and clear of the law today, and feeling good about his state of testicular cleanliness. Unless, that is, his behavior was some strange sideshow to a bent toward sexual predation. In which case I hope my alert got a note added to his record that might someday be to society’s advantage.
Personally, I savored the opportunity to tell another human being, “There’s a guy in the bathroom with his pants down, washing his dick and balls.” It’s certainly something I don’t get a chance to say every day.
Saturday, August 6, 2011
White-Noise Wedding
A recurrent question in the highbrow marital discourse of our household is, “Why don’t you marry it?” As in, “So, if you like X, Y or Z so much, why don’t you marry it?” “It” typically is a foodstuff or an inanimate object. Less frequently the subject is a person, such as an actor who’s the opposite sex of the potential bride or groom. In those cases, “him” or “her” takes the place of “it.”
There’s witty domestic repartee of the type featured in old Hollywood movies, and then there’s the juvenile trash we talk. You may not be shocked to learn that the betrothal question tends to be followed by zingers like, “I would, but I’m already married” or “By God, I think I will!”
So it has been that many times in recent months, during pillow talk before lights out, I’ve fretted to Lynn about the gap since my last post to this blog, and have wondered aloud what the hell I should write about next. We are lying in bed, looking up at the ceiling fan, and Lynn’s thoroughly unhelpful response without fail, is “Why don’t you write about the fan, since you want to marry it.”
Some context. When Lynn goads me to write about those whirling blades that produce breeze, she isn’t specifically referencing our ceiling fan. What she is suggesting I pay tribute to in prose are all the fans in my life. Of which there are several. (Electronic, I mean. Flesh-and-bone, as in “fans of this blog,” perhaps fewer.) In fact, a small box fan is blowing air across my body from its perch on a bookcase to my right at this moment. This is the same fan that typically sits atop a table in our sunroom, delighting and soothing me with its gentle breeze and low white-noise hum while I watch TV on the La-Z Boy chair or read the newspaper on the sofa.
Downstairs, a small oscillating fan—generally set to remain stationary—also pulls two-room duty. That level of our house is a full basement that isn’t air-conditioned. It doesn’t get brutally hot down there, but it’s warm and stuffy in the summer. Thus, my downstairs fan serves as the coolest of friends when I’m pedaling on the stationary bike, or doing crunches, or catching up on my reading in the, um, “library,” let’s say.
At work, too, I have a tiny desk fan I turn on and point toward myself when the sun warms the room but air conditioning isn’t quite necessary. I bought it for, like, $5.99 during an end-of-season sidewalk sale at our neighborhood hardware store. So outsized is the pleasure this diminutive machine brings me—bathing my face in breeze and taking the edge off the aural distractions of the workplace—that I panicked several months ago at the thought of its mortality and ordered a couple of backups online.
Part of my fan-dom stems from the fact that I’ve always been what my parents call a “hotbox.” The etymology of this term is unclear to me, but given the nonsensical image it suggests—of a human being reduced or perhaps melted by heat into a square-shaped mass—and also the fact that my now-elderly parents are the only people I’ve ever heard say the word, I’m prone to think it dates to the era of that silly Mairzy Doats song. Which Google tells me was a big radio hit in 1944. People kept food cold in iceboxes back then, so maybe humans who simply could not be kept cool were known as hotboxes. Who knows? Anyway, what my parents meant, and what I was and still am, is a guy who’s quick to feel overly warm. (Except in the winter, when I’m a real coolbox. But let’s not get off track.) So, one of the two big attractions fans always have held for me is the real, physical comfort they provide.
The other big attraction is that sound. The whir. The steady hum that softens ambient noises and can serve as an enveloping, downy blanket. It’s lulling. It’s peaceful. It can be nearly magical. The sound of a whirring fan takes the heat off me, too, but in a different way than the blowing air does.
Take right now, for example. I like writing this blog, but it’s always a bit stressful trying to string together words that are going to be read and critically assessed by others—even an audience of friends. Yet, with the my fan beside me as I write, cooling my body with its rotating blades and my psyche with its gentle drone, the task seems somehow easier.
Also, sitting on the desk in front of me at this moment is today’s Washington Post. The lead headline is “U.S. Rating Downgraded for the First Time,” a reference to credit, borrowing and the economic mess this country is in. A sidebar heralds a “Minor Bright Spot,” which is that “modest job growth” means “a bit less dread for the economy.” Other front-page stories discuss the implications of financial ruin on President Obama’s reelection, and the fact that his political friends now see the man the Right has caricatured with some success as a Socialist as being, rather, a big wuss and a hapless enabler of the Tea Party.
Furthermore, I know from having read the entire paper earlier today that inside the “A” section are equally cheery articles on the impending Republican presidential candidacy of the astoundingly Neanderthal Texas Governor Rick Perry, the massacre of anti-government protesters in Syria, the near-apocalyptic European debt crisis, and the continued tanking of the Washington Post Co. itself.
It’s a cliché that everything one reads in the news these days is depressing, but it’s pretty much true. In fact, as I see it, the glass that is the planet Earth is way more than half-empty. There may be a less than a mouthful left in there, given the vast number of problems and the dearth of any solutions more visionary than adding apps to SmartPhones to better enable charitable giving to the likes of Greenpeace and Oxfam.
But, you know something? Sitting here in my darkened house—with my sleeping dog in the next room, with cool breeze on my face, and with no sound save the rhapsodic whir of the box fan—everything that’s going on in the world outside my window seems a little less immediate, a bit less frightening.
So, how about that—now I really have written about my love of the fan. I hope Lynn will be happy. But I must confess that, were she and I not already betrothed—and despite my guilt over wasting electric power at a time when energy conservation never was more important—I would be sorely tempted to marry this marvelous bringer of such peace.
There’s witty domestic repartee of the type featured in old Hollywood movies, and then there’s the juvenile trash we talk. You may not be shocked to learn that the betrothal question tends to be followed by zingers like, “I would, but I’m already married” or “By God, I think I will!”
So it has been that many times in recent months, during pillow talk before lights out, I’ve fretted to Lynn about the gap since my last post to this blog, and have wondered aloud what the hell I should write about next. We are lying in bed, looking up at the ceiling fan, and Lynn’s thoroughly unhelpful response without fail, is “Why don’t you write about the fan, since you want to marry it.”
Some context. When Lynn goads me to write about those whirling blades that produce breeze, she isn’t specifically referencing our ceiling fan. What she is suggesting I pay tribute to in prose are all the fans in my life. Of which there are several. (Electronic, I mean. Flesh-and-bone, as in “fans of this blog,” perhaps fewer.) In fact, a small box fan is blowing air across my body from its perch on a bookcase to my right at this moment. This is the same fan that typically sits atop a table in our sunroom, delighting and soothing me with its gentle breeze and low white-noise hum while I watch TV on the La-Z Boy chair or read the newspaper on the sofa.
Downstairs, a small oscillating fan—generally set to remain stationary—also pulls two-room duty. That level of our house is a full basement that isn’t air-conditioned. It doesn’t get brutally hot down there, but it’s warm and stuffy in the summer. Thus, my downstairs fan serves as the coolest of friends when I’m pedaling on the stationary bike, or doing crunches, or catching up on my reading in the, um, “library,” let’s say.
At work, too, I have a tiny desk fan I turn on and point toward myself when the sun warms the room but air conditioning isn’t quite necessary. I bought it for, like, $5.99 during an end-of-season sidewalk sale at our neighborhood hardware store. So outsized is the pleasure this diminutive machine brings me—bathing my face in breeze and taking the edge off the aural distractions of the workplace—that I panicked several months ago at the thought of its mortality and ordered a couple of backups online.
Part of my fan-dom stems from the fact that I’ve always been what my parents call a “hotbox.” The etymology of this term is unclear to me, but given the nonsensical image it suggests—of a human being reduced or perhaps melted by heat into a square-shaped mass—and also the fact that my now-elderly parents are the only people I’ve ever heard say the word, I’m prone to think it dates to the era of that silly Mairzy Doats song. Which Google tells me was a big radio hit in 1944. People kept food cold in iceboxes back then, so maybe humans who simply could not be kept cool were known as hotboxes. Who knows? Anyway, what my parents meant, and what I was and still am, is a guy who’s quick to feel overly warm. (Except in the winter, when I’m a real coolbox. But let’s not get off track.) So, one of the two big attractions fans always have held for me is the real, physical comfort they provide.
The other big attraction is that sound. The whir. The steady hum that softens ambient noises and can serve as an enveloping, downy blanket. It’s lulling. It’s peaceful. It can be nearly magical. The sound of a whirring fan takes the heat off me, too, but in a different way than the blowing air does.
Take right now, for example. I like writing this blog, but it’s always a bit stressful trying to string together words that are going to be read and critically assessed by others—even an audience of friends. Yet, with the my fan beside me as I write, cooling my body with its rotating blades and my psyche with its gentle drone, the task seems somehow easier.
Also, sitting on the desk in front of me at this moment is today’s Washington Post. The lead headline is “U.S. Rating Downgraded for the First Time,” a reference to credit, borrowing and the economic mess this country is in. A sidebar heralds a “Minor Bright Spot,” which is that “modest job growth” means “a bit less dread for the economy.” Other front-page stories discuss the implications of financial ruin on President Obama’s reelection, and the fact that his political friends now see the man the Right has caricatured with some success as a Socialist as being, rather, a big wuss and a hapless enabler of the Tea Party.
Furthermore, I know from having read the entire paper earlier today that inside the “A” section are equally cheery articles on the impending Republican presidential candidacy of the astoundingly Neanderthal Texas Governor Rick Perry, the massacre of anti-government protesters in Syria, the near-apocalyptic European debt crisis, and the continued tanking of the Washington Post Co. itself.
It’s a cliché that everything one reads in the news these days is depressing, but it’s pretty much true. In fact, as I see it, the glass that is the planet Earth is way more than half-empty. There may be a less than a mouthful left in there, given the vast number of problems and the dearth of any solutions more visionary than adding apps to SmartPhones to better enable charitable giving to the likes of Greenpeace and Oxfam.
But, you know something? Sitting here in my darkened house—with my sleeping dog in the next room, with cool breeze on my face, and with no sound save the rhapsodic whir of the box fan—everything that’s going on in the world outside my window seems a little less immediate, a bit less frightening.
So, how about that—now I really have written about my love of the fan. I hope Lynn will be happy. But I must confess that, were she and I not already betrothed—and despite my guilt over wasting electric power at a time when energy conservation never was more important—I would be sorely tempted to marry this marvelous bringer of such peace.
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