The (last) Amend (Bloodhound Blog)
The Notion
In my dream I’m always gasping for air; as if the trillion or so cubic inches of ozone I’ve already blown through in my lifetime somehow counts for nothing. I awake, step over the dog, and scramble downstairs in my boxers in search of a physical remedy to a metaphysical dilemma. Something is bothering me and I can’t quite place my finger on it. Life is short and, on this crisp autumn eve, I’m clearly too underdressed to even be considering my last breath. Our fifteen-year old cat follows close behind, his own mousy demons no doubt, in tow as well.
‘Dear God, please don’t let me die with money in my portion of the Charles Schwab account,’ I think as I root through the herbal medicine cabinet, next to the dishes, above the microwave. ‘That’s what the Prudential life insurance policy in the house safe is for,’ I obsess. It’s an odd recurring thought, I realize. Just being forthcoming.
We keep no real drugs in our house.
Ginkgo Biloba, Paranil, Senna, Licorice Root. Green Tea, White Tea, Black Tea…where the fck is the Alka Seltzer?
Over the years I’ve developed an internal ON/OFF switch of sorts; a requirement for any man whose livelihood simultaneously hinges on rejection yet somehow also depends on the act of a total stranger purchasing something of considerable value; house, condo, etc…. every month. It’s an Acceptance thing, I’ve learned. This emotional circuit breaker has, for a long time, assisted me in affairs of the heart, finance, most of the Deadly Sins—Fear, Greed, Anger, etc… not to mention social and personal guilt. And in case you haven’t been following the box scores at home this season, I’ve been in the OFF mode for a while now.
thankyouverymuchhaveanicedaybiteme….next
Over time I’ve learned to appreciate the next ‘Next‘ in life—I just haven’t learned not to eat Mexican food before retiring for the evening or found a way to avoid the night scares that have startled me ever since that stupid monster began squatting in my childhood closet at 39 Vineyard Road in Levittown. And as my Life flickers before me this particular night, I wonder:
‘What to do with the lingering wreckage of my Past?’
Just as my faithful canine companion would rather bark at intruders from inside the picture window when it’s chilly outside, I too, prefer to write a quick note or better yet, cower behind electronic messaging for all breaking news, good and bad, anymore. Even my foxhole prayers begin with OMG these days. I’ve become shrinkwrapped into a Twitter mentality, 140 characters at a time. If I feel any emotion at all I toss in an exclamation point or two. Even Facebook is becoming a burden. I don’t even call it Facebook anymore. I call it FB. OMG. WTF…is @ 2 me?!! Critical mass approaches as my social network expands and my personal circle contracts….
But I mentally carve deeper and in a brief moment of clarity, it hits me as I hover over the sink swirling the midnight elixir in a half washed coffee mug, old as hell goddamn cat on the counter beside me. I tip-toe into my office, dig out some dusty boxes, and begin tearing through decades of loose leaf pulp in search of a single folded sheet.
An hour later it is in my hand. I examine the inky yellow page beneath the reading light on my desk. The Amends. One unchecked-off task remains although the list is from another millenium altogether. A previous Life, to be sure.
I walk back into the kitchen and toast the harvest moon through the window. I boil some water for a final cup of Sleepytime and snoop through the fridge for a quick nibble. The cold white light is blinding—Soy this, 1% that, Non Fat everything else. Yogurt? I think not. Flax seed, Organic, Antioxidant…my wife is clearly trying to torture me into good health.
And, like most things in Life that have challenged me since those early monster days in (bucolic by name only) Violetwood, once I let the problem go, the solution appears on its own…
The Reunion
I step off the commuter jet in Pittsburgh and walk across the terminal to Avis. The girl behind the counter thinks I’m ancient, I’m certain.
“What brings you to Pittsburgh today, sir?” She asks.
“Class Reunion,” Me.
“High School?” Her.
“College,” Me.
“Pitt?” Her.
“No. Slippery Rock….” Me.
Silence, as always, follows. Two underachievers, we stand an arms length and several generations apart, avoiding eye contact.
“…I’ve owed someone $100 for almost thirty years and I’m going to repay my debt today…” Me.
“…then reunite with some old friends.” Me still.
More silence. Silence and Judgement, I sense. I’m being judged by a rental car clerk in Pittsburgh.
OFF.
“You reserved a Chevy Malibu?” Finally, Her.
My wife always makes my travel arrangements so alas, a sensible Mid-Size American ride awaits my AMEX imprint. I immediately upgrade to a Cadillac, confirming I guess, that I am indeed… old. We’ve been doing this for years. Mona has yet to ever rent me a car I’d actually be seen driving in real life and I always end up getting a Caddy because they don’t rent German cars in this country for what-ev…..
I exit the airport complex and drive north for an hour, texting on my iPhone and fumbling with the satellite radio the entire way. I push On-Star by accident twice. The third time they inform me I’m being charged. Bite me. Besides the makes and models of vehicles cruising in either direction along I-79 (and the daunt figure that keeps staring back at me in the vanity mirror on my visor), Western Pennsylvania hasn’t changed at all in three decades.
I pull into my old college town as the Homecoming Parade disassembles. As Fate, I suppose, would have it, I find a parking spot directly in front of the Camelot Restaurant. There is a line out to the sidewalk. A hand painted banner hangs from above the awning:
Everyday. 99 cent Breakfast.
Nothing has changed. I ate a hundred of these meals for free thirty years ago and then left town without paying the tab. What a schmuck. I step inside and push through the crowd into the kitchen. The interior has remained stagnant over the years. The aroma of burnt, bottemless coffee fills a crease in my mind. An old man is hunched over the griddle frying a dozen eggs at a time. An old woman stands beside him slinging potato hash onto chipped plates.
“I’m looking for Gary,” Me.
“I’m Gary,” Him.
I stare back at a gray ghost of the man in my memories. I hand him the one- hundred dollar bill already in my fingertips.
“I’ve owed you this for thirty years?” Me.
“What?” Him. A little miffed. He doesn’t stop cooking.
Hey, I’m not in the mood for perturbation on this day; not when I’m attempting to make a grandiose gesture. I just want to get a good night’s sleep, for crissakes. I continue…
“I’m Geno. I ran up a tab here when I was in Grad School and left town without paying. It always bothered me.” Me. (white lie)
“I don’t remember you,” Him.
“I was an actor. Streetcar, Equus, Hot L Baltimore. And a writer. I had a little column in the Tri-City News…. Geno…remember? You let me eat here free for like a year…” Me.
“Whatever. I don’t remember. Amateur theater around here has never been very memorable.” Him.
“Well I wanted to make good on my debt.” Me, also a little miffed now as well but it’s too late to slip the bill back into my pocket.
“Whatever.” Him.
I place the C-note next to a toaster.
“I remember him,” The old woman. But she doesn’t elaborate. No need to I suppose. Yet another disappointed woman to add to yet another unresolved list. Not.
I turn and head off to the reunion hoping that my reception there is a little warmer and wondering if there is a Starbucks anywhere in the tri-county area. Ironic… I never had a buck for a plate of eggs thirty years ago but I’m quick to drop a five spot on a decent cup of coffee in a heartbeat today. I pull a Green Tea capsule from my coat pocket and swallow it instead. WTF…
I stroll down the Main Street (actual name) of my Bohemian years and stop in front of an ATM. I check my balance and withdraw the maximum daily limit just in case I suddenly kick the bucket as I make this final turn in Life with no intention of ever looking back. After all, they say an unrealized expectation leads to a Resentment. And holding on to a Resentment is pretty much like drinking the poison and waiting for the other person to die. Don’t you think?
The Old Dog In Me (Bloodhound Blog)
In dog years I’m pushing 8; city dog 8, not country dog 8. I like a crisp biscuit in the morning and a nice can of food with an ice cube in my water at night. I enjoy a leisurely stroll through the neighborhood and don’t really care to muddy my feet in the parkway or venture too close to the curb anymore. Not sure what I’d do if I had to rely on chasing rabbits for food or stray bitches for frolic. If I want to press my point, I piss in the bushes. At the end of a long dog day, I retire to my own bed where the cool sheets calm my simple soul and pull me into a dreamland of temporal puppy moments.
I stopped barking at the mailman years ago when I realized that he was merely the messenger. I stopped chasing cars when the reality of an $800 per month payment finally stung me on the snout. I’ve learned to separate unconditional love from raw, base instincts. I stopped humping legs for no good reason.
As a man…I will always be some sort of a dog, I am told. The most I can hope for is to be the best dog I can humanly be. At the very end of the run I wouldn’t mind if my epitaph, carved into the side of a red Arizona mountain, read something like: ‘Here lies the ashes of Geno Petro. He was a very good dog although his bite was much worse than his bark…’ Something like that.
True Story (Active Rain)
True Story. I sat next to a one-armed girl in typing class back in the 8th grade who blew everyone away on a WPM basis. I forget the girl’s name now although our surnames must have been similar (alphabetical seating, and all), but I do recall that she was the fastest typist in the school. That fact was well broadcasted and she received constant praise from the Faculty of Secretarial Curriculum. (My personal handicap was in the form of mild hallucinogens and I, too, was graded accordingly I suspect.) Thinking back I guess maybe she had two arms but only one hand. I can’t say for certain. I tried not to look too closely but I do remember the way she returned the carriage with her left elbow at the end of each line or paragraph.. So yes…two arms, two elbows, one hand. I’m pretty sure
Ironically, I would later in life lose most of my hair (to absolutely no praise or acclaim) and the majority of sight in one eye (drinking accident), and come to understand how one adapts to such curveballs Fate hurls ones way. Anyway, the result was I became among the worst typists in the grade–me and everyone else that didn’t sign up for the class to begin with, although I wasn’t given that choice. As you might suppose, most of the guys who enrolled in Intro To Typing did so because of the obvious high ‘girl to boy’ ratios in such classes. Mine was just a bad handwriting issue and a mandate from my Guidance Counselor. Typewriters were ‘the way of the future,’ I was told. I didn’t buy it, though. One armed girl or not, I hedged my bets and went in the opposite direction saving up my paper route money for something called a calculator. And even though they were $200 at the time for the simplest model, it was my only hope of getting through four more years of Math. I eventually bought a guitar instead and graduated in the bottom third of the class with all the other smart alecs.
So, I didn’t become a rock star because of the hair loss issue (although I understand the drummer of Def Leppard has only one arm and one leg), a pilot because of the bad eye, an architect because of low Math IQ or a writer because of horrible handwriting and equally bad typing skills. And as luck would have it, typewriters were not the ‘way of the future,’ but computers were, leaving me on the sidelines in about every way imaginable from a career standpoint. Ultimately, I sold Insurance for a living until I was 40.
Add on another 10 years in the Real Estate arena and the mercurial cycle of life completed yet another revolution and landed me back to where I was in 1969–in front of a keyboard with a lot to say and only two fingers with which to say it. At this stage of the life game I would almost gladly give up a hand–or even a hand plus an elbow (no return carriages necessary on a laptop) to be able to spill out a couple hundred volumes of work at a 120WPM. There are not only Real Estate related blog posts floating around this shiny dome of mine, but novels, short stories, essays, and screenplays, as well–or so I imagine as I peck away in earnest trying to complete a sentence before I forget the driving thought. As a result, I am seriously considering enrolling in an adult typing class just to help extract these ideas from my brain to the screen via my fingertips in a speedier manner. It certainly couldn’t hurt
I met a one-armed man on a cruise a few years back. Sat next to him in a whirlpool almost everyday on the pool deck as we cruised the Caribbean at Christmas for the umpteenth time each, it turned out—St Maartens, St. Kitts, who cares. Anywhere but the Midwest in December, is my credo. His too.
“Let the wives shop and we’ll just get a tan on whatever is left of our aging bodies,” my new friend said one morning, including me some way in his own personal quagmire of physical shortcomings. He probably meant the hair, come to think of it, or perhaps it was the slight limp from an old high school football injury that pops up every so often. He sold cars in Detroit. Judging from the gold Rolex on his remaining wrist he seemed to be doing pretty well for himself. I can only hope that my junior high school typing companion found a similar route to success in her life—or at the very least, simple happiness and a decent computer programming career.
A Sailor Jerry Moment (Bloodhound Blog)
The base anticipation that precedes any journey to a new destination is always more vivid for me than the denouement that accompanies the physical descent to earth. With rare exception (perhaps Paris and maybe Vegas), the image I conjure up in my two dimensional mind beforehand always seems to fall somewhat short of the real 3-D deal. On our first trip to Maui, for example, my notion of grass huts and Woody Wagons clamped with surfboards was quickly dashed the moment I spotted a Costco and a Wal-Mart just steps from the arrival terminal. It was raining ukuleles that day and the lone, Port Authority hula dancer was, how shall I say… Samoan? I was expecting something a bit more, I don’t know….svelte?; like the subject of one of those Sailor Jerry tattoos I threaten to get stenciled across my chest every 120 lunar cycles or so—-pure 1950’s South Pacific paradise-of-the-mind stuff. I think we bought our own leis for 8 bucks each at the gift shop, rented a Taurus from Avis, and called it a day.
And it’s not just Hawaii. The same holds true for Jamaica—or as I like to call it, The Bangladesh of the Caribbean, with its human squalor, smelly ceviche, and over-abundance of muddy water. Even the Antiquarium in Boscoreale, Italy, beneath the shadows of a nearby looming housing project, is sequestered by a string of barbed wire and discarded heroin needles. Not that I don’t enjoy myself abroad, mind you. I’m an enthusiastic traveler, to be sure. The foreign landscapes that ultimately unfold just never fully mesh with the spatial images dancing around in my head before touch down.
Alaska was pretty spot-on but to be honest, I wasn’t expecting too much from that particular latitude. And while I did not get a tattoo while docked in the port of Juneau, I was presented with a shiny new Rolex Datejust in our cruise ship cabin later that evening. Since I’m clearly never retiring from anywhere, my wife decided to give me my ceremonial timepiece a few decades early— for my 50th birthday. Just so you know, the name MONA, is tattooed on my left bicep. (It was only erased and changed to MOM once, and then back again to MONA as quickly as possible but as I often tell whoever will listen—that’s another story for another weekend writer’s block.) I’ve long since admitted to God, to myself, and to at least one other expatriot on foreign soil, that I should have re-thought that whole laser/erase/redo episode beforehand. So what if the Rolex is stainless steel and not gold. I’m just assuming its not a fugazi.
I’ve owned 20 different vehicles and a half dozen dwellings in my 30+ years as an adult—each one, a little disappointing in its own way; wrong model, too small an engine, obstructed view, wrong city. Never ‘Sailor Jerry’ perfect like those carefree models on the vintage posters—forever young and beautiful. Never what one thinks a tattoo is going to be before the alcohol wears off, the flesh begins to rip, and the ink sets in for good. This causes me to think of the elder men who have preceded me in this life as I ponder their own indelible whims.
My Uncle Zip never did move back to Hawaii after World War II, or own a brand new Coupe De Ville like he said he one day would, or meet Frank Sinatra in person (Vic Damone or Buddy Greco either, for that matter). But every speck of his being, from here to eternity, let everyone within swinging distance know that these were items on his personal bucket list. In my uncle’s case, the dream itself seemed to suffice in lieu of the destination or even the journey. When the old Navy dog finally did make his final pilgrimage back to the Big Island much later in life he would, too, find his black sand paradise covered beneath a sheet of rain and asphalt. He died in Levittown, Pennsylvania with a rusting Dodge Polara in the driveway.
And as I now recall my own father, a soul whose passing is still within clear sight, I’m certain he would have preferred to spend his final years gazing at egrets and herons through binoculars from an Adirondack chair in Cape May, New Jersey; much more so, I think, than being held hostage by the Fox News Network and ESPN via his north Philadelphia blue leather recliner while fretting over the pink ink of his Wachovia accounts. Think about it—a man can probably die wherever he wishes with some proper planning, enough dough, and a little luck. He just needs a willing spouse to help move things along. That’s all.
Truthfully though, I don’t give this all too much thought. I see little use in being disappointed in something as anti-climatic as my journey to the After Life. Obsessions, like tattoos, begin to fade after so many years in the sun. But you must admit, those four-color brochures that the Seventh Day Adventists leave on the front porch every summer do catch your cosmic eye—like a Sailor Jerry classic. In Paradise. ‘Forever.’ On a deep six holiday.
The Life (Bloodhound Blog)
I know a guy who makes stupid money. He doesn’t even call it money. He calls it trump.
“I make sick trump,” he once told me. (Stupid money.)
“I have a Hot Mess at home,” he continued. “And she’s sick, too.” (An attractive girlfriend with a drinking problem.)
“It’s ill.” (Troubling.)
According to this guy, a derivatives trader at the Chicago Merc, if you don’t make 30/40 (million per year) you’re not a Whale. (A sick big spender with a lot of trump and at least one Hot Mess at at least one sick home.)
“30/40 is the magic number. You can buy all the whores in Sin City with that kind of trump.” (Duh. Even I figured that and I don’t really have a head for math.)
Not surprisingly, he met his own Hot Mess at the Paris Las Vegas. They were doing ice block Southern Comfort shots (don’t ask) together at a Whale’s private party and decided to hook up for the near, if not immediate, domestic future. He shipped her and her Two Brats back east to Chicago. This guy trades farm futures so I would imagine he knew what he was getting into. Although not risk aversive, he has assured me on more than one occasion that he is not yet a Whale. He’s more than a Chump certainly, but definitely not a Whale.
A Chump is a million dollar a year guy. You are either a Chump, a Whale, or Bank in his world (The Life). Bank trumps Whale. Then Chump. Everyone else is Home Depot. Wonderful.
“No offense,” he tells me, “but the average Joe Home Depot in this country is living paycheck to paycheck. They couldn’t care less when the market goes apeshit. (Apeshit means apeshit. Think about it.) They squawk like they do care but they got no real skin in the game. Bullshit 401K pennies maybe. They got no trump. Joe Home Depot can always find another Home Depot with matching funds to bag nails and pay the bills. A Chump, however, is ruined in an apeshit scenario. The Life is over for him. I know of at least 20 guys at Lehman who lost everything. No bonuses. No job. Eliminated. Home Depot.” He slices his own throat ear to ear with his index finger. A secret trading sign for something scary, no doubt.
I met this guy at an open house last year. He walked through the door, looked around and declared, ‘I may buy this.’ It was 1.7 million at the time. Every few months he’d amble back by to chew the fat with me on Sundays and see if the price came down at all. It always did. He eventually bought something down the street on a short sale from some unlucky Chump he knew from the Merc. He dropped in again last weekend. I’m now listed at $1,450,000, 424 days on the market.
“You still got this Talking Moose?” he asks. (A big, unsold energy sucking McMansion.)
“Yeah,” I say. “You still in The Life?”
“Oh yeah,” says he. “It’s apeshit.”
I look at him and wonder what it is like to make enough money to buy my own house (of which I have 29 years left on a 30 year mortgage) for cash each and every month. He always wears a Bears football jersey or a Cubs T-shirt. He always has a baseball cap on and running shoes. He’s fat. He’s rich. He’s 20 years younger than me. He’s always just coming back from Vegas.
“My Hot Mess tried to burn the house down last week so I flew her ass and her Two Brats back home.” I wonder if they all went First Class or if he made the Mess and her Brats torture each other (and everyone around them) back in Coach?
“Ann Taylor fired her for insubordination and she went apeshit.” I silently question why such a place would even hire her in the first place. I picture Courtney Love, whiskey breathed and all viked up (Vicodin), selling plaid skirts to grandmothers. (Or is that Talbots?)
“She was making French Toast and lost it over the Viking,” he says sadly. He misses the drama, I can tell.
“That’s a metaphor,” I say to him. “Paris burning.” He just looks at me. He doesn’t know what a metaphor is. He thinks in algorythms. That’s why he’s rich and I publish to thin air.
“Yeah, ” he finally agrees. “She’s definitely a beast.” Close enough.
After he leaves the open house (my only visitor) I walk into the bathroom, one of 4.5 in my big Talking unsold Moose, and study myself in the mirror before closing up for the day. A fairly happy man looks back at me. I think about lying under a huge carved block of ice and gulping brain freeze shots of sickening sweet liquor as it somehow makes its way from top to bottom. I haven’t had a stiff drink in a decade but I instantly gag at the syrupy thought. I think about the last time I went to Vegas, four years ago now, spending thousands and smoking the maximum amount of cigarettes a human being can intake in a row for 3 days straight before exiting the air conditioned marble morgue into the 115 degree white hot glare, leaving a half-full pack of Marlboro Lights in a planter at the Bellagio, quitting for good once and for all. With a majority of the Deadly Sins now out of my life I only occasionally grapple with Envy. Envy and perhaps Greed. I think of all the whores in Vegas (how many could there possibly be?) and whether or not any of them saved a spot for my Sunday buddy’s Hot drunken Mess and her Two Brats. For some reason, the notion of Lust doesn’t cross my mind, that Deadly Sin fairly well under control anymore. It’s the trump that dominates my thoughts this day. That sick, sick trump and where it all goes when the market goes apeshit…
Mangiare! Morte! Mangiare! (Bloodhound Blog)
“You aren’t supposed to be smiling at a funeral,” my niece whispered out of the corner of her mouth as she sat between me and her older sister in the first row of Salon A. The three of us stared straight ahead studying the grim subject before us; our beloved Pop Pop Gene. My tiny mother sat slumped in a wing-backed receiving line chair just to the side of the casket; my youngest sister, kneeling beside her on one knee, patted her slightly shaking hand.
I peeked over to my right. A chestnut shock of hair hung over half of the child’s face as she silently reprimanded me. Suddenly moonstruck, I realized how both young girls looked just as their mother did at that same mysterious age—prime numbered Eleven. Picasso beauties, all three of them. I couldn’t help but smile even on this, the saddest of all wakeful occasions.
We Italianos, besides wearing a lot of black, don’t mourn so much as think about food during times of great sorrow. Ironically, we fill our stomachs with the very fatty pabulum that slowly kills us in the first place. Mangiare! Morte! Mangiare! Too many cheese raviolis spoil the life span. According to the heart surgeon, who admittedly did all he that could, my father had 95% blockages in every artery. We are told he never made it past the initial catheterization. I looked around the room and wondered if everyone was as hungry as me. The pang soon passed as I once again embraced the still, silent gravity of the moment.
I slipped my iPhone out of the breast pocket of my suit jacket and clicked on the Notes icon. The screen lit up the entire front row. I scrolled down to a page I had earlier tagged ‘Cheat Sheet’ and quickly reviewed the names of each of my 20+ first cousins and their respective spouses (both alive and deceased), children, and significant others as well as my parents’ immediate neighbors, long ago retired co-workers, and dearest remaining friends. Anyone beyond that realm of entitled preparation would receive a simple and gracious “Thank you so much for coming.” I do a similar thing at weddings and Christmas parties. At age 52, my memory is clearly shot.
There are at least six variations Michael in our hyper-extended family; Mike, Mikey, Mickey, etc and nearly as many Johns and Johnnys. There are also a couple of Judys and more than a few versions of Elizabeth; Liz, Mary Beth, Mary Elizabeth, et al. The most beloved of these are committed to perpetual and everlasting memory. Everyone else is on the List.
“Put your phone away,” my niece whispered loud enough for everyone but my mother (and possibly father) to hear—and to be fair, my mother never hears anything. I rose up from my chair and scurried into a private room reserved for Immediate Family to quickly review the names: John and Sandy, Ricky and Debbie, Judy and Mike, Monica and Mike, Elaine and Mike (Oops, divorced… I think. Maybe not. Or was it just an affair?… I think. Maybe not. Everyone got so fat I guess it doesn’t really matter anymore), Andrea and Mike (did they ever marry?) Wait… more than a few of these people have passed on themselves. I needed to make a separate List just for the dearly departed. Note… to… self…
I was starving. I looked around the chintz and mahogany room. There was nothing to eat but wrapped breath mints and ice cubes from the pewter ice bucket. I picked up a stack of St. Jude prayer cards and fought back the tears as I read my father’s printed name on the back. I put three of them into my pocket and popped a breath mint. Smoking a cigarette seemed like a good idea for the first time in years but I refrained (although I was pretty sure at least one of the ‘Mikes’ smoked my old brand).
My father was wearing his best Brooks Brothers suit and a Hermes tie my wife Mona bought him for his 80th birthday. Everyone said he looked great but I’m not even sure what that means. I could barely focus. My sister, up on both feet by now, took a small bottle from our mother’s purse, walked over to the casket, and made sure the parlor attendant dabbed a splash of cologne on Pop Pop’s lapel. A Knights of Columbus 4th Degree Honor Guard volunteer stood at swaying attention to the left. My other sister insists she saw him take a couple nips when he thought no one was looking but then again, she needed a drink right about then as much as I needed a bowl of mussels, linguine, and a half-loaf of stiff Italian bread. Guests began to arrive and we ‘meeted and greeted’ for what seemed like the remainder of Eternity. Time seemed to stop for all of us, including our father who art….
Toward the end of the night I fought off the sorrow, ignored the lingering hunger, and vowed to improve my life in all areas–not the least of which being what I shove down my throat. Alone on a sofa in the Mens Lounge of the funeral home, I typed the following into the Lose it! application on my iPhone: Tasty Slim Fast in the morning; A cracker for lunch; A sensible carrot stick for dinner. (I would ultimately blow my diet in First Class on my trip back to Chicago. Those damn…hot…nuts…) My father’s son in more ways than one, I love anything salty, crunchy, sweet, or spicy. Again, I fought back the tears….
As the remaining family members said our goodbyes beneath the mercury lights of the parking lot I leaned down and whispered into my young niece’s ear. The shock of hair still covered one beautiful blue eye. The other, pure sapphire under the moon and mercury, gleamed back at me.
“I always think about food when I’m sad.” Her pretty little mouth flashed the faintest of smiles—a quarter turn upward, as she hugged me goodbye. “And just so you know,” I continued as her older sister left her own mother’s side and joined our personal embrace…. ”I always smile when I cry.” But I really don’t.
Mother Nature is not a MILF (Bloodhound Blog)
Now the hard part—fabricating an essay that somehow pertains to real estate and ties in with the above catchy title; one that popped into my head while hydroplaning through a stop sign in a downpour earlier this month. At the next red light I quickly texted the lofty thought to myself expecting to come up with an accompanying point (and several hundred additional words) once I made it safely back to my desk—my writing desk that is. Not my selling desk. I have a separate hard, cluttered surface for each, you see.
More accurately, what I’ve set up are creative stations for each side of my brain; right brain/writing desk, left brain/selling desk. And it’s not hard to tell when I’m performing the wrong creative duty at the wrong desk, either; I basically suck at whichever task is at hand, I’m always running behind schedule, and I don’t make any money. Anyway, that Mother Nature idea was almost three weeks ago.
So tonight I was reading Jeff Brown’s latest post (and most of the 100 or so comments that were bound to ensue) when finally, the ideal segue hit me. Transparency! Why not try and give that clear concept a whack myself since, as hard as I tried to think of a comment to insert, I had nothing intelligent to add to Mr Brown’s already lengthy thread. Perhaps instead, I could unveil a few secrets of my own that the BawldGuy might feel are nobody’s fiscal business. Actually, I agree with him (and his grandparents) on this one but I happen to be sitting at my selling desk in boxer shorts now so…. down they come. Ah transparency.
* In 2006 I earned more income selling real estate than the combined government salaries of the Vice President of the United States and a typical City of Chicago Streets and Sanitation worker on the ‘no show’ payroll.
* Last year, according to the cover of Parade Magazine, I basically matched dollar for dollar with the average preschool teaching assistant in Youngstown, Ohio (Fail perhaps, but not quite Perish).
* So far this selling season, I’m keeping signing bonus pace with the two lowest paid relief pitchers on the Cubs roster who have but one Save between them. That’s only one Save more than me and I don’t even play baseball. Still, it beats the hell out of singing Barney songs to kindergarteners and cleaning up spilt milk…in Ohio.
* I’m yet to directly make a nickel writing anything in any year, sing-along session, or administration.
* Sometimes I imagine a cute saying or vivid scene, edit the content for profanity and blue imagery, QWERTY it into the Notes page of my iPhone then blog about it later, generally at my writing desk. I try very hard to keep at least an element of truth in these sorts of writings. If the piece winds up getting too far out there then I just stuff it full of keywords and hyperlinks and post it on Active Rain instead.
* Other times, the event actually does unfold before my very eyes which immediately hurls me into multi-talkxting mode (simultaneously talking with one person, texting another, and drinking a caffeinated beverage while operating a motor vehicle). This is always about the time I accidently drop my iPhone in one puddle or another.
* The rest of the time I just wait for Saturday evening to arrive and, if I haven’t dozed off in a corner somewhere, log onto my Bloodhound WordPress account and try to slip a semi-polished post past a couple of the sleeping big dogs before midnight. If I’ve had enough coffee throughout the week, it generally writes itself.
This morning in the shower a new title popped into my head. The New York Nicks: a story of two cooks, both named Nicholas, who work at a Greek restaurant during the day and play in a Staten Island garage band at night. How I’ll ever find a way to make that notion somehow pertain to real estate, I haven’t a clue. But then again, Mother Nature is not a MILF took since May 12th to end up here.
Geno’s Wrong {bang a gong} (Bloodhound Blog)
I’ve heard tell that a baby’s first post-partum sensation is a visceral experience of himself and his mother as One. Thus, being too new in Life to yet separate himself from the outside world, little baby Geno mentally concludes mommy and he are the exact same entity. And when the light bulb finally does go off in the infant’s bald little noggin a few months down the lifeline and he realizes he’s been maternally duped by Nature, the very first ‘Separation Anxiety’ is then experienced and all future disappointments in his ensuing mortal journey can be traced back to that very instant. That’s what I’ve heard, anyway. Either that or I dreamt it in one of my other, more enlightened lives when I wasn’t so monetarily attached to my livelihood.
I’ve also read somewhere that when one person moves to thumb down, and snap the mutual wishbone, ending a personal or business relationship abruptly, that the mental decision was made long before the actual ax hit the proverbial turkey’s neck; that the severing party (axer) grieving period had already begun long before fatal action was actually taken and thus, comes off as being the more ‘heartless’ of the separated duo. The turkey (axee), on the other hand, is cast immediately into a state of shock and is forced to run around ‘headless’ and very quickly come to terms with his own extremely short future as a team member in this world. Somewhere between these first two paragraphs lies my point (allow me a few moments to dig it out as I simultaneously fret over a handful of my difficult Listings with a combined market time of almost 3 years) but I can tell you right now; headless, heartless, whatever…I’d rather be the axer than the axee.
I thought about this quite a bit as I escaped the silent treatment market torture in Chicago and flew home to visit with my 80 year old parents over Easter weekend. As I walked through their front door I was instantly greeted by a lifetime of childhood reminders, familiar tastes and nearly forgotten episodes. I sat there for hours keeping company with the two people I’ve known longer than any two souls on this earth, wondering where all the time went. I told them I felt so different lately, with barely a speck of child left in my psyche. They told me I’m exactly the same, “minus the hair loss, of course.”
“You’re just getting old, that’s all,” my father said. “Look at me. I’m shrinking.”
I had been. I tried to match the face with the man who taught me to throw a baseball and swing a golf club but no results were immediately found. Ironically, my parents’ house is full of framed images of people and events that no longer look familiar.
I barely resemble the portraits on the walls; a series of thickly brushed oils on canvas my mother had me pose for on those long past Sunday afternoons, many years ago. It was her Artist period and I, being her favorite willing subject, was always quick to oblige. After all, I think I used to think she was me. I turned to my dad sitting in his arm chair and caught a glimpse of myself a few, short decades from now, when I am no longer the apple, but the tree. We share many of the same physical features; to the point that the very oldest of my remaining relatives often times confused me with him as a younger man, during similar visits.
“So you’re back from the Korean War, Genie?” I was asked once by a 103 year old great aunt who refused to wear her hearing aids for vanity purposes. I was 22 and the year was 1978.
“Yeah,” I replied, speaking for the old man back home. “It sucked.”
“That’s a nice.”
****************
I sat in the living room, staring at my own framed images, mentally calculating the miles and re-mapping all those thousands of routes that landed me on that plaid, woven davenport in Northeast Philadelphia at that very moment. ”How’s business?” my Dad asked. But before I could answer untruthfully he asked me if I wanted to finish a crossword puzzle he was stuck on, motioning his clipboard with a hundred other unfinished cut out puzzles from the Philadlphia Inquirer brain teaser section, my way. And then if ‘I wanted a soda from the fridge?’ And if ‘I was hungry?’ My mother immediately jumped up to make me a sandwich although we had finished a lunch of sandwiches only an hour or two before.
“Geno’s hungry, Mitz,” he declared, trying to figure out a four letter name for a band member of U2, still clutching on to the proffered grid of letters and blank boxes, not quite ready to throw in the towel.
“I know. I’m making him a sandwich,” answered my mom, Mitzi. She was perhaps, a little snippy but that’s how they get sometimes. I didn’t even attempt to refuse or accept. I know better than to agree or disagree with either of them under that roof. My parents have been married for 63 years and are going to do their own thing whether I want another sandwich or not.
“Bono,” I tell my dad.
“Bono?”
“Yeah, Bono.” he’s a singer for U2.
My father studies his puzzle, mouthing words down and across silently. “Bono?” he asks again.
“Yeah, the singer for U2,” say I. He is squinting at the clipboard, now.
“I think it starts with an E. Not a B,” he answers.
My mother brings in a ham sandwich on a kaiser roll from the kitchen. It has mayo, mustard and a pickle on it. Onion, too. I rarely eat any of those things but I dare not say a word for fear of offending her. “Diet Coke?” she asks.
“No mom…you know what Paris Hilton says about Diet Coke, don’t you?”
“Oh, I don’t like her.” declares Mitzi.
“What?” my dad pipes in, apparently with a different opinion of the media icon.
“Only fat people drink Diet Coke,” I say.
“Fat people?”
“Yeah, it’s a joke I think.” I say, now wondering myself if it’s even funny. They don’t get it and now, I don’t get it either. My wife Mona is taking a nap upstairs, belly full with as many sandwiches as she’s probably eaten in a month. The volume is turned down on the television and closed captions are streaming across the top third of the screen, covering the faces of everyone on the Fox News Network. My parents read, watch and comment unfavorably whenever someone bashes Hillary or Obama and hiss in unison when anything positive is said about Bush or the War. I ask them why they even watch Fox at all if they are Democrats but they don’t really get the question. I guess I don’t really get it either in this particular election year. Perhaps they just have trouble working the remote and are afraid to mess with the Dish. There are Post-it notes taped to everything electronic in the house and most things static, as well.
And despite what I have just witnessed, I feel like I too, am losing market share quickly in this wildly out of control time warp where one second I’m a kid and the next, I’m in my 50s selling real estate in a down market. In 10 minutes, I’ll be my father looking for any small victory I can muster. I sometimes feel as if I’m lagging behind all the youth and technology in my chosen industry of real estate. I have to read something three times before it makes sense, lately. I can only buy my way out of so much of it before I get lapped by the genius youth who have only known an iPhone/Facebook/Starbucks existence on this planet. I am now the age my parents were a mere 28 years ago. My goodness, it was just the other day that I graduated college and…
“Edge.” my dad declares. “The band member for YouTube is Edge.”
“Oh yeah. I forgot about him,” I say. “Although I’m pretty sure he’s called The Edge….” but before I could finish my sentence…
“Hey Mitz. Geno’s was wrong! The answer was Edge. E.D.G.E.” My dad was beaming, mouthing the word across and down, completing his task for the day.
“Geno was wrong. Geno was wrong,” I hear Mona sing-songing from the upstairs guest room, laughing from behind the half opened door.
For a second I longed for those good old days when Maxwell House was my beverage of choice, my only phone was green and attached to a wall in my kitchen, and I was right most, if not all, of the time. And his name is The Edge, goddammit. I make eye contact with my mother sitting next to me on the davenport now. I dig down deeper, trying to recall a glimpse of that fabled ’separated’ moment more than a half a century ago….but nothing. No results found.
“Hey Mom,” I say in a near whisper, at last feeling like my old self for the first time in days, ”Make Mona a sandwich and take it upstairs to her…. with a Diet Coke…”
The U-571 iPhone (Active Rain)
The truth is, I was multi-talkxting (simultaneously talking to one person, texting another, and drinking a Red Bull) when the iPhone slipped out of my hand and into the dog’s water dish. Frozen freak out as I watched my slow motion lifeline quietly descend to the bottom; like in that Matthew McConaughey movie—you know, the one where he’s so busy trying to save a submarine he never gets a chance to take off his shirt.
Fully dressed, I dove into the drink, retrieved the bubbling device, and bolted up the stairs to the bathroom. This was not the first time my personal Pearl Harbor had come under attack. A veteran of more than a few such self-sabatoges over my distinguished sales career, I’ve acquired the basic EMT survivor skills necessary for simple real estate business to carry on even in spite of myself.
There was the time in the late 1990s when my Motorola Star-Tec met its own destiny in a powder room commode at a Sunday Open House. I searched for an hour before re-tracing my tracks back to its resting place in the bucket; toilet seat still up at half-mast, the exhaust fan playing taps. (That phone was the only thing in my physical possession that I actually bragged about being so small.)
Then there was that era in my pre-iPhone ‘Verizon’ subscription life when I rolled with a seven pound Treo 650 on my belt. On its final day, a slushy puddle became the final landing spot as I attempted to swing my big fat ass (not really, it’s just an expression) out of the driver’s seat of a Mini Cooper. I recall laying the gurgling remains on the Verizon counter an hour later when the Assistant Day Manager finally called my number, next in line.
“You dropped this in the water,” he said.
“No I didn’t.”
“Then why is there all this moisture and condensation beneath the screen?” he inquired, narrowing his focus from behind Pearl Vision Express eyewear, probing the soggy brick with a Bic pen.
“I live in a very humid climate,” I answered.
“Where’s that?” he asked. ” The Tropic of Cancer?”
Alas, another fellow English Literature major unable to find a position in his chosen field. I reached down deep into my mental Cliff Notes and attempted to establish ‘Common Ground’ (Step Two of the Sales Process directly after the ‘Meet and Greet’ but somewhere before the actual ‘Sit’). We chatted up Henry Miller for a few moments before he loosened the corporate noose and gave me the 411 on cellular resuscitation.
“Next time this happens,” he explained, “immediately remove the battery, shake all excess water from the phone, then point a hair dryer on Medium Heat toward the inside of the handset for 15 minutes. Then hope. Then pray. Then live to text another day….” The young man was indeed, a poet. And thankfully so, as his tutorial words echoed in my head on this latest occasion….
I burst through the door of the 2nd floor guest bath where I camp out and park all my toiletries (because the 400 square foot master bath in our house is somehow not big enough for two people). In my own tiny bathroom now, it suddenly hit me that a) the iPhone does not have a removable battery and b) I have no hair—thus, no hair dryer. I scrambled into my wife’s private spa and plugged the first device I found into an outlet. A curling iron. WTF.
I quickly located the hair dryer as the final seconds ticked away. I pointed. I hoped. I prayed…
“Alright, Alright, Alright!” I might not be in the same heroic league as Matthew McC in U-571 but I kept my cool (and my shirt on) under SIM fire. The dry-out procedure was a cyber-medical success.
That original iPhone, although barely moaning through each ensuing ring anymore (and about to be retired in lieu of a newer and slicker 3G model), will forever occupy a special place in my bottom nightstand drawer full of other swaybacked cellular workhorses, mismatched chargers, and scattered loose, dead blue teeth. And even though the Assistant Day Manager at the AT&T store I frequent these days doesn’t know squat about literature, I’ve decided to extend my unlimited minutes/texting contract for another two-years of close calls and narrow escapes. After all, “Life, as it is called, is for most of us one long postponement.” (and that, my dear readers, would be Henry Miller).
