Fiasco

Originally Posted Monday, October 27, 2014

Well, yesterday was an interesting fiasco, and I can tell you some of it if you'll let me. 

First, as you already have heard, the electricity went out in the neighborhood early in the morning.  I waited a while for it to come back on, then decided it would be best to go to the Country Club College baseball stadium up the street and do stadium steps.  It had been a good long while.  The stadium was empty as it only is in the very early mornings any more, and I began my ritual up and down, up and down with intermittent crunches, squats, push ups, and pull ups to get the old blood flowing.  Boy, I thought, this is great.  I had forgotten how healthful such a workout is.  I thought that for a while, and then I thought how horrible it was.  I am not in shape, apparently.  All the YMCA machines in the world won't do what real steps and real hills will do.  And by the end, having done what I had set out to do, I was bushed.  But steadfast, I continued on and walked the three miles I had intended to walk from the start. 

Skip ahead.  It was all a hideous mistake, I can tell you.  My knees and hips had seized up by the time the sun went down, and getting out of bed this morning was a horror. 

But after a shower, I was feeling pretty chipper and headed uptown to have brunch with a couple friends.  We chose a place on the Boulevard that has fantastic food, and while I hadn't planned to drink, the girl in the group ordered sangria, and eventually the sense of that hit me and I had a couple of mimosas.  Yuppie soul food.  It was grand. 

After awhile, breakfast done, we wandered out onto the Boulevard where the Carnival Cruise Line had apparently docked a ship.  Fuck Google Maps.  Once discreetly tucked away from the great unwashed, our quaint and beautiful little town is the destination of every mouth-breather with an iPhone.  There are plenty of working money couples who come to the Boulevard, too, driving in from what were supposed to be the up and coming communities, suburbs with large homes made for families, served by strip malls and parking lots built to look like Downtown Disney in that faux style now as readily available as a McDonalds or a Starbucks.  The mixture  and volume of people was simply a horror show.  And still we went on, somehow always walking in the wrong direction, it seemed as people crowded the sidewalk three or four abreast so that I had to lower my shoulder and knock middle-aged mothers and grandma's to the sidewalk.  It didn't matter, really.  I couldn't understand a word of what they screamed.  Apparently none of them spoke English.  I was embarrassed, though, by my behavior which was quite shocking, I think, to my friend, the girl friend that is as my boy friend is used to my outrageous behavior in crowds.  I found myself apologizing to her each time I clobbered someone. 

In order to prevent a riot, we decided to cross the street and walk in the Park where the crowd was thinner and the spaces broad.  It was a delight, of course.  As we walked by the fountain, one of us pointed and said something.  Here is what we found. 

I immediately began to call all the children around to come see.  "Look at the dime in the bottom of the pool," I'd say.  "Go get it, go get it."  Their parents started getting upset, of course, for again, most of them spoke no English and thought I was pointing to the dead squirrel which, of course, I hadn't really noticed. 

After that little incident, my friends said they were ready to go, so we walked back to the studio and said our goodbyes.  Sort of.  One of my friends came back to my house.  She wanted to hear some music. 

My tenant's son had been to church in the morning for his Confirmation, and his mother had sent out invitations for people to come celebrate the event.  Since she herself doesn't go to church but merely drops her son off and comes home, I was a bit taken back, but her mother, I am sure, was behind it all, and she had flown down from the Great North to orchestrate the occaission, so. . . . It was to begin at three and by the time we got to the house, people were already there piling up on the lawn between the upstairs apartment and the patio off my bedroom.  I didn't want to go, and I certainly did not want to be seen, so we snuck into the house and closed the shutters and lay down on the bed to listen to the music.  We were sleepy, of course, after the sangria and mimosas, and we were letting the music take us away when I heard the kitchen door open and my mother's voice cry out my name. 

"Oh, shit," I said, "my mother's here.  What the fuck?  She said she wasn't coming until four or four-thirty."  I got up and looked out just in time to see my mother heading over to the party.  My friend intuited that we were done with the music and decided it was time for her to depart.  Shit, piss, fuck, I thought.  This day was going south very, very quickly.  I could feel the absence of a nap and the hangover from the night before (have I told you about that?) conspiring against me suddenly.  I walked my friend to her car, and just as she slipped behind the steering wheel, my mother came around the corner of the house.  She had her iPad in her hand. 

"Ho-ho, mother," I called out in surprise, "are you having trouble with your tablet?" 

"No.  Hold still.  I want to take a picture." 

I turned to my friend with a chuckle.  "Um. . . that's what my mother uses for a camera."

"Look here.  Say CHEESE." 

After the evidence had been captured, my friend ducked back into her car and waved a cheery hand goodbye.  My mother and I walked into the house. 

"I thought you weren't coming 'til later?  I thought I was going to make dinner afterwards?" 

"I ran out of things to do," she said.  She has not been happy lately, and it was apparently my job to remedy that.  I got up and poured some wine.  This was going to be a loooooong afternoon.  I cursed the day, or rather the loss of it.  There was going to be no winning. 

After awhile, my mother went back out onto the lawn to join the party which was growing.  I sat in the house miserably for a long while, then went to the bedroom to peek out the shutters to see what was going on.  Oh, Jesus, Joseph, and Mary, there were too many people I didn't want to see.  I couldn't face it, but I knew I had to say something to the newly Confirmed, so I snuck onto the patio and called through the shrubbery as he glided by.  He walked over without emotion. 

"So. . . you are newly washed in the blood of innocence, eh?  Married to the little baby Jesus?"

He looked embarrassed.  "I didn't want to," he said.  "They made me." 

"Well, then, that's fine.  Listen, I can't come out there.  There are too many people I don't like.  I'm sorry, but I can't."

"That's fine," he said rolling his eyes.  "This one is on me." 

"Alright man.  Come over later if you want." 

And with that, I slid back inside. 

Later my mother came in and we decided we wouldn't do dinner.  She sat for a couple of hours and then went home.  The party was still going on.  I knew I was in trouble for not going out, for not saying hello to the tenant's mother and friends, but I had a malady of sorts.  I just couldn't do it.  They all looked so pathetic, I thought, standing around in the yard or sitting in a mixture of wicker, wrought iron, and folding chairs balancing paper plates and holding plastic cups and making small talk on a beautiful autumn afternoon, telling one another that it was very, very lovely.  I felt like the devil practicing the darker arts. 

Just before evening fell, I decided to get some take out Thai.  Backing out of the driveway, I felt for a moment a sense of escape.  The light was very, very lovely. 

Worn out that night, I couldn't even face watching t.v. and by nine, I was in bed.  Lights out.  Crashed. 

Of course, I woke at four.  I tossed around for a bit and finally got up.  I thought the clock said six, so I got up and made coffee and read the news.  An hour later, the clock finally did. 

I think I'll go back to bed now and sleep for awhile.  The sun is just breaking the horizon.  I am exhausted.  I'll have to tell you about Friday night another time.