nixonia, the paradox of trying, and the occasional elixir-yielding outcome of making an effort

Nixonia

Today is Nixon's birthday, a fact which I'm sure thrills you to your earthly cores, and would be unbeknownst to me were it not also the birthday of two people of my long-standing acquaintance: One is Amy, my oldest friend, who I have known from the days when she sported a rockin' mullet-perm! and dressed up at Halloween as a nose dripping snottage. Not only is today Amy's birthday, but she got a new job today, too. Nice going; just pack it all in there. The shipment of Gael Garcia Bernal in-a-box, par avion, will be arriving this afternoon, too. The other important birthday belongs to my mom, Juan. Juan has spent more than twenty-six of her past birthdays Raising Monsters, which is really no small task. I wish I could say that she has already reached the point when she may lie back in her chaise and truly enjoy her birthday without having to ferry some child here or there, or worry about whether some child is dealing crack cocaine in an alleyway, or worst of all, worrying about whether some child is really serious about living out its entire life as a fiction writer, but I can't. All I can say is, happy birthday; may this year's worries be less spectacular than the last.

Fellowship Applications: Acts of Great Paradox

I spent much of yesterday, in between teaching, meeting with students, grading, and finally getting my heater to work (I bid you adieu, frostbite), working on fellowship applications. Fellowship applications are both heartening and disheartening; the former because -- good for you, grasshopper! -- you are taking action, forwarding your work, attempting advancement, trying! The latter because despite all your trying and admirable gusto, you will never get these fellowships, you ass -- what were you thinking? Not because you're bad at what you do, but because there are thousands of people who do what you do, and they are also not bad, and many are better, or luckier, or just a little more mainstream. Even as you fill out that SASE you can see yourself opening it and finding the slip that reads, "Dear Writer..."

Then again, one time, feeling extremely low and foolish, I filled out just such an application and stuck my stories in the mail, and (probably a clerical error) I never got the SASE back. I got (probably a clerical error) a fellowship and a one-way ticket to California, and everything that came after. I guess it doesn't hurt to try. You never know when someone's going to screw up and accidentally accept you to something.

In the process, however, you are asked to write all sorts of things called "Sketch of Self as Writer" or "Sketch of Life as Writer" or "Statement of Plans." These are dumb and wretched. Although you may have very real things to say, they are impossible to say in this format. (Particularly "Sketch of Life As Writer," which realistically should read, "Null. No life.")
I wrote out one of these Statements of Plans and it was four pages long.
"It can't be four pages," said Shimon on the phone last night as we agreed that although we'd had plans to hang out, neither one of us actually felt like doing so. (My exact words: "It would be great if we could not hang out." I'm clearly not going to be getting any congeniality fellowships in the near future.)
"I know it can't be four pages," I said testily. Shimon has received, at one point or another, pretty much all of the fellowships I'm applying for, so he speaks on this issue from a Mountaintop of Wisdom. Whenever we discuss this sort of thing, I glare up beadily from the bottom of this Mountaintop and hiss in a rabid fashion, usually throwing stones that end up falling back onto my own head.
I am historically terrible at receiving Wisdoms.
"Why is it four pages? What could you possibly be saying for four pages?" he asked.
"I have a lot of plans," I said simply.
There was silence, as if he sincerely doubted it (or else hadn't heard me, as frequently also occurs).
"I'm fixing it," I added. And then, although I couldn't say it out loud because it sounded far too petulant, I wrote on a sheet of notebook paper nearby: I'M NOT DUMB.
Although truthfully, maybe I am, to be paying these application fees out the ass with no hope of ever receiving anything besides a SASE in return.

But: What Trying Can Get You Is Amazing, and Can Sometimes Take the Form of an Elixir

Click to enlarge.

today, your mouth might be moving but no one is listening

On Sunday night in D.C., David, Amy, and I accompanied David's friend Andy to Mei Wah, an establishment that enjoys mythic infamy in my parents' house (where my parents and brothers live), since no family member but David had ever visited it before I, as it were, broke the seal. Andy is an All-the-Time Regular at Mei Wah, and David a sort of JV, or Assistant, Regular. We hear about Mei Wah a lot. How great the food is, how nice the people. (I was dubious about sushi from a Chinese restaurant, but it actually did turn out to be good. I've been showed. Shewn, if you will.) Sometimes David and Andy go bowling with the Mei Wah staff, or play darts with them. I have been informed that Andy carries his own set of darts. Personal darts. This is the kind of situation we're talking about here, a situation in which people carry personal sets of darts.

During dinner, Amy and I sat dutifully, fulfilling the role of Girls, ordering Green Things off the menu and getting introduced to David and Andy's friends. "Hello," we said, and shook hands with many people. I told them all that I was Kara, David's Sister. (That's what's written on my birth certificate, even though I'm older than David. Breaking the barriers of space and time!) Their friends looked back and forth between David and me. Indeed, it did seem that we could be related, both being pretty dark-looking and Jewy-looking, and wearing goofy expressions. (To their credit, they did not articulate this outright.)

The most momentous part of the meal came at the end, when we all received fortune cookies. The best fortune among them read:

TODAY, YOUR MOUTH MIGHT BE MOVING BUT NO ONE IS LISTENING.

This was originally David's fortune. David is a middle school history teacher, so I figured this was probably appropriate. (I can just envision it now: "Yak yak Gettysburg Address yak yak.")
"No," David said, always charitable and positive. (We are related, but in some ways more than others.) "They do usually listen."
"Give that to me," I said promptly, and stuck it in my pocket.
Clearly it had reached the wrong recipient.
...Yak.

I carried this fortune back from D.C. with me to San Francisco. Last night I was telling Ben about it in my typical overdelighted fashion.
"Well," said Ben, and here I am as usual paraphrasing, "is the 'you' to which this fortune refers saying anything? The fortune does not indicate if you are actually saying anything, even though your mouth is moving. Maybe that is why no one is listening -- because no one can hear you."
I had to concede that this was true. Maybe my mouth was moving but nothing was coming out! And that was why no one was listening to me!
But no, ultimately I had to disagree; this was a POV problem. To those who would hear me, it appears that my mouth is moving, but they are not listening to hear what may or may not be coming out, because they know it will be boring. The fortune is a close 3rd person! So "they" are really not listening, whoever "they" are.

I figured I knew who they might be, or else where they might be located. I took the fortune with me in my pocket to school today and delivered it to the PWCM before his class.
"Do you want me to hold on to this?" he asked.
"Yes," I said. "You're going to need it for class. You can return it to me afterward, before I teach again."

Mei Wah, you may add this far-traveling fortune to your growing legacy -- you serve food, you engender personal dart-set purchasing, you speak the truth!

man about town

Yesterday was one of those highly unpleasant days where I literally edited to beat the UPS pickup times. I should have had plenty of energy to power through and do the job, especially considering that I have begun, at the doctor's urging, to eat again. (Although I think what the doctor had in mind was more of a slow, feeble, waiflike nibbling, whereas what has occurred is me laying waste to entire containers of rice pudding, bags of apples, crackers, pretty much everything short of growing extra-long canine teeth and ripping a live chicken to shreds. I guess not eating for three months makes you hungrier than I thought. In the past three days, I've gained three pounds. Just imagine how enormous I'll be by Christmas! Git out the wheelbarra'!) Anyway, with an unnecessary amount of effort, I saw this editing project to completion, leaped in the shower, leaped out of the shower (apparently leaping is also an important aspect of copyediting), and started to make my way to the UPS, which is about a mile away, up a hill.

Before going out, however, I took precautions. For example, it was raining, and my hair was wet. While you, not being old housewives, might say, So what? Your hair's already wet; let it get a little wetter, I learned from an early age that the punishment for going out with a wet head is Death, so for the sake of my health and continued livelihood, I wore a hat. I was also still wearing my glasses, which can sometimes also be useful in the rain. Having wrapped the manuscript in ripped-up Walgreens bags for added protection, I began my ascent to the UPS with about an hour to spare.

Now, I am known at this UPS. I am there pretty much every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to ship manuscripts back to New York or elsewhere in SF. Some of the employees greet me by name. Yesterday, however, there was a new person there -- someone who I had never seen before. There were no customers. As I walked in, he said,
"Hello, sir."

Now, despite the fact that I was wearing a hat, and despite my massive linebackeresque physique (may I repeat?: Git out the wheelbarra'!), I think it's pretty clear I'm not a man. For one thing, there's the small matter of my, um, whole body. And non-manly voice. And womanly wiles? Okay, well, the first two, anyway. I figured he would realize his mistake when we started to talk.

"Hi," I said. "I need to ship this package? I have the pre-paid mailer here."
One other super annoying thing about UPS: You have to buy the box you ship your packages in. My employers pay for the shipping, but they don't pay for the box; I have to pay for that, which I am very bitter about. The UPS employee was ready to ring up my embittered purchase.
"Sir," he said, "I'm sorry, but your credit card has been declined."
Sir!
"No," I said, "no, that can't be. I'm sorry, could you try it again? I'm really sure there's nothing wrong with it." I mean, don't get me wrong, no towers bearing my name are about to be erected on the West Side Highway anytime soon, but I don't think I'm yet at the point where my credit cards are maxed out.
He tried it again.
"No, sir, I'm sorry. It's declined. Do you have another card?"
"I'll just pay in cash," I said, bewildered. What was wrong with the credit card? And why had I changed genders without warning? I should never have started eating again.
"Okay, sir," said the man. "Here is your receipt, and here is your tracking number."
I looked from the receipt to the tracking number to the UPS employee.
"I'm not a man," I said. I couldn't hold it in any longer. When I was teaching ESL there were constant errors in differentiating between the masculine and the feminine language indicators, but not errors in actually knowing the difference between male and female. This was confusing. Apparently, it was also confusing for him. I suppose this was not the first time, working at the Castro UPS, this sort of thing had happened to him.
"Hmm," he finally said.
With this, I left.
I present to you the evidence: This was me, yesterday, in my Don't-Catch-Your-Death apparel. I am just a little too pansy here, in my opinion, to be any kind of man. I could not beat your mother up if I swung myself at her from a fast-moving forest vine. Much as I would like to.

the early-bird special

It is 6:21 pm and I am going to sleep. For the record, however, there is a difference between "eye circles" and "eye bags": I have the former, not the latter. Circles: dark, no topography. Bags: baggy. Baglike. Thrice today my so-called "bags" have been remarked upon, once by the PWCM, once by a student, and once by a man who always rides my CalTrain, someone who I privately call Snape because of his resemblance to Alan Rickman's portrayal of the Harry Potter character.

I do not hold this error against the PWCM, who I believe only tells me these things to demonstrate his acumen for observation -- something that he knows I hold in high esteem -- and also, in his own, frosty way, to exhibit some semblance of concern.
"Do I really look that bad?" I asked. I had just been observed. I hoped I had not looked, while being observed, like an abandoned ghost town in human form.
"No, it's not that," he said, but then went on to speak about my supposed undereye bags again, using the same hand motion beneath his eyes as men often make when they are talking about giant breasts. So maybe they are bags. I don't know.

Whatever they are, I look like I've just been pelted by batallion of underripe prunes. It is time for me to go to sleep, even though somewhere, in a later time zone, my own grandmother is still awake, watching Everybody Loves Raymond or some such. I am the early-bird special, apparently. Somebody has to do it.

virgin use of the star system

Last night I watched a movie. The movie was "Knocked Up." I was a little bit concerned that this would be awkward to watch with another person. First of all, I was convinced that I had read that it was a weirdly Christian movie (though I do not remember where I read that), and secondly, I knew there would be lots of gruesome sex in it, and when those scenes arrived I would have to act totally placid and undisturbed. (Sexy Christian movie! Peace be with you!) However, since I myself had only Flight of the Conchords or The OC: Season Four (don't be hatin'!) to offer, I yielded to Shimon's choice. I was planning either to have to strenuously appear nonchalant when the sex scenes came on or else to hate the whole thing, to spend 106 minutes worrying about my work and also about not accidentally touching his leg with my leg, which is another thing you shouldn't do when you're watching a movie with someone, particularly a movie with sex scenes. I'm not awkward at all.

However, I liked the movie. Surprisingly, I liked it a lot. I found it extremely funny. Maybe this speaks to all the brain cells that have died this semester as my teaching "career" (let's be thorough and put "teaching" in quotation marks, too, actually) has progressed (""). But maybe it was a clever movie. One really encouraging thing that occurs in the movie is that this dumb Jewish schmuck, Ben Stone, lands this hot blonde shiksa girl. Yes, originally he lands her by impregnating her during what's supposed to be a one-night stand, but later he actually gets her to like him too. I think it's implied that they get married. And, you know, have more sex or whatever.
"What's a shiksa?" Shimon asked.
"A non-Jewish girl. That's the pinnacle for a Jewish guy," I explained to him. "That's hot. If you can get a shiksa in bed, that's just great. Especially if she's blonde."
"I've met blonde Jewish girls," he said.
"I know. Well, those are good, too. Best are shiksas. Then blonde Jewish girls. Then other Jewish girls. Those are last-choice."
"Like you," he clarified.
"Right," I said. "But only for Jewish guys. Otherwise girls like me need not necessarily be, um, the last choice."
It took about four or five seconds for what I'd just said to sink in, and even I was confused. Shimon also looked confused. I realized saying something like that was probably another thing one shouldn't do while watching a movie, not alone, with lots of sex scenes in it.

In the end, they sort of show the baby being born. Paul Rudd captures it on a video camera. BJ Novak is not the chosen obstetrician, unfortunately. The baby even has its umbilical cord, and the cord is gray and bloody, which I exclaimed was very lifelike, receiving a withering look in response. Overall, out of a possible five stars, I give it four. That is a lot of stars from me, who has never used the star system before.

The issues that this movie brings up would be a way better foundation for the lesson I am teaching tomorrow -- the lesson in which I will be terrifyingly observed! -- but unfortunately the syllabus indicates that this lesson, the lesson during which my teaching will be evaluated, has to do with shopping. I want to shoot myself. Technically it is about marketing and the American consumer, but let's be honest, shall we? Fucking shit's about shopping. I have to teach a lesson about shopping. Do I look like I understand economics or shopping? I am trying to figure out something that will fulfill all of the following things:
1) Take up 75 minutes in a useful way.
2) Teach the monsters something they will enjoy and also be able to use.
3) Make me look on top of my shit.
4) Is easy.
5) Doesn't get me out of my depth conceptually, i.e., way into freaking marketing, shopping, or whatever.
6) Will not result in a fishbowl of silence during which all the students stare at me, unable to answer my questions.

"Topic: Big Hair. Yes or no?" ... If only.

work ethic as medicine in a remission society

For the past few months, I have been working on an essay about what Arthur W. Frank would call a "remission society" and its tendency -- pathology, even -- to overcompensate in its lust for the everyday by formulating for itself a herculean work ethic. In our society the everyday is work, even down to our language to describe it; indeed, the words workaday and everyday are used synonymously. There seems to be no more concrete goal for a chronically sick person in remission than to excel in the sphere of work, or, ideally, overdose on it, and in my essay I argue that this trend yields a number of results: that it creates an unproductive cycle of illness where a work-dominant remission period overstresses the subject and sends him right back out of remission again, in essence depleting Frank's "remission society"; that it creates a disturbing connective thread between illness and consumerism, equating wellness with earning power and professional prestige; and that it fails in its supposed aim: the equating of the chronically sick person's priorities with the well person's priorities. In researching for this essay I have been reading a lot of illness theory as usual, as well as medicinal economic theory and psychology books. The next step is to find some subjects to interview. If you would like to be interviewed for the essay, please get in touch with me by e-mail.

I am, of course, probably the epitomic example of a person whose mindset has been worm-fled by this phenomenon; I would be the first to admit that I equate health with the ability to work as "normal" people do, and that I -- perhaps not purposefully, but all the same noticeably -- overcompensate for my physical failures by trying to prove that I can work more, and harder, than my "normal" peers, that I can in some cases do a better job, that I am the complete and total master of my body, perhaps even more so than they, whose bodies present fewer issues to control.

Recent months, to continue with myself as a case study for lack of another at this point, have been a perfect example of this. I work round-the-clock, barely sleep, have almost ten employers. What is my goal here? To make lots of money? That would be nice, of course, but no -- no one in their right mind would imagine that the jobs I hold could be lucrative in any way. To build up my resume? Not really. Most of the jobs I hold are ones I've held before. Because I love my work? Only in a few cases. No, the actual goal is to run myself into the ground, to find and achieve the limit of what I am capable of producing, and to prove to myself (it must be to myself, because honestly, there is no one else worth knowing who would care) that I am, for all practical purposes, normal -- because "normal" in today's society means "able to produce," "able to be productive," and, importantly, the ability to do so without any visible cracks in one's armor. If I am normal, then I am not a Sick Person. And if I am not a Sick Person, I am in complete and total control of my body, and by extension, in a more general complete and total sort of control.

The irony, of course, is that this type of effort puts specific strain on a person with a chronic illness, and essentially forces him out of remission and back to the state he is trying to suppress. In the totally dumb case study of myself (ahem -- since again I do not yet have another! Phone in now! Your call is important to us!), I have already reached the point where I eat maybe once a day, if at all, in order to avoid the symptoms of Crohn's Disease that accompany eating. (I also drink a lot of gin and wine; tres nutritious.) There are all kinds of physical and social drawbacks to this. On the other hand, I am the hardest-working man in show business. I can work harder than all my "normal" friends. I am more "normal" even than they are, more "normal" even than normal. (They are all totally bored and annoyed by my monologues on this topic, too.) It is the absolute pinnacle of success for a chronically sick person, I argue in the essay, to live this way, but absolutely self-destructive and irrational as well, and ultimately dangerous.

Is this disturbing? Is it, in a phrase that I will not use in the essay itself, totally fucked up? Absolutely. Not only that, it has implications far beyond the psychological -- economic and social implications that I intend to explore more deeply in my essay. If you have ideas for me, or would like to be interviewed (as I am not too keen on using myself as a case study) please let me know.

in which more people wear clothing depicting the foods that interest them

A couple of weeks ago, I was approached on the BART. I seem to have a knack for silently inviting people to speak to me on public transportation -- the BART first and foremost -- but usually it is for a collegial chat, or a commentary about my fellow riders' attempts to pick up teenagers. This time the matter seemed more serious. It was early morning, and I was on the first leg of my voyage to San Jose, grading papers.

"Excuse me," said a young man across the way from me. I looked up. "I always see you on this same BART car, writing. What are you writing?"
I told him I was grading papers.
Thus began a rather one-sided conversation which ended with the man informing me that he dealt in fish. Fish, he said, was his game. Whatever fish I needed -- and here he produced his card -- I should call him and that fish would be mine. Did I enjoy grilled fish? Smoked fish? He could show me how to cook my fish, if I wanted, after he provided it for me. He had -- and I kid you not -- a "very large grill."
"I've got sturgeon, I've got salmon, I've got crabs," he said.
(At this point a girl behind me burst into muffled guffaws.)
"You should call me, it'll be fun," he said as he left the car. I looked down at the card to find that indeed, a bevy of well-heeled crabs were dancing insistently across the bottom of the card underneath his name and phone number. I put it in my bag because littering is irresponsible.

Today on the BART I was re-reading some articles about stem cell research that my class would be discussing this morning. When I looked up, there was a new person sitting in the seat in front of me: a man in a hooded sweatshirt, hood up. On the back of the hood -- the back of the hood, I'm telling you -- was a dancing crab. If I were clever, or starring in a Clue! movie, I might have divined that this merry-crab-hoodie-wearing individual might be my friend from the previous week. However, I did not realize that it was him until -- overly dramatically, if you ask me -- he wrenched off the crab hood and turned around to reveal himself to me. CRAB MAN!

He had clearly seated himself strategically for this very reveal.

"Hey, Kara," he said, as though we were old friends.
"Hello..." I replied. I considered replying, "Hello... you," or "Hello, One Who Has Crabs," but I did not think this was very polite, even for early morning. He reminded me of his name, looking a little hurt.
Today I dispatched our conversation rather quickly and managed to get back to my reading. When he was about to get off the train, however, he stopped by my seat.
"Where do you get on this train?" he asked. "16th Street, right?"
I do get on at 16th Street, but wasn't sure I wanted him to know that.
"Yes..." I said hesitantly.
"Okay," he said, as though thinking about something. "You know, there's something I really want to ask you."
"Okay," I said expectantly, in the manner of "Go on," but he did not appear to be about to ask it.
"It's nothing bad," he said. "It's good. I'll ask you next time I see you. Think about it."
How could I think about it if I didn't know what it was?
The crab hood receded from view.

Later on, in class, I developed a severe debt to the tzedakah box. In my parents' house when I was growing up, a swear word, or else the phrase "shut up," warranted twenty-five cents in the tzedakah box. (For you non-Jews out there, that's a charity box.) I was sort of pacing up and down at the front of the classroom, gesticulating with chalk and writing stuff on the board. My morning class, who appear to remain Replaced With Aliens, were attentive and inspired this morning, and seemed to be having ideas. I was pacing in such a way that I did not see a giant hook that was coming out of the wall, and therefore did not have time to slow down or stop before walking right into it.
As I did so, it made a loud, low gong, and all of the students groaned appreciatively. The noise they made all together -- a sort of "ooooogh!" -- was more noise than they have made, including their class participation, for the entire semester combined. It hurt like I cannot tell you. I doubled over.
"Fucking shitbricks," I said. "Oh my fucking shitbricks."
There was a large, hard lump forming, and a little blood. I straightened up as fast as I could.
"Okay! Sorry about that. I'm fine. Sorry for that language," I said.
"No way, we liked it," one student offered.
"Oh my fucking shitbricks!" another one falsettoed, in a voice that was, I guess, supposed to be mine.

This evening I told Shimon what had happened in class.
"That reminds me of a YouTube video I saw," he said, "where this guy teaching firearm safety shoots himself in the foot in the middle of the demonstration and then tries to play it off. He spends like ten minutes trying to go on with the lesson after he's accidentally shot himself in the foot! I think afterward he loses his job."
"That is not helpful, Shimon," I said.
He did not appear to hear me.
"I'll send you the link, it will cheer you up," he said.
"I'm cheery," I said.
"Hey, Kara, I've got to go, I'm meeting some friends."
"I'm cheery!" I said again.

Why does no one ever listen to me when I say that?

three lessons on hat-wearing, pornography, and aging

Last night Magical Majkin, Ben, and I learned some very important lessons.

Majkin learned how to test a head to see if it can wear hats.
She announced to us that she had purchased a very fetching beret.
"For my part, I cannot wear hats," Ben told us while we were sitting, very strangely I now think in retrospect, on three stools facing one another in a circle in the middle of the bar, with no table between us.
"Why not?" I asked.
Ben was prepared.
"Because," he said calmly, "my head will explode."
"How do you know?" Majkin asked.
Ben explained that the theory had been tested.
"They put a very small hat, about this big" -- he indicated with his hands a quarter-sized circumference -- "on a part of my head, and that small part exploded. It was very gruesome. Scalp wounds produce a lot of blood, you know." He returned to calmly sipping his beer.
I was delighted by this information and nearly applauded.
Majkin was confused.
"Wait, what? What did you do? You put on a tiny hat?"
I tried to explain a few times, gleefully. ("He put a tiny hat on his head! Just on a little part! A tiny hat, Majkin!")
It transpired that Majkin had indeed understood, but simply failed to see the logic in testing one's head for hat-produced explosiveness at all.

Ben learned that I have porn on my computer, a lot of porn. Really a lot.
I explained, at another bar, later, that I was having trouble transferring my music from the Dell from Hell to my new, also somewhat hellish, Mac.
"No one knows how to do this!" I complained. "It is impossible!"
"I know how to do it," Ben said. "I'll help you."
"Hmm," I replied thoughtfully. By this time, Michelle had joined us, and we were gathered around a square table with three chairs, in which Ben, Majkin, and Michelle were sitting. I stood, having opted to lord over all the rest, an opportunity rarely available to one as short as I. "All right," I told him. "Once I get all the porn off the Dell."
"What?" Michelle and Majkin tuned in, as is usually the way when naked bodies are insinuated into a conversation.
"I have a ton of porn on my computer," I told them. "Just, tons. A lot. More than you could ever dream of." (This is a bit of an exaggeration.)
They waited. Ben was looking at me expectantly.
"Research," I said, taking a drink, "for a story."
"What story?" asked Michelle, skeptically.
The truth was actually lots of stories, but there was one in particular for which I watched a great deal of porn, and I think the story benefited significantly as a result. It is a good story, I think, even if no one would like to publish it just yet. Maybe I should send it to Titties Fancy or some other publication of similar literary merit. No, they would probably just reject it, too.
"The interesting thing," I said, while they exchanged looks, "is that while for the first minute or two porn is sort of exciting, it quickly becomes really, really boring. You become totally numb to it, like hurry up and do it already so this can be over! You know?"
Ben was thoughtful for a moment.
"I will not judge you," he said magnanimously, "for your porn."

For my part, I learned that it is extremely difficult to go out with people my own age, who are, you know, young and vibrant or whatever.
Around midnight, the others were trying to decide where we ought to go next. A loud, bearish yawn escaped my grizzled maw, around which gray hairs had sprouted and slobber had begun to collect. A cane had emerged from my hand. I was suddenly wearing an oversized cardigan with large buttons. While some, at the stroke of midnight, turn into pumpkins or other very cute kinds of squash or root vegetables, I simply turn back into my resting state, that of Old Man.
"I am an old man," I said, stating the obvious.
The others looked at me skeptically. "But I can rally!" I insisted.
No one truly believed this. First of all, these three know that I am essentially a Body At Rest.
Several more times I attempted to put on my Rallying Face, which more or less looks like the face I wear when I am asleep at home in my own bed.
After a long bout of indecision, the party broke up because of my old-mannishness. Michelle, Ben, and I went home, and Majkin, being significantly Younger At Heart than we other three, journeyed on to another bar.

Is it dangerous to leave one's home, particularly on a weekend night? Yes. (Note that it is Saturday night I am in the Fort as usual, copyediting and entering data. Yes, I am so broke that I enter data on Saturday nights. It's because I'm such a successful writer!) However! Can important lessons be learned by leaving one's home? Yes. Yes, gentle reader, they certainly can.

the unexpected components of a great day, or: i'm sorry, but i'm beginning to hate your face!

Great events of the day:

-My students have been whisked away by aliens and replaced with strangely docile, grateful, absurdly skilled versions of their former selves. Today the students, who previously had threatened my life on several occasions, filed complaints about me, tried to light cigarettes in my classroom, cried, seized, fallen asleep, flipped me off, talked on their cell phones as I was taking roll, etc. seem to have, en masse, mutated. One asked if there were any classes she could take with me in the spring, and told me how much easier writing has become for her. One spontaneously hugged me during office hours, telling me I was a "godsend" (even though I'm failing her, which painfully confused me). Another wrote me an e-mail thanking me for being an "intelligent and compassionate mentor." Most suspiciously of all, as I was riding home on the train and grading the in-class essays they wrote today, I discovered with glee and horror that, finally, they are -- incomprehensibly! -- doing what we have been working on. They! Are! Doing! It! Sort of! It is a miracle. Somewhere in outer space, my real students are orbiting the Earth, petrified, text-messaging, flailing Facebook invitations into the universe. But whoever these new aliases are, I'm really pleased they're not plotting my death, and I'm not looking a gift horse in the mouth.

-My dad, who has been suffering from an undiagnosable and highly uncomfortable malady for the past month or so, declares that he is feeling very slightly better, although there is still no word on what this malady might be. I find this slightly discomfiting and slightly comforting. It is always good to feel better, but in my experience, Not Knowing What It Is is an ominous proposition. This is why I continue calling other members of my family for reconnaissance on the issue, since my dad himself always remains rather mum on matters pertaining to his own affairs or person. Today he conceded a grumble of assent when I checked to see if the information I had received from my mother -- that he is feeling slightly better -- was true. "Fleeble, schmarble," he confirmed -- not phonetically -- which is the fake sound his children like to make when we are doing bad impressions of him. Furthermore, he reports, Bis'l, the Crohn's Dog of Maryland, who had a lump that no one even told me about, has been deemed Not Beholden of a Dangerous Lump. Would that we at the Fort could say the same for ourselves.

"I feel great!" I spent most of the day exclaiming, to anyone who would not respond by simply trying to reverse the truth of that statement. It turns out that all that is needed for a good day is to not have one's life threatened in the workplace; have one's family members feeling slightly improved; learn that one's dog is a better Crohn's patient than oneself; and to listen to this rather cheery song, which has a certain schizophrenia (the first half is phenomenal, and the second half really makes you want to fast-forward, it is so B-O-O H-O-O. Right after, or really perhaps before "your face is a vacuum," I start to feel uncomfortable and turned off by the touchy-feeliness). But that first half, regardless of what comes after, is a pretty insightful little beginning there, the best line of which is "That sass is gonna come back to bite you in the ass." (Ha! Don't, uh, sass me, young lady.) I'm beginning to hate your face. Of course I am!

Except, I've hated your face for a long, long time now.