I Am Stone Cold Sober, Occifer

My late and ex, a theater amateur in that best sense of the word that means for love alone, liked to tell the story of a summer repertory troupe in New England which became restive as, over a period of weeks, their wages were shorted or didn’t appear at all. Perhaps the management felt they could get away with stiffing second-string actors as long as their rooms and meals were all found. It is a brave man, however, who presumes to fuck with artists. As the curtain rose one night on the second act of some version of Tod Browning’s fairly awful Dracula play, the actor playing the undead Count rose slowly from his coffin — fingers of one hand over the side first, upper half gradually coming into view, you know the shtik. “If I’m alive,” he said in the rich, vaguely Eastern-European accents we expect of the King Vampire, “what am I doing in this coffin?… But if I am dead, why do I have to go to the bathroom?”

Legend has it that the troupe was paid full whack thereafter. I don’t know if it’s true, but it occurred to me early yesterday morning. If I’m asleep, how did I reach this familiar seat by the bathroom window? But if I’m awake, why am I seeing this in the back garden?

“There’s a frog on a bicycle in the back yard,” I said blearily as I crawled back into bed next to the Cute Engineer, who had spent the night after a marathon opera evening. I think he replied something like “bsiuytoihrslplk.”

David the gardener seems to have gone upbudget. For uncounted seasons he has suspended a used aluminum disposable pie plate from a stake, hoping to frighten off an increasingly brazen tribe of birds who pillage the tomatoes. It is quite a metabolism for such a work of craft to take the pie plate’s place, but he explained to me later that evening that his wife likes things like that. “I figured maybe that was it since I knew I hadn’t had a thing to drink when I saw it,” I replied.

I can’t decide if my excitement threshold has dropped to a dangerously low level.

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Protected: A Dedication

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Things That Happen In The Capital Of The Free World

Or right across the river, anyway.

1. I Will Destroy You With Mangoes

I used to get a massage in this building — in fact, it’s the place where, back in 1986, I met my first professional mentor, who eventually shared her lease with Sister Age some years after I became her mentor, and they both worked on me there, only the first lady I parted brass rags with after she had canceled my appointment on account of being “too busy” one too many times, and in passing given me one too many speeches about what was wrong with my answering machine message. She was from Northern Germany, a region where (at least from my observation) fault-finding is a form of folk art. Something in the water maybe.

Anyway the neighborhood is totally Latino now and there is this mini-mart called Miguel’s, where I have clear memories of unsuccessfully trying to buy an apple and a bottle of Deer Park when it was more of a video store, but apparently it has diversified now:

Police say German Cruz-Coreas, 49, entered Miguel’s Q-Mart on the 5500 block of Columbia Pike and demanded money from a store employee.

“When the employee refused, the subject proceeded to light coffee filters on fire and announced that no one could leave the store,” according to the Arlington County Police crime report.

The man started throwing mangoes and avocados at store employees and a 16-month-old child, according to Arlington County Police spokesman Dustin Sternbeck. He tipped over the store’s shelves, destroyed merchandise, broke the store’s slushie machine, and partially melted a television with the flaming coffee filters, Sternbeck said.

“He literally destroyed the entire store,” said Sternbeck.

Store employees barricaded themselves in a room inside the store during the incident, but the store’s manager was eventually able to subdue the man and hold him to the ground until police arrived and placed him under arrest.

Other than the Arlington PIO’s inaccurate use of the term “literally” (I drove by and the place is still standing), I am charmed by this account. I know of no television that would not be better for a little melting and no 16-month-old child that would not make me want to shot-put an avocado at it. But they hauled him off to the pokey anyway.

2. The Lunatics Are Running The Asylum

Gotta love the damage in the mug shot. This badass chick thing is catching on.

 

The chief of the U.S. Air Force Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Branch has been charged with sexual battery.

Lt. Col. Jeffrey Krusinski, 41, of Arlington, was removed from that position Monday afternoon, Air Force spokeswoman Jennifer Cassidy told Patch.

Krusinski, who worked out of the Pentagon, was charged this weekend by the Arlington County Police Department.

At about 12:35 a.m. Sunday, a drunken Krusinski approached a woman in a parking lot in the 500 block of South 23rd Street and grabbed her breasts and buttocks, according to Arlington police.

The woman fought him off as he tried to touch her again, according to police, at which point she was able to call for help. He was arrested and held on a $5,000 unsecured bond.

Krusinski and the woman did not know each other, police spokesman Dustin Sternbeck told Patch. She was not injured, he said.

Monday afternoon, Krusinski was removed from his position leading the Air Force’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Branch until more information could be obtained, Cassidy said.

“The thinking was it was best not to have him in this position right now,” she said.

The Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Program “reinforces the Air Force’s commitment to eliminate incidents of sexual assault through awareness and prevention training, education, victim advocacy, response, reporting and accountability,” according to its website.

Further, “The Air Force promotes sensitive care and confidential reporting for victims of sexual assault and accountability for those who commit these crimes,” the site states.

Krusinski has served in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to Stars and Stripes.

Tuesday, the Pentagon is expected to release its annual report on sexual assault in the military, according to Wired.com.

[Credit: Arlington Patch]

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Personal Privacy

I called a delightful person in the office of my county government that regulates construction and property standards, trying to find out exactly what I did and didn’t have to do to get long overdue repairs performed on my front porch. The whole thing is going to have to be simply and sordidly hammered off and replaced, and I want it a little bigger so that two people can stand on it without colliding.

The county website purportedly offers information about that, but first you have to know what it is you have to know and I am done with using a Ouija board and a magnifying glass to figure these things out. The specialized vocabulary doesn’t help. To me a setback is something that makes you start over again from the beginning (which has some bearing on a project like this, admittedly) but here it involves how close your project is to the property line.

“For that you have to talk to Zoning,” said Delightful Guy, who didn’t start off exactly delightful, in fact seemed a little cranky that I wasn’t looking up everything on the website, but he mellowed a little bit when I said I wasn’t famliar with any of the terms and was worn out trying to figure it all out from the seven-point type.

“I don’t know what that is,” he said. “Specialized vocabulary,” I explained. “It means you have to put your nose on the screen to read it.” After that he became positively chatty. Maybe he is nearsighted too.

“I’m just concerned with the building standard, if it’s going to stay up or blow down or sink into the lawn, that kind of thing,” he said. “Zoning takes care of the allowable coverage. And Environmental Services has to pass if there’s something that could affect, oh say water runoff, or if you have a commode on your porch, is it hooked up to the sanitary sewer system correctly.” We contemplated that possible amenity for a moment. “Funny enough there is nothing in the code about privacy,” he said. “They used to, but they took it out. So I guess you could have a commode on your porch.”

That ought to fetch the Neighbors From Hell.

He told me a story about visiting a model home that only had a half wall between the master bedroom and the master bath and I told him about my Brit Ex’s flat where the front door opened directly on the bathroom door which opened on a direct sight line with the Throne of Justice. You could never get into this territory in the website. This is why the human touch is important.

Eventually he transferred me to Zoning, almost reluctantly. Maybe there really are people like the legendary Maytag repairman, who sit at work all day waiting for the phone to ring.

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One Of Those Days

We all have them.

The plumber who spent three hours here fixing a string of fiddly malfunctions — drippy taps, self-flushing commodes — opened the cellar door (which can stay closed the whole winter) and stepped out into a well-aged and geologically layered heap of raccoon poop. Apparently the local Rocky has decided my walkout stairwell is the place to amble in and take a dump.

We’re under a tornado watch, which means the barometer has plummeted and every place I’ve ever wrenched or strained (there’s a lot of them) is singing. I feel like I’ve done a full tour of a museum the size of Delaware.

And every other guy I crossed paths with in the gym today looked like one of the Tsarnaev brothers.

All you can do is wait for the thunderstorm.

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I Will Never, Ever, Ever, Live This Down

The Engineer was helping me plant some pampas grass that a client heaved out of her trunk last week, a couple of clumps with their roots anchored in wads of dirt weighing about thirty pounds each. People bring me stuff like this on a whim. I was just stomping the soil down tight when, out of the rays of the dropping sun, a smallish glossy-black-curly-bouncy terrier-ish dog came hurtling down the sidewalk from inside the neighborhood, headed straight for the intersection of my street with a four-lane divided. A blonde Norman Rockwell eight-year-old, pounding after him but hopelessly outclassed, was shouting an unintelligible name; the dog, tasting freedom, was not about to pay any notice. Fate intervened in the form of a lamp-post. It wasn’t a hydrant but it was good enough for a sniff.

Small dog. I am not really afraid of small dogs. I jumped forward, extended my arms and called “C’mere, doggie!” Anything new is interesting; he bounded over and I hoisted him up just as the little girl reached us.

“Your little doggie get away from you?” I said. “Here we go.” She gathered him up, not all that gracefully. “Hand under his little butt, then he won’t get loose as easy.”

Halfway down the block a Momly figure waved to me. I waved back.

“I just,” I said in dawning shock to the Engineer as we pruned the thyme, “caught a runaway dog. For a little girl. Do not let this get out into the community.”

As he left a little while ago he spotted an envelope sitting on top of my mailbox.

I mean, I can’t stand children. Or dogs. And he would have been okay, the juvenile canine doofus.

I am so screwed.

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Ava, Scarlett, and BARF

The magnificent Izzy, my friend and financial shepherd, called last week to ask in an anxious tone if I could see my way to doing him a favor. Since Izzy has pulled my irons out of the fire on a continuous basis since 1998, in one way or another, the answer to this is always yes if at all possible.

Izzy has two Golden Retrievers named Ava and Scarlett (he likes classic movies). You can only tell them apart by the color of their collars; their sophisticated and glamorous names notwithstanding, they are, after all, Golden Retrievers. That is, they munch each other’s heads, galumph about the house like young Shetland ponies, and generally behave like big brainless louts who can’t decide if they are pack predators or preschoolers. They scare the living crap out of me. Izzy worships them. If I did not adore Izzy and Inger as much as I do I would still be running from the last encounter I had with them, discussing my retirement fund white-knuckled in Izzy’s kitchen.

What Izzy needed was freezer space, because he will not allow Ava and Scarlett to eat commercial dog food with its potential taint of chemicals or processing, and weekly concocts for them a homemade variant on the BARF diet.

Strangely enough, I have freezer space, because my Albino Ex, in the paroxysm of guilt that accompanied his decision to kick me to the curb, gave me not only four new tires but a refrigerator, three years old at the time but slated for replacement because he was venturing out on a Brave New Bachelor World and was having his whole condo expensively overhauled. It didn’t fit in my dinky kitchen so I just decided to have a second fridge in the cellar. The freezer section is mostly occupied by a colossal overstock of cold therapy gel packs.

Today Izzy pulled up in my driveway, the hatch of his Subaru laden with cargo retrieved from the nearest Wegman’s, where his inside man had warned him of several cases of frozen stock from Thanksgiving destined to be either pulled or sold. I, a vegetarian, now have seven kosher turkeys in my freezer, because kosher meat is guaranteed crap free, and Izzy, a man who observes the Law and davens devoutly, sees no reason why his dogs should eat treyf.

Only for him would I do this. I swear.

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March Twenty Fifth

(Clearly I need to reset the date function on my camera. These were taken about ten hours after the date stamp says they were.)

This is bullshit.

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On Being An Eleven-Year-Old Boy

At least that’s what my Cute Engineer said, once or twice. I believe he is a lad of more delicate sensibilities than my own; but then I am the daughter of a horn player and, as I have mentioned elsewhere, performers on brass instruments are perpetual adolescents one and all, who could not have persisted to virtuosity had they not a genial tolerance for the flatulent noises that a French horn or tuba will make in the early stages of mastery.

For a short time, around the era of my divorce, I maintained a weekend dinner date with a slightly neurotic but comfortingly ailurophile lady who fancied garlicky haricots and Belgian beers. Our mutual aesthetic broke down on the matter of gender bias. “Something I don’t understand about men,” she said, “is that men think farts are funny.“

You mean they’re not?

The celestial Mark Twain – however privately, in his day — gave us “1601, or, CONVERSATION, AS IT WAS BY THE SOCIAL FIRESIDE, IN THE TIME OF THE TUDORS.”

Ye Queene.—Verily in mine eight and sixty yeres have I not heard the fellow to this fart. Meseemeth, by ye grete sound and clamour of it, it was male; yet ye belly it did lurk behinde shoulde now fall lean and flat against ye spine of him yt hath bene delivered of so stately and so waste a bulk, where as ye guts of them yt doe quiff-splitters bear, stand comely still and rounde. Prithee let ye author confess ye offspring.

In latter days, Doctor Demento circulated this treasure.

Okay, so I’m an eleven-year-old boy. What the fuck. I never pretended to be ladylike from day one. Pull my finger.

EDIT: I used to hang out with a redneck from Vienna — Virginia, not Austria — who cued me in to the original of which the above tune is a parody. It occurs to me that it’s been years since it was current. Le voila:

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Spooked

I should know when to shut my mouth. Not that I said anything to them, but today, as I returned from the gym, my geezer neighbor — the one whose wife likes to leave nastygrams on my guests’ cars for the cardinal sin of parking at their curb — was out in front of his house, talking to a police officer. There were two shiny-new orange cones in the street behind his vehicle, well one of them anyway, they have a fucking fleet.

I don’t think he liked what she was telling him. I glanced back out the window in time to see her get back into her cruiser and drive off; he was carrying the cones back into the house.

I doubt they read this page. Am I spellcasting?

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