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First thing Special Ed says upon waking: "Why does Rachel from The Real World keep trying out for The View? She got beat out by Lisa Ling, and then Elizabeth Filarski Hasselbeck. When Elizabeth leaves the show, will Rachel try out again? And get beat out again?"
"Maps" - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
"Stars and Sons" - Broken Social Scene
"She Wants to Move" - N.E.R.D.
"Deep Red Bells" - Neko Case
I've been missing something lately, and I think it is the city of Chicago. I walked into class yesterday wearing my 1984 thrift store highwater Jordache jeans (sure they give me the 1980s long butt, but who cares! they're highwaters!), red high heels, a boy's v-neck sweater, and a jaunty scarf. Cute, right? So I walk into class and my students start making fun of my outfit. They ask me "Where d'ya get yer clothes Mrs. B.? You always are wearin' sumthin' funny."
Please, let me clarify the situation here. In this group of students are at least two boys who are wearing sweatsuits. As in matching sweat pants and sweat shirt. Three girls in pajama bottoms, and the rest wearing nearly identical "novelty tees" that say things like "Eat Lunch at Johnny's" on the front in a "vintage" font but have a store logo emblazoned across the back.
But this isn't a swipe at my students—well I guess it is, but it's a productive swipe, akin to when I called them "shitheads" for not doing ANY of the assigned reading for class. I'm no culture snob; I love to rock the American Eagle, I really do, and I'll tell it to you straight: Special Ed and I went to the Olive Garden for V-Day. And LOVED it.
What this is, though, is a dirge for the days when I could walk outside with a hat handcrafted of potato latkes and have some strung-out freak stop me in the street and compliment me on it. It's my way of paying tribute to the girl in a black turtleneck and cat-eye glasses and the boy in extra-small black trousers with white belt I used to see on every corner. It's my loving remembrance of those ludicrous Art Institute kids that crash every single twenty-something party on Chicago's northside.
It's a shout-out to Thai food on every corner, and taquerias in between. It's my way of tipping my hat to the four-o'clock crush at Marie's Riptide Lounge. A little love letter to the #66 bus line on Chicago Avenue, and the hard luck crowd that rides it. A tender chuckle over those weird hippies that practice Capoeira in Wicker Park, who are so very bad at it. I'm blowing a virtual kiss to the lovably violent gang bangers that inexplicably ruled the block I used to live on, giving the proverbial finger to the rapidly gentrifying rest of the neighborhood. I'm crying out to the cocaine-snorting yuppie chicks and dudes that took all the parking on my street every Friday and Saturday night as they jammed themselves into Bar Thirteen—I'm saying to them, "I'm sorry I took a superior cultural stance toward you! Look at what I've been reduced to! Taking a superior stance toward small town college students. It doesn't get lamer than that!"
So give me back those puddles of urine in the alley, the rats in the dumpster, annoying art rockers, and that feeling of panic on a winter morning when you look down expecting to see you've forgotten to put pants on because the wind is cutting to the bone. I'll take it all back, every single thing I've ever complained about. 'Cause my potato latke hat is starting to stink up my closet.
I've gotten a little bit behind on my correspondence lately, so I thought I'd use this space to catch up. Hope you don't mind.
It was great to see you last night! You both look like you are doing pretty well. I especially like how the goatee is working for you, Mr. Male Part of the Couple. I just wanted to drop you a line, though, to let you know that it's ok if you didn't exactly hit it off last night. There's no law that says you have to stay out until midnight on a blind date. I think everyone involved would have been better off if you all had just called it quits after you, Mr. Male Part, leaned back from the table, patted your ample belly, and then, reaching for the check, joked, "Let's see what the damage is." Really, it would have been fine to finish the evening there. Because, well, I just think that would have been better than proceeding on to Enoch's where you would spend that precious last hour of February 7, 2004 discussing your relative ACT scores.
Hope this letter finds you both well!
Sarah.
I'm so sorry that it is still six months after I married into your family and I still haven't dealt with the issue of what to call you, you. I'm sorry that when I call you to chat, I have to come up with schticky openers like "Hello, there! It's your new daughter-in-law!" instead of just saying "Hello, Mom" or "Hello, Lucy." I'm sorry that even when I'm under your own roof I have to preface any questions I have with "Hey, you there!" It's unacceptable, I know. I'm going to try to get better on this issue very soon.
Ok, you, I need to get going. I'll tell your son to give his lovely mother a call.
Yours truly,
Your New Daughter-in-Law!
It's not that I'm not into you anymore. You're still pretty damn cute, with your indie rock v-neck sweaters. It's just that, see, I'm 28 now, and after 9/11 and all I can't justify listening to 40 minutes of your wailing anymore. You know what I mean? So I guess this is goodbye. Don't feel bad, I had to say goodbye to Unwound, too.
I was also wondering, has anyone ever told you that Jonathan Fire*eater was a seriously epic band? Too bad you missed out on that shit.
Kisses and Hugs,
Sarah.
Dear The Academy,
I'm simply outraged! How could you have overlooked a performance so subtle, so nubile, so very MOVING?! How could you have possibly neglected to nominate Scarlett Johansson's ass for its work in Lost in Translation? Have you ever seen an ass express so much about the fragility of the human condition? Have you ever felt such profound, existential loneliness at the thought of never being able to be part of that ass's life? THAT, my friends, is acting. And if you can't recognize it, well then I feel a deep sadness for you.
Most definitely not thanking the academy at this moment,
Sarah.
Dear Special Ed,
Hi honey! As usual, I've been thinking about butts lately. And you already know that I think yours is pretty much the cat's pajamas. If I could, I'd look at your adorable behind all day long. I wish I could have a Butt Cam streaming video so I could see how cute your tookus is at work while you write all those sexy legal briefs. But, sweetie? It'd probably be a good idea if you didn't sit down in EXACTLY THE SAME PLACE on the couch every single day. Your butt print on our couch is beginning to take on some sort of religious significance, like the Virgin Mary appearing in a tortilla.
Thanks, pal!
Your loving wife.
Dear Grammy Producers,
Just a quick note to say thanks for reminding me to not do drugs. Just the other day I was thinking "Dude, I could really use some of that chronic." But then I sat through the most effective "just say no" advertisement I've ever seen, the Church of Funk Funkadelic Extravaganza you put together for tonight's Grammy awards. And I said to myself, "Dude, if you smoke that chronic you were jonesing for, you might end up like that old white geezer dressed like a wizard, jamming to "We Got the Funk."
So thanks!
Sarah.
Rodney Yee? you can just go ahead and bite me right now. Yeah, I'm talking to you, Rodney, with your virile ponytail and luridly bulging hot pants. When you tell me to stand on my head and sniff my armpit, I do it. Even when I forgot my deodorant that morning. Half Moon pose? Yeah, I can't do that one for shit. But do I take a Ben & Jerry's break when you tell me to do it? No, Rodney, I do not. No, Rodney, because I've moved my freaking brain into my heart like you told me to, and so have no brain with which to resist your evil. Rodney, you might be enjoying the shit out of your practice, but you know what? You're on a mountaintop in Hawaii. I'm stuck here trying not to break my freakishly-long arms on my furniture when you tell me to swan dive forward forty-three times in a row. And also, the paper mill downwind is really starting to stink the joint up right now so excuse me if I can't focus enough to turn, turn, and then turn even more. But really, Rodney? all of this is small potatoes compared to when you tell me to move my pubis away from my buttocks flesh. And then you say it again. Pubis. Buttocks Flesh. Flesh of Buttocks with a side of Pubis. So even though I'm a drooling brainless yoga zombie right now, when you keep saying those words, you are only hurting yourself. Because the more often you say it, Mr. Pubis Buttocks Fleshman, III, the more likely it is that I'm gonna come on over there, Rodney, and kick you in your unnaturally rounded BUTTOCKS FLESH.
Namaste this, bitch.
Last night, Special Ed came to join me in the shower. Before you get excited, I'll just go ahead and clarify that while we both seriously dig the marital relations, the shower, for us, is not usually the place where they occur. In the shower we make grocery lists for the upcoming week, talk about the Yankees, inspect unusual new moles on one another's backs, and just generally gossip. It's a regular naked coffee klatch in there sometimes.
As we're wrapping up our household shower meeting last night--Yeah, thanks for the pointers, Joe. I'll go work those up and get back to you-- I reach down to turn the water off. Our shower faucet is of the two-knobbed ilk, one for hot water and one for cold. So I reach down and (I know you see this one coming) obviously turn the cold water completely off, leaving us both to get doused in a blindingly rageful stream of boiling water. Except see, I was closer to and facing the faucet and so am only receiving glancing blows of boiling water off my backside; Special Ed, on the other hand, is getting it full frontal. His exit from the shower is blocked because our sink juts out right next to the shower on his end, and he can't get to the faucet because I'm in the way. And I am paralyzed with, well, with retardation. Special Ed's screaming "Turn it off! Turn it off!" and somehow my mind registers all the blame for this calamity on the FAULTY PIPES rather than my bungling hands, and resign myself to the fact that there is nothing to be done about all this boiling water except maybe make a really huge pot of tea later on.
So what do I do? To the man to whom I have pledged my love, life, and loyalty? To the man with whom I have sat through Biker Boyz and who has sat through Ken Burns' Civil War with me? The man who actually once said to me, while I was out of town, that he missed having my feet in his lap? Well, obviously, I bail. I get the fuck out of there and leave my sweet husband to perish, melting into a little blue-eyed melted man.
But Special Ed has the will to survive! By God, and by Gloria Gaynor, he will! He will not have his life ended this way. No, not this day! And so, The Little Ed That Could revs up his engine and attempts to leap out of the shower. Through the closed shower curtain. And he is not a flexible man. But he is wet and slippery. He took out the shower curtain (and by took out, I mean ripped the whole damn pole down) and somehow ended up on his back on the floor of the bathroom with his lower legs still bent over the lip of the tub. Oh, and also, he was naked.
And I laughed. Oh, I am the worst wife ever invented. But then I laughed some more. And then I leaned over and shut the shower off. Because in the end, neither the shower nor the pipes were trying to murder us by scalding (though that would make a mean Law and Order: SVU). No, apparently there was no plot against us, except for the plot God set in motion when he neglected to provide me with crisis-management skills.
Happy Anniversary, honey. It's been six months of wedded bliss today. Bet you just can't wait to see what comes next.
