Blond Again!

An Irishman , a Mexican and a Blonde Guy are on the scaffolding on the 20th floor of a building.

When they open their lunch boxes, the Irishman says, “If I get corned beef and cabbage one more time, I'm going to jump off this building.”

The Mexican opens his lunch box and exclaims, “If I get burritos one more time I'm going to jump.”

The blonde opens his lunch and says, “If I get ever get another bologna sandwich, I surely will jump as well.”

The next day, the Irishman opens his lunch box, sees corned beef and cabbage and jumps to his death.

The Mexican sees his burrito and jumps.

The blonde guy opens his lunch and sure enough, there’s the bologna so he jumps to his death.

The Irishman's wife weeps at the funeral. “If I'd known how really tired he was of corned beef and cabbage, I wouldn’t have given it to him again!”

The Mexican's wife wails, “I didn't know how much he hated burritos. I could have given him tacos or enchiladas.”

Then the blonde's wife speaks. “Don't look at me. He always made his own lunch.”

Treat Me Like a Lady

After my visit last summer Martin sent me a note taped to this wall in front of me: “Don’t wait another ten years.”

Thirty years ago he and I lived together as lovers. It was a year or perhaps less before I became impatient and found Larry who lasted about the same amount of time before I gave him the boot, too. Then the two of them went off together on glorious adventures around the world that I could only envy.

What did I want? I wanted to move into a real partnership, down that long, winding path to Forever. A joined-up life. Travel was exciting but I wanted to build a nest, fix up old houses because that’s what I knew. Neither one of these guys had the money or the inclination to throw their lots in with me. They had their own paths to follow.

As I look back on that time in my thirties and forties I realize now that I only flattered myself that I threw them over. They were just being gallant guys by letting me be the one to say tootle-oo.

The great thing about men is that they intensify our womanliness. Not by pawing our panties off but by acknowledging that we are feminine. There’s always the potential erotic connection even in forbidden relationships, fathers and daughters, brothers and sisters, but masculine gallantry is a special kind of love. These guys always treated me like a lady.

So, bereft now of my old lover, Martin, who died last month, I lose a few dance steps in the rhythm of my femininity. I am grateful that other old flames still stop by or call to keep up. I can hear the old music in their voices and see that same bright spark in their eyes. For me. Well, I'm sure they tell all their old girlfriends they are still special. Cricky, who expected boyfriends would live past eighty? Who knew they’d die?

I loved them once and I love them still. I am still beautiful in their hearts. How I miss the dance.

Hand Me the Spade

When an old friend of thirty years died last week I realized again that very few people can utter the actual word, 'dead'. People say “passed” or mumble something pious. No one dares say 'croaked', either or 'toes up' or even that poetic Shakepearean 'shuffled off the mortal coils'.

Next time you say 'passed', try to not roll your eyes heavenward. Look at me. See what it means to me. Help me face it. 'Dead’ is hard, yes. ‘Dead’ is sharp, yes, and final. There’s nothing good or easy about it but it's the truest word.

Don't try to smooth it over with a flowery euphemism such as ‘he’s gone home to God’. This makes YOU feel better but it irritates the hell out of me. Just endure my unhappy moment with me. Maybe I want to say more about the dead friend; maybe I’ll even burst into tears. But I’m a grown-up. I’ll change the subject if I can and let you off the hook.

Say, “too bad he’s gone” or “what a shame” and I’ll handle my own religion. You may mean well but you're changing the subject from my grief to your sermon. If you really believe I am wrong to weep, that my friend truly is ‘better off’ with the angels’, just hand me a pamphlet. I’ll read it later.

“Be honest. Call a spade a spade,” my mother said. When you want to dig a hole you need a spade, you don’t want ‘a digging instrument’ .’ Only a shovel with long handle and a pointy blade will do the job. A tool you can lean into. I need a spade to bury my dead friend. I need a sharp spade to say good-bye to thirty years of happy times.

Now is not the time for a spirituality lesson. If you saw me with a cast on my leg, would you say, “it’s God’s will?”

No, you’d say, “Too bad. How’d it happen?” Because you know I’m dying to tell you how it happened and I’d sure like your sympathy.

“Don’t gild the lily.” My mother said. Meaning, don’t paint over a beautiful flower. Saying “he’s passed” means he’s not really gone away forver. “He’s passed” means he’s just out of sight, stuck in a traffic jam. “He’s passed” promises I will see him again. You may believe that what if I don’t?

What matters is that he’s not here anymore. He doesn’t answer the phone. His dog misses him. Dead means dead no matter how you try to improve on it.

Skip the sermon. Hand me the spade and let me dig.

KABOOM! How to Make Airports Secure!

From my smart pal in today's mail:

Get ride of those embarassing full-body scanners at the airports which prove to the security line that you have huge breasts or a tiny penis. Now you can step into a booth that will detonate any explosive device on anyone's body.

You'll feel completely secure at the airport terminal every time you hear another muffled explosion because you know your plane ride will be perfectly safe!

We'll save money without those long, expensive 'terrorist' trials and arguments about racial profiling. Nope, justice will be swift and certain. Case and casket closed!


And there'll be the added benefit of hearing the airport announcer say, "Attention standby passengers! We now have a seat available on flight number..."

The Pessimism Bubble

Unemployment, oil spill, climate change.. but maybe it ain’t ALL bad. Ross Douthat, op-ed columnist for the New York Times, writes July 5 that we have been down before and recovered.

"Pessimism bubbles formed during America’s last two economic crises," he writes. Take a look at "the stagflation era in the late 1970s and the post-cold war recession that ushered Bill Clinton into the White House. Go back and read Jimmy Carter’s famous “malaise speech,” which liberals have lately been rehabilitating. With its warnings about retrenchment, rationing and a permanent energy crisis, it feels like a contemporary document. But it isn’t, and Carter’s prophecies were wrong: the grimmest speech any modern president has given was delivered just a few years before America kicked off a long era of impressive economic growth.

"..(E)ven now, there isn’t a major power in the world that wouldn’t happily change places with the United States. Our weaknesses are real, but so is our potential for resilience. While our rivals (in Asia as well as the West) face a slow demographic decline, our population is steadily increasing. The European Union’s recent follies make our creaking 200-year-old institutions look flexible by comparison. And China can throw up all the high-speed rails and solar panels it wants, but it won’t change the fact that most of the country is still sunk in rural poverty.

"All of this is cold comfort if you can’t find a job, or can’t afford your mortgage payments. But historical perspective is important. The more we remember the pessimism bubbles of the past, the better our chances of bursting out of this one.

"Here endeth the pep talk. Happy Fifth of July.”

To be Very Very Old

My husband and I are very, very old. How old? I'm so old I don't know what I'm missing. So old I gave up on the Mac transition a few months ago and still work on my old Dell with a very old browser.

The husband's so old he can't figure out the Mac OS either. And now we've spent all this money on the Macbook, keyboard and mouse, iMe or whatever the devil it is, and a years supply of Apple tech support. Hundred bucks for that and cheap at twice the price.

IF, if if we can ever remember what the sequence of the OS is. Email looks very like Outlook but it's not the same. It's a flat, grey on grey color, for one thing. I know the Apple Genii put my contact list on there but since I can't sync it with my ever-changing Dell contacts, what good is it? And it doesn't pick up my mail.

Poor husband is right now on this fine Fourth of July Saturday standing confused and pissed off at the Apple Store. You make an appointment for a One on One a week or so ahead and you can only make one appointment at a time. Plenty of free 'seminars' at the stores which are really just feature demonstrations. Somehow Apple has designed the cruelest stools to sit on my butt has ever met so you stand. Keeps the customers moving right along.

Wait, it's worse. Dear reader, dear fellow blogger, help me post your blog right alongside this one. I fell off the turnip truck years ago and can't remember how to put you there. It's not that I'm not reading you, it's just that I'm so very, very old. A toddler could help but I'm all out of toddlers these days.

Mother of the Bride

A friend sent this charming little tale just today:

Jennifer's wedding day was fast approaching. Not even her parents' nasty divorce could dampen her excitement.

Her mother had found the PERFECT dress, and would be the best-dressed mother-of-the-bride ever!

A week later, Jennifer was horrified to learn that her father's new, young wife had bought the same dress as her mother!

Jennifer asked her father's new young wife to exchange it. ''Absolutely not!" she replied. "I look like a million bucks in this dress, and I'm wearing it to your wedding.''

Jennifer told her mother, who graciously said, ''Never mind, Sweetheart. I'll get another dress. After all, it's your special day.''

A few days later, they went shopping and found another
gorgeous dress for her mother.

When they stopped for lunch, Jennifer asked her mother,
''Aren't you going to return the other dress? You really don't have another occasion where you could wear it."

Her mother smiled and replied, ''Of course I do,
dear. I'm wearing it to the rehearsal dinner.''

Damndest thing. One day he’s here, kvetching about his stocks and no wonder, he was always looking for a bargain, junk bonds back in the day, all you can eat at buffet restaurants in low-rent shopping malls. Not that he was tight, just cautious. Conserved what he had, his money, his routines, his solo life.

Now he’s dead. Not from junk bonds or junk food but a junk doctor who didn’t read his file and prescribed penicillin that sent him into anaphylactic shock, Stevens-Johnson Syndrome and, poof, a month later, toes up. He had quit Medicare for a cheaper local HMO. No copays.

Over the years I asked Martin what he was going to do with all his money when he croaked.

“I ain’t goin’,” he snorted. No ex-wives and no kids to leave any money to, just a stray dog, Lucky, that kept him company for the past ten years. A distant sister too old to visit nowadays who didn’t need anything from him.

“Are you okay, financially?” I pestered. Only old lovers who have morphed over thirty years into close friends can ask these questions. Nobody else did. “Mart, you gotta have a will. Leave everything to me.”

“Hah.”

“You want to be buried or cremated or what? You give anybody a power of attorney?”

“Nah.”

Even ‘nah’ sounded Brooklynese. New York City smart, Martin could tell jokes for hours: Jewish jokes, Irish jokes, religious jokes, lawyer jokes, doctor jokes, all of them streamed out of his memory, an East River of humor, tolerance, irony and wit.

During the brief year he lived in my house, two doors down from his, he brought home grocery bags of goodies and great wine. He loved to shop, he loved to cook and he loved to eat. He taught me to drink martini’s. We went to Key West and looked at Hemingway’s house although Martin did not read much.

In Santa Fe last summer, promoting my memoir, Santa Fe Dreamhouse, I stayed with him. There’s a box of my books in his garage right now, along with the last rugs he didn’t sell at flea markets. Pissed me off he wouldn’t read my book even though he’s in the last chapter. Damn stubborn.

I’ll always have my dreamhouse for it existed before I ever set foot
in Santa Fe and will last as long as I have memory. It's architecture is not perfect but its location by the ancient river, snug against the mountain flank, makes it unique. There will never be another like it, ever.

I can fill the Thanksgiving table with everyone I loved. Here’s Martin, my old friend and neighbor from Brandywine Street, who loved my dog, Flyer, so much he followed me from Philadelphia to Santa Fe just to be near him. Martin has his own dog now.

“Can I bring my Lucky?” he’ll ask.

“Of course,” I say. “Bring what you love.”

Martin, how I miss you.