A conversation with Katy:
Me: Where's Matt?
Katy: The bathroom.
Me: I swear to God, one of you is ALWAYS in the bathroom. In fact, if you guys had a sitcom, that would be the running joke every week.
Katy: And it would be funny every week. You'd see it coming, but it'll always be good.
Me: I would be the wacky neighbor.
Katy: Yes! Like Roseanne's sister! You'd be like Jackie!
Me: Ew! Gross! I would not be Roseanne's sister!
Katy: Okay... you can be the neighbor from Will and Grace.
Me: Jack? A gay man?
Katy: No! The one who shops a lot!
Me: Karen? The drunk one with big boobs?
Katy: Sure! You and the gay guy could sit around and giggle all the time.
Me: Can I just say that I find it disturbing that you know Roseanne's sister's name but you don't know any of the characters from Will and Grace?
Katy: I love Roseanne! I grew up with that show!
Me: I wasn't allowed to watch it.
Katy: Why?
Me: My parents thought it was dirty and crass.
Katy: This explains a lot about our relationship.
Showing posts with label television. Show all posts
Showing posts with label television. Show all posts
Friday, August 21, 2009
Monday, September 22, 2008
My Friends Think He's a FILF
My father called at 7:55 tonight. When I answered the phone, he wanted to know what I was doing, what I was up to. He wanted to know if I was excited.
"It's premiere night!" he said.
Oh, as if I didn't know. While I might love summer for its sun and beaches and weather that allows me to wear sandals, I love fall even more. Fall, of course, means tastes like pumpkin and apple and cinnamon--which are some of my favorites--and it also means changing leaves and weather that allows me to wear thigh-high boots. It also means the start of the fall television season, and I, as I think has been extensively proven, love television. I especially love reality television that revolves around singing and dancing. Which means tonight is right up my alley.
Tonight Dancing with the Stars starts. And I'm not the only person in my family who loves Dancing with the Stars. My father loves Dancing with the Stars, too. He and I have similar reasons for loving the show: we have massive crushes on the professional dancers or the stars. For me, this season is going to be about the following things: loving Mark Ballas, loving Derek Hough, loving Rocco DiSpirito, and loving Lance Bass--the last one in a way that I know well. After all, I can love a gay man like no one else.
My father? He loves Karina. He loves Edyta. He loves Cheryl. He loves to send me vaguely perverted text messages about them when they--spangled and half-nude--appear on the screen.
I'd like to be her friend, my father texts me at 8:10 tonight, just after Cheryl has swished around the stage, flinging her hips around as easily as she flings her choppy bob.
Gross, I text back.
What's wrong with that? my father wants to know.
Gross, I type.
My father could be watching Monday Night Football like many of America's men, but he's not. He's watching the foxtrot and the cha-cha and he's trading catty text messages with his daughter about the fallen celebrities who are gluing on smiles and padding their bras and stuffing their spandex pants and making brilliant asses of themselves on television.
This might very well be part of my father's appeal. This might very well be why Katy just sent me a card the other day, a card that announced she thinks my father is a FILF.
Gross, I wrote back. You're just gross.
"It's premiere night!" he said.
Oh, as if I didn't know. While I might love summer for its sun and beaches and weather that allows me to wear sandals, I love fall even more. Fall, of course, means tastes like pumpkin and apple and cinnamon--which are some of my favorites--and it also means changing leaves and weather that allows me to wear thigh-high boots. It also means the start of the fall television season, and I, as I think has been extensively proven, love television. I especially love reality television that revolves around singing and dancing. Which means tonight is right up my alley.
Tonight Dancing with the Stars starts. And I'm not the only person in my family who loves Dancing with the Stars. My father loves Dancing with the Stars, too. He and I have similar reasons for loving the show: we have massive crushes on the professional dancers or the stars. For me, this season is going to be about the following things: loving Mark Ballas, loving Derek Hough, loving Rocco DiSpirito, and loving Lance Bass--the last one in a way that I know well. After all, I can love a gay man like no one else.
My father? He loves Karina. He loves Edyta. He loves Cheryl. He loves to send me vaguely perverted text messages about them when they--spangled and half-nude--appear on the screen.
I'd like to be her friend, my father texts me at 8:10 tonight, just after Cheryl has swished around the stage, flinging her hips around as easily as she flings her choppy bob.
Gross, I text back.
What's wrong with that? my father wants to know.
Gross, I type.
My father could be watching Monday Night Football like many of America's men, but he's not. He's watching the foxtrot and the cha-cha and he's trading catty text messages with his daughter about the fallen celebrities who are gluing on smiles and padding their bras and stuffing their spandex pants and making brilliant asses of themselves on television.
This might very well be part of my father's appeal. This might very well be why Katy just sent me a card the other day, a card that announced she thinks my father is a FILF.
Gross, I wrote back. You're just gross.
Monday, September 8, 2008
That Guy on T.V. Has Seen Me (Almost) Naked
About a month ago there was a day when I went to the beach, and when I came home I immediately got in the shower. Everything about me was crusty with sand and salt, and there was nothing I wanted more than to be buffed clean and smooth.
When I got out of the shower, I started smoothing lotion on my legs. That's when I heard a knock, and I grabbed my robe and ran for the front door as fast as I could. A few days before my bathroom ceiling had caved in because my landlord had ignored a leak I called to tell him about every month since October. Whenever it rained hard, the ceiling started plink-plink-plinking water onto the floor of my bathroom. My landlord had tried some quick fixes--none of which worked, and the problem was getting worse. During the night of a particularly bad rain storm I woke at 3:00 AM and had to hold a towel over me as I went to the bathroom because the leak had gotten just that bad. Then a night or so later I came home from teaching and found that a few of the ceiling tiles had exploded. The whole bathroom was filled with filthy, soggy, and bloated remnants of those tiles. I was not pleased.
And this explains why I ran for the door when I heard the knock. I was thinking that it was--finally, oh finally!--that gangly boy the landlord employs to be handy around the house, and I could've cared less what I looked like when I whipped open that door because he was going to fix my bathroom. He was going to give me a ceiling. He was going to alleviate those walking nightmares I had as I puttered around my bathroom, scared that a whole army of wet and irritated spiders was going to march through the gaping hole and stare me down before they ate my body down to nothing but bones.
I barely had my bathrobe wrapped around me when I ripped the chain from its place and pulled the door open. I was all ready to say, "WILL A BEER MAKE YOU DO THIS FASTER? I AM ABOUT TO BE EATEN BY SPIDERS!"
But as I opened my mouth and tugged at the robe's belt, I realized that it was not the gangly handy man standing at my door. Instead, it was a tall man with silver hair. His mouth fell open when he saw me with a half-hitched-up robe and wet, tangled hair.
"Uhm," he said.
"Oh!" I said.
"Uhm," he said.
"Oh!" I said. "Well, I was expecting someone else."
He nodded slowly. He identified himself. Turns out, he was running for office. Important office. And he had come by to introduce himself. He was walking the neighborhood, getting to know the good people of this part of Maine.
"Well," I said, "that's good. That's nice. I'm just coming out of the shower." I touched my wet hair and tightened the belt of my robe.
"I see," he said. "Well, can I tell you about my positions? My ideas? Can I tell you what I care about?"
"I was kind of in the middle of something," I said. I did not add that I was in the middle of oiling myself up like some co-ed on her way to happy hour.
The man didn't quite care. He launched into his speech about renewable energy sources, about government spending, about education reform, about gas prices. He never once made eye contact with me. He looked at the floor, the ceiling, the wall, the back of the door. He wanted to look anywhere that did not include my wet, dripping body.
After he finished his prepared speech, I nodded and thanked him for coming by. "It was nice to meet you," I said as I pushed the door shut in his face. "Good luck!"
And just recently when I turned the television on I saw that man's face again, floating on the screen next to very patriotic images: laughing children, waving flags, smiling veterans. When he turned his gaze directly at the television screen, I got a major case of the blecchs. I thought of him standing in my doorway and shifting weight from leg to leg. I thought of him trying not to look me directly in the eye, for fear his eyes might wander to more southern locations. I couldn't remember a word he said about his platform, his ideas, his positions, but I could remember everything else.
Whenever his commercials come on I feel just about as dirty as a girl can get. Dirty, dirty, dirty.
When I got out of the shower, I started smoothing lotion on my legs. That's when I heard a knock, and I grabbed my robe and ran for the front door as fast as I could. A few days before my bathroom ceiling had caved in because my landlord had ignored a leak I called to tell him about every month since October. Whenever it rained hard, the ceiling started plink-plink-plinking water onto the floor of my bathroom. My landlord had tried some quick fixes--none of which worked, and the problem was getting worse. During the night of a particularly bad rain storm I woke at 3:00 AM and had to hold a towel over me as I went to the bathroom because the leak had gotten just that bad. Then a night or so later I came home from teaching and found that a few of the ceiling tiles had exploded. The whole bathroom was filled with filthy, soggy, and bloated remnants of those tiles. I was not pleased.
And this explains why I ran for the door when I heard the knock. I was thinking that it was--finally, oh finally!--that gangly boy the landlord employs to be handy around the house, and I could've cared less what I looked like when I whipped open that door because he was going to fix my bathroom. He was going to give me a ceiling. He was going to alleviate those walking nightmares I had as I puttered around my bathroom, scared that a whole army of wet and irritated spiders was going to march through the gaping hole and stare me down before they ate my body down to nothing but bones.
I barely had my bathrobe wrapped around me when I ripped the chain from its place and pulled the door open. I was all ready to say, "WILL A BEER MAKE YOU DO THIS FASTER? I AM ABOUT TO BE EATEN BY SPIDERS!"
But as I opened my mouth and tugged at the robe's belt, I realized that it was not the gangly handy man standing at my door. Instead, it was a tall man with silver hair. His mouth fell open when he saw me with a half-hitched-up robe and wet, tangled hair.
"Uhm," he said.
"Oh!" I said.
"Uhm," he said.
"Oh!" I said. "Well, I was expecting someone else."
He nodded slowly. He identified himself. Turns out, he was running for office. Important office. And he had come by to introduce himself. He was walking the neighborhood, getting to know the good people of this part of Maine.
"Well," I said, "that's good. That's nice. I'm just coming out of the shower." I touched my wet hair and tightened the belt of my robe.
"I see," he said. "Well, can I tell you about my positions? My ideas? Can I tell you what I care about?"
"I was kind of in the middle of something," I said. I did not add that I was in the middle of oiling myself up like some co-ed on her way to happy hour.
The man didn't quite care. He launched into his speech about renewable energy sources, about government spending, about education reform, about gas prices. He never once made eye contact with me. He looked at the floor, the ceiling, the wall, the back of the door. He wanted to look anywhere that did not include my wet, dripping body.
After he finished his prepared speech, I nodded and thanked him for coming by. "It was nice to meet you," I said as I pushed the door shut in his face. "Good luck!"
And just recently when I turned the television on I saw that man's face again, floating on the screen next to very patriotic images: laughing children, waving flags, smiling veterans. When he turned his gaze directly at the television screen, I got a major case of the blecchs. I thought of him standing in my doorway and shifting weight from leg to leg. I thought of him trying not to look me directly in the eye, for fear his eyes might wander to more southern locations. I couldn't remember a word he said about his platform, his ideas, his positions, but I could remember everything else.
Whenever his commercials come on I feel just about as dirty as a girl can get. Dirty, dirty, dirty.
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
It's Enough to Make Me Wish I'd Been Forced into Dance Class
For a period in my teenage years I was the friend of a boy who was pretty fabulous at one thing: dancing. He didn't care what people thought about him, and he didn't care if he made an ass of himself. Those two things combined to make him a pretty decent dancer for a guy who didn't take class and preferred to just fool around with the form.
I took this boy to two of my high school dances. I took him for two reasons. First, I thought I was in love with him. Second, I wanted to watch him dance. At the second dance, my friends and I arranged it so we brought in a few of his friends, and the three of them worked on a dance number for weeks before. When one of them launched over the other's head during a high-flying move, it was made official: we had the awesomest dates ever.
They took some of their inspiration from Usher, and if there was anyone I loved more than the dancing boy at that point in my life, it was Usher. In fact, when I first saw the video for My Way, my jaw unlocked from my head and fell onto the floor in front of me. I wanted nothing more than to sit in a dark room and watch him do that dance--oh, that sequence at the end!--over and over and over. And the dancing boy I was toting around to my school dances? Well, he learned that dance. It was all pretty impressive. (I had a similar religious experience involving Usher in grad school. This was about the time that Yeah was on the radio every time you turned it on. One day I was over at the Wily Republican's, and my head nearly fell off my shoulders when he started doing a sequence from the middle of the video. I was grading essays, and he was supposed to be writing a paper, but he was doing what he always did when he was supposed to write a paper--avoiding it. And dancing. "ARE YOU DOING THE USHER DANCE?!" I said. I put down my pen and tried very hard not to hyperventilate. He stopped. "Yeah," he said, all nonchalant, like it was no big deal, no big thing. Well, you can bet I went home and recorded that in my diary.)
After high school, there was a long period where I didn't talk to that dancing boy anymore. He and I went our separate ways. We ran into each other four years later, a few months before I left for graduate school, and we realized it would be pretty silly not to spend the summer together. So that's exactly what we did. And there was an awful lot of dancing. We danced at bars and clubs. We occasionally drove over to Canada with some of our still underage friends and we drank watery rum and Cokes and danced ourselves stupid, tired, and parched.
It should be noted that I'm not a good dancer. I'm not even okay. I'm goofy and gangly and stiff. But when I was with that dancing boy, I was a better dancer. I cared less about what people thought about me and my proficiency. All that mattered was that he was spinning me, twirling me, lifting me. All that mattered was that our bodies were so close and the dance floor was so crowded and the air was so hot and the music was so loud that it we felt like we were part of something otherworldly.
When I miss that boy these days, it is only for that reason. He made it easy to dance. He made me love it in a way that's never quite left me.
Which is why I sort of freaked out over this summer's edition of So You Think You Can Dance. It was a show I'd never watched before. Amy and Becky were always telling me You'll love it! You need to watch it! It's better than American Idol! and I'd scoff and think, Better than American Idol? Please.
But let me tell you this--it's just as good and amazing and consuming as American Idol, and I couldn't be happier that the girls finally hounded me into watching it.
Every Wednesday I'd park myself in front of the television so full of giddiness that I couldn't contain it. I'd twitch and groove and wiggle all over the room on commercials. I'd throw down some of my best moves, suddenly inspired by what I was seeing on the television. And what was I seeing? Sheer brilliance, that's what.
I was in love with Will and Twitch. I wanted to be Chelsie. And Mark? Well, I felt like I'd known Mark in another life. The first time I saw him with curly hair I thought, "Oh my God. That's New Boy!" And I spent a considerable chunk of the season giggling whenever Mark came on the screen and did his thing because I was seeing New Boy doing it, and that seemed awfully funny. Mark looks a Hawaiian (possibly gay? I go back and forth on that issue...) version of New Boy, and I that's a lot of what motivated me to pick up the phone and vote for him week after week. But when it came down to the semifinals, I stopped voting for Mark. It was no longer enough that he amused me for resembling one of my grad school flings. Now I was voting for the best dancer, which meant I was voting for Joshua because he is fantastic:
(Now you can see why it's so often like a Bollywood number inside my head--becuse it's awesome.)
And--if that weren't enough--here's one more reason for me to love So You Think You Can Dance: it's really, really hot.
It's enough to make a girl wish her parents had been the cruel type--you know, the ones who would say, "You don't like going to dance class? Tough. Suck it up. You'll thank me some day!"
I sure might've.
I took this boy to two of my high school dances. I took him for two reasons. First, I thought I was in love with him. Second, I wanted to watch him dance. At the second dance, my friends and I arranged it so we brought in a few of his friends, and the three of them worked on a dance number for weeks before. When one of them launched over the other's head during a high-flying move, it was made official: we had the awesomest dates ever.
They took some of their inspiration from Usher, and if there was anyone I loved more than the dancing boy at that point in my life, it was Usher. In fact, when I first saw the video for My Way, my jaw unlocked from my head and fell onto the floor in front of me. I wanted nothing more than to sit in a dark room and watch him do that dance--oh, that sequence at the end!--over and over and over. And the dancing boy I was toting around to my school dances? Well, he learned that dance. It was all pretty impressive. (I had a similar religious experience involving Usher in grad school. This was about the time that Yeah was on the radio every time you turned it on. One day I was over at the Wily Republican's, and my head nearly fell off my shoulders when he started doing a sequence from the middle of the video. I was grading essays, and he was supposed to be writing a paper, but he was doing what he always did when he was supposed to write a paper--avoiding it. And dancing. "ARE YOU DOING THE USHER DANCE?!" I said. I put down my pen and tried very hard not to hyperventilate. He stopped. "Yeah," he said, all nonchalant, like it was no big deal, no big thing. Well, you can bet I went home and recorded that in my diary.)
After high school, there was a long period where I didn't talk to that dancing boy anymore. He and I went our separate ways. We ran into each other four years later, a few months before I left for graduate school, and we realized it would be pretty silly not to spend the summer together. So that's exactly what we did. And there was an awful lot of dancing. We danced at bars and clubs. We occasionally drove over to Canada with some of our still underage friends and we drank watery rum and Cokes and danced ourselves stupid, tired, and parched.
It should be noted that I'm not a good dancer. I'm not even okay. I'm goofy and gangly and stiff. But when I was with that dancing boy, I was a better dancer. I cared less about what people thought about me and my proficiency. All that mattered was that he was spinning me, twirling me, lifting me. All that mattered was that our bodies were so close and the dance floor was so crowded and the air was so hot and the music was so loud that it we felt like we were part of something otherworldly.
When I miss that boy these days, it is only for that reason. He made it easy to dance. He made me love it in a way that's never quite left me.
Which is why I sort of freaked out over this summer's edition of So You Think You Can Dance. It was a show I'd never watched before. Amy and Becky were always telling me You'll love it! You need to watch it! It's better than American Idol! and I'd scoff and think, Better than American Idol? Please.
But let me tell you this--it's just as good and amazing and consuming as American Idol, and I couldn't be happier that the girls finally hounded me into watching it.
Every Wednesday I'd park myself in front of the television so full of giddiness that I couldn't contain it. I'd twitch and groove and wiggle all over the room on commercials. I'd throw down some of my best moves, suddenly inspired by what I was seeing on the television. And what was I seeing? Sheer brilliance, that's what.
I was in love with Will and Twitch. I wanted to be Chelsie. And Mark? Well, I felt like I'd known Mark in another life. The first time I saw him with curly hair I thought, "Oh my God. That's New Boy!" And I spent a considerable chunk of the season giggling whenever Mark came on the screen and did his thing because I was seeing New Boy doing it, and that seemed awfully funny. Mark looks a Hawaiian (possibly gay? I go back and forth on that issue...) version of New Boy, and I that's a lot of what motivated me to pick up the phone and vote for him week after week. But when it came down to the semifinals, I stopped voting for Mark. It was no longer enough that he amused me for resembling one of my grad school flings. Now I was voting for the best dancer, which meant I was voting for Joshua because he is fantastic:
(Now you can see why it's so often like a Bollywood number inside my head--becuse it's awesome.)
And--if that weren't enough--here's one more reason for me to love So You Think You Can Dance: it's really, really hot.
It's enough to make a girl wish her parents had been the cruel type--you know, the ones who would say, "You don't like going to dance class? Tough. Suck it up. You'll thank me some day!"
I sure might've.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Sorry, Boyfriend: The Mark Ballas Edition
You know what takes the edge off being sexually harassed by students? Dancing with the Stars. There is something incredibly endearing about watching B-List celebrities or fallen A-List celebrities or sports stars try to do the rumba, and on Monday nights I park myself in front of the television and try to make it through the show without hyperventilating.
It never fails--there's always someone on Dancing with the Stars that I can lust after. Recall the Helio Castroneves incident? Well, that type of thing is happening again, except this season I have developed multiple crushes. For some reason, I find pretty much everyone on this current season to be as charming as all get out. Especially the professional dancers. Especially Mark Ballas. So, here we go:
Sorry, Boyfriend, but I am in love with Mark Ballas.
Mark Ballas is enough to make me want to enroll in acting classes just so that I can become some B-List star and land a gig on Dancing with the Stars, where I will be his one, his only, his partner for all those sexy Latin dances. I want him to murmur the phrase hip-action! to me until my brain leaks out my ear.
Last week when Amy was in town, we had the pleasure of watching the show together, and that meant we got eighteen different kinds of worked up about Mark Ballas whenever he appeared on screen. Then, after we had thoroughly discussed the reasons we thought he was just so hot, we got curious about him. We thought we should Google him. And we did. And we found out that Mark Ballas is a singer. A singer who plays the guitar. A singer who plays the guitar in a band he formed with another of the dancers from the show. Oh, it was too much!
Mark Ballas reminds me of a lot of people. Sometimes he reminds me of the old New Boy, what with the dark hair and tan skin, those curls. Sometimes he reminds me of a ton of the boys I had crushes on during college--preppy boys with cute hats, crisp shirts, clean sneakers. He reminds me of a boy who loves his mother a whole lot. I want to bake him cookies.
Oh, but I want to do more than bake cookies for him. I want to learn to dance for him. With him. Listen, I would be the world's worst dancer. That much is fact. I wouldn't be able to contort my body or wiggle my hips or do any of those things the judges of the show are always yapping about. After all, I am the girl who, when she was in the local pageant during her senior year and thus required to do a group dance--a swing dance--fouled it up but good almost every single time she did it. When our perky, blond-haired, recently-engaged-and-flaunting-her-ring-every-chance-she-got dance instructor ever sighed and called the number to a halt, it was usually on my behalf. My jazz hands? Not jazzy. My snaps and flips? Ugly. My timing? Sucky. Which is a shame because I really, really, really love to dance. Some of the moves I can throw down in my bedroom? Brilliant. And I would try so hard to get it together if just Mark Ballas would dance with me.
Of course, I'm not going to take him away from his current girlfriend. I wouldn't dream of it! After all, they have a lovely story. A classic story. It was all Disney-pop-sensation-and-hero-to-adolescent-girls-everywhere meets fine-assed-ballroom-champion. A few foxtrots, a few jives, a few waltzes and poof!
And who can blame them? They were stuck in a stuffy studio for weeks. They had only each other. They practiced for hours and hours on end. They were half-clothed and sweaty and they had to hold each other like they were lovers. So why not actually become lovers? Man, I wouldn't have been able to hold out very long at all. The first time that boy slanted his eyes at me in just the right kind of way, I would've had him up against the wall. And if that moment had occurred after hours of practice which left us both smelling like sour dishrags, so be it. I wouldn't have cared. I wouldn't have even insisted on going off and taking a shower before stepping back into the studio, suddenly smelling decidedly un-dishrag-y. I would've had him up against the wall even if I was dirty and sweaty and smelly, even if my hair was a frazzled nest on the top of my head, even if my muscles ached and ached and ached. And, coming from a girl who for years had to shower immediately after coming home from waitressing so she no longer would smell like the fryer, that's quite a big deal.
Oh just try to tell me you wouldn't feel the same way. Just you try.
It never fails--there's always someone on Dancing with the Stars that I can lust after. Recall the Helio Castroneves incident? Well, that type of thing is happening again, except this season I have developed multiple crushes. For some reason, I find pretty much everyone on this current season to be as charming as all get out. Especially the professional dancers. Especially Mark Ballas. So, here we go:
Sorry, Boyfriend, but I am in love with Mark Ballas.
Mark Ballas is enough to make me want to enroll in acting classes just so that I can become some B-List star and land a gig on Dancing with the Stars, where I will be his one, his only, his partner for all those sexy Latin dances. I want him to murmur the phrase hip-action! to me until my brain leaks out my ear.
Last week when Amy was in town, we had the pleasure of watching the show together, and that meant we got eighteen different kinds of worked up about Mark Ballas whenever he appeared on screen. Then, after we had thoroughly discussed the reasons we thought he was just so hot, we got curious about him. We thought we should Google him. And we did. And we found out that Mark Ballas is a singer. A singer who plays the guitar. A singer who plays the guitar in a band he formed with another of the dancers from the show. Oh, it was too much!
Mark Ballas reminds me of a lot of people. Sometimes he reminds me of the old New Boy, what with the dark hair and tan skin, those curls. Sometimes he reminds me of a ton of the boys I had crushes on during college--preppy boys with cute hats, crisp shirts, clean sneakers. He reminds me of a boy who loves his mother a whole lot. I want to bake him cookies.
Oh, but I want to do more than bake cookies for him. I want to learn to dance for him. With him. Listen, I would be the world's worst dancer. That much is fact. I wouldn't be able to contort my body or wiggle my hips or do any of those things the judges of the show are always yapping about. After all, I am the girl who, when she was in the local pageant during her senior year and thus required to do a group dance--a swing dance--fouled it up but good almost every single time she did it. When our perky, blond-haired, recently-engaged-and-flaunting-her-ring-every-chance-she-got dance instructor ever sighed and called the number to a halt, it was usually on my behalf. My jazz hands? Not jazzy. My snaps and flips? Ugly. My timing? Sucky. Which is a shame because I really, really, really love to dance. Some of the moves I can throw down in my bedroom? Brilliant. And I would try so hard to get it together if just Mark Ballas would dance with me.
Of course, I'm not going to take him away from his current girlfriend. I wouldn't dream of it! After all, they have a lovely story. A classic story. It was all Disney-pop-sensation-and-hero-to-adolescent-girls-everywhere meets fine-assed-ballroom-champion. A few foxtrots, a few jives, a few waltzes and poof!
And who can blame them? They were stuck in a stuffy studio for weeks. They had only each other. They practiced for hours and hours on end. They were half-clothed and sweaty and they had to hold each other like they were lovers. So why not actually become lovers? Man, I wouldn't have been able to hold out very long at all. The first time that boy slanted his eyes at me in just the right kind of way, I would've had him up against the wall. And if that moment had occurred after hours of practice which left us both smelling like sour dishrags, so be it. I wouldn't have cared. I wouldn't have even insisted on going off and taking a shower before stepping back into the studio, suddenly smelling decidedly un-dishrag-y. I would've had him up against the wall even if I was dirty and sweaty and smelly, even if my hair was a frazzled nest on the top of my head, even if my muscles ached and ached and ached. And, coming from a girl who for years had to shower immediately after coming home from waitressing so she no longer would smell like the fryer, that's quite a big deal.
Oh just try to tell me you wouldn't feel the same way. Just you try.
Monday, March 3, 2008
He's a Regular Barry White
Remember Ally McBeal?
The show came out when I was sixteen years old, and I was in love with it. A hard type of love. Not since Angela Chase did I identify with a main character so much. Ally was haunted by her adolescent love gone wrong and she wore chunky shoes. I was haunted by many adolescent loves (unrequited, yes, but so what?) and I wore chunky shoes, too. After all, this was 1997, and everyone was still recovering from eight pound leather sandals and thick stacked heels. Ally and I were kindred spirits.
And I think about the show from time to time, mostly in the context of, Oh my God. My life is so Ally McBeal right now. Like today, for example. Today was a very Ally McBeal day. Today I got to walk into my classroom and see the student who had written an unsigned e-mail that asked me out on a date. I thought, Okay, let's see what this is like.
I hadn't responded to the e-mail because even the space of the weekend hadn't provided me with words that I found to be appropriate. Should my response be stern? Should it be brief? Should it explain why it was considered bad form to write that type of e-mail to your instructor? If I wanted--which I most certainly did not--I could've even peppered my e-mail with anecdotes from my undergrad existence, where, for a brief period of time I had a crush on one of my literature professors. Did I throw together some slapdash e-mail that ignored all rules of capitalization and punctuation? Did I ask my professor out on a date so we could "brainstorm all we wanted to?" No, I did not. I had the decency to do what was right. I spent several months drifting off during his lectures (which were horribly prissy and snobby) and imagining a world where we drank good wine and ate expensive cheese and kissed under magnolia trees and stayed in bed on Sunday to talk about literature. Then I came to the realization he was a giant skeeze ball--the King of Skeeze, a Doer of Grad Students, a Shameless Snobby Literary Pervert--and moved on to having a more productive and platonic crush on my Yeats professor, who could have been my grandfather--if my grandfather had advanced degrees in literature and an intimate knowledge of every single word that WB Yeats ever wrote. (And let's face it--WB was a dreamboat himself. He had amazing hair.)
The point is this: I knew how to handle myself when I had crushes on my professors. This current student of mine? Not so much. Today he walked into class fifteen minutes and slanted a grin in my direction--a grin that said, Hey, baby. Sorry, baby. I'll make it up to you, baby. Later, every time I would pass by him he would look up from his serious research work and lower his eyelids in a dreamy sort of way. He'd grin that slanty grin again and give me a little nod. The what's up nod. He'd work his eyelashes and his eyebrows and his lips, and he'd speak slow, soft. A bedroom voice.
On my fourth pass around the classroom, I felt strangely icky but also nostalgic. I was thinking of Ally McBeal. I was thinking of her strange little friend--John--and how he would channel Barry White whenever he needed to pep himself up, whenever he needed to muster up the confidence to do what needed to be done.
This afternoon as I passed by my student each time, I couldn't help but think he was humming some Barry White songs to himself, and that's what was giving him the strength to look up at me like that--all wiggly eyebrows and eyelashes and lips--like it was the most natural thing, like it was actually something even close to what he should be doing.
The show came out when I was sixteen years old, and I was in love with it. A hard type of love. Not since Angela Chase did I identify with a main character so much. Ally was haunted by her adolescent love gone wrong and she wore chunky shoes. I was haunted by many adolescent loves (unrequited, yes, but so what?) and I wore chunky shoes, too. After all, this was 1997, and everyone was still recovering from eight pound leather sandals and thick stacked heels. Ally and I were kindred spirits.
And I think about the show from time to time, mostly in the context of, Oh my God. My life is so Ally McBeal right now. Like today, for example. Today was a very Ally McBeal day. Today I got to walk into my classroom and see the student who had written an unsigned e-mail that asked me out on a date. I thought, Okay, let's see what this is like.
I hadn't responded to the e-mail because even the space of the weekend hadn't provided me with words that I found to be appropriate. Should my response be stern? Should it be brief? Should it explain why it was considered bad form to write that type of e-mail to your instructor? If I wanted--which I most certainly did not--I could've even peppered my e-mail with anecdotes from my undergrad existence, where, for a brief period of time I had a crush on one of my literature professors. Did I throw together some slapdash e-mail that ignored all rules of capitalization and punctuation? Did I ask my professor out on a date so we could "brainstorm all we wanted to?" No, I did not. I had the decency to do what was right. I spent several months drifting off during his lectures (which were horribly prissy and snobby) and imagining a world where we drank good wine and ate expensive cheese and kissed under magnolia trees and stayed in bed on Sunday to talk about literature. Then I came to the realization he was a giant skeeze ball--the King of Skeeze, a Doer of Grad Students, a Shameless Snobby Literary Pervert--and moved on to having a more productive and platonic crush on my Yeats professor, who could have been my grandfather--if my grandfather had advanced degrees in literature and an intimate knowledge of every single word that WB Yeats ever wrote. (And let's face it--WB was a dreamboat himself. He had amazing hair.)
The point is this: I knew how to handle myself when I had crushes on my professors. This current student of mine? Not so much. Today he walked into class fifteen minutes and slanted a grin in my direction--a grin that said, Hey, baby. Sorry, baby. I'll make it up to you, baby. Later, every time I would pass by him he would look up from his serious research work and lower his eyelids in a dreamy sort of way. He'd grin that slanty grin again and give me a little nod. The what's up nod. He'd work his eyelashes and his eyebrows and his lips, and he'd speak slow, soft. A bedroom voice.
On my fourth pass around the classroom, I felt strangely icky but also nostalgic. I was thinking of Ally McBeal. I was thinking of her strange little friend--John--and how he would channel Barry White whenever he needed to pep himself up, whenever he needed to muster up the confidence to do what needed to be done.
This afternoon as I passed by my student each time, I couldn't help but think he was humming some Barry White songs to himself, and that's what was giving him the strength to look up at me like that--all wiggly eyebrows and eyelashes and lips--like it was the most natural thing, like it was actually something even close to what he should be doing.
Monday, November 5, 2007
Sorry, Boyfriend: The Helio Castroneves Edition
Sorry, Boyfriend, but I am in love with Helio Castroneves.
In the past, I've had a love/hate relationship with Dancing with the Stars, mainly because when it first came out I thought it was stupid. Really, really stupid. Then I moved back to New York after graduate school, and that fall I was in what I'd loosely call a "funk." A funk which involved watching entirely too much network television. After a long day of teaching of three or four sections of composition in a row, sans lunch break, all I wanted to do was come home and sit on the couch with my father and help him make snarky comments about whatever shows the networks were presenting to us.
And that's when my hate for the stupid, stupid show turned to love because it wasn't stupid; it was brilliant. First of all, that was the season that featured Joey Lawrence and Mario Lopez--two boys I had minor crushes on in the 80's--and those boys seriously knew how to dance. Also, Mario was totally nailing his professional dancer, and if that's not incentive to tune in and watch I don't know what is.
Anyway, this season of Dancing brought with it a stack of impressively skilled stars. And Helio was one of those stars. I hadn't even heard of him before the new season began, and I probably wouldn't have even cared about him had he not been so freaking badass in week two of the competition. On that night I sat up straight in bed and yelled to my empty apartment, "I AM IN LOVE WITH THIS MAN!"
The best part of this has to do with Helio's day job. He is, in fact, a racecar driver. That's right. A Latin racecar driver with dimples and a smile I want to eat for breakfast.
We all know how I feel about racing and racecar drivers. Not only did I cut my thirteen year old teeth on crushes I held for drivers at my hometown asphalt oval, but throughout the years I also sustained a pretty active fantasy life that involved an alternate life in some NASCAR-soaked world, where I was a sassy sports journalista who would somehow meet and snag Jeff Gordon. As a young girl, I wrote many a story about that, and those stories were printed out on an ancient dot matrix contraption and then circulated among my friends during chorus.
The fact that Helio is a racer, albeit an Indy Car racer, increases his allure. The fact that he somehow reminds me of a Brazilian and more deeply dimpled version of Jeff Gordon gets him even more points. And--it must be said--he's cuter than Jeff Gordon will ever be (even though here Jeff is pictured with his brand new baby in a picture that seems so cute and awkwardly tender it makes me want to implode). I think it's the accent that seals the deal with Helio. I mean, Jeff is from Indiana. When he first began making television appearances he had this weird bordering-on-Southern accent that the Hendricks PR team finally beat out of him, but no one better even attempt to beat Helio's silky accent out of him because I will kill that person.
I want to make a nest in his dimples. I want to take up residence in his ears. I want to wake up every morning to the sunshine that breaks across his shining teeth. And I don't even care that he's a whole inch shorter than me. It would be worth a life without high heels if I could just nuzzle against his neck during a foxtrot, if I could put my hands on his gyrating hips during a samba.
In the past, I've had a love/hate relationship with Dancing with the Stars, mainly because when it first came out I thought it was stupid. Really, really stupid. Then I moved back to New York after graduate school, and that fall I was in what I'd loosely call a "funk." A funk which involved watching entirely too much network television. After a long day of teaching of three or four sections of composition in a row, sans lunch break, all I wanted to do was come home and sit on the couch with my father and help him make snarky comments about whatever shows the networks were presenting to us.
And that's when my hate for the stupid, stupid show turned to love because it wasn't stupid; it was brilliant. First of all, that was the season that featured Joey Lawrence and Mario Lopez--two boys I had minor crushes on in the 80's--and those boys seriously knew how to dance. Also, Mario was totally nailing his professional dancer, and if that's not incentive to tune in and watch I don't know what is.
Anyway, this season of Dancing brought with it a stack of impressively skilled stars. And Helio was one of those stars. I hadn't even heard of him before the new season began, and I probably wouldn't have even cared about him had he not been so freaking badass in week two of the competition. On that night I sat up straight in bed and yelled to my empty apartment, "I AM IN LOVE WITH THIS MAN!"
The best part of this has to do with Helio's day job. He is, in fact, a racecar driver. That's right. A Latin racecar driver with dimples and a smile I want to eat for breakfast.
We all know how I feel about racing and racecar drivers. Not only did I cut my thirteen year old teeth on crushes I held for drivers at my hometown asphalt oval, but throughout the years I also sustained a pretty active fantasy life that involved an alternate life in some NASCAR-soaked world, where I was a sassy sports journalista who would somehow meet and snag Jeff Gordon. As a young girl, I wrote many a story about that, and those stories were printed out on an ancient dot matrix contraption and then circulated among my friends during chorus.
The fact that Helio is a racer, albeit an Indy Car racer, increases his allure. The fact that he somehow reminds me of a Brazilian and more deeply dimpled version of Jeff Gordon gets him even more points. And--it must be said--he's cuter than Jeff Gordon will ever be (even though here Jeff is pictured with his brand new baby in a picture that seems so cute and awkwardly tender it makes me want to implode). I think it's the accent that seals the deal with Helio. I mean, Jeff is from Indiana. When he first began making television appearances he had this weird bordering-on-Southern accent that the Hendricks PR team finally beat out of him, but no one better even attempt to beat Helio's silky accent out of him because I will kill that person.
I want to make a nest in his dimples. I want to take up residence in his ears. I want to wake up every morning to the sunshine that breaks across his shining teeth. And I don't even care that he's a whole inch shorter than me. It would be worth a life without high heels if I could just nuzzle against his neck during a foxtrot, if I could put my hands on his gyrating hips during a samba.
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Trashy
This weekend, after a month-long wait, the Time Warner cable truck rolled up to my apartment and produced a cable installer who brought with him my free-for-three-months cable box/DVR player.
The first thing the cable installer said to me was not what you might expect. It was not Hey or Hi there or How are things? Instead, the cable installer said, "Well, someone sure isn't going to be happy."
At first I thought he meant me. At first I thought he was about to give me some bad news about the cable--maybe that Time Warner had done a background check and found me unworthy of their services, that they weren't going to save me from the funk that has surrounded me for this month I've been separated from the Food Network and TLC. I was prepared to beg. I was prepared to get down on my knees and say, Please, sir. Anything. Do you want me to bake you a pie? A nice chicken dinner? Do you want a pork loin? A milkshake? And by the way, these are things I learned to make by watching the Food Network, so please, for the love of God, give it to me.
But the cable installer wasn't talking about my unhappiness. He gestured behind him and stepped back so I could lean out the door frame and see down the stairs and through the high doors and out to the street. Next to the curb in front of my house was a small red truck, and all of its tires were slashed. It looked ridiculous there, sunk and pitiful at the bottom of our granite steps.
"Oh," I said. Then I gasped. I was remembering the night before, 1:00 AM, 2:30 AM, 3:30 AM, the couple upstairs getting into a major row and screaming and stomping and throwing and slamming. At one point, their front door opened and one of them crashed down the stairs and out toward the street, only to return a few minutes later. If I were a betting woman, I'd put some money on the fact that the guy went out there and slashed the tires of his girlfriend's truck.
I don't know much about the people upstairs, but I do know that the red truck is not the man's car. I've seen him getting in and out of some Jeep. He is the only one I've ever had any interaction with. These interactions--every single one of them--have been odd, just a little bit off.
I can't claim the first-ever interaction. That distinct honor belongs to the Boy from Work. It was during my first week here, the week I had the BFW with me. It was a weeknight, after 11:00. There was a knock on my door--a big ferocious-sounding knock that echoed everywhere because I had no furniture to my name (except for a blow-up mattress) at that point.
At the time the knock bounced off the living room walls I was wearing pajamas of the sort that should not be paraded out in front of neighbors. The shorts were short. The cami was plunging. I froze and stared at the door, then told the BFW he needed to answer the knock, which he did. I stood in the bedroom, leaning as far out as I could without stepping into view. The conversation went something like this:
BFW: Hi?
The Guy: Hi. You new tenants?
BFW: Yeah. Well, sort of. I mean, my girlfriend is. This is her place. I'm just here helping her move in.
TG: Yeah? Where is she? I'd like to meet her.
BFW: Uhm, she's in the bathroom. She's getting ready for bed. It's kind of late.
TG: Oh. Well, you know what? Can I just tell you something? This is really strange. I was told they weren't accepting any new renters on this property because the guy who owns it is trying to sell it. I tried to sign another year lease but they wouldn't let me, and they told me they weren't letting anyone sign another lease. They gave me another six months and said that was all they could do.
BFW: Huh. Strange. I mean, there's a sign out front of the building that says For Rent!
TG: Right. I'm not sure what's going on here. I've just got that six month lease. Your girlfriend signed a year lease?
BFW: Yes.
TG: Huh. I just don't understand it.
BFW: Yeah, I don't know what to tell you. It sure is strange.
--Silence, silence, silence--
BFW: Well, I think we're going to get to bed now.
TG: Oh. Oh, sure. Okay. Right. Well, goodnight.
The BFW said the guy just stared at him and seemed completely content with standing silently in the door frame. "He's creepy," the BFW said.
"Well, yeah," I said. "Who knocks on a complete stranger's door on a Tuesday night after 11:00? Creepy people, that's who."
Later, this creepiness was confirmed. I ran into another one of the building's tenants out on the back steps one morning. She was out there in a ratty sweatsuit. She was smoking a cigarette like her life depended on it.
We said hi, exchanged pleasantries, then she gestured up the stairs. "Listen," she said. "Just so you know, you've got a weirdo living above you. You met that guy?"
"Not personally," I said. "My boyfriend did."
"Well, he's totally strange. He's always coming downstairs to try and get me to drink beer with him. My boyfriend does not like it one bit. He's just off. I think he has mental problems."
"Fantastic," I said, and then for the next few days I kept one cautious eye turned toward my front door, praying he wouldn't get it in his head that he wanted a proper introduction to me now that my boyfriend was gone.
Inevitably, of course, we had our first meeting. It was a Tuesday night at 8:15 PM when he knocked on my door again. I'd been in the kitchen with my hands in a sink of dirty dishes. I had Lowest of the Low cranking from my bedroom--turned up just enough so I could hear it in the kitchen. It was loud, but it wasn't offensive. And it was a reasonable hour.
I grabbed a towel and opened the door. The guy was standing out there in faded jeans, a gray t-shirt, and hiking boots. He had a slouching problem. He had stubble--but not the sexy kind; it was the vaguely serial killer kind.
"Can I join the party?" he asked. I half expected him to produce a six pack of beer from behind his back.
"What party?" I asked.
He jerked his head to the right, indicating my music. "Or do you want to join my party?" he asked.
I said nothing.
"We can sort of hear your radio upstairs," he said, and with that he gestured behind him, like there was someone there, someone who would back him up, someone who would chirp Yeah!
There was no one there. It occurred to me that maybe this guy had an imaginary friend or, if he was really crazy, an imaginary girlfriend.
"I'm really sorry about that," I said. "I was just doing some dishes and trying to make it more bearable. I'll turn it right down."
"Okay," he said. He gave me a look that was heavy with disappointment--like he was my dad and I'd just snuck in past curfew.
"I'm sorry to have disturbed you," I said, because I really was. I didn't know my music had been that loud, and I had no intentions of irritating my neighbors. At least not in my first month.
He disappeared up the stairs without another word. I went and turned the radio off and returned to soaping down my dishes.
Twenty minutes later there was another knock on my door. I considered not answering it. After all, I knew who it was, and there was absolutely no reason for him to be knocking on my door twice in one night. Or in one month, for that matter. I figured maybe he'd gone out for that six pack and returned with the intention of asking me to have a cold one with him. I wanted zero cold ones, especially in his presence.
But I did open the door. After all, he knew I was home. I gave him an expectant look as soon as the door swung back and he came into view. My look was one that said What? What now? What could you possibly want now?
He looked absolutely bashful. "Sorry about before," he said. If he were a cartoon man, he would've been drawn stubbing his toe into the ground, embarrassed-like. It was as if whoever had sent him down there in the first place--maybe the girlfriend (real or imaginary)--was now gone, and he didn't give a shit about how loud the Canadian rock was.
"No," I said, "it's fine. I didn't realize. I apologize again."
"No, no, no," he said. "Don't apologize. I need to apologize to you." He shrugged. "You know what? You should turn your music back up. Play it as loud as you want. No, really. Go ahead. Crank it up!"
I shook my head and started shutting the door in his face. Just the way everything was going--the way he was talking and acting--was off, and I wanted no part in his off-ness. "Nope, sorry!" I said. "Have a nice night!" And then I put the deadbolt on and returned to my bedroom.
The next time we ran into each other it was dark out. I was coming down the back stairs--which I almost never do because they are rickety and close. They are claustrophobic stairs. This house is an old, old house and its construction clearly shows that. The back stairs are outside and poorly lighted. They are stairs straight out of a Stephen King novel. And, considering he grew up about fifteen minutes away from here, it wouldn't at all surprise me if he had at some point in his life attended a get-together at this house, seen those back stairs, and said to himself, Now those are some creepy stairs. I'll remember those!
Anyway, I was coming down these back stairs in my teacher clothes. I still had my high heels on. I tend to clatter on stairs when wearing heels--I'm not a very graceful descender. And on these wooden stairs, I sounded like a clamoring moose. When I got to the bottom, I saw that the guy was standing outside his car. He looked up at me.
"Was that you making all that noise up there?" he asked. He said it as if it had taken me half an hour to get down the stairs. I may not be a graceful descender, but it does not take me more than a minute to get down that death trap.
"Uhm, yeah," I said.
"Well, I sure hope I don't get blamed for that," he said, and then he was on his way.
I wanted to turn around and stare. I wanted to say, Are you out of your fucking mind? Do you often get confused for a woman going down the stairs in her heels?
And besides, the two seconds of me clattering down the stairs was not going to bother anybody. That he'd even wasted breath on that type of exchange instead of a polite hey-how-are-you boggled my mind. I wanted to egg his car.
And then Friday night came. It was the first night that I was confident that the guy had an actual flesh-and-blood girlfriend because she was most definitely there, most definitely screaming at the top of her lungs. They fought gloriously: the slamming and stomping and pushing and breaking of things was impressive. I was up, so I found it an amusing late-night theater, but if it had been a school night I would've been royally pissed. But, as it were, it was Friday and I was on the phone with the Boy From Work, so I was able to give him a play-by-play.
"Oh God, oh God," I hissed. "One of them is coming down the stairs! Oh, someone broke something. Oh Lord."
Another door slammed and then a radio came on, full-blare. Angry rock music poured down into my apartment.
"Oh, you're fucking KIDDING ME!" I said. "My radio is too loud at eight-fifteen? It's one-thirty! What an asshole."
After awhile I fell asleep. It was 3:30 when I woke up to go to the bathroom. The two of them were still sort of going at it. They were out in the hallway now, but talking in more reasonable tones and coming down the stairs.
"You know what I have a problem with?" the girl asked.
I leaned closer to the door to hear what she said but couldn't.
The guy, too, said something inaudible. But then he raised his voice. "You know what I do have a problem with, though?" he asked. "People who are all hopped up on drugs."
At this point, they were right outside my door and headed for the next set of stairs to the main floor.
"Well," the girl said, "I'm on drugs right now, but for good reason."
And that was the last I heard from them. The next morning the truck was sitting on the curb looking like it had seen better days--millions of them, in fact. I'm guessing that during the initial outburst, the guy had been so filled with rage at what she was saying--and, boy, was she saying it in banshee-like tones--that he stormed down stairs, breaking beer bottles as he went. He went out to the front, where her truck was parked. He jimmied a knife out of his pocket and went to work, digging it deep into each tire's thick rubber sole. The slashes were elegant, long, impressive. And then he went upstairs ready to argue some more. Eventually, at 3:30, after they'd put their argument away and started to sew themselves back together, he had to take her home because there was no way for her to get there, what with her truck being deflated.
The next morning the cable installer was pretty impressed with the guy's work. "They really did a number on that," he said.
"I bet it was the couple upstairs," I said. "I heard them going at it last night. Real bad."
The cable installer smacked his lips together and shook his head. "Some people," he said. "That's just sad."
And then he came in with the little silver box that would deliver me back to the civilized world of What Not to Wear and Ace of Cakes. And that's just what he did--he delivered me back to the world of non-network TV. And the first thing I did was sit down and watch three back-to-back episodes of Making the Team: The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders.
What can I say? I think that was my quiet rebellion against the weeks and weeks of PBS programming I swallowed--much of it delightful, but it was no Clinton Kelly in a purple velvet blazer telling hopeless women why their wardrobe makes him want to vomit up his expensive lunch from Nobu.
Besides, I was pretty sure I wasn't the only one in the apartment building who might be tuned into CMT at that exact moment, watching limber girls do kick lines in hot pants. I had a sneaking suspicion that the couple upstairs, if they were both there at that moment, would be stretched out on their own couch with a couple beers cracked open in front of them, and they too would be marvelling at the way the girls' legs kept kicking, kicking, kicking, straight up into the afternoon sun, their whole bodies saying, Look at me! Look at me! Just look, look, look!
The first thing the cable installer said to me was not what you might expect. It was not Hey or Hi there or How are things? Instead, the cable installer said, "Well, someone sure isn't going to be happy."
At first I thought he meant me. At first I thought he was about to give me some bad news about the cable--maybe that Time Warner had done a background check and found me unworthy of their services, that they weren't going to save me from the funk that has surrounded me for this month I've been separated from the Food Network and TLC. I was prepared to beg. I was prepared to get down on my knees and say, Please, sir. Anything. Do you want me to bake you a pie? A nice chicken dinner? Do you want a pork loin? A milkshake? And by the way, these are things I learned to make by watching the Food Network, so please, for the love of God, give it to me.
But the cable installer wasn't talking about my unhappiness. He gestured behind him and stepped back so I could lean out the door frame and see down the stairs and through the high doors and out to the street. Next to the curb in front of my house was a small red truck, and all of its tires were slashed. It looked ridiculous there, sunk and pitiful at the bottom of our granite steps.
"Oh," I said. Then I gasped. I was remembering the night before, 1:00 AM, 2:30 AM, 3:30 AM, the couple upstairs getting into a major row and screaming and stomping and throwing and slamming. At one point, their front door opened and one of them crashed down the stairs and out toward the street, only to return a few minutes later. If I were a betting woman, I'd put some money on the fact that the guy went out there and slashed the tires of his girlfriend's truck.
I don't know much about the people upstairs, but I do know that the red truck is not the man's car. I've seen him getting in and out of some Jeep. He is the only one I've ever had any interaction with. These interactions--every single one of them--have been odd, just a little bit off.
I can't claim the first-ever interaction. That distinct honor belongs to the Boy from Work. It was during my first week here, the week I had the BFW with me. It was a weeknight, after 11:00. There was a knock on my door--a big ferocious-sounding knock that echoed everywhere because I had no furniture to my name (except for a blow-up mattress) at that point.
At the time the knock bounced off the living room walls I was wearing pajamas of the sort that should not be paraded out in front of neighbors. The shorts were short. The cami was plunging. I froze and stared at the door, then told the BFW he needed to answer the knock, which he did. I stood in the bedroom, leaning as far out as I could without stepping into view. The conversation went something like this:
BFW: Hi?
The Guy: Hi. You new tenants?
BFW: Yeah. Well, sort of. I mean, my girlfriend is. This is her place. I'm just here helping her move in.
TG: Yeah? Where is she? I'd like to meet her.
BFW: Uhm, she's in the bathroom. She's getting ready for bed. It's kind of late.
TG: Oh. Well, you know what? Can I just tell you something? This is really strange. I was told they weren't accepting any new renters on this property because the guy who owns it is trying to sell it. I tried to sign another year lease but they wouldn't let me, and they told me they weren't letting anyone sign another lease. They gave me another six months and said that was all they could do.
BFW: Huh. Strange. I mean, there's a sign out front of the building that says For Rent!
TG: Right. I'm not sure what's going on here. I've just got that six month lease. Your girlfriend signed a year lease?
BFW: Yes.
TG: Huh. I just don't understand it.
BFW: Yeah, I don't know what to tell you. It sure is strange.
--Silence, silence, silence--
BFW: Well, I think we're going to get to bed now.
TG: Oh. Oh, sure. Okay. Right. Well, goodnight.
The BFW said the guy just stared at him and seemed completely content with standing silently in the door frame. "He's creepy," the BFW said.
"Well, yeah," I said. "Who knocks on a complete stranger's door on a Tuesday night after 11:00? Creepy people, that's who."
Later, this creepiness was confirmed. I ran into another one of the building's tenants out on the back steps one morning. She was out there in a ratty sweatsuit. She was smoking a cigarette like her life depended on it.
We said hi, exchanged pleasantries, then she gestured up the stairs. "Listen," she said. "Just so you know, you've got a weirdo living above you. You met that guy?"
"Not personally," I said. "My boyfriend did."
"Well, he's totally strange. He's always coming downstairs to try and get me to drink beer with him. My boyfriend does not like it one bit. He's just off. I think he has mental problems."
"Fantastic," I said, and then for the next few days I kept one cautious eye turned toward my front door, praying he wouldn't get it in his head that he wanted a proper introduction to me now that my boyfriend was gone.
Inevitably, of course, we had our first meeting. It was a Tuesday night at 8:15 PM when he knocked on my door again. I'd been in the kitchen with my hands in a sink of dirty dishes. I had Lowest of the Low cranking from my bedroom--turned up just enough so I could hear it in the kitchen. It was loud, but it wasn't offensive. And it was a reasonable hour.
I grabbed a towel and opened the door. The guy was standing out there in faded jeans, a gray t-shirt, and hiking boots. He had a slouching problem. He had stubble--but not the sexy kind; it was the vaguely serial killer kind.
"Can I join the party?" he asked. I half expected him to produce a six pack of beer from behind his back.
"What party?" I asked.
He jerked his head to the right, indicating my music. "Or do you want to join my party?" he asked.
I said nothing.
"We can sort of hear your radio upstairs," he said, and with that he gestured behind him, like there was someone there, someone who would back him up, someone who would chirp Yeah!
There was no one there. It occurred to me that maybe this guy had an imaginary friend or, if he was really crazy, an imaginary girlfriend.
"I'm really sorry about that," I said. "I was just doing some dishes and trying to make it more bearable. I'll turn it right down."
"Okay," he said. He gave me a look that was heavy with disappointment--like he was my dad and I'd just snuck in past curfew.
"I'm sorry to have disturbed you," I said, because I really was. I didn't know my music had been that loud, and I had no intentions of irritating my neighbors. At least not in my first month.
He disappeared up the stairs without another word. I went and turned the radio off and returned to soaping down my dishes.
Twenty minutes later there was another knock on my door. I considered not answering it. After all, I knew who it was, and there was absolutely no reason for him to be knocking on my door twice in one night. Or in one month, for that matter. I figured maybe he'd gone out for that six pack and returned with the intention of asking me to have a cold one with him. I wanted zero cold ones, especially in his presence.
But I did open the door. After all, he knew I was home. I gave him an expectant look as soon as the door swung back and he came into view. My look was one that said What? What now? What could you possibly want now?
He looked absolutely bashful. "Sorry about before," he said. If he were a cartoon man, he would've been drawn stubbing his toe into the ground, embarrassed-like. It was as if whoever had sent him down there in the first place--maybe the girlfriend (real or imaginary)--was now gone, and he didn't give a shit about how loud the Canadian rock was.
"No," I said, "it's fine. I didn't realize. I apologize again."
"No, no, no," he said. "Don't apologize. I need to apologize to you." He shrugged. "You know what? You should turn your music back up. Play it as loud as you want. No, really. Go ahead. Crank it up!"
I shook my head and started shutting the door in his face. Just the way everything was going--the way he was talking and acting--was off, and I wanted no part in his off-ness. "Nope, sorry!" I said. "Have a nice night!" And then I put the deadbolt on and returned to my bedroom.
The next time we ran into each other it was dark out. I was coming down the back stairs--which I almost never do because they are rickety and close. They are claustrophobic stairs. This house is an old, old house and its construction clearly shows that. The back stairs are outside and poorly lighted. They are stairs straight out of a Stephen King novel. And, considering he grew up about fifteen minutes away from here, it wouldn't at all surprise me if he had at some point in his life attended a get-together at this house, seen those back stairs, and said to himself, Now those are some creepy stairs. I'll remember those!
Anyway, I was coming down these back stairs in my teacher clothes. I still had my high heels on. I tend to clatter on stairs when wearing heels--I'm not a very graceful descender. And on these wooden stairs, I sounded like a clamoring moose. When I got to the bottom, I saw that the guy was standing outside his car. He looked up at me.
"Was that you making all that noise up there?" he asked. He said it as if it had taken me half an hour to get down the stairs. I may not be a graceful descender, but it does not take me more than a minute to get down that death trap.
"Uhm, yeah," I said.
"Well, I sure hope I don't get blamed for that," he said, and then he was on his way.
I wanted to turn around and stare. I wanted to say, Are you out of your fucking mind? Do you often get confused for a woman going down the stairs in her heels?
And besides, the two seconds of me clattering down the stairs was not going to bother anybody. That he'd even wasted breath on that type of exchange instead of a polite hey-how-are-you boggled my mind. I wanted to egg his car.
And then Friday night came. It was the first night that I was confident that the guy had an actual flesh-and-blood girlfriend because she was most definitely there, most definitely screaming at the top of her lungs. They fought gloriously: the slamming and stomping and pushing and breaking of things was impressive. I was up, so I found it an amusing late-night theater, but if it had been a school night I would've been royally pissed. But, as it were, it was Friday and I was on the phone with the Boy From Work, so I was able to give him a play-by-play.
"Oh God, oh God," I hissed. "One of them is coming down the stairs! Oh, someone broke something. Oh Lord."
Another door slammed and then a radio came on, full-blare. Angry rock music poured down into my apartment.
"Oh, you're fucking KIDDING ME!" I said. "My radio is too loud at eight-fifteen? It's one-thirty! What an asshole."
After awhile I fell asleep. It was 3:30 when I woke up to go to the bathroom. The two of them were still sort of going at it. They were out in the hallway now, but talking in more reasonable tones and coming down the stairs.
"You know what I have a problem with?" the girl asked.
I leaned closer to the door to hear what she said but couldn't.
The guy, too, said something inaudible. But then he raised his voice. "You know what I do have a problem with, though?" he asked. "People who are all hopped up on drugs."
At this point, they were right outside my door and headed for the next set of stairs to the main floor.
"Well," the girl said, "I'm on drugs right now, but for good reason."
And that was the last I heard from them. The next morning the truck was sitting on the curb looking like it had seen better days--millions of them, in fact. I'm guessing that during the initial outburst, the guy had been so filled with rage at what she was saying--and, boy, was she saying it in banshee-like tones--that he stormed down stairs, breaking beer bottles as he went. He went out to the front, where her truck was parked. He jimmied a knife out of his pocket and went to work, digging it deep into each tire's thick rubber sole. The slashes were elegant, long, impressive. And then he went upstairs ready to argue some more. Eventually, at 3:30, after they'd put their argument away and started to sew themselves back together, he had to take her home because there was no way for her to get there, what with her truck being deflated.
The next morning the cable installer was pretty impressed with the guy's work. "They really did a number on that," he said.
"I bet it was the couple upstairs," I said. "I heard them going at it last night. Real bad."
The cable installer smacked his lips together and shook his head. "Some people," he said. "That's just sad."
And then he came in with the little silver box that would deliver me back to the civilized world of What Not to Wear and Ace of Cakes. And that's just what he did--he delivered me back to the world of non-network TV. And the first thing I did was sit down and watch three back-to-back episodes of Making the Team: The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders.
What can I say? I think that was my quiet rebellion against the weeks and weeks of PBS programming I swallowed--much of it delightful, but it was no Clinton Kelly in a purple velvet blazer telling hopeless women why their wardrobe makes him want to vomit up his expensive lunch from Nobu.
Besides, I was pretty sure I wasn't the only one in the apartment building who might be tuned into CMT at that exact moment, watching limber girls do kick lines in hot pants. I had a sneaking suspicion that the couple upstairs, if they were both there at that moment, would be stretched out on their own couch with a couple beers cracked open in front of them, and they too would be marvelling at the way the girls' legs kept kicking, kicking, kicking, straight up into the afternoon sun, their whole bodies saying, Look at me! Look at me! Just look, look, look!
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