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No one must know my terrible secret...

House of Noh!

Monday, December 26, 2005

A weird looking, stinky dude came into the Laundromat I frequent a few nights ago. There were about twenty people, including me, washing our clothes. This guy asked everybody in the ‘mat if they wanted to buy some socks. Everybody but me. He even leaned across the laundry cart I was using to ask another guy if he wanted some socks. I was standing right there. When it became apparent he wasn’t going to ask me if I wanted socks, I even caught his eye and gave him a come-hither-sock-salesperson look, as if to say, “I might be in the market for some socks.” The guy ignored me. He brushed past me without saying a word to me to ask another person at the Laundromat if they wanted to buy some socks.

I was being mean by trying to tempt that sock salesperson because I didn’t want to buy any socks from that guy. I just wanted him to ask me if I wanted to buy some socks. Then I was going to point my finger in his face and shout, “No way! Jerk! I’ve got all the socks I need!” Then I was planning on doing an obnoxious touch-down dance to get everybody’s attention in the ‘mat and cock my thumb at the rejected sock salesperson and say “Merry Dissmas!” about him to everybody else.

I’ve written about sock salespeople in this journal before, and the terrible trauma I suffered at their hands. As part of a sociology class during college, believe it or not, we took a field-trip to Chicago. In the loop my class was set upon by a gang of aggressive street vendors selling socks. It was terrible. The whole time I was clutching my hair with both hands in terror and screaming, “Nooo! Nooo!” We could hardly see out the bus windows on the ride back to our rural Michigan college - twenty four packs of all-white tube-socks stacked in the bus like a warehouse crammed full with toilet paper pallets.

But maybe I shouldn’t categorize the sock salesperson of last evening in the same group as the vile tube-sock selling salespeople of the loop. And also, the whole time the guy was soliciting sock sales in the Laundromat, at no time did he even display any socks. I was watching him like a hawk. The only possible place he could have even had any socks was in the creased and dirty hefty bag he carried. Whatever the bag contained, it was in wad form. If he did have any socks in that bag, I suspect that they were the unmatched discards from the dumpster behind the Laundromat, where the attendants throw away orphaned socks left in the dryers at the end of the day. And I’m sure selling new tube socks is an entirely different industry from the selling of unmatched discards – like with completely distinct federal sock regulations and separate trade journals published by McGraw Hill under catchy journal-names like “Tube Sock Round-Up” and “Socks Stock.”

If you want to see pictures of my bicycle, some were posted today at Fixed Gear Gallery (12 -25-2005 grouping).

Coming up soon is Zen Camp, which is an overnight affair at the temple during which we meditate while layered up in heavy winter sweaters and lick our bowls out clean during dinner and drink tiny little cups of tea at intermittent intervals and I suffer drastic, acute, throbbing caffeine withdrawal without the four cups of tar-thick coffee I am accustomed to drinking in the mornings. I expect the following exchange to occur, after which it will probably be another two years before I am welcome at the Temple again (and then not really).

Me: (to tea dispensing zen initiate) Can I have another cup of tea, please?

Tea Pourer: (courteously) May I offer a suggestion? Why don’t you use this as an opportunity to anticipate another cup of tea at a later time?

Me: Why don’t YOU use this opportunity to pour some fucking tea in my fucking tiny-ass tea cup. Seriously. My head is about to split open. I command you to satisfy my gluttonous American lusts for stimulating beverages! Pour me another cup of tea now!”

Tea Pourer (runs away with tea pot)

Me: (bitterly) You bastard!

Then the Tea Pourer will come back with the monk in charge, and the monk in charge will remind me that Zen Camp is entirely voluntary, and suggest that I leave. But I’ll just sit in my pathetic imitation of lotus position behind a couch in the basement and ignore them and I’ll be like, “Shh! I’m meditating!” whenever they try to say something to me.

Then I’ll sneak off during a sitting. I know where they keep the tea leaves, and I know where they keep the water: the kitchen! Then later on, when monks go into the kitchen to make some tea or prepare a meal, they’ll be like, “Somebody drank all the tea!” and “There are human gnaw marks in all the tofu cubes in the refrigerator!”

When I hear them bemoaning the loss of their precious, precious tea, I’ll be like, “heh heh heh, heh heh heh,” in a very satisfied and satiated way.

And when the monks hear me laughing behind the couch in the basement, they’ll come over to confront me, but I’ll be sitting there on the carpet in my quarter-lotus position and I’ll ignore them and just be like, “Shh! I’m meditating!” I think that’s the rule: that you can’t kick somebody out of Zen Camp as long as you’re meditating.