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No one must know my terrible secret...

House of Noh!

Monday, May 30, 2005

For a few brief, tender moments last Friday, I thought I had found my salad twin. I was at the MacKelly’s [shamrock] Greens ‘n things. Please don’t tell anybody that I buy my lunch at a place that ends with “’n things.” Actually, I’ll go ahead and tell you what “n’ things” are at MacKelly’s: HUGE PIECES OF FRIED FISH. That, and like, au grautin potatoes and shit in long stainless steal trays on a big steamer table like the fucking Old County Buffet back in Portage, Michigan, where, with my co-workers at the adult foster care home, I used to take our charges in the special van for meals on fancy occasions and holidays. And BTW, I’m telling you right now if you eat at the OCB – sneeze shields do nothing. NOTHING. I got a booger in the public chicken gumbo tray and I wasn’t even trying.

But back to my salad twin. The MacKelly’s salad line was crowded so I was forced to take the inside track – bumping shoulders with the people buying huge pieces of fried fish and whatnot. On the outside track, right across from me on the other side of the salad bar was this wiry old dude – the kind of scrappy, gaunt, belt wearing old dude who’s always taking deep straining breaths through big horse nostrils and has big, strained, turtle tendons sticking out in his neck… you know the type. I noticed right away that he grabbed the same size salad box as me. Then he wanted spinach leaves as his leafy salad base, just like me, but I had the tongs first so he had to wait. And then I had to wait for the green pea tongs. He likes green peas too, I thought to myself as I waited for the tongs. This horse-nostril old dude with turtle neck tendons might be my salad twin. I watched him carefully after that. So I can say with confidence that he likes chickpeas on his salad too! He likes carrot shavings, and broccoli pieces, and kidney beans, just like me. Everything I like on my salad, this guy liked too. I was at the very end of the line, at the salad dressing with my hand on the spoon for the thousand island when the old dude paused right across from me. It’s true, I thought, he’s my salad twin! He’s waiting for the spoon because he likes the same dressing as me!

But it wasn’t true. He wasn’t waiting for the thousand island. He was looking for something else. He finally found it, not on the salad bar but on a little cart behind him. He didn’t even use salad dressing at all. He pours oil from a tiny little glass pitcher onto his salad. As I closed up my salad box I watched him from across the bar as he hoisted the little glass jug by its tiny little jug handle, and then, turtle neck tendons straining visibly from clavicle to up behind his ears, he ever-so-carefully poured a tiny little amount onto his salad. He’s not my salad twin! He’s a son-of-a-bitch!!

Saturday, May 14, 2005

Taking stock of my life on a Saturday morning, sort of cloudy and rainy outside, and I didn’t really have enough coffee to satisfy the extravagant and insatiable lusts of Mr. Coffee’s filter basket last night so I had to supplement the grounds with some bancha tea, and some gingko leaves, and some roobois pellets or whatever they are - this is the kind of thing my grandma would do during the Depression, except she would use dried chickory root, or grass clippings, and then she’d eat fucking cabbage fried in lard exclusively for the next four years ‘cept for when she, or her younger brother Jack, who joined the navy, could steal a chicken.

I’ve mentioned my grandma before. I know I know, many times. But to summarize - she’s the one who lives in the HUD senior peoples’ housing; the building (and I’m sort of fascinated with it), looking at the city from Westnedge Hill, that makes up the skyline of Kalamazoo. Other than the HUD building, during the summer from that vantage point when there are leaves on the trees, the valley looks the same way it did when “kalamazoo” meant the way river gravel looks when seen through the clear water of a stream rushing over the top of it.

“Hey Grandma! Is that guy still peeing in the hallways?”

“Now he’s pooping in the elevators! Nobody saw him do it, but there were human feces in the elevator. Who else could it be?”

(days later)

“Hey Grandma! Is that guy still pooping in the elevator?”

“No. We got rid of him!” (cackling)

BTW, by “We,” my Grandma means a group of old ladies who meet in the old rec room, and now that bingo has been cancelled due to lack of government funding, have nothing to do but conspire. I hear about their plans sometimes. Sometimes their plans are good, but sometimes their plans are a bit, well…. crazy. Like, I’m pretty sure once they had a plan to capture a half-chicken, half person. First of all, the whole premise of the existence of a half chicken, half person was a bit crazy. But most crazy of all, was these old ladies’ plan to take one on. I bet even Bruce Fucking Lee would have trouble fighting a half human, half chicken beast. And you should see these old ladies, some of which are seriously infirm.

Anyway, I’m not sure exactly how they did it, but they got rid of that guy who was pooping in the elevators. (don’t tell anybody, but I suspect that the plans of my Grandma’s gang were probably more correlative than causative of the elevator pooper’s departure from their building) And the way my Grandma said it – I could tell those old ladies don’t take feces in their elevator lightly. I almost feel sorry for the guy. I mean, maybe he just really had to go? Or maybe the elevator was stuck? And really, isn’t being able to poop in weird places a valuable skill? I once had a friend who tried to poop in a pizza box, but he couldn’t do it.

Oh yeah, so here I am, drinking my adulterated coffee, taking stock of my life. On the back of my hand is a faint note I scribbled there last night. It refers to this huge, 4’ by 8’ pizza delivery map laminated to a big board I found last night behind the Domino’s Pizza that has a back entrance on the alley behind my place. It’s a big, old, aged map of my neighborhood with all the streets and sub-neighborhoods divided into pizza zones and delivery quadrants. The note on my hand reads, “get map under cover of darkness.”

That huge map is still down there in the alley, I just got up and checked, then walked back to this computer. But it is no longer dark. And the note on my hand is so faint now, the next time I wash my hands it’ll probably be gone for good.

Monday, May 09, 2005

I was at my parent’s house the other day – this is weeks ago now - and I had to wake up at 6:00 in the morning, striking off in the dewy morning dimness on 131 for farther north in Michigan yet. I told everybody they didn’t have to wake up with me, but they did anyway, and we sat around eating breakfast and drinking coffee. At least myself, Andrea, and Mom did. Dad joined us a little later.

Andrea: Have you seen the new Wisconsin quarter yet?

Me: Yeah, have you?

Andrea: No, but I’ve heard from my friends it’s got a picture of a buffalo with a boner on it!!

Mom: Wisconsin is the dairy state! It’s a cow! … and that’s not an erection, it’s a corncob!

Andrea: (laughing)

Dad: (appearing standing in the doorway to the kitchen, fresh out of bed, bleary eyed and blinking from the light) Hey, everybody…. Whas’ happening?

It was really funny.

Since this conversation I’ve seen the coin of which Andrea’s teen friends speak. It’s not the Wisconsin quarter – I think that is a cow, and that is a corn cob. Andrea’s friends are talking about the nickel, I think. There’s a picture of Thomas Jefferson, all close-up on the front, and on the back… a noble silhouette of the great American bison. And it’s true, the bison has a boner. I can only imagine the heated disagreement that occurred between the engraver and U.S. Currency Department higher-ups. The engraver, of course, insisted on achieving his artistic vision and portraying the bison with its boner. The U.S. Currency Department sought to uphold the American puritanical ideal and insisted adamantly on a neuter bison. Thirty years ago, I assure you, there would be no boner on ANY U.S. currency. But lo, the engraver and his artistic vision won out and certain 2005 nickels bear his artistic boner expression. How have we changed? What does this boner mean for our society?

Saturday, May 07, 2005

I didn’t see who said it, but here’s an ACTUAL QUOTATION I heard from the alley below the exterior stairway landing to my apartment last night (presumably uttered by some asswipe on a bicycle):

“Oh my God! Riding a fixed, high, is amazing!!”

This is what I say to that: Grow up you asshole!

And here’s another QUOTE I heard later that evening at the grocery store. It came from this dude with a six pack of beer he was trying to purchase in the self-checkout lane with his two friends who were also buying six packs of beer. “Dude, do you have your Preferred Card on you?” the guy asked one of his friends. One of his friends did have his ‘Card on him, and handed it to the guy. This is what the guy exclaimed as he scanned in the bar code on the back of the card:

“You the man!”

Please don’t say that ever again.

I’ve got to get out of this neighborhood.

My guy at the laundr-o-mat - the one who wears all the gold chains and the medallions, the one with the 70% ring to finger ratio – I think he agrees with me about this neighborhood.

I was the last one last night at the laundr-o-mat, and when my laundr-o-mat guy pulled out his mop and bucket I sat up on a counter to keep my feet out of the way. When he finished mopping, he started cleaning out all the washers. “Hey Man!” he said to me, and lifted an abandoned, wet old sock out of a washing machine. “Hey Man! Is this thing yours?” I told him it wasn’t. A few machines later, he stood and lifted a filthy old dish rag above the level of the bank of washing machines. “Hey man, is this yours?” He also asked me about the soggy pile of old sweatshirt he pulled out of the next washer. “These fucking people!” he burst out when I said the sweatshirt wasn’t mine either. “They leave all their shit in my fucking machines! They leave whole loads in my driers! They leave their [unintelligible] fucking [unintelligible] fucking [unintelligible]… Stupid fuckers… Fucking idiots.”