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Me and Liberace

This was our first year at church camp. Even though Liberace isn’t a member of Holy Ghost Lutheran, they paid for him to go with me ‘cause he is a nice guy. I was all excited to go this year and my mom got me a new backpack and suitcase just for this. She wanted me to go with a plain set of luggage but I really wanted the Transformers set. She was like, “You aren’t going to like that in a few years, you will out grow it!”

I was like, “Mom, Optimus Prime is the coolest transformer and I will look like a dork-o-roni if I show up with some plain old bag.”

I guess that was convincing enough and we bought the Transformer bag. When we pulled up outside of Liberace’s house, he had a whole set of bags. He had a bag for shoes, one for hats, a garment bag, two suitcases and a small bag to carry. They were nice looking though. They were covered in crushed green silk with Italian leather at the corners and the edges. My mom packed all of his bags with just enough room for my Optimus Prime backpack on the top.

“Dude, I got some Mad magazines and a crossword puzzle, what did you bring?”

Liberace pulled out a bunch of magazines from his small bag but they were all weird one. I don’t really read Vanity Fair, Marie Clare or Elle. I just read mine and he read his.

Before we took of mom stopped at McDonald’s and I got an Egg McMuffin and Liberace got a breakfast Burrito. Mom just got a Coke, she never eats breakfast. The trip up to Camp Minnetonka takes three hours so she bought a bunch of smaller Cokes at the gas station too.

Archery and canoeing are the most popular classes to take during the week. What they counselors do is cut only so many colored pieces of construction paper to represent how many “tickets” they can give out for each class. There are also basket weaving class, swimming class, hiking class, sewing class and a bunch of others that are kind of boring. Me and Liberace right away got into canoeing together but when archery came up too many hands were in the air. I got in and he missed out. I looked at him and tears were all welled up in his eyes and he started sobbing, real loud too. The counselors all ran to him and asked what was the matter. He pointed to my archery ticket and they said it was ok; they gave him the very last one.

The highlight of the week is always Capture the Flag. We divide into two teams based on our cabins. Me and Liberace we’re in Mandan, the cool cabin, so we were on the Iroquois team. We play in this really huge field with a big lake in the middle. Liberace was dumb though he wore this really bright pink feather boa so I told him he had to go on his own ‘cause I didn’t want to get caught so early in the game. I saw him run east around the lake and a guy from the other team popped out of the willows and scared Liberace. Liberace tripped, stumbled and rolled down the side of the embankment into the lake.

We ended up losing the game and we headed back to our cabins to get ready for the big talent show. Me and Liberace had our part down pretty good. He would play the piano and I would dance the song Macarena. He would then change the song and the tempo and I would adjust the Macarena just a bit so it would fit to the song.

When our turn came up it started smoothly and we were getting everyone to laugh but then Mr. Showboat had to steal the show. He got off his bench and was playing the piano with his foot, then he climbed up on the top of the piano and was playing it backwards from the top. I kind of just stopped dancing and watched him myself. He really was great. The show stopper was when he pulled out a little kerosene and dowsed it on the top of the piano and set it on fire and then played Jerry Lee Lewis’s “Great Balls of Fire.” It was so awesome and the crowd went crazy until the camp director, Mr. Hayworth, ran onstage with an extinguisher and put the fire out.

We won the award for best skit in the talent show and everybody high fived Liberace. When my mom pulled up to take us home Liberace cried but she brought some pie and it was cool.

Crazy New Uni-Something

We love reading about new products and designs from Bombardier, mostly because besides building things like airplanes and subway cars, the privately held, Quebec-based company also builds fun stuff like Rotax karts, Ski-Doo and Lynx snowmobiles, Bombardier ATVs, Sea-Doo sport boats and Johnson and Evinrude outboard engines.

No wonder, then, that they have produced an exciting answer to the Segway Human Transporter. Like the Segway, Bombardier’s Embrio concept–a prototype that may or may not make production–uses gyroscope technology to balance riders but adds a dash of flair absent in the Segway, which we as car nuts find slightly nerdy.

The Embrio concept also uses one less wheel than the Segway and will attract, Bombardier hopes, a younger demographic. The vehicle is designed as a guess at what transportation in the year 2025 might look like. (Forbes.com )

Driving

“I just need to… go for a drive,” she whispered, giving his hand a quick squeeze and climbing into the driver’s seat. “Don’t worry about me. I will be back.”

Then, almost as an afterthought, “I love you.”

She started the car and drove away, waving out of habit but not looking back. She stopped at the light, signaled and drove out of view, waving one last time. She reached the interstate and merged into traffic, heading west. She drove without a map, without a compass, without a thought. Gas, clutch, shift, release. The phone rang somewhere outside of Cincinnati and she considered hucking out the window.

Huck. She lifted the word from her brother, now gone. Buried in the rich Virginia earth. Huck. The word brought pain, feeling for just a minute but soon departed. The phone stopped ringing and she kept driving.

When she stopped for gas, she bought a pack of cigarettes, her first in years. Dragging deeply, she closed her eyes, tilted her head and enjoyed that first rush of nicotine. After a few minutes, she remembered why she quit, the acrid taste of guilt and smoke clinging to her unbrushed teeth. She locked the cigarettes in the glove compartment and promised herself one at the next gas stop. And the next. And the next.

Days passed. Drive four, five hours. Stop for gas. Smoke. Drive. She stopped when she was too tired to keep going, checking into anonymous hotels along the interstate where she lay between the cool, crisp sheets unable to sleep for the thoughts racing through her head, the sound of the trucks rushing by, voices from the television in the room above, below, next door. She cried at times and sank into darkness before waking up and driving again.

Somewhere in Kansas, she realized that she’d been listening to the same CD since she had left. With a brief flicker of surprise, she realized that she didn’t care. She thought about calling him, telling him where she was, but she didn’t even know. She kept driving. Gas, clutch, shift, release. Brake, clutch, shift, release.

Later, she would reconstruct her trip from a string of credit card receipts, dates, times, locations giving her insight into the long maze of interstates, winding through the country. The smell of lilacs, gas, fudge, wildflowers dotting the median brought back the summer; though, she never knew why or where she’d first encountered them. At the time, she didn’t know where she was or how she’d gotten there.

She wasn’t surprised when the car started making that strange clunking sound, she’d driven it long and hard. Minutes later, though, it just stopped running. She coasted to the side of the road and sat there for a minute, dazed. After trying to turn over the engine a few times, she got out of the car and lifted the hood, knowing full well that she wouldn’t recognize the problem much less how to fix it. Returning for a second to her old self, she pulled out her cell phone and punched in a few numbers. No service.

Looking around for the first time, she saw an uneven horizon, patchy dirt, scrub. Recognizable only as the desert but certainly not familiar. She sat back in the driver’s seat and reclined, tilting her face to the sun, waiting.

Nobody came.

Thought came. Unbidden, unwanted but still it filled her mind with memories of fights, stupid fights about pizza and TV and walking together, memories of the family vacations and college and late nights talking about anything, everything, nothing. Tears streamed down her face, evaporating in the desert air and leaving salty streaks. She cursed, softly at first and ever more loudly, screaming her anguish at an uncaring god.

Words meant nothing. Wracking her brain, she couldn’t think of words strong enough to bear her pain and she resorted to raw animal sounds of grief, grunting, panting, but even that couldn’t carry the weight of it.

She jumped out of the Jeep and paced the desert road, alternating between rants and moans. She pounded her foot against the dirt, stomping, cursing. She kicked out and found momentary satisfaction in the dust flying up into the wind, a mess. She never made messes. The satisfaction passed and she kicked at the road, the rocks, a cactus.

“Aaargh!” she screamed, looking down at her foot, impaled by a needle. She crouched down and held her foot. Tears streamed down her face once more, tears of grief and sorrow instead of rage and she rocked back and forth as the sun set, allowing the desert heat to embrace, to comfort her. For the first time, she felt. Just felt.

A police officer drove up sometime late in the afternoon, early evening. He called a tow truck and drove her to a hotel. She arranged to have her car fixed and called him.

“Take me home.”

“Where are you?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Caller ID…” she whispered before letting the phone drop and sinking finally, deeply into sleep.

She awoke to the sound of the door. He slipped in, trying not to wake her, but she stirred, turned on the light. He smiled cautiously and stepped toward her. With a flush, she felt her own unbrushed teeth and inhaled her own ripe smell. She looked down at the black jersey dress, stiff with sweat and dirt.

“Shower,” she muttered, and again, not as an afterthought, “I love you.”

Her husband picked up the car, without questions, without accusations. He’d brought clean clothes, shampoo, a toothbrush. As he headed out of that small desert town, she recognized the site of her breakdown.

“Stop,” she enjoined, swinging out of the Jeep before it rolled to a stop. She grabbed her camera from the backseat, walked to the middle of the road and snapped a picture. He looked at her but didn’t ask.

“I just needed to know that this was real… Let’s go home.”

Life in Layman’s Terms

Trick or Treat

I love Halloween. For me, Halloween runs a shy second to the Saturday that marks the end of daylight savings time and far outweighs my birthday, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Combined.

Leaves crunch underfoot as smoke and mischief mingle in the cool autumn air. Our whole social structure crumbles for just one night as children dressed as goblins, witches and Disney princesses beg strangers for treats, threatening tricks on those who don’t oblige. Adults not only condone this behavior, they encourage it buying candy for the little hooligans, flipping on their porch lights and putting on a costume.

Oh, the costume.

I’m not creative. At all. (There’s a reason I don’t write fiction.) Yet, every year I strive to create the perfect costume, and create I do. I’d feel a bit like a cheat to beg, borrow or steal a costume for the occasion. Costumes embody a piece of the wearer. For one night only, I get to wear a mask, to be anything I want to be, and the world approves.

Of course, I don’t always know what I’m trying to say with my costume (although, I did consider a fairly obvious and rather political appearance as the silent majority). I don’t always know what I’m trying to say with my column. Sometimes it’s enough just to get the words out, and sometimes it’s enough just to wear a costume.

Last year, I morphed into the perfect black and white TV mom. Donna Reed was warned. June Cleaver had met her match. I adopted a black satin party dress, white gloves and pearls, white pancake makeup with gray lipstick, eye shadow and “rouge” and of course, black hairspray. An entire can of hairspray (apparently a blue-based black) transformed my auburn locks into a stiff, matte black.

By the end of the night, the flaky spray mixed with the thick greasy white makeup to form a lovely shade blue. By the end of the night, television of the 50s gave vway to the cheesy horror of the 70s with more of a Prom Night 2 effect than June Cleaver. My Halloween costume exceeded even my expectations, taking on a life, or death, of its own. I had so much fun.

I have a couple of rules regarding Halloween. The first, I can’t date anyone from a Halloween party. Ever. You will forever be colored by that first impression, whether or not you realize it. When you see a thoroughly gorgeous bloke and think “Ed Grimley,” something is just not quite right with the world. It’s hard to move beyond that.

My second rule is that on Halloween, you can, and should be, anything you want. It doesn’t matter if I’m smart or funny, skinny or sexy or pretty. For one night, I can be whatever I want, whomever I want. And I do.

Back at the office on Monday, this year, the Monday morning ease into work included the ritual weekend rehash. I spent much of the weekend in a red cape, with beer and scary orange Jell-O squares of vodka. As Little Red Riding Hood, I carried a basket with maps, chicken noodle soup and a wanted poster for the big bad wolf (based on the FBI wanted posters for the baddest of the bad – Bin Laden).

A coworker of mine said that other than a few college parties, he hadn’t celebrated Halloween since childhood. Without kids, in an apartment without trick-or-treaters and without much incentive to dress in a costume, he just didn’t care about the all hallowed eve. My coworker and his wife spent the night at the movies.

Leaning against the frame of my office door, he talked about Mystic River. He talked. He glowed. He raved. I think he mentioned the Academy Awards once, twice, six times. Actors. Director. Cinematography. The best boy grip. Everyone and everything about the movie deserved an award.

“When the movie ended, I was like ‘Okay. I’m good with this,’” he explained. “If they wanted to keep going, I was definitely there for it, but I felt good about the ending.”

“It’s what a movie should be.”

I know how he feels. Not about Mystic River, not yet. I haven’t seen it, but I love movies and the way they make me feel. I don’t know what it is. I don’t even know why I love the movies I love. Sometimes they are silly, more often they are complicated. I’m not in it for the happy ending; I’m in it for the ride. It’s all about the story, but even when I know the story, I keep coming back to old friends and familiar faces.

I want to work in movies. I really want to work in movies. I don’t need to be a star or even in front of the camera. Crunching numbers in an office on East 73rd, doing the job I do now in the movie industry would make me happy. I just want to be a part of it. I watch movies. I envelop myself in them, over and over, like my favorite blue hooded sweatshirt, soft and worn and home. I breathe movies.

At happy hour, a friend mentioned the cheesy flicks that we secretly love. The guilty pleasures. The movies you’d never admit to loving yet watch time and again. This politically-minded, beer-swilling computer programmer loves “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.” Adores it. He quoted from it repeatedly. His girlfriend won’t even watch it with him.

I have my own list. I love “Never Been Kissed” with Drew Barrymore and Michael Vartan, the delicious Alias agent. “Empire Records” and “Reservoir Dogs” and “Beautiful Girls.” I can’t even begin to imagine the number of times I’ve seen them. Audrey Hepburn crooning “Moon River” to a noisy, crowded, lonely world from a fire escape in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” or choosing her family over Gregory Peck, a cynic who chooses her in “Roman Holiday.” (A prized possession from my own trip to Rome is the movie poster I bought from a street vendor near the Trevi Fountain.)

I admire the people who work in movies. They create the illusion; they tell a story. For a second, a minute, two hours they make people feel alive, and everyday for work, they get to put on costumes. They get to be anything they want.

One Mediocre Breakfast

I looked across the table at Erwin, “Look at this, what is this? This, in no possible way looks like the picture.”

“You don’t want it? I’ll eat it,” he tells me.

“It’s not that I don’t want it, it’s just that this is so ridiculously not the picture of an egg-biscuit breakfast, I have to draw the line. I mean, look at the picture of a Wendy’s hamburger and it usually resembles what they are actually selling you. Or a Pizza Hut pizza, it looks pretty darn close to the commercial, but this? No, no way, I am complaining just out of principle.”

I pick up my tray and slowly walk up to the counter, closely eyeing the 16 year-old running the register. I look him up and down, trying to give off a non-threatening, non-swearing in your face, non-spitting on myself ’cause I am so angry with my food look that I am sure he is not used to. I hold the tray up to about chest level and I show him my breakfast.

“Now I don’t want to cause a problem, and I know you don’t control how the food turns out, well, not really, but look at this. Now look at the picture. Does this look like that?”

“…um,” he mutters.

“I don’t want anything; I just wanted to say, well, I am disappointed. But look at this, does it look like the picture?”

“I…uh…let me get my manager.”

This is not what I wanted; in fact I don’t really know what I wanted. I do know that I wanted the kid to agree with me. To agree that the eggs really did look horribly deformed and deflated, sitting in a tiny wretched mess at the corned of my Styrofoam plate. And the biscuit, it was like a flat tire, greasy and smelling of faux-butter.

The manager pops her head around the corner of a huge cooking unit and looks at me suspiciously. The boys gives her a brief run down of the scenario, she looks in my direction disquietedly and wobbles over. I give her the same schpeel as the boy.

“I don’t want anything, I just wanted to say that I am disappointed. But look at this, does it look like the picture?”

“The eggs sometimes get like that when you cook them, let me give you another serving.”

And ta-daaaaa, that’s it, I walk away. No miracle, beautified, wonderful looking egg-biscuit meal sitting in the back. No mass customer civil protest against the breakfast establishment. No collective group of striking burger joint workers demanding fluffier eggs and rounder biscuits. I don’t know what I really wanted them to do about; I just wanted to see a little light, some truth in advertising and a meal worth my $2.37

What did I get, now I have two eggs looking horribly deformed and deflated, sitting in a tiny wretched mess at the corned of my Styrofoam plate.