38 Going On 39
I was in the middle of a useful Chinese lesson, learning how to say, Who farted? when Ack, the ex-husband/ best friend called. He wanted to lubricate himself in preparation for a meeting he had scheduled with a banker later that evening. Though I don't have much money to spend on non-essentials right now, pints and burgers are one combination that I find kind of hard to pass up. Besides, I don't have that much time left in Toronto. And Ack is my best friend.
The Comrade: I'll be ready in 7 minutes.
I've been having a huge problem with banks these days. Just to access my pittance, I have to either maintain a really high balance or pay a monthly double digit figure just for the convenience of accessing said pittance. But only to a degree, because some corporate body decides for me how much of my own money I can access daily. They tell me things like, "Oh, it's for your own good. It's a safety measure, just in case someone tries to hold you up at the bank machine."
Say you have a lot of money and a kid. And say one day you found your kid missing and in his place was a ransom note. You couldn't just go to the bank and say, "I'd like $20 million in small, unmarked bills, please" and get it A) on the same day or B) without paying a shitload of money for your own money. There are people who have the sole job of brokering transfers of unimaginable sums. This process can take up to a week. Ack's new friend has this job.
Ack had met the banker some months back through a friend and his new girlfriend. An aerial photograph of their double date looked sort of like a Audi shaped quadrangle represented by two towering Bay Street power women up front, strung loosely to a couple of puny film pawns in last year's H&M. A small Minolta capture of the big city zeitgeist.
I'd written about Ack's friend a couple of years ago. He's a writer, director, producer. He was the one who was disappointed with Tim Burton's scrambled eggs. He'd stolen an idea from me and used it, without my permission, in a script he'd pitched to the CBC. I'd called him the Applier because he was the one who made a play for me in Ack's house when our bellies were full of his chili and beer. After a flat refusal, I'd suggested we go down the street for a public drink in a neighbourhood bar. At one end of the L shaped bar, I was busy thumb wrestling with an old friend. At the other, the Applier was putting new moves on a young lady he'd just met with Crystal Gayle length hair. It's good to know that some aren't deterred by a little rejection.
Within a week a conundrum loomed.
Crystal Gayle turned out to be exactly half amazing and half annoying.
Amazing
• equipped with an undulating vagina that does all the work for you. Time to recline!
Annoying
• calls several times during regular business hours to tell you about who she went to the zoo with, losing a hair elastic, what she ate, etc.
Amazing
• makes delicious and nutritious fruit smoothies in the morning
Annoying
• blares Kid Rock as an accompaniment to the smoothie
Eventually, annoying won. To get rid of her he rented a stack of ill fated romance movies, looking for break up dialogue. Apparently, the crème de la crème was: I need my space, baby..
This guy has actually sold scripts, plural.
Most recently, the Applier had been caught and released by one of the Bay Street power women. She sent him back to again fight his way upstream alongside all the other minions. He didn't understand it. Act III had been rewritten and got final approval. Look! It says right here on page 174: They lived happily ever after! They did, dammit!
The Comrade: So, this time she needed her Space Baby?
On an outing a few days ago, Ack and his banker friend got a lecture from the freshly dumped and newly embittered Applier, who now had to write an epilogue to his magnum opus. The satellite photo revealed the Audi replaced by a rusted tricycle, with half ravaged streamers and a tiny corroded license plate bearing "Xanadu".
According to the Applier, there are some women who have never been in love before; who have never left their safe circle of friends; who trade superficial, cursory relationship stocks while sipping Cosmos and tapping Charles Jourdans. If it pans out, great. If not, it's no big loss. It would never be a real investment, just a fun penny stock. These women are pleasant enough, sweet even, but lacking real substance.
Facebookers.
Because there's nothing really special about her, and she's been known to spout the mantra We Have An Obligation to Our Shareholders, without a hint of irony,
Ack: I've got to break it off with the Banker.
Neither a shareholder, nor a client with unimaginable sums of money, Ack was simply prospecting.
We started with a pitcher of Stella.
The patio was filled with the same daily regulars, the ones who continue to pay off owner Dharam's mortgage and to set aside his childrens' educational nest egg. As it was a statutory holiday, these people had clocked in early to enjoy a full day of sun. The only variance amongst them was their differing degrees of pinkness.
There was a couple I'd never seen before. Aged hipsters with hair-do's and humungous designer sunglasses (I almost wrote shun-glasses). They were the food-free, but liberally-boozed types. They reeked of the film industry. Production side. I thought I recognized the girl. I thought she was someone I once knew. Vicky from Montreal. I used to call her Vichyssoise. Cold and tasty potato soup. It's actually better warm, with a drizzle of truffle oil.
I waited until Ack and her date were away from the table.
The Comrade: Vicky.
Nothing.
The Comrade: Excuse me, is your name Vicky?
Annette: [slightly slurring, and peering from behind humungous shunglasses]: Did you say Nicky?
Annette invited herself to come sit with us. If we didn't mind.
What can you say? She'd already gathered everything together.
The Comrade: Where's your friend?
Annette: He's gone.
Ten minutes earlier I'd commented to Ack how everyone has had a "domestic" on that particular patio. I'd had 3. With the same person.
It turned out that the guy who left was an ex-boyfriend from years back. They were purely platonic friends now. He had been talking her down. Annette was broken hearted from the most recent break-up with a man who was either a physicist or a scientist of some denomination.
Once she sat, she spewed a continuous stream of dissatisfactions. She'd never been married. The last man she was dating was too boring and too depressing for her. She wanted someone else. She wanted someone more cheerful, I guess. She didn't need anyone as a reminder of her own depression she'd lived with for years. She deserved more. She was doing so much for herself. She's read all the current bestseller self-help books; she talks to her family and friends about her problems constantly; she's taken yoga; she's tried mediation.
Each time that Ack or I tried to make a suggestion, she talked on top of us.
I hate being talked on top of.
And then she began to repeat herself.
Annette: I'm 38 going on 39.
She had made this statement no less than 6 times in the hour we were together.
Annette: I just want to be married!
The Comrade: Why?
Annette: I'm 38 going on 39.
The Comrade: I know. Why do you want to get married?
Annette: Have you ever been married?
The Comrade: Twice. It's overrated.
Annette: Twice? I've never been married once! I've never even lived with a man!
Ack and the Comrade: [in unison] Really?
Annette: What?!
Ack: Nothing. It's just that usually people will have cohabited by this time.
Annette: So, there's something wrong with me, right?
Ack: No, I didn't say that.
Annette: Well, I used to party a lot. I don't anymore. I want to settle down now. I'm 38 going on 39!
The Comrade: We know. You've said.
Annette: Oh, so now you hate me.
The Comrade: No, I just think you're a narcissist.
Annette: That's mean. How am I a narcissist?
The Comrade: We don't know you and you just sat down and told us every little thing that has irked you in the last year, without hearing a single word either of us have said to you. All you do is churn your problems over and over. Every person you know has had to listen to your story. More than a few times, I suspect.
Annette: [drunk and crestfallen] Now I feel bad.
The Comrade: Don't feel bad. I believe the Universe brings people together.
Annette: Me, too!
The Comrade: And that everyone you meet has a message for you.
Annette: I believe that, too!
The Comrade: You're a narcissist.
Annette: You're so hard! You could be nicer, you know!
The Comrade: You want me to be nicer?
Annette: Well, yeah. I think if you said things nicer, then I would take it in more.
The Comrade: [rubbing her back] I think a lot of people have been saying kind and gentle things to you, but it hasn't worked. Besides, isn't that why things didn't work out with the last guy? You were never satisfied with who he was. You kept trying to make him into something you wanted him to be.
And when I said that to her, I said that to myself, too.
A couple of years ago, when I visited the Czech Republic, Ack's native land, I remember sitting in (Good King) Wenceslaus's Square flanked by Ack and Fatty. All of us were eating street meat and chugging travellers - 500mL cans of beer. My eyes rested on a family from Japan. There was a father, a mother and a 4 year old child.
Choosing to carry one of the heavier shopping bags, the child was determined to be a useful one. The bag, however, was just as tall as she was. The plastic traitor slid under a pretty party shoe, tripping her not yet coordinated self. Cobblestone flew to her face in a split second. I was blinking wincingly as I waited to see what the parents would do.
The father walked away entirely. The mother watched the child for a few moments then simply crouched down and wrapped her arms around her own knees. When the mother crouched down, the child went around and hugged her neck from behind. She gave her child a temporary place to go, but her maternal arms never once comforted her. She was teaching the child to learn how to comfort herself.
The tepid back proffered when young is merely a set of training wheels destined for the compost in life's solo journey.
Sometimes when we're 38 going on 39, we think our life should look a certain way. Maybe we won't have kids, but we think there should be someone next to us. Handsome, not handsome, it doesn't really matter. A family cottage would be nice, though. Skinny dipping. Someone to travel Europe with. But when we're with you, sometimes we girls treat you boys like science projects. We put all of our energy into this one creature: honing, editing, organizing, diapering.
Because if we keep ourselves busy with you, we never have to look at ourselves.
The Comrade: I'll be ready in 7 minutes.
I've been having a huge problem with banks these days. Just to access my pittance, I have to either maintain a really high balance or pay a monthly double digit figure just for the convenience of accessing said pittance. But only to a degree, because some corporate body decides for me how much of my own money I can access daily. They tell me things like, "Oh, it's for your own good. It's a safety measure, just in case someone tries to hold you up at the bank machine."
Say you have a lot of money and a kid. And say one day you found your kid missing and in his place was a ransom note. You couldn't just go to the bank and say, "I'd like $20 million in small, unmarked bills, please" and get it A) on the same day or B) without paying a shitload of money for your own money. There are people who have the sole job of brokering transfers of unimaginable sums. This process can take up to a week. Ack's new friend has this job.
Ack had met the banker some months back through a friend and his new girlfriend. An aerial photograph of their double date looked sort of like a Audi shaped quadrangle represented by two towering Bay Street power women up front, strung loosely to a couple of puny film pawns in last year's H&M. A small Minolta capture of the big city zeitgeist.
I'd written about Ack's friend a couple of years ago. He's a writer, director, producer. He was the one who was disappointed with Tim Burton's scrambled eggs. He'd stolen an idea from me and used it, without my permission, in a script he'd pitched to the CBC. I'd called him the Applier because he was the one who made a play for me in Ack's house when our bellies were full of his chili and beer. After a flat refusal, I'd suggested we go down the street for a public drink in a neighbourhood bar. At one end of the L shaped bar, I was busy thumb wrestling with an old friend. At the other, the Applier was putting new moves on a young lady he'd just met with Crystal Gayle length hair. It's good to know that some aren't deterred by a little rejection.
Within a week a conundrum loomed.
Crystal Gayle turned out to be exactly half amazing and half annoying.
Amazing
• equipped with an undulating vagina that does all the work for you. Time to recline!
Annoying
• calls several times during regular business hours to tell you about who she went to the zoo with, losing a hair elastic, what she ate, etc.
Amazing
• makes delicious and nutritious fruit smoothies in the morning
Annoying
• blares Kid Rock as an accompaniment to the smoothie
Eventually, annoying won. To get rid of her he rented a stack of ill fated romance movies, looking for break up dialogue. Apparently, the crème de la crème was: I need my space, baby..
This guy has actually sold scripts, plural.
Most recently, the Applier had been caught and released by one of the Bay Street power women. She sent him back to again fight his way upstream alongside all the other minions. He didn't understand it. Act III had been rewritten and got final approval. Look! It says right here on page 174: They lived happily ever after! They did, dammit!
The Comrade: So, this time she needed her Space Baby?
On an outing a few days ago, Ack and his banker friend got a lecture from the freshly dumped and newly embittered Applier, who now had to write an epilogue to his magnum opus. The satellite photo revealed the Audi replaced by a rusted tricycle, with half ravaged streamers and a tiny corroded license plate bearing "Xanadu".
According to the Applier, there are some women who have never been in love before; who have never left their safe circle of friends; who trade superficial, cursory relationship stocks while sipping Cosmos and tapping Charles Jourdans. If it pans out, great. If not, it's no big loss. It would never be a real investment, just a fun penny stock. These women are pleasant enough, sweet even, but lacking real substance.
Facebookers.
Because there's nothing really special about her, and she's been known to spout the mantra We Have An Obligation to Our Shareholders, without a hint of irony,
Ack: I've got to break it off with the Banker.
Neither a shareholder, nor a client with unimaginable sums of money, Ack was simply prospecting.
We started with a pitcher of Stella.
The patio was filled with the same daily regulars, the ones who continue to pay off owner Dharam's mortgage and to set aside his childrens' educational nest egg. As it was a statutory holiday, these people had clocked in early to enjoy a full day of sun. The only variance amongst them was their differing degrees of pinkness.
There was a couple I'd never seen before. Aged hipsters with hair-do's and humungous designer sunglasses (I almost wrote shun-glasses). They were the food-free, but liberally-boozed types. They reeked of the film industry. Production side. I thought I recognized the girl. I thought she was someone I once knew. Vicky from Montreal. I used to call her Vichyssoise. Cold and tasty potato soup. It's actually better warm, with a drizzle of truffle oil.
I waited until Ack and her date were away from the table.
The Comrade: Vicky.
Nothing.
The Comrade: Excuse me, is your name Vicky?
Annette: [slightly slurring, and peering from behind humungous shunglasses]: Did you say Nicky?
Annette invited herself to come sit with us. If we didn't mind.
What can you say? She'd already gathered everything together.
The Comrade: Where's your friend?
Annette: He's gone.
Ten minutes earlier I'd commented to Ack how everyone has had a "domestic" on that particular patio. I'd had 3. With the same person.
It turned out that the guy who left was an ex-boyfriend from years back. They were purely platonic friends now. He had been talking her down. Annette was broken hearted from the most recent break-up with a man who was either a physicist or a scientist of some denomination.
Once she sat, she spewed a continuous stream of dissatisfactions. She'd never been married. The last man she was dating was too boring and too depressing for her. She wanted someone else. She wanted someone more cheerful, I guess. She didn't need anyone as a reminder of her own depression she'd lived with for years. She deserved more. She was doing so much for herself. She's read all the current bestseller self-help books; she talks to her family and friends about her problems constantly; she's taken yoga; she's tried mediation.
Each time that Ack or I tried to make a suggestion, she talked on top of us.
I hate being talked on top of.
And then she began to repeat herself.
Annette: I'm 38 going on 39.
She had made this statement no less than 6 times in the hour we were together.
Annette: I just want to be married!
The Comrade: Why?
Annette: I'm 38 going on 39.
The Comrade: I know. Why do you want to get married?
Annette: Have you ever been married?
The Comrade: Twice. It's overrated.
Annette: Twice? I've never been married once! I've never even lived with a man!
Ack and the Comrade: [in unison] Really?
Annette: What?!
Ack: Nothing. It's just that usually people will have cohabited by this time.
Annette: So, there's something wrong with me, right?
Ack: No, I didn't say that.
Annette: Well, I used to party a lot. I don't anymore. I want to settle down now. I'm 38 going on 39!
The Comrade: We know. You've said.
Annette: Oh, so now you hate me.
The Comrade: No, I just think you're a narcissist.
Annette: That's mean. How am I a narcissist?
The Comrade: We don't know you and you just sat down and told us every little thing that has irked you in the last year, without hearing a single word either of us have said to you. All you do is churn your problems over and over. Every person you know has had to listen to your story. More than a few times, I suspect.
Annette: [drunk and crestfallen] Now I feel bad.
The Comrade: Don't feel bad. I believe the Universe brings people together.
Annette: Me, too!
The Comrade: And that everyone you meet has a message for you.
Annette: I believe that, too!
The Comrade: You're a narcissist.
Annette: You're so hard! You could be nicer, you know!
The Comrade: You want me to be nicer?
Annette: Well, yeah. I think if you said things nicer, then I would take it in more.
The Comrade: [rubbing her back] I think a lot of people have been saying kind and gentle things to you, but it hasn't worked. Besides, isn't that why things didn't work out with the last guy? You were never satisfied with who he was. You kept trying to make him into something you wanted him to be.
And when I said that to her, I said that to myself, too.
A couple of years ago, when I visited the Czech Republic, Ack's native land, I remember sitting in (Good King) Wenceslaus's Square flanked by Ack and Fatty. All of us were eating street meat and chugging travellers - 500mL cans of beer. My eyes rested on a family from Japan. There was a father, a mother and a 4 year old child.
Choosing to carry one of the heavier shopping bags, the child was determined to be a useful one. The bag, however, was just as tall as she was. The plastic traitor slid under a pretty party shoe, tripping her not yet coordinated self. Cobblestone flew to her face in a split second. I was blinking wincingly as I waited to see what the parents would do.
The father walked away entirely. The mother watched the child for a few moments then simply crouched down and wrapped her arms around her own knees. When the mother crouched down, the child went around and hugged her neck from behind. She gave her child a temporary place to go, but her maternal arms never once comforted her. She was teaching the child to learn how to comfort herself.
The tepid back proffered when young is merely a set of training wheels destined for the compost in life's solo journey.
Sometimes when we're 38 going on 39, we think our life should look a certain way. Maybe we won't have kids, but we think there should be someone next to us. Handsome, not handsome, it doesn't really matter. A family cottage would be nice, though. Skinny dipping. Someone to travel Europe with. But when we're with you, sometimes we girls treat you boys like science projects. We put all of our energy into this one creature: honing, editing, organizing, diapering.
Because if we keep ourselves busy with you, we never have to look at ourselves.
posted by Comrade Chicken at
1:38 p.m.
|
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