smattering

I was temping at a company where a photographer whom the company employed was being fired for some kind of indiscretion.  I had been there long enough to believe, along with several other people in the company, that whatever had happened was not directly his fault.  However, the event had already made headline news, the company was in uproar, and the photographer was being fired, no matter what.  I wandered from room to room as meetings were held, people talked about it in small groups, and no real work got done.  I had no idea what to do with myself.

Jump.  You are marrying a woman – who is already married and much older than you – for her insurance, because you have none and are very ill.  Ill enough to be life threatening, but something which can be managed well by the treatment which good insurance will get you.  You have no other choice, you must marry this woman.  I wonder why you do not marry me, because I have good insurance, then remember that it’s not really mine, I’m still a dependent on someone else’s insurance, and I recognize anyway that this is the best thing.  You have told only me and picked me to be your witness to the whole affair.

When we get to the place where the ceremony will take place the priest is ready and the woman and her other husband are there.  The woman is married to the photographer who got fired from my job.  Though it has only been a couple of days since I last saw him, the photographer’s hair has turned grey and he looks years older.  He recognizes me and we shake hands.  The woman seems dispassionate, refuses to look at anyone.  I am not sure why she has agreed to do this.  I hold your hand.  You are shaking, sweating, white, drawn.  I ask you if you’re shaking and you cannot speak.  I hold your arm in my arms, partly to steady you in case you fall, and partly to comfort you.  I don’t know whether you are shaking because of the illness or because you are overcome with the emotion of having to do this.

The priest marries you and the woman.  She and her photographer husband get in one car, we get in a limosine.  Suddenly, though you had been dressed in a full suit and tie during the ceremony, you are without a shirt and your blazer is open.  I sit with my arms around you, you stroke my left arm with your left hand, your fingers are white as snow.  We are flipping through the photos you had taken with the woman you just married, photos of the wedding and honeymoon that had been faked, just in case the insurance company happened to need evidence that you were really married.  I stroke your bare chest, you seem calmer than before, but still you do not speak.  I feel happy, because you are depending on me.

As if I haven’t not written for the last month or so…

Doesn’t the website SilenceYourRooster.com sound like something you definitely wouldn’t want to click on – at work, in front of the kids, ever?  Well, it’s really an Ambien advertisement?  Okay!

Speaking of roosters, I plan on bringing this out of the closet today to share with my fellow man:

Yes, those are tiny blue roosters all over the shirt.

Also, this whole Lehman Brothers bankruptcy thing can now be filed away in the vast, wailing portion of my life entitled “Bad Timing”.  I was about to be hired by them for a three month contract worker position on Monday and now have heard nothing from nobody about it for the last couple days.  Not even a “Whoops, forgot to mention we’re gonna be busy for the next couple of days nose-diving on the DOW with our A.I.G. pals.  Rain check?”  I know, I know, they’ve got bigger fish to fry than a Boston receptionist, but hey, I’d like to be secure that I wasn’t swimming in the bankruptcy pool along with them this year… Just sayin’ ’sal!

This is pretty vanilla, but it’s my all-time number one fantasy to smell like the beach.  All the time.  In the torrid recesses of my mind this attracts tan, tousled surfer types and lonely businessmen.

Turns out maybe I can do that?  With this?  I’m not sure how smelling like any part of 1966 is gonna turn out, but I’ll let you know!  

p.s. last night I brought home a new desk chair.  For free, on my way home from the supermarket… After I patch it and spray it down with a gallon of Febreeze (not that it smells, just, you know, in case) I’ll let you know how it turns out.  Even with the two small holes on the arms and the sitting outside for a whole day it still looks better than the desk chair I currently have at home!  Also trash day I got a vintage suitcase from Taiwan that I’m using as a knitting/fabric storage.  Such a hoarder…

A couple of weeks ago I came home with about ten books – a couple of which were given away as gifts – after going to mail a letter on a Saturday then remembering that the post office was closed on weekends.  No, I didn’t happen upon a bookstore and splurge.  Turns out a Harvard student (I live about ten minutes from the campus) was having a purge of books from all the courses they had taken.  I picked up two graphic novels (one a *mint* copy of Ghost World), a Graham Greene novel, Foucault’s Pendulum - not what I would call a readable novel, probably going to get passed on unfinished – and a couple of critical theory texts, which, much to the chagrin of a passing hipster, I was actually going to read, since Crit. Theory happens to be my academic thing.  I sent my roommate out to the box after stumbling in breathless with an armful of free treasure, only to have him come back in a few minutes later sullen because the box had been emptied in the few minutes I stepped away. 

Later that day a friend accused me of “always finding the best shit on the street” – and this from a man who found 50 dollars on the ground New Year’s Day!  The truth is, I kind of do.  It being a college/young/hip/professional neighborhood in a major metropolitan area, people have a lot of cool stuff.  There are a metric ton of yardsales every week during the summer, and what happens when you don’t sell those awful old clothes or bare lamps?  Why, they go out to the garbage.  Some people are too lazy to bring the leftovers to Goodwill/Salvation Army, or to even have the yardsale in the first place, so almost every weekend and every garbage day there’s a box or two of free junk to peruse. 

Past classic finds

- a painty old chair (a artist’s?) which I plan on knocking the broken struts off of, throwing a couple hooks up on the wall, and having a weird shelf

- the world’s ugliest pyramid teapot: white with a black and maroon pattern.  I wish my camera weren’t broken, it’s truly too heinous to describe effectively.  I once drank beer out of it at a “no cups” party.  Ah, college.

- one “free stuff” pile included two puzzles (one a duck and one a landscape), a heart wine stopper, and some incense from India which I gave to a friend.

- a poetry anthology which was amongst about five other poetry books; apparently someone took a poetry class they hated…

- a box I passed the other night had nordic ski boots which were my size: too bad I don’t ski, had to pass those up!

- someone threw out an entire record collection of old classical music records.  I grabbed about ten well-known ones and gave them to a friend with a record collection who likes classical music.  We played a couple of them once and they still worked, so I suppose it was a good deal.

- a dark wood chair with leather backing: passed it since I was on my to dinner, came back and it was unfortunately gone.  Same thing happened a couple days later with a papasan chair.  Probably for the best, since I would not have been able to transport these things to my dorm room via my friend’s small, rickety BMW.

I plan on taking a nice long walk this Sunday on my way to the Cambridge Antiques Market in hopes of finding some great stuff.  I’ll post anything I happen upon… I can’t wait to get into my own place in mid/late-August so I can start putting this stuff to good use!