The Over 30 Roadtrip rolls into Washington DC through air so thick and damp that we have to drop an anchor. DC is the muggiest place I have ever been in the real world (Florida doesn’t count – ever). Three minutes outside in the heat and I morph into a sloth. We trudge through streets that are like a jungle and Collin and I are in a gooey national geographic special searching for red-bellied lemurs and the elusive hot dog stand.

But there are monuments to be viewed.

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I pull the pick-up onto the PA turnpike (Hell’s Road) at a safe and reasonable speed. Collin is reading a fantasy novel. Kenny Rogers is telling us all about a gent who knows when to hold ’em. We are supplied – 2 ham sandwiches (with mustard), 2 apples (Granny Smith), 2 granola bars (1 chocolate, 1 peanut butter), a bag of blueberries and 2 Capri suns (kiwi strawberry – 100% juice)

The only thing that worries me are the apples – I have forgotten to bring floss.

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6A, a window seat, on DELTA flight 104 is more technologically advanced than my laptop and any car I have ever owned. The control panel alone sends me into a neolithic shame spiral.

Before I can sit, I am offered a choice – champagne or orange juice. The decision is made with disturbing ease.

My aisle-bound cohort could be Hagrid’s stunt double in the Harry Potter films. I tell him I’m a nervous flyer and he laughs and waves over an attendant. Hagrid explains my predicament and I am embarrassed by the fuss. He can tell that I am a rookie. She comes back with a rocks glass of Irish whiskey. I am prancing towards intoxication and we have not yet left the ground.

Oh my God, I think as I sip (gulp) down the whiskey, welcome to the big leagues.

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I was writing at the kitchen table of the small cottage when a sense of dread drew my attention to the wall. A large moth was fluttering along the baseboard. Before he could get into the air, a plump black spider came out of a cave-like hole with ridiculous speed, grabbed the moth and sped back to his lair with him.

A moment later, the spider came back to the entrance of the hole, booty tucked under his right four legs, and gave me an intense glare that proclaimed – you’re next, you two-legged bastard.

He disappeared into the hole again. Read the rest of this entry »

“It’s been found that 52.3% of people who have lumps on their genitalia have been doing garden work,” the man says this with absolute confidence. He is immense and sitting behind a desk smoking a cigarette. His face flab jiggles with every movement, partially concealing that a portion of his jaw is missing.

There is no way to fully appreciate the man’s voice. He has a slight lisp, almost slur, which sneaks out of the side of his mouth as though he’s trying to convey a prohibited secret. Imagine Marlon Brando if he were a character on the Muppets. Each sentence rivals the last in its grandeur and extended syllables.

This man is The Šaš, and The Šaš is my doctor.

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It’s a cool morning and I’m sitting in my home office, a breeze is coming through the open balcony door. I am drinking strong coffee and have just eaten a bologna sandwich with mustard. Běla the cat is asleep on my lap and Django Reinhardt is playing with unfair, three-fingered grandeur. I am reading about World War II.

All is right in my world.

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I get on the tram and it’s brutally hot. After tricking an old woman out of her seat with promises of duck liver, I sit down and take slow breaths in hopes of lulling my body into a false sense of temperate comfort. It doesn’t work. This is mainly because of the six Italian tourists who decide to keep me company by standing inside of my rectum.

Summer-time in Prague is a constant battle between my extreme hatred of the heat and my love of the minimizing effect it has on Czech women’s clothing. This lack of clothing is an enjoyable part of the Prague spring mating ritual.

Women dress to attract the opposite sex with their bare, life-sustaining breasts, tanned legs and displayed contraceptive patches. The men strut around with cocksure attitudes, biceps brandishing faded, hepatotoxic tattoos and dreaded mullets puffed out like peacock tails. I take part in the ritual, wearing glasses and holding a book, conveying: I am intelligent; allow me to fertilize your eggs!

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To the grim delight of my neighbors, I started jogging a few months ago.

Let’s get this out in the open. I am one of the Fat People. There is no sugar-coating it with euphemisms like chubby, portly, husky or stocky. No need to delve into the world of PC terms. I do not challenge gravity. I am not big-boned and I am not horizontally-enhanced.

I am one of the Fat People.

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It was on a flight into Goa that the man I’d been staring at finally looked up from his book. He was in the seat next to me and when he gazed into the ceiling and made a face as though he had just gotten a really bad pun, I knew we were in trouble. I took out my Moleskine with the intentions of writing my will. The airplane began making terrible grating sounds akin to those made by my Dodge Neon just before I left her on the side of the turnpike. The jabbering over the speaker and its frenzied effect on the others did little to quell my consternation. I wrote ‘Last Will and Testament’ at the top of the page, paused and then frowned as my forehead added several drops of sweat to my worldly belongings. Then, realizing that I didn’t own anything, I added a one word asset below:

SHIT

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I practiced my new phrase in the bathroom at work, furrowing my brow and emoting sturdy facial expressions in the mirror. I alternated between singing the phrase and declaring it with grave conviction. It was a dedicated practice, done in the midst of my morning routine of coffee, lesson-planning and avoiding the German teachers.

I checked the phrase again: Zvládnul to – It has been managed

Eager to use the phrase, I completed a minor task and stomped over to my boss’s office, which houses all the heads of the language departments at the university. I set my chin, knuckled the table and announced to the room, “Ja to zvadnul.”

I had dropped the L.

Everyone in the room, including one of my beautiful students who was having a consultation with her French teacher, erupted into laughter. In my patented method of self-defense, I began sweating like John Goodman and shifting towards the door. They finally regained their composure enough to tell me through teary eyes and red faces that I had just announced, in round about, grammatically poor Czech (insult/injury), that I had just gone impotent.

I had been rendered impotent by an L. This hardly seemed fair.

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