Monsters in Natural Habitat

My mother casually asks what I am doing on a Friday morning and I, on holiday, can’t come up with anything other than “workout and then write” and then add after a moment “Oh, also, I think I’ll read on the porch for a while.” I should know something is afoot. Additionally, when she asks what I want for dinner that evening, adding that I am the guest of honor, I really should understand that I am in for a big one.

But, being a relatively dumb man, I walk into the traps and it’s only when my sister comes in a short while later and asks Mom “Well, is he going to watch the kids?” and my mom’s subsequent wince and the embarrassed look on my sister’s face and then a full explanation (see dumb man above) but I finally figure it out.

“We need you to watch the kids for about 30 minutes.”

“30 minutes?”

“An hour tops.”

“One hour,” I confirm.

“Yes. Maybe. OK, look, I’m bringing Amanda to the airport.”

“The one in Philadelphia?”

“Yes.”

“So we’re talking two hours.” Then, remembering that my sister possesses the Galeone Gene, which does not allow her to arrive any later than two hours early for anything, I recalculate. “Three hours.”

“I will make you a steak.”

“What about Da—” I try to throw my father under the bus, but stop when I remember that I have been reading E.B White. No, I do not want to watch two kids – ages 5 and 7. No, I do not want to give up my serene vacation morning of coffee, cereal, exercise, writing, and reading on a rocking chair on the porch. I don’t. But I know that if I spend three, maybe four hours (tops) watching them, I can make people laugh at the outcome. Assuming nobody has to visit a hospital, and even then I’ll get two blog posts out of it. Additionally, if my dad watches the kids there is a solid chance I’ll be not-so-trickily coerced into doing the brunt of the active watching, and in this case I get steak.

Sold. I agree.

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Verb Monkey with Wine

We are sitting outside at a café in Paris’ Latin Quarter. I am pinned between our table and the wall, so I am watching people walk by. We’ve been seated exceptionally close to two young men who smoke cigarettes while they eat. They speak in French. An English copy of The Grapes of Wrath is on the table.

The waitress gives us menus and my sister orders water and white wine in French. Her French sounds great to me, but the waitress makes a few faces during their exchange which would suggest that she was either judgmental of my sister’s French or had a pregnant black widow in her panties.

She leaves. My sister and I are enthusiastic and happy, but we are also nervous. For the first time in a very long time, I feel intimidated. The waitress doesn’t seem to suffer fools, and I am certain I have made a fool of myself thus far and this lunch is not nearly over. It has been a long time since I have had absolutely no idea of what was being said. I speak pretty good Czech. I understand German. In other places they engaged me in English.

Not in Paris. I said “Merci” when the waitress said “Bonjour.” I have since smiled at her idiotically while begging her not to engage me in any sort of conversation. I look at the menu and understand nothing. I scan for familiar foods. Eggs. Salmon. Salad. Cognac. That’s about it. I need help and so I politely ask my sister.

“Translate, Verb Monkey!”

The look I get is one I have not seen since I tied a pillowcase around her neck and encouraged her to jump off the top step. I make up my mind to order the first thing I see that has no mushrooms and is cheaper than 20 Euro.

“Is that mushrooms?” I point.

She looks. “No.”

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I am on the phone with my aunt. She’s talking about work. Since I can never stay still while talking on the phone and my parents’ house is roughly the temperature of Mercury, I leave the house to pace our driveway.

It’s as I near the garage that I hear the most dreaded onamonapia a person in the country can hear. Buzz. Right next to my ear. Loudly. Again, buzz. Now it lingers in the near distance. Buzz.

There’s a specific reaction one has to a buzz. First, there’s panic. Manly, manly panic, coupled with an ever more masculine high-pitched wail of terror. Second, there’s a duel hand wave/flap around the head area to ensure that the vespine invader is not an immediate threat. The third step is to run away. Often this is done while still enacting the second step, so that if one’s neighbors were to see him at this time, they’d think he was reenacting a scene out of One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

My neighbors are gifted this vision at this moment, if any of them has the good fortune to be watching. My aunt asks if everything is OK. I lie and say yes. My heart is palpitating. I stand on the porch fifteen feet away and scan the sky as if I were a gunner on the Akagi during the Battle of Midway.

I see it. It’s big and it’s flying in aggressive swoops near the front of the garage. It’s not a bee, it’s not a wasp, it’s a hornet.

I tell my aunt I love her and I have to hang up. And I go in the house to hide.

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Untrue Romantic

It’s brunch at the Royal Albert Hall. We’re in Verdi’s kitchen, a well-lit, high-ceilinged yet cozy café, where a jazz quartet plays in the corner of the room. Like many, we are sipping coffee and becoming mesmerized into mellow by the music. Rain is falling; the mood is warm and pleasant, as if cuddling inside of a half-cooked pizza bagel.

I look around the room, mostly couples, some families. One guy in the corner is trying to talk over the music and I schedule a late afternoon rant against him. The others are holding hands, looking into each others’ eyes and getting carried away by the quartet’s blend of Brazilian jazz and Czech classical music.

The room is oozing romance.

There is nothing about this that isn’t romantic: cozy environment, Black-tied wait staff, rain, music, the Royal Albert Hall. It is the perfect atmosphere for romance to bloom. And I would gladly let it bloom were it not for my companion. My sister.

I remember I wanted to tell her something. I lean in. “I have stool softeners if you get backed up.”

Yes. Romance blooms.

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As I look forward to another day of travel tomorrow – Prague to Philadelphia – I again wonder who I’ll be sitting next to.

Anyone who has ever traveled knows the extreme difference one’s neighbors en route can make to their journey. This is why people eye up babies in the airport – is it on my plane, my row, the row in front? The departure lounge has one casting glances around at others – is that goddess sitting next to me? Oh please be 29B! Or is that guy who’s sweating audibly (me) next to me? Please don’t be 29B!

Perhaps we are most conscious of this on airplanes, but one’s next door passengers on ground transport can also make or break your journey. This can be on buses, trains, or chunnels.

I have been reflecting on this since returning from a journey to London, Paris, and Lyon, and had the opportunity to consider my fellow passengers, as well as their opinions of me.

20D

…was a nice young woman with two children who drove those in front of them insane by kicking the back of their seats. The flight was a quickie from Prague to London. She caught my attention by being very attractive and reading an article I’d written in a Czech newspaper. Did I care that her kids continued to kick their front riders while I flirted with their mom and showed off my knowledge of Czech culture.

Not

In

Any

Way

Gatwick Express

I have no idea what their seat numbers were, since I was too busy sweating through my glasses, but the three gentlemen I sat next to on the trip from the airport to London were Ukrainians who clearly didn’t think anyone near them spoke a Slavic language.

These guys ironically made me miss Prague in tourist season, when Americans ride transport and speak in such a manner and at such volumes that is clear they think nobody around them speaks English.

I didn’t pick up everything they said, but if others had understood the vulgarity-laced discussion they were having, they’d have stared at them in horror and not, well, hatred.

43

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Photobombed by Ben

I’m standing in front of Big Ben. The clock in London, not the football player in Pittsburgh. My sister Julia is taking pictures of Ben and I am standing in a flock of tourists who are all taking pictures.

I am not one of them, having relegated all of the photographic duties to my sister. The camera and I have never, ever gotten along. I am as photogenic as a “before” picture, never having understood what to do when a camera is pointed at me. I smile too much or too self-consciously, don’t know what to do with my hands, and always end up looking as though I am either constipated or on angel dust.

Moreover, I am the single worst photographer in the history of shutter and exposure. I am never able to capture the scene I want. My pictures always turn out to look like postmodernist interpretations of random body parts or a sideways road view of an accidental pocket shot. Architecture is my active foe.

Despite all of this, I have somehow always had a talent for accidentally ending up in strangers’ pictures. I am the accidental photobomber. And I am magnificent. I surely grace dozens, hundreds of strangers’ photos in the background scratching my crotch, picking my nose, doing the post-bite of pizza mouth cool down, or laughing like a hyena. Complete strangers have given me Polaroid snaps that I have unwittingly ruined by somehow becoming its central focal point.

Accidental photobombing is my weird talent.

In fact, while checking my watch against Ben, I notice that I am standing directly in front of a woman who has a phone in her outstretched hand, obviously snapping a picture. A picture that will no doubt include me if I don’t move. I do the embarrassed “I’m in your picture” shuffle that I have done 20,000 times – hands up, apologetic smile/wince, dance out of her line of sight.

She looks from the screen up at me and gives me a look which mixes confusion and irritation. Then she brushes her hair back a little, puckers her lips, makes a sexy face, and looks back into her screen.

Julia grabs me and she aims the camera at our faces. Big Ben is in the background.

Aha.

It dawns on me.

They’re taking selfies.

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Departure Board: 2 hour Delay  

Noticing this is accompanied by the scattered groans and epithets of what are surely my future co-passengers. I shouldn’t have looked up at it. No good comes from looking at a Departure Board.

I let out a batch of vulgarities tailor-made for this occasion (and which would make Hunter S. Thompson reach for his thesaurus and wince) and continue walking.

I can’t read in airports. Everyone I know gets to the airport, checks in, sits his or her ass in a cozy spot, or on a cozy barstool if they have the scratch, and reads. They read or do Sudoku or play Angry Birds or, I guess, search for Pokemons. Or eat them, or serenade them, or do whatever the hell someone does to a Pokemon.

In any event, as an avid reader, people assume that I eagerly use this time to settle into a good book. After all, airport time is usually a couple hours of dead time. If you’re not wearing a jacket with wings on it, there’s almost literally nothing you can do to prepare for what you’re about to do. You are most probably not going to be asked to refuel the plane or check its tires or tick items off a list on a clipboard.

But still, I can’t read.

All I can do is walk. For me, preflight time is a buildup of nervous energy. It starts the day before when I tap my toes and bounce my feet underneath the table. Then I can’t sit still and clean the flat to put that energy to use. Then I toss and turn in bed imagining the plane leaving terra firma or bumping around in thick clouds.

By the time I am in the airport, I am channeling so much nervous energy that the only thing I feel comfortable doing is walking the airport in a tracked loop. I create a beaten path of my steps, passing the various stores and shops – duty free, relay, Blue Praha – whose employees at first smile at me, then cock their heads at my consistent appearance, then eye me with suspicion, then ignore me completely.

So I walk. My fitbit steps add up. I stop occasionally to watch a plane do the incomprehensible by vaulting into their air as if it were nothing, then I walk again, shaking my head in disbelief.

And every now and then I look up at the Departures board.

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I am standing two people back in line.

I am watching with awe as the man in line goes through this transaction as though it is the first time he has ever purchased goods in a shop. He seems amazed when the cashier asks him for money, digs through his bag for a few long seconds until he finds his wallet. Then he digs through that for a few long seconds until he finds the money. Then he digs through the coin purse until he finds the right change.

This kind of thing no longer surprises me, since it happens every single time I stand behind someone in line at a shop. For some reason, when Czech people buy goods in a shop, they appear surprised and confused to the point that it would suggest that they are actually aliens in borrowed human bodies.

I have no idea why.

All I know is that I hate this man. Read the rest of this entry »

My Cat the Lush

While I have met probably 5% of my friends’ kids, I have seen thousands of pictures of them. For I have Facebook, and Facebook is child land. It’s summer time, so the pictures are of kids eating, swimming, posing with their Little League teams.

This is not a complaint, just an observation.

Some of those pictures make me smile, some make me wax nostalgic for childhood. And some make me so mind-bogglingly happy to be childless that I can’t even see straight.

There are so many benefits of not having kids. Travel. Sleep. Sex. Social life. Impromptu naps. Money. To list more would only make me unpopular. And, by the way, I am very well aware of the fact that there’s a huge huge list of benefits and rewards of having kids, so don’t think I’m ignorant of that fact. It’s all about personal choices.

One of the benefits of not having kids is that I am nobody’s immediate live-in role model. I know that an enormous aspect of kid’s developmental behavior is watching what their parents do. What they eat, smoke, drink, how they talk, react to stress, everything. And since I can be an idiot at times, I am glad nobody is watching me and mimicking me.

Nobody is watching me scratch my body in two spots at once. Nobody is listening to the knitted Afghan of vulgarities that my mouth creates when the internet drops off. Nobody is watching me sip a late night whiskey or chew tobacco, or pick my nose.

Nobody.

Except my cat.

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