Partners in Crime

It’s hard to believe that I was in the U.S for Christmas just two weeks ago. My Christmas holiday visit came and went so fast that it’s almost as though it didn’t happen. Sometimes, in the confused moments of lingering jetlag, I am not totally unconvinced that it wasn’t a dream.

Fortunately, I spent a lot of time with my sister in the U.S, so I have roughly 12,392 pictures to prove I was there.

My sister and I have known each other for about forty years. She is the second oldest sibling, twenty-two months younger than me, and so was my first DNA-sharing partner in crime. Ask my parents and they might suggest that “partner in crime” is an almost literal statement. See, at the age of three, I realized that efficiently torturing the youth and happiness out of my parents demanded a second party, which is where my sister came in.

And for the next ten years or so we did just that with several thoughtful, well-planned, poorly-executed hijinks. We broke things, ate things, and threw things. We snooped, crapped, and plotted. The only thing we were better at than doing bad things was getting in trouble for doing bad things. Fortunately, it turns out that neither of us are natural-born criminals, so more often than not we got nabbed. And when that happened I left her holding the bag as often as possible.

Believe it or not, my tendency to sell my closest friend, partner, and confidante down the river did nothing to damage our relationship. We remained close friends until we hit puberty a decade later and she embarked upon a seven-year period when everyone in the neighborhood referred to her as the “she-monster.” Not to her face, of course, as we were all afraid of her. Nobody who knew her then ever talks about it now.

And yet, my sister has grown into the opposite of the she-monster, and the nicest of my siblings (myself included). She is sweet and unassuming, will focus with genuine attentiveness on what people tell her. She looks down on talking bad about people behind their backs, while the rest of our family is governed by the notion that if you’re not there to defend yourself, well, that’s just your own damn fault. After two drinks she slips on a wide-eyed naivety persona, both easily amazed and entertained, and one who would cajole a shoulder rub out of Adolf Hitler if he happened to goosestep through the door.

Beneath this goofy exterior, is a hard-headed businesswoman. Lack though she does the funny gene and the biting wit the other three siblings have, she has instead developed a shrewd and clever business sense.

And you would be hard pressed to find another human being who takes as many photographs as she does, outside of those who write the word “photographer” on their W2 forms.

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Bole International (Addis Ababa) > Charles De Gaulle

I’m trying to stay awake at Charles De Gaulle in Paris. More accurately I am trying not to embarrass myself. I am doing the bastardized version of sleep that comes during long layovers after long flights.

My chin is in my palm, elbow perched on the armrest. I keep dropping off to sleep for seconds at a time, waking as my head slips out of my palm and towards the backpack on my lap.

Anytime I have a long layover after a long flight I feel like a prisoner being tortured by the CIA. I can’t sleep on flights, so after 8 sleepless hours in the sky, I am sent through a maze of hallways, gates, security points, and escalators. What’s more, the same coffee shop and magazine-stand/gift-shop keep appearing, so I am led to believe I am hallucinating.

Today, the worst part of this ordeal is that when I finally reach my gate, I still have more than four hours to wait. I groan.

My sister can’t believe this attitude, everything involving air travel is a dream come true for her. But then again, she has two kids, so four quiet hours of scrolling Facebook or reading magazines might as well come with 72 virgins.

I have inherited the pathological and intense dislike of waiting displayed by the men in my family. We have made impatience into a warlike art form, and become instantly stressed, uncomfortable, and aggravated.

But I have worked on this shortcoming in recent years. I have tried simply to be, rather than expect or anticipate. So that’s not what really bothers me. What really gets to me is waiting to do something I can’t stand.

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I really miss sitting at a bar.

I don’t mean sitting in a pub, I mean sitting at a bar. In the Czech Republic’s pubs patrons do not sit at the bar, they sit at tables. The bar is where beers and drinks are poured, split tabs are paid, and bartenders and waiters smoke and gripe about customers.

Tonight, at the Jug Handle (best wings in South Jersey!), we are sitting at the bar.

My friend Jen and I are on the left leg of the U-shaped bar end, so that we are looking across at two women, and flanked by a good-looking couple and two massive meatheads on the bottom of the U. The couple next to us is engaged in quiet conversation and eating wings, the meatheads are drinking Bud Lights with Jack Daniels backs, and the two women across from us give us smiles. Football is on television.

Life is perfect.

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Often in a movie in which the main character is visiting his family at Christmas, there are familial interactions in various public locales before the film culminates in the big event.

We meet the quirky residents of his hometown and see some ways in which the main character deals with being away from his normal life. Some familial tensions or issues are hinted at or foreshadowed.

In this Family Christmas Movie, the main character spends the weekdays in his pajamas and wakes up at 4 am due to jet lag.

He is there for three days before he realizes that his sister and her kids have also been there for three days. This realization coincides with other realizations, such as how much he hates the concept of forced-pants at home, how quiet his flat is, how much he loves and misses that quiet, and that he is astoundingly happy without children.

After – and as a result of – all of these realizations, he makes a mental note to find a quiet moment to vocally thank the Gods of Durable Latex and Good Timing. Now, however, a quiet moment seems unlikely.

The parts of the quirky townsfolk are played by the employees in the father’s dental office, which is attached to the house. The main character goes into the office for a teeth cleaning and he is received well by the ladies who work for his dad. And then, for unknown crimes against unknown people, his father sends him to a chair where he is set upon by the lovely Martina.

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I am on my way to the mall. It’s at the moment I get stuck in mall traffic three miles away on the highway that it dawns on me that it may have been a mistake.

Before you say “Whoa, you went to the mall three days before Christmas?” followed by several deserved comments on my mental health and intelligence, let me just say I had no choice.

Every year I come home for Christmas, I feel the pressure to get my family members “something Czech.” But after eleven years, I am plum tapped out of ideas. I have brought home all of the Old Town prints, Charles Bridge coffee mugs, and Krteček dolls that my family can handle.

And so, this Christmas, I decide to do my shopping in the U.S.

I finally get to the mall and I park at the book store. I do this because it is one of my main destinations today and because I am certain there will be free spots. I am correct. And yet, the book store is filled with people and not all of them fill me with hope for the human race.

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Family Christmas Insanity 1980s Style

We’ve seen so many holiday movies, haven’t we? They all seem to blend into little sub-genres. There’s the one about the fast track guy who has lost the meaning of Christmas, and the other about the woman (or the kid or the man) who undergoes a crisis at the holidays, but who is rescued from the depths when she (or he or they) finally realizes that Christmas isn’t about gifts, but friends.

And then there’s the family Christmas movie. These usually feature an odd family, old family tensions, or a squirrel in the Christmas tree and a toupee afire.

The following movie treatment features a guy visiting his quirky family at Christmas. The issues involved, as well as the joys, stresses, food, and alcoholic coping medicine.

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I was thirteen when I realized I wasn’t Jewish.

Sure, there were lots of hints. I went to Catholic school. I was baptised and had done my Holy Communion. I’d been forced to admit my sins at confession, during which I re-enacted for the priest and the horrified audience of parents and families how much trouble one got in at my home when they said the words “fuck it.”

Plus, I felt guilty about everything I did that felt remotely good.

On top of this, there were constant reminders that I was of Italian and Irish heritage. My mother’s maiden name was McFarland. My dad shouted curses in bastardized Neapolitan, vulgarities which would mark my first foray into second language acquisition. We ate pasta at least twice a week, a ubiquitous piece of bread in our free hands to act as sauce sponge. Moreover, my father adored everything Italian: movies, books, basketball coaches.

Still, the fact that I was not Jewish never sunk in until the age of thirteen, when I did my Confirmation and all of my friends were having Bar Mitzvahs.

Now, if you have any experience with these things, you know that there are advantages to both. As a Catholic, I didn’t have to sing in front of a huge group of friends and family, so I totally won out in the overall avoidance of public humiliation. That said, the party afterwards clearly swung in the favour of my Jewish comrades.

As far as I could tell, Bar Mitzvahs were summed up in one event: an older person smothers a yarmulke-donning twelve-year-old boy, pinches his cheeks, passes along a few tidbits of wisdom mixed with good-natured self-deprecating jabs, says one or two things in Yiddish, then hands him a substantial amount of money in an envelope.

My confirmation party was pretty sweet. We had meatballs, and I think I got a watch.

We lived in a neighbourhood primarily made up of Jewish families. There were some households with a Jewish and gentile parent, and there were surely other gentile families, but the primary demographic was Jewish. Our babysitters were Jewish, our friends, enemies, and teammates in street sports were often Jewish. Therefore we pretty much grew up Jewish.

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Evidence of the Decorating Talents of the Male Galeone

As I prepare to head home for two weeks of holiday fun, I am turning over the things we all relate with the holidays. Part of that is the feasting I will undertake, which will start upon my arrival and end as I lethargically wave a chubby hand at Newark International in early January.

But mostly I have been preparing for family time. This means I will have to dig into my bag of ‘creative truths’ to come up with new reasons for being single and not giving my mom grandchildren. It’s also a lot of Galeones in one place, which means alcohol (for me).

Part of this family craziness is the inevitable slave labor enforced by my mom upon every visit. Mom cooks and does laundry and I perform whatever task she comes up with.

But it’s the way it happens that sometimes irks me. As she’s leaving the house, she’ll stumble upon me hiding in the downstairs mud room, pressed against the wall, holding my breath, you know, just relaxing, and she’ll say my name in a pointed way.

‘Damien.’

It’s then I know that my life is about to get 9-11% more annoying.

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