From the book of Cetaceans

Hard to believe, but for the first time ever there are photographs of humpback whales, apparently quite private, having sex, off the coast of Hawaii. Two males, it happens. Wouldn’t you guess? What will the Thumper see this as ungodly evidence of? It does make me wonder if all this time we have been misinterpreting the metaphor of the whale swallowing Jonah.

Hapless Males, re-met

I met Ray at a Cuddles Party. You heard that correctly. We did not cuddle, but did have a friendly, easy conversation, so when he asked if I’d be willing to get together for coffee or dinner, I said yes.

We made a date to meet at the popular cafe on 27^th St. Prior to leaving the house, I had an internal debate on whether to bring him a copy of my book of short stories, Hapless Males. I have a fair number of copies in a box in the basement, which I am all too happy to disperse, so it would not be an exercise in magnaminity. But how would he interpret it? Would he think that I am committed to pursing a friendship? I have plenty of friends. Boyfriends? No chance, no doubt from his viewpoint too, which I will be the first to admit. Should I tell him that I have copies I want to get rid of? Wouldn’t this denigrate the work itself, of which I am occasionally satisfied, although I haven’t re-read a single one of the stories since the book came out for fear I will crave to re-write it? Should I inscribe it? As always, that invites a dilemma. To Ray, may he find cuddles in his future. Maybe I should bring two books, joking that he might lose one on the way home. Another hapless male. Get it? Maybe that would not be welcome.

I was halfway to the cafe when I realized I had forgotten the book. Or books. It was a good thing, since it was raining like it remembered how.

Shark Teeth

My luck started to change the day I opened the front door and a bird flew into the living room. It was one of those little black birds that nobody finds attractive, a grackle or a starling, and its extreme agitation made it even less so. It ricocheted from floor to wall, clattering with such momentum against the picture window that I feared it was going to maim itself. Feathers floated to the carpet. I circled around it at a respectful distance, hoping to induce it to fly out the way it had so blithely entered, but whether it was made stupid by panic or it was, indeed, a birdbrain, it kept repeatedly flinging itself against the picture window, so I gave up. I propped the front door open and went to my computer to look for strategies to avoid the worst outcome regarding my taxes.

For several years, perhaps a decade, I have not paid them. A month ago I got a courtesy note (euphemism) from the IRS. I scrambled, stuffed some bank statements and receipts into a Grocery Outlet bag and paid a visit to my accountant Steve.

Steve is crusty and decrepit, but he still is a bloodhound when it come to sniffing out financial hidey-holes. Short of the penitentiary, he advised there was no recourse but to pay the fine and the back taxes. For the first time I became suspicious of his acumen, and even more suspicious of his motives. There was something hostile in the way he tapped his knuckly digits on his keyboard, and his smirk in informing me of the amount owed was unsavory. Really, did I expect that somebody who steeped his life in numbers and dollar signs would stay unimpeachable?

I am a good citizen. I didn’t pay my taxes, not out of civic irresponsibility, but because I didn’t have the disposable dough. I would have had the dough but I have, make that had, a gambling issue. On-line poker. If you’ve tried it, you won’t judge me. Back in the day I won with some regularity. Nowadays there is an app-assisted armada of barracudas in every pool, and before you know it, you’re stripped to bones. It doesn’t take a genius to know when to fold ’em. Or maybe it does. I hung in too long.

It was incumbent to find a source of income. In my neighborhood there’s always some job to be done, painting someone’s fence, taking out someone’s trash, loving up a widow here and there. Last resorts, and poor ones at that, belittling in different ways, and light on lucre. Fantasy filled the void of actual prospects. I saw flyers and posters on trees and buildings offering an extravagant reward for the return of a darling pooch and I began to fantasize about stealing a Shih Tzu or two. I would have to be cunning. I have the advantage of having an unbesmirched reputation. People think I am a little strange, but nobody would expect me of masterminding a pet-napping or anything else.

Pet-napping is not something you can plan, in any case. Perhaps if the opportunity arose, if somebody left their little chow-chow in the Tundra while they went shopping at Bi-Rite, well maybe. I picture the mutt viciously chomping on my fingers before I get it muffled in a thick blanket. But why would I be carrying a thick blanket around?

I considered other animals, eliminating cats immediately. You try to catch one. They know your intentions.

The day the black bird flew into my house I was in a slough of despond, without the wavelength to fret about the freaked out creature in my living room. I forgot about it entirely, until later in the morning I went back into the living room and was startled by it lifting off the armoire. It had learned enough to stop hurling itself against the window. It settled back upon the armoire. It seemed entirely more equanimous. Perhaps it was concussed. I slowly sat down on the couch, and except for a slight reactive hop, it stayed still, its ebony eye fixed on me. We began a stare-down, a telepathic one. I let it know it could stay as long as it wanted, but if it wanted to go, the door was open. It nodded and immediately flew down the hall and out the front door, as if it knew where the exit was the whole time, that its panic was a pantomime with a moral. I thought about it. I thought about birds in general, how they are descendants of dinosaurs, and then about fossils and suddenly I remembered the necklace that has been sequestered in a closet since I bought it from a drugged-out hippie back in the 70’s. It is made of shells and the teeth of the megalodon shark. It occurred to me that megalodon teeth might be worth something and sure enough, after googling, calculated that if I sold them wisely they would take a megalodon-size bite out of my IRS arrears. I retrieved the necklace and was jubilant to discover there were twice as many teeth as I remembered, twelve in all.

I put the necklace on. It was impressively grisly, even more so after I took my shirt off. Time has done a number on my body, but I still like the look of it, especially wearing the necklace.

I wasn’t quite ready to give it up. It was money in the bank. I had a better idea. Keeping the necklace on, I slipped into a pair of pajama bottoms and my ancient cowboy boots, and took my guitar down to the subway station. For the rest of the afternoon I busked, playing “Imagine” over and over, which is the only thing I can play that’s recognizable. I made over three hundred dollars. One hundred bucks an hour. I’m busking a different station tomorrow.

Don, Ben, and Bob

I have to own the fact that I am quickly becoming a cliché; rickety hips and arthritic hot spots, misplaced words, grumpiness. I’m not that grumpy, despite what you’ve heard. Maybe because I’m past seventy, and the “double ditch” is in sight, I don’t care as much about much, and care about some things more. I don’t care, for instance that I don’t know what “double ditch” means literally, it’s an Irish metaphor, I think. You get the idea, shoveling involved.

Today, absolutely lovely Saturday, first day of fall, Deb and I are down at Charlie’s having blueberry smoothies, and a tall, somewhat stooped man walks up carrying a small, black, somewhat tattered case. There’s urgency in his manner. “Hey,” he says, “I just found this on the street corner. Do you know if it belongs to anyone here?” He puts the suitcase on a chair and proceeds to unfasten its snaps. “What do you think might be in here?”

“I hope it’s not a dead baby,” I say but really hoping it isn’t a bomb, as if somebody would leave a bomb in a little black suitcase on the corner of Bessie Street on a tranquil Saturday morning. He lifts the lid. Indeed there is a dead something in there, folded in three, with a big toothy grin on an encephalitic head.

Deb says, “You just found this?”

“No, it’s mine. Just a joke. This is Don. Don Oso.”

“Oso means bear in Spanish,” Deb says.

“No, one word. Donoso. It means idiot in Spanish. Me and Donoso, we’re a pair of idiots. I used to call him Charlie McCarthy but I got in trouble for that.” Deb, and I are of a vintage to know at least vaguely of Charlie McCarthy, whom the puppet unpleasantly resembles. Charlie’s doppelganger’s right hand man shuts the suitcase, doffs his fedora, and saunters off. Will he pull the same stunt down the street at Precita Park Cafe? The woman at the next table says, “That old man knows how to entertain himself.” What a perfect thing to be when you get to a certain age. A holy fool.

When I look it up later, I discover donoso means “witty, refined.” Is this another of the old man’s jokes? Or did he say “witty” and I misheard “idiot.” Tonight on page 286 of Middlemarch I find this sentence: The troublesome ones in a family are usually either the wits or the idiots. I have a vague idea that the universe is providing a clue here, but I’m too slow to pick up on it. I have been somewhat troublesome in the past. More likely I misremembered the word, the first syllable perhaps not being “don” but something similar. Ben, maybe. Oso, I know, was the last part. One of the neighborhood dogs bears the name. Ha ha.

I’m beginning to wonder if that man was an apparition, Borges manifesting through a time warp. He told us he was from South America, he didn’t say where.

Benoso means benificent.

I text Deb. What is the word for idiot we learned ?

Boboso.

The Buddhist sage says, “Only don’t know.” I am on the path.

Wants (upon a time)

I want this to be a list that will bring smiles to a million faces.

Where to begin.

Anywhere—everything I look at wears a want

like a sticker on a peach.

So I’ll start anywhere

before I board the train of self-admiration

which runs frequently.

My refrigerator, here at hand.

I want an energy efficient refrigerator.

I want a refrigerator that isn’t intrusive and doesn’t run so much.

I wish the seal on the freezer compartment would seal.

I want this refrigerator to be replaced by a small quiet refrigerator

without me lifting a finger, without me picturing this refrigerator

in a dump with a thousand other unsatisfactory refrigerators.

Another thing I don’t want to think about

is what’s inside the refrigerator,

the cottage cheese about to explode.

Consider the body. My personal gift.

Listing the wants could go on for days.

More hair. No jock itch, no toe fungus.

The ear I had Tuesday, before surgery.

I want the wound to heal without getting infected.

I want the swelling to go down.

I want it not to hurt. It doesn’t. I want sympathy.

I don’t want another melanoma.

I want youthful skin.

I hope my disfigured ear won’t repel looks.

I wish I would still get cruised. More hair would help.

If I had a lot, I could grow it to cover my ear.

Fifty years ago I was a hippie with hair down to my shoulders.

Long beautiful hair, shining gleaming streaming flaxen waxen.

Do I want to be that green again? Well, sure.

I wish Richy were in the next room.

I want immersive love.

I want air to fill my lungs.

I want to be so naive as to believe I

can give myself that kind of love.

Where was I?

My refrigerator. It distracted me. I suppose I let it.

I want to master focus,

the ability to pay flawless attention.

Which, if I’m not mistaken, would quell desire.

My entitled mind cherishes its wants

but I wouldn’t want to give it up.

I’m hoping that learning to play the accordion

will help keep it keen. Boy

I wish I had a better ear, a passable sense of rhythm

a smidge of talent. Did I mention focus?

My favorite piece to play is La Martiniana

a canción of 100-proof melancholy.

Cuando yo muero, no lloras sobre mi tumba…

I wish I could play it for you

inoculated against self-consciousness.

I want to go on living.

I want everyone I love to go on living.

So far they haven’t.

Things I notice

At the corner garden the gate was draped with security-tape. Someone was replacing the steps leading to the front door. He introduced himself. Cal. He had the kind of mien that certain farmers have, of being square with the world. He asked whether the parking patrol comes around. His big Ram pickup was parked nearby. I didn’t know. The operations of the parking concession are and will remain mysterious. What I noticed is that in our conversation my image of him was that he was older than me, though I guess he’s maybe sixty.

I am a fourteen-year old in a soon to be 74-year old body. Will it ever change? In the meantime, here are the options: demean the 14-year old for his arrested development, or love him for his inimitable charm.

One more thing to love on our street.

Sidewalk Juice

Viva carnaval!!!!!

Fascinators

Fascinators

David the ex-monk says the right choice will be made when the time is right.

It’s not even 8:30 a.m and I have mound, like a termite hill, of what-should-I-dos.

This is not a casual simile. It arose thanks to the insects that of late have been finding my monitor fascinating. I suspect they are termites hatched by warm weather.

If so, what took them so long to find this shack? Should I call the landlord? Would he have the shack fumigated? Yuck. With a legal pad I smush the less dodgy insects. Am I a bad Buddhist? There are more, always more flying around. I have many opportunities to transcend.

My right gum is slightly swollen. A slight infection in the bothersome tooth.

It’s happened before. My dentist will prescribe antibiotics over the phone. Do I want to take antibiotics? No. Should I anyway?

Should I have a second cup of coffee, as is my habit? Since I want to change my life, why do I refuse to change my habits?

Why should I change my life when I have it so good? I should change my attitude, not listen to the voices of dissatisfaction. But what if they’re telling me something I need to hear?

My accordion teacher is having a student recital. I need to let her know if I’ll participate. I should participate, it would be good practice, but I don’t really want to.

Is it because I am afraid to take risks? Of course it is. But sometimes I do. I participated in the Christmas recital and here’s a shock, it was fun and I did fine. I played Joy to the World and This Little Light of Mine. Fascinating choices for a depressive. If I decide to participate, I will have to choose two pieces and practice them until my fingers divorce my mind. Get as confident as possible. La Martiniana could be one. The words, When I am dead, don’t shed your tears at my tomb (my translation) are ideal for a tragic romantic (Enneagram 4). I’m already half-decent playing it, but Jennifer will ask me to sing the words. In Spanish. Adding two more avenues to crash in. The recital is in ten days.

Last week Mimi gave me cash for plants I bought for her. Eleven twenties. I counted them, a bit ashamed to do so. Shouldn’t there have been twelve, since the bill was $235 plus change. Did I miscount? I put them in my wallet, and spent some. No chance of a recount. Should I call her ask for the remainder? Am I being a pest? Fretting over $15? When you grow up in a large family with a small income, do you ever stop letting pennies pinch you?

I volunteered at the celebrated Venetian Room for a cabaret performance. One of the attendees had a flowery number on the starboard side of her head, a felt rosette with three green feathers. “It’s a fascinator,” Karr whispered. I said, “Maybe she has a hole in her head,” and immediately regretted saying it. Maybe she does have a hole in her head. It happens. Should I keep my mouth shut simply because dumb things come out of it?

Je t’aime, XqbAUh03

Je suis nous. XqbAUh03 et moi. That is the name of my/our Duolingo avatar, christened when I was a cis-singular and made the decision to refresh my never-all-that-fluent French. We are on Lesson dix-huit. We are in competition, also a surprise, with faceless others on the site, most of whom have earthly names like Beatrice and Farley, for some unspecified glory. We are currently in 17^th place which, as much as Duolingo slavers on positive feedback, (“10 in a row!” “You’re crushing it!”) is not overwhelmingly impressive. We don’t know which one of us is holding us back but we promettons faire l’effort to buckle down and climb the ladder.

Floaters

I was about to get up from behind my desk to help the old man manage the stubborn front door when a young man, perhaps his grandson, a head taller, thrust an arm against the frame and held it open so the old man could wrestle his walker over the threshold. Dangling from the walker were three white plastic shopping bags. He, like almost everyone but sharks smelling blood, came to my store to sell, not buy. He pushed the walker fitfully across the uneven linoleum. The young man hovered alongside, ready to help. I could see the resemblance, protruding jawlines and large noses, as if modeled on Easter Island statues. The old man’s longish, flyaway white hair was thin but silken, testament to a former, not so distant, handsomeness.

He stood before me, leaning against the walker, working up his spiel. After a vigorous clearing of his throat, he asked. “Are you interested in looking at some collectible pens?”

I was always interested in looking. Was I interested in purchasing a collection of collectible pens? No. Like him, I was at a stage when dispersal was the order of the day. Twenty years ago there were five thriving antique stores this end of Broadway. Mine is the last standing, leaking cash the last five years, at a rate accelerating alarmingly. I know I’m expected to move online but I consider starving a better option. Inertia spreads like mold. I have just enough incentive to postpone and procrastinate. I own the building, but there are back taxes. The crux of the matter is this: what in holy God’s name am I going to do with all this stuff, the bounty and the booty, the rewards of heroic quests, the grails, the spoils of wars of obsession. Look around you, young man. In the next room you will find a playbill from Ford’s theater, featuring John Wilkes Booth. A lariat from Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. A genuine Tiffany lamp. The young man is staring at his phone.

“Let me take a look at them,” I said, a formality, since the old man had already placed three cigar boxes on my desk. “These are the fancy ones,” he said opening the first box. The pens in that box, maybe twenty or thirty, were mainly the bulky, finely-made instruments of the 1920’s and 1930’s that signified a certain level of class or aspiration, green, brown, black and tortoiseshell. “These are very valuable,” the old man said, trying to convince either or both of us. And he was partially right, they were worth something, at least two were, a Parker, and a Montblanc, maybe a hundred bucks each. If putative buyer had a customer for said pen who would pay a hundred bucks. “What about the other boxes?”

He picked up the middle box. “These are the novelties.” He gave me a preview, opening the lid for brief look which featured a Smurf pen, a Pinocchio with a broken nose and a kazoo pen. Kitsch. But the cigar box. It had to be a Shakespeare Colorado. I glimpsed the bard’s face on the cover’s underside. The box appeared to be in pristine condition. Amazing condition.

Observing my disinterest in the novelties, he turned to the third box. “These are the special ones, the floaters.” The box itself was a disappointment, a common Dutch Masters product. The old man extracted a scuffed plastic pen, red below, ivory above. In the upper section there was a tiny, oblong porthole with view of a minuscule babe in a bikini floating back and forth relative to the tilt of the pen, her hands behind her head, her boobs upthrust. The old man winked. “If you run her back and forth a few times she gets naked.”

The young man, who was only half paying attention to his phone, blushed. The world is a fine place if youth are still embarrassed by their elders. I was enjoying pawing through the floaters, seeing what was encased in those miniature worlds. A battleship. A monkey on a raft. The Statue of Liberty, sideways. Inside one pen there was just a froth like spit, its captive having escaped.

“They come as a set. I’m not selling them individual. What will you give me for them?”

I gave him a price. He just about spat. “The floaters by themselves are worth twice that.”

I picked up the box of novelties, as if my interest in them had grown. The box was in such immaculate condition I wondered if it was a knock-off.

I doubled my offer; he doubled his scorn. He was about to pack it in, when reality entered the scene, ushered in by the good sense of the young man. “Take it Grandpa, it sounds like a fair price.”

You could see him struggling, unwilling to give up the illusion of the pot of gold at rainbow’s end, again like yours truly. “I’m keeping this one,” he said pocketing the floating babe, but before he did, he showed it to me and damn, the babe was naked.

The cigar box is the real thing, worth way more than I thought. Does that mean I’ve sold it? No, it’s in a locked case in back. Somebody’s going to come in that door and do a jig of discovery. But not today. This morning I sold some newspapers from the 1930’s Dust Bowl days. Nobody has come in all afternoon. Idle, I pull out the box of floaters and watch what slides into view.