everyone has their dangerous mood. that teetering-on-the-edge-of-sanity feeling where the only reason you haven’t lashed out is because no one’s given you a good target. it makes you smile too hard when a smile is demanded, bely the politeness of an answer because it’s delivered through gritted teeth.
i’m having one of those days. i didn’t sleep well enough last night. i’d wake up freezing, turn off the air conditioning, only to wake up drenched in sweat an hour later. i’d wake up desperate to talk to someone but too tired to reach out and find the phone. so now i’m feeling every which way but good. i’m cranky and moody and edgy and weepy. i’m just waiting for an excuse to snap. it’s a dangerous mood.
so i figure i’m prime testing ground for the age-old theory that chocolate cures all woes. the almost-comic storm cloud positioned directly over my head is baseless – i have no real crisis that needs attending. if chocolate is ready for the challenge, i’m ready for this irrational solution to tame my equally irrational snarls and sniffles.
forget paxil … chocolate, what can you do for me today?
i reserve a special kind of hatred for the branch of technology which they call “customer service”. i think they don’t understand the meanings of the words “customer”, that is, “person who pays their salaries”, or the word “service”, that is, “to be remotely helpful at all”. in fact, i think you could easily say that the words “customer service” when applied to automated telephone replies is not only a bizarre twist on Opposite Day, it’s also insulting.
it wasn’t so bad, years ago, when you just had to press numbers. that’s not the problem. i understand the heavy call volume and the market place demands. my real problem is the Fake People. you know who i’m talking about. anybody here use Sprint PCS? are you familiar with… CLARE? here’s a sample phone conversation i once had with clare, right before i quit my long-time Sprint loyalty due completely to her:
clare: “i’m sorry, i didn’t understand your last question! could you try to say it again?”
me: “my antenna fell off. i need help.”
clare: “perhaps you’re not speaking directly into the mouthpiece. could you speak clearer?”
me: “antenna. broken. HELP.”
clare: “perhaps you want to try and rephrase your question?”
me: “FUCK YOU, YOU STINKING MISERABLE FUCKNUT.”
clare: “i’m sorry, i don’t understand you. goodbye!”
this is the point where i slammed the phone repeatedly against the dashboard as i was driving. in the time it took clare’s saccharine voice took to imply that i’m a hopeless unintelligible moron, a customer service rep could have been on the phone. or i could have listened to all of burt baccarach’s albums on tinny wait-music. but i wouldn’t have canceled my contract. because i’ve never wanted so badly to throttle a virtual human being before in my life. they should create a clare doll in the Sprint stores, so that we can go in there and beat the simpering shitface to a stuffy pulp.
i understand it’s more cost-effective and it’s a nifty new way to test out voice-recognition stuff. but humans have this funny thing where they LIKE to talk to other humans. i mean, think of the chaos that would ensue if we were ALL just reduced to pleasantly sycophantic and empty response systems.
witness dick and jane, for instance, discussing the cooling-down of their sex life.
jane: “honey, we need to talk.”
dick: “what’s up?”
jane: “i want to spice up our sex life.”
dick: “erm….” shifts about nervously, glances at door.
jane: “i know this is weird for you, but how about we go to the bedroom right now and i can show you a couple things?”
dick: “OKAY.”
dick and jane proceed to GET IT ON.
see? jane had a problem, she offered sex as a prize for the task of learning new ways to satisfy her, and dick was more than pleased to help. but if dick were replaced with the friendly and cost-effective husband-simulator 3000?
jane: “honey, we really need to talk.”
dick: “i’m here to help you! please voice your concerns slowly and in simple language.”
jane: “it’s just that – this is really difficult for me..”
dick: “can you verbalize your problem in the form of a question? that would really help!”
jane: “i’m worried about our sex life.”
dick: “i’m sorry, that wasn’t a question!”
jane: “um, i’m worried about our sex life?”
dick: “i see you’ve got a concern! please pick the response you’d most like me to act out: change the subject rapidly. tell you i’m actually gay. stab the dog as a diversion. OR! run out the door and never return!”
jane: “NONE, you cowardly limp-dicked fleabag?”
dick: “i’m sorry, then i don’t understand the problem!”
jane: “you’re TERRIBLE IN BED!”
dick: “could you please rephrase that in a simpler manner?”
jane: “you couldn’t find my g-spot with an ONSTAR NAVIGATION SYSTEM. you GRUNT like a LUMBERJACK! two minutes is NOT ACTUALLY NORMAL. and that WEIRD BUMP? IT’S -”
dick: “we’re sorry we couldn’t help you. goodbye!”
jane proceeds to fruitlessly beating a frying pan over the silent head of the turned-off husband.
i think i can safely that given the pitfalls of screaming and throwing things at a man-simulator that has simply disconnected, i’ll take the messy, complicated, fraught-with-misunderstanding version of human communication any day. in customer service as in life. take THAT, clare.
i love my friend rachel (known to me as raychul) because we don’t talk for months and then i get this email, reprinted in its entirety:
“I’m pretty sure if a person was an animagus of squishy panda, they’d be totally useless against Lord Voldemort. I commented on this to matt (her husband). He pretty much thinks I’m insane.”
but i understand completely, raychul.
you’d think, if you were looking at wedding dresses online during work hours free time, there’d be a lot of ooohing and aahhhing.
that might be true if you didn’t have friends like biscuit and shiv. instead of actually looking with any seriousness for wedding paraphanalia, we get distracted by our immense capacity for wit. this leads to the following taglines:
“They had to put one of those COLLARS around my HEAD so I don’t GNAW MY WAY OUT of this monstrosity. Alert the Humane Society, Please.”
“My dress was FINE until a million pigeons pooped on me.”
“My wedding gown was KIDNAPPED BY ANOTHER ROGUE WEDDING GOWN.”
“My veil is actually a cleverly disguised ONE WAY MIRROR. Help me, I’ve been wandering around blind for DAYS.” to which we reply, this is the punishment you pay for buying a dress that’s POLYESTER and ACETATE.
“I’m really excited about something. Probably the fact that the THING around my neck hasn’t SPRUNG TO LIFE to KILL me and my entire family. YET.”
“I will cut off my own face if I ever see this again.” – Biscuit
“Look! My dress is eco-friendly! It’s made entirely of QUILTED PAPER TOWELS!”
“Oh for the love of god help me my head is being eaten by a tulle
monster heelllp arrghllblargleMMPPPHHH.” and imagine, the guests just STOOD BY AND WATCHED as the bride’s head was eaten CLEAN OFF.
well, we expect wedding dresses to be ugly, full of tulle and crystals, and complicated, right? but … wedding rings too? and from my own personal mecca of style, TIFFANY? oh, we found a way, mes ami. we found a way. for instance?
this ring says, “I KNOW, shut UP, my goldsmith was DRUNK.”
and for eleven grand? New York called. It wants the BIG SPARKLY BALL BACK.
and hey, sometimes it’s not your fault. this monstrosity STARTED OUT as a normal gold band. then it went wandering through the forest and got ATTACKED by a BRAMBLE DEMON. Now it’s been tragically suffocated in DIAMONDS and TWIGS.
the message here, folks?
no wedding accoutrement is safe from our scorn. even though some of the above specimens aren’t the worst of the worst, they still invite our mockery with their pagaentry.
seriously people, i may never find a real dress – i’ll have to get married in jeans. but i’ll just pin pictures to the walls of the AWFUL NIGHTMARES i chose NOT to wear and everyone will understand.
i’d just like to take this moment to congratulate the google empire. i know that people who either have or want gmail accounts say it’s because of all the free space.
bullshit. it’s because you have to get invited*.
ah, the internet … extending high school clique behavior far past its shelf life.
*and before you say anything, yes, i’ve got one, so no, this isn’t sour grapes. i got one because of blogger. i am under no delusion that i am cooler now.
“i’d like to see your name in lights,” said stuart.
“i don’t know about lights, on paper would be fine though,” i answered.
two minutes later he sent me a screen shot of my name, in uppercase enormous letters, on a word document. that’s love, i thought.
i’ve been playing Career of the Week for a while now. dog walker! private tutor! maker of cupcakes! get a masters degree in literature and teach! what am i even qualified for, other than talking about books, writing blogs, and being charming? and trying to find ways to turn “charming” into a career is harder than you’d think, unless the career in question is Professional Socialite.
but what i really want to do is – well, you know. i do it here with apparent ease, it’s only when i open up a blank document on my computer and try to write something truly brilliant and eye-opening that i fail utterly.
it’s like my big problem with dave eggers and jonathan franzen and d.f. wallace. i’ve always said that the sheer act of attempting to create a New Generation of Literature means you’ll fail. these things need to be borne from inspiration and fortuity. so maybe a great book is the same way. maybe the sheer act of hoping you’ll one day write a great book is the death knell for accomplishing it. maybe i should aim to write a completely mediocre book. maybe i should write it even if i know it’ll never get published.
because hey, now i’ve already seen my name on paper, right?
this is percival. he’s known to his friends as percy. he’s my duck.
well, let me explain. a certain man who shall be known only as biscuit gave him to me.
wait, that didn’t help. okay. back in the hazy stupified first few days of love before anything had been said about Who Would Move Where, biscuit gave me percy. he said, “ooh! ooh! you can move to the isle of wight? and live in a shambly little cottage? and you can have ducks?”
i said, “i don’t think i’m moving to the isle of wight, biscuit. stuart doesn’t even live on the isle of wight.”
he didn’t care. he said, “yes, yes! and you can stomp around your little yard in oversized wellies and a cute hat! you can garden! and the neighbors will cluck their tongues at you! because you’re so fish-out-of-water!”
i started to see what he meant. “yeah,” i said, “i’d love a pair of oversized wellies! ducks, you said?”
“yes!” he promised, “ducks! and you’ll have one favourite duck. he’ll be, like, your top duck. his name will be -”
“- percy!” and hence, percy was born in yet another krissa/biscuit flight of fancy. percy would follow me around the yard, he said, quacking contentedly while i fed the ducks and chickens.
“where would they live?” i asked.
“in a… a… what DO ducks live in?”
“a.. hut?”
“yes! a DUCK HUT!”
we cottoned to percy immediately. even though i knew i wasn’t moving to the isle of wight, even after stuart held my hand and said, without prompting, how much he wanted to move to new york, i thought about percy. when days got rough and the pavement of this dirty city seemed to stretch on for miles, i thought about percy and the duck hut and the wellies.
then, we met percy. only, there’s more to percy than meets the eye…
while i wouldn’t say being separated from stuart classifies as “fun”, time sure has been flying in a certain sense. at the beginning of this week, i checked the INS case status site to see how our little packet of love was surviving in the big cold world of bureaucracy. it’d been up there about ten days. we’d been told that the center would process it in about thirty to fifty. imagine my surprise at the words:
your petition was approved on june 2, 2004. a letter was mailed confirming this approval. the petition has been forwarded to the national visa center for processing.
i had to read it four times. i had to drag my roommate to the computer to read it. finally, i had to wake stuart up at four in the morning to tell him. i’m not sure he believed me at first. after a mere ten days with the INS, we were given the green light and our petition is heading to england for the interview, with a pitstop at the NVC.
for people not reaching expert immigration levels like stuart and i, this means everything just got a month faster. it means his interview might take place as soon as early august. it means a lot of things. it’ll mean a lot of planning, a lot of discussions. but most of all, it means we’ll be standing at JFK, reunited for good, a lot sooner.
so it doesn’t matter how complicated things are until then. that’s the point, isn’t it?
us. together. sooner.
i take back every expletive i ever hurled at the INS for its plodding bureaucracy, seemingly endless forms, or esoteric procedures. if the INS were a person, i’d run up, kiss it, and name an ice-cream flavor after it. of course, if the INS was a person, that person would probably Tom Ridge, so i think i’ll steer clear of the kiss part.
anyway, my point is, i’d totally buy the INS a coke. or even give it a parade. with elephants. but tom ridge has to stay home we’re really happy.
but wait…
last week i broke up with a friend. a friend i communed with every day, that started my mornings and finished my evenings and punctuated my lunch breaks. a friend that was the perfect companion to my coffee, to my cosmos, to my long walks, to my bedtime reads.
i gave up my cigarettes.
at the time i felt strong and brave. i saw a future with better-smelling clothes, a healthy happy body, and a fatter wallet.
now i feel lost. it’s been an emotional week, and not just because of the cigarettes. things going on behind the surface make me unwittingly reach for a cigarette. and they’re not there anymore. and the worst thing is, i want them to be.
it’s like a breakup, really. i suppose after a while, i’ll stop associating cigarettes with everything. i’ll stop looking with longing at people who’re still under the spell. i’ll stop having to force myself to walk past someone who i could reasonably bum a smoke from. i’ll stop resenting my morning coffee for suddenly being mateless.
but i must mourn this breakup a little, for-the-best though it may be. cigarettes, i had you when things were going really good. when something satisfying was accomplished, you helped me celebrate. just the very act of sitting on my couch and lighting the first draw from a fresh pack – it felt wonderful. and cigarettes, most of all, you helped me when things were bad. it’s impossible to sob maniacally and smoke. so lighting up helped at the tail-end of that chest-heaving sob.
you helped calm me when i was angry, you helped pass the time when i was bored. you helped with stifling afternoons at work. you helped, cigarettes. and now it’s time to go.
there are better things in life to love. i’m finding that out every day. but cigarettes, you will always have a part of my black, black heart.
