Word Rescue | Ergo: You’ve Already Had Your Free Refill

Washington's Coffee
  1. When asked what your novel is about, you snap “Death!” Then you turn away. You listen. What was that? Was that a dog barking, or was it laughter?
  2. Friends come in but you don’t say hello. You hold the newspaper higher hoping they won’t see you. You hope they leave. When they sit nearby, you close your eyes and pretend to sleep, the newspaper over your face. You’re just pretending to sleep. You’re not actually sleeping. And when you stop, things have changed. You didn’t know this is where you were. What happened to your newspaper?
  3. You ask to borrow the phone. You call a friend and ask when they planned on getting here. They say, “what?” You say, “I thought we were meeting this morning.” They say, “No, that’s next week.” You say, “My bad.” You knew this already, but you wanted to make sure your friend knew.
  4. You’ve read all the magazines except House Beautiful. You’ve begun to read House Beautiful. You set House Beautiful aside. If you read House Beautiful, you will have no more excuses.
  5. The music seems like the most wonderful thing you’ve ever heard. You ask the Hershey-haired boy behind the counter about the music. “What music is this?” He looks at you quizzically. “Everyone knows what music this is,” he says with a sneer. “I don’t,” you say. “Okay,” he says. “It’s Michael Bolton,” he says. You say to yourself, “Michael Bolton.” You repeat the name. “Michael Bolton. Michael Bolton. Michael Bolton is an angel.”
  6. Later, when you approach the counter, the Hershey-haired boy behind the counter begins to scowl, like a Doberman towards a stranger--or it looks like a scowl, like a Doberman towards a stranger, but you could be wrong. Maybe it’s not a scowl. Maybe he has to sneeze and he’s getting ready to do that. Sneeze. You ask for a refill. He refills your cup. There is that anxious moment when you wonder if he’s going to charge you. There is that anxious moment when you don’t know if you should say, “how much is that,” or just pretend that you think it’s free, walk back to your seat, have a seat, begin to sip. You do the thing in between. You wait for him to say, “here you go,” and see if he moves toward the cash register. When he does not immediately move toward the cash register, you take your opportunity. You turn. You say “thanks” as you turn. You walk back to your seat and you sit. You sip. You watch him. Someone has come in and ordered a Comet. Whatever that is. Your refill is still too hot to drink.
  7. You secretly wish the girl in the halter-top was working this morning. You don’t make much of a secret of this. After the Comet customer leaves with a Comet and a pink cookie, you ask the Hershey-haired boy behind the counter what has happened to the regular girl. You leave your cup at the table, still too hot, not wanting to risk reminding him that he filled it at no charge. “Cindy,” you say. “You know. Eyes. Mouth. Um. You know.” He tells you he doesn’t know a Cindy. This isn’t his regular shop, or his regular time. Still the scowl, though you haven’t asked for another refill. Just Cindy. You want to hear more about Cindy but nobody here can tell you, or even sympathize with you. Not at this store, at this time. The Comet customer has left already. You will have to remember to tell Cindy that you missed her when she was gone. That you didn’t appreciate the Hershey-haired boy with the scowl like a Doberman. But you will not really have to remember to tell her. She will see it all over you. You’ll wear it like a canary bow tie.
  8. You dig in your pockets to see if you have enough for a pastry. You don’t have enough for a pastry, but you go and stand near the pastry window just in case one of the pastries is cheaper than you thought. They are all more than you thought. The Hershey-haired boy does not offer you a discount.
  9. You would ask one of the other patrons about Cindy, but the only people here are all gathered around a large table in back, talking loudly about Jesus. About what a great fella Jesus was. Just look at all these terrific things about Jesus, the people say. The people all seem to speak as if their words are printed in red ink. You do not think they will know anything worth knowing about Cindy.
  10. You change your lucky number from seven to two. You spend some time looking for the number two on the front page of the newspaper. You find the number two twice. This must be a sign of some kind. The story in which the number two appears is about a wildfire. Perhaps you will become a firefighter. Perhaps you will become an arsonist. You consider your options. You fold the newspaper in half and set it aside, near enough to you so that people might think it is yours. They will think twice before taking it away.
  11. You’ve come to admire the Hershey-haired boy’s scowl. If it is a Doberman’s scowl, you suddenly realize, this is okay, because you’ve always liked Doberman Pinschers. They are friendly enough if you don’t teach them to kill or maim or improperly make use of their teeth and superior sense of meat. There is no hope in the Hershey-haired boy’s scowl. It doesn’t make you think of glory. It doesn’t make you think of happiness. It doesn’t make you think of a different life for yourself. You ask the Doberman where and when he usually works. He tells you. And maybe you’ll consider moving to this shop in the mornings. But you know that if you do, eventually you’ll be back here, that the absence of Cindy is even more appealing than Cindy herself, that if you go to another store you will spend your time thinking of Cindy, of halter-top, of eyes and mouth, of midriff and of lotion, how you would like to repair her damaged elbows with aloe and bag balm. You will buy her elbow pads for the long lonely days. You will buy yourself a punch card. You will definitely be back here. And now your coffee is cold. So you’re wondering if it would be possible to get a “warm up”—not a full refill, just a warm up. Because that’s just exactly what you need.

Originally published in Sweet Fancy Moses

I must confess that while editing this I was also listening to The Poopsmith Song and The Devil Went Down To Georgia. I do not know if this influenced my edits or not, but I have a feeling it must have done something, yes? Well. Okay then.

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Acknowledgments

Name That Ad

I’d like to thank the Academy, the academics, the pandemics, the id, the ego, the superego, Superman, his friend Clark, and three guys who sit outside Freddy’s on Sunday mornings, all of them named Pete.

For the time and space and love: my wife, my guide, my chair, the light near my chair, the full spectrum light near my chair without which I’d be under the table weeping like a crossdresser trapped in the elevator at Nordstrom (that is, at least, Pete, the crossdresser, who did this last fall, trapped with an old woman and her pomeranian who reminded him of his mother--the woman, not the dog). Also the spellchecker, the great vacuum of space, and ramen noodles.

For advice and encouragement: Ann Landers, Emily Post, Dan Savage, Marcus Welby.

For being there (rather than being here, that is): Donald Trump, Merv Griffin, Kathy Griffin, Rosie O’Donell, Dick Clark, Steven Segal, and many other famous people I don’t think about as often as I think about these people (no, I’m not a stalker--not really even a follower, so please don’t think that).

For expert testimony: Dr. Phil, Dr. Ruth, Doc Severencsen, Ed McMahon, Mr. Ed, Mr. Rogers, Mister Mister, Devo, The Cars, Blondie, Billy Idol, Billy Joel, and Billy Bob Thorton.

For warming my feet: the dog, whose name I won’t reveal for the sake of her privacy, though she has no qualms about nosing strangers in the crotch to see what’s what. It just seems unsavory to give you the key to her identity. She’s a good dog, really.

And you, of course. You. Thank you for everything. For the rest. For the top of the mountain. For the icing on the cake. For the hair on my head. For the extra foam on my cappucino. For the epi of my dermis. For everything, okay? That’s what I mean by everything. Everything. Thanks.

Light of my life, fire of my loins, lady of my lake, verb of my noun, time of my life, piece of my mind, you know who you are, don’t you? Well? No. Not Pete. Not any of the Petes. I have a thing about the name Pete, that’s all. No no. It’s you. Over there. In the kitchen. By the toaster oven. It smells like something’s burning.

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Word Rescue | Ergo: God Exists | Sweet Fancy Moses

Latah Mosaic

1. Remember that song, like twenty years ago, that makes the claim that you never see fish heads drinking cappucino in Italian restaurants? You know the one. “Fish Heads.” You can almost hum the tune, can’t you? “Fish heads, fish heads, roly poly fish heads, fish heads, fish heads, eat them up yum.” In a Godless world, that song is never written, is never sung, much less ever recorded or distributed or received to international acclaim. I’m thinking this year, instead of singing “God Bless America” during the seventh inning stretch, we sing “Fish Heads” instead. It’s basically the same sentiment, don’t you think?

2. Same goes, of course, for “You Gotta Fight for Your Right to Party” by the Beastie Boys. Those boys are the bomb.

3. Coffee. (I was just going to write “coffee” and not say anything further, but then I thought, well, maybe someone would misunderstand what I meant by coffee. By coffee I mean the seed of the coffee bean which is dried and roasted and ground and placed in a coffee making device that allows the ground coffee to steep in the hot water just long enough to completely transform the hot water into a kind of brown muddy bitter substance to drink. That’s what I mean. Any other meaning is unintentional.)

4. I spoke with the Holy Father just the other morning, asking if he existed (for the purposes of detailing his existence in this proof of his existence), and to my surprise he replied first by saying that it wasn’t polite to prove the existence of God, then objecting to my use of the masculine personal pronoun “he.” I then replied to his reply (or I did, in fact, rejoinder): “In English, we hardly have a better option.” I asked him for suggetions, if he had any, because I’ve long been wanting another pronoun, something not so ridiculous as s/he or he/she or the one I tried to use in my English papers back in college (much to the chagrin of my professors): sme (pronounced with a long “e,” as in “me” or “she” or “flea). Sme said that the English language was a human construction and had to be repaired by humans. I told smim that smis answer was a copout and sme knew it and I expected more from a God. Sme didn’t reply until morning, when instead of offering a solution to our poor pronoun selection, sme burned my toast.

5. Martinis. No human being alone could ever be so imaginitive as to find a single use for the otherwise hideous juniper bush.

6. Milli Vanilli has very nearly disappeared from the popular consiousness. This is obviously a godly thing and we thank God. Really, I mean it, thank you.

7. Butter. I’ve had a lot of butter in my life and I’ll tell you what, I’m not dead yet, and the only reason I can think of that my arteries have not completely gone irreversably solid is that God has prevented it from happening. Again I’m going to have to say thank you. I’m glad to be alive. Though I believe in God and all that, I’m not sure yet about the heaven part of death and all the good things we get to do up there (or wherever it is), so for right now thanks for letting me be alive, okay?

8. Tape.

9. How much proof do you need? I mean, come on? Isn’t this enough for you?

10. As Descartes said, God contains all perfections, and existence is a perfection, therefore God contains the perfection of existence.

11. Like, duh. Ergo: God exists.

Originally published in Sweet Fancy Moses.

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Scott Bateman's Mom Had a Stroke

Thanks to Pia for the linkage love.

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How to Survive an Encounter with George W. Bush


It occurs to me, after seeing several how-to articles on the internet, that it might be valuable to know How to Survive an Encounter with President George W. Bush. I think I should do some research and post that here, as a public service. Yes?

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