Bumcheeks Revisited: Chapter One

Oh, we've all done it, so don't pretend like you haven't.
You're single, or maybe you're not but things are going absolutely rotten with "him" (or "her"), so your thoughts begin to drift back... back to when you were dating that other person, and how you recall those days being filled with sunshine, goofy jokes and steamy nights in dark bars and beds.

You clearly remember how much fun you had, and how you'd walk along the boardwalk as mermaids threw bits of sunken treasure at you from the water, and you both would tuck the gold and jewels into your pockets before boarding the dirigible and floating off to your mountaintop castle, where hoards of leather-clad dwarfs served you lovely chocolatey things and let you win at all the video games.
It's all so clear in hindsight.

"Why did I let that go?" you think, as you gaze off into the middle distance (or stare malevolently at the back of the person responsible for your every misery, or at least intolerable banality).
You inevitably wonder what that person is doing now. Is he/she happy? Does that person still think of you, or (in some cases) even remember you?

Maybe, you think, your past love occasionally sits on a moonlit stone wall and gazes at the stars, wondering where you are. Maybe there's a song that brings you to mind, or maybe it's that brand of beer you liked or the smell of clove cigarettes... maybe you're on someone's mind and, goldernit (you think) you can't let that pass you by! You can go back! It's not too late... go find your lost love and dive forever into your shared life of magical ponies!

Yeah.
I'm here to tell you, you're a fucking idiot.

I'm sorry to be the one to break it to you, you not knowing me from a hole in the wall and all, but you are.
Now, pay attention. What you have forgotten is that he sucks on each. and. every. finger. after a meal of something he's eaten with his hands (even though he wasn't meant to in the first place). You've conveniently wiped from your memory the fact that he uses the word, "piss" way too liberally, can't sit still for more than a minute, and insists on singing along to the radio incessantly.
This isn't news. You know this. Yet, many of us still seem to have a persistent curiosity when it comes to people we left in our rear-view mirror 10, 15, 20, even 25 years ago.

That's okay. Really, it is.
It's okay because most of us wouldn't dream of doing something as dumb as actually going and finding out What Happened To So-And-So, but I AM. Well, not really that dumb, but definitely that curious, and below is the tale of what transpired when I reconnected with one dude from My Past Life in the 80's.

I heard just yesterday that my divorce is final, and my last ties to the man I was with for 9 years (12 if you count the 3 years between our separation and actual divorce) have been severed permanently. My feelings about this are mixed and unexpected; I'm not sad in the least, except insofar as I'm sad about the 8 years or so of romantic life on which I lost out. I'm actually happy that he seems to have found someone he doesn't hate, and it's nice that at least one of us gets to win, even if she is sort of a moose that learned to walk upright. I also feel kind of like a dinghy that's been cut loose, and there's the vague notion that someone ought to start rowing.
Since, unlike my ex, I have not yet found another suitable partner, I have plenty of time for dumb-ass projects, and enough of a penchant for thumbing my nose at reality that I'm of a mind to play around with ideas from which most normal people would shy away.

As such, I've decided it might be an interesting writing project to track down a few of my past interests/exes/friends (male and female) and actually have a look at what they've gotten themselves up to. I'm that weirdo who suddenly turns up out of nowhere.

What could possibly go wrong?

One reason I think this might be entertaining is that I did exactly this, just for the hell of it, with one person a few years ago, and it was an eye-opener:

My second boyfriend ever was not named "Joe," but that's what I'm calling him here, because I think at the very least he deserves that level of anonymity.

I met Joe in the spring of my freshman year in college. I was on the periphery of the "Dead Head" community, getting very much into the music and fashion but not really inspired by the more adventurous drugs. Oh, sure, I got stoned regularly, but that and beer was about it. Joe was introduced to me by a female friend, and I fell instantly for those huge blue eyes, tousled brown hair and soft voice. We spent more and more time together, and my crush on him drove me nuts, but I was far too shy to admit it.
I lived in an apartment with 3 other girls, and we had a kitchen and bathroom with a bedroom on either side. Since Joe and I were both night owls, we spent practically every night in that kitchen, on the couch in the corner, talking as quietly as possible about God knows what until dawn. To be super quiet, we took to writing each other notes in (and this totally cracks me up now) a runic alphabet. It was our own little code. It was our thing.
Finally, one night, he wrote a short note, pondered it for a moment, then folded it and put it in his shirt pocket. We'd been doing the whole flirting thing for a while, so of course I was hoping like hell he'd written something interesting about me, but now he was adamant that I not see it.
Of course, that meant I wouldn't relent until I did.
After a great load of pseudo-wrestling, he finally relented and handed it over. Much to my shock, it actually was a declaration of romantic intent, and that was the beginning of our involvement.
It lasted through that spring and summer, and then ended when he found another hippie chick while away somewhere for a few weeks, but it was cool and we stayed friends for a few more years before finally drifting apart, at which point I was at art school in NYC and he was in boat-building school on the Atlantic coast.
I lived for many years with good memories of Joe. I remembered a good writer, how he smoked cloves and how I liked the smell, his obscure observations of the world, the weird music and comedy he introduced me to, his mellow, almost hypnotic voice and how relaxed and content I felt around him.

Years went by, and I occasionally tried to look him up, but he was always off the grid. Then, one day, the Almighty Internet rose like a social fungus, and eventually its tendrils reached into even the most out-of-the-way hidey holes of all but the most conscientious hippie.
A few years ago, my husband and I separated, and I left CA and returned to New England to re-group, as it were. After I'd been back for a few months, I started looking up old friends who I thought might be in the area, and the fact that Joe had been elusive over the years only reinforced my curiosity about him, so I set about digging up all the specifics I had on him, determined to re-connect with my old friend. (My primary motive was to find an "in" to a social circle in the area, since I'm bad at finding them on my own, and he seemed like the sort who would hang with an artsy fartsy crowd.)

Now, this is an important point: I was not ever interested in pursuing anything romantic this time around. That wasn't my motivation. Even though I had nothing but warm and fond memories of Joe, and while technically I have a "never say never" outlook, I had zero expectations or hopes in that department. Trust me... I'll tell you when I start talking about one of the ones in whom I did (or still do) have an interest.
This is not one of them.

I eventually found a "Joe" with the right last name and age, and I found an address, which turned out to be only maybe an hour from me.
Okay, so far so good.
I wrote the following (I've omitted names and other specific info here), and sent it off to someone I may or may not have once known:

"You now hold in your hands the 'Funny Thing That Happened to You Today;' A letter out of the blue from either an old friend from the distant past, or from a total stranger (either way, not an everyday thing). I hope it will turn out that it's the former.
    After roaming about, living in NYC, Paris and San Francisco, I have finally returned to Maine, and I’m looking for the (Joe) I met (in college) back in (19xx), with whom I lost touch shortly after I moved to NYC. I believe you were about to go to boat-building school at the time. If this sounds like it might be you, you may or may not remember (me), as I was known back then, though I’ve gone by (me) for the past 20 years or so.
    I doubt either of us are the same as we were back then, but I remember you as a unique and creative individual, and I’m persistently curious regarding what became of you. If you are the (Joe) I once knew, and you’d like to fill me in on the last couple of decades, you may contact me in either of the following ways:"

Maybe a week or so later, I got a call from him.
Oh, that same voice... the nostalgia flooded back.
We had a good talk. He had a 7-year-old daughter and recently separated from her mother (no, I swear, I still had no "thoughts." I'm a city girl, and he eats raw string beans. Not my thing). He was living on a homestead in central Maine, in a house he and his girlfriend had built from scratch, and was working at a place that installs solar panels. I had not even a shred of surprise.

I went up to visit him and catch up one summer day. Why the hell not? This was fun, and I felt like I was doing something I wasn't supposed to. This, however, was where the reality of doing this sort of thing started to solidify into something far less ethereal and poetic as mere recollection would have one believe.

The homestead turned out to be a little house on a huge parcel of grassy land, with raised gardens and a chicken coop beside it. The land itself is beautiful; slight hills with long grass and wildflowers, a patch of forest behind the house, and rows of maples dividing the fields into irregular sections. The house itself, however, was apparently still a work in progress. Upon exiting the car, my dog immediately began terrorizing the chickens, which I probably should have recognized as not a good start. I got her under control just as Joe came out of the house.
Well, I gotta give him this: He hadn't aged much. He was the same weight, same build, same hair, same glasses... remarkable, really. We went into the kitchen to hang out and talk while he cooked something for a group dinner somewhere.

Inside the house, there was running water, but the floors and walls were unfinished. Apparently, they'd plugged along with building the house for years, but then hit a "wall" (so to speak), and a bunch of stuff was either unfinished or outright missing. I wondered how the hell they coped in the winter, since I saw no heat source.
Of particular interest, however, was the bathroom.

One of the reasons I hate camping is the bathroom situation. I am incredibly unhappy when I have no access to clean, cool porcelain, lovely floor tiles, plush bath mats, a sink free of crusted toothpaste, and a good hard flush. This bathroom had none of those things. The shower, I will say, was fantastic. They'd built a huge shower-room, festooned with blue, green and violet mosaic tiles and raised up on a couple of steps, and one barely noticed that the water source was... a hose run through a hole in the wall from outside.
The commode, however, was a work of art in its wrongness.
Someone had constructed a wooden box about 2 feet square and the height of the average kitchen chair. Inside the box was a large white bucket, and when I gingerly peered in I could see (somewhat to my relief) that it contained several inches of wood chips. That same someone (presumably) had also obtained a large-ish wooden arm chair, removed its legs, cut a bum-sized hole in the seat, and affixed it atop the wooden box o'bucket. Next to this contraption was a block of wood chips, which were actually the same brand I used to use as my horse's bedding.
It was explained to me that the established procedure was that one was to sit upon this throne of sorts, relieve oneself of whatever abdominal cargo one wished, which would collect in said bucket, atop the existing wood chips. At the conclusion of one's purging, one was expected to add a small layer of wood chips to the bucket to cover the evidence. Apparently, once the bucket became full, it was hauled out to some sort of separate compost area (I don't remember the specifics, as at that point I was still on, "I'm to whiz in a what?"), dumped, and returned to the box.
Uhm, okay.

Everything else there was similarly makeshift or tree huggy, though I really didn't mind because some of it was kind of cool, plus I knew I'd be going home in a few hours to my flushing, heated-water world. It was a nice visit, and his daughter turned out to be a sweet, beautiful little fairy-like girl.
Even though the lifestyle was totally alien to me (I've been extremely generous in my description here), it was good to have reconnected, and we kept in touch for a while.

Now, the rest of our contacts weren't too interesting, but what I learned was this:
What you remember as a blue-eyed poet with a charmingly child-like world view and a mellow personality can, if you get close enough again, turn out to be a blue-eyed clueless aging hippie with zero ability to make the most fundamental life choices, scrape together enough motivation to actually do something -- anything, or spring for the $40 to bleach the fuck out of that one brown front tooth.
I have friends of widely varying personalities, so it normally wouldn't bother me that he, for instance, insists on driving a car while turned fully around to look at his daughter while talking to her. No shit, doing 45 up Route 1, he's at the wheel and getting through 2 or 3 complete sentences in a row while looking out the back window. He also chews with his mouth open.
I know. I'm so picky, right?
Schlompp schlompp schlompp...
It was fascinating. I couldn't have done it that dramatically if I tried.
Every misfortune he'd suffered had been at his own hands, like when he thought it would be awesome to go rock climbing alone, with no equipment, miles from traffic. Halfway up a 50-or-so-foot rock face, he lost his footing and fell, broke both feet upon landing, and a fraction of a second later his knees slammed up into his jaw, shattering it. He crawled 3 miles or so down the trail until he happened on some hikers who helped him out.
I can see a teenager doing that, but he was in his late 20's at the time, the dumbass.

There were a number of tiny quirks and aspects of his personality that scratched and dented my previously rosy memory of him, but again, with friends you take the good with the bad.
What tilts my narrative in a snarky, somewhat dismissive direction is what happened the last time I saw him. We had a nice dinner at my place, but before he left he got all serious on me. He explained very clearly how we had to "talk about this crush (I) had on him."
Uhwhaaat?
Wait, what?
He went on to explain how he knew I had a major thing for him, but that he just wasn't interested, in part because he'd met a woman he'd started seeing. "She's perfect, except that she's a raging alcoholic." My mind snagged on that for a few beats, as it boggled at how any parent of a 7-year-old could think it was a fine idea to deliberately bring a person with major substance abuse issues into their lives. I struggled with absorbing that information while some other part of my mind was thumbing desperately through the manual of How To Tell A Guy He Has Totally The Wrong Idea.

The sheer arrogance and patronizing tone is what makes me not at all hesitant to point out his shortcomings. All subtlety deserted me. I was left stranded with the choice to remain quiet, or bluntly explain how sure I was that I'd somehow muddle through not having the option to date a penniless, snaggle-toothed middle-aged dude who shits in a bucket.

I'd done nothing whatsoever to prod him into that conclusion, either. In fact, I thought I'd been pretty clear about wanting to go back to Brooklyn, my love of all sorts of things he wasn't into, plus there was my whole aversion to raw beans and desire to not have other people's urine hanging around in my house.
(No, I bloody well can't let the toilet thing go. You didn't see it, dammit!)

It turned out to be a mercifully short conversation, during which I mostly said things like, "Oh, well," without elaboration. I wished him luck, he left, we played phone tag a couple of times, but it's now been over a year since I've heard from him.

My "lesson" here, friends, is not that you should never seek out those who stick in your mind through the years, but that if you decide to do so, be prepared for your memories to be marred by reality. I absolutely don't regret finding Joe again, because I'd rather know than wonder what became of him. The price I paid was discovering that he's much weaker than I remember, his creativity has gone unused or wasted on bad ideas, and he's nowhere near as smart or intuitive as I remember. He's a faded, diluted and worn version of the Joe in my mind's eye, and that's a bit of a shame.

The experience has made me curious, though, about a few other choice individuals from my past, so I'll be writing about them in future entries, whether or not I find them, and whether I fuck the whole thing up enough that they somehow think I have a crush on them, too.

(Finally, just for fun, here's a photo from that day I saw him for the first time in years. Hey, I never said he wasn't good lookin'!):

Air Show Tragedy

I've always had this weird memory from when I was little... maybe 4 or 5 years old, of being at one of the air shows to which my dad used to take my mom and I. Over the years, I've sometimes wondered if it was a partially made-up memory, in which I conflated the time I got my first bee sting (at another air show), the pilots doing their stunt flying, and maybe a crash I saw on TV.

In it, we watched one of the planes perform some tricks, and my dad was telling me about how the pilot was a woman, which was somewhat of a novelty back then. He told me all about the names of whatever trick she was doing as she did it, and it was really cool. Eventually, I watched her plane fly low over the crowd, tilt almost vertically upwards and ascend briefly, and then spiral down into the end of the runway with a loud, heavy WHUMP. Almost instantly, the wreckage exploded into flames.
I looked up and around, and asked my parents, "Was that supposed to happen?" and "Where's the parachute?" Of course, there wasn't one. I had just watched someone die right in front of me. I remember processing this and knowing exactly what it meant, even at that age.

Anyway, I finally remembered to ask my dad about it today, and all I asked was, "Didn't we see someone crash at an air show once?" and he recounted this story EXACTLY as I'd remembered it, so apparently I'd retained all the details of that day with no embellishment at all. Weird... some part of me really did think I might have imagined some or all of it. What a peculiar thing to have witnessed.

I can't imagine why I won't get in a small plane, even for a bag full of emeralds.

Willing The Studio Into Existence

I swear, my brain is all over the fucking map lately.

Right now, I'm suffering in the feverish throes of desire for change.
For Making Things Happen.

Chief among my ideas in this vein is that I want to open a studio with at least two other friends; one is an illustrator and the other is a phenomenal stained glass artist. We've been toying with the idea for a bit, poking at it and batting it about, but so far none of us have had the balls so pick the damn thing up and run with it.

It's one of those things you tend to think about in terms of, "We'll do that when we're older," under the assumption that "older" means an established career, good credit and some disposable income. None of the three of us has ANY of that shit (despite being "older") and, in fact, only one of us even has a child (not I), but I'm starting to think that now may be the time to just do it.

Every once in a while, when faced with this sort of life-assessing string of thoughts, I like to imagine that I've just slipped through a temporal wormhole from 20 or so years in the future. I see myself lounging about somewhere in that time period, contemplating that time (i.e. now) when I had a certain set of choices, and wishing I'd taken a leap that I hadn't. Then, suddenly, fate shoves me unceremoniously into the vortex and I slam into existence here, now, in my den, on the cusp of saying "fuck it" regarding some life choice. I've been given a second chance, though without the benefit of the hindsight I'd have gained in that imagined future.

I'm a City Girl. I admit it, I can't change it... don't want to. I want a studio where I can play with colorful, sparkly shit, indoors, and in close proximity to the disgusting, filthy, unreliable, occasionally dangerous, but ultimately beloved subway (the train, not the sammitch purveyors). I want to hang some Christmas lights somewhere. I want to be influenced and inspired by my friends' work, and to cooperate with each other so that we all achieve enough success to live without having to pander to the banal people and work environments that conspire to suck the life out of us. Some brick would also be nice.
I want to teach others some of the weird shit I know how to do.
I was to meet more weird artists like myself.
I want, ever so rarely, to go to a club and dance like an idiot.
I want to do drastic things with velvet.
I want to have a studio open house and display things in a gallery.
I want my dog at work with me.
I want rhythm, I want music, and dammit I can ask for anything more.
(Okay, fine, I'd be happy with just the music... we all know I'll never have rhythm.)
I want to make things that light up and glow in the dark and, moreover, I want to make other people want them, too.


Given all of that, what the fuck am I DOING with my life?

Is it really so much of a fatuous idea to just MAKE it happen once the weather warms up?
I have this funny feeling that if we did, by banding together we'd go three times as fast as we would on our own, pooling time and resources for the benefit of all. It could be something extraordinary, or it could be a colossal failure, but I'm thinking it could turn out to be an amazing thing.

In a time when artists have been stomped into rigid molds for corporate jobs, terrified by the prospect that someone who's a little faster, a little younger or a little cheaper will take away our incomes, or already unemployed and/or unemployable due to our desire for a voice of our own, it would be a glorious thing for a few of us to team up and go all old-school on everyone's ass and make our own rules.
And, and this would the important bit, succeed in doing so.

I looked into studio rentals in Brooklyn and Manhattan and, to my astonishment, I found a few that would be both suitable and affordable! I have an office desk and chair, a spare desktop Mac, my own drawing table, rugs, shelves, a coffee table and even a full-sized fridge that could all go into our space. If I could secretly crash in the studio for a few months until I got an apartment (and shower at friends' places), it's actually do-able.
The more I ponder it, the more I fall in love with the idea.

I'm not dumb... I know it would probably be several miles of rough road. Possibly VERY rough road, and there are a lot of variables, so what it comes down to is: Is it worth it to try?
I'm SO leaning towards...
"yes."

Why I Eschew Internet Dating

While going through some old documents, I found this rant from years ago, when I briefly tried a couple of dating sites and walked away feeling like I'd just tried to seek companionship with a whole different species. I've been bitching a lot lately about dating in general, so I figured I'd share this, since it will, I fear, always be relevant:

Here’s a hint for all of you guys on dating websites: Don’t quote your mom in your profile, especially if you’re doing so to substantiate your claim of being a funny guy. Also, embrace the baldness or get a hat. Are you seriously thinking that black toupee perched atop your noggin, like a ferret on a pile of dryer lint, is fooling anyone? The lingering wisps of hair clinging to your temples are grey, as are your eyebrows and mustache, and your flaccid denial of this says more about who you are than 10 pages of profile prose ever could.
While we’re at it, about the mustache: 1976 called… it wants its face back. It screams, “I wish my Scion was a Camero,” “50% of my wardrobe is naugahide,” and/or, “I’m not gay. I’m NOT GAY!” Finally, when you list your favorite music as “Bluegrass,” it’s probably better to bypass the woman whose profile literally states, “Bluegrass makes me break out in hives.”

Are there no men out there with style? I’m not talking about manscaping metrosexuals. I mean a guy who you can look at and think, “Wow, you’re different, and it really works for you.” What rock to I have to peer under to find a non-smoker, non-drinker, non-drug user and non-caffeine drinker with no kids, who isn’t also going to preach holy hellfire at me, or try to trade me for 2 camels and a chicken?

Even if I narrow my criteria to the bare minimum of a) Men who are as smart/smarter than I am, b) Men who have some form of income, c) people without criminal records, and d) Guys with good oral and personal hygiene, the prospects are distressingly bleak. Add to that the frighteningly common “Open Mouth Chewers,” the “Finger Lickers,” the “Frenetically Tapping Along to the Song in My Heads,” the “Free Sneezers” and the “I am Biologically Linked to My Cell Phone/PDAs,” and you have a field of dating prospects that makes me wonder if I should even bother at this point.

I’m sorry I don’t hang out in bars anymore unless there's something going on other than drinking. I’m sorry I only go to the gym 4 times a week, and that I have no interest in base jumping. I’m sorry that I REALLY don’t want to be your kids’ new mommy.

I seek practicality without tightwaddiness. I seek that guy whose top 10 communication preferences do not include texting. If your diet includes more than 2% of foods that are deep-fried or “fast,” move along, nothing to see here. I’ve seen countless men who fan out their colorful feathers by declaring how much they love traveling to exotic places. Where’s the guy who knows that a good book, a deck of cards, a porch, a hammock, a few passing thunderstorms and a shitload of lightning bugs are also elements of a decent vacation? Someone like that is a million times more interesting to me than the dude who can’t let a day off go by without putting more effort into it than the average workday (I’m not sure if I’m putting this right, but why does everyone seem to need to be entertained all the time)? 

On second thought, maybe it just annoys me because I know that being on an exotic adventure doesn’t make you interesting, and it seems like a lot of people don’t realize this. At some point, you’re going to be passing the Grape Nuts back and forth in the morning, and that’s the point when you’re either happy to be right there, or you’re desperately thinking of the next entertaining getaway and someone other than I with whom to be on it.

The Wet Chicken Incident

Perhaps surprisingly, this is not a euphemism.

          Back in the first decade of the new millennium, in a far away magical land called California, I eked out a modest existence in the Bay Area in part by ranch-sitting for friends. One particular couple I knew were Charles and Kim, who I met when I needed a winter pasture for my horse, and a friend connected us. They were both living the textbook CA dream. He was a little older than I, had already made millions in something tech-related, and had invested wisely enough that he maintained his wealth through the stock crises. She was/is both gorgeous and one of the nicest people I knew, with a million dollar smile and looks that made for 50/50 odds that she was once an exotic dancer or a very high end working girl (neither of which are professions to which I object), and had gracefully held onto her beauty in middle age.

          After they'd gotten married, Kim decided to fulfill her dream of having a ranch and raising Gypsy Vanner horses, so they bought a beautiful swath of hilltop land in the East Bay and proceeded to populate it with horses, dogs and about a million chickens. Okay, maybe there were more like 50 chickens (I counted 48 and 53 at different times), but anyone who's ever been around them knows that you count chickens as: One, Two, Three, Several and millions. She had Silkies, Barred Plymouth Rocks, New Hampshire Reds, some small ones that looked more like doves, Red Jungle Fowls, a few Bantam breeds, something gigantic and black, and one of whatever the fuck is on the Corn Flakes box. One of the dove-like ones was awesome. Her name was Abigail, and she was a lap-chicken. She'd sit on Kim's lap when she worked at the computer, and whenever I was looking after the ranch, Abigail preferred to ride around in the pocket of my sweatshirt as I did chores.
          By and large, though, chickens are hands-down the dumbest life forms (as a group) I've ever encountered, the Silkies being the worst offenders. Go to a drag queen cabaret and locate the most voluminous marabou boa in the place and wad it up into a ball. Glue a beak on in the most logical place, then jam the whole lot onto a pair of ruffled pantaloons and you'll have your very own Silkie.
Think I'm joking? Look, here's a picture:

 

          Now imagine this creation with a perpetual look of confused paranoia, occasionally running around in a histrionic, directionless frenzy. Add ten more of them and stand in the middle of the whole mess. Welcome to being me.

          Now, I've had my own ducks. I had Khaki Campbells and Pekins, and not only are ducks the most affable of fowl and a consistent source of hilarity, their eggs also make the best popovers ever. 
(Here's me with one of my Pekins. I think this one's "Billie Idol." That's right... I had my duck in my house. Don't you judge me!)

          When it comes to chickens, however, I've found that while chickens in general are kind of cool, I have one problem: Roosters. Or, as I prefer to call them, "Homicidal, Ambulatory Lunch Meat." Kim had a bunch of them, and I spent many an hour being seriously terrorized by a triumvirate of bantams (one copper, one black and one white with black speckles) who would surround and mock me as often as possible, and one godawful monstrosity of a rooster named, "Clancy." Clancy would follow me like a shadow as I fed the horses and dogs, cleaned the pasture, filled the waters, cleaned the coops, collected eggs and filled the chicken feed dispensers. 95% of the time he'd just stare at me with one eye. Oh, he had two eyes, but he could only terrorize me with one at a time, first glaring at me with one and then quickly turning his little pin head to fix the other on me. The other 5% of the time he would actively attack me with the venomous hatred of a ninja bent on avenging the slaughter of his family. The damage that a pound or two of angry bird could inflict on me was truly astounding; I went home with scratches and frequent bruises more often than not, and he went to bed in the coop some nights with wispy strands of my hair still tangled in his talons.

          The horses on the ranch consisted, at one time, of a Gypsy Vanner mother and foal  (they look like this, but they're only large-pony height):

an adolescent Clydesdale, a massive draft horse of unknown breed and mercurial temperament, and another friend's yearling draft-Thoroughbred cross named Ruby. Ruby, having been afflicted at an early age with the equine version of a sense of humor, had the annoying habit of climbing into the big (about 7 feet in diameter and 3+ feet deep) water bin in the pasture. She'd just hang out there, belly-deep in the water, with a look on her face like, "Well, waddaya gonna do abouddit?" The answer, of course is, "nothing." Sometimes we could shoo her out, but for the most part the safest thing to do is to let a large, young horse get out of the water trough when she's good and ready. Well, at least until we got the fence in the other paddock finished and we could move her to where the troughs were too small for her to get into.

          Chickens, it turns out, aren't as flexible with the whole water thing as one would think, especially not in winter. I found this out one morning, when I discovered one of the Silkies in some distress, it having flapped up onto, and subsequently flopped into one of the water bins, the sides of which were too steep for her to grab onto and get herself out. I'd found her just in time, and when I rescued her she was exactly what you's expect a cold, wet wad of marabou to look like, compounded by her being coated in green algae.
           There was only one thing I could do, since I couldn't leave her in the coop with the others on a cold night if she wasn't totally dry (they're not the best at dealing with cold). I had to bring her in the house and give her a bath.

          I was a little at sea,  since I had to use SOME soap to get the goop off of her, yet I didn't know if this would be bad for her feathers in the long run. In the end I used a very diluted smidgen of baby shampoo, which did the trick. As I toweled her off, the blow dryer caught my eye. To my surprise, it turns out it IS possible to blow-dry a chicken. Here's an animal that freaks out when a leaf blows by, yet sits quietly on a towel, happily dozing as I fluff up her feathers on low heat.
          As I embarked on this task, I had one of those moments where I slipped into a contemplative assessment of how life in general was going. Who am I? I mused. Well, I'm a graduate of an upscale private school, I have two college degrees (one from one a prestigious art school), I've lived in NYC for a long time, worked in the Marvel Comics Bullpen, partied many a night away in the depths of the East Village, spent time working for the largest ad agency in the world, skated drunk in a mylar mini-dress at the Rockefeller Center rink, been lots of places I had no business being, also lived in both Paris and San Francisco, actually spent a night in a Paris brothel (that's another story), and had a ton of other experiences in my 40-ish years that fall into the, "Huh, that's kinda weird" category. I marveled that all of that had eventually led me to this point, here, in my friend's bathroom, blow-drying a slightly green (but happy) chicken back into roughly the size and shape of a basketball.

          It's moments like that that give one a fantastic perspective on life.

         

The Juliet Incident

            Some time ago, I was dating a guy whose friend was in a performance, and we happily trotted off to the West Village to see it. The show consisted of three scenes, each one 20 minutes or so in duration, from classic plays, and my date's friend was in the middle one, though I have no recollection from which play it was excerpted. Or the friend’s name. Or, in fact, anything at all about the evening, other than the glorious tragedy of this incident.
            My feelings about it require some back story, dating back to about 12 years before that night. At that point, I was a freshman at UNH, and I was all gung-ho about my first college theater class. Our first assignment was to pair up with someone and perform a 2-person scene of our choosing, and I got paired with one “Maria,” a fine example of a purebred milquetoast. Maria was the sort of person who always buttoned the top button of her peter-pan collars, wore no makeup at all, and whose dorm room walls were festooned with assorted depictions of a suspiciously Aryan Jesus, and a number of creatures enjoying rainbows.
            Given Maria’s otherwise somewhat floppy personality, I was taken aback when she announced, “We’re going to do the scene between Juliet and her maid. I’ll be Juliet.” There was no discussion or options. She’d clearly set her heart on being Juliet, and who was I to shatter her tiny, tiny dream? I’d never even tried speaking Shakespearean English before but, since I was a total stoner at the time and was, frankly, way more focused on my hippie boyfriend, I was like, “Okay. Whatever.”

            Working with that woman was an excruciating handful of evenings that felt like weeks (and not just because I was stoned out of my gourd for most of it), and it all culminated in a thoroughly horrifying performance for which our teacher tore both of us a new one, mostly because we had far overreached our abilities. I felt I’d been railroaded into that stern lecture our teacher gave us, and I probably would have been upset about it if I’d been paying attention.

            Again, I was like, “Okay. Whatever,” at the time, but subsequently my friends and I would reenact Maria’s god-awful performance on many an occasion. We could never quite capture the nuances of her colossal ineptitude, but we got some great giggle fits out of it anyway.
            Now (or, rather, THEN), it was 12 years later as we arrived at the little New York theater, Maria a distant, forgotten memory. The theater itself was quaint; the “box office” was a little wooden podium in a kitchen-sized lobby just inside the door, and a block of 7 or 8 steps on the left led up to a curtained doorway. Beyond this curtain was the center aisle of the theater, which was maybe 35 or 40 feet from door to stage, with short rows of seats on each side. At the stage end of the aisle was another block of 3 stairs that led up to the stage. It was a charming little venue, and my personality-challenged beau and I sat a few rows from the back.

            When I opened the program, my experience from a dozen years ago came back in an instant as I read that the first scene was, in fact, the same one that I’d chewed up with Maria way back when. “Well,” I thought, “it’ll at least be nice to see how it was supposed to be done.” As soon as the scene began, however, it became immediately apparent that I was witnessing Maria: The Next Generation.

            The actress was beyond awful. Every line was emphatic, every word was way too loud, and she swung her head around constantly like an epileptic heron. Predictably, I quickly became lost in thought. I began to daydream assorted scenarios; she slips on a banana peel, someone farts loudly at just the right moment, the whole thing suddenly shifts into a brilliant surrealist take on the whole thing… none of which, of course, were likely to happen in reality. I eventually settled on a favorite fantasy that sprouted from my natural tendency towards schadenfreude, and played it over and over in my head as Juliet hooted and gesticulated at her long-suffering maid on stage.            

            In my mind’s eye, I saw Juliet at the end of her rant, the back of her hand on her forehead, delivering her last line at the center front of the stage. I saw her sprint all the way up the center aisle, flounce through the curtain, and then totally wipe out on the stairs beyond. Sometimes, I even saw Maria’s face on the poor girl, and I giggled quietly to myself.

            As the end of the scene approached, Juliet made her way to the center front of the stage and, to no one’s surprise, actually delivered her last line with her head thrown back and the back of her hand in the widely accepted “woe is me” position on her forehead. I was delighted by this partial fulfillment of my expectations. Imagine how eerie it was, though, when my musings came suddenly to life as she then actually did canter up the center aisle, throw the curtain aside, and fall down the stairs beyond with a noise like 300 books falling from a shelf.

            There was a moment of profound silence, as my fellow theater-goers reeled from this development, while I alone had maybe one second of stunned surprise, as if a benevolent Shakespeare-loving djinn had witnessed the performance and been just as pained as I, then overheard my daydream and thought it was a lovely idea. Once that second of pause was up, however, I helplessly let loose with an explosive guffaw which turned into uncontrollable peals of laughter.

It was a theater. It echoed.

            I tried to stop, I really did, but every time I got myself under some sort of control, I’d look over at my date’s expression and seeming inability to understand what the hell was wrong with me. I'm sure he thought I was the most colossal ass on the planet and, ironically, his demeanor only fueled the fire thereafter, as he nudged and poked me in a vain attempt at infusing me with maturity. It’s also important to note that the actress was fine, and required nothing more than a virtual band-aid for her pride. I, however, continued to spasm with silent giggles (and the occasional snort when I replayed it in my head) right through the third performance, and on into the night.