Big Mike: A Young Woman’s Thoughts Turn To….
I may be an old bastard but I still have plenty of romance left in me. Take yesterday. A group of four twenty-somethings clomped into The Book Case. A couple of guys and a couple of chicks. They were pierced and tatted and wore the raiment of poets and painters. My kind of kids, to be sure.
The four were led by one of the women. She was a little taller than the rest and a lot more vocal. She took it upon herself to be the spokesperson for the group, a task she relished.
“We’re roommates,” she said. “We all came from Washington. Three of us went to IU. This one didn’t,” she said, nodding toward the shorter woman wearing a beret and an Army fatigue jacket standing next to her. “She went to Ivy Tech. But we all love it here in Bloomington so we decided to stay.”
“Are you all lunatics?” I asked. “You moved from Washington to live here? I’d love to be in Washington, with the mountains and the ocean.”
Not South Central Indiana
“No, no, not Washington state,” the woman said. “DC. I’d give anything to live in Washington state. But this is heaven compared to DC.”
We all chuckled over that one. Joining us in the laughter was another twenty-something woman whom I’d chatted up before the group of four came in. Her name was Jessica. She was pretty and tall and, well, substantial. It’s always a minefield to talk about a woman being well, large, given that the prevailing standard of Hollywood beauty these days makes a Biafran look like a gourmand.
But Jessica wasn’t large like, say, Gabourey Sidibe. She was about 5’10 or ’11 and was, as my mother would say, big-boned. Yet she wore her mass like a badge of honor. She had on an eye-popping black dress with white polka dots. She stood straight and tall, not slouching like a lot of rangy young woman who seem to be trying to will themselves into a more comfortable shortness.
Gabourey Sidibe
Before the four had come in, I’d learned that Jessica also attended IU and was working on an advanced degree. “So what do you study?” I’d asked her.
“Gee, that sounds like a line in a bookstore,” she said, laughing.
I fell all over myself trying to convince her that I wasn’t trying to come on to her. I even dangled my left hand in front of her, showing her my wedding ring. Sheesh! I could imagine trying to have an affair with her: Honey, not right now, my sciatica is acting up, okay?
Anyway, Jessica assured me that she knew I wasn’t an old lech. She said she was studying education and was already working as a student teacher in Ellettsville. Then she pointed at one of the hottest children’s books around, The Black Book of Colors. “Isn’t this fantastic?” she said. It really is the coolest thing. The cover and the pages are completely black. Inside are embossed black images of leaves, grasses, ocean waves and all sorts of things we take for granted seeing. But the book is narrated by a blind kid who tries to explain what colors mean to him. “Brown crackles under your feet when the leaves are dry,” the blind kid says. “Sometimes it smells like chocolate, and sometimes it does not smell very good.” It’s written by Menena Cottin and illustrated by Rosana Faria. If you have little kids, you ought run out and buy a copy.
A Page From The Black Book Of Colors
The book reminded Jessica of something that happened in her Ellettsville school the other day. Some kid had noticed that the room number sign next to the door had strange raised dots on it. “What’s that for?” the kid asked.
“That’s how blind people read,” Jessica said.
“I don’t get it,’ the kid said. With that, Jessica put one hand over the kid’s eyes and, with the other, guided his hand over the dots. “See?” she said.
To me, she said: “I realize maybe teaching is a stupid career to be getting into now, with all the budget cuts going on, but that’s a lot better reward than a few extra bucks a week.”
I looked at her admiringly. “You are cool,” I said.
So, sure, I’d be working overtime to get her phone number had I been twenty five years younger and hadn’t yet met The Loved One. Nevertheless, Jessica provided me with the next best thing.
One of the group of four, a sensitive looking young man wearing a tweed jacket and a scarf more as an accessory than anything else came up to the counter with some George Bernard Shaw books. Jessica stood about ten feet away, thumbing through another book, stealing glances at him. His hair was wavy and tousled. His gray-blue eyes were soulful, his skin spotless. Had GQ done a photo layout of the sexy boys of academia, this guy would have made the cut.
“Hmm,” I said as a rang the books up, “Arms And The Man. Heartbreak House. Looks like some light, beach reading here.” The young man smiled. “Yeah, I’m afraid I’m just a dreamer.”
Shaw
I glanced over at Jessica and winked. She grinned back at me.
As I took his cash, I noticed that Jessica had sidled up to the counter. The young man noticed her too and nodded. Jessica, exhibiting all the finest characteristics of someone on the make, smiled and said to him, “What do you study?”
I was thrilled that she’d lifted my line, albeit for a different purpose. The young man responded, “Literature.”
Jessica took an involuntary deep breath. The two chatted for a few minutes until the tall woman who was the leader of the four said it was time to go.
I don’t know why the young man never asked Jessica for her phone number. Maybe he was gay. Maybe he had a girlfriend. Maybe — and I’d hate to think this — he thought Jessica was, well, large. As he left, Jessica said “I really enjoyed talking with you,” which was code for I wonder what your lips taste like.
After the four left, I turned to Jessica. “He was very cute,” I said.
“Don’t I know it,” she said.
I extended my hand. “I wanna congratulate you,” I said as she shook it. “I like your style.”
“Really?” she said. “You don’t think I was too pushy or anything?”
“Nope. You were perfect. Too bad they had to leave so soon.”
Jessica only shrugged. She craned her neck to look out the window onto Kirkwood Street. “Yeah,” she said. “I wonder where they’re going.” With that, she plopped down a couple of books, paid quickly, told me she loved talking with me, thanked me for the encouragement, and dashed out the door. Before she got out of eyeshot, she looked back over her shoulder and saw me watching her. She grinned sheepishly. She knew we both knew why she was in a hurry.
I love spring.
From Life Magazine
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Benny Jay: Plushies
It’s early Sunday morning, the car radio’s tuned to Breakfast with the Beatles , and I’m driving my wife to the airport so she can catch a flight to visit her sister….
My wife’s talking and the radio’s playing Chains – you know, `my baby’s got me locked up in chains” — and I’m half listening to my wife and half listening to the song which means I’m not really listening to either one.
I just sort of half hear her tell me that the last time she visited her sister they stayed up all night looking at computer websites about Fluffies….
She finishes talking. A moment passes. All a sudden it hits me — she just told me a story about people screwing while dressed in animal suits.
I turn down the radio and say: “What?”
“It’s true….”
“No, wait – explain that again….”
So — one more time — she tells me about a friend who has a friend who met this guy through a computer-dating service. They go out once or twice and he finally brings her home for, you know, their big moment. And he goes into the bathroom and when he comes out he’s dressed like a squirrel.
“A squirrel?”
“A squirrel….”
“No way….”
“Yes way. Apparently, there’s this whole world of people who dress up like Benny the Bull or something and have sex….”
“Okay,” I say cutting her off. “Let me get this straight. You’re telling me the guy was gonna screw her while he was wearing a squirrel suit?”
“Yes….”
“And she was supposed to be dressed up like, what – a chipmunk or something?”
“Or a bunny rabbit….”
“A bunny rabbit!”
“Well, I don’t know if she was a bunny rabbit. I’m just saying she might have been dressed like a bunny rabbit….”
“Wow….”
“I’m telling you….”
“So, like — how do they do it?”
“Do what?”
“You know – it?”
“What do you mean how do they do it? How does anybody do it?”
“No, I mean, does he, you know, have, like, a little pouch in his squirrel suit where he puts his thing?”
“How do I know?”
“Well, you know everything else….”
“Well, I don’t know that….”
Pause. I can’t get that image of the guy in the squirrel suit out of my mind.
“So what did your friend do?” I ask.
“She’s not my friend – she’s a friend of a friend….”
“Whatever….”
“She got freaked out and ran out of the bedroom, though it’s not really his fault cause on his Internet dating picture he was holding a stuffed animal. That’s a signal, see, that you’re a Fluffy. Or Pluffy. Or whatever they call it. Only she didn’t realize it until he came out of the bathroom dressed like a squirrel….”
“Damn, you know a lot about this stuff….”
“I told you – my sister and I saw it on the Internet….”
“You’re like a freakin’ expert on animal sex….”
“I tried to tell you about this months ago….”
“You never told me this story….”
“Oh, my god. Yes, I did. I definitely told you this story. You just didn’t listen. You never listen when I tell you about people at work….”
“Oh, no, this is not some boring story about some girl doing yoga. If you had told me about the guy in a squirrel suit I definitely would have been listening….”
“I did tell you….”
“No you didn’t….”
“Yes, I did….”
I could say — no, you didn’t — but I decide I’ll be the mature one. So I stop.
We drive in silence. The radio’s playing Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds. I’m wondering: How come I don’t know about this stuff? I bet millions of people know this stuff. Definitely, Big Mike and Milo know about this. Those horny bastards — they know all that kinky shit. But me? I’m always a step behind. Always! And, watch, as soon as I tell someone about it, they’re gonna go: What, you didn’t know about that?
We reach the airport. Say our goodbyes. I head home. They’re playing I Got a Feeling. One of my favorites. “Everybody saw the sun shine….”
But I can’t concentrate cause I’m still thinking about that guy in the squirrel suit screwing the girl dressed like a chipmunk — or vice versa….
Here’s the thing. Hours later I ask my younger daughter: “Have you ever heard of a Fluffy?”
“A what?”
“You know, guys who dress up like squirrels or chipmunks before sex?”
“You mean Plushie?”
“You heard about it?”
“Duh, dad, everybody’s heard of that – that’s so yesterday’s news….”
See! Just like I told you….
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Big Mike: Growing Older — And I Do Mean Growing
A personal message to Milo: Thank you, thank you, thank, you. I feel as though a weight has been lifted off my shoulders.
Yesterday, if any of the seven of you recall, Milo confessed that the mug who greets him from the mirror each morning isn’t the same king of beasts who grinned at him a couple of decades ago. And all this time I thought I was the only one who was turning into the subject of an Ivan Albright painting.
Good Morning!
It’s embarrassing, I tell you, this business of getting old. Swear to god, I used to fantasize that firm young females would be peeking in on me as I showered. I’d pose for my pretend audience. Just look at those bulging biceps. That flat abdomen. Those springy legs. I’d lather up as if I were the star of a soap commercial. Better, I was the lead actor in my own soft-core porn movie.
Me, Then
Now, though, I try to shower with the lights off and my eyes closed. The less I — or any imaginary audience — sees, the better. I hate to start the day weeping.
It’s a goddamned shame. See, now I have the confidence of a middle-aged, graying veteran of the love wars. I’m not afraid to talk to any woman. I don’t get tongue tied around pretty dames like Rat in Fast Times at Ridgemont High.
Rat
Maybe it’s because the object of the game isn’t to convince them to watch me lather up sensually and languorously in the shower anymore. I’d rather have them laugh at my bons mots now, not my ballooning belly and my saggy glutes.
When I was first dating The Loved One, we’d go out to dinner and I’d eat like a sparrow. I wouldn’t even finish my entree. Heaven forbid she’d think I was a glutton. Now, though, I can swiftly dump a couple of heaping plates of baked rigatoni down my gullet and then tell her I could go for some bread and butter.
Then the next morning I force myself to look in the mirror and wonder why I’m turning into a sphere. If, as they say, I am what I eat, then I must be one colossal meatball.
Me, Now
Amazingly, The Loved One tells me I’m alluring to her no matter what I look like, the silly fool.
To look at her, you’d hardly believe she’s now middle-aged. She’s still quite a dish. When people see pix of her, they often make the winking comment that I’d robbed the cradle. I wonder what her friends tell her — that she’s taken a hostage from the nursing home?
And what about Benny Jay? The son of a bitch runs every day, for pity’s sake! He’s more fit and trim now than when I first met him in the early ’80s. It’s not fair.
My brother Joey is in his sixties now, yet he’s thinner than he was when he had a bushy white-boy ‘fro. Damn him.
My pal Danny, who turned half a century old in November, has a magnificent head of salt and pepper hair. Richard Gere or Michael Douglas could play him in the story of his life. He’s distinguished looking. Women still occasionally follow him with their eyes as he walks through a restaurant. I’m beginning to despise him.
Richard Gere As My Pal Danny
The Loved One could doll herself up, don a short skirt, and still turn heads down at the wine bar. Benny Jay, Joey, and Danny could go out tonight and sweep the tomatoes off their feet.
Me? All I’ve got is tomato sauce stains on my shirt.
But I’m not alone. I’ve got a friend in Milo.
Oliver Platt As Big Mike & Lauren Graham As The Loved One In The New Movie “When Do We Eat?”
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Letter From Milo: Deceptive Practices
You can’t tell it by looking at me, but I used to be a very handsome man. There was a time when I had a full head of hair, all my teeth, a trim belly and fewer scars. Not only was I, arguably, the greatest writer ever to come out of Gary, Indiana, I was also, hands down, the best looking man ever to come out of that fine metropolis.
Inevitably, time has had its cruel way with me. I’m a shell of my former handsome self. Whenever I look in a mirror I feel a terrible sense of sadness and loss. I imagine Michelangelo felt the same way when the first cracks appeared in the ceiling of the Sistine chapel.
A great writer, whose name I don’t recall, once said, “By the age of 50, every man has the face he deserves.” If that’s the case, what the fuck did I do to deserve this?
The reason I’m bringing up this subject is that I’ve recently been under a lot of pressure to get on Facebook. Big Mike, the Barn Boss of this scabby, barely legal outfit, has been especially tough on me about Facebook. After dozens of abusive emails and several threatening letters from The Third City’s attorneys, I decided to give Big Mike a call.
“Hey, Big Mike, it’s me, Milo.”
“Make it quick, asshole. I’ve got a blog to run.”
“What’s this shit about me getting on Facebook?”
“We need more readers. My investors are getting antsy. There’s a lot of Arab and Japanese money behind this blog site.”
“When you hired me you said we had, like, 15 million readers a day.”
“Well, heh, heh, I may have exaggerated a bit.”
“How many readers do we actually have?”
“Seven. But I haven’t got the numbers in from Europe and Asia yet.”
“Seven! That’s it!”
“Yeah, but we can easily double that number if you get on Facebook.”
“Ah, okay.”
Which brings me back to the beginning of this blog. You see, according to my daughter, who set up my Facebook account, I had to have a photo of myself on the site. But I was hesitant about posting a recent photo because, as I had mentioned, my present appearance is not up to my usual lofty standards.
There you have it. My daughter went through some old photo albums, found a 25-year-old photo of me, scanned it, doctored it up, and posted it on the site.
So, if any of you ladies are thinking of contacting me for a little fun and games, you might want to think twice about getting in touch. Instead of spending quality time with a young Al Pacino, you’d end up frolicking with an aging Bela Lugosi.
Don’t say you haven’t been warned.
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Benny Jay: A Day At The Hospital
I’m sitting with my wife, father, and sister in the visitor’s room at the hospital waiting for the surgeon to emerge from the operating room and tell us about my mom.
She’s having a heart operation. Coincidentally, the same procedure Milo went through six months ago. You know, where they cracked him open like a lobster, as he so delicately put it.
My sister’s doing a crossword puzzle. She employs a strategy I can only describe as free association – whatever pops into her mind, she writes. In pen, no less. If it’s wrong, scratch it out. What the hell – it’s only a puzzle. I’m just the opposite. Cautious. Careful. Write in pencil in case of mistake. Like I’m taking a test.
So you can see, it’s probably not a good idea that we do these puzzles together….
“What’s a play by Ibsen?” she asks me.
“How many letters?”
“Eleven….”
“Ugh….”
“Hedda Gabler,” she says.
“Sounds good — but make sure it fits before you….”
Too late, she writes it in.
Seconds pass. “Uh-oh,” she says. “I think it’s A Doll’s House….”
“I told you to wait….”
“Shut up….”
Like I was telling you….
She returns to the puzzle. My wife knits. My father reads. I look at a plant. I think it’s plastic….
I must have drifted off, cause I wake to see the doctor telling my father the operation’s a success. He’s kind of cocky, this doctor – he’s got the swagger of a jet-fighter pilot. Like – yeah, I cracked her open and sewed her up, no big deal….
Hours pass. We move to a new room on another floor in a different wing of the hospital and sit around a fish tank. My wife knits. My father reads. My sister does her puzzle. I watch a yellow fish swim from one end of the tank to the other.
A group of people emerges from the back room. They’re crying.
“Someone died,” my sister whispers to me.
I don’t want to have a conversation about these people while they’re standing a few feet away, so I pretend I don’t hear her.
“They said he went fast,” she says.
“Stop eavesdropping on their conversation….”
“There’s nothing else to do….”
We watch them comfort each other.
“Do you think she’s going to be all right?” asks my sister.
“Milo said that if she gets off the operating table, the worst is over….”
“Milo said that?”
“Yeah, and he went through the same thing….”
More hours pass….
My dad reminisces about the time over forty years ago when he was recuperating in a hospital and my mom smuggled him martinis in a glass jar. “We drank them in the hospital,” he says.
He pauses. “I can’t remember why I was in the hospital,” he says with a slight smile. “But I remember the martinis….”
A nurse emerges to lead us to the room where my mom’s in a bed hooked to tubes and breathing through an oxygen mask. The nurse sees the shock in our eyes. “She’s okay,” she reassures us. “She’s doing great.”
We stand in silence, almost afraid to talk….
The next day we return to the hospital. My mom’s in a different room. Sunshine streaming through the window. She’s sitting up in a chair. Got color in her face. No oxygen mask, no tubes. Looks like a million bucks.
She says she has no memory of yesterday, as if the day never existed. It was Monday and now it’s Wednesday – that’s all she knows.
“Let’s test the rest of your memory,” I say. “When I was in sixth grade, I used to walk home from school with a kid who ate Suzie Qs. What was that kid’s name?”
“Oh,” my mom says. “Uh….”
“Alan Brandeis,” says my sister.
“Okay,” I say. “We know you know his name….”
“Oh, yeah,” says my mom, “Alan Brandeis.”
“All right, mom, how `bout this one,” I say. “In high school, there was a kid who made phony tickets for Northwestern football games and then sold them to other kids What was his name?”
“Ted Ross,” says my sister.
“Okay,” I say. “What part of this game are we not getting?”
“Oh, yeah,” says my mom. “Ted Ross….”
“All right, one last question. And this time no help from the peanut gallery,” I say as I look at my sister. “In the last presidential election, Barack Obama ran against which Republican candidate?”
“Ugh, that son of a bitch,” says my mom, who was, is and will always be a New Deal Democrat.
“Close enough,” I say. “The judges will count it!”
Call it a small step on a long road to a remarkable recovery….
P.S. On a personal note, thanks to everyone who looked out for me over the last few days, particularly: Daddy Dee, J Dub, Johnny Reaves, Milo, Norm, and cousin Robert. My mom’s out of the hospital and getting stronger day by day….
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Big Mike: How Do You Take Your Coffee?
So today is National Coffee Party Day. Woo-hoo. It’s supposedly the liberals’ answer to the wingnut right’s Tea Parties.
They Prefer Tea
And that’s the problem with liberals and Democrats and all the rest of this holy land’s softies including abortionists and jackbooted homosexuals. Always a day late, always answering the right — as if the right is some authority to which one has to answer. Well, let me say…, wait, um, oops. On second thought, that is the right.
Anyway, I ought to be right in the middle of Coffee Party festivities. I sit here in my home away from home, Soma coffeehouse in good old Bloomington, Indiana. If Annabel Park and her gang of klatschers are really on to something, this place will be packed with citizens expounding on the evils of corporate America, the ever-widening gap between rich and poor, and the fact that Glenn Beck is allowed to roam the streets without a straightjacket.
Annabel Park (photo by Eric Sueyoshi)
So, I look around and see…, a fairly empty coffeehouse. You see, yesterday was the last day of classes before spring break so Bloomington, much to the delight of townies, will be pretty much student-less for a week. Oh sure, the usual suspects are here. There’s the couple Sally and Harry — she works for Indiana University‘s financial aid office and he’s in the Southeast Asian Studies department. Oh, and there’s the streetwise former Chicagoan, Pat, who’s the boss of the city’s water department, holding court at his customary table. We all usually talk about the issues of the day and pretty much agree that Bushey Boy was a lunkhead and Obama‘s a hell of a lot better, but that isn’t really saying much.
I paid my respects to parties at both tables and not once did we talk about our visions for the future of this great republic, as Park might hope. The chief barista, Abbey, didn’t even have NPR on the radio, as it normally is on Saturday mornings. Instead, she’s playing that Feist disc, the one we’ve all heard so many times we just tune it out now, like music in an elevator.
The difference between the left and the right in America is the right has a clearly defined villain around whom they all can gather and lob verbal stones as well as the occasional real one. That would be one Barack Hussein Obama, as they like to refer to him — that is, when they’re not calling him Obama bin Laden or Adolf Owe-bama. The left, on the other hand, has a cast of thousands to demonize. My personal fave is Lloyd Blankfein. Others prefer Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly. Then there’s Dick Cheney. Sarah Palin. Mitch McConnell. John Boehner. Oil company CEOs. Fundamentalists. The Texas board of education. Birthers. The Micheles: Malkin and Bachmann. They all have their little hissing sections within the left.
How can you get people to stand up as one — as Annabel Park hopes Coffee Party Day will do — when they’re all splintered into little diverse subsets? One of the cardinal rules of organizing is to get people to identify a single threat they can all agree on. And, man, Obama fits that bill perfectly for the right. They don’t even need a secret handshake. They can simply spout “Obama’s a socialist” (code for I’ll never accept the fact that a brown man is the president) and their confreres will jump out of the woodwork. The more radical among them might simply say “Obama’s destroying this country” (another code, this one meaning Now all our sisters/wives/daughters will be going black before you know it.) That gang is stocking up on canned goods and ammo.
He Knows What’s Wrong And What To Do About It
We dedicated liberals, progressives, mild radicals, social capitalists, and the like need a straw man like that. As I indicated earlier, my vote would go to the CEO of Goldman Sachs. But Lloyd Blankfein lacks the cachet, the aura, the celebrity. Half the people on my side of the political spectrum probably don’t even know who he is. We need someone with pizzazz. Someone who looks great on TV. Someone whose very being threatens the ideals we hold dear.
John McCain wasn’t that person. Nor would Mike Huckabee or Mitt Romney be. Frankly, not even Glenn Beck fills the bill. Trying to demonize him would be like picking on a wimpy fat kid in the fifth grade. Only toward the end of his term did the public catch on that George W. Bush was the personification of all that was wrong with the right. Before that, we had to pretend to support him as commander in chief after 9/11.
We need, in short, Sarah Palin. Then we can have a real National Coffee Party Day.
The Look Of Love
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Randolph Street: Wilbur The Wonder Cat–1992/2010
August 7, 1992–March 11, 2010.
All Photos © Jon Randolph
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Guest Blogger:
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Pull My Finger. Written by Milo. Read by Andy Orscheln, Lorenzo Toia, Joel Reitsma, Nels, Laura Korn and introducing Benny Jay as Rolando. Produced by King Conundrum.
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A wholly owned subsidiary of The Third City.
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