City Life

Freakin’ Dog!

Doesn’t look like she could make so much trouble, does she?

In case I haven’t been clear, I call her Little Incredibly Dumb Dog for a reason. She is sweet and soft and smooshable, but wow. With all my doggie experience, she is the dumbest dog I’ve ever known, let alone owned.

Despite my best efforts, at over a year old she still isn’t completely housebroken. Every couple of months I’m lulled into thinking we have found success, “hey, it’s been two weeks since she had an accident!” Inevitably, the day comes where she forgets to wait and yuck, yuck, yuck. Let’s just say my floors have never been cleaned so regularly. Which sucks, because my floors aren’t actual hardwood, they’re a pressboard veneer so they can’t be refinished.

She also still loves to chew on things she shouldn’t. Mostly items that belong to Flower Child and me. I’m down to one clip for my hair. I am not an inexperienced dog owner, she has many toys of her own to chew on, treats, balls, regular walks, and Big Senile Dog to ~~pester~~ play with.

You can and do learn a lot about the neighborhood when walking dogs. One thing I’ve learned is that apparently we’ve got a huge number of folks practicing Voodoo.

Voodoo Altar, French Quarter, New Orleans (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It’s the only reason I can think of for the regular scattering of chicken bones on the curbs.

Well, there is that one guy who sits on the concrete fence with a styrofoam platter of chicharrones de pollo (Dominican fried chicken), but he’s always very helpful, pointing out the bones he’s tossing on the asphalt, so I can pull the dogs away. Thanks, buddy! Seriously New York, wtf are you doing? This isn’t the ’70s anymore, there’s a trash can on every corner. Chicken bones can choke a dog, puncture their intestines, and kill them. Skipping those extremes, the bones also cause puking and excessive pooping.

So, when I woke up this morning and saw a dark oblong object on the floor next to one of the dog beds, I assumed it was a Little Dumb Dog log. This was before I’d actually made it into the bathroom to squirt some contact lens solution into my eyes, everything is kinda fuzzy for me that early in the day.

I was happy to be wrong for about a tenth of a second. There on the floor was the chewed remnants of the bluetooth for my cell phone. I loved that thing. It made my life much easier and more convenient than Little Incredibly Dumb Dog does. Easily one of the top five gifts I’ve gotten, and it’s definitely not in the budget to replace it now.

To the moon, freakin fluffball!

Chicken Bone (Photo credit: goodiesfirst)

The Blues Had a Baby

and they named it rock-n-roll.

Muddy Waters, described as “the guiding light of the modern blues school” Dicaire (1999), p. 79 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Muddy Waters, always perfect.

But, I have a long playlist of “perfect” songs and artists. For someone without a hint of musical talent, I can’t imagine life without music.

The last concert Husband and I went to was Robert Cray in 2002. And that one was a last minute surprise; Husband asked Sister-In-Law to watch the kiddos. At the end of the evening I don’t think I was all the way through the door frame before Flower Child was back in my arms and Sister-In-Law was headed toward the elevator. Not easy to babysit a nursing baby without functional boobs.

When we were young, though…. Lots of live shows; blues, rock, jazz, fusion; not even sure how many times we saw Pat Metheny–though I surely remember one particular show in Radio City with seats right next to a speaker. Not even “American Garage” sounds good when your ear drum is splintering. I dragged Husband to a Grateful Dead concert way back when. He’s still grumbling, and I still smile when I hear Sugar Magnolia. Makes me think of an old friend, we would scrape two or three dollars together to put just enough gas in the tank of her VW Rabbit to get us to the beach, where her fingers would stumble on her guitar strings and my voice would crack under the background of the surf.

Forget Farmville and Words With Friends, my favorite game is through emails, exchanging links with friends to whatever song or artist we’re feeling in the moment.

When I was a kid I loved my little AM radio, would fall asleep on summer nights with it crackling the T0p 40, set up on a folding chair next to my bed, the thwak-swish-“fuck!” of the handball court across the street providing background. And albums, how could you not love the ceremony of carefully removing the vinyl from the sleeve, blowing off any residual dust, and setting that needle down to pop and spin. My very first records were old folk 45’s from my father, 33’s of musicals and big band jazz.

Handball (Photo credit: Brian Auer)

The morning routine was punctuated by Disco Freddy, a man who would roller skate past my house every day, boom box balanced on his bony shoulder, on his way to skate up and down the boardwalk all day, to be heard again as the sun was setting.

fixing the boom box (Photo credit: John Chevier™)

The soundtrack continues like most others of my generation; The Beatles, Rolling Stones, CCR, BTO, CSN&Y, Led Zeppelin, The Who, Supertramp, and on and on. For someone who proclaimed “disco sucks” along with the rest of the cool kids, I knew (and know) every word to every song played at the discos. Then came punk, so daring! And Frank Zappa, who will always have a place in my dysfunctional heart.

I loved those albums, loved the heft of them, the cover art, the scratches that became part of the rhythm, walking into the used record store with $20 and walking out with a stack I could barely balance. The excitement of eight-tracks (Paul McCartney and The Wings!), and then cassettes. Walkmans were liberation, forget burning bras. Now the iPod. Much as I feel nostalgia for the old vinyl, and splicing my tapes when they wore out, that iPod is a miracle, my joy and my peace. Even laundry is palatable with those earbuds in place and the volume cranked up.

My musical tastes haven’t matured, just expanded. More blues, some classical– even some opera.

What about you? Is your life catalogued by when you first listened to a particular song?

Old Vinyl (Photo credit: fensterbme)

Portable Neighborhood

Macbook keys (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Friends have heard me talk about this before, but I like this subject, so I’ll talk about it again.

New Yorkers are kind of, um New Yorkcentric. Not only does the world revolve around us, but we tend to believe we are the most well rounded, evolved folks in the world. No provincial thinking here. Hah!

It’s easy as morning coffee to be provincial here. Spend an evening in a local bar and hear 8 languages being spoken at any given time, have a drink with straight people, gay people, every ethnicity, young people, old people, rich or poor. I can go months without leaving my immediate neighborhood, and still eat at any ethnicity restaurant, shop for any type of clothing, roam the parks and enjoy a variety of live music, see a play, attend a poetry reading, attend services at a church/temple/meeting house for every religion you can think of, or even never leave my apartment and still have any and everything delivered to my door.

It wasn’t until I had reason to join an online forum that I realized how very narrow my world and my focus was. At first it was plain old weird. I prefaced every sentence to Husband with, “this woman I know online,” etc. It felt squishy to define someone I’d never met face to face as a friend. I’ve gotten over it, and have made many online friends over the years. There’s an intimacy created in these forums, safety in getting to know someone through a computer screen. At this point I’ve been lucky enough to meet several face to face–the good part of living in NY, lots of people have reason to come or just a desire to visit. I meet them after they do their touristy thing. Really, it’s ok, you can climb the Statue of Liberty without me.

Statue Of Liberty (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’ll meet you in the park later, by the chick who’s dressed as her, green sheet, face paint, silent, with a bucket for donations at her feet.

Now, I’m a left leaning gal, most of my face to face (trying to think of a better term than “In Real Life”, my online friends are quite real, thank you) friends are also left leaning. Even the ones who vote right lean left to some degree or another. I’ve had plenty of friends who attended church/temple/fill in your house of worship here, but for most, there’s a wide distance btw church and state, friends, and politics.

In the past seven years or so, I’ve moved into a new neighborhood, a whole new world, and truly been exposed to different frames of reference. Some of my online friends are people I “know” I’d become friends with no matter how I met them. But that isn’t true for everyone. The interesting thing about forums is how they are a window, and the curtains that drape them one subject or area of interest, one commonality. A sneaky thing happens when you’re surrounded by those window treatments, you get to know people as individuals before learning their politics, socio-economic status, religious beliefs, or ethnicity.

I got to know their beverage of choice, their marital status, marital problems, their musical preferences, their medical bills, their children, their humor, their snark, their warmth, their intelligence, their knowledge, their support. Only after all of this, did I learn who went to church 3 times a week, read their devotionals twice daily, doesn’t believe at all, is a lapsed Mormon, pro-life/pro-choice, support gun restriction/own 10 guns, etc. I. love. this. Every day, I love it. We don’t always agree, and sometimes discussions can get pretty heated, but there is a respect for each other as human beings, individuals with complete lives, brains and hearts, opinions formed from our individual and varied life experiences. I get upset when my online friends cross from questioning and debating into arguments and blind rhetoric.

Through my online community, built from friends drawn from several different forums with vastly different focal areas, I don’t feel so provincial anymore. I feel better informed and better equipped to form opinions. I “live” in a new neighborhood, all of my neighbors chosen for commonalities but not sameness, mutual love, support, respect, and compassion. Yanno, all that squishy stuff.

Flickr friends (Photo credit: Meer)

The Super Secret Society of NY Dogwalking

OK, not so secret. One thing that seems to surprise tourists is how many of us here in NY have dogs. I understand the surprise if you’re coming from a place where having a dog equals hunting or long romps through grassy fields. Big Senile Dog is such a city dog he’ll only “go” on concrete or asphalt. Not fun when visiting friends in the country, and I’m walking my beast down an unlit road at night because he won’t poop on grass.

A special relationship, she likes to walk under him when he’s peeing outside, then we come home and she pees on his bed.

Believe it or not, most NYers are pretty friendly, just not chatty. The exceptions come out once you’re walking your dog(s). All of a sudden, people you’ve never noticed before, and who’ve never noticed you, are stopping to say hello, how are you, tell you about their day and begin friendships. An entirely new dimension of bonding and neighborly love becomes clear. Cause nothing says intimacy like a conversation when one or both parties are holding a bag of dog poop.

I think dog owners here are the holders of the neighborhood secrets. We know who’s sick, who’s in love, getting married, divorced, which building is about to shift from rent controlled to co-op, who lost their job. I’ve heard many stories over the years of people finding jobs through connections in the dog run.

Like a bartender recognizes people by what they drink, we recognize people by the dogs attached to them. Sometimes I can tell you what type of dog, elimination quirks, and all about the owner’s life, but can’t for the life of me give you a physical description of the person attached to the leash.

please curb your dog (Photo credit: Charley Lhasa)

In the Lint Pile

English: A close-up of dryer lint (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Just about all Manhattan neighborhoods are a mix. A mix of ethnicities, political views, religions, and socio-economic status. My neighborhood is particularly mixed when it comes to the latter. We have a high number of SROs. Single Room Occupancy hotels–boutique hotels, if you’re a naive young tourist who believes all the pretty pictures posted on the internets. Many times I’ve come across 120 pound tourists with 150 pound packs strapped to them, looking for the “boutique hotel” they paid for in advance, online, from their clean and comfy homes or universities somewhere in Europe, maybe the Netherlands. Sometimes I run into these same young tourists 2 days later in the drugstore, looking for products to combat bedbugs and lice.

Most frequently, SROs house those who have fallen from the fringe into the lint pile, a few house those have recently arrived in America and are first trying to climb up to the fringe. Rent controlled, very cheap housing, what you get is one room and a shared bathroom and kitchen. Some are reasonably clean and safe, many are dirty, in desperate need of repairs, and not somewhere you’d like to find yourself–day or night. Many who live in the SROs are basically homeless, mentally ill, drug addicted, and either HIV+ or have full blown AIDS.

I’ll be honest, there are certain blocks I avoid walking on at night, even with Big Senile Dog at my side. As the economy has grown tighter, the problems and crimes that spill out of these buildings has risen. Most of the people who live in even the seediest of the SROs seem fairly harmless, I’ve lived here for years and so have they; I recognize their faces, those who aren’t drug or booze addled recognize mine. OK, so it was more than a little unsettling when Fatigue got a new puppy in his ground floor apartment and was assured a few weeks later by one particular man that he didn’t have to worry about said puppy while he was out at work–the man was watching him through the window, and he was ok. Ummm, thanks?

This summer, violent crime has escalated, there have been a couple of fatal incidents, and the city is planning to place an additional four hundred people in SROs in the immediate neighborhood. Predictably, there are petitions circulating to stop this placement. Social service agencies place people in this housing, and it is great and necessary to have somewhere for the ill and indigent to go besides the front stoops of churches; but then they don’t provide supports to keep the people well, clean, or even safe. A Catch 22 that affects not only the people living in these buildings, but all living around them.

Some of the people living in the SROs are elderly, some work fringe jobs, some work regular jobs that just don’t pay enough for rent on an apartment, many live off their SSI/SSD checks and supplement by panhandling. Ah, the panhandling. “Mama, you got a dollar? How bout a cigarette?” Usually not, and usually, when I just keep walking, they’re asking the next person before I’ve even passed them. Sometimes it’s annoying, if the person in question decides to follow and continue asking for half a block, sometimes it pisses me off, if I say no and the person immediately switches modes from smiling, hand extended, “God Bless,” to snarling and “fucking bitch.” Sometimes it’s frightening. Flower Child doesn’t understand all the cues and clues, which seems to attract the most fractured of the crack addicts, “oh little Mommy, you’re so beautiful, I don’t have my babies anymore, can I touch your hair?”

When Man Child was little, he used to announce what we were having for dinner and invite the homeless he saw on our way home from nursery school to join us.

homeless (Photo credit: digitizedchaos)

A lot of my younger internet friends think of me as an ex-hippie. Though I’m too young to actually have played on the streets of Haight-Ashbury, the politics and philosophies wouldn’t be far off, and it’s true, my favorite pair of jeans in high school was a pair I had tie-bleached with a friend in the basement. In the eighties and early nineties, I worked in social services where most of my jobs were a direct result of the push to deinstitutionalize the mentally ill. So I feel for all of those living in the SROs, had many opportunities to get to know and understand they aren’t just lint, these are people with histories, many of them histories that would make you lose your breakfast, and some, indistinguishable from the others, with histories that would be uncomfortably similar to yours.

The petitions want them placed “somewhere else.” Where? The people behind the petitions fear for safety, other vulnerable residents, and property values. They want them placed somewhere with enough security and supports to minimize these issues. I would like that last part too, but where would the money come from to make that happen?

Tie Dye (Photo credit: deborah.soltesz)

My left leaning, ex-too-young-to-have-been-a-real-hippie, ex-case manager, all too aware of how easy it can be to drop from the fringe to the lint-self wants to see more people placed in local SROs, campaign for donations and fight for the city to help them once they’re in. How can we not care, pretend they don’t exist? But I’m also a mom who is thinking about an escalation of violent crimes, Man Child and Nerd Child old enough and independent enough to be walking the streets on their own, and my vulnerable Flower Child.

What do you think?

City Wildlife

Detour (Photo credit: krossbow)

My intention was to post about blogging today, the direction I started in, where I’d like to be going with this, and of course, how very thrilled and excited I still am that one of my posts was chosen for yesterday’s Freshly Pressed.

Instead, I’m off on a traditional New York rant, much the way Man Child is on a quest to hunt down, trap, and kill the cockroach he saw in our kitchen cabinet a couple of hours ago.

I know, roaches are a fact of life in NY. I think they’re pretty much a fact of life in every city; the more humid the city gets, the more densely populated, the more roaches there are. That doesn’t make them welcome, or even tolerated, guests in MY apartment. I’ve been pretty lucky over the past 12 years or so, very few have found their way into my kitchen. We won’t discuss the building’s basement, or the way I can hear their little legs scritch scittering across the sidewalk when I’m walking the dogs at night.

Three or four days ago I spotted a big one in the kitchen. You know, the really big ones people like to call water bugs, because it makes us uncomfortable to acknowledge these critters can grow to be so large. I promptly ran to the local drugstore, bought three boxes of Combat baits for my shoe box sized apartment, and planted them throughout the kitchen cabinets, against the walls, in the bathroom, some for good measure in the bedrooms and entranceway. Like a welcome mat, only it says get the fuck out.

This morning, to my horror, we saw another one. I know what infested means, and I know this isn’t it. I’ve been in apartments where the roaches are doing the hustle across the kitchen floor in broad daylight, the backstroke in the puddle left by a leaky bathtub faucet, and have an ongoing performance piece happening on the wall of a bedroom. That’s infested. This is me having a hissy fit.

Roach (Photo credit: Are W)

A fit that sent me back to the drugstore for yet another box of Combat, a tube of gel incase any of the suckers are claustrophobic and don’t want to enter the trap to eat the bait, and got to work with Man Child and Nerd Child. Everything is out of the cabinets, 2/3 have been cleaned with bleach and water, and half the cabinets have new traps laid with gel applied in strategic cracks and gaps.

Wonderful. Only now I’m so nauseous from breathing in bleach and poison fumes, I’m not quite sure how I’m going to get up to finish the job. Man Child took a break and went to the store, so he’s beat, too.

Frankly, I don’t care how superior they are on the evolutionary scale, I hate roaches. Sick or not, it’s time for me to get back to my mission, and send any of these strays packing. Yuck!

Amarillo Tx – Dynamite Museum – Roaches Kitchen (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Going To Hell with Gasoline Drawers On

Night Fires 3 (Photo credit: Jean-Michel Reed)

In keeping with my summer of death theme, I left my building yesterday morning to find a cluster of neighbors talking. A neighbor had died in his apartment, estimated three days earlier, and was found yesterday morning when others on his floor complained about the smell.

This was another fringe character, though not a friend. If not for the “low” rent apartment, I’m guessing he would have been homeless. This is purely conjecture, for all I know he had three million dollars in the bank. I don’t know his story, maybe he was a veteran, maybe he was sick, maybe he had been deserted by a cheating wife and ingrate children. He was a hard and serious drinker, who could be spotted regularly parked in one of three neighborhood restaurants, drinking for hours until his cash ran out or the manager of the restaurant got enough complaints from other customers.

Naturally, as I walked Big Senile Dog and Little Incredibly Dumb Dog, I was thinking about all of this. Now I may not be happy here in New York, may not want to live here anymore, but I am a New Yorker. Therefore, after tallying how many people I know who have died this summer, I had the traditional New York mourning thought.

Apartment for Rent on E 61st St, NYC (Photo credit: cathleenritt)

Really, it isn’t just something made up for a Seinfeld episode. Combing obituaries is a time honored way to find a rent controlled apartment. Much trickier than it used to be, as rent control laws have changed, but still valid.

I brought the dogs back and immediately stopped one of the workers in my building to ask him what size apartment the man had lived in. He laughed at me and told me I’m going to Hell with gasoline drawers on. I had never heard that saying before, but it’s now my new favorite.

And if you’re wondering, no. This didn’t turn out to be an opportunity for me and mine. His apartment is the same size as ours.

Seinfeld (Photo credit: T Hoffarth)

Also,

the rent is too damn high (Photo credit: CathrynDC)

Plans vs Dreams

Vintage Chenille Designer Fabric Girl Patchwork Quilt with Fuchsia Fringe (Photo credit: Nesha’s Vintage Niche)

Mmm hmm, we’re all human, want to love and be loved, put our pants on one leg at a time; insert whatever cliche feels right to you here. But there are differences between those who worry about paying the rent and those who don’t, same as there are differences between men and women. Then again, maybe it’s just me.

I don’t make too many plans, but for as much as I lecture myself not to do it, I still dream. I dream of my beach house, I dream of a 135 gallon tank stocked with the flashiest fish and corals money can buy. I dream of buying my kids everything they need when they need it, I dream of a brand new fully loaded van, a little hybrid for myself and another one for Man Child. I dream of being able to take Flower Child to the absolute best doctors to maximize her quality of life and her joy, no matter where they might be, or how much it would cost, of being able to search out and pay for a school that truly fits her needs. I dream of Virginia Woolf, and being able to say yes, I have a room of my own to write in, and the time to do so. I dream of indulging the shoe whore who lives inside me, letting her out. I dream of being able to say to the fabulous fancy schmancy schools that have given scholarships to my boys, “Here, take it back. Let me write you a check x 2, so you can offer scholarships to two more kids who need and deserve their shot.”

Dreams don’t cost anything, some would even argue they’re food for the soul. I’m not sure which side of that argument I’d take. Plans, though, plans are something else. Plans are what people do when they have enough, and some extra. When decisions aren’t made out of panic and absolute necessity, but careful thought.

What’s that old saying? Man makes plans and God laughs? I was on Facebook yesterday, trying to catch up on the “news” of my online friends, and saw someone had posted a map of the US, illustrating how many hours would need to be worked in each state at minimum wage each week in order to pay (fair market) rent on a two bedroom apartment. Some were much worse than others, but not one state would afford a two bedroom if you only worked 40 hours. I live here in Gotham City, so that wasn’t exactly shocking. What was shocking were the comments made on the side. So much self-righteousness I was afraid to type a response, surely a viscous sludge that reeked of pomp and circumstance would ooze from between the keys. “Just get another job!…They shouldn’t have had children they couldn’t afford!…Join the army!…Share the apartment with another family!…Who told those people to procreate (yes, I’m well aware I already wrote that, but it was mentioned many times)…Let them go back to their own countries!…”

I don’t know any of the people who posted those comments. I don’t know if they go to the union meeting on Tuesday, the PTA meeting on Wednesday, or church on Sunday. I do know that I, and others I know like myself and my family, used to make plans. It doesn’t take much; the loss of a job, a real estate bubble expanding and then bursting, a diagnosis of a chronic medical condition, to push Average Jane/Joe off the solid weave and onto the fringe. Staying on the fringe and not falling into society’s lint pile, well, that takes a lot. Focus, strength, determination, maybe even the remnants of faith in a better life, possibilities, and dreams.

Rats With Wings

Columbidae II (Photo credit: Iñaki Mateos)

Pigeons. They aren’t cool, cute, or sweet. They’re noisy and filthy. Yeah, yeah, get off my lawn.

And when I say noisy, I mean loud, obnoxious sounds that make my head want to explode. I thought they were related to doves? a type of dove? These things don’t coo, their sounds are a harsh scraping, like if you turn the key into the ignition too far, but about 5 octaves higher. Do I sound like a cranky old lady? Good, better that than one of the ~~old biddies~~, errr, sweet older women who drag out bags of bread and birdseed that weigh more than they do to feed the things each day.

They produce many pounds of bird shit per bird, per year. Bird shit that covers the sidewalks, buildings, terraces, clothing, hair, and anything else you can think of. When Man Child was in elementary school, there was a woman who would stand at the corner each morning, spreading crumbs so the pigeons would spread their crap. Getting to the front door of the building was like crossing a minefield. The sidewalk looked like it had been painted and the not so little white, red, and brown bombs dropped regularly from above. Hello, pigeons carry diseases, transferred by their shit. Hell, House even had an episode centered around one of those lovely illnesses.

14+ year old workman’s clothing (Photo credit: Aidan Whiteley)

When it’s sunny, they’re scraping, when a storm is coming, they’re scree screeing, when it’s raining, they’re a cacophony of screaming that is not to be believed, if you’re unfortunate enough to be taking shelter under a favored scaffolding–or if you have a neighbor you share a terrace with who does nothing to discourage the things! There’s a divider between our portion of the terrace and hers, but the divider has a sizable gap at the top and bottom. So they can walk right onto our portion of the terrace, and they love sitting on top of that divider, dropping crap bombs on both sides. Yeah, no thanks. I went looking for pigeon spikes, to prevent them from sitting on top or walking through the bottom, but those spikes would have equaled an unhealthy dent in the grocery budget.

So, we’re the urban equivalent of the rural homes people poke fun at. You know the ones, with rusted out Chevys on their lawns up on cement blocks, and bald 4×4 tires propping up sagging porches. Only instead of a front yard, this is my terrace. There’s a nifty thing we reefers use in our tanks, purchased at Home Depot type stores, called egg crate. Basically, it’s sheets of thick plastic gridding, safe to use in a coral reef tank for all kinds of things; frag racks, dividers in a sump, etc. Being a reefer, I of course had some egg crate in the apartment. Husband clipped it to fit the space between the top of the terrace divider and the bottom of the terrace above us. Other assorted crap like not in use orange Homer buckets (another reefing must) line the space underneath the divider, so they can’t walk through. Now they’re nesting, laying eggs on the neighbor’s half of the terrace.

The other day Flower Child and I were walking to the grocery store. We saw a pigeon standing on the roof of a parked car, scree-screeing away. An odd sight indeed. Ten steps further, we saw a dead pigeon on the ground, looked like it had been run over. FC said, “Oh, the other one must be telling his friends to come to the funeral.” I would have sent a floral arrangement, but they’d have shit all over it.

Fringe Folks

In case you were wondering, my family and I aren’t the only peripheries left in the city–though it’s true, if you were making a hippie coat of Manhattanites, the fringe would look kind of moth eaten, sparse. This is a lonely place to be, but I do have a couple of friends here. Mostly, we’re all too busy getting by to get together.

Except for Friday nights. Sacred Friday Night Madness. I get together with my buddy, Fatigue. Sacred because we try to do this no matter what, more so because we miss as many weeks as we hit. One beer. I have one beer, while Fatigue downs his pretty but nasty Manhattan. Depending on how the week has gone for each of us, we might share a plate of nachos, a sandwich, or on a particularly flush week, each have our own sandwich.

We dream about leaving the city, me to a beach town, him to another city. We talk about our respective arts; my writing, his singing, depending on the year or month, explain why our dreams are dead/aren’t dead/on hiatus for the time being. We talk about our beasts, Big Senile Dog and Little Incredibly Dumb Dog, and his two, Enormous Skittish Dog and Teeny Yip. We talk about who’s left the neighborhood, who lost their job, their apartment, their life. He asks for updates on the Fringe kiddos and Husband, tells me about the other friends he’s seen and spoken with during the week. He tells me the histories of the old and mostly dead cabaret stars. We calculate the cost of the evening and talk about what we’ll cut during the week to make up for it. By now he’s done with his Manhattan, and is on to impersonations. Fatigue is a very talented guy, and can do a wicked impersonation of just about anyone. I polish the moment, to laugh and not have to think. Then the waitress comes over and asks if we want another round. Of course we do, but we can’t, just tell her everything was perfect and we’re so tired we need the check.

I don’t leave for the evening until I’ve given dinner to Flower Child, Nerd Child, and Man Child. I’m home in time to say Good Night, My Darling to Flower Child and walk the beasts.

Anyone else have a Friday Night Madness?