Wednesday, September 09, 2009

Top Ten Signs You Might Be Living in the Tri-State Area

10. Someone named "Tattoo Tony" wants you iced.

9. You want someone named "Tattoo Tony" iced.

8. Everyone from New Haven pretends they're from Brooklyn.

7. Everyone from Brooklyn pretends they're from Manhattan.

6. Everyone, regardless of where they're actually from, really wants to be somewhere else.

5. The statement "Jesus! You look like crap, you sonuvabitch!" is actually considered a compliment.

4. It makes the evening news when Ziplock bags are used for the intended purpose of storing food, not crack-cocaine.

3. No one has a clue what you just ordered when you say, "I'll have the manicotti, please."

2. Re: #3, you get smacked in the face for saying "please" because the waitress assumes you're being a smart-ass, not polite.

1. "Gun control" means the Mayor doesn't wave around his own .38 Special during town council meetings.


Tuesday, September 08, 2009

screw that!

Tattoo, on penis of patient: Fuck this.

The Curious Incident of the Fake Wife In The Nighttime.

Scene: night shift, intensive care unit at a large county teaching hospital; surgical resident attempting to elicit information from haggard-looking woman at patient's bedside.


RESIDENT:
(with faked air of pleasantness)
So, you're his wife?


WOMAN:
Well, yeah... I mean, we've been together for six months!


RESIDENT:
(increasingly dubious)
Yes, but are you his
legal spouse?

WOMAN:
Well, I sleep with him. We have sex. I'm as good as his wife.


RESIDENT:
(patience wearing thin)
I don't think you're understanding me. Did you get married? Do you have legal document saying you are his wife?


WOMAN:
(agitated, emphatically)
You don't understand! We've been together for
six months. We have sex and stuff! He don't got nobody else! I'm his wife!


Sunday, September 06, 2009

beginning, middle, end.


Beginnings are easy. Endings are, in some ways, even easier. But the middle? It's the hardest part.

Middles are murky, untidy, full of bluffs and blind alleys. Nobody can say, in the middle of something, what or when the End will be--it just is. The End might sideline you, it might knock the wind out of you, or it might be a gentle passing into nothing--but it's certain. But the Middle of Something? Impossible to say, how long it'll last, how far it's got to go, how much more you've got to endure.

After the fine, heady rush of a Beginning, with its newness and shiny glamour--the Middle comes as a bit of a nasty shock. It's the unexpected wrinkle in a clean linen tunic, the missed stitch in the knitting noticed three rows too late, the running-out-things-to-say on a first date, and the oh-fuck-I-just-said-too-much-and-too-loud of an argument in the calming lull after the first thunder of anger and passion, it's the bland, boring and scarily undefinable center of a Twinkie.

The Middle: it drags on. It doesn't know what to make of itself--is it the end of the beginning or the beginning of the end? The Middle questions its every choice, its every move. It squints into the future, blinded by sunspots of brilliant dreams yet tangled in the kudzu of fate. It is a lazy day dream, distracted by what might have been and what will be.

The Middle second and triple and quadruple guesses itself. It fucks up, makes the wrong the decisions. It fucks up some more. Sometimes, it rights itself--more often, it stays off-balance, like some pathetic leaning tower of Pisa. It is caught in the cat's cradle between hope and despair.

I am good at beginnings--those require only a bit of arrogance and the mad assumption whatever I'm doing might be The Right Thing, at long last. And I am very, very good at endings: a needle full of dull numbness and the thing--whatever it is or was--is done.

But the Middle... ah, the Middle. It confounds, it buffets, it lulls, and then it dares belligerently to take it--to take you--to the edge of the end and throw it--and you-- off the cliff.

And I absolutely suck at it.