Weekend Plans: Fried Chicken, Showers, Pedicures

So Cass is away again, and I, Tiresias, at this late hour, must think of something to round out the week.

Usually doesn't bode well when someone begins with such a weak premise. I have a number of things in line, even along topics that don't involve defecation and vomiting and crude mentions of flesh falling out of their clothing ... though there's plenty of that, and no end of inspiration when I look to my own wardrobe and how sometimes unsuccessfully it encases all the bits, though I console myself with the fact that I'm really not out to vie with all the contestants of the Lil Kim Pageant to see whose bits fall out with the greatest of ease. I, on the other hand, look down in horror to see that my gardening pants that I wear on my dog walks have hitched down so far everyone can see the logo stripe on my underwear, plus a stripe of blinding anemic white that is my belly, that is something that has not seen the sun since the third grade, when I had that one-piece bathing suit with the midriff chopped out (I really shudder to think what some grown women with their very much grown bellies would look like if this suit were resurrected, and I’m gagging to think of the parade of fleshly bellies the texture of grapefruit skin and the consistency and jiggle of runny tofu, probably the next time I take to the beaches where I am, mind you, covered in 45 SPF and sunglasses and a winter-weight muumuu).

But I am not in the frame of mind necessary to work up a diatribe on fashion foibles, even my own, but instead offer the following words of advice, as a great wise prophet should. Things to look out for this weekend. And if you’re on the west coast, I am so very sorry. I’ve only been complaining of having to swim through warmish eighty-degree humidity and gagging from the smell of marinated pits and dog urine steaming from sidewalks and the asswipe over here at Hobos Inc. sneaking into the break room to reheat their grilled mackerel, the smell of death, only surpassed by the smell of warm anchovy, which on a summer day is the most evil gift one can bestow on your co-workers.

So here they are. Words. Between the lines on a page.

• If you feel a tantrum coming, stick your head under the shower, blast it cold, scream through the initial pain and then sing that one song you know from Die Fledermaus.
• If you feel inert and completely lackluster, check your personal email account to see if anyone cared about you in the last twelve minutes. Anyone? Hello? Upset? Well, see the above bullet point then.
• Soak your feet in hot water and lavender oil (with a cold drink in hand). Then scrub away the nastiness with a pumice stone.
• Start that chapter of your debut Blaze Harlequin novel. Start with a sex scene. That’s they only way the Blaze editors (or intern) will read your manuscript.
• Drink prosecco, Cass’s summer drink of choice. And mine? Limeade.
• Read something Russian. They are invariably set in the winter. It’s a good time to read about soldiers trooping through the upper reaches of Siberia and dying of frostbite. Don’t think about heat waves and the body count, both human and bovine, in California.
• Figure out who to blame for the heat wave. For the general rise in temperature. Think about it. Hard.
• Now that your feet are pretty, you might as well polish your nails.
• Watch out for the hobos in the park when walking at twilight. (Coming soon: hobo etiquette, a cautionary tale.)
• Watch at least half an hour of C-Span. Then repeat the first bullet point.
• Call up your old high school acquaintances and have brunch. Try not to talk about high school. Tell them how much you like to knit and crochet and how you’ve just discovered scrapbooking. Then tell them how and when you found the Lord. Tell them you’re running late to your knitting guild. Then go home and repeat the first bullet point.
• Then put on the Smiths. Blast that son of a bitch. Because you should, and because you can.
• If your dog whines at any point, throw her in the tub and perform a modified version of the first bullet point. Then when you’re warbling “Mein Herr Marquis,” you won’t be distorted from trying to sing through all that water. Then you’ll be able to shine undeterred.

Sunbathing in the Great White North

While Tiresias was slaving away, making sure Hobos Inc. continues to shine, communing with the dead at the Mutter Museum, and holding down the fort at Penn, I, Cass:

• floated in the Lake that borders Troy and Canada.

• sat in a lawn chair, lathered in a white paste (that is sunblock). I alternated between reading a page, putting the book down, picking it back up, examining the back, front, and inside covers, reviewing the author’s biography to learn that he is around my age, being pissed about that. I fidgeted.

• saw The Devil Wears Prada with my mother for $12, hobo change, if you will, the cost of ONE movie ticket in Manhattan.

• buried my feet and then unburied them and reburied them.

• having total access to the Troy News and thus a detailed hockey scouting report, I planned possible lines for the team, tried to make the salary cap, and derived a mathematical formula to determine the best possible record for the Sabres next season. I wrote it on the back of a Molson Stock Ale label, popped it into the bottle, and set the bottle at sea, in the hopes that doing so might actualize it.

• ate. A lot.

• drank red, red wine.

• pretended not to assist my little nieces in the Annual Sandcastle Contest at Crescent Beach. They had decided to build a punch bug and because those are scarce, my not quite three-year-old niece thought it prudent to implement the elements of a PT Cruiser into the design. We dug, we filled and emptied buckets, we smoothed and re-smoothed the sand. My brother/their father, the good-looking one (see Cass’s biography for more on this), tried to dispose of the architectural blueprints and Texas Instrument calculator, as they clearly violated the no-adult assistance stipulation. My sister-in-law stood back from the perfectly formed tailpipe and bumper. We looked at one another, furrowed our brows, and knew the carburetor wasn’t going to fly. We immediately handed the shovels to the little girls who were actually enrolled in the contest. And we made serious attempts to destroy evidence of our unintentional enthusiasm. We hoped for a torrential downpour. We kicked at the sand. Apparently we succeeded because my nieces won an honorable mention and not first, second, or third place. Phew.

I see more dead people

Disclaimer: please skip this entire post if you are offended by graphic descriptions (or just plain descriptions) of human specimens. Or bodily functions. Or if you are eating lunch. Because reading further may spoil your appetite. And that would just be a shame.

I hope this is the last of the disclaimers. At least for a while.

For years I’ve dreamed of the soap lady, the blackened, disintegrated body of a woman on display at the College of Physicians in Philadelphia, or the Mütter Museum, her body now a melting corpse made of soap-like adipocere. Given her high fat content and the moist soil, these things caused her body to turn into soap. Ever see Fight Club? In her new glass home, her feet seem so small and delicate, her mouth open as though screaming.

Shudder.

Last month’s pilgrimage to the museum was to visit with her, as well as the other curious remains of the dead … a horn growing out of a man’s forehead, the likeness disturbingly like a well-shaped turd spiraling out above his eyes, and the mega-colon, extracted from a man whose claim to fame in his time was as an exhibit at a dime museum as “The Wind Bag” or “Balloon Man.” The dimensions of his colon are quite breathtaking, the overall length at 8 feet, 4 inches, and the circumferential measurements ranging from 10 to 30 inches. The the rectum was, however, noted to be of a normal size, which was the most frightful piece of information ever.

I once asked my uncle about constipation during a lull, fool that I was, thinking he would give me a straightforward answer and treat my question as confidential. My uncle, an old cracker who liked to sit around and shoot the shit with just about anyone who came into my aunt’s gas station (it got to be so problematic that the cops were banned from ever going into the gas station because they just sat around and talked with my uncle instead of, like, doing their jobs) was actually once upon a time someone who had a crack brain and knew all manner of things. I was working with him and my aunt under duress probably during some miserable holiday vacation, instead of lounging around eating bonbons and hanging out at the mall and reading romance novels as I would have done if I were home for break. Instead, I was mopping floors, stocking the cooler with as many six packs of Molson and Heineken and premium 40s of malt liquor that I could stand to without getting frostbit, authorizing gas pumps and telling shit-for-brains to swipe the card again through the loudspeakers, giving my aunt full-body massages, cooking evening meals, going to Sam’s Club with my uncle, and counting the bills and change in the cash register at the end of the day.

There was little time for reading, writing, hanging with friends (it was a college town, and I knew a considerable number of people there), or, really, if you must know, very little time to take a shit.

So I didn’t. Though if you considered my habits back then, drinking two pots of coffee before noon, eating all manner of horrendous heart disease harbingers from our three rotating greasy spoons we got our meals from, and smoking all the Marlboros I wanted from the cigarette dispenser at the counter, I was a sleek walking laxative, ready to deploy at any given moment.

So then it kind of became a problem, and I became very concerned about what was happening. It seemed I had no control over the matter. I substituted pulverized vegetables for the extra chocolate croissant I usually had, I ate apples, I drank more water, I chased every cigarette with another so I became a true chain smoker.

I couldn’t take it anymore. “Uncle,” I said. “Don’t tell anyone.” And my uncle, in his slow, gummy, country drawl said, “Don’t worry, Tah-reese. I won’t.” So I said, “I’m constipated. And I’m afraid to go now because it’s been four days and I’m afraid I’ll back up the toilet.” And then he said, “Well, you better go soon, but you don’t need to worry about the toilet. What happens is you’re compacting the stool and drawing out the water,” and then he launched into a recounting of the state of his bowels when he was in the army. Lovely.

So I’m imagining this poor mega-colon man who had decades worth of shit inside of him that had been leached of all liquids and just sat there in his large, oval belly, a hard, unyielding mound of waste management gone horribly wrong. His view of mortality must have been an interesting one.

He died young, and he died in the water closet. A prodigious amount of feces (two and a half pails worth is the scientific gauge) was discovered upon autopsy.

And finally (it must have been the apples) came relief, not in the form of a heart attack while on the can, thank heavens, and I was able to eat my overcooked overfried Shoney’s breakfasts with gusto again, and with it the notoriety (among those in the know: my aunt, the stock boy, and the entire police department) as the girl who couldn’t take a crap for five days.

Communion, of sorts

Big, big disclaimer: Much talk of dead people detritus, like preserved limbs, skulls, weird malformations of the skin. Well, not all of that, but if you get grossed out easily, or you’re eating lunch, skip this entire entry.

I can’t watch horror films, but I love seeing human specimens at their most grotesque. At the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia, so many titillating objects elicited my attention, such as the drawers containing objects extracted from people’s throats, endless samples of limbs and blodies that bloomed foul with syphilis, leprosy, smallpox, gout, scarlet fever, and measles, a whole room devoted to specimens preserved in fluid, fetuses, babies, entire body systems, the smaller, dustier, mad-scientist version of Bodies: The Exhibit, currently showing at South Street Seaport.

Then there was the gallery of skulls with yellowed nameplates beneath each one, the paper slightly curled at the edges, the print clear but faded, the typewritten words compelling a certain amount of pathos in the viewer. If all the facts were available, each card listed the area where the skull came from, the name of the unfortunate one, his/her age, and the cause of death. Sometimes additional information that I neglected to copy down, such as “mandibular fracture,” or the descent of something or other (I have such a great memory), but it was the other pieces of information that seemed to hold the most story.

I was accompanied by a friend from graduate school and her mother, who was originally supposed to see this exhibit with me alone, as my poor friend could not think of this place without shuddering with revulsion. She came along because she’s a good friend and because, really, she can’t resist a story. We probably spent almost half the time at the museum just in front of the skull gallery, and because we couldn’t help ourselves, copied down the nameplates of a great many of the unfortunates.

These were a handful that I felt were the most compelling:

• Lower Austria. Franz Braun, age 13. Suicide. Hanged himself because of a discovered theft.
• Gorale (Polish tribe, Tatra Mountains). Stanislas Stara, age 43. Train solder. Died of gunshot wounds.
• Istria, Trieste. Girolamo Zini, age 20. Rope-walker. Died of atlanto-axial dislocation (broken neck).
• Linz, Upper Austria. Simon Juhren, age 19. Suicide. Hanged himself because of unhappy love affair.
• Salzburg. Veronica Huber, age 18. Executed for the murder of her child.
• Island of Lissa, Dalmatia. Orazio Trani, age 39. Idiot.
• Wende (Slovenian tribe). Magdal Pagrac, age 23. Maidservant. Died of puerpal sepsis (childbed fever) in the general hospital.
• Northern Hungary. Julius Farkas, age 28. Protestant, solider. Suicide by gunshot wound of the heart, because of weariness of life.
• Sgigeth (Hungary or Romania). Geza Vironenyi, 80. Reformist, herdsman. At age 70 attempted suicide by cutting his throat. Wound not fatal because of ossified larynx; laryngeal fistula remained. Lived until 80 without melancholy.
• Prague. Araschtau Gottlied, age 19. Suicide by potassium cyanide because of suspected unfaithfulness of his mistress.
• Wallachian. Constantin Anesku, age 32. Died of gunshot wounds in Bucharest. High mandibular body at mid-point of chin.
• Calabria. Alessandro Zaccarella. Bandit. Shot by police in the Abruzzi Mountains.

Definitely stories here, and something that I wish I’d had as a resource back when I used to teach. Wouldn’t these have been great little prompts for stories? Perhaps I would have had to gloss over the fact that I had taken these from skull descriptions at a museum (wet dream for old sawbones the world over), but let’s take the last one, Alessandro, the bandit who was shot by the police in the Abruzzi Mountains. Doesn’t that sound kind of romantic, and if cleaned up a bit, would make a great mist-filled scene in a Gothic suspense novel?

So let me open this up to our dear readers, all four of you. Do any of these skulls inspire a story or a great opening line?

Here's mine:

Running along a rocky, precarious precipice with the wind coming at his front and the whistles and curses of the carabinieri at his back, with the heft of a ten-pound bag of jewels in his nutsack, Alessandro Zaccarella finally realized why his mother always told him to wear roomy, breathable underpants.

Waldfest Attendees Shatter the Silence of Suburban Troy

July 16, 2006

SUBURBAN TROY, New York -- At approximately 6pm, a yellow school bus arrived in a parking lot bordering the NYS interchange. The driver was visibly annoyed and shaken.

Vincent Williams, a resident of the area and owner of Molly, a Sheltie, walks the neighborhood three times a day at equally timed intervals. He recalls the bus screeching into the parking lot and the doors flying open. He noticed that a handful of young men exited the vehicle immediately, while the rest needed “considerable assistance”. One man in a red baseball cap was reported crawling down the three steps backwards.

According to Williams, “One man, noticeably older than the rest of the group, dropped his trousers and yelled some obscenity that I would rather not repeat in the presence of a lady. Another young man whose knuckles were bleeding profusely urinated all over the windows of that bank. And the man in the red baseball hat, he climbed into the passenger seat of a car, only to be rerouted to another car by a blonde woman. He looked to be covered in vomit. And the woman, who I assume was his wife, did not seem pleased. I believe she might have called him an immature f-word, but I couldn’t be sure because she rolled up the vehicle windows.”

Williams describes their departure from the parking lot as quick: “The rest piled into various cars and left the area. One man lingered a bit and then appeared to stagger down the middle of a side street. When I returned home, I informed my wife that tonight would be a good night to keep Molly indoors.”

Sources confirm that the group was returning from the annual Waldfest, a German “Festival in the Woods;” held annually on a private lot bordered by various deciduous forests in Southwestern New York, Waldfest is a family event celebrating German heritage with ethnic food, song, and dance.

A source close to the group at Waldfest states that the twenty or so men are in their twenties and thirties, are gainfully employed, and wore t-shirts with an unidentifiable logo and the wording: “Waldfest: Who Knew?” This source maintains that the men pushed their picnic tables together and sat on them while chanting and lifting alternating members of the group upside down to drink from hoses attached to two kegs of an alcoholic substance that was presumably a wheat beer.

The men were later seen singing loudly, vomiting, and squirting each other with ketchup and mustard.

Helga Klingenschmitt noticed “the men were very excited to sing ‘Prosit,’ all except the one man who spoke very good German to me earlier in the day. He was asleep with the hose in his mouth. Maybe, the sun made him tired.”

Summer Uniform Etiquette

With summer comes great responsibility. Major fashion malfunctions a la tits flopping out of flimsy sundresses (watch out Pam) and bits of ass falling out of mal-positioned thongs and babydoll dresses have caused Tiresias to relapse into periods of intense darkness and Cass to have to lead him back to the light. These horrible sights cause great weeping and gnashing of teeth, biblical style. Here’s help for the unfortunates.

Never, fucking ever:

• Wear clear bra straps
• Go without a bra unless your tits swim in an A-cup or they’ve just recently been lifted, you plastic whore, and they would chafe in a bra and need to be aired and gently handled
• Substitute a bikini top for a bra
• Wear a flimsy cotton white bra with a white t-shirt if you want to keep your dignity
• Forget that it often rains at whim in this city and prepare yourself accordingly lest you look like you emerged from a Budweiser ad or a wet t-shirt contest, or both
• Let your thong straps hang out of your waistband (if you fear pantylines, it’s better to go commando if you have a little ass. However, if each of your ass cheeks occupies separate zip codes, don the grannies).
• Wear unlined pants if you have the potential for cottage cheese ass (if you don’t know what this is, just make sure you have lined pants or they’re a size that actually fits you and don’t look like you swiped them from your little size zero sister, you fat cellulite-laden fuck)
• Wear babydoll dresses that actually get caught on your ass. If you’ve got a shelf, forget it.
• Wear your graduation/confirmation dress and claim that you can “still fit in it.” Because you can’t.
• Wear a cashmere sweater in the summer unless you want it to smell like goat’s balls for the rest of its life.
• Admit you don’t wear deodorant. You will never be invited anywhere, ever, you stinky new age whorish ball of ass.
• Leave the house with yellowed/black/green/rotting toenails. Please cover them up. OPI nail polish. They sell them in Duane Reade now and are quite reasonably priced.

Seed Stitch or Stockinette?

It was rough going for a while when knitting needles were banned from public transportation hubs. What if a bitch just wants to knit a baby blanket for her stupid little green-snotted milk-vomiting nephew? What if knitting clothes out of discounted dollar skeins of yarn found in the Everything-Must-Go crafts megastore is the only thing a hobo can do when her main source of income is scrounging for loose change under the fine Penn Station pastry shops? Sometimes Zaro's Bakery will only cough up a few dimes, while on a good day, there's a nice fat quarter in the mix.

This leads me to introduce a mentor who knows her way around the finest discounted yarns. In one of my notebooks, I drew a sketch of one of my co-workers, an elderly woman, with her mouth slack in the perfect pose of someone who is gently fighting sleep. Some days she walks around with sunglasses perched atop her head while wearing reading glasses, the rims usually a bright jewel color, and she rotates them according to what she is wearing. Like any self-respecting woman of a certain age, her favorite color is purple, and she is not afraid of mixing it with other like-minded colors.

She's the head of my Wednesday afternoon knitting circle.

My secret life involves long hours sitting with the drone of the tv or some music in the background. Sometimes, if you channel your inner Type A obsessive-compulsive freak just right, you don't need the meditative aid of white noise or old tv show reruns, the holy trinity of the WB's Gilmore Girls, Veronica Mars, and Charmed, and before you know it, you'll have knitted yourself the world's longest scarf. This elderly woman is my mentor in my secret life as a wannabe professional knitter. Under her tutelage, I have completed three samples, a chevron-patterned afghan, and about thirty-seven granny squares, which I will stitch together and make into another afghan.

And my next project, since the winter is coming and it's hard to fight the elements in cotton, will be a black pencil skirt, and the correspondence between me and my mentor has flown swiftly with verve and passion. She may occasionally bitch me out for omitting a semicolon or not knowing a proofreading symbol (occasionally may mean three times a day, on average), but when she talks knitting, I am no longer an unsteady illiterate in need of a daily grammar lesson and a smackdown; we talk skeins and needle sizes and the virtues of worsted weight and luster sheen, and how cute it would be for her niece and doll to have matching fun fur jackets.

I was in high spirits yesterday, thinking of my great new enterprise as skirt knitter. Maybe, I chortled to Cass, we will become the next Missoni! Maybe we will be in such demand for our luster sheen lightweight home-knit pencil skirts that we will be able to pull ourselves, once and for all, out of the pit of near-destitution and be able to live dumpster- and public-facilities free.

I’ll See You in Hell: An Epic in Three Parts

Part One: The Setting

In downtown Troy, not far from the City Mission is a local watering hole of sorts. I say local because it is only known to residents of Troy and visitors with strong Troy connections. You won’t find this in Fodor’s Guide to Troy. And I say hole, because well, it is a hole. For years the sign was broken in half, as a brawl in the apartment above sent one of the residents flying out the window and through the sign. The restrooms smell a little like the thirty-seventh layer of hell; actually they make our familiar facilities in Penn Station look like a Kohler ad. The ladies room features indoor/outdoor carpeting. But the restrooms aren’t really a deal-breaker as half the patrons prefer not to use them or even move from their bar stool when the urge strikes. The bar is coated in a layer of something so thick that if you tried to slide a beer bottle to a friend seated next to you, the bottle wouldn’t move. I never ever order anything here that does not come with a cap. You never ask for a lime wedge to garnish your Corona here. In fact you never ask for anything that involves a knife, cutting board, or fruit. Folks with OCD or excessive cleanliness needs usually break out into hives upon passing through the doorframe. During the winter, well with gas prices being what they are and all, it’s best to leave your coat on. And your scarf. Gloves. Goretex boots.

The jukebox, though partially shattered and prone to skipping (nothing that can’t be fixed by a swift kick), is awesome. Hit 12B and the proprietor will hop up on the radiator with broom in hand for his rendition of “Surfing Safari.” 34F is another nice selection, because I promise you, you haven’t seen anything until you witness a row of down-on-their-luck hobos brighten and raise their scraggly heads to the sound of Whitney Houston belting out “I Will Always Love You.” Apparently HOPE does spring eternal. And with that, I say touché to a local bar reviewer who says he witnessed “hope staggering out the front door” here. Not so, sir.

For the teenage set (and yes, they are a large contingent here as a library card constitutes proper ID), there is also a pool table. A few of them have even retired their hockey jerseys here. Some professional-type hipsters out of quarters broke the lock box off of the table, so a game of pool is free…a nice bonus if you can actually locate enough balls and cues to play. Professional hipsters? There are a few who congregate here for the atmosphere and a chance to let loose (like break things, guest-bartend, and toss empty beer bottles against the wall “let loose”) without worrying that a current or future client might witness this. When the hipsters are in attendance you can bank on a pizza and wings delivery as they tend to understandably eschew anything BBQ-ed on the pint-size grill propped against the front door. The pizza also adds to sociability as guests from the City Mission see this as a nice break from their routine and the hipsters, as a chance to mingle with the other regulars. Come back in a week after said pizza party and you will likely catch the proprietor passing out leftover slices for a quarter each.

Have I made the atmosphere clear enough? Can you see yourself there, dear reader? Your thumb securely fastened over the opening of your beer bottle lest some asbestos fall from the ceiling into your drink? Your two dollars in change stuck, literally stuck, to the bar? Swaying with the others to “Once in a Lifetime”? Shifting uncomfortably from one cheek to the other as you think of what/whom might have preceded you on the bar stool?

Part Two: The Crew

Good. Because what makes the experience – be it a sociological study or a descent into the underworld or a wow-been-there-done-that-I-feel-so-much-better-about-my-life-now or an opportunity to cut loose – is the characters. You can see the bar, the juke box, even the clientele. The staff is another matter, altogether. The proprietor requires his own epic.

The lone female bartender is a sweet, middle-aged woman with a great smile. She always tells you how great you look. She gives you a wink, adds a “hon” to everything. She’s been known to rock festive clothing on holidays, tinsel for Christmas, a jersey for a big game, shamrock stickers on her cheeks for St. Patty’s Day. Her hair is kinky curly and kind of looks like she uses a transformer as a blow dryer (think Slash here from G’n’R, minus gel or a stylist). One night a friend, blinded (and I’m talking like Braille blinded, sorry Ti) by booze and maybe unable to see through her hair, hooked up with her. I know this because at that exact moment (approximately 2:55AM), I received 4 phone calls and so many texts that my phone actually shorted out. His life has never been the same.

There are a couple of guest bartenders: a numbers/stock wiz (one of the professional hipsters) who likes the view from behind the bar, where he can hold court and order the proprietor to dance like a trained monkey; a guy from the City Mission who steps in when there’s a staffing shortage and works for his drinks. But the guy you could count on to know your name when you walk through the door is the proprietor’s brother, Bernie. Sadly, Bernie recently passed.

There are 5 things you MUST know about Bernie:
1) He knows the value of a dollar: Once, some patrons looking for a little added fun asked Bernie if he thought he could score for them. They gave him 30 bucks and asked him for weed. He came back with crack. When they looked puzzled and slightly dismayed, he responded: “It’s so much better.”
2) His insight guides decisions: Once, I, Cass was on a date, and on my way out of the bar, a disheveled and drunk man stumbled out of his seat. “Cass,” he yelled. “Hey Cass, haven’t see you in awhile! When you coming down to the bar?” I turned. “Hi Bernie, good to see you,” I replied. My date was horrified and as a result, I decided that he was a tight ass and that real men don’t drink Mich Ultra, anyway.
3) You scratch his back, he’ll scratch yours: Often when Bernie was behind the bar, we would order a drink and hold out a bill, only to have Bernie wave it away. Then later with sweat pouring down his face, “ppsst Cass, can you watch the bar while I run out for a minute?”
4) He never forgets a face/name: If you ever needed a friendly face, Bernie was your man. One of my friends (a tall, attractive blonde) recalls: “Bernie never forgot my name and I liked how he always shortened it to add a –y to the end, Joany. And then how when I waved to him, he always leaned across the bar to give me a hug and try to feel my….yeah.”
5) He never misses a party, EVER: Bartenders and bar staff and daily patrons can live tough lives. And I don’t mean hard, as in, a difficult sense. I mean, tough, like on the body, liver, and other important internal organs. And despite these challenges, this incredible physical responsibility, Bernie was always there, always the life of the party.

Part Three: The Funeral

I, Cass, am not a crier….except at weddings and funerals. Ti has already penned an entry on how to survive the wedding season, tear free. And because the two can be so closely related, I hope to offer our readers the same here.

The email arrived in my Inbox unobtrusively enough. A one-liner that told me of our friend Bernie’s passing. One of the professional hipsters contacted me to be sure I had heard the news and asked if I’d be coming back to Troy for the services. I told him I didn’t think bartender qualified under The Hobos Inc. Human Resources bereavement policy. He said he wasn’t sure which of the services he would be attending or which of the after-parties (there were to be quite a few), but he would call with a report. I felt badly. I knew my trips back to Troy’s local watering hole wouldn’t be the same and that Bernie embodies a special kind of hoboness. And so I wanted to pen a eulogy to our fellow hobo, Bernie. But then, it appeared in my Inbox as if Bernie himself had written, in absentia:

So a Christian burial was had for our friend Bernie and at one point the minister stood up and invited the audience to offer some thoughts, reflections on the deceased. A few people got up and offered a funny anecdote, a few characterizations (“he was beautiful,” one woman cried into her hanky). And then his brother, who descended the mountain he climbed a few years back (when his home was condemned by the sanitation department) but apparently hadn’t had time to shave or ditch the climber-gear, stood up. He cleared his throat and clenched his fist, drew it back behind his shaggy neck and then, as if launching a football, yelled, “I’ll see you in hell, Bernie!”

There were a few gasps, and a distinct cry emerged from the crowd. The minister bent to comfort the woman and then quickly stepped back to the pulpit. “Well, since no one can [ahem, throat clearing] top that, I think we’ll move along.” A handful of insightful mourners nodded and murmured Amen.

And with that short, concise battle cry, Bernie’s eulogy was born. R.I.P.

Tis the Season

Cass had to go to a wedding, and she fretted a little about the arrangements. Really, on a hobo budget, getting out of the city is hard. You spend days figuring out the cheapest things to do, which may involve taking the subway, transferring crosstown, then taking the green line on the other side up, to which there is a bus that will take you into the heart of Queens and to the airport ... and the bus stop is in an area that makes you vow never to go to the east side again, even though it's hardly representative of the entire east side, but believe me, I don't need much convincing.

As with the internal workings of weddings for the immediate party, there are questions that guests have to consider. What do you wear? How do you get there? Do you need a date? Can you slink in without one? Do you need to memorize a stock list of answers for the elderly? Heels? Easy Spirit or bejeweled Birkenstocks? What is hobo etiquette for gift-giving? Wrap it in the prettiest paper you can afford and hope that it doesn't leak or stink? So I ventured forth some options. In this recounting of a wedding long past, I hoped to alleviate whatever worries Cass had concerning her own impending wedding trip. Here's mine:

Did I tell you about the time I was supposed to be a bridesmaid for my college friend, then I freaked (it was my last year/semester as a grad student and I had just lost teaching/funding and I hated living in tooth-crack/ass-crack Indiana and I hated everything) and I declined but said I'd show up (in spite of all the above and having NO money) and the day before I was supposed to drive out the guys changing the oil broke something in my car, got me a rental car (that I paid for), which was an extended cab Ford F-150, which I drove across what felt like half the country ... then to find that I arrived so late for the wedding that when I roared up in my TRUCK, the wedding party that I was sort of supposed to be a part of was outside taking photos?

I think I gave the wedding couple like these freaking insane ginzu knives (I forgot what they're called but they're these super-chic Japanese things that could kill you with a nudge). And of course, half delirious and drunk on half a glass of red, I announced to the bride at the reception: I'm the only chink here.

We're still friends, believe it or not.

***

Well, I, Tiresias, can no longer afford chef’s knives. I watched people slosh wine all over each other while dancing to the full jazz band. I ate my dinner, but regrettably, this was not the kind of wedding where I could ask for seconds and then pad my old-lady Gucci bag with biscuits and gravy and chicken wings and whole ears of corn and an entire plate of kung pao chicken (which is what my mother and her old-lady friends do at Korean weddings). I stayed just long enough to drink down a hot coffee and then took the cigarettes I bought (with an old college friend, who snuck out with me shortly after I entered the hall to the gas station down the road) and grabbed the little box of Godiva chocolates at my table and stuffed three all at once in my mouth and drove from rural Connecticut to Philadelphia that night, arriving at my friend's apartment at 3:45, with chocolate drool and bits of tobacco around my mouth. On the way, I hallucinated twice and nearly drove in to the median.

So if you find that you're feeling gob-smacked and tired from the usual six weddings in one summer and that your vacation time and money has been spent listening to little Asian girl string quartets playing the Palchelbel Canon and Ave Maria when you could be farting on your couch listening to Led Zeppelin and Prince, take heart. Think of the memories you will help create. Think how steadily and freely the wine will flow. Think upon my own tale of woe. Think of the cost of this wedding. I was there for three hours, tops, and it cost around $1500, plus four days from school, two course incompletes, four days constipation, and long drives back and forth through Ohio, easily the most boring state this side of Oklahoma.

It was the last time I was asked to be a bridesmaid, ever.

The Rise of AMEX

I, Cass, am predicting that the AMEX Marketing Department (or whichever ad agency they employ) has been working some serious OVERTIME. I feel like AMEX is following me.

Just the other day Ti appeared at Hobos Inc. with a chilling tale from the dog run at Central Park. It was an oppressively hot summer morn with no breeze, just dead air and two single professional women gabbing.
Woman 1: And if I really wanted to, I could go out with someone different every night, like if I really wanted to.
Woman 2: Oh I know, me too! [Aside to small purse-size dog sniffing a German Shepherd’s recently sliced balls] Oh Princey baby, no, no, Mommy says no. But my problem is, how am I supposed to go out with these guys? I mean I go to all the right places, I know what I’m capable of, you know. But how can I even entertain the thought of a man who doesn’t have the same level AMEX card as me? How?

How indeed, oh logical one? Well, despite the fact that I could keep an entire blog afloat on what’s ideologically and logically wrong with that statement, I won’t. And I am doomed to remember an episode of MTV’s The Newlyweds that centered around Jessica (when she still seemed stupidly sweet and kindof-of-the-moment and not a castoff train wreck) being so incredibly pumped that she qualified for the AMEX Black card, a level of credit and spendthriftdom only reserved for the very rich, powerful, and elite. Apparently, it is an invitation only card, and Jessica was convinced that she might be the very last celebrity EVER to receive one. Jessica also seemed happier in that episode than she did in any of the excerpts from her aired and re-aired and re-aired and re-re-aired wedding. I could likewise keep an entire blog afloat on what’s ideologically and logically wrong with that episode, show, individual/couple, and what’s absolutely humiliating and tragic about the fact that I remember that. However, I won’t.

And then Saturday night at a delightful underground tapas bar on 10th between 6th and 5th (much closer to 6th), there it was again. AMEX. After my friend pinpointed a nice white wine with the help of the bar staff and we ordered half of the menu, I happened to glance down at the very bottom of the menu where they list the chef’s name. And there it was: We ONLY accept the American Express card. Figuring that, as is typical with a disbelieved hobo-like prophetess, I had approximately $7.43 in my wallet, I immediately grew queasy. What about my Master Card I wondered? What about VISA? After all, “it is everywhere you want to be.” I flipped through the receipts that comprise 90% of the contents of my wallet to find that I actually had more foresight than I thought: $60. I asked my friend if she had seen the MC/Visa obituary at the bottom of the menu, and she had not. She shared my shock…why just AMEX? And she reminded me that we should be used to the fact that half the great little restaurants and bars in our neighborhood are cash only establishments. But then why the wild card: AMEX? After AMEX had been excluded for so many years by little logos affixed to the back of cash registers all over: VISA, MC, Diner’s Club (for God’s sake?!), why the sudden comeback? Why is AMEX everywhere?

My friends and I wondered about this and after a few more sips of wine, I, Cass, decided (as I am sometimes inclined to do on nights when I’m feeling particularly rowdy) to ask the young man behind the bar. He wished my friend had asked him and later, that I would shut up and die. But, he humored me all the same.
C: Excuse me. Do you really accept just American Express?
YM: Yes.
C: Why? Do you not like VISA?
YM: What?
C: Why don’t you like VISA? “It’s everywhere you want to be.”
YM: Um…………… we take American Express.
C: What about Master Card? What do you have against Master Card? You know, “for everything else there’s Master Card.”
YM: What are you talking about?
Friend: You know the commercial? You have to know the….
YM: What commercial?
C: Are you for real? It’s one of the most brilliant ad campaigns ever….you don’t know it? I mean seriously, the young father taking his son to a country ice rink on a blistery winter day one, seriously almost made me cry. You know, the one where it says, “hockey skates: $150, gloves: $35, watching your favorite place become his favorite place: priceless”?
YM: Um……………
C (for Ti, in absentia but via telepathy): Do you live in a toilet?
YM (no sounds just puzzled stares at this point):
C: Ok, ok, Master Card, it goes something like this. Chorizo wrapped shrimp, $8. [dramatic pause]
Friend: A glass of Riesling, $12. [dramatic pause]
C: Going to a great tapas bar with little if any cash to learn they only accept American Express and have never heard of Master Card, priceless. “There are some things money can’t buy, for everything else there’s Master Card.”
YM: Oh.

So Ti and I have decided that AMEX is realizing some pretty incredible feats; not only have they transformed a young bartender into a medieval man, they thrilled Jessica Simpson, and they’ve turned some self-important, elitist, miniature dog toting women on the hunt into gold……oh wait. In the interim, we at Hobos Inc., are plotting the resurrection of the MC/Visa sticker, the official cards of Hobos Inc. and every day hobos all over.

The Birth of Tiresias, Revisited

So the reasons why Cass and I have anointed ourselves hobos in space are, I think, quite clear. But why we chose such names proves our endeavor as a sort of meeting of the minds, even though we come from such different backgrounds and experiences.

As with everything, it all started with a love story of sorts. And perhaps a love of story. A tertiary member in the fabric of our hobo lives fell in love with our acquaintance, and we used this as an opportunity to flex our muscles as young novice soothsayers.

“Tell me, Cassandra, do you feel that this will be a fruitful union?” I asked one day.

She answered, “It is an ill wind that blows no good, Tiresias.”

We laughed. And through our snorting giggles, our identities were born. We had now appointed ourselves as two of the greatest soothsayers and voices of the gods and those who know the future this side of the River Styx. We are the modern-day tragic ancients who babbled wisdom and bemoaned the frailty and foolhardiness of man. We are better than Jean Dixon. We laugh in the face of Nostradamus’s most dire threats. And Revelations? The mark of the beast? The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse? Mere silly storytelling. We all know the real apocalypse will come when we propel ourselves into a major climate change from our wasteful consumerist ways.

Praise the lord, and pass the ammunition.

Sorry. I, Tiresias, have no idea of the origins of all that. All I can do is apologize. But see? As soothsayers, we are but mere vessels for the truth, and as you know, the truth will set you free. So thus, the birth of the wise, all-knowing hobos. We know everything, even though no one else knows this about us. And we’re particularly adept at pinpointing doomed relationships. The truth in such matters appears as clearly to us as the sight of someone walking by in a Balenciaga coat that some five-year-old went to town on with a Bedazzler, or as though The Truth were etched on a subway advertisement the length of an entire car: “Yes, he will use your crazy ass for sex and never talk to you again.”

As far as how well these classical figures mesh with our personae, this makes sense, of course, as Cassandra was the more well-known of ancient Western soothsayers, and Tiresias is the drag queen that time forgot. Not only was he famous for his necessary role in Oedipus Rex (famously: “Oedipus my boy! Hey! Hey, Eddy! If you go that way you’re gonna kill your father and screw your mother and have children with dubious genetic coding, you stupid git”), but he had also witnessed a private moment between two snakes (private: two snakes fucking, which is like two worms fucking after a thunderstorm but much, much worse) and he struck one of them because he couldn’t leave well enough alone and it turned him into a woman. It took him seven years before he found a pair of mating snakes and he could strike the one that changed him back into a man.

While he was a woman, though, I believe he eschewed his duties as wise prophet and like my very beloved aunt (and I write this with all due respect), whored himself across the Aegean Sea and back. My aunt, on the other hand, in this modern day and age of the great aeroplane, spread herself across the vast Pacific through two continents. She owns a convenience store in the middle of nowhere now.

And besides, don’t the names Cassandra and Tiresias hold a bit of the ancient powers? Doesn’t it inspire you to listen, to heed, to act with all haste in fear of the consequences? Don’t you, when Cass says the baby doll look is out, out, out (especially tie-dyed dresses and sweatshop-manufactured synthetic ruffled ones embellished with puff paints and plastic beads?), immediately look to your frocks in the closet with disgust, to then throw them into a box headed straight for Goodwill?

Don’t you, when Cass says Diane von Furstenberg is out, out, out, and that you must donate them to Goodwill because they’re so last season, they were never in in the first place, promptly get rid of them and then laugh at the poor unfortunate who buys the dresses and wears them proudly, as though she’s found the jackpot of the century?

Pity the fool, don’t you?

Okay. I didn’t think so. But I thought I’d try.

See? No one listens to us. They never have.

But if you do happen to take our sage advice and donate your old DVF dresses, please do the right thing and email us the exact size, design, color(s), and new location of your goods. We’ll be happy to hold on to it for you in the event it may come back in style again, but we really doubt it. And we really know what we’re talking about.

Passing the Flame, Keeping It Alive

Cass is back. Thank GOD.

I can hear it. All the way from readerland. The sounds of great jubilance, cheering, rotten-fruit throwers chanting, "No more windbag Tiresias! No more I'll-try-to-keep-it-under-four-hundred-words blind prophet. No more mention of copraphagic dogs and many-legged and furry roommates. No more Tiresias, period."

At least until Cass posts a couple of entries.

We'll be back soon.

On the Beach

I, Tiresias, have not enjoyed a light salt spray along the boardwalk or a serious summer tan in years. Quite possibly in almost seven years, as that was the last time I was on a beach and in a bathing suit at the same time. Though maybe this doesn’t count, as it was in October at Cape Cod and we were courting pneumonia, even though everyone knows swimming in New England during the World Series does not often meet with positive results. The next time after that, it was a parking lot a couple hundred yards away from the beach. And I guess tugging at the suit bottom and frowning in a Target dressing room doesn’t count.

Anyway, as I feel like sort of a novice and know how forgetful I am, here is a list of the things I must not forget to take with me to the beach:

*Kiehl’s 45 SPF sunblock
*Scrunchie
*Book—should I bring the Sally Lockhart book, The Ruby in the Smoke by Philip Pullman or All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren, which I borrowed from Cass and should be reading but is slow going, even though I like it and some of the passages are so gorgeous as to make you weep? Or something entirely different … a Business Week, the latest issue of Paste Magazine, or Razor’s Edge by Somerset Maugham? Or a Russian novel set in winter as a way to keep cool?
*My notebook, so I can “blog” while at the beach. Never off duty, though this week wouldn’t convince anyone of this fact. Just know that there are several entries in the queue and should get fired up soon.
*iPod. Will listen to Joni Mitchell, Lauren Hill, Derek and the Dominoes, and John Prine.
*Towel
*Pen
*Black electrical tape
*Clear mailing tape
*Extra pair of shoes
*Shirt and skirt, just in case I decide to float a bit in the Atlantic in my shorts and tank top.

Things I will need at Penn Station, the portal to all good things:
*Water
*Superglue
*Magazine, cause you can’t have enough
*A caramel macchiato

Things I wish I had for the beach:
*Karen Carpenter’s greatest hits
*Jim Croce’s greatest hits
*Musicology
*Mad Libs.

The tape and glue so I can repair my glasses on an as-needed basis.

But I don’t like to think when I am at the beach, feeling the sun on my face and wind rippling through my hair, so I probably won't have much use for Mad Libs or the aforementioned books. We’ll try to be good roving reporters. If we see someone doing some serious nosepicking or working on sudoku puzzles, you, dear reader, will be the first to know.

And Baby Makes Four

I, Tiresias, had what I can only call a visual feast, in spite of recent difficulties. I broke one of the arms on my glasses last week. Mornings at the park, people straggle up the hill still in their pajamas, some women bra-less, most everyone frowzy-haired, shirts stained with coffee or toothpaste, faces encrusted with spittle or eye cheese. Sure, they're wearing last night's fetes all over their shirtsleeves, but they have nice accessories. That includes glasses. I come panting up the hill with my dog, leashed because of her tendency to wander the quiet places that provide the chance for a decent tete-a-tete, which also serve as what one of the dog owners baldly calls "the bathroom of the homeless." My dog seeks these places out. So no matter the state of my glasses, I need them when I'm with the dog. With help from a friend I visited last weekend in Philadelphia, the arm has been reattached with super glue (which has stopped being so super and is now a clearish dull glop covering both broken ends) reinforced with black electrical tape, then doubly reinforced with invisible tape after the electrical tape had its run.

It's times like these when you notice how much and how torridly you've fallen by the wayside. But now I know for sure that no one, at least in my neighborhood (and at least all the dog owners) wears discount reading glasses from the drugstore. My favorites were the wide-armed tortoise-shell Fendi sunglasses. No CVS in sight.

Ah, CVS. This reminds me to get more tape and glue. And mouse traps.

Yes, mouse traps. The topic at hand. I have another new roommate. I'll call her Chita. I don't know why I'm coming up with all these Hispanic names, except a friend named my water bug Paco (whom I hope is well and dead at this point, as I've set out eight roach traps), and I'm just going with it. But I'll give the next guest a Russian name.

All I know is, as I sat down last night to chicken and vegetables stewed in pepper sauce and sliced vegetables (cucumbers, tomatoes, and yellow pickled dikon that I wanted to display just for the colors) while watching a movie, I was interrupted by a sound that could only be of something scuttling across a wooden board. I looked up. A mouse! Gone in a flash, into my closet (I don't want to think about it). My dog looked up and stared hard at the closet. She looked at me, then looked back at the closet, so I know I wasn't imagining things.

I lost my appetite, but not just because of Chita. I watched the rest of this Korean movie called Welcome to Dongmakgol, which was described to me as a feel-good war/comedy, and then of course realized that there is no such thing as a feel-good war/comedy, especially once the Koreans get ahold of it. At one point, I said (out loud, to my dog and Paco and Chita), "I thought it was supposed to be a comedy!" The dog sniffed and went back to her corner post. Who knows what the hell Paco and Chita were doing. Frolicking together in my closet? Eating linens, shitting on silks?

A visual feast, indeed.

New Roommate

This hobo has another companion to welcome her home every night. His name is Paco. He likes to lie under the skinny chest or the radiator, and he likes the scent of bleach misting on him like a light, clean rain.

He scuttled in on Tuesday as I was enjoying my fourth of July dinner with the dog while watching a Korean film that I vaguely remembered seeing last August. I lost my appetite upon seeing him, as I jumped up wanting to greet him properly (with a To Be Read Business Week sitting patiently atop a pile of other magazines), but he didn't seem to want to be greeted, nor did he want some of my excess reading material, as he dashed for the chest and remained there, quivering, silent as though dead, though I entreated him to come out with some hearty slaps on the floor.

Last night, I grilled chicken and made pasta primavera, hoping to entice Paco into joining me. But he was gone, quietly, a thief in the night.

However, this morning as I ushered the dog out for her morning run, I saw Paco's nose quivering by the door. How could it be? But yes, it was he! So I took the aforementioned Business Week and pounded after him, slapping him a good ten times with it. He fled under the radiator, and my repeated attempts to get him out with the Swiffer only strengthened his resolve to remain under there.

And so now I have two unpaying roommates, and I, Tiresias, am currently suffering from a very bad case of hives. I wanted to end our time together in a nice, eco-friendly way, but I may have to break out the Raid tonight after I watch The Devil Wears Prada. I almost hoped at times that my dog would find Paco and eat him, but she really does, weirdly enough, have champagne tastes.

Morning: With the other normal dog owners

A vindication of sorts, that there is indeed a difference between the east and west side, in a conversation today under a huge ass umbrella as the soft steady rain poured down on us and our dogs frolicked in the spray:

Me: How was your weekend?

The owner of the black lab/basset hound mix: Oh, great! I don't really remember. I drank a lot. I was on the east side.

Me: Oh. [what else is there to say?]

TOOTBLBHM: You know, the dogs there are really so different.

Me (and the other dog owners): Really?

TOOTBLBHM: Yeah. I mean, there were all these labs and their owners, and they were like, so where did you get him? Who's your breeder?

Me: The ASPCA?

TOOTBLBHM: I know! And they were like, "Mehhhh." And then they asked, "Who does your dog play with?" And I was like, "Uh, pitbulls?" And they were like, "What? Pitbulls?

Me [crowing]: I knew the east side was totally different!

The other dog owners: Yeah, they're kinda weird over there.

TOOTBLBHM: I mean, they can't imagine dogs playing with other breeds over there.

Me: Come here, baby. Oh no, what are you eating? [Running, running.]

The other dog owners: I'm so glad I live over here.

Me: Come back here, you!

Of course, a little in danger of stating the obvious, these canine owners aren't so very far from being called cuckoo as well, and I, Tiresias, have a soft spot for my dog who never responds to my commands, never helps me cross the street, has an uncanny sixth sense for chicken bones and turds, especially human turds, and drools on my foot when I sit down to dine.

Holidays are here again

Cass is gone for the week, so here's fair warning. She may communicate through the old ways (tea leaves, telepathy, astral projection, or dictation from her cell phone that may not work at the beach while I, Tiresias, faithful scribe, will tap away at ninety-seven percent accuracy, because blindness and allergies keep me from peak eficency. thus my spelling problems), but it looks like it'll just be me for a while. Lucky, lucky reader.

Did I mention that I am a former failed spelling bee champ? I couldn't bear to reinforce all the Asian stereotypes that dictated the compulsion to spell every word right and keep the blonde boy from winning the bee and going to county (yeah ... no win at the school level. I knew if I had to go to county, I would be forever raised from nerdy obscurity only to be jumped in the bathroom and alleys forevermore.)

Though truth is, I really couldn't spell some of the words, and I did my best to spell the ones I knew wrong, too.

Broken dreams aside, I, Tiresias, will try, in all possible ways, to fill the void left by dear Cass this week while she is away living her double life and I am left to canvass our shared section of Penn Station. It was ever crowded this weekend. At eight on Saturday, I wended through crowds of people wearing the requisite uniform of terry cloth halter tops over bikini top, short ruffled beach skirt, flip flops, sunglasses perched atop heads (could it be ... Hamptons 2000? oh, ma gawd), giant tote bags, beach towels slung over one shoulder, and the occasional plastic beach chair clutched tightly in one hand, a Dunkin Donuts coffee in the other. All looking avidly at the timetable for the Long Island Rail Road waiting for the track number to appear. Besides the LIRR, the NJ Transit and Amtrak were also experiencing high traffic, and no one seemed to notice me as I walked in between the eager couples and families.

Alas, the unusually crowded train station doesn't seem to offer higher levels of generosity. In fact, I must work harder for their sympathies. "I was just mugged by some awful men. Could you please help?" I did have a tote bag stolen in a London supermarket once, so my plea has a note of truth to it. The bag, stained with coffee and all sorts of graduate school detritus, contained a wallet, Marlboro Lights and Bic, Burberry scarf, a bottle of scent (L'Artisan du Parfumeur), Armani sunglasses, a journal, and my T Le Clerc compact (my! such a label whore). I try not to lie, and I always try to say please.

I hope I don't let you down, Cass. Work on your tan and mental well being for now, and I will try to keep the forthcoming damage control to the barest minimum.