Month: May 2011

Journal
24 May 11
I am wholly undeserving of the trust and affection my grandma has for me

Grandma loves me. I do simple favors for her of the kind any relative would do for any relative. She is over 90 years old so I drive her to the bank, go through her mailings to throw out the scams, and call the telephone company when it is obvious they are overcharging her for services she never uses. As I drive her or make to leave she looks up at me with her loving blue eyes and repeats, in a perseverative way, how much she appreciates it and how I am such a big help and it is so good to have a grandson who looks out for her.

I think about how nice it is to be of help to her, yet inside me I nurse a secret malice. If I could press a button and vaporize 95 percent of the people on the planet, I would do it in an instant. If I could, unbeknownst to them, sterilize and release people on a massive scale, as wildlife officials do to control some invasive animals, I would do so. I would wipe out the vast majority of greedy, imbecile humanity in order to reverse the global age of extinction now underway. Wildlife would flourish, the population explosion would cease, global carbon emissions would be decimated, and future generations would be protected. The reset button would be activated and there would be no rapaciousness this time around. If I could, I would dash the heads of all the slobbering, filthy infants upon rocks, put a bullet to the heads of their mothers and fathers, and mow down almost seven billion people. I would sit atop the bloody heap and smile and the world would be a better place without so many damned breeding apes.

But all that is just a passing thought. Grandma doesn’t know about that. I dismiss her laudatory remarks and say it’s nothing, don’t be silly, it’s good to spend an afternoon with you, I don’t see you enough, and so on. I only go there like once a month, after all, it’s just so nice to be of any help, see ya later Grandma!

11 May 2011

Is “mushroom hunting” a code word for “anonymous homosexual encounter in a public park”?

I ask because the other day, in Theodore Wirth Park, I was walking along the trails on an afternoon birding expedition when a bald guy of about 35 years approached me and struck up a conversation. He was wearing a bright flowery button-up shirt, jeans, a jacket and loafers. He looked like an average Joe and seemed only a little bit odd, as might anyone who engages you unexpectedly. I was wearing a black hoodie, jeans, I had my binoculars around my neck, and my hood over my head because a faint rain was coming down.

He said, “You know, it sure is a good day for mushroom hunting,” and waited for my response.

“Oh, I suppose so,” I said, “but I don’t know, I think I would be afraid of picking one of the poisonous ones, the ones the make you puke or die, you know.”

“Oh, well,” he said, “you just gotta find the edible ones,” and this last part he said as he looked me up and down and made sort of a slurping sound with his mouth. All of a sudden it struck me that everything we said could be misconstrued as a double entendre so I made a couple of sheepish parting remarks ending with an idiotic “Well, see ya later!” and left. I walked toward the parking lot and continued hiking in the more public section of the preserve on the other side of Theodore Wirth Parkway.

In retrospect I realize it was a rainy day, gloomy and not good for wildlife viewing (Though I did see a mourning warbler that day – a first for me). I also had my hood up. I now know where to go for gay sex, since craigslist is not to be trusted. I wonder why women don’t seek out anonymous sex in public… Hmm. Too bad.

I also realized that birding is the perfect cover for this type of rendez-vous. You are alone and walking in secluded corners of parks and preserves. I can imagine the following encounter: “But officer, I was just bird watching!”

“Oh yeah? And what were you looking for, the secretive public sodomy-bird? Hands behind your head, pal.”

Journal
Thu 14 April 2011

I am sitting in my second-hand Ikea chair, farting. Carl is on my shoulder devouring a piece of bread I gave him. He is depositing crumbs there, which will end up on my floor. I have drunk a beer already and am now on a second one. Rachel is in the hospital, water broken, ready to give birth to her third child. I will meet up with Ben and others in an hour or so for drinks and darts. There is a police siren going by on Franklin Avenue.

I wasn’t kidding about the farting. Over the past few days my gaseous discharge has been heinous – both stinky and frequent. I thought it was the cheap salsa I had bought to go on chips and tortillas, but it may turn out to be something else I have unwittingly incorporated into my diet. When I sit for a long period, it eventually smells like I am sitting on a load of poop, instead of just having a passing stink. When I wake up in the morning, I smell farts, as if I have been doing it all night. Once, I got back in my car while running errands and smelled a fart from earlier that had been trapped and had not dissipated, even after 20 minutes or so. By the end of the day my underwear smells terrible (not that I really need to smell it before tossing it in the bin). And at work I must clench my sphincter until I can reach a locked bathroom to release my shameful brown mist.

This private suffering led me to think: Is this what daily life is like for most Americans? Once I find the offending food item I will eliminate it and my problem of the past week will go away. But for people who eat fast food every day (and there are many), or who consume unnatural quantities of meat or certain cheeses, wines or beers, is this their regular state of being? Are they gas-bags who must walk around with stinky pants all the time? I cannot discount the possibility. But in the meantime I will examine my most recent grocery receipts.