Category: Life in General (Page 30 of 46)

 

If you look at my archives from last year, you’ll notice that it was a dramatic week here at Citizen of the Month in 2006.  There was the wild “Blog Appreciation Day,” something which many of you participated in.  There was a post where I expressed my fear of meeting some of you, wondering if I should hug you or not.   And it was also moving week, where I moved back in with Sophia.

It is now a year later. Things change.

1)  I’m now going to move OUT.

2)  I don’t have the energy to do a big Blog Appreciation Day.  I’m in a much more mellow mood.  Of course, I greatly appreciate all my blogging friends, even if I don’t send you a photo of me reading your blog.  Let me postpone the big day for a month.  I don’t like to end traditions.

3)  Most importantly — I have overcome my fear of life-long fear of hugging strangers!  Last week, I went to a blog reading AND Secret Agent Josephine‘s art show, and I just hugged everyone — men, women, child, and dogs.   I even hugged LvGurl before I was even sure who she was. Something has happened to me over the past year — I have become a hugging machine.

Tonight, Danny invited me to see Wilco at the Greek Theater.  I have to remember to hug him.

By the way — I did end up buying a print done by Secret Agent Josephine, but I still have to pick it up from the gallery. Here is the original sketch to give you an idea of what it looks like.  Isn’t it perfect for me? — A dog with glasses surfing for pornography on his laptop!

Neil: So, it’s therapy session #3. Have you seen any changes in me yet?

Therapist: Absolutely. I think we can wrap things up today.

Neil: We can? You mean after three sessions, I’m cured of all of my neuroses?

Therapist: I like to take a different approach to therapy. Some therapists keep their patients on a short leash for years. I like to hear the patient’s story, come up with a solution, and quickly cure him.   In and Out,  like the burger joint with the Christian messages on the burger wrappers.

Neil: Wow. I’m so lucky that I randomly picked you out of the phonebook.

Therapist: Let’s get started. The clock is ticking.

Neil: I’m ready. Tell me what my biggest problem is.

Therapist: Well, #1 is that you think too much. By over-analyzing everything, you never come up with an answer.

Neil: I knew it! I’m terrible at making choices. Which job to take? Which restaurant to eat in? Where to live? Even when I meet a woman, I’m never sure if I should become her good friend or try to get in to her pants?

Therapist: How much education do you have?

Neil: I have a masters degree.

Therapist: Exactly. There’s your problem in a nutshell! Scientific research from Johns Hopkins has proven that each additional year of education screws you up a little bit more. That’s why so many professors are hospitalized for nervous breakdowns.  But the solution is really easy.

Neil: It is?

Therapist: Yes. And that’s why I’m going to give you this —

My therapist reaches into her filing cabinet and pulls out an official-looking piece of paper with a red-ribbon seal.

Neil: What’s this?

Therapist: This is an official notice from the New York Public School System showing that you dropped out of junior high school. I want you to hang this on your wall and look at it every day. From now on consider yourself less educated, maybe even a little dumb. From now on, you aren’t much smarter than a fifth grader! But you’re happier.  So go and enjoy life!

Neil: Well, thanks. I DO feel better. Like I took a handful of Prozacs. I just feel a little numb, like I can’t find the right words, as if my vocabulary… like, uh, like…

Therapist: Perfect!

Neil: I appreciate this, but I still don’t feel “cured.” I’m still hurting… in my heart.  What if this is the end of my relationship with Sophia? Even those who dropped out of junior high school can still feel emotional pain and loneliness.

Therapist: Of course. Loneliness can be a serious problem. But there is a solution for that, too.  Back where I come from, the great state of Kansas, there used to be many lonely people, including many men like yourself. But things changed when this came out —

My therapist reaches into her filing cabinet again and pulls out a laminated card, which she hands to me.

Neil: A free 30-day trial to Skinflix DVD rentals?

Therapist: They deliver the movies right to your home. You never have to be embarrassed again renting “Topless Pirate Women of the Caribbean.”

Neil: Hmm… I’m missing Sophia less and less already…

Therapist: Is there anything else on your mind before we wrap up your therapy?

Neil: I guess the only other part of my life that is frustrating is my blogging.

Therapist: Yes, I read your blog. Very funny. I love that talking c*ck!

Neil: Yeah, yeah, people seem to like the blog OK, but it has never really reached “superstar” status. Too many powerful mommybloggers ignore me, thinking me sophomoric.  Dooce doesn’t know who the hell I am.  And even someone like Crazy Aunt Purl gets 20x more comments than I do — and all she does is write a blog about knitting!  I would think that in the scheme of things, a talking Penis should win over a bunch of yarn! Life isn’t fair.

Therapist: Your problem is that you lack confidence.

Neil: I know. I know. I’m always telling myself that. I wish I were one of those super-confident guys like Dave at Blogography or Mr. Fab. You never see them complaining that their stats take a dive on the weekend when no one is busy searching for photos of “Britney Spears crotchless.”

Therapist: Confidence is easy. You just have to attain it. Do you think a lion is born with courage? Of course not. What you need is this —

My therapist reaches into her filing cabinet and pulls out a colorful banner.

Therapist: Scan this and put this in the sidebar of your blog.

Neil: Yes… I like it, but WHO exactly voted for this?

Therapist: Ha Ha. Who cares? People believe any crap they read online!

Neil: You’re right! I’m feeling more confident already.

Therapist: And I like it. Women like a man who is confident.

She looks at her watch.

Therapist: Oops. Time is up. You’re cured!

Neil: Hey, do you have another appointment now?

Therapist: I’m done for the day.

Neil: Since I’m not your patient anymore, how ’bout we order some fish tacos — then sit on the couch together and make out?

Therapist: Just what the doctor ordered!

I need to take a day or two break from my “washing machine” story because I spent some time writing it today and it is turning into a twenty page emotional mess about all sorts of topics — manhood, my father, film school, Sears customer service, sexuality, and Diet Coke. And the story isn’t funny at all. I think my two weeks of therapy is already screwing with my mind, making me more emotionally unstable than when I first walked in there.

Yesterday, during my second therapy session, I talked to my new therapist about my blog, and now I’m feeling a little self-conscious for even bringing it up. What if she’s reading it? Why is it OK that my mother reads my blog, but knowing that my therapist is reading “Citizen of the Month” is giving me performance anxiety?

During our session:

Therapist: “Is it like MySpace?”

Neil: “No, it’s a regular blog.”

Therapist: “And what do you write about?”

Neil: “Just different stuff.”

Therapist: “Interesting And how do people find you?”

Neil: “If you search my name you could easily find it. Uh…”

Therapist: “What?”

Neil: “No, nothing. I just didn’t expect to be talking about my blog. It’s not… well, I guess it IS a big part of my life. It’s just sometimes I write some fantasy stuff. Sex stuff. It’s all in good fun. Just in case you ever read it, you should know, it’s not really me. Well, it IS me. It’s just that I even… (nervously) ha ha… wrote a post about you… uh, imagining you before the first session… and… uh…”

Therapist: “You did?”

Neil: “Well, I have this gimmick, where… you see, I talk to my Penis, and…”

The therapist made a notation in her book. And then underlined it.

 

(from previous post)

A washing machine is like a woman.   If handled right it gets wet and inviting, and washes away all sorrows.    But a washing machine, like a woman, is a turbulent, emotional machine.  When something goes wrong — watch out!

OK, I hear you.  My comparison of women and washing machines in my last post is borderline offensive, but I do associate washing machines with women, which is odd, since it was my father who did the laundry when I was growing up.  

When my parents married, my father was a real traditional sort of husband, which meant, of course, letting my mother do all the household chores.  At some point, when I was around six years old, my father decided to do the laundry.   Did the feminist movement finally reach him?  Did my mother have a “serious” talk with him while I was over at my friend Rob’s house playing “Operation?”  Or was it because he was able to go downstairs to the apartment building “laundry room” and be the only adult male in a sea of horny housewives?

My father loved going to the laundry room and talking and joking with the women.  I would sometimes accompany him downstairs and help him fold the towels, embarrassed that others could see my Fruit of the Loom underwear as he place it into the dryer.  Most of the women would ignore me as they spoke with my father, hanging their enormous cupped bras right in my face, not realizing how this would affect me in my later years. 

My father took on his laundry-chore as a job, doing it for the rest of his life, even though he never got the hang of doing it correctly.  He was stubborn and refused to follow “the rules.”  He mixed the whites and colors, and always dried everything on high heat.  My underwear always came out pink and too tight, proving once and for all that you are born gay.  Tight, pink underwear can make you look like ABBA, but it can’t really change your sexual orientation. 

I went to college at Columbia in Manhattan.  I stayed in the dorms, despite my parents living in nearby Queens.  During my freshman year, I was so bad at doing my laundry that I would pack it in a suitcase and take it home with me on the subway to my parents.

During my sophomore year, while watching the McNeil-Lehrer Report on PBS in Nanette’s room, Nanette unbuttoned my pants and gave me a hand job.  It was a tremendously good experience, but when I came all over her duvet cover, she immediately insisted that I  go downstairs to the dorm laundry room and wash the duvet cover with hot water and bleach.  But from that day on, I did my own laundry.

When I moved to LA, a roommate found a girlfriend in a laundromat in Hollywood.  I started doing my laundry at the neighborhood laundromat, even though there was already a decent machine in my own apartment building.  Rumor had it that the laundromat was a good place to pick up girls, so that was the big draw.  I was pretty bad at it.  I felt phony acting like a dumb guy and asking questions that I already knew the answer to — like, “How much Tide do I put in the double load machine?”

I never did meet any women in a laundromat, but I enjoyed the experience.  Women would come in looking disheveled; their hair in buns, wearing sweats and flip-flops.  It was very easy to imagine that this is what a woman would look like in the morning after we had sex all night.  Women became less of a mystery.  Years before meeting Sophia, I began to understand how women used their makeup, hair, and clothes to enhance what God gave them.   In the laundromat, I could see the “real” woman, and when it came down to it, even the most gorgeous woman had dirty laundry, just like everybody else.  I consider my single male “laundromat days” as an important part of my education.

After Sophia and I got married, one of our first purchases was a Kenmore washer/dryer from Sears.  I think it was the first time I had ever actually walked into a Sears.  Sophia insisted that we buy a “frontload washer” for reasons that, years later, I still don’t understand. 

Buying a washing machine was symbolic for me.  What could be more iconic of domestic life?  Gone were my days of hanging out in public laundromats, watching women drying their delicates.  We were now a family unit – husband, wife, and washing machine.

Sophia and I have not had an easy marriage, but throughout the years, one constant has been our reliable Kenmore washing machine.  It cleaned our clothes and didn’t ask for anything in return.

Last week, I was packing up some books from my office.  Sophia and I are “separating” again.  I’m supposed to be moving out by next month, but I am moving very slowly. 

“Neil!” yelled Sophia from the garage.  “The water won’t go down.  Something is wrong with the washing machine!”

(continued)

Once we were mere boys, playful and innocent, unaware of our future roles as breadwinners, caretakers, and role models for the community. 

One day, we wake up, and we are men. 

We march into adventure — we find the soft toilet seat, we save the little pigeon from a sure death.  But each time we slay a dragon, there is another one pounding on the door, breathing his hot flames of destruction against our skin, threatening our homes and loved ones.  And we must put on our armor and fight.

This is a story about a man and a washing machine. 

A washing machine is like a woman.   If handled right it gets wet and inviting, and washes away all sorrows.    But a washing machine, like a woman, is a turbulent, emotional machine.  When something goes wrong — watch out!

(continued later)