Self Esteem

I've got to stop watching Arrested Development.

Michael is a hapless doormat. The other offspring are either despicable or pathetic, or both. (And don't get me started on Jason Bateman and Portia de Rossi playing the parents of teenagers. Worst casting since Tom Cruise as Lestat.) No family, however dysfunctional, is quite that bad. I know, I know, it's a comedy; it's satire; it's television.

I'm only a third of the way through the second disc of Season I on DVD, and, well, it's like watching a traffic accident. A traffic accident in my driveway. It's hitting a little too close to home.

There's no situation so bad that it can't be made worse, I always say, so yesterday, between classes, I went to visit my dad again.

If my life were more like a Julia Roberts movie, less like Arrested Development, my father would have called me a couple of days after my last visit and said, "Of course I want my daughter to come with me on this momentous journey to my (sort of) homeland! Of course I want to show you off to my old friends, and re-introduce you to your aunts and uncles and cousins, who haven't seen you since you wore braces!"

He might even have said it in German.

The thing is, my life has never been much like a Julia Roberts movie. And that's why my father doesn't want me to go to Germany with him.

You see, when my father was my age he had just completed building a new house on sixty acres of property on the Niagara Escarpment that had been bought and paid for two years earlier. The construction of the house, and everything in it, was paid for, in cash, as the project went along. My dad did all the brick work himself, and there were, if I remember correctly, twelve thousand bricks in the house. He built the fireplace, too. I remember going with my mother to choose doorknobs and light fixtures, and I was allowed to choose the carpet and wall colours for my room. (Chocolate brown and peach, respectively — hey, it was the seventies.)

He had no mortgage. He had money in the bank. He had a new truck. My braces were paid for. And, he was happily married, or at least that's what we all thought at the time. We didn't know that my mother was planning her mid life crisis for a few years hence.

So my father can't understand, and has no sympathy for the fact that here I am with a husband who done run off, a twelve year old car in bad need of a paint job, a house with a hefty mortgage, and no money in the bank. If I want to go to Germany so bad, he says, I'll just have to wait until I can afford it.

Besides, he adds, all my cousins in Germany are doing so well. They all drive Mercedeses or BMWs. My cousin Paul is an engineer at Mercedes. My cousin Martina is a nurse. My cousin Klaus is a blue collar worker, an electrician, and he just bought a house up on the hill in the village where all my father's siblings live. My cousins' houses, of course, are all paid for. None of them has a mortgage. How does my father know that, I ask? He doesn't.

Last week I thought it was about the money, and I thought I could understand that. But I couldn't leave it alone, oh no. Crazy, hopeful, cockeyed optimist that I am, I thought that maybe, with a gentle push and a little cajoling, my dad would say, between grumbles, that he really did want me to come to Germany with him. Instead, I learned that the real reason he doesn't want me to go is because he's ashamed of his offspring.

Maybe Jack was right about Hope.

The more you suffer, the more it shows you really care, right?

Yeah.
* * *
In the next story Sass tells about her friend AC, who is good for her self esteem, and how she feels like shit because she can't return the favour. Going to your friend's wedding with a tall, handsome man is also good for the ego. If only Sass's father could see this picture of her and Jack

Update: Click here to find out what happens when Sass visits her father in June. Will she show him the picture of Jack?

Greatest Hits Volume I

It's the six month anniversary of Postmodernes Sprachspielen, and you may be wondering:

Who is Postmodern Sass, and what's the deal with the song titles?

What does Postmodernes Sprachspielen mean, anyway?

Why doesn't she allow comments on her blog?

Is she, like, obsessed with go-go boots and karaoke?

Who is Postmodern Sass's best friend, and what were they doing in Memphis in October, 2004? And — cough — did that guy she met at the airport have a piercing where I think she's saying he had a piercing?

Did Postmodern Sass's grandfather really play the accordion?

Is she still as much of a clueless dork as she was in The Viking Trilogy?

Who's this guy Jack she's always mentioning? Is he the man who made her feel like Cinderella in this early story? If so, then he couldn't possibly be the same guy who stood her up, could he? Or the guy with the Rolex and the BMW? Why does she put up with him, anyway?

Is the story of Jack and Diane true?

I could answer your questions, but that would be telling.

Remember, Gentle Reader, Postmodern Sass is not a real person, but a Sprachspiel.

I'm A Believer

You may remember the little ditty about Jack and Diane...

I don't like to make promises. It's the reason I never did the formal, official, snowcone dress in the church thing with the X. I was happy to be with him for as long as he was happy to be with me — which was a long, long time, but not long enough. In the end, the lack of a legal document binding us did not preclude the necessity of my paying a lawyer $3,500 to dissolve us.

To stand before an officiant, before my family, before all my friends — never mind before God, whom I never mind anyway — and promise, promise that I would love this man forever, for the rest of my life, 'til death us do part was, for me, an impossibility. People change. Shit happens. Sixty years is a fucking long time. How could I be sure I could keep such a promise?

I made Jack a promise a few weeks ago. It's only the second one, and it was this: If you really do come to New York on March 19 to dance with me at Sara's wedding, you'll never hear about that other thing again.

But I wouldn't allow myself to expect that he would be there. If you keep your expectations low, you're never disappointed, and once in a while you're pleasantly surprised. I booked my ticket to New York just after Christmas, when Air Canada was having a seat sale. I arranged to share a room with Janice, Sara's maid of honour. I borrowed a stunning black sequin and chiffon cocktail dress from Francine, and bought the perfect pair of dangly rhinestone earrings to go with it on eBay. I shopped for Sara's wedding gift.

While doing all this I spoke to Jack on the phone a couple of times, and he continued to aver that he would be there. Not only at the wedding on Saturday night, but at the airport to meet my plane. And I continued to make plans as if he weren't.

On Saturday morning I put on makeup and a dab of Chanel No. 5, just in case. I drove to the airport. I got on the plane.

The flight landed about ten minutes early, at Gate A5 at LaGuardia. I would look for Jack at the baggage claim — he's easy to spot in a crowd, because he's always the biggest, handsomest guy in it — but if he wasn't there, I'd rent a car. Though the wedding, like the airport, was on Long Island, it's a very long island, and a one-day rental would probably be cheaper than a two-way cab.

I passed through security — you just walk through, on the way out — and was still in the A Gates corridor, heading for the escalator that would take me down to baggage claim, when I heard,

"Hey, you."

And there was Jack. Leaning, Bogart-style, against the wall.

"You should have snapped your Zippo. I'd 've heard that more easily."

"Can't do that in here," he said.

"That's a damned shame." I was trying very hard to be nonchalant, and I'm pretty sure I was pulling it off. "So, you're here."

"I said I would be."

"So you did."

"Let's go," he said, and he reached for my bag.

He had me at hey you.

It seems I've got a promise to keep.

* * *
Click here to read about the wedding. There might even be pictures. Or, go to the next story in sequence, Postmodern Sass's Greatest Hits Volume I.

Tie A Yellow Ribbon 'Round The Old Oak Tree

I love my Daddy.

Today is his birthday, and he lives not far from the university where I work; not far from the small town where I grew up. So I went to see him in between my classes today. I brought a small cooler packed with the following: a jar of pickled herring, a tub of sour cream, a loaf of Roggenbrot, and six Dabs. I know what my Daddy likes.

We exchanged pleasantries and updates, having not seen one another since Christmas, and then he said, "I'm going to Germany on April 2."

"Without me?" I asked, in disbelief.

At Christmas, we had talked about the letter from his brother's family, all of whom still live in the village in Germany that my father is from. They had been on a road trip north, into the former East Germany, and had come upon a town that bore our family name. Now, if your last name is, say, Jackson, you might feel a special affinity to Jackson, Mississippi, but my family name is uncommon enough that I literally know everyone in Canada who bears it. It was nothing short of bizarre, seeing it there, on a huge black and yellow sign, in the photo my cousin Evelyne sent.

We talked about going to Germany, to see it. And, of course, to visit the relatives. My father has one brother and three sisters who, collectively, have produced 13 first cousins for me — and they all live in the same town. The last time I was in Germany was 1995. My father, 1997. The last time we were there together, I was ten years old.

How could he make plans to go without me?

I suppose I shouldn't be so surprised.

My father was born in Bessarabia, into an enclave of Germans living in what is now land-locked and dirt-poor Moldova. Which is pretty much what it was then, though in 1938 it was part of Romania. Two hundred or so German families, my mother's included, had lived there peacefully for over two hundred years, on land granted to them by Catherine the Great; happily minding their own farming business until one summer day in 1940 when the Russians showed up and, at gunpoint, ordered the families to pack up what they could and get out. Go back to your homeland, Germany. Hitler wants you. We do not.

As they say on the Dab Web site, Jedes Land Braucht Seine Legende

My father remembers none of that. What he does remember is growing up in a devastated village in post-war Germany, seeing people roaming the streets with dog leashes, hoping to encounter a stray that could be brought home for dinner. There was never enough food for him and his four siblings. There was never enough money.

At the age of twelve he was sent away, Dickensian style, to apprentice for a blacksmith in Stuttgart. He ran away, and later, at 18, he ran to Canada. When he arrived in the Niagara Peninsula in 1956 he made the Scarlett O'Hara promise.

He laid bricks for 45 years, getting paid by the hour, and working as many hours as he could. We were never poor, but we may have seemed so. Both my parents drove Volkswagen Beetles. We didn't have a colour television until 1975, and we never had cable. We never went on vacation, other than camping up north. My parents had only one child, and my mother worked, which, in the 1960s was taken by the parents of my suburban friends to mean my father couldn't support a family on his own. They didn't know my parents had paid off the mortgage on their first house two years after moving into it. We never had money trouble, and I was never hungry.

My father saved almost every penny he ever earned. He's retired now, and I know that he looks at his bank book every day, just to admire the figure recorded there. I've seen him do it. He is very proud of himself, as he should be, and I am very proud of him. And I am not exaggerating when I tell you that the figure in that bank book is a number between one and nine, followed by five zeros, and that the first digit is closer to nine than it is to one.

We had a lengthy conversation between bites of pickled herring.

OK, argument.

The reason my father won't take me to Germany with him is that he doesn't want to pay for my plane ticket. It might cost as much as $1,200. That would be the only appreciable expense, seeing as how when we go to Germany we stay with relatives (as they do when they come here).

Under the best of circumstances my father frustrates me. He's a difficult man to have a conversation with. He doesn't listen. He interrupts. He repeats himself. And acorns don't fall that far from their oak trees.

I felt the possibility of tears, and my father is not the sort of man for whom tears have the effect of softening up. Quite the opposite, in fact. Were I to cry over this he would consider me weak and foolish, and would want even less to have me accompany him.

I got up from the table, half my Dab remaining in its glass, kissed my Daddy goodbye, and left.

I love my Daddy, but he makes it so hard sometimes.
* * *
Go to the next story in sequence, in which we find out what happened in New York. Or, read this story, in which Sass learns the hard way that, when it comes to her father, it's better to leave well enough alone.

Who Are You?

A Canuck, an American, and a Viking walk into a blog and...

I'm not sure how to complete that joke, but I do know the joke's on me. Until last night I had thought that a week ago Thursday, in the car with The Viking, I had survived the most embarassing conversation of my life. I was wrong.

Accordion Guy and The Redhead, a.k.a. Wendy and Joey, were at the Rivoli last night with a couple of their "real friends" who were introduced to me as brother and sister.

Joey used my analog name to introduce me to Donny and Marie, and then Donny said, "You're Sass, aren't you? I read your blog."

"Really?" I was surprised and flattered. It continues to amaze me that anyone, especially those of the Donny, rather than the Marie, gender, reads my blog, but more surprising was that this was a person who was there in person. I've heard from many of my Gentle Readers, and they are in San Diego, Stuttgart, and Sydney. I don't expect to run into them in a bar.

"I've been reading you since you posted the comment on Joey's blog about the Han Solo /Princess Leia cake topper," said Donny. "The more I read, the more I put the pieces together, and thought to myself, I think I know who she might be."

"Donny, you have to stop approaching blog reading like a reporter from 60 Minutes," interjected Joey. Then he turned his attention back to Wendy, and became oblivious to the world. If you have never seen the two of them together, in person, you are missing a truly awe-inspiring scene. No exaggeration at all.

"A 525 isn't a real BMW, you know," continued Donny.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Well, it is, if you want a BMW for, say, taking out the trash. It's not good for much else with that little engine."

Way to make a good first impression, I thought — insult my friends.

"I think you should kick Jack to the curb," he said, firmly. "He's had his six years."

"You don't know yet, what happened last night, at the wedding," I replied.

"Doesn't matter. Forget about him. Dave's a great guy." Of course Donny would know Dave; he's sitting there with Wendy and Joey, and Dave is going to be Wendy's bridesman.

Wendy, upon hearing her name, tore her gaze from Joey long enough to agree with Donny, and to inquire, "Sass, I hope you like cheeseburgers."

Donny wasn't through yet. Two down, one to go.

"I know you had some guys offer to do away with The Viking for you, but I thought someone should offer a word in his defence. Try to explain his side of it."

I was all ears.

"The Viking seems like a really nice guy," Donny began.

"He is," I agreed, assuming he had inferred this from reading my blog.

"So I think what it might be is that, because he's a nice guy, and because he really likes you, and wants to be your friend, he doesn't want to take the chance that you might go out with him, then break up, and then avoid each other. I remember when he and [insert real name of stripper — sorry, burlesque dancer — here] broke up they divided up the karaoke places so they wouldn't have to run into each other..."

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

Oh, fuck.

"You know who The Viking is?"

"Of course. How many famous Vikings are there? And, by the way, you'd better not let M— catch you calling her a stripper."

I hurt my nose a bit as my forehead thumped the table. I hoped I would wake up in a Soho doorway.

"He's too short for you, anyway, you know."

Hey, I don't wear go-go boots all the time. I take them off when I go to bed. And when I walk the dogs.

Donny indicated that he believed my shocked reaction to be disingenuous. "You're publishing stories on your blog, you're not writing in your diary and hiding it under your mattress. Don't act like you're surprised that people are reading it."

It's not that; I know I have readers. They email me all the time. It's this: I gather most bloggers tell their friends and family about their blogs. Not me. Carly and Simon; Magda and her creepy boyfriend, Romeo; my best friend since high school, Kay; my newly married friend, Mrs. Stephen King; even my cousins — they don't even know I have a blog, much less have they read about the characters based on them in it. And may I remind you, Gentle Reader, that should they perchance stumble upon it, they won't necessarily recognize themselves anyway. The perchances are minute, in any case. Thirty trillion blogs or so out there in the World Wide (very wide) Web. I mean, what are the odds?

"Does Jack know about it?" asked Donny.

"Yes, but he only reads it when I write about him. Same with my karaoke buddies."

"What makes you think The Viking doesn't read it?" persisted Donny.

I would think the answer to that question is obvious. The Viking told me himself. He's not interested.

* * *
In the next story we meet Sass's father. And the next time Sass sees Donny, she can't believe who he's sitting with.

Working For The Weekend

Before I turn my attention to counting down the hours until I get on the plane to New York and obsessing about whether I'll be stood up tomorrow at Sara's wedding — which will be any minute now — I want to say thank you to several of my readers who've emailed me this week. So, thank you

Mo, for saying exactly the right thing ("His loss.") exactly when I needed to hear it.

Ronnie, for telling me I looked beautiful in my red taffeta dress last Thursday at the Rose & Thorne. (It was a karaoke costume, for singing Connie Francis.)

Mike, Paul, and Marco, for offering to "take care of The Viking" for me.

Norman, for amusing me by pointing out that the stemware goes in the china cabinet, though the name would seem to suggest otherwise.

Dave, for pointing me to this site, thereby proving he's a bigger nerd than I am.

Tim K, for linking to me, and for playing guitar.

I've said it before, I've said it over to your right, and I'll say it again: It never ceases to amaze and delight me that you are reading my stories. It occured to me today to wonder why so many of my readers are men. I have no answer to that question, but it does make me wonder.

My plane leaves in 17 hours. The wedding is at 6:00 tomorrow evening. As Loverboy says, everybody needs a second chance. But if he stands me up again, it's over.

Wish me luck.
* * *
Go to the next story in sequence, in which Sass, home from the wedding, her hair still in its Phoebe bun (and only slightly squished), goes to the Rivoli and has a Very Embarassing Experience. Or, skip ahead to find out whether Jack stood her up To sing the next chorus of Working For The Weekend, click here..

You Don't Bring Me Flowers

"So, what are we doing today?" asked Daniel, as he snapped the black nylon smock and then secured it firmly around my neck.

"Well, this week I've been feeling like the nerdy misfit in highschool who asks the cheerleader to the prom. In short, a dork. I'm here because I know you'll be able to at least make me look a little less like one."

"Oh no!" Daniel exclaimed, "What happened that made you feel like a dork?"

So I told him, in broad strokes, about The Viking. There's nothing like the sincere yet transitory heartfelt sympathy you get from your hairdresser. They make you feel better by making you look better.

Shopping works, too.

You're not likely to see my version of the Mastercard commercial on TV any time soon, though:

"Brittania compote from Tiffany's, $195 U.S.
Sterling silver candlestick from Tiffany's, $425 U.S.
Giving either of them to your friend for her wedding: insanity!"

What is a compote, anyway? I mean, I know what it is, in the sense that this is what it looks like. But what is it for? Candlesticks I can comprehend, but at $425 U.S. for one — a single candlestick, not a pair, mind — it better have been made by Paul Revere.

It's not just the fact that to pay such a sum for such an item would, in my family, at least, be grounds for immediate commission to the loony bin; it's that... well, ok, actually, that's exactly what it is.

I've been examining Sara's bridal registries on the Tiffany's and Bloomingdale's Web sites, and while I do believe that the Web is a most wonderous thing, and that the functionality associated with the registering of, and purchasing from, gift registries online is exactly what the Internet was designed for (apologies to Al Gore), I decided that I would buy her a present the good old analog way, so that I could see and touch the item of beauty for which I'll exchange my hard-earned cash. After studying her registry and making a short list, I headed uptown to William Ashley this morning.

Sara has indicated her interest in some very lovely items. In addition to the compote and the candlestick, there's this crystal bowl from Tiffany's. It's $395. Can you imagine putting potato chips in it? Too pedestrian?

How about salad? Bean salad. Yeah, right. Speaking of salad, Sara has also chosen this sterling silver salad spoon and fork.

They cost $150. Each. I'm having difficulty conceptualizing this concept. In my wildest imagination I have never imagined such a thing existed in the wild. Nor have I ever conceived of (a) owning such a thing nor (2) wanting such a thing.

I'm disappointed that there is no photo available for an item called the "Elsa Peretti thumbprint dish." I am dying to see what a thumbprint dish is.

Sara is registered at Bloomingdale's for china and stemware. Now there's a word you never hear enough in conversation: "Could you set the table, please? The stemware is in the cupboard above the sink."

Her china pattern is called Murray Hill. Apparently this is the name of a neighbourhood in Manhattan. Where I come from, however, it's the name of a bus company.

I don't want to buy my friend Sara dishes for her wedding. I simply refuse. Every item on her registry is... dull. Dishes, dull as dishwater.

Oh, but wait: she's chosen a vase. Two, in fact. One on the Tiffany's registry, and one on the Bloomingdale's.

That's what I'm going to buy her.

This is not the first time I have chosen a vase as a wedding gift. I get very emotional about vases. My mother had quite a collection of them — some ugly, some beautiful, all interesting — and when she died, I gave one to each of her friends. I kept two for myself: the ones my father had bought her as Christmas presents when I was just a little girl. They had always been in our house, and almost thirty years later, they were there in my mother's. Now they're in mine.

A vase is the perfect wedding gift. A gift, as I wrote a few weeks ago, is a reflection of the gift-giver. When a friend like Sara gets married, I truly share her hopes for a long and happy life with her husband, and I hope that they'll never say, one to the other, you don't bring me flowers anymore.

This is the present I chose for my friend. It's Nachtmann crystal, the style is called Nova, and this is a vase that's big enough to hold a dozen red roses on Valentine's Day.

* * *
When Daniel was done blowing steam off my head with his 100,000 watt blow dryer, he handed me a hand mirror and said, "Voila!"

I looked into the mirror and saw a reasonably attractive woman, no longer 29, with shoulder length red hair, and bangs.

Good lord, I look just like Lana!

I wonder if anyone will ask us if we're sisters when we go to the Air Canada Centre on April 5. That's right, since The Viking turned me down, and Dave lives in Chicago, I invited Lana to the Duran Duran concert.

In the next story, Postmodern Sass sings a chorus of Working For The Weekend. Later, Sass and Lana groove to Duran Duran together, then go to the Banknote.

Wish You Were Here

Who I should have invited to the Duran Duran concert, instead of The Viking, is Dave.

Oddly enough, Dave and I met in person before our blogworlds ever collided. At the party, I remember asking him if his name was really Dutch, which is what was embroidered on his Kensington Market bowling shirt. I remember him telling me he was from Chicago. Then he went on the field trip to the secret swing, and I went back out on the patio in search of Zippos. Later, when The Redhead mentioned her old friend Dave, and even later, when I heard some blogger named Logan's Dave had added me to his blogroll, I failed to make the connection.

A couple of weeks ago Dave posted something about a kilt. Kilts, for me, have much the same effect as Zippos. We got to chatting. Via email and bloggitorily.

I knew from my site stat counter that he was reading my Jack and Diane story, but I didn't hear from him until I posted Part IV. Then I received this:

From: Logan's Dave
To: Postmodern Sass
Date: March 8, 2005
Subject: Wait, wait, wait.

Are you telling me that in addition to men in kilts, hockey, and karaoke, that you also enjoy fine single-malt scotch?

I replied:

From: Postmodern Sass
To: Logan's Dave
Date: March 8, 2005

Yes. And never, never with ice.

And you, in addition to having a kilt, loving hockey and Douglas Adams, also are a cat lover and sing karaoke?

Where were you when I posted this comment on Accordion Guy's blog?

There ensued a lengthy e-conversation in which we remembered who the other had been at that party in November, and discovered that we not only share a German heritage, but that we both lived in Kitchener, home to the largest Oktoberfest outside of Germany. Though not at the same time.

After I posted the final entry in The Viking Trilogy, he sent this email:

From: Logan's Dave
To: Postmodern Sass
Date: March 15, 2005
Subject: Not again

You're a Tarantino fan as well? Oy.

I think he meant that "oy" in a good vey. I'm not always clueless. Viking, schmiking!

Dave said he was tempted to quote a Pink Floyd song.

"We don't need no education?" I asked. But I knew which one he meant.

I also know he's reading this.

Dave, I wish you were here so I could take you to Duran Duran on April 5. I have a friend who works at the Air Canada Centre. I don't just get tickets, I get escorted to the Air Canada Club, and watch the show from there. So...

...if you're ever in Toronto again...

...and if there's ever hockey again...

Oh — and bring your kilt.
* * *
Go to next story in sequence, or read this story, in which Sass discovers that her readers are rooting for Dave. Or go here to find out who Sass goes to the Duran Duran concert with.

Basket Case

Remember on Ally McBeal, how all the characters had theme songs? Ally's was Tell Him. This is mine. And last night I dedicated it to my karaoke buddy Mo, who wouldn't let me drive home on Thursday night, and who force-fed me coffee until 4:00 in the morning, and who listened to me whine.

Do you have the time to listen to me whine
About nothing and everything all at once
I am one of those melodramatic fools
Neurotic to the bone, no doubt about it

No doubt about it.

Sometimes I give myself the creeps

That's true.

Sometimes my mind plays tricks on me

You have no idea.

It all keeps adding up
I think I'm cracking up
Am I just paranoid?
I'm just stoned

I went to a shrink
To analyze my dreams
He says it's lack of sex that's bringing me down

That could be it.

I went to a whore
She said my life's a bore
And quit my whining 'cause it's bringing her down

Sorry.

Sometimes I give myself the creeps
Sometimes my mind plays tricks on me
It all keeps adding up
I think I'm cracking up
Am I just paranoid?
I'm just stoned

Grasping to control
So you better hold on

Sometimes I give myself the creeps
Sometimes my mind plays tricks on me
It all keeps adding up
I think I'm cracking up
Am I just paranoid?
I'm just stoned

Actually, I'm just slightly neurotic. But I'm done whining about the Viking. I'm hungry. Let's go get a taco.

This completes The Viking Trilogy by Postmodern Sass. Enough, already! Go to the next story, in which Sass really does stop whining about The Viking. Little does she know, yet, that she is dead wrong in thinking that things couldn't possibly get any more embarassing. Here's where they did.

Dream On

Friend and fellow blogger Logan's Dave posted this meme, which supposedly reveals what your birth month reveals about you.

I'm not sure how it'll be any different from my horoscope, which I already don't pay any attention to every morning, especially last Thursday, when it read, "You have been clueless these last few weeks. Get a clue."

Seriously.

Here's what my birth month, August, supposedly reveals about me:

"Loves to joke. Attractive. Suave and caring. Brave and fearless. Firm and has leadership qualities. Knows how to console others. Too generous and egoistic. Takes high pride in herself. Thirsty for praise. Extraordinary spirit. Easily angered. Angry when provoked. Easily jealous. Observant. Careful and cautious. Thinks quickly. Independent thoughts. Loves to lead and to be led. Loves to dream. Talented in the arts and music. Sensitive but not petty. Poor resistance against illnesses. Learns to relax. Hasty and trusting. Romantic. Loving and caring. Loves to make friends."

Loves to dream, OK. But observant? Hmn. Not so much. Clueless, I believe, is the word they're looking for.

And if they were shooting for accuracy, the description might have included, "Is not afraid to embarass herself."

Though actually, to be accurate, that would have been inaccurate, because I was shaking like a leaf when I asked Leif the Viking out, and now I'm so embarassed — not so much because of the rejection itself, although that can hardly be considered a boost to the ego, but because he also let me know, in not the gentlest of ways, though not unkindly either, and, truth be told, that's what I need sometimes, for someone to drop a house on my head, because, yeah, ok, I've been told I can't take a hint, and apparently this time the hint was, "I'm not interested," but because I have spent the last few weeks since Lana's birthday party entertaining the fantasy that he might want to go out with me, and in doing so was being clueless, and it's being informed that I have been clueless that's the humiliating part of this whole dorking down — that I don't know when I'll be able to look him in the eye again. I will, eventually, but not just yet, not tomorrow night, surely, and that's likely the next time I'll see him, because, as I've told you, he hangs around in my circle of friends.

Maybe tomorrow the good lord will take me away.

In the next story, the final installment in The Viking Trilogy, Postmodern Sass climbs out from under Dorothy's house and is just about done whining.

Something Stupid

I woke up this morning with a hangover and a whole new respect for men. How do you do it? Us women, we are socialized differently. We don't know how to ask you out. We suck at it.

See, there's this guy who hangs out with my circle of friends, who I've known for not quite a year, who is one of the guys with whom I hang out as one of the guys. That's me, yeah. I'm a girl, but since I was, like, six years old I've always been one of the guys. First it was climbing trees. Then fixing cars. Then being in a band. Lately, karaoke.

Sometimes you hang around with the guys for months, even years, and then one day, for no particular reason, you think to yourself, hey, that one's kind of interesting. I think I'd like to get to know him better. Maybe talk to him without all the others around. There's a guy like that in my circle. He was named after a Viking, but I won't tell you which one, and instead I'll refer to him as The Viking.

So last week we were at a different karaoke place, not the Rivoli, and the larger circle wasn't there, and The Viking and I were sitting with some of the locals, and one of them, Ronnie, in the course of commenting about one of the other singers, says to me, "Oh, I thought you two were brother and sister."

Not again. This is getting too funny.

The Viking was sitting on the other side of me. I turned to examine him, a look of amused frustration on my face.

"What?" he asked.

"Ronnie thinks we're brother and sister, too."

The Viking laughed.

"I don't get it. I don't look like you, do I?" Realizing that my words could be taken as an insult, I added, "Not that I'm saying that would be a bad thing — hey, you have much better hair!"

"Well, I'd be insulted if someone said I look like me."

"If we do look alike, then what does that say about the people here who think we're a couple?"

"Who thinks we're a couple?"

"Rob. And his girlfriend."

"Now you should definitely be insulted," The Viking says.

"Why?"

"Have you seen my ex-girlfriends?"

"Just the stripper." To be fair, she's not a stripper, but a burlesque dancer. I've not only seen her, I've seen her perform. And I'm in awe of what she can do with tassels.

"Well, so..."

"I don't get it. Are you saying I'm not your type?"

"No, I'm saying, if I were you, I'd be insulted if anyone thought I was my girlfriend."

My head spun, trying to parse that sentence. I eventually concluded that in a strange, backhanded, sideways, upside-down sort of way, that had been a compliment.

So I asked him out.

I have not asked a guy out for, like... wait; have I ever? Oh yeah: once.

When I first met X, I not only didn't like him, I actually disliked him. He was a peripheral member of my circle of friends, and I knew him for two years before I ever had a private conversation with him. I didn't like him: he was too sarcastic, too cyncial, and seemed to have an enormous chip on his shoulder. Then one Saturday night, at a house party — at my house — I went down to the basement in search of something, and found him sitting on my dryer. Alone, with a beer. I asked him what he was doing there, and he said, I heard the best parties always happen in the laundry room.

We talked for two hours, until my roommate finally came looking for me.

I decided I liked him. It seemed like he liked me. I waited for him to ask me out, because, you know, that's what girls do. I tried flirting with him, joking around, hoping he would figure it out. Years later, I was told by a gay friend that most men are pretty dense when it comes to that. They don't "get" that you like them. They are, for the most part, insecure.

Them too?

You have to drop a house on their head. You know, tell them.

So I asked him out. To a Violent Femmes concert.

I drove him home. He kissed me — just once, and quickly, and then practically jumped out of my car. And that was the beginning of a 17 year relationship.

He lived with his mother. He was a student. He had no money. He had no car. He didn't even have a driver's license. He was socially awkward. He had never had a girlfriend before.

I liked him anyway. He was smart, and witty, and sarcastic. He was also Irish Catholic.

We were together a long, long time, but when he left my new mantra became, "I'm done with the fookin' Irish."

I was watching a rerun of Sex And The City last night, and thinking, Carrie was right. We're just dating the same person over and over again, and then

The Viking turned me down.

I'm sure that, in a week or two, three at the outside, I'll stop feeling like the biggest dork on the planet, and maybe, maybe, in another ten years or so I'll work up the courage to ask another guy out. But probably not.

* * *
In the next story, part two of what will become known as The Viking Trilogy, Sass explains why, exactly, she was such a dork.

Jack and Diane [part IV - fin]

Continued from part III

They agreed to meet a N'Awlins on King Street at 10:00. The girl arrived first, and ordered a Macallan to calm her nerves.

The girl was remembering the time when she was a littler girl, and her cousins lived near a golf course. Sometimes, after dark, when the golfers had gone home, the girl and her cousins would go hunting for golf balls. One summer they collected a whole bushel full. They counted them. They sorted them by colour. They sorted them by brand. They played Brobdinagian marbles with them. They bounced them on the driveway. They wondered why golf balls bounced — they're not made of rubber.

So they cut one open.

A circular slice with a pocket knife, and the skin of the ball peeled right off. Inside was not the rubber ball they were expecting, but rather a tightly wound ball of very fine elastic strands. It reminded the girl of the story of one of her Cat In The Hat books. Her cousin Danny wanted to bounce it. The girl wanted to see how long the string was. So she rubbed the surface gently, like Aladdin rubbing his lamp, until the end of the string loosened. Then she began to unwind it.

The ball was not, in fact, made of elastic strands, but of only one strand, fine as a hair, and miles long. The girl unwound and unwound. Her cousins became bored and left in search of other games. And still the girl unwound the elastic string. The ball became smaller and smaller.

Then the ball began to move on its own in her hand. Startled, she dropped it to the ground and watched as the elastic, having achieved some critical point, began to unwind itself. Faster and faster the ball spun, the elastic hair spraying out around it like the Tasmanian Devil's wake until, finally, a tiny rubber ball popped out and bounced quietly away.

* * *
The bartender placed a Macallan in front of her. Neat, with a glass of water on the side. She took a sip. Grimaced. Looked up. And there was Jack.

"Hey, you," he said. It was as though no time at all had passed.

He asked what she was drinking. He ordered the same. Then: "Do you still have the Corrado?"

"Yes. How's Beauty?"

"She's fine. She's in storage. I take her out once in a while, when it's a beautiful sunny day."

"Isn't it always a beautiful sunny day in California?"

"It is," he agreed. "So, how's ___?"

"Weggegangen."

Jack said nothing. He looked at the girl with his steel blue eyes for several minutes. Then, this time, he did do what she wanted him to do. He wrapped his arms around her. And for the first time in two years, the girl felt the golf ball stop spinning.

"I read The Velveteen Rabbit once a year, at Christmas, whether I want to or not," Jack told the girl, "And I never want to."

* * *
They talked on the phone nearly every night. For hours and hours. Until his cordless phone would run out of power. Then he'd call her back on his cell phone, just to say goodnight, and they'd talk for another hour. She, lying in bed, half asleep; he, pacing the floor of his kitchen, three thousand miles away.

There was a giddiness to their relationship. A kind of excitement she hadn't felt since highschool. This time, there were no taboos. There was no one to hurt. No one else, at least. It's not that there were no obstacles. There were — and are — and some of them are Very Bad. But the girl had known about the Very Bad Things since that summer at the Internet company. She learned more about them now.

She had Hope.

On the girl's birthday, last summer, Jack invited her to San Francisco for the weekend, and took her dancing at The Starlight Room. It was a magical night, and the girl felt just like Cinderella.

Jack promised to take her to the opera, because she had never seen La Bohème.

They said that thing they never say. And the girl said to Jack, "This time, I choose you."

An invitation to a fall wedding on Toronto Island arrived in the girl's mailbox, and Jack agreed to be her escort. It had been several weeks since they had seen each other, and the girl couldn't wait to see him again, and to show him off to her friends.

And then something happened, something that had nothing to do with the girl, that she could neither help nor prevent, and the Very Bad Things resurfaced.

He called her and said, "I will not come."

Oh yeah, life goes on. Even after the thrill of living is gone. "I cannot bear this again," the girl thought. And so she wrote this story, to say, fuck you; and this story, to say, I understand; and this story, to say, but I'm not pining. And she promised herself that Jack would never make her cry again.

And then late one night the phone rang, and it was Jack. "How was the concert?" he asked. There was a note of sarcasm in his voice. Cleverness, wit, sarcasm; these were all qualities the girl sought out in her friends, and Jack had them in spades. But this time, something was different. It almost sounded like he was jealous.

And so they began to talk again. Infrequently, and on eggshells.

It was just after Christmas. They were talking about Stephen King and the Boston Red Sox. And the girl said, "So, my friend Sara is getting married in New York in March. You'll never guess what her fiancé's name is."

"What?"

"Steven King."

"With a PH or a V?"

"With a V. But still, come on!"

Jack laughed.

The girl didn't want to ask, she didn't want to ask, she knew the answer would be no, and she didn't think she could bear it. But even the thinest sliver of Hope is nevertheless a sliver of Hope, and so she asked:

"Will you come dance with me?"

"No," he replied.

"Ouch," she said.

And then, a few weeks later, he called and said, "I will come dance with you."

And now the girl is trying hard not to count the days until March 19. She has a great deal of work to do, after all: papers to grade, midterms to prepare, class preps to prep, textbook chapters to edit. So many people are depending on her.

And so she's agreed to share a hotel room with the maid of honour, and she's asked another friend who is driving to the wedding to pick her up at the airport.

She wants more than anything to believe that Jack will be there, but she won't allow herself more than a very, very, very thin sliver of Hope.
* * *
Go to next story in sequence, which begins The Viking Trilogy. Or, skip ahead to find out whether the girl was stood up by Jack. If you've just joined us, Gentle Reader, click here to read the story of Jack and Diane from the beginning.