Love is the Drug

The best part about my visit to the doctor last week was sure not the trip there on the bus. The only thing that sucks worse than having to go see a doctor when you're sick is having to take the bus to go see a doctor when you're sick.

No, it was the lorazepam.

Lorazepam, in case you don't know, and are too lazy to look it up in the Wikipedia, is a happy drug. A chill pill. An anti-anxiety medication. Or, more scientifically, an anxiolytic. It's also categorized as a sedative, an amnesic, an anticonvulsant and, my favourite, a hypnotic.

Gosh, how I love this country!

Sarcasm, Gentle Reader, sarcasm.

But you have to love a country with doctors that'll give you a prescription for an addictive hypnotic and sometime hallucinogenic just for the asking, when you came in to see them for an earache. For that, by the way, they prescribed Robitussin and nasal spray. Over the counter.

And if you think I'm joking, you must be one of my non-American readers.

Next, it's Postmodern Sass's birthday.

Crazy

Crazy, I'm crazy for feelin' so lonely.
I'm crazy, crazy for feelin' so blue.
I knew you'd love me as long as you wanted
And then someday, you'd leave me for somebody new.

Worry, why do I let myself worry?
Wonderin', what in the world did I do?
Oh, crazy, for thinking that my love could hold you.
I'm crazy for tryin', and I'm crazy for cryin',
And I'm crazy for lovin' you.

No, no reason. Why?

When Kay and I travelled to Memphis together, at Halloween two years ago, we visited the famous Sun Studio and I recorded that song in the booth where Elvis used to sing. I have the recording on a CD that looks like an old 45 rpm. It's one of my most cherished possessions.

I chose that song not because it's my best, but because they didn't have any Connie Francis or Nancy Sinatra or Blondie. Those are my best. But it doesn't suck, at least I don't think it does, and Ace, who is a trained musician, and can tell suckitude when he hears it, said it wasn't bad.

Of course, he's my friend and may have just been being kind.

I wish I had a microphone. I could totally nail that song right now. And I want to have a cigarette in my hand while I'm doing it.

Oh, man, do I want a cig bad right now.

Instead of having a cigarette, Sass takes drugs.

My name is Luka

One side of a cell phone conversation, overheard on the bus, yesterday, on my way to see my first American doctor:

"Well, you remember my mom...

I could see that I was more together than her, and I was five!

But your dad was just a regular dad. Mine was like...

I remember he used to say, whatever she says, just do the opposite.

Well, you know, you must succumb to whatever mom wants!

Have they finally accepted that I was beaten?

Well, yeah, that's what made my dad successful and rich, but what has it done for you?

Oh, no! My dad was completely miserable. My mom was just icing on the cake!"

His mother's not the only one who's crazy.

My head is like a football, I think I'm gonna die

It's not from a hangover, far from it, but there don't seem to be any songs written about plain old being sick.

That's my Throwdown Chicken Soup over there, made on Sunday night and inspired by my new hero, Bobby Flay. My mother, whose 1970s soup pot I still use, would have loved him.

The last two weeks I've been spending most of my time at home, writing, with the TV on in the background for inspiration and company, and I've become a fan of the Food Network. Not, you understand, because I like to cook, but because I like to watch other people cook. Especially Bobby Flay.

This cough and cold, and, as of last night, earache, were acquired, if I had to guess, from Jack, the night we went to see Chris Isaak at the Mountain Winery, and if you can imagine a more romantic setting in which to hear perform a man who makes women's knees turn to jelly, I'd like to hear about it, Gentle Reader. It was a fabulous evening, or would have been, had Jack not been sick. He'd been coughing at me over the phone for a couple of days before the concert, and I'd been working on a plan B to sell the tickets on Craigslist but he insisted he was well enough to make the trip. He wasn't, really, but he did it anyway.

Jack's recovered from his cold by now, I suppose. We're not exactly speaking these days, I explained to Ace the other day, because he asked, and then I added: and by the way I want to rip his head off and stuff it down his throat.

So today I'm staying in my jammies and I'm watching All My Children, something I haven't done since around the time that Maria was Edmund's wife, not a DNA expert on CSI: Miami. Can I tell you how much I love that Jack and Erica are married? Gosh, I love Jack. I've always loved Jack.

This Jack. The character on All My Children.

Sheesh.

Next, Postmodern Sass rides the bus and overhears a conversation.

I Hate Everything About You

That's the title of a song by Three Days Grace, a Canadian band of the I'm-an-angst-filled-twenty- something- from- a- middle- class- family genre, epitomized by Nickelback, and which I can't abide. What follows in the refrain is "Why do I love you?"

This song perfectly expresses how I feel about Facebook.

(Ha! Gotcha! You thought I was going to say Jack, didn't you?)

I may hate it — heck, I do hate it — but that's not stopping me from being obsessed with it. And I do mean obsessed. Last night I hung out on Nadine's fabulous patio with Nadine and Monica, drinking beer until 2:00 in the morning, and refused, even through my drunken haze, to answer their questions about Jack, except for to say, "Do you remember what Hilary Clinton said, when she was on her book tour a few years ago, when all the talk show hosts would ask her why she stayed with Bill?"

"What?"

"He's far from perfect, and yes, he's hurt me, but for all his faults, he's still the most interesting, intelligent man I know, and I'd rather spend time with him than with any other man I've ever met."

When I got home I logged on and saw that three more people had added themselves to my Facebook friend list. I'd broken the 30 mark on my first day!

Top Ten Things I Hate About Facebook:

1. It forces you to enter your year of birth.
2. It encourages you to enter years for everything else, so that people can do the math.
3. The word "random," used incorrectly, appears as an option for almost every indicator.
4. It wants you to indicate your political and religious views.
5. It doesn't offer "random" as an option for your political and religious views.
6. People whose profile photo is not of them alone.
7. The childish third-party apps, like Boozemail.
8. Student/teacher is not an option for indicating your relationship with a new friend.
9. The Americanness of it: It views "college" as not being an institution one gets a degree from.
10. Poking. It's just idiotic.

Number One Thing I Love About Facebook:

1. It gives as an option, under relationship status, "It's complicated."

My bloggerly friend, Neil Kramer, also lists his relationship status as "it's complicated." If you're not familiar with Neil's blog, he's an L.A. writer who lives with his estranged wife, Sophia, whom he absolutely adores. We're unsure how she feels about him. They're not divorced, they're just separated, but they live together. See? And you thought my relationship with Jack was barmy.

My friend Genie, whom I've known since grade three, is on Facebook. She emailed me a few weeks back to ask, "Do you remember a boy named Clifford Jerel, from Miss Parker's grade three class at Jacob Beam?"

"Um, yeah! I thought you said you read back to the beginning of my stories? Didn't you notice that I mentioned him? Real name and all, figuring, what the heck, it's not like he'll ever... see it... waitasec... NO!!"

"Yes!"

"No way!"

"Way!"

Thank you, Facebook. I can't wait until I hear from Roger Larmon.

In the next story, Sass eats chicken soup and watches All My Children.

Fire

The sirens of the firetrucks that rushed to the site of the old Victorian house in downtown San Jose that burned down the other day didn't wake me, though the house wasn't three blocks away. I heard about it on the news later that day, as reporters wailed and moaned about the tragic loss of an [sic] historic monument, the former home of a former mayor, and so I went to survey the damage.


The smell of smoke was overpowering, even a block away, if you were downwind, and the firemen (I love firemen!) were still on the scene.


I couldn't get close enough to read the plaque near the front door, but you can see it there, can't you? According to the City of San Jose the house is landmark #HL00-125.


"Are you from Toronto?" asked the PG&E serviceman who'd come to make sure the gas and electricity connections to the building were not live. They weren't, he said, and hadn't been for years. He was from Detroit, he said, and I was glad I'd worn my Maple Leafs t-shirt. The building was abandoned and was scheduled for demolition. The owners wanted to put up a parking structure, just like the one in the lot right behind the house. We counted ten hydro — er, electric — meters, and concluded that the last use of this historic monument must have been as a flop house.


Somehow, this seems like a more dignified way to go.



Footnote to history:

This website describing the plans for restoring the house appears to have been abandoned nearly as long as the house itself, so I doubt that whoever created it will mind if I steal the photos of what the house looked like before:




In the next story, Postmodern Sass tells you what it is that she passionately hates — and loves.

Now playing: The Theme from Gone With The Wind

"I've met someone," is what he said on the phone that day, and whether it was the tone of his voice, or the shock of hearing those three simple words articulated in that order, I'm not sure, but nothing after that registered in my mind.

"A knight proves his worthiness through his deeds," Jack used to say, and because I believed he believed it, I chose to believe his deeds over his words, which could sometimes be cruel and which were often contradictory. I learned to be selective in which words I'd remember, which I'd dismiss, and which I'd believe.

I choose to believe the words he said to me that day in Stratford.

I will never love another.

I choose to believe the words he said while we were driving back from Santa Barbara last Christmas.

With everyone else, I can make them see the Jack I want them to see, but I can't do that with you because you know me too well. I know you see through all the bullshit and you know that deep down I love you and I want to be with you.

I choose to believe the words he said to his father.

I couldn't possibly love her more.

He's always been my knight, and though I've doubted him in the past, and caused him pain, I've never doubted that he would slay a dragon for me. Never once. Not ever.

So you see, don't you, Gentle Reader, why I can find no nexus in my mental schema on which to place the information that there might be someone he would rather be with than me? Someone whose father's accent he'll imitate? Someone he'd rather hang out at the Black Horse and drink pints with? Someone he'd rather watch fireworks and ride the rollercoasters with? Someone else he'll tell about the Very Bad Things? Someone else he'll read stories and sing songs to? Someone else he'll tease about ending sentences with a preposition?

I can't think about this now. I'll go crazy if I do. I'll think about it tomorrow.

Maybe it's her Gone With The Wind -themed week that draws Sass, in the next story, to the scene of a fire.

Go back, Jack, do it again

I know, I know, it's been forever.

I still owe you the story about how I met Jack's father, and what he said about me after I left, and what Jack replied, and I realize I haven't even finished the story about my condo, much less told you about how I went home to Toronto for a week and, at the very last second, found a tenant.

It's not that nothing's been happening. It's not that nothing story-worthy has been happening. Why, the story about how Genie told me that Clifford Jerel actually did end up stumbling onto my blog (though, thankfully, not my yellow vinyl-covered diary) is priceless. Worth volumes.

Tim Bray, who is in Silicon Valley today, and is taking me out for dinner tonight, asked the other day why I haven't been writing. I have no excuse, is what I told him, and I really don't. I just haven't felt like it.

I was beginning to think that, well, perhaps, just perhaps, there was a possibility, or at least there was the outside chance I might be approaching the periphery of the possibility of maybe not hating it here so much. That maybe, just maybe, one day, I might even be happy here. That I was even beginning to approach that possibility had a lot to do with Jack.

It's like I told you, Gentle Reader, last fall, on the occasion of my second blogiversary: I write when I'm upset, when I'm angry, when I'm scared. When things are going, well, kind of OK, I lack the urge. If my life isn't feeling like an existential angst-ridden episode of The Twilight Zone, I figure, there's nothing you're going to want to read about. I mean, where's the schadenfreude in Postmodern Sass being happy?

That's probably why I didn't tell you that Jack promised to take me to Hawaii for my birthday. I'd had the whole Internet convinced he was a bit of a bastard, you see; something of a rogue deep down, and that if he and I ever did end up, against all odds, riding off into the sunset together, well, you'd all keel over in a dead heap, snoring from the boredom of it all.

Which is why, too, when he called this afternoon to break my heart for the third time, not that I'm counting (here and here), it shouldn't have come as as great a shock to me as it did. Really, it shouldn't have. I feel like such an enormous great big fat fool, and I know what you think, Gentle Reader, which is why I've turned the comments off. Sorry. I just can't bear the I-told-you-so's right now.

Let's just say it's Sex and the City, season 2, episode 29.* I may even have the opportunity to throw up on the beach tonight. (Sorry, Tim.)

Photo by Tim Bray

God, how I wish I hadn't told my dad about Hawaii.

I'm the biggest fool on the planet. Here's why.

*In this episode, Carrie-as-narrator says, "And then, everything I knew was promptly blown to pieces." It's two months after Mr. Big has broken her heart for the second time, when Carrie sees him at a beach party on Long Island, a 26-year old new girlfriend in tow. Carrie's response is to run out to the ocean and throw up.