Friend Fruit
After my surgery, I received many wonderful gifts. And I still plan on thanking the folks responsible for those things, for they were each treasures; on days when I felt like I wanted to give up, I’d get a card or a drawing or a video, and suddenly I was reminded why life was worth living. And that was beautiful, and I can’t let it go unpassed.
But there’s one gift that arrived afresh today: Friend Fruit.
You see, when I fell sick, my online critique group was deeply concerned for me. Which was sweet; we’d all done Viable Paradise together, we’d somehow kept in touch and kept critiquing the shit out of each other. I’d read their novels, their stories, pumped the fist at their publications.
And being creative writers, they devised a thoughtful gift to keep me around: a subscription to the Fruit of the Month club. First month: oranges.
The thing is, I still don’t like fruit all that much. But every morning, when I woke up, I thought, “My friends want me to eat healthy.” And so I ate an orange, which I labelled “friend fruit.” My family shared in my fruit, and together we ate well, and that made me happy.
Yesterday, the second shipment of friend fruit arrived: grapefruits. I’ve never had grapefruits. I don’t know whether I’ll like them. But I do know that I’ll smile as I eat them, because it was a gift given by some thoughtful buddies of mine. And that makes these fruit all the sweeter.
So thank you, Lara, George, Miranda, George, Sean, Christian, and Eric. I’m gonna eat some grapefruit today. For you.
Shaving With A Straight Razor For A Month: A Report
If you take out the eight weeks of post-heart attack recuperation, I have been shaving with a straight razor for a solid month now. And I must say, the biggest appeal of it all is how toyetic the process is.
“Toyetic” is a made-up word that explained Star Wars’ appeal; it made lots of cool toys. Whereas while, say, Independence Day is a fine movie on its own merits, there’s only one alien and it’s kind of ugly. (Seriously, who wants to play with the Jeff Goldblum doll?) And shaving with a straight razor appeals to men because it is not only stupidly dangerous and useless, but it is marvelously toyetic.
As witness! Before, my entire shaving kit consisted of this pathetic set in a shower:
Now, it consists of this fine, intimidating regiment:
And all of those items, my friends, are the topic of stupid debates, which men naturally love. What brand of shaving cream should you use… or should you use shaving oil? Is that badger hair brush really top-of-the-line? How many times should you apply the hot towel to your face during a shave? What grip should you use? All of these allow a man to have firm opinions about something that matters really not at all, which is of course a fine thing to have.
The thing is, I find myself shaving for pleasure, which is odd. Yesterday, I completed work and went into the bathroom to treat myself – yes, to treat myself! – to a nice long shave. I call it my “blood meditation,” because you cannot shave quickly with a straight razor, and you’d be foolish to try. No, no matter how hectic your life, you must slow down to match the pace of the shave – holding the hot towel to your face, lathering up in the cup, smooshing the lather into your face.
And, of course, the shave. The shave teaches you to pay attention to your face with strange detail. Before, if you’d asked me about my face, I’d have told you it was, well, a face. But now I see it in angles; there’s my sadly soft cheeks, which tend to mush under the blade, and the treacherous hollows under my jawline, and the underside of my neck. I pay attention to the directions my facial hair grows, for I must shave against the grain for the closest cut – and that, my friends, changes from inch to inch. I now occasionally just touch my face gently, with the tips of my fingers, trying to recall which way my beard grows.
So much of the shave is in that approach. Which way do I cut? I keep changing my approach, looking for the perfect set of swathes that lead me to a face with no stubble whatsoever. I haven’t found it; I think I’ve mastered it, then as I apply the post-shave witch hazel I find another thatch of cut, but not perfectly cut, hair. And there is pleasure in seeking that perfection.
Do I cut myself? Yes, of course. And almost always in the same place. For as I try to cut against the grain (which is to say, towards my ear) along my right cheek, I always find this awkward moment where I can’t cut all the way smoothly with my right hand. It’s my elbow, my damnable elbow. So I slow down, and slowing down lets the razor bite, and as such I not only have this same cut but you can actually see where the stubble is thicker after it. I have to find a better approach, even as I am terrified to switch to try to use my trembling left hand, as others have suggested.
As for the name of my razor? Well, many suggested – ha ha! – Sweeney, even though I said I do not want to cuddle up with a bloodthirsty razor. No, I want a comforting razor, a razor that is redolent of 1950s barber shops and men in nice fedoras getting a fine shave before they head off to the office. As such, several people wisely suggested “Floyd,” as in Mayberry’s own Floyd the Barber, and I think that is a most, most excellent name for a razor. Floyd never wanted to cut anyone; he just wanted to even out your sideburns.
How My Mind Works: The World's Perfect Couple?
Okay, while doing research I really had no right to be doing, I discovered the fact that in 2006, a woman called the Scorpion Queen held the record for holding a live scorpion in her mouth. Two minutes, three seconds, seven inches of venomous scorpion between the teeth.
That’s not the cool bit. Who placed the scorpion in her mouth?
Her lover, the Centipede King.
Now, these guys are serious. The Scorpion Queen – or so it was reported – lived in a house with 5,000 scorpions for 32 days. Her husband lived in a cage with a thousand centipedes for a month. (Though this gives me the delightful image of the Scorpion Queen, sitting in her writhing chitinous house, with her husband popping by from time to time, stepping carefully amidst the sea of stingers to bring in the tea.)
And, in 2006, they wed.
But then I wondered: are they still together? What kind of marital disharmonies would they face? I mean, clearly they spend a lot of time apart, what with their living boxed up with bugs all the time. One hopes they can manage to get past the inevitable conflicts that arise when one starts comparing the merits of centipedes to scorpions, and make it up with insect-filled kisses.
Alas. The Internet fails us here, as I can find no update on the Scorpion Queen and her fine, verminous husband. They have dropped off the ‘net, having gone dark – a thing that seems supremely appropriate, yet is maddening in its absence.
I need to know how they are today. Have they managed to grow their love like the larvae in their walls? Are they still magnificently into multi-legged creatures? Has the Centipede King become some sort of hipster, having declared centipedes to be so 2006 and moved on to stinkbeetles? Or are they cuddling among the bugs, wreathed in many-legged bliss?
Please, please tell me they have not divorced. I could not bear the news.
For if the Scorpion Queen and the Centipede King cannot make it work, what hope is there for the rest of us?
I Was Never That Weak. I Couldn't Have Been.
Week Nine into recovery from the heart surgery, and I’m edging normal. My sleep habits are still all over the place, and my energy levels are inconsistent, but at this point there isn’t really anything I can’t do, just things that are painful to do. (Like sneezing. Oh my God, sneezing.)
And now that I’m mostly back, my brain is trying to rewrite history.
Take getting out of bed, for example. I can get up in a matter of seconds, with only a twinge of pain. And every time I do, I think, Oh, this is easy. The only reason it was so hard before is because I was scared.
Or when I power-walk three miles in forty-five minutes and get off the treadmill, sweating, only to think: You could have done that before. You were just reluctant to go full-out.
And I was reluctant to go full-out, my friends, but that’s because my chest was still freshly broken and my lungs could only suck in half the air they could today. Yet I do not want to face that terror. I do not want to ever know that I was that weak. So I keep retconning history, making it so that the reason I didn’t get out of bed and tapdance is just that I was too timid to really take this new body out for a spin.
It’s ridiculous. But I think that instinct to rearrange life is at the heart of a lot of bad politics, the kind of instinct that goes, “Shit, life is scary and uncertain, and even if you work smart and hard there’s still a chance that you could fail. So… let’s rearrange life to be more predictable! Let’s make it so that every person who has a lot of money got there because of their tremendous smarts and aptitude, and all the poor people are there because they are lazy! That’s a much nicer rule, and it ensures that the money I have is because of all my effort.”
You see that a lot, that re-attributing things to willpower and gumption because, shit, the idea that you could lose for reasons that had nothing to do with you are terrifying. Just like the way I look at myself two months ago, laid low by genetic factors I had zero control over, saved by medicine I barely understand, under the complete control of my nurses and doctors and the medicines pumped into my veins.
No. Better to think that I was just reluctant back then. I could have been my old self at any time. That’s much more comforting, and it means if I’m ever there again all I have to do is kick my heels.
Will Somebody Think Of The Children?
Divorce is a bitter, bitter thing for a child to face. It leaves scars that never heal, churning up big ugly terrors of abandonment and instability. And God forbid you handle it wrong and turn the kids into the rope of your tug o’war game with your ex-spouse, constantly demanding they take sides in a war they never asked to be in. That separation and consequent reordering of their life can fuck them up in profound ways.
If you love your children, divorce is a damned hard road to put them on… So a lot of people endure borderline abusive relationships for the sake of the kids, sticking around so they never have to go through that anguish.
But stasis also takes its own toll. Because every day you stay with your spouse, you’re teaching your children what love looks like. They’re taking their cues as to all their future romantic relationships from you, because this is most likely the only intimate pair-bond they’ll get to see in such detail.
No matter how dysfunctional the household, if you grow up with it, you think it’s normal for a time. And why not? At seven, it’s not like you’ve experienced anything else.
So if you’re pondering divorce, yes, consider the strain on the kids once those separation papers go through. But also consider all the compromises you’re making to keep this creaking marriage together, all the angry fights you’re subjecting them to (because even through a muffled door, kids pick up on that shit like antennae), all the ways in which you’re both showing disrespect for each other…. And then think, “Do I want them to think this is the way they should treat someone they love?”
Because a bad parental relationship is like chemicals in the groundwater. It’s not as explosive as the divorce, but in some ways it’s more long-lasting, so subtle they might not ever realize that they’re being inevitably drawn to unhappy relationships like good ol’ Mom and Dad because, well, they keep making decisions to hide their emotions and fight unfairly in ways that drive all the positive partners away. That the template you handed them is broken, and you never really bothered to explain that to them.
Thing is, parenting is all about uncertainties. You can teach your kids the worst lessons in the world, and some of them will still thrive and find a way to surpass every bad instinct you ground into them. Or you can teach your kids the best lessons, and still have them miserable and broke and upset. So it’s hard to give any firm parenting advice, because like much of life, it’s a game of odds where sometimes, no matter how well you’ve played out that hand of Blackjack, the dealer flops into a 21 and it’s over.
Yet that doesn’t mean playing the odds is dumb.
I think if you’ve taken on the responsibility of kids, then you owe it to them to try to make the marriage work, and give it every shot in counseling, mediation, whatever you can do to try to restart the love you guys once had. But if you can’t, and you’re still miserable, then I’d think mighty hard about whether the lessons you’re teaching them are the lessons you want them to learn. Because there’s a good danger that, in fact, they’ll learn it far better than you’d like.