37. Bear Strolls into the Campsite

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Bear strolls into the campsite searching for grub. The few chokecherries he had the day before didn’t do Bear no good. Bear passes a few fleshy vanilla creatures standing around their smoking fire pits with some sort of pork product dangling limply from the ends of their sticks. Bad-tasting, these vanillas, too stringy. He rather prefers the darker versions of these creatures, which supposedly be more nutritious for you anyhow.

A couple vanillas, catching his stink, locate him there in the half-dark and look at him quite… Bear be trying to place the look exactly when it comes to him, as they say, in a flash: aghast. A literary way of looking at somebody, Bear would have thought, a way to look at somebody in bad stories, or not even so, in whatever this is, in bad little anecdotes. Very aghast.

So, naturally, Bear flips them a gang sign as if to say, ”It be cool. Don’t be going all aghast on me. Don’t be giving me that strange vanilla voodoo. I ain’t here for you anyhow. I ain’t into sinking my teeth into your tasteless vanilla thighs.” And then to really freak them out, and just to be sure that they don’t come jabbing at him with their fiery sticks, he growls out a couple of lines from Lord Alfred Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shalott” before lumbering on.

242. I Wake Up Singing

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I wake up singing the chorus to that 80s song, “Maneater,” by the musical duo Hall and Oates:

Oh, oh, oh, here she comes.
Watch out boys, she’ll chew you up.
Oh, oh, oh, here she comes.
She’s a man-eater.

“Okay,” I say, and nudge the cougar purring beside me. “I think it’s time for you to go home.”

241. A Matter of Semantics

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That gentleman over there doesn’t realize that although he may have his thumb and not his index finger up his nose, he’s still—even if in a somewhat more socially acceptable manner—picking it.

239. 12 Steps of a Tradeshow Junkie

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1

This is my life. I’m on a plane. The plane is going down. I’m watching this on TV. The TV is off. I have friends over, in my hotel room, people I’ve never met. I have no friends.

Let me start again.

2

I work the company tradeshows. They send me to Florida, San Antonio, Toronto, the moon. I wear a nametag enclosed in plastic, hanging around my neck by a string. I could strangle myself with this. Just joking. I would never do such a thing.

3

In Atlanta I get into a line of people, and we take an escalator up to the next floor where we half-circle to another escalator going up. When we die, this is how it will go, escalator after escalator, until we reach the floor of our convention center lined with gold. Or a hole leading down into a fiery pit. Or neither. Or both.

I’m not telling this right.

4

A man steps to the urinal beside me and pees without hands—very uncouth. I’m in Denver, Delaware, Duluth.

5

I’m in the Midwest somewhere or San Francisco. Memphis, Seattle, Tempe. I’m in New Orleans with a bag of jellybeans. I’m sitting in a kiosk or in a Turkish bath or in a taxi. I’ve just paid the fare or the person behind curtain number one and am about to step out, to push the door away and parachute down.

Quad grandé extra vanilla soy mocha with whip and sprinkles (please).

6

In the morning I comb my hair, I brush my teeth, I shave, I put my smile on.

7

I’m staying in Dallas at the Marriott Courtyard, which is just down the Freeport from the Marriott Residence Inn, which is just down the Freeport from the Marriott Mothership. Over there is the Earth, a big twirling ball of blue. Strange that I should notice such a thing.

8

On the 3½ hour flight, they feed us a granola bar, an 8 oz. cup of blueberry yogurt and a shiny miniature packet of raisins. Am I full? I never really know.

9

I slide my keycard through the slit on the door and wait for the red flicker to go green. I step away from the toilet and it flushes for me. I stick my hand beneath the soap dispenser and a glob of whitish soap like jism squirts neatly into my palm.

10

I’m eating a cheese steak in Philly. I’m standing on a cement ledge staring at ice patches in the Detroit River and thinking of drowning myself (not really). I’m in O’Hare. I’m in my underwear. They tell me I’ve been selected by the airport for a security check. They rope me in and wave me with a wand.

11

On behalf of the captain and the entire flight crew it is a pleasure having me on the flight this morning. They’re pleasured. I pleasure them.

12

I look out the window and oh sweet Jesus one of the engines has caught fire! (I’m only joking.) I’m in a cloud. I’m in a crowd. We circle around and go down, circle around and go down.

238. Be a Man

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Be brave. Drink beer from a can. Be pull it out
and piss where you stand. Be like a squirrel.
Be grabbing for your nuts at every chance.

Be like, “Um, I’m not sure what you’re talking about,”
when the boss shuffles over to your desk
as comforting as a police officer in riot gear.
Be like it’s cool. Be like don’t be coming into my cubicle
space with your accusatory Post-It notes. Be like all
casual about dunking the NERF basketball over her head.

Be like “There better be dinner on the table when I get home
from work, wifey-poo,” you text with two smiley faces
at four PM. “Better be bringing in the biggest antelope,
then, Mr. IT He-Man, second in command,” she texts back.
Be like no sweat little woman. Be all swagger in your
base-circling home run trot to the water cooler and back
to your desk. Be fight fight fight, in your heart. Be like
that, whenever you can. Be brave. Suck it up. Be a man.

237. Old Man and His Walker

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Slow-going, this afternoon, for the old man and his walker
through the mall,
his wife beside him coaxing
as his left foot does half a stutter-
step against the floor, half a br-
oken animal claw.

The quiet fights in the bedroom, hissing
under their breath long after
the sleeping children
have grown up
and moved on, the fierce
love-making, diets, drill
bits, March flowers, hearing—all of that gone.

They’ll do anything now to make it into the sticky booth
where in the middle of his meal, with red sauce
on his chin, after he launches into what
is obviously a long and tired rant,
she reaches across with a napkin
in her trembling hand in the pretense
of wiping his chin and—not necessarily
unkindly and perhaps only to get
his attention—slaps him, as if to say, “Shut up, just
please be quiet. Shut up now, or you’ll choke to death.”