She's A Summer Girl

Chiara, trying on dresses for me, just came into the room to show me a recent purchase. She took a wide eyed look out the window at the clamshell sized snowflakes heaping down, made a face like a kitten that was just made to lick a lemon and said, in a little raspy voice: "winter."

Everybody's Doing It

Every year around this time you hear a lot of fatuousness about Valentine's Day and how it is a phony holiday created by the greeting card industry or other rot like that.

But, a quick primer:

What we call Valentine's Day is really an amalgam of several ancient and modern festivals celebrated at this time of year, many of them half remembered and gutless after a couple thousand years of watering down, but even so.

For the ancient Athenians, who had different months, the period of time between what we call the middle of January and the middle of February was set aside to celebrate the marriage of Zeus, king of the gods and Hera, his sister and bride. Being ancient Greece, one can assume this was mostly celebrated by having sex with young boys.

For the Celts, Imbolc fell in the first week of Febraury, a kind of Fertility festival celebrating rebirth ('Imbolc' means, roughly, "in the belly" and referred to the ewes and other animals who became pregnant at around this time and would birth in the Spring). As this was the time of year when winter's grip began to loosen, people would gather together to have sex. Lots of sex. Pagan sex. You know, the good kind, with ram's horns and wicker.

And, oh yeah, I suppose there was a kind of veneration of the feminine about Imbolc as well, and we've hung on to that part also. After all, I have very seldom been wined or dined or presented with degrading articles of underwear on this day. Because I'm a man. I get it.

Sexists.

For the Romans, the early part of February was the Lupercalia, where, again, fertility and sex were venerated, along with Juno, the goddess associated with marriage. They would also venerate the she-wolf who suckled Romulus and Remus. Men would run through the street wearing bloody wolf pelts and this would get them invited to parties where girls became very drunk.

I mean, really. They would sacrifice a wolf in the main square and these young men would come up to the altar naked where the priest or priestess would tie these long thongs of flesh cut from the wolf's pelt around their arms and legs. The boys would run through the streets, lashing at the women who gathered on the sidewalks in white gowns. If you were the women, you hoped to be lashed by the bloody thong because it would bring you love in the year to come, or fertility, or ease in childbirth.

The bloody thongs were called "Februa." Ahem.

In fact, the Lupercalia was such an orgiastic free-for-all that the early popes spent centuries trying to do away with it. Eventually, under the "if you can't beat 'em, change the name of the thing they like so much and pretend they've just been doing it wrong for a thousand years" school of management that had worked so well with Christmas, the popes started associating the Lupercalia with an otherwise not especially noteworthy couple of dudes called Valentine, who were early Christian martyrs. That they were chubby toddlers with wings and a mastery of archery is less well known, but makes their martyrdom all the more poignant.

In the Medieval period, the mythologization, poeticization, and refinement of romantic love really got off the ground. The idea of "courtly love," of a code of honor relating to the pursuit of a paramour, became the major topic of art and literature, especially among the upper class. In Hamlet, Ophelia is even shown to be thinking about Valentine's Day, and we know well things turned out for her. Take heart, single ladies!

But, as with so many of our great traditions and holidays, the real architects of the way in which we celebrate Valentine's Day today are the Victorians. They get a bad wrap for being prudes, but they invented porn! (not sexy pictures, as such, but the idea of sexy pictures being something illicit that you hid in your sock drawer because your wife doesn't ever have any reason to look in your sock drawer - not even if someone mentions this blog to her. Look it up!)

Yes, the Victorians gave us the greeting cards and the chocolates and the obsession with the images of those chubby little gremlins called putti. (No idea if they were also responsible the everpopular tradition of the Valentine's Day lingerie purchase and the ceremonial refusal to wear.)

So quit bitching. Cranks and conservatives and curmudgeons have tried to whine and moan their way out of our remarkably festive civilization, turning up their noses at the redolent smell of paganism in everything we hold dear. Some people won't be happy until we have nothing to celebrate at all and just spend all our time in church or at work. SNORE.

Humans have been celebrating this time (and, indeed, in many cases, this exact day) for centuries and millennia as a time to think of erotic love and overpriced, underwhelming prix fixe dinners.

Embrace it.

Candlemas 2011

So today (or tomorrow?) is Candlemas. Or Brighid. or St. Brigit's Day. Or Imbolc. Or Groundhog Day.
Whatever. Same Diff.

This is the midpoint between the Winter Solstice and The Vernal Equinox.

In my phony-balogna Secular Paganism this is one of the holidays. Because our main belief is that holidays should be evenly distributed and have good party decorations.

You celebrate the lengthening of the days, the first buds on the trees, the baby animals conceived but not yet born. You celebrate the winter for its wintryness. (because, at Christmas, you celebrate all the things winter is not, really).

I meant to have a big party this year. My WINTERLUDE party. Was gonna have tons of lights and candles and lanterns and was gonna serve gins and tonic and listen to brittle electro-funk music.

Alas, the New Year's thing we had sorta threw us, money wise. Next year.

Anyway, Happy Candlemas! Happy Winterlude! light some candles. make one of these things, whatever the fuck they are:

See you dumbasses for Easter.

The Best Snowstorm of the Year

I'm decidedly of two minds about the weather today.

On the one hand, I'm personally offended to have snow in March. It had been warmish and increasingly vernal for several weeks. Flowers were starting to push their way out of the ground, birds could be heard scrabbling on the roof in the morning. Winter seemed in full retreat.

On the other hand, it was the most curious snowfall. Early this morning, when I dragged myself out of bed like a marionette with tangled strings and looked out our bedroom window, the whole world was coated with a marshmallowy dollop of white.

Between an inch and two inches of snow on every roof, on every lawn, on every branch - right down to the tiniest of new buds - but not a speck of snow on the streets and not a hint of it on the sidewalk.

No shoveling to be done. No extra care to be taken behind the wheel.

What's more, by some odd trick of the storm, every street sign and every billboard, every stop sign and every shop sign, every school crossing and every mile marker, was covered in snow as though each had been frosted with a cake spreader. No vertical space could be seen without its message obscured by a perfect coating of snow.

Tabula rasa. Everything ineffable (or, at least, uneffed).

Still. Goddamned March, isn't it? Enough already.

Homeless for the Holidays (At My House!)

One year, while living alone in a little house I rented, I had a Halloween party.

In the early part of the evening I stayed in and handed out candy to the trick-or-treaters and, because I was forever opening and shutting the door anyway, I didn't bother to lock it in between candy out-handing.

So I could hardly have been surprised when the seven foot tall homeless man, stinking of whiskey and pee (and of clothes washed in whiskey and pee) burst through my door and into my living room to "get away from the dude who stole [his] bike!"

At first I tried to humor him. Pretended to look outside. Told him I didn't see the guy he was running from - that the coast was clear. Somehow he took this elaborate pantomime as an invitation to sit on (and forever mar the smell of) my sofa.

He grabbed my phone off the coffee table and punched a long succession of numbers. While he sat there, fidgeting, holding the receiver against his head as though waiting while it rang on the other end, he told me he was calling the C.I.A.

When he finally got through to the C.I.A. he asked to speak with Mr. Santos.

He became enraged when he was, apparently, told that Mr. Santos had been transferred to another department and that they did not have a contact number. The homeless man held the phone away from his face and shouted into it "I ride with Jesus on a rickshaw!"

This all ended predictably, with me pushing my head into his chest in order to get him out the door, like trying to get an elephant onto an airplane.

So all that was years ago. The reason I mention it is that I am, apparently, the nexus in some cosmic relationship between the wheel of the year and drunken vagrantism.

Today, Valentine's Day, I received a telephone call from my delightful French neighbor, informing me that a drunken man was sleeping on my front porch (a sentence that sounds surprisingly sophistique in a French accent).

I laughed. Imagine if I'd gone to get the mail this afternoon. How long had he been there? As it was I had wandered by the front window half a dozen times today without seeing his sack-like body slumped in my Adirondack chair. But the sun was on him and he was sound asleep, drunk as a fish, blissfully unaware of my presence as I peered at him through the glass.

I wish I'd thought to take a photo before the police came. I called Eric to tell him about the whole thing and he didn't answer. If he had, he told me later, he would have convinced me to decorate the guy with tinsel and string - as a Valentine's Day gift for Chiara.

"Because that's a gift you can't buy in a store," he said.

As it was, I did the safer thing and just called the police.

In three minutes they had nine officers and four paramedics there. It was ridiculous.

Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves, especially after they determined that the guy was basically okay - just hammered. They led him away and I got a picture of that. They would take him to a detox shelter and they said he would be fine. They handcuffed him, though. That seemed a shame.

Still, they told me as they were leaving that he was just out of prison - on parole for only two days. So maybe a good thing I didn't put glitter on his face after all, Eric.

One odd note more - after the cops took the drunk guy away from my house, I went outside to sniff the wet spot on the chair (only water - I think) and I checked the mailbox. The mail carrier had come and gone while the dude was passed out on my porch. I have to ask him about this the next time I see him. It won't be awkward, I have to talk to him anyway. For some reason we've stopped receiving the lingerie catalogs the previous owners received at this address and something has to be done, recession or no.

Touche, Tubby

Me: walking down the concourse of the open air shopping center, returning from an eye exam.

Fat Kid: approaching from the opposite direction, wearing a tank top and athletic shorts.

The City: cold. snowbound.

Me: passing the fat kid, "aren't you cold?"

Fat Kid: banging on handheld game with stubby fingers, "I don't get cold. I'm fat."

Me: Sisyphean attempt to laugh in a way that conveyed amusement, but not agreement.

The City: sigh.

My Father at Christmastide

He watches The Gilmore Girls. He Tivos The Hills. During the whole of Christmas afternoon he sat contentedly in front of the fire, watching lifetime original movies on his 50 inch TV screen while Tim and I stood nervously nearby, hoping to catch the first snore of his inevitable nap so that we could connect the Xbox and chainsaw some aliens.

He knows no sin greater than to serve salad at the same time as the main course. He has left a trail of bloodied and broken waiters and waitresses behind him in his never ending quest to rid the world of this most heinous of wrongs. Once he flatly refused to eat (or pay for) a large porterhouse steak that was brought to him whilst he was still eating his salad. He insisted, loudly, that the waitress must throw away the steak he had been brought and have another prepared for him to be ready after he had finished his lettuce. And woe be unto him who should suggest that he 'calm down' or that it is 'no big deal.' The road to disinheritance is paved with such blasphemies. At Red Lobster the other night (yes, I know), he turned heads when he almost launched into a scathing rebuke of our Croatian waiter for bringing the salads at the same time as out order of coconut shrimp. Only some fast conversational footwork to get him reminiscing about a particular black bean soup he used to get for lunch twenty years ago saved the evening.

While watching a football game on television, he saw a player who had just barely missed an interception clap his hands once, forcefully, in frustration. Apparently never having seen humans behave, my father insisted that someone explain to him why the player in question would clap about missing an interception. Was he happy? What's wrong with him? It was explained to my father that a clap of the type he witnessed was a common way to vent the feeling of 'almost, damn!' and that people did this all the time, ourselves included.

He refused to accept this. He insisted that he had never seen anyone do that ever and that we must be wrong.

But he works really hard to put together a nice Christmas every year. He puts up a ridiculously tall tree (mostly to satisfy my sister's arboreal penis envy) and is willing, bless his heart, to watch the same insipid films every single year just to soak it all in. And all he asks for in return is at least one gift which contains something black and leather.

Oh yeah, he seems to have some kind of poorly developed leather fetish, as well.

Park City: My Father Explains a T-shirt

On Main Street last night, while taking an after dinner stroll, my father pulled Chiara and I over to a shop window and directed us to look inside. He pointed out a t-shirt on a mannequin and read its slogan to us with glee:

“Bike Naked . . . Show Off Your Rear Suspension”

I rolled my eyes and moved on up the street. Chiara (perhaps she was in shock) just stared at the shirt in the window while my father jostled her lightly, a silly grin playing around his John Ashcroft head.

“Get it? Get it?”

Chiara raised her delicate eyebrows and shrugged.

“You know bicycles have rear suspension?” My father went on, smirking. Chiara nodded and assented that she did, though I think she had no idea what he had asked her.

“And so, get it? ‘Bike Naked. Show Off Your Rear Suspension’?”

Chiara: “I theenk so.”

My Father: “Hahaha! That’s really clever. Rear suspension. Don’t you think that’s clever, Jeff?”

Me, from up the street, not looking: “Clever.”

He then nudged Chiara again and repeated himself.

“I think that’s really clever. Show Off Your Rear Suspension. You want a shirt like that, Jeff?”

“No.” I said, my eyes clinging by their fingernails to stay inside my head.

But I should have said ‘yes’ you will tell me.

You’re right, of course.

Park City: My Father and the Steak Diane

One of the things you do when visiting the family for the Christmas holiday is to bring your family out into public so that you can feel embarrassed not just at home, but in a variety of places.

While dining the other night at a restaurant in Park City, my father spotted Steak Diane on the menu. Like a bite of Proust’s madeleine, this sent him into a kind of reverie.

“It was while your mother and I were living in Northridge,” it began.

“We were driving to Sequoia or somewhere. Anyway, we were near Modesto or Fresno and we were hungry.”

“We were driving through this small town at night, and on either side of us there were scores of car dealerships - and I mean fancy car dealerships - Lincoln, Cadillac, Oldsmobile . . .”

(Chuckles from my sister and I. My father oblivious.)

“We followed the road until we found a little restaurant and stopped for dinner. We both ordered the Steak Diane. Maybe that was the first time I ever had it. The waiter brought it to the table on a cart and it was served flambé. He rolled up the sleeves of his tuxedo jacket and cut our steak right there at the table. It was decadent and it was just delicious. I always remember that.”

Later, after Tim and Chiara had been convinced (how?) by this story to order the Steak Diane, my father lamented the inferiority of the Steak Diane served to them - which did not come flambé.

“This just isn’t Steak Diane,” he said with a shake of his head.

Barbarian Musings

It’s this time of year, when the mercury falls and the thermostat rises, that I often reflect on beards gone by.

The Christmas Beard is the gift I have to give myself every year, but I’ve neglected myself once again. I miss my beard. I should have shaved off the rest of me instead.

There are two sorts of people in the world, of course: people who like beards . . .

And women.

Women in the audience should know a curious thing: wearing a real beard provides almost the exact same sensation as wearing a false beard held on by cosmetic glue. Should any of you ever wish to experience an hour or two of facial hair, simply purchase a kit from your costume shop. You won’t be disappointed. Or you will be. In either event, you will have magnified your knowledge of beards.

Under a beard, one forgets oneself. Or, anyway, one forgets the contours of one’s chin and jaw - which is the same thing.

When you cut away the beard from the rest of you, you reveal mostly regret; a pasty, raw, unfamiliar kind of regret that you’d just as soon cover with bristles.

Oh well.

Don’t shampoo your beard in the shower, imagining that it would benefit form the process as does the longer, softer hair of your scalp. It only makes your beard itch more, I’ve found.

A beard is the scaffolding upon which a mustache is constructed.

A beard is the camouflage that conceals your true purpose. Then, like the sculptor sees in the stone the statue’s final form, you find the final courage to carve the mustache from the hairy medium.

But mustaches are an advanced maneuver and should not be attempted lightly or with much hope of happiness or success. The candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long.

It feels weird to brush beards out, away from your face. It hurts, but in the way that chewing on a canker or worrying a hangnail hurts. That is to say: it hurts in the way you cannot quite stop yourself from doing, though you know you will regret it.

It doesn’t really keep you warm, a beard, but it cuts the wind. It denies you the pleasure of a cool pillow on your face. This is a thing you learn to miss.

It gives you something to do when you are thinking about something. Stroking a beard while musing or concentrating is a terrible cliché. Like most terrible clichés, it works.

Everyone should grow a full beard at least once in their life. That so many will not is a kind of tragedy. Beards are to the male experience what childbirth is to the female.

Maybe haircuts would be a better fit there.

In any case, as the narrator in Cheever's The Swimmer had an inexplicable contempt for men who did not throw themselves into pools, so I have an abiding distaste for those who shave every morning. And a special hell is reserved for those who ignore the grain of the ingrowing beard by shaving against it.

You might surprise yourself by growing a beard an entirely different color from the hair on your head.

Also, with a beard, you’ll look better in a baseball cap, but worse in a collared shirt, but better in a crewneck sweater, but worse in a sportcoat. These are the wages of beards.

When you finally do buckle under the pressure from the women in your life and shave your beard away, you will feel a sickly regret and loathe your puffy face and ill-defined cheekbones, not to mention your gullibility and the ease with which you folded under pressure. You’ll want nothing so much as to pluck the hairs one by one from the sink and glue them back to your face.

It will take a while to tan the bottom part of your face. People will notice.