the only thing worse
than bad memories
is no memories at all..
[dismemberment plan]
6.16.2008
People are Fucking Strange.
I can easily admit that I am not an extremely attractive person. My proportions seem way off to me, my hair for some reason has reverted back to its Bad Hair Days of 1994, and I've packed on what often feels like a padded, foam fat suit over the years.
However, I am a woman in New York City with no visible mutations or deformities. My hair is dark and long, my waist is luckily smaller than my hips and my bust. So with these very basic factors of being female, along with my deliberate Shy-No-More! personality (wherein I try to be friendly and talkative, unlike my painfully shy and evasive days where I would have killed to hide behind my mother's legs and peek out occasionally in terror... at like age 18), I somehow attract the attention of some very strange, desperate characters in search of female companionship.
I was at B.'s house on Saturday, helping him to prepare for the delivery of a baby grand piano. The movers arrived -- the ringleader being a very heavy, red-headed Italian with a broom-like mustache and a heavy Staten Island accent, and his laborers a team of Hispanic young men who all looked very nervous and fidgety, with eyes that didn't quite come up high enough to match your gaze. Later, we'd learn the probable cause of their sheepishness was that they'd forgotten the fucking piano bench and had left it behind.
Anyway, as B. took off for the bank to pay these guys, the red-headed Italian "mover" (quotes added because he didn't lift a single thing, and only ordered around/criticized the other guys), George, didn't even wait until B. was off the driveway before he closed in. "So your husband is from Staten Island, too, huh?" he said.
"Husband??" I thought. Okay, well, I guess I could go with that.
"Yes, I guess he is!" I replied, cheerfully, glad to avoid an awkward silence while B. was away for several minutes. I would honestly rather talk about something gross like gastric colitis or something ridiculous that I don't know/care about, like, say, "American Idol," than stand around with an awkward silence heavily upon me. That's when my cheek gets a little nervous twitch when I smile and I start sweating on my upper lip -- my patented SweatStache that I so love to write about. I also may or may not twiddle my fingers around as though I'm knitting an invisible afghan throw (or are those crocheted?) and start asking random people if they want something to drink.
After some small talk about George the Mover's daughters, he got a look on his face that I knew too well. The "Trying to be smooth even though I'm a middle aged obese man with a rash on my face that may be psoriasis"-Look. All of us ladies can feel this coming on from a mile away.
"Hey, do you gots a twin sistuh?" he said, screwing up his eyes to get a better look and pushed his wraparound sunglasses to rest on top of his wispy-haired head. His eyes were shockingly clear blue, and were opened so wide that they looked like they were about to pop out of his skull. "Blink-blink," went his eyes, as though he had just emerged from a cave after blindly wandering through the dark for several days, his hands groping about for an exit... groping...
"No. Why, do I look like someone you know?" I said, still happy to be having a conversation rather than pestering the very sweaty movers if they want a plastic tumbler of iced tea (which I would find myself doing just moments later anyway).
"Nah, I was just hopin', 'cause YOU'RE already taken!" he said, giving me a fixed, plastic smile, his gritted teeth pressed together into a neat grid.
"OH! HAHA ha HA!" I laughed. I noticed a small crumb in his mustache. I felt a little strange in my stomach and wondered when B. would return. I looked around for a tissue and started dusting a book on the coffee table.
Next, he did something that I truly detest. "You a Korean?"
"Yeah, are you?" I replied, immediately irritated, trying not to sound too snappy. Behind us, three Hispanic men were struggling to put the piano up on only two legs, as one tried to shove the third leg in place.
"I had a Korean coin once," he said, unfazed. "I asked this pretty Korean girl once how much it was worth. Ten cents! I woulda asked her out on a date but she was already taken, too. Huh."
"Well, how about that," I said.
"And to top it all off, I stupidly GAVE her the coin, so now I don't even have it as a conversation startuh!"
"Well, at least you can tell that story now," I replied.
"You don't have any Korean coins you could give me, do you?" he said.
"No."
Luckily, B. came back at that point. We then noticed that they'd forgotten the piano bench in New Jersey, but B. had already given me the wad of cash to give them, including the tip, so when they asked for the balance, I just handed over the whole wad from out of my pocket, without trying to negotiate the price of their negligence. I'm so weak sometimes.
Then, as each of the five Hispanic men took turns making lengthy trips to the bathroom, as the rest of them had the iced tea I brought out, George the Mover and I found ourselves in another conversation once again. B. was puttering around with his elderly neighbor showing her the new piano. "Oh!" she exclaimed. I couldn't make out the rest of what she said to him, but it was in that same frail, high-pitched tone.
"You cook, too???" George bellowed. I looked down, and on the kitchen table was "The Wicca Cookbook," which was not mine. "You really ARE da perfect woman!"
I tried desperately to make eye contact with B. who was in the next room, but he was now too busy showing off the framed artwork in the dining room to his neighbor. "Oh!" she exclaimed again.
He then examined the shelves stacked high with about 50 boxes of tea. "White tea is supposed to be really good for you," he said. "You drink this stuff?"
"Yeah, it's pretty good."
"I was watching Oprah -- no, I mean, the View -- and some guy was on there saying how white tea is all you should drink. And that coffee is the worst thing you could put in your body," he said.
We both looked over at the French press I'd filled with coffee.
"Well, it's decaf."
"White tea is da best..." he went on. "So good for you..."
Finally, I grabbed the box and gave him a few tea bags. "Why don't you take some with you?"
"WOW!" he exclaimed to one of the movers who had just come out of the bathrooms without washing his hands. "Patty is just the sweetest, isn't she? Just the sweetest woman. And so beautiful, too, isn't she? That Patty."
The man turned red and walked away.
Next, George the Mover spotted a newspaper clipping on the fridge -- a photo of a ballet dancer from the NY Times that B. thought was "the most graceful thing he'd ever seen."
"You like ballet? You know, I used ta take ballet lessons! Was the only guy in my class, but I remember all of my positions!"
And with that, this 250+ pound man, wearing sweat-shorts, puffy sneakers, and a grayed gym shirt (yellowed in the armpits, I noticed), thrust his hairy, Popeye-like arms over his head, pointed his toes outwards, and did a few quick, strange, squatting motions.
And as I watched in horror, he rose slowly up on his tippy-toes, and delicately padded around in a circle in the middle of the kitchen, pirouetting slowly, like something out of the Nutcracker. The tea bags in his pocket flapped against his thigh. And as his routine continued, this strange exotic mating dance ritual, and as the positions became more and more obscenely ridiculous, as he huffed and puffed -- the whole time, his bright blue eyes were locked with mine, unblinking, boring into my skull intensely enough to cut diamonds in my brain, daring me to look away.
[Peek-a-Foo]