by Jancee Dunn
Every day we ran for the UPS man. When the package arrived, we tore it open.
The shriveled petits fours from the gift box were the size of sugar cubes. “Jeez,” said Dinah. “They looked huge in the catalog.” She took a cautious sniff. (We Dunns like to sniff our food first, like forest animals.) “It smells a little like air freshener.” She took a bite. “Yuck,” she declared, and pushed it away.
The Dobosh Torte was similarly tiny, as well as waxy, dry, and tasteless. “I can’t eat this thing,” said Heather, spitting it out with a gagging noise.
“We never should have ordered this stuff,” I said, tossing the whole mess into the trash.
Heather folded her arms. “Next time we order from Harry & David.”
Of course, the goods from Harry & David’s were just as disappointing. It took a lot of credit card debt for me to realize how often the product would never live up to my wild expectations. So after many similar letdowns (and being consumed by guilt over wasted paper) I have whittled down my catalogs to exactly one: the Vermont Country Store. Known as “Purveyors of the Practical & Hard-to-Find,” the Vermont Country Store was established in 1946 and is a general celebration of the Good Old Days, Before Everything Got S’Darn Complicated. It’s possibly the world’s least sexy catalog (and once you’re on their mailing list, brace for an influx of medical-footwear catalogs that sell therapeutic socks and allow you the depressing option of “Shopping by Condition”).
But I eagerly flip through its pages, glorying in resurrected products such as the pink Princess phone, the Bermuda bag, chocolate cream drops, and packs of handkerchiefs.
The buzzwords here are comfort and dependability, and most of the upbeat catalog copy that accompanies the old-fashioned line drawings emphasizes these qualities. The goods are divided into sections such as Household & Cleaning, Footwear, and Tried & True, but I think more apt categories would be I’d Like to Know Why Everyone Is in Such an All-Fired Hurry All the Time (“Manual Olivetti typewriter types at a pace you can think”). Or Why Should I Throw Away My Money on a New Gadget That Will Break in a Month? (“Remember the Fuller Brush man? He’s still making quality cotton mops.”)
Tried & True would be better described as Marion? Where Are My Reading Glasses, I Can’t See the Blasted Numbers on This Goddamn Thing. (“End remote rage! Extra-large, easy-to-use, lighted big-button remote control—what could be simpler?”) The bespoke toy section should be the more expansively titled In My Day, Kids Could Be Kids, and They for Darn Sure Didn’t Need a Pile of Electronic Gewgaws to Have Fun (Original Lincoln Logs with 115 Wooden Pieces—“building houses and memories that last”). And the food emporium should be headed I’d Like to Eat Something I Can Identify, Thanks, So You Can Keep Your Parmesan Foam and Your Fusion Food (“Whirley Pop makes popcorn that tastes the way it was meant to”).
My very favorite section is Apothecary (an obsession I share with many beauty editors and bloggers). It’s like looking through your bathroom cabinet’s old yearbook. Tigress perfume, with the animal-print bottle cap! Indian Earth, in the tiny clay pot, which imparts a “sun-kissed” nuclear orange glow! Bonne Bell Ten-O-Six zit vanquisher! And, not one, but four Memory Lane shampoos—“Gee, Your Hair Smells Terrific,” LemonUp, Body on Tap (made from beer), and—are you ready?—Psssssst spray-on dry shampoo. Freakin’ Psssssst! (Yes, the name was that long, a tribute to seventies excess.)
But as tempted as I have been to ransack the Apothecary for some LemonUp, or perhaps Ondine Eau de Parfum, a resurrected 1954 scent with the daring slogan “Don’t wear Ondine unless you mean it,” I have learned to control myself. Having waved goodbye to the naïve excitement of my youth, I now buy items that are strictly practical. Although I must admit that when my latest package arrived from Vermont, my reaction was a little disturbing.
“Oh good!” I cried to Tom. “My wool socks are here, and my egg separator!” Then I tore open that box as if it contained an Easy-Bake oven with mega-deluxe accessories.
You Make Me Feel Like Dancing
Julie phones at 9:07 A.M., as she does every day on her journey to the gym.
JULIE: I’m very prepared for working out today, because I just added a bunch of new songs to my iPod.
JANCEE: You know what? If anyone ever looked at the lineup on my iPod, it’s one hundred percent embarrassing. I could probably count on one hand the number of songs I could display publicly. My entire collection consists of songs that, if you’re playing them in a car, you have to turn down when you get to a stoplight and other people can hear you.
JULIE: Oh, please. Me, too.
JANCEE: I know one person who goes to my gym, and just in case I run into him, I have a Jesus & Mary Chain tune that I can quickly put on. The rest of the time I’m taking out my earbuds a lot and nervously checking them, because I’m sure that everyone can hear the Scritti Politti song that’s blasting. Don’t you feel like everyone is listening to something new and hip on their iPods except for you?
JULIE: Yes, because they are. Sometimes when someone is on the rowing machine next to me, I quickly put on En Vogue’s “Free Your Mind” to replace Glen Campbell’s “Wichita Lineman.”
JANCEE: Listen, when I worked at Rolling Stone, one of the questions I used to pull out to ask musicians was “What is the perfect pop song?” They always loved to answer that one. And no less than Nirvana producer Butch Vig said “Wichita Lineman.” So you’re cooler than you think.
JULIE: If you say “perfect pop song” to me and I don’t think about it, the song that pops into my head is “Tell Her About It” by Billy Joel. Although I wouldn’t want it on my iPod.
JANCEE: Soon we won’t care at all if anyone sees what we’re playing, and that’s when we’ll know we’re officially old. Although we’re on our way with our musical choices. For instance I downloaded “I’m Your Man” last week, and—
JULIE: The Leonard Cohen song? But that’s hip.
JANCEE: No, the one by Wham! Okay? What’s odd is that when this song came out in the eighties, I wouldn’t have been caught dead buying a Wham! album. I mean, I never bought pop. I would never have deigned to buy something by Hall and Oates, yet now I find myself downloading “One on One.” You know, there’s a theory floating around that every single iPod has at least one Hall and Oates tune on it.
JULIE: I believe it.
JANCEE: I think I’m rebelling or something from so many years of working at Rolling Stone and MTV and being musically correct.
JULIE: There’s a section on iTunes called the Genius Sidebar, which recommends songs to you based on what you’ve gotten already. And I swear to God, the Genius Sidebar (whispers) knows me better than I know myself.
Let me just tell you what I’m buying. I like the heavy-metal ballads—“Home Sweet Home” by Mötley Crüe, “Sometimes She Cries” by Warrant, Winger’s “Headed for a Heartbreak”—all that stuff. And they suggested “Fly to the Angels” by Slaughter. They know. They know.
JANCEE: (male voice talking in background) Tom just walked into the room and said, “What’s that thing on your forehead?”
JULIE: Aww. So sweet.
JANCEE: I have a blemish above my eyebrow that is perhaps a little 3-D. But what’s good about Tom is that he doesn’t notice any change in my appearance whatsoever unless it’s some sort of health-related problem, like the giant swelling on my forehead. Otherwise it just doesn’t register. I could be wearing nothing but scuba flippers. Which is kind of how I normally dress.
Anyway, I just downloaded the song “Lady (You Bring Me Up)” by the Commodores. Have you ever seen the video for that one, by the way?
JULIE: Not that I can remember.
JANCEE: I suggest you YouTube it immediately. The Commodores are all gathered in a soccer field to play a game, and they all have these fabulous beards and giant square glasses, except Lionel Ritchie, who has a mustache-and-Afro-mullet combo. And they’re all wearing extremely tiny soccer shorts, because in between singing, they play a soccer game against
what appear to be braless porn actresses. A classic. But I listened to the song twice and then got bored.
JULIE: That happens a lot. I have a couple of those songs where I got them, listened once, and decided I never wanted to hear them again. Like Leo Sayer’s “You Make Me Feel Like Dancing.” I listened once and thought, Okay, ninety-nine cents, I’ll take that, sure. And now every time it comes on, I fast-forward it. So many stupid songs on there. I think that our lists are probably equally bad. Let’s have a contest to see who has the worst song. Okay, let me look. I think mine is “The Captain of Her Heart” by Double. Terrible.
JANCEE: I can top it. “(Can’t Live Without Your) Love and Affection” by Nelson. Nelson, Jul!
JULIE: I see Nelson and raise you Orleans, “Dance with Me.”
JANCEE: “S.O.S.” by Abba. They sound especially Swedish on it, like they’re barely hanging on to the English.
JULIE: I just downloaded a song by a band called Alter Bridge. You never heard of them. The song is always on VH1. Alter Bridge does a music video and they show all these bad clips from Celebrity Rehab, like Tawny Kitaen having a meltdown. So you’re listening to this song while Jeff Conaway is sobbing in a wheelchair. Somehow, I had to have it.
JANCEE: Okay, now I’m looking at the Genius Sidebar on my computer and I see that it’s recommending “Caribbean Queen” by Billy Ocean. So that will give you an idea of the caliber of songs I’m buying.
JULIE: I saw someone dead again today before I dropped Violet off at school. This time it was Jerry Orbach from Law & Order.
JANCEE: That happens to you a lot. But there is a certain sort of civilian who does have a Jerry Orbach look.
JULIE: Okay, I’m here.
JANCEE: Enjoy.
I Never Knew It Could
Be Like This
Periodically I force myself to unhook my fingers from the door frame, venture out even farther from my immediate neighborhood, and explore an entirely new country It must be done, or I would be the human equivalent of a cave fish; in my case, it really does build some much-needed character. Traveling to distant climes, away from my cherished network of comforts, is a no-fail way for me to face my many fears, a partial list being people, change, stray dogs, strange new insects that could bite me and bring forth a latent allergy that causes my death, alien viruses for which I have built up no immunities, and trains with indecipherable schedules that deposit you in an unknown country hundreds of miles from your destination before you figure out you’re going the wrong way Hovering malevolently over them all is a fear of dirt and germs.
For the last three years I have had ample opportunity to deal with these neuroses, as Tom has been researching a book that has taken him all over the world and he kindly brought me along. Our trip to China, which took place two years ago, enabled me to confront one of my most pervasive and debilitating fears: heights.
We started the first day of the Beijing leg of our journey as we usually do: rambling for hours with no particular destination. As we strolled through a seven-hundred-year-old, soon-to-be-demolished hutong neighborhood, Tom mentioned that he wanted to walk on the Great Wall the next day.
“Sounds good,” I said, keeping the doubt out of my voice. Why couldn’t we just take a look at it? Why walk on it? But I didn’t want to sound like a grandma. He said that if I was game, he had made inquiries online to a certain Mr. Mu, who would drive us the next morning to a less overrun section of the wall a few hours farther than the one most tourists visited. It was a bit more challenging. Was I up for it?
“Sure,” I said weakly.
The next day, Mr. Mu drove us for six hours before pulling up to the entrance of the suitably impressive Great Wall (although it’s a myth that you can see it from space). It was higher than I thought—about thirty feet tall—and snaked vertiginously over a dizzying series of steep hills crowned with watchtowers.
“Well, good-bye,” announced Mr. Mu. “I will see you in five hours.” Wait, what? Five hours? I reckoned we’d walk around for a little bit, take some pictures, admire the view, and call it a day. Maybe lunch was involved?
“Didn’t I tell you?” said Tom. “We’re going to walk on the wall for a few hours, and then Mr. Mu will pick us up at a point farther south.”
What? What? Mr. Mu got into his car and drove away. Suddenly it was the first day of kindergarten again and my mother had dropped me off on the steps of the school. Mommy? Mr. Mu?
We started up the walkway. You can do this, I coached myself.
You are standing on one of the most miraculous manmade structures in the world. Your parents dreamed of coming here and likely never will. Get on with it.
I have a fear of heights so debilitating that when I peer over the second-floor balcony of the Short Hills mall, I am seized with heart palpitations. Some people are terrified of clowns, or the number four (tetraphobia), or loud sounds (phonophobia), but I feel that being scared of heights is legitimate. Height has consequences. You can fall and die.
We made our way up a small hill, which led to a tower. I peeked over the side and was immediately sorry as I saw a couple of large rocks break off from the walkway and tumble down the side of the hill, bouncing like my skull would if I leaned too far off the edge.
The second hill was higher. I was surprised to find that most of the wall is actually made up of stairs—ancient, crumbling steps that are often only about twelve inches high, a neverending StairMaster. It was another shock to discover that much of the wall had no protective bits on the side. A cold, wet wind pushed against me. What if I blew off?
The hills grew steeper as I carefully mounted the steps. My hands shook; my nose ran in humiliating rivulets down my shirt. Three towers down. I wondered how many there were to go. Was it better not to know? I finally asked Tom.
“Thirty,” was his reply.
Thirty towers.
I started gibbering quietly, mostly a complicated bargaining process with the Lord if He would only spare me.
The next hill was so steep I was using both my hands and feet to haul myself upward, like a rock climber. I moved forward only because I had no choice; hordes of people marched behind us, even in this less touristy part. I kept my eyes firmly ahead of me and dared not look down as I clung like a beetle to the stairs with sweat-slicked hands and the wind whipped my hair into my nose rivulets.
When we reached the next sharply slanting tower, I began hyperventilating and sat heavily down. “I can’t do it,” I wheezed. “I have to turn around.” Shame flooded me. Why couldn’t I be one of those unflappable, sunburned Germans I always encounter in my travels—the same ones I saw visiting my own city who breezily took the subway to the South Bronx to look around?
Tom stroked my hair. “I’m sorry,” he said gently. “We can’t turn around. Mr. Mu is meeting us at the other end, and I have no way of contacting him. It’s a five-hour drive. And look”—he pointed to the long, thick line of sightseers twisting down the hill. “You’d have to fight against this.”
I started to cry. “I can’t do twenty-six more towers,” I said between gasps. We began to argue as my rational mind slipped away and hysteria crept in. This was the sort of genuine nightmare I regularly lurched awake from at home. I wanted to remain in that tower and grip the rocks like a barnacle until a rescuing helicopter arrived. “Please,” I blubbered.
As I clung to him and begged, causing what was probably a very entertaining scene for the other tourists, an elderly lady with knee braces and forearm crutches determinedly picked her way past me.
We both began to laugh. Christ. If she could do it, I could. I shakily heaved myself up. At the same moment a slight local woman with windburned cheeks appeared from nowhere and offered to guide me. “Yes, yes, sure,” I gabbled, grabbing on to her arm. We negotiated a price that was fair, considering I would have happily ripped off my wedding ring and handed it over. Half my size and as sure-footed as a mountain goat, she dragged me along like an unwieldy trash bag for the remainder of the trip. I only
wished she was a little bigger so she could heave me over her shoulder in a fireman’s carry and I could simply pass out until it was over.
When I saw Mr. Mu waiting for us in the parking lot, it was all I could do not to run over and give him a lap dance. I suppose the whole experience strengthened me, in the way that a hideously broken bone mends to become more robust. At least now I can look out over the second floor of the mall without even blinking.
Our next journey, to Delhi, India, presented an opportunity for me to face another fear: crowds.
I had dreamed of going to India my whole life. On-screen, it always looked so heart-stoppingly vivid in a way New York City never could. So many of my friends had been there, and every one of them swooned as they recalled the trip, using phrases like “life-changing” and “unforgettably magical.” The country will get in your blood, they told me solemnly, and compel you to return again and again.
We arrived in the city after a bone-jarring flight and, half-dead, shuffled into a taxi, but when I sniffed the city’s spicy, rich air, I quickly revived. “We’re really here!” I whispered, and squeezed Tom’s arm. A family of four, somehow balanced precariously on one small moped, swooped in front of us, the woman’s fuchsia sari flapping and twisting in the breeze. Our heads snapped around as we tried to take in the colors and sounds of the chaotic traffic.
Then we stopped at a streetlight, and suddenly our taxi was mobbed. A crying woman was holding up her listless, miserable baby. A man with two stumps for arms hollered for money. A child no more than four ran over and held on to the handle of the taxi, telling us he would not let go until we gave him some cash. The man began to beat his stumps on the window. Wham! Wham! Wham!