Tex: What did she say?
Lewis: Just go with it. She likes to hear herself talk.
Me: Now that we’ve defined a greeting …
Lewis: And by the way, I like to make mine last until she’s down on her knees, if not flat on her back …
Tex: I’ve seen your work, buddy. You’re an artist.
Me: … Let’s try one more exercise to see if you are getting the point. Okay. Imagine this. I decide to take out the garbage. I walk to the door …
Lewis: I’m right there with you.
Tex: I beat you there.
Lewis: The hell you do.
Me: I exit. About eight seconds later I come back in the door. What would be your response?
Tex: I’d be so thrilled to see you that I’d run up to you, hurl myself at you, then I’d get up on my back legs and …
Lewis: Dolt. You don’t listen. We just went through this a second ago. It’s circle and hurl, circle and lean … and hurl. Circle and hurl.
Me: Stop! Listen to me! The point was that you do not have to greet me again. You just greeted me seconds before. I’m sorry if this seems confusing but I’d like you just to blindly accept this rule and obey it. Do not greet me every time I come in the door.
Lewis: So you’re asking us to be rude.
Tex: No, no, I hear you. Tell me if I’ve got it straight. You go out the door, and then you come right back in. We do not get up on you. No. We circle and hurl, circle and lean and hurl …
Lewis: There you go. Step on her feet and trip her. Tangle her up, and lean on her and at the same time circle …
Tex: I can definitely do that.
Lewis: Where is she going?
Tex: Looks like the bedroom. Whoa. She closed the door. How long is she going to be gone?
Lewis: I don’t know. All I know is suddenly we’re very alone.
Tex: How long has it been since we saw her?
Lewis: I don’t know. A month? A year?
Tex: Wait! The door is opening. Oh my God! She’s back!
Lewis: Dear God, thank you! She’s back! Welcome back!
Tex: Come let me get up on you and give you a nice big kiss.
Deranged Love Mutants: The Story of Romeo and Juliet
Every year when Valentine’s Day rolls around, I make a special point of trying to scan the horizon for a reasonable example of romantic love, just so I know what we’re all supposed to be celebrating.
Of course, the preceding 364 days I am adrift in a sea of stories about love gone dopey. I refer here to both the whining weepy anecdotes of my various friends as well as those of the never-ending parade of deranged love mutants booked in triplicate on the afternoon talk shows. To say nothing of the stream of stunning examples reported daily.
My favorite:
A 71-year-old woman was arrested Friday after she allegedly doused her husband of more than 30 years with rubbing alcohol and set him on fire for eating a chocolate Easter bunny she had saved for herself, police said.
Proving once and for all that when evaluating the success of a love relationship, the element of longevity should not necessarily be the key.
But if that isn’t, what is? It has become increasingly disturbing how few good models of love there are.
This year, we can’t look to the First Couple for any hints. It’s pretty apparent that Hillary is just putting the best face on some kind of marital sciatica. In fact, these past few years every single public couple who ever looked the least bit intriguing bought a ticket for the long slow ride to hell.
I still remember with a shudder when I thought Woody Allen and Mia Farrow looked like they had worked out something impressive. Eccentric, yes, but romantic and mature. That was way back in the late eighties—when we used to be able to count on England’s royal couples to at least fake a show of romance.
This year, we can’t even count on Tom and Roseanne. Yes, John Tesh and Connie Sellecca would like to step up to the plate as our new romantic ideal, but having survived the taping of an embarrassing infomercial is not qualification enough.
So this year, in honor of Valentine’s Day, I decided to reread a true classic—Romeo and Juliet.
If you have not had the occasion to do so lately, please allow me to reacquaint you with the details of this timeless model of romantic love.
When we first meet the teenage Romeo, it is a Sunday night and he has decided to crash a ball just to catch a glimpse of Rosaline, a girl with whom he is desperately in love. Instead, he meets the thirteen-year-old Juliet. And even though only seconds before he was deeply in love with Rosaline, now he knows instantly that this thirteen-year-old girl is the greatest love of his life. Really. She is. He’s not kidding this time.
Juliet has never been in love before. And yes, their two families hate each other. But so what? My parents never liked anyone I went out with either. The important thing is that by Monday afternoon, so beautiful is their love, they go ahead and get married.
Just one day later.
In lieu of a honeymoon, Romeo kills Juliet’s cousin and Juliet goes back home to spend the night at her parents’ house. Of course her parents do not know about the marriage yet, but they are so beside themselves with grief about the murdered cousin that Juliet’s father decides there is no time like the present to arrange for Juliet to marry an older man.
Well, she is thirteen and not getting any younger. Soon, she’ll be thirteen and a half. However, because he’s an adult and not a hotheaded teenager, he really doesn’t want to rush things. So he sets the wedding date for Thursday.
Naturally, the already-married Juliet realizes she must defy her father’s wishes. She is no longer a codependent. She has boundaries and as a fully individualized adult, she must stand up to him and tell him her intentions. She takes the most sensible course of action under the circumstances. She pretends to be dead.
This also bodes very well for the future of her marriage to Romeo since we now know that the core of any “love at first sight” attraction is usually “repetition compulsion”—wherein a person reenacts the identical behavior and problems first seen in the parent-child relationship.
Thank God both Romeo and Juliet killed themselves before we were able to chart their marriage any further into the future, when it most certainly would have descended into scenarios like this:
(Romeo enters parlor)
“Juliet! Juliet! My light! I’m home! Juliet? Oh, I forgot to tell you that I ate that chocolate Easter bunny that you were … Juliet? Juliet? Oh no. Honey. Not dead again. Don’t tell me you’re dead again. Please don’t be playing dead again. You were just dead on Monday. I can’t call 911 twice in one week. It’s too embarrassing. Juliet? Juliet?”
Well, there you have this year’s Valentine’s Day poster couple. A thirteen-year-old girl who likes to pretend to be dead married to a teenage murderer who has no trouble falling in love with two different girls on the same Sunday night.
Which leaves us with this slightly comforting fact:
There is no reason to lament today’s lack of viable romantic models. Things are no worse now than they ever were. The only difference is that back then no one watched Oprah or read psychology books. So they didn’t mind calling deranged neurotic behavior “the greatest love story ever told.”
Happy Valentine’s Day.
Viva Las Wine Goddesses!
So the other weekend I went to Las Vegas on a date. At first I had my doubts about our choice of venue, and consulted friends, who fell into two camps: those who found the excesses and depravities of the place to be the very definition of hilarity and those for whom the identical elements were at the heart of a searing existential depression, which, they felt, could only lead to a loss of the will to live.
I can confirm that there is real truth to both perceptions, and it seems to me that the best way to avoid passing from the first camp to the second is to be very careful about the length of your stay. This must not, for any sensitive and reasonably intelligent adult, exceed t
hirty-six hours. For those of us blessed (or cursed) with a hyperactive sense of the ironic, Las Vegas, taken in small doses, is a specialty act without peer. And so I present you now with a kind of handy guidebook for your own short visit. Think of it as something you might get from that big travel writer—I forget his name—the one who writes all the “Rome on five dollars a day” things, if he weren’t too big a weenie to write it.
Merrill’s Guide to Thirty-six Hours of Vegas Fun
Las Vegas is but a hop, a skip, and a jump from Los Angeles. But since fewer and fewer people rely on any of the above for their transportational needs, you have your choice of flying or driving. We drove—through mile after mile of pale orange landscape, dotted with tiny specks of black and pale green that are either sagebrush or tumbleweed or rock—until we reached Las Vegas.
Of course everyone knows what the Las Vegas strip looks like from a million movies and videotape montages. But they ill prepare you for how really, really bizarre it is in three dimensions. Almost everywhere you look, a building is screaming a visual or verbal insanity at you. The overall effect is of something you made up in a feverish dream one night when you drank too much tequila and ate too many pepperoncini.
Tip Number 1: Stay at the Gaudiest Hotel You Can Afford. Why? Because the whole point of going to Las Vegas is to have the Las Vegasiest time you can have. I heartily recommend Caesars Palace, which I found to be the wackiest luxury hotel that I have ever been in, around, or near. It’s not just because the employees wear costumes or because of all the oversize antiquities, friezes, and historical references. How about those moving sidewalks that carry you into the complex—passing through a miniature temple type of structure, with gold columns and horns to announce your arrival—and then abandon you to the regular old stationary sidewalks for your exit?
Many movies, such as Rain Man, have shown us in loving detail the lavish suites full of grand pianos and chandeliers that are provided for the high rollers. We, however, had an economy-priced room right next to food services, just a short distance down the hall from accounting. This simple room did not have even a regular-size piano, but it did feature a giant raised marble bathtub. Okay, fine, I can definitely follow the concept of a giant raised marble bathtub/shower combo, but the concept kind of goes south in the small economy rooms where the tub has to serve instead of a stall shower. And since these tubs are located nearly in the center of the floor—only feet from the bed and the TV and the window—suddenly you are faced with a far-from-glamorous situation, namely, one where bathing must be done in the presence of all people in the room. This is less than ideal, especially if you happen to be sharing a hotel room with someone you barely know.
Now you might be muttering to yourself, “What kind of moron would share a hotel room with someone she barely knows?” but that is not something I want to discuss. This is, after all, my essay. The point I am making here is that maybe you never need to know someone so well that you lose altogether the option of showering privately. And in this particular room, your roommate, who may be pretending to sleep or watch TV, is, unquestionably, just watching you shower.
Which brings us to the in-house viewing selections. There was a tape showcasing the various wining and dining opportunities in our very own hotel complex, such as “Cleopatra’s Barge” for dancing and “The Bacchanal Room,” where you dine in splendor, served by the lovely “wine goddesses.” There was also a learn-to-gamble-with-Larry-Manetti tape that my date must have watched about 300 times. In this, a blond woman in a fur and the older guy from Magnum P.I. who is not Tom Selleck take some pointers from Larry Manetti (I forget just who he is). But in a hilarious twist of fate they end up beating him at his own game … and then the fun begins!!!! Once your sides have stopped aching from laughter (and once you have gotten over the shock of showering in front of someone who doesn’t mind watching Larry Manetti for hours on end), it’s high time to get the hell out of the room and experience some of that world-famous Las Vegas nightlife!
Tip Number 2: Go to a Show. Somewhere in your room is a book that lists every show in town. I selected Nudes on Ice for our viewing enjoyment because … well, it was the stupidest-sounding show available. Now, I realize that not everyone selects their entertainment according to this criterion (and, by the way, aren’t you glad you don’t have to travel with me?), but everything on the list sounded pretty stupid to me, so I felt that attending the stupidest one of them all would be the most Las Vegasy thing to do. (I actually came very close to selecting Boylesque, but in the end I felt that Las Vegas men pretending to be women would be less interesting than the men pretending to be men and the women pretending to be women.) And I was not disappointed. I don’t know whether or not partially nude women so bored with their jobs that they could barely keep their cigarette butts lit constitutes a “sexsational revue” (as the program advertised), but it was interesting to note that the more breast was exposed, the less skating was required. I guess this equation is relevant in every walk of life.
Especially memorable for me was Act 5, which was called “A Russian Fantasy” and which seemed to my nonexpert eyes to be a re-creation of that period of Russian history when, because of a crop shortage or something, the czar apparently decreed that only a percentage of women in the royal court could be fully dressed.
Honorable mention goes to the comedian who came out and devoted a third of his act to dirty balloon animals (always a rollicking good time). This is entertainment that you cannot see anywhere else in the world, and for a very good reason. Why in the world would you want to?
Tip Number 3: Win a Bunch of Money. Let me begin this section by saying that I have never been remotely interested in gambling. I have always felt that nothing ventured is nothing lost. I have never been able to see the fun in losing $5 and then winning back $3.50. Which gives you an idea of the kind of stakes I usually play. But, influenced by my date, I picked the right number at roulette and immediately won $400. And before the evening was over, we had won $1,200. I cannot recommend this too highly. If it hasn’t occurred to you, win $1,200 and see for yourself. It’s very energizing and really adds to your Vegas fun.
Tip Number 4: Dine Among the Wine Goddesses. By now you will have seen the ad on your color TV (while you were trying not to watch someone else shower). What sort of Las Vegas visitor would you be if you didn’t give the wine goddesses their due? At least, this was my rap right up until we were seated at our table and I saw the wine goddesses in diaphanous harem outfits circling my date, offering to give him some kind of theoretical eye massage. Maybe I wouldn’t have gotten quite so ticked off if there had been wine gods available for the gals. Maybe then we all could have had a great big laugh about it. Ha, ha, ha. As it was, I, for the first time in my life, felt it necessary to threaten restaurant help with my Swiss Army knife.
There were other highlights to the meal besides the much-loathed wine goddesses. For instance, it’s not every restaurant that offers you what look like 3-D fiberglass replicas of the available entrées to examine before you order. For those of us who have never actually seen what a real veal chop looks like, this is extraordinarily helpful. But the biggest dinner highlight was definitely the arrival of Julius Caesar and Cleopatra, heralded by the crash of a giant gong. Dressed in full historical regalia, this important couple had come all the way through time with nothing more on their minds than to find out how we were enjoying our meal. And I confess I tried to use what little clout I had with the great Roman emperor to see about getting the wine goddesses pulled off the face of the earth.
Tip Number 5: On Your Way Out of Town, Be Sure to Visit the Liberace Museum. Now, I don’t want to say too much here. I know the man came to a tragic end. But let me just suggest that you slow down while passing through the portion of the museum devoted to Lee’s brother George, and observe that in a glass case both his driver’s license and his frequent flier card have been mounted and preserved. On sale in the gift shop are a variety of swell items. Because I was ahead my
half of the $1,200, I was able to purchase the Liberace paper clips, the coffee mug, the photo-embossed Christmas ornament, the key chain, the extra-large postcard of Liberace posing by his closet, and the box of scented soaps, each shaped like a grand piano and emblazoned with his name.
Tip Number 6: Now Get Out of There and Don’t Look Back. And so we say good-bye to the city of Las Vegas, remembering that we’d better not overstay our thirty-six hours. Taking with us a whole lot of free money and a bunch of silly stuff … and leaving behind the goddamn wine goddesses. And they’d better stay the hell out of Los Angeles if they know what’s good for them.
Pets and the Single Girl
Being a single woman and living by yourself in the United States of America can be a very rough life. Okay … it’s a pretty loose definition of the word “rough.” It’s not “rough” like living in Bosnia and dodging mortar fire. Or Russia in the midst of economic and cultural collapse. Or doing anything at all in Somalia or the Sudan. Come to think of it, it’s not even “rough” like trying to be a single mother in this country. Or being half of one of those ghastly couples who are making a public descent into hell, like Ben and Jen or Britney and her latest husband. Or even part of any less publicized troubled couple, like the ones who call day and night on those radio psychology shows or turn up on Jerry Springer. I guess what I’m actually saying here is that being a single woman and living by yourself in the United States of America is a pretty easy hand to play.
After all, you don’t have to debate your every decision with a critical detractor; there’s no one around to constantly remind you which of your habits make others insane. You don’t have to cook if you don’t want to. And then on the other hand, if you want to eat shamelessly and endlessly, there is no one to comment, “Geez, you sure pack it away.” You can decorate eccentrically. You can hang around with worthless weasels and ne’er-do-wells. Overall, it’s a relatively painless way of life. Sure, you have to attend to every exasperating detail of your day all by yourself. But come on—that’s a small price to pay. In fact, maybe it’s too small. Maybe things are just a little bit too easy.
What the Dogs Have Taught Me: And Other Amazing Things I've Learned Page 14