Surplus Cats

Contrary to what you might gather from the 100+ temps, I am in heaven. Granted I am unemployed and job hunting and very quickly running out of funds –but I am currently back in my hometown, surrounded by my oldest, dearest friends. They are, no lie, the most patient, genuinely thoughtful crew one could hope to be friends with and for the most part they’ve been here all along while I was everywhere but where I belonged.

I really want this to happen. This place is so much better than it was 15 years ago. Case in point? The subway, while still smelling like urine and chicken soup, actually tells you useful information now about connections at each upcoming stop. The bus stops have clearly marked routes and even in some places have schedules posted. Things make sense here. People, with the exception of tourists, walk on the right side of the sidewalks at reasonable paces. When I talk, no one says “Yer not frum ’round here, huh?”

Also? There is a PIZZA TRUCK that goes around this neighborhood. You don’t even have to order pizza, it just shows up. Are you fucking kidding me? Even if I hated it here, I would stay just for the pizza truck dinner option.

So yeah, life is a litle scary, but also exciting and I’m totally into it.

Check out this dude I met at the shore the other day:

I’m getting my hair cut tomorrow and for the life of me I cannot remember what I was going for when I started growing my bangs out and fell into this state of perpetual ponytail. The evidence points to a beatnik Cousin Itt.

I don’t even know what to ask for tomorrow. I might be over my quest for unattainable Jennifer Love Hewitt hair. I’m trying not to let the heat wave influence me, or I’ll end up with a repeat of the dreaded pixie disaster of first grade. (A mistake I’ve repeated more than once hoping it would somehow suddenly work for me? It’s so perfect on so many ladies, including my own mother!)

Anyway, the reason it is so pressing that I get this mess trimmed up: I’m taking an undeserved vacation from my idle life to hang out with a good friend I haven’t seen in over a decade (with some job hunting on the side). As much as we all love shit-talking Facebook, I gotta say, it’s been good to me.

I can’t have a good dream without it morphing into something horrific (my definition, not necessarily yours) or it being promptly followed by a nightmare. I know it is tedious to read about dreams so I will just give you the sick details because it is also a fairly complete list of things that I find unbearably gross.

• a karaoke diner
• the cook was ladling sausage gravy all over the place
• birds were flapping around inside, their feathers landing in the sausage gravy mess (also: bird tracks in puddles of sausage gravy)
• no one was wearing shoes or socks
• all of the surrounding conversations were about surgical mishaps
• strangers wearing wool kept bumping into the bare portions of my arms
• at some point I got glitter in my eye
• my wallet fell out of my back pocket and into a toilet (one of my greatest fears)
• my toothbrush cuddling with other toothbrushes
• a drinking fountain filled with milk. “Eco-friendly” recirculating milk.

You know what? I have to stop right there and die a little bit faster.

First, this new Wuthering Heights cover makes my heart hurt:

I can’t even. Just. Really?

Dangnabbit. I lost my entire train of thought and this just became a list.

Things that make me happy, July 2K10 edition:

• almond tea
• all the awesome dogs that live in my town
• finding Kobo Abe’s The Box Man at the used bookstore
• Kate Bush videos on youtube
• the sweet brush in Sally Hansen’s Insta-dry polish (& blazing blue)
• Sebastian Bach as as Gil in Lane’s band on Gilmore Girls

There’s a lot more. I’m in a really good mood lately. I think I am in love with this summer. Is that allowed or is it like when lions lay down with lambs? Fickle, fickle kid, no?

Here, have some tunes –perhaps to fold clothes to. A mostly new wave mix:

Don’t turn your back on me baby
Don’t turn your back on me baby

1990. I was 12. It was hot and sticky and my father’s car didn’t have air conditioning, but it did have a tape deck and one cassette. The tape was a blank one he’d filled both sides entirely with Santana’s Black Magic Woman, and the deck kept auto-flipping so that we’d been listening to it nonstop from Philadelphia to wherever it was he lived back then.

Yes, don’t turn your back on me baby

At one point he pulled up to a gas pump and shut off the car, and then gave the key a slight twist to keep Black Magic Woman going. “No!” I shouted over it, but he was already inside paying to fill up.

Stop messing round with your tricks

I hit the eject button and flung the tape into the bin between the pumps. His radio was, of course, tuned to the classic rock station and when he got back in the car Black Magic Woman had just started again. As it finished I side-eyed him, watching his mustache twitch before he turned to me.

“Did you take my tape?”

“Yes.”

“Are you going to give it back?”

“I threw it out of the window.”

“What?”

“I didn’t litter. I tossed it into the trashcan back at the gas station.”

“That doesn’t make it ok!”

“I won’t do it again. You don’t have anymore tapes.”

“They’re just at home.”

“More tapes of just that one song?”

Don’t turn your back on me baby

I didn’t see him again after that, but I did get an email right after I’d left school, about a month before my university account was purged. I refused to listen to his bullshit. Six years and not even a birthday card from him? (Let alone years without court ordered child support checks.) And now he was blaming his long, silent absence on my mom? I replied with the coldest, meanest dismissal I’ve ever produced. He fired back an angry reply and I told him to leave me alone. He did.

Turning my heart in to stone

Several years ago my stepfather had a heart attack, and a bit later spent an entire night on the telephone with me telling me all of the things he would’ve done differently if he could do it all again; none of it included my mother, me, or my step brother. He insisted I promise him to not repeat his mistakes, to do what I want, and not be miserable like him. A few months later, or maybe even then — who knows? — he was cheating on my mother. They’ve been separated for three years now and he lives in their house with his girlfriend and her kids –a replacement family younger than the one he’d had plus one more kid. (I don’t really get it either.) I’ve tried to be civil, but it’s easier to just leave it alone.

His almost-dying and turning into a completely different person made me wonder how often people do change. Does everyone? And if one can change from a relatively decent person into a complete ass, is the opposite also true? Could I be less of a jerk to my own father now? Could he have also grown up a bit over the years? I started looking for him, and the closest I came was discovering that my grandmother had passed in 1998 — not very long after our ridiculous email argument.

I can’t leave you alone

Last week it occurred to me that perhaps my search was too narrow. As soon as I checked the social security death index, I found him; he’d died in 2008.

How do you lose two fathers at the same time and not know it?