in person or he isn’t there. His car has manual windows.
Mark taught himself the piano at age ten and was playing Chopin nocturnes from memory at twenty; now he teaches children and adults piano for a living in Los Gatos, just outside Santa Cruz. He’s one of the best people I know, and the only person I know who has never seen an episode of
Seinfeld.
We go over to his house to hear some selections for the procession. After hearing them all and drinking two bottles of Chilean Merlot, we choose Handel’s
Largo.
His new librarian girlfriend sits silently by on the extra chair like a big cat, her black hair fanning around her face. Her eyes casually assess my brother as he plays. I instinctively don’t trust her. I know that look. It’s the I’m Waiting to See If Someone Better Comes Along look. I half expect her to start licking her hands to groom herself, but she doesn’t. She just watches.
I want to say, I see you, bitch.
• • •
I just read the tiny, nine-point-type information sheet inside my Pill packet. Michael made me go on the Pill, is how I tell it to myself, but actually I did it to control my PMS, which it isn’t doing. I still feel like Joan Crawford on steroids. I was so gratified when Beth told me she was PMSing once and got into a fight with her mother and wanted to pull over on the freeway, push her out of the car, and back over her.
I inspected the Pill brochure to see if there was any truth to the rumor of side effects. Upon inspection, nothing proved askance but an increased risk for sterility, high blood pressure, and cancer of the breast, cervix, and liver. Oh, and blood clots that fly swiftly to your brain.
When you pass thirty-five as a woman and your hormones start raging, they should just tell you, You get to be sick, or you get to take drugs that kill you. Then they could pass out magazines to flip through until you decide.
I call my friend Ray at his law firm in Dallas, where he moved after college and never moved back. People in high school used to hate Ray because he was muscular and good-looking and first-string quarterback, but he just kept on being those things. Then Ray stopped playing football and went to Stanford with me, also majoring in English with a straight B-minus average. We were nothing there together, which was kind of nice. Nobody hates you.
Ray says he just talked to Dusty. Dusty and Ray have been friends as long as Dusty and I have been friends. I ask Ray how Dusty is doing.
“Still gay,” he says. Ray’s been married twice and has twin sons. Like mine, Ray’s father was a minister, and unlike mine, his father still practices: Episcopalian.
Ray launches into an impromptu discussion about the upcoming holidays and religion. He says, “I only went to church because I loved my dad. It meant nothing to me.”
“I believe all religion was a human creation to deal with suffering, back when everybody only lived to be twenty-three. They had to believe in something,” he says. “When I heard about the Mormons, with the crickets and shit, I couldn’t believe it.
“The Muslims are no better,” he adds.
I wait for him to tell me about the Muslims. He does.
“It’s all about some spaceship,” he says in a confused voice. “And Allah arriving on the other side of the moon, along with some guys on camels.”
There is a small pause. Ray receives an incoming business call from New York, which he summarily dismisses.
“I know it has something to do with the other side of the moon, camels, and some golden path. I mean if you just wrote up the unabridged version of that and plopped it down in front of one hundred people who’d never been introduced to any of it, they’d tell you: ‘This is a loon case. This is a cult.’
“Look at the Catholics,” he says. He’s drawling now. “All those uniforms for everybody and the pope in a pointy white hat, saying not to use condoms and how women can’t be priests.
“And there’s a
bunch
of ’em,
Mark taught himself the piano at age ten and was playing Chopin nocturnes from memory at twenty; now he teaches children and adults piano for a living in Los Gatos, just outside Santa Cruz. He’s one of the best people I know, and the only person I know who has never seen an episode of
Seinfeld.
We go over to his house to hear some selections for the procession. After hearing them all and drinking two bottles of Chilean Merlot, we choose Handel’s
Largo.
His new librarian girlfriend sits silently by on the extra chair like a big cat, her black hair fanning around her face. Her eyes casually assess my brother as he plays. I instinctively don’t trust her. I know that look. It’s the I’m Waiting to See If Someone Better Comes Along look. I half expect her to start licking her hands to groom herself, but she doesn’t. She just watches.
I want to say, I see you, bitch.
• • •
I just read the tiny, nine-point-type information sheet inside my Pill packet. Michael made me go on the Pill, is how I tell it to myself, but actually I did it to control my PMS, which it isn’t doing. I still feel like Joan Crawford on steroids. I was so gratified when Beth told me she was PMSing once and got into a fight with her mother and wanted to pull over on the freeway, push her out of the car, and back over her.
I inspected the Pill brochure to see if there was any truth to the rumor of side effects. Upon inspection, nothing proved askance but an increased risk for sterility, high blood pressure, and cancer of the breast, cervix, and liver. Oh, and blood clots that fly swiftly to your brain.
When you pass thirty-five as a woman and your hormones start raging, they should just tell you, You get to be sick, or you get to take drugs that kill you. Then they could pass out magazines to flip through until you decide.
I call my friend Ray at his law firm in Dallas, where he moved after college and never moved back. People in high school used to hate Ray because he was muscular and good-looking and first-string quarterback, but he just kept on being those things. Then Ray stopped playing football and went to Stanford with me, also majoring in English with a straight B-minus average. We were nothing there together, which was kind of nice. Nobody hates you.
Ray says he just talked to Dusty. Dusty and Ray have been friends as long as Dusty and I have been friends. I ask Ray how Dusty is doing.
“Still gay,” he says. Ray’s been married twice and has twin sons. Like mine, Ray’s father was a minister, and unlike mine, his father still practices: Episcopalian.
Ray launches into an impromptu discussion about the upcoming holidays and religion. He says, “I only went to church because I loved my dad. It meant nothing to me.”
“I believe all religion was a human creation to deal with suffering, back when everybody only lived to be twenty-three. They had to believe in something,” he says. “When I heard about the Mormons, with the crickets and shit, I couldn’t believe it.
“The Muslims are no better,” he adds.
I wait for him to tell me about the Muslims. He does.
“It’s all about some spaceship,” he says in a confused voice. “And Allah arriving on the other side of the moon, along with some guys on camels.”
There is a small pause. Ray receives an incoming business call from New York, which he summarily dismisses.
“I know it has something to do with the other side of the moon, camels, and some golden path. I mean if you just wrote up the unabridged version of that and plopped it down in front of one hundred people who’d never been introduced to any of it, they’d tell you: ‘This is a loon case. This is a cult.’
“Look at the Catholics,” he says. He’s drawling now. “All those uniforms for everybody and the pope in a pointy white hat, saying not to use condoms and how women can’t be priests.
“And there’s a
bunch
of ’em,
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