I suppose it had to happen sooner or later. It may be indicative that the blog has become dull and predictable because several of my readers are weighing in to offer help and try to steer the direction of the narrative. You know, make it more interesting for them to read. And damn the rest of you. I am, of course, talking about requests. This week, I received a couple.
Now, really, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with suggesting ideas for the blog to look at. It’s painfully obvious that I can use all the help I can get when deciding what to write about, so please if you have an idea, email it to me. Just don’t get hurt feelings if I 1)- choose not to use the idea in a timely fashion or 2) – decide that it’s a great idea but only as something to poke fun at, ridicule, or otherwise disparage in print. Remember it’s all in good fun and, however unlikely, I might agree with you but just be playing for laughs. Also keep in mind that I’m looking for something with general appeal and don’t want you to end up feeling like somebody who requests “The Chicken Dance” from the band at a wedding reception and then watches everybody else head for the hors d’oeuvres table until the song finishes.
This past week I received two such requests. Both of them are excellent ideas and god-how-I-wish-I-would-have-thought-of-them-myself. The first was a request to write more about my “pet peeves”. Apparently, the requestor was mildly entertained by last week’s brief rant on the inappropriate use of “we” by people that we 1) – don’t know and 2) – don’t care to know. Grammar screw-ups are oneof my pet peeves. They bug me so much that I have even called out NPR and BBC writers for heinous mis-articulations. Not that it did me any good.
Sadly, in the pet peeves department, I have only one other and that involves pedestrians, cyclists, drivers, and abusers of so-called smart-phones. As, I am sure, each and every one of you falls into at least one of those categories, writing anything more on pet peeves would do nothing but risk alienating my entire readership. As that is exactly the opposite effect of the one I am trying for, namely to get you to suggest to all your friends that they might find something worth reading here, I will take a pass on saying anything further about the things that really bug me.
Which brings us to the second request. This request was sent in by three readers although two of them weren’t aware that I was listening at the time. It is a subject that I touched on several months ago and which I’ve been meaning to revisit but didn’t really have anything to write about. That recently changed so I’m going to spice things up a bit by writing to the second request, which was: “write something romantic”.
This brings us back to our old friends Carl and Lupe. For the newcomers and the more forgetful among you, Carl and Lupe are the fictionalized personas of a couple of friends about whom I first wrote in “You Don’t Say” back on June twenty-fourth. The short version of that blog is that making things up and telling a story at different levels is all well and good but that reality is often so completely unbelievable that it’s much easier to just write about what actually happens because, hey, nobody’s going to believe it anyway and I’ll get credit for making up the story.
So it was with Carl and Lupe. They had the most unbelievable whirlwind romantic story that I had ever heard. In a nutshell, they met on Wednesday, set their first date for Saturday, and started living together on Friday; the Friday before their first date. Things actually went amazingly well for the happy couple. So well, in fact, that they completely disappeared from the social radar, until Tuesday of last week.
“Meet me for lunch tomorrow,” read Lupe’s text message. “Please.”
“Okay, where?”
“Three Sparrows, noon.”
The Three Sparrows, you’ll recall, was the sight of Carl and Lupe’s first date lo these many months ago. I arrived at 12:05 and Lupe was already half in the bag. Her eyes red and puffy, her upper lip glistened and a cloth napkin lay crumpled on the white tablecloth. I sat down as the waiter arrived with a glass.
“The Rottweiler Cellars, Ma’am.” He placed the glass down and collected Lupe’s two empties. “And for you, sir?
I glanced at the menu. “I’ll have the free-range roasted turkey on a rosemary sourdough baguette with baby greens and blackberry mayonnaise,” – it’s that kind of place – “and an iced tea.” He vanished.
“Lupe, what’s wrong?”
“Oh, nothing.” She blew her nose and it sounded like the ferry leaving. “Nothing at all.”
Our lunch arrived and we made small talk in between bites. The sandwich was pretty good despite its pretensions. The waiter returned.
“Today’s dessert special is pistachio gelato.” He glanced at Lupe. “May I bring you some?”
At this point Lupe started blubbering uncontrollably. I shook my head at the waiter and gave him a how-about-a-little-privacy look. He vanished again.
“Come on Lupe, what’s going on here?”
“It’s just that pistachio was Carl’s favorite flavor.”
“’Was’?”
“Yes,” she straightened up and dabbed at her eyes with the napkin. “Yes, I don’t think I can keep on seeing him.”
“Oh,” I tried to look understanding. “Well these whirlwind romances are tough. At least it ended early before you got too attached.”
A single tear ran down her cheek. “No,” she shook her head. “It’s not like that. I still love Carl like crazy. It’s just…” she trailed off.
“Yes?”
“I think Carl’s gay.”
At this point I made sure to start coughing and snatched up my napkin to cover my face. Once I had composed myself I lowered the napkin. An unfortunate smile remained. Carl is perhaps the least-gay person on the planet.
“Uh, correct me if I’m wrong but you’ve been sleeping with the guy for three months right?”
“Two months, twenty-two and a half days.”
“Close enough. Doesn’t that give you a hint that maybe he’s not gay.”
“But.”
“Yes?” I chose this unfortunate moment to take a drink of my iced tea.
“He has a hairdryer.”
After the waiter cleaned up the mess and I had stopped hacking up ice cubes I rejoined the conversation.
“That makes him gay?”
“Yes.” She looked at me sadly.
“Hell,” I tried to sound upbeat. “I have a hairdryer.”
She looked skeptical but asked the fatal question. “And what do you use it for?”
“Uh, scraping paint.”
“You would never think about using it to dry your hair would you?”
I admitted she had me there.
“And it gets worse.” I couldn’t see how it could. “He has a whole box of hairdryers.”
At this point it all became perfectly clear. I reached out and patted Lupe’s hand. “Aw, Lupe that’s okay. Lots of guys have boxes filled with hairdryers.”
“They do?” She didn’t believe me. “How come?”
“How old are you?”
“Forty eight.”
“And how about Carl?”
She started moving her fingers like she was counting backwards. “Uh, fifty one.”
“You think you’re Carl’s first girlfriend?”
“No, but….”
I stopped her. “When a guy and a woman start dating seriously the first thing she does is bring a hairdryer over to his house. I think it’s the female equivalent of scent-marking her territory.”
“Yes, but….”
“But nothing. The thing is, that if they break up, she never takes her hairdryer with her.”
“That’s silly.”
“Maybe, but guys are so stupid they think that maybe she’ll come back to pick up the hairdryer.”
She picked up my explanation like she was reading my mind. “No woman in her right mind would do that. The man must think that he’ll keep it just in case somebody needs to borrow one sometime.”
“Or scrape some paint.” I suggested.
“But nobody ever needs to borrow one because they all bring their own.” You could see the light come on. “So he just tosses it in a box.”
“Right,” I said and saw the hint of a smile cross Lupe’s face. “Later, they always get found and there’s a bit of a fight about all the hairdryers. But guys are so clueless they never think to just throw them out.”
“He…he…he.” Finally, a laugh.
“I mean, I’m sure you’ve had something like that happen to you at some point.”
“Well,” she blushed.
“Come on.”
“Well, after it looked like Carl and I had something long-term I told him he could use a closet for his clothes if he wanted.”
“Okay.”
“He brought over some clothes and when he opened the closet he told me there were already some guy’s clothes in there.”
“Were there?” I was amazed that anybody would leave clothes behind.
“Yes. A couple of shirts.”
“What did you do?”
“I grabbed them, ran out, threw them in the car and gave them to Goodwill.”
“Did Carl ever mention it again?”
“Uh, no.”
Just then her phone started blasting “Come on everybody let’s do the Conga….”
“It’s Carl’s ringtone.” Her eyes lit up and she answered the call. “Of course I want to see you tonight. What makes you think I wouldn’t?” She waited. “Oh, honey.”
Honey?
“Okay, see you later. Love you too.” She clicked off.
“It’s like this,” I told her. “Even though you’ve been living together for three months,” she opened her mouth to speak, “more or less. It’s still brand new. You have a past, and he has a past.”
“Filled with girls with wet hair.”
“And now is the time that your past and his past will be bumping into your shared present the most.”
“And future.” She blushed again. This was the Lupe I knew.
“You just have to deal with it and move on. Don’t let something so little get in the way of what the two of you are building.”
“So I shouldn’t worry about the box full of hairdryers.”
“Nah, it doesn’t mean he’s gay and it doesn’t mean he can’t get over his old girlfriends. It just means he’s a dumb guy. Besides….”
“What?”
“They could come in handy if you ever need to scrape some paint.”