It's a Front

Doing my part to create hideously untrue rumors about hard working decent people.

Or

Minnesota... A hot-bed of criminal activity


My friend got out of rehab today. I can only assume he was there for one or a combination of a couple things, notably booze and cocaine. I'm actually low enough on the "call in case of" list that I didn't learn he was IN rehab until he actually got OUT of rehab. Yep, that low. We're distant friends. Acquaintances. Former coworkers. I'm of course thrilled to hear that he's making these crucial and healthy life changes. I'm sure I've got all sorts of recovery lingo (12step-ese? 12step-ish? 12 steppery?) coming my way when we have lunch next week, but that's actually not the point. His stint with the slogan-spouters got me to thinking about a little problem that I have. I'm talking, of course, about my obsessive tendency to call businesses of questionable solvency "fronts". I find myself doing this more frequently each passing year. It's not as though I'm paranoid or concerned about them per se. Call it a sick fascination. Or more endearingly... call it a quirk, a borderline OCD quirk. I know that there can't possibly be as many out there as my twisted mind would like to think there are but, let's face it, these things DO exist. Haven't you ever watched the show "Weeds"?

How about that one neighborhood Chinese Take Out restaurant that never seems to be open or doing any business? Yeah, nearly every urban neighborhood has one. Front. And don't even get me started on the GIGANTIC spice store that inhabits the absurdly large space. It's bigger than a Baby Gap. Now as near as I can fathom, their product, spice, well folks it just doesn't GET much smaller. It's powder. Smaller than powder is what? What comes before powder? Electrons? Why would anyone EVER need that much space for cumin? Come ON! It's a front! But here's the twist... It's not a drug front. No way. Much too obvious. It's a prostitution front.


Ok. Here's a question. If you wanted to run a brothel out of a legitimate business, why in the name of all that is holy, would you call it a Massage Parlor? You really just might as well call it a god damned brothel and bank on the fact that the cops have better things to do with their time than to arrest you. Not to mention you take the fun out of them catching on to your scheme right out of the equation. If they can't "bust" you, it's no fun for them.

Ding a ling...

Brothel employee: "Hello officer! How can we be of service to you today?"

Cop: "Yes ma'am, We have reason to believe that there is illegal activity happening on the premises. (gotta love copspeak) This officer suspects..."

Brothel employee: "You mean you. You mean ’I suspect.’”

Cop: Yes. This officer suspects that place of business is operating as a place of prostitution."

Brothel employee: "No shit, brainiac. What clued you in? The sign outside that says "Martha's Whores - Pay for sex here" or the lit fast food style menu behind my head.

[I should note here that I was very tempted to do a quick sketch of how something like that might look, but my mother reads this... Hi Mom... and I'm worried that might cross a line, or worse... she might have suggestions.]

Perhaps first we should break down all the signs that should lead one to believe that something of ill repute is happening behind the scenes at an otherwise by all appearances... legitimate establishment.

1. Supply/Demand of the product being offered: Does the neighborhood really need ANOTHER tanning salon on top of the five in a two block radius? Can that many people really be in the market for 18th century French faucet knobs?

2. Real Estate - How big is the business relative to the space they are using? In other words, if the property is very large and the product/service being sold there doesn't fit the size of the space... Well, the bigger the space, the higher the rent right? Why would you want to pay for a space that you're only using a small portion of?

3. Employee appearance - An abnormal amount of employees in varying states of disarray, eg. missing teeth, unkempt facial hair, etc. Or on the opposite end of the spectrum, all women, dressed in various synthetics of skin-tight quality, mysteriously graced with considerable "real estate" in a particular area. And they all look at you like you're an ice cream cone.

4. Patrons - High activity/No activity. The person entering the business doesn't match the product the business professes to sell. For example guys with unkempt facial hair and dirty parkas hanging around outside the Baby Gap or SUPER skinny hipsters in American Apparel hanging around the craft and silk flower store. Wait... That actually kind of fits. But, you get my drift.

The pharmacy/gift shop on the corner rings alarms on all four of these points. It’s enormous and I do mean ENORMOUS! Just when you think you’ve reached the margins of the establishment an entirely new room appears. It offers the standard pharmacy fare in addition to really kitschy (and not in the good way) gift-y things. Picture just about any airport “boutique” and you’re about up to speed. Not to mention it’s directly across the street from one of those super high end, trendy gift stores that much better suits the neighborhood it inhabits.

Roughly 35 percent of the shelves are empty. I’ve never seen more than one or two people in there at the same time, a girl purchasing pizza rolls (I think that was legit.) and a guy who left the store promptly when I walked in and waited outside until I left. (Ok yes. I’ve been in there a few times but that’s namely to buy a pack of gum or water on my way to the bus. I sincerely doubt my patronage is keeping them afloat.) The clerks are either a tooth deficient greyish-tinged man or an amply endowed eastern European girl. Go figure.

All together now... Let’s sing it in high C this time... “Front!”


Oh. And don't even get me started on the Stone Masons... cannibals. They have an enormous temple across the street from my apartment and every now and then I see a disarmingly scantly chaperoned line of children filing into the building and I say to myself, "Oh. The Masons are having children for dinner tonight".

I Asked For A Dog And I Got Crabs

HERMIT crabs! I asked for a dog and I got HERMIT crabs. Wow. You leave out one word... whole other meaning.

As a kid, I didn't want for much. I was blessed with a relatively generous mother who I think also "generally" felt guilty for marrying my step-father, heretofore referred to as step-bother, the grumpiest man to walk the earth. So I "generally" got what I asked for. Except for the year that I asked for a dog and somehow ended up with hermit crabs. Not a gerbil, or a goldfish, or a bird, or hell, not even a turtle. Hermit crabs. Crustaceans. Seriously, that's just a very tiny notch up from cockroach.

Here's how it all went down:

I was twelve and even though we already had a home inhabited by two cats and a dog, I wanted a puppy. A puppy that was mine. My mom and step-bother had the appropriately dubious response to a twelve years old’s request to possess a living creature. "You’ll take care of it for a month, get bored like you do with everything else and then we’ll end up doing all the work."

“I do not get bored!” I declared, stung.

My mother shot a conspiratorial glance at my step-bother, drew in a heavy breath…

“How about the numerous clothes that you just HAD to have but now won’t wear?”

“Painter’s pants are soooo last season, mom.”

“Juggling?”

“I was allergic to the bean bags!”

Field hockey?

“Ok. That was not at ALL what I expected it to be.”

She paused for dramatic effect, crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow…

"Unicycle?"

“Ok, ok. But this time will be different. I swear!"

Thus began the bizarre set of requirements that had to be fulfilled before any further puppy discussion would be entertained. In retrospect, I suspect that most of it was more a distraction than anything. That secretly they hoped by the time I'd completed all the prerequisites, I'd have moved on from puppies to hot air balloons or some such thing. (Fortunately for me tenacity, when necessary, was something I always possessed in spades.)

My first requirement - and this one's a head scratcher - was satisfactory completion of a Speed Reading course. Huh? What does speed readin' have to do with dog-ownin'? I never was entirely clear on that one, but if you'll take a bit of a circuitous route with me… this is my best guess: Faster readin' breeds faster homework-doin' which leaves more time for dog walkin'. (Did I mention my step-bother was a bit of a hillbilly?)

Second requirement.... hermit crabs. I came home from school one day and in my room was a glass aquarium with a food bowl and two large seashells inside. As I got closer I realized the shells were MOVING. I retreated slowly, horrified. "MMMMMMOOOOOOMMMM?!" I heard her laughing from the back of the house. Evil!
"Look what Paul got you," she said still laughing as she walked in the room. I made a mental note that she walked a wide arc around the cage, giving it much more berth than necessary. So Mom's afraid of them too. Good to know. Actually George Michael and Peanut Butter weren't terrible pets in the end. (What do you expect? I was twelve. I was still straddling that razor thin line between sweets and boys. Come to think of it… I do still really like peanut butter. Not so much George Michael.) Their upkeep was pretty simple and I actually grew to appreciate, if not LIKE, them a little bit.

When I left for the summer to visit my dad, I expected that my crabs, er... HERMIT crabs,would be well cared for. This as, it turns out, was not entirely in the cards for G.M. and P.B. In his infinite wisdom, step-bother put the crabs in the sandbox outside and made a crude cage out of window screening. Anyone else see where this is going? Hey Flash! They're crabs?! They have claws?! To this day, I like to think of little George Michael and Peanut Butter, escape artists extraordinaire, as living it up on some extravagant beach in Savannah. What's the shelf life on a hermit crab anyway?

As for the rest of the mandates for puppy ownership, I have no idea what else was in store for me. But the next day I got my puppy. I suspect out of guilt. And I fed and walked and played with her everyday.... for about two months. Before I moved on to hot air balloons.

Hey, You Dropped Your Cheese

Blamo!... Slam!... rattle, rattle.  Hear that?  That’s the sound I imagine I made during the  painful, embarrassing and painfully embarrassing header i took on the bus this morning.   I didn’t actually hear it.  I was listening to Spoon, so to me my swan dive sounded remarkably like the lilting cadence of Britt Daniel's voice.  But man oh man, it MUST have sounded like a rhinoceros tumbleweed.  That’s how hard I fell. Yep.  That’s right.  I’m THAT loser.  The one that you see fall on the bus. I write this while I ice my knee, the part of my body that bore the brunt of my plummet.  Took the bullet, as it were.  Let’s have a moment of silence for the fallen.  Godspeed left kneecap.  You were a faithful and proud pivotal hinge joint.  Your bravery in the face of impending “smashery”  was beyond commendable.  I shall miss you terribly. 

I blame the second step at the back of the newer modelled buses.  I curse you superfluous step!!  And toe of my high-heeled boot… if you’re not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.  I curse you too.  I couldn't even say exactly what happened.  It was all happening in slow motion and simultaneously at light speed.  How is that possible?  In the end I don't think it was any one thing that toppled this giant.  I'll call it an unfortunate sequence of events.  There was a bit of the it's-so-early-it's-still-dark-out fogginess coupled with lust due to the previously referenced dreamy indie rocker.  I realized almost instantly that I'd forgotten about the second step and actually had plenty of time to re-adjust. In my head it went something like this, "Oh shit, I'm gonna fall. Wait.  No, I'm not. I got this."  And then I think the toe of my boot caught on something and that was it.  Next thing I know I was on the ground.  Did I mention I was wearing a skirt?  WAY too many people saw my pink and brown polka dot panties before 8 AM than EVER should.  EVER.  Ok maybe not EVER.  Kidding. 

Now here's the thing about when adults fall in very public places.  It's funny.  It's ALWAYS funny.  Someone, somewhere at this very moment is writing about the idiot she saw fall on the bus this morning.  I'm here to tell you, that idiot was me.  But since we've all at one time or another done something like this we all know that there a couple ways to handle the aftermath:

1) Pretend like it was someone/something else's fault.  Act indignant and storm off waving off any kind strangers' attempts to ask if you're okay.  

2) Get up, look humiliated, shuffle away quickly, head down. 

3) Act hurt.  Really, really hurt.  Tears would be good in this situation.

4)  Laugh your ass off.

My response was sort of a cross between 2 and 4.  But what I really, really wanted to do was to just sit my ass down on the floor of that bus, cross my legs indian-style, blink up at my stunned co-passengers and in my best imitation of a kid's voice state loudly,  "I fell down!"  [Look at hands and back up at even more confused passengers] "I fell down. I hurted my knee.  See?"  Because the truth is, no one ever laughs when little kids fall down.  And come to think of it falling 80 year olds elicit a surprising lack of mirth as well.  Little kids and 80 year olds.  Man those guys get all the breaks.  (Pun definitely NOT intended.)  

As I finally stepped off what will heretofore be referred to as "the hell bus" and tried to not limp to my building, I felt a tap on my shoulder.  Great.  Some well meaning student was holding out her hand palm up.

"Hey.  You dropped your cheese." 

 I glanced down to see that she was holding my mini string cheese.  It must have tumbled out of my lunch bag in the hullaballoo.  She had chased me down for a piece of cheese.  A black hole opened up on the bus and I fell through.  Now I was just trying to make sure I climbed out on the correct side and she's worrying about a piece of cheese.  I couldn't help myself.  I just stopped there in the street and laughed.  Hard.  

I keep playing that line in my head.  

“Hey.  You dropped your cheese.” 

Trust me doll,  that’s not all that got left behind on the rubber-matted floor of the 114C not the least of which was my pride.  

Do you think I could call up the metro transit authority to see if anyone turned in grace and dignity to the Lost And Found today?

I blame Halloween...

When a lab or office here at the University decides to upgrade equipment or get rid of broken or out of date machines, they put them in the hallway. There the slumping, rejected machines sit for weeks, a veritable widget graveyard, while people like me pick our way through them, sometimes turning a corner too fast to avoid them and finding ourselves face down in their knobbed and dialed corpses. Until eventually they go away. I'm not sure why they have to sit there for so long before they’re hauled away. It's possible that it's protocol. It’s possible that the building maintenance crew must give the vultures enough time to pick over the carcasses. Perhaps it's a battle of wills. Maybe proper procedure is to call someone to arrange for a large receptacle in which to toss the aforementioned unwanted things until someone can come and wheel it out to an even bigger receptacle. Maybe the researchers don't know they're supposed to do this or don't care. The maintenance crews find it frustrating and disrespectful so as punishment they make people trip over the stuff in their hallways for about a month before they finally take care of it. I know that's what I'd do. Absent-minded genius, my ass. Clean up your mess, professor. Well in my many walks through the dim and less accessible hallways, I've seen some very interesting looking machines. I like to imagine what they do. Call it a guessing game. Propulsion chamber? Viscosity leveller? Finger remover? Fitzelpopping thermoplasmic fuselating farfelhoffer?

But the other day I nearly tripped over a machine that outright terrified me, because I'm damn near positive it was a suicide machine. Remember the suicide machine? Jack Kevorkian? Dr. Death? I did a report on it in like sixth grade or something. Maybe it was high school. But I have a vague recollection of the machine and this “machine” in the hallway bears an eerie resemblance. (A quick bit of research on line and I find the actual name is thanatron. Ok…this thing in the hallway looks a LOT like a thanatron.) Furthermore, it doesn't even look like it's something that belongs in a highly advanced research university lab. It looks crude. It’s pretty small, about the size of a laptop computer with four raw wood boards that form the frame. In the middle of the top of the frame on what looked like some sort of spring is a syringe. (Some responsible party apparently saw to it that the needle was disposed of through the proper channels.) I will not pretend to be one of those people who can understand the inner workings of things, but I see a crude wood frame with a syringe, a hook, and a spring and I'm sorry, but I see suicide machine. And of course the mental gymnastics begin. If we consistently refer to objects as dying or dead... For example, "My phone died." Or "my computer died." Then if a thanatron ceases to work, has it not then died? And would that be considered... suicide? Noooooo! I have way too much to get done today to jump down this little rabbit hole. I should probably get back to work anyway. Hey now, don't be sad. I'll be back. No. No, you put down that suicide machine right now!

I'd like to schedule an appointment...

Yesterday was a gorgeous day. The kind of day that makes you fall in love with Fall. The sun bakes you and the cool air puts a bit of rose on your cheeks. It was the kind of day you just can’t leave. And yet there is something about this kind of day that I find depressing. It’s as though I can't possibly appreciate it or take advantage of it as much as I feel like I should. I couldn't even really express what the expectations are. I just know that they exist and I have no idea how one goes about fulfilling them. Maybe it all stems from being a kid when warm sunny days were our playground. I didn't tend to let them go to waste, but if I was caught indoors by an adult on a day like that the response was always the same, as though they had all recently attended the same seminar. "It's a beautiful day. Get outside and enjoy it." My God… those days just flew by when I was young… Running around the neighborhood with all the other kids playing unusually intricate and complicated games or make believe scenarios. We raced through those warm late summer days as if they wielded knives. When one of us would finally look at the sky and notice the sun starting to get low, our games' pace quickened to near manic levels. That dipping sun signaled the end of our reign. Our realm belonged to us during the day and to the adults at night. We could hear clinking sounds from kitchens. Dinner preparations were under way. Time was running out and there was still so much to do. No one had officially won the game of freeze tag we paused when we decided to pick up a softball game which dissolved when someone dared Danny Freeman to touch the "witch's house" at the end of the block, which had inspired us to play neighborhood spies with finger guns peeking from behind fat trees, cheeks pressed against the cool bark. We need more time! There’s so much more to do!

Is it possible that the feeling I still get on days like yesterday is some lingering residual from those days so far removed? Is that why as adults we are always saying to kids, "It's a beautiful day. Get outside and enjoy it." Because we know we no longer can, at least not the way we once did, or tried so very hard to do. As kids we sucked the marrow out of those days. As adults, it seems we barely have time for a few bites, then it’s back to our oh so important lives.

“Hello? Is this the sun? I’m terribly sorry but I’ll have to reschedule our appointment. Are you free next week at all?”

Je suis désolée, mais Je ne parle pas CRAZY

"It's not like I'm thirsty for the pony. I'm not looking at a refrigerator full of haircuts and thinking THAT'S the one I want."

This from James the Giant Peach, an intern at Beth's office who was helping us paint her house the other day. Giant, because he's the tallest human being I've ever seen. Peach, because I could just take a bite right out of him he's so cute. And James because that's his name. He also is one of the few people from whom I can walk away after a conversation thinking, "What the hell just happened there?" Did I just accidentally stumble onto the set of Twin Peaks? Was there a backwards-talking midget in the room? In this particular case he was talking about how he wanted to grow his hair long enough to put it in a pony tail as a goof. For little more reason than just to see if he could do it. At least that was what I think he was trying to tell us because everything he says, he says in this strange amalgammation of riddle and obscure poetry which would actually be quite beautiful, in an oddly compelling sort of way, if it didn't come at you so relentlessly. You're barely able to process "refrigerator full of haircuts" before he's talking about "middle droops" and how middle droops are okay, but "end droops. well, end droops are like you’ve just stopped caring." (I think this little gem had something to do with Beth’s window treatments.) After painting all day, we're standing in her living room drinking a beer and he comes down from the rafters to perch on the arm of her couch. Some exotic bird squawking away. He’s definitely talking because he IS forming words and sentences and in his mind it must make some sense. But I sort of get the feeling halfway through when I realize he isn't really going to stop to let anyone else get a word in, that he is more talking NEAR us than he is TO us. Take away the cozy living room, stylish garb, skin-melting good looks and you’ve got yourself any number of characters that populate my bus stop after 10 pm on a given night. Dreadfully sorry Peachy, but I don’t speak crazy. Oh, that I did. Or do I?

Round Trip Ticket, Please (Part 1)

Practically two years ago to the day, I took on a house sitting gig in a million dollar home just outside the city. I didn’t pay rent. I didn’t pay bills. A “service” mowed the lawn. A “service” plowed the snow. A “service” cleaned the house. It essentially required very little of me save for just living in the home. The trouble, it seems, was actually living there.

Flashback... I’m catching the very last rays of the evening's October sun on my new deck and sipping on a vino verde. I'm continually surprised by how much I WANT to be here. I still have my old apartment for another month and for someone who professed to love it as much as I did just a few weeks earlier - so much so that I wasn't sure I could leave it - I sure seem to be finding every excuse to avoid it. Perhaps because it's too hard to face all the packing that I have yet to do or the hole that has been left behind is too much to bear. Whatever it is, I seem to be perfectly content to rattle around by myself in this large and complicated home like some defective and deficient maraca. And still there's this small voice in my head that keeps saying, "Fraud. Fraud. You're a fraud." The source of this voice, I suspect, is also the same part of me that never feels as if I can completely inhabit this home. (Even if I walk around it a hundred times entering and re-entering every room and turning on all the lights.) The same part of me thinks this is a sign of my slumping and defeated descent into adulthood and consumer hell. But whatever rebelling forces I have in me seem to be relinquishing themselves to some internal sinkhole, though not without throwing out some choice admonishments on their way down. "YOU'RE BECOMING EVERYTHING YOU SAID YOU WOULD NEVER BEEEEEEeeeeeeeeee."

But the bottom line is this: Was I really that much happier living the way that I was? Are the hipsters I surrounded myself with and yearned to be one of really, truly all that much different than the people here in stuck-up suburbia? Take away the white belts, fashionable eye ware and ironic hairstyles and they’re just another elitist crowd. I think what I've come to realize here is that in some way - a way that I never could have understood until I got here - besides the opportunity to save MASSIVE amounts of money... I needed this kind of quiet. I didn't know. I thought I liked (and I still do, of course) the chaos of the city. What I never expected when I came here is that I would be okay in the quiet. I thought that anxiety would kick in. The same anxiety that kicks in when I try and close my eyes to sleep. The eyes close and the brain turns ON. I guess I always thought that if I found myself in a place that was too quiet, the same thing would happen. I don't mind that my brain turns ON every now and again. In fact, I sort of count on it. It's just the feeling that I can't turn it back OFF again. But what I've discovered is that I CAN just sit and stare at a lake, or the lawn flies swirling in a low, stray ray of sun. I can listen to a distant dog bark or two kids playing somewhere out of sight behind a tree and the curve of a lake.