Revenge of the Paste Eaters (11 page)
I have never internalized any of this nonexistent presumption of who I am or what I feel. I would never discriminate against another woman of substance. I would never look at a heavy person and think, “self-pitying, undisciplined tub of lard.” I would never admit that while I admire beautiful bodies, I rarely give the inhabitants the same attention and respect I would a soul mate because I do not expect they would ever become a soul mate. I would never tell you that I was probably thirty years old before I realized you really
can
be too small or too thin, or that the condition causes real emotional pain.
I have never skipped a high school reunion until I “lose a few pounds.” I have never hesitated to reconnect with an old friend. I will appear anywhere in a bathing suit. If my pants split, I assume—and I assume everyone assumes—it was caused by poor materials.
I have always understood why attractive women are offended when men whistle at them.
I have never felt self-conscious standing next to my male friend who is five foot ten and weighs 145 pounds.
I am not angry about any of this.
for my birthday my
Beloved gave me a Dremel.
I have wanted a Dremel for a long time. And indeed, as I have shared the news of my Beloved’s gift, my friends have responded “(slight sigh) I’ve always
wanted
one of those,” or “What’s a Dremel?” I have no idea what a Dremel is. It’s a power tool. According to the box, it’s a “rotary tool.” It is not necessary to know what a Dremel is to want one. It is small. It is neat. It runs on electricity (although there is a rechargeable Dremel with its own battery pack). It comes with a lively assortment of bits and brushes and little felt things that look important and practical. A Dremel is an
instrument
: it is the sort of handy, pragmatic little tool that one eyes and murmurs reverently, “That would be
good
for something.”
My father has a Dremel. My father has two separate buildings filled with tools. I suspect that—had he so desired—he could have lived a full and complete life Dremel-free, his routers and drills and buffers filling in those spaces that the missing Dremel left, but I believe—and there is a note of bitterness here—that he has not one Dremel but two. I first fell in love with the whole idea of a Dremel when I found one nesting in a small plastic box, its bits and brushes lined up cozily next to it, in one of his two tool buildings. (“Shed” does not properly describe my father’s tool storage units. One of his “sheds” is the leftover part of a house.) I said, “What does this do, Dad?” The answer, as I recall, was vague. Several years later we were clearing out his mother’s house after she went into a nursing home and I found her Dremel, which, he maintained, he had purchased for her and therefore now owned by default. He already had one, but it seemed inappropriate to covet my grandmother’s rotary tool while we were unraveling her life.
My grandmother requested a Dremel to use to build furniture for her dollhouse. Since her dollhouse was furnished, I can only assume she did use it.
I have never seen my father use either one of his Dremels. Once, perhaps. He may have used it to cut out the inner lining of a plastic case I bought for a quarter. The inner plastic lining was molded to hold something, but the something had been sold long before I came along, and I did not have, nor could I even identify, the something that was no longer there. I wanted to use the case for something else. So he Dremeled out the inside. It looked like work to me.
My Beloved has a Dremel, although it appears to have run off to live with one of her friends and has been reluctant to return home. My Beloved used her Dremel once, to her recollection: she drilled a hole in her big toenail with it. Intentionally. This is not high on my list of potential Dremel uses.
A day or so after I received my Dremel I reported to my dentist to have my teeth cleaned, and as the dental assistant fired up her handheld tool I thought to myself, “I could do this at home—all I really need is a packet of that peppermint-flavored sand she uses . . .”
I will probably do that right after I drill a hole in my big toenail.
Dremels are exceptionally handy for sawing off the ends of bolts that stick out and get in the way. Should I ever be pestered by an obstreperous bolt end, I am now prepared.
The Dremel company appears not to be wholly ignorant of the enchantment factor that endears their rotary tool to potential buyers. Packed inside the Dremel box are three pieces of literature: a small Dremel manual, explaining carefully in three languages that Dremels should not be used in the bathtub or to sever their own cords, and carefully—almost painfully—clarifying the differences between a Dremel and an electric drill; a smaller book of all of the delightful accessories and attachments the proud new owner can now purchase for their Dremel; and a third book—by far the thickest of the three—entitled “175+ Uses for a Rotary Tool.” This presumes that the average Dremel owner purchased their rotary tool in an anticipation of some as yet unidentified need, and it is the responsibility of the manufacturer to clarify what that need might be, thus tidily eliminating the possibility of buyer’s remorse.
At the Web site www.dremel.com there is an ongoing contest for new and creative uses for one’s Dremel. I have frankly not explored this particular page of the Web site: myself, I have been scrolling around, trying to locate that beige plastic case with the internal plastic moldings designed to nest my Dremel. It appears that one can buy a Dremel in a case, or one can buy an uncased Dremel, but one cannot buy an unDremeled case. This flies in the face of intelligent marketing. Since I estimate that a full 50 percent of all Dremels sold never leave their cases, it seems foolish that the case is the one accessory a Dremel owner cannot buy. It’s a question of need.
upon reflection it has
occurred to Babycakes that he could have chosen a better person to feed, shelter, be-litter, and amuse him. He will stay with Mommy, he has decided (if with a slight sigh)—for in truth, he has seconds of genuine fondness for her (particularly those seconds around 3 a.m.)—but it is only because he is a fine young cat that he has learned to forgive her for her faults.
For instance, she deliberately deprives him of his favorite food group, chocolate. Mommy puts warm chocolate in a cup and drinks it, and she will not share with her beloved Babycakes. Mommy eats soft chocolate out of tiny plastic dishes that are just deeper than his tongue is long and she will only give him these dishes when the chocolate is more than tongue-deep. She is a bad Mommy, but Babycakes is a cat of uncommon inner personal strength, and he has learned to forage on his own.
Mommy has a round thing where she hides everything that might be of interest to Babycakes. It was in the round thing that Babycakes found the shiny metal pockets of chocolate powder that Mommy—silly Mommy—told him he could not have.
Babycakes ate the chocolate powder. Just to show Mommy, he ate his powder, shiny pockets and all.
Soon a dreadful thing happened. He had been going about his life as usual, grooming his beautiful gold self, when his entire body was overwhelmed by painful, agonizing spasms and Babycakes coughed and gagged until his fur came through his nose! He very nearly turned inside out! Nothing like this had ever happened to Babycakes before, and he was so shocked and astounded he had to go take a nap.
But someone had put fire in Babycakes’ belly, and it burned and burned. Someone had stuck several Ping-Pong balls in Babycakes’ belly and they bounced and bounced. Babycakes was a very unhappy cat.
Mommy rose from her platform to go to her litter room and stepped on a small, wet wad of Babycakes’ used fur, and she became very unhappy, too.
She put Babycakes in a box and took him to Jennifer Needles.
Babycakes has never understood why Mommy likes Jennifer Needles. She
seems
like a nice Big One. She is covered with exotic and fascinating smells that suggest to Babycakes that she has some very interesting friends. Jennifer speaks to him very kindly when they meet, and she strokes his fine fur, and she talks pleasantly enough to Mommy, and just when Babycakes is beginning to like her, she pokes him in the most personal of places and then sticks him with pins. This almost always when Babycakes isn’t feeling well anyway, and it seems acutely unfair to him.
Twice a day for several days after they visited Jennifer Needles Mommy put Babycakes on the counter and gave him sticky, bluck-tasting white stuff out of a little glass tube. Babycakes had mixed feelings about this. He rather liked the white stuff, but it’s against Feline Law to appear eager, and being aloof can be SUCH a bother.
And then one day Mommy said, in a cheerful voice that lacked sincerity, “Would you like to go see Jennifer again?”
Babycakes said, “No.” He said, “No” every way he knew how to say no, and when Mommy showed him that hated box Babycakes dug Mommy as his gentle way of saying, “Mommy, LISTEN to me.” Mommy said several very bad words and stuffed him into the box anyway and took him to the Place Where All Sorts of Things Are.
Mommy showed Babycakes a fur-thing that had ears way too long and a nose that twitched and just a little bitty tuft of tail Babycakes would have been ashamed to own. It smelled like dinner to him, but Mommy said, “Oh, I don’t think so.”
Mommy showed Babycakes a huge, bad-smelling thing that wobbled all over the place and had terrible breath and that looked into Babycakes’ very own box at him and said, “Woof.”
Babycakes said, “Oh, I don’t think so.”
And then Jennifer Needles came to Babycakes’ box and she pulled him out of his box, and Babycakes said, “No” to Jennifer Needles.
“Did he just hiss at you?” Mommy asked.
“Oh, it was just a little hiss,” said Jennifer Needles, and she began to feel Babycakes all over his body. She felt his tummy. She felt his teeth. She looked in his ears, she played with his coat, she deliberately and intentionally made all of his hairs go the wrong way.
This was the very last straw. Babycakes said, “No” to Jennifer Needles.
“Amazing,” Mommy said to Jennifer Needles. “He’s NEVER hissed at me—he usually just swats me and rips off some hide.”
“I think he’s okay,” Jennifer Needles said, and put Babycakes back in his box.
Babycakes lay very flat in his box. If anyone had looked in there they might have seen a fine gold rug. All the way home Babycakes was very quiet and very flat. Had his life been just a little different, he might have been a Persian rug. He might have learned to fly, and he might have flown far, far away from Mommy and her evil friend, Jennifer Needles.
“So,” Mommy said as they rode home, just Mommy and a beautiful non-Persian gold rug, “I guess we won’t be eating any more tin foil, eh, Babycakes?”
Mommy seemed inordinately pleased with herself.
This morning the parking lot
was full of unusually stupid birds
—loud, arrogant birds who stood
at my wheels and demanded food
as if someone had waited on them
their entire lives. Welfare birds
(it is the welfare parking lot).
A darker, fuller bird fluttered
around them as if to say, “FLY,
you fools—fly away!”
And I sat there in my twelve-year-old
land yacht dripping antifreeze
on the pavement while baby birds
shrieked and made demands and fought
among themselves and finally scurried
off after their mothersource, never once
seeing me as anything but a missed meal.
just after the close
of World War II an epidemic struck this country. In the next ten years, American parents, amazed that they had won the war, produced the biggest single generation of children ever born in the same decade. But they did not do so without threat. By the time I came along in 1949 parents had steeled themselves against the single most overwhelming disease ever to face an affluent society. Kids my age could also die of polio, viral pneumonia, or the flu, but the infirmity that struck the deepest terror into a parental heart was the Big Head.
Just about anything could cause the Big Head. Winning. Not coming in last. Coming in last, but coming in at all when no one expected you to finish. Doing something well, receiving a compliment, feeling good about something you did—all of this was the devil’s own workshop for the Big Head. It could strike at any time, anywhere a small child had a moment of rampant ego gratification, and my parents—and the parents of all of my friends—were determined that it would never happen to a child of theirs.
If I did something well, my mother assured me it was “about time,” or she told me how much better she had done with less effort at an earlier age. When other people complimented me for something she would roll her eyes and say under her breath, “Don’t let it go to your head.” I presumed from a very early age that nothing I would ever do would much impress my mother: I was doomed to failure, I knew, and the very BEST I could hope for would be to blend in invisibly with the rest of the losers. My mother, by comparison, had taught herself to read while gazing at billboards through her mother’s womb.
I was her first child. Lovingly she shared my baby stories with me. I was born a month premature with no fingernails, no eyebrows, no baby fat, and I was bright red. My ancestors, gathered around me to welcome me into the fold, choked on phrases like “she’s beautiful.” I was the ugliest newborn ever presented to either branch of my family tree. This reception apparently worked on my delicate nerves and I retaliated by getting colic and screaming for the first six months of my life. In retrospect, given the opportunity to make amends I might have handled that situation differently, but I have often sensed that the tone of my relationship with my mother was set before I had much opportunity to tinker with the effects of my input.
Being her first attempt, I was particularly vulnerable to wind shifts, predators, and things that go bump in the night. My mother believed I strolled obliviously through life with my heart on my sleeve and my brains tucked firmly in my back pocket. And while it is true that I rode my bike around our P-shaped drive while wearing a hat that fell down over my eyes, allowing me to ride headfirst into her parked Buick, I think her assessment was unfair and unkind. The world, in my mother’s eyes—and therefore, in mine—was one endless parking lot filled with Buicks.