The Mother And Child Reunion Is Only a Motion Away

“Salve Regina, mater misericordiae. Vita dulcedo es pes nostra, salve, salve regina. Ad te teclamamus, exules fillir heavae, ad te sepstumatis gementes, et flentis, o clemens o pia.”
--Traditional Catholic prayer


“Doctor, doctor, will I die?
Yes, my child, and so will I.”
--Anonymous




My mother died two months ago.

For my entire life, I’ve looked with a sort of wonderment at people whose parents are deceased because all I could think was: “They’ve been through it. They’ve been through the worst thing that I can imagine and they’re still functioning. How do you do that? It would kill me if one of my parents died.”

She was in the hospice for 114 days, admitted with serious pneumonia. But she was terrified that if she went to the hospital, she would get wore pneumonia and die.

She did not leave her bed to do anything except use the bathroom and get the occasional snack. She was 20 pounds underweight—101 pounds at 5’%”. She was so weak she couldn’t feed herself.

Finally, I snapped. “Mom, you are a 76 woman with a 60 year smoking habit that has ravished your lungs. You are technically anorexic. You cannot ride out bronchial pneumonia with Tylenol and Mucinex! You need a doctor! You need antibiotics!”

Long story short, she ended up going to the hospital. And she did die there.

Once they confirmed the pneumonia, they discovered a whole hoard of other life threatening diseases such as:

--pleural effusions
--cancer (we already knew that one)
--congestive heart failure
--sepsis
--severe kidney failure
--ischemic strokes
--severe edema
--unexplained rectal bleeding

I knew, on day four, she was never walking out of that place. No amount of prayers, no amount of rosaries, no amount of get well cards was going to do it. And all I could do was look at her, swollen with edema, her eyes sometimes recognizing me and say, “why did you do this, God? She had mental problems but was far from evil. I’m the bad one in the family. It should have been me. It should have been me!

Imagine having to watch your own mother on her deathbed for five horrible terrifying months, most of which she didn’t know me Pretty awful right? Now imagine that when you have Borderline Personality Disorder (very first diagnostic criteria: “Irrational fear of imagined or realistic abandonment.” That’s probably worse, right?

Now imagine how it felt go to through that completely alone.

My father is emotionally neutral. Mom died on April 24th and he is absolutely astonished that I’m not “over it” yet. Well, I’m sorry, I’m not. I haven’t found my emotion switch, Dad. I kept reminding him that when his mom passed (he was 28), he had an older brother, a father, two sisters, all their husbands and wives, his Navy buddie, and, oh yeah, a frigging spouse! I HAD NO ONE!

My mother was not always loving, She found my weak spots early on and she played into those fear. (What’s that line from The Wall? “Mother’s gonna make all your nightmares come true / Mother’s gonna put all of her fears into you.” And she did. She made me paranoid. She had a one-way intercom installed in my bedroom just so could hear what was “going on up there.” (With a female friend?) .She blatantly admitted to reading my journals, which is how she a She is largely responsible for my own mental illness.
Oh, yes, the psychiatrist gave me a little extra chemical help, but

But there were so wonderful things about her. I can hear her voice so clearly it’s scary. I break down when I smell her perfume. We would watch movies from the 1940’s and it was she who made me fall in love with Cary Grant and Gary Cooper and Gregory Peck. We traded books we knew the other would like—and we always did.

She taught me how to knit, just for fun. Even though she hated sewing machines, it just look so neat that she taught me, too. We played games, horsing around on the floor, then my dad would come in and then all three of us would start roughhousing and it would be…love.

She taught me how to wear makeup. She taught me how to pluck my eyebrows, shave my legs, and of course when it came time for the sex talk, she was stellar. She had charts. And audio-visual aids. And she loved to play dress up, and bride and groom, and game show.

My absolute favorite thing she used to do, though, was whenever I was upset, she would make me lie my head down on her lap and stroke my hair with such love and she smelled so good, but weirdly rarely wore perfume. And it was so comforting and so loving and tender that it almost was like being part of her body again or something and now..

and now…

and now…

I’ll never feel that again! Her gentle, warm fingers with those long nails will never make me feel better again. The very last words she spoke to me were, "it'll be okay," and then she started yanking on my long hair. I was confused, but then I realized what she wanted and I laid my head on her hospital bed in her lap and she gingerly started stroking my hair. I sobbed and sobbed. Even on her deathbed her FINAL THOUGHT was to COMFORT ME.

Get over it in three months? If something funny or weird happens in class my very first thought is, “Oh, I have to tell this to Mom right now!” If my department Chair gives me a merit raise or a commendation, my knee-jerk reaction is “I can’t wait to tell Mom!” I once so far as to borrow a cell-phone from a student and start to dial.

If something bad happens I have no one in whose arms to cry. My father tries hard, God love him, but he so obviously hates physical contact that our “hug” is about two feet apart.

Did I mention he’s got lung cancer?

Next time: The Powers That Be send three people into my life to help me.

And So It Goes, And So It Goes, And So Will You, Soon, I Suppose

“I only wanted to talk to you one last time
not to change your mind,
but just to say I’ll miss you, baby,
good luck, good-bye, Bobby-Jean.”
--Bruce Springsteen

Friendship is important to me.

The reason friendship is so important to me is that when I was younger (up until about my mid-twenties), I really didn’t have any friends. I had buddies, pals, work and school colleagues, but no real friends, no one I could share secrets with, or go places with, or just hang out with when I had no money (which was often the case.)

Regular readers of the BeowulfBlog (all four of you) may have noticed that the vast majority of my entries begin with phrases like; “I once had a friend who…” or “I used to know this guy who…” or “Years ago, my friends and I…” The reason for this is simple—I am once again pretty much alone.

Don’t get me wrong…I know people. I talk to people. I have people in my department with whom I do social things, but there’s nobody I can really talk to except for good old Andrew in California, and my favorite cousin, with whom I am getting very close. As a result of this, I spend a lot of time online, and therefore, the vast majority of my “friends” are found there.

The problem is, though, whenever someone does make a friendly overture toward me, I get so excited at the prospect of having an actual live, in-person friend that I get all obsessed about the friendship and tend to analyze every aspect of it. Now, this is not to say that I play and replay their voice-mail messages like the Zapruder film, but I am somewhat “clingy.” If I haven’t heard from, say, Sue in a few days, instead of asking myself, “I wonder what Sue’s up to?” I am more likely to think, “what did I do that Sue is avoiding me?”

Also, for some reason yet to be explained, people keep…well, they keep leaving me. It began about ten years ago when three of my best friends (who were in my wedding) simply told me, point blank, that they didn’t have room in their lives for me anymore; that I was too “intense” and too “high maintenance” a friend. I understood. I was heartbroken, and I miss them every day, but I understood. It had been that way all my life--I was "the weird kid," so I was ostracized. Then of course my husband left me and that pretty much sealed the deal on my end—something was obviously wrong with me.

I decided it would be emotionally safer to make friends online, and for a while it seemed to work. I made two very close friends in other states (Alan and Jessica, respectively), but those friendships just sort of petered out naturally, and I wasn’t really hurt by them.

Which brings us to Meg.

Meg is not her real name, but I like the name Meg, and I’ve decided to call her that. Meg and I “met” on a message board for a TV show that we both liked about four years ago. We instantly hit it off in the forums, and before we knew it, we had taken it to e-mail, and we e-mailed like crazy for the next three years. I’m talking long, involved, profound e-mails, in which we divulged secrets, hopes and dreams, and most of all…most important of all…she made me laugh. It may surprise some of my readers to learn that, despite the humorous tone of my blog, I really don’t have very much joy in my life. In fact, most of the time I feel very empty and alone. When I would open my in-box and see a message from Meg, it absolutely delighted me. It made my whole freakin’ day.

Although we never talked on the phone, we exchanged lots of pictures and I felt—strongly—that our relationship was growing into a real “friendship” rather than “e-mail buddies.” I knew, of course, that she had other things going on in her life—other friends, her job, her family, her hobbies and interests. But I didn’t have any of that. Aside from Andrew and the aforementioned cousin, Meg was the only one I could really open up to over e-mail. Although there was a significant gap in our ages (she was about 12 years younger), I never once felt ware of that--and she was so amazingly articulate and eloquent that she made the perfect correspondent for an English professor. She was bright, witty, funny, loyal, (and extremely beautiful).

And then it started to happen. Like it always does.

Her life somehow got “busier,” and she wrote to me asking if we could write shorter e-mails from now on. I was totally on board with that—I would much rather have shorter, more frequent messages from her than to have to wait days and days for her to construct one of our usual missives. Besides, with the easy schedule of a college professor, I could roll with it. So I said of course, let’s go for it.

That lasted for about two months. Her e-mails began to come so infrequently that I actually had to save up all the things that had been happening to me in the meantime, then felt guilty because I had to send her a “long” e-mail, which she clearly didn’t want.

Now in the past when this happened (when one of us didn’t get back to the other right away) we would send each other a quick friendly message—simply with the subject line of *waves* and the message reading, “pop in when you have a chance, will you?” And that would be all. This method worked fine for years. However, about a year ago when I sent her one of these friendly shout-outs, I got a very snappish response saying, “I am perfectly aware of when I owe you an e-mail. I don’t need your little reminders.”

Um…okay. That shut me up for about two weeks. But did I take the hint? No, of course not. After all, we were friends, right? Right?

It started to go downhill from there.

Halloween came, her favorite holiday. I wrote to her asking her what she dressed as. No answer.

Two weeks later was her birthday. I sent her an e-card and a note asking how she had celebrated. No answer.

Thanksgiving came. I wrote asking her how her dinner had been with her family. No answer.

Christmas came. I wrote to wish her a Merry Christmas. No answer.

And still…still I refused to admit what was right in front of me. She wanted out. She was trying, gracefully and delicately and with extreme diplomacy to solve “the BeowulfGirl problem,” and I wasn’t letting her because I was so selfish that I wanted her friendship—contact with her, any way I could get it. So I kept torturing myself by e-mailing her, then for the following three days running to my computer every hour to see if she’d written back.

About three months before all the unanswered holiday-related e-mails, I got what I refer to as “the penultimate e-mail,” meaning that I knew—somehow I knew that this would be the second to last time I would ever hear from her. She wrote a beautiful letter about how she needed to concentrate on her “real life friends,” and that stopped me cold.

“Real life friends?” After four years of writing extremely intimate things about our lives, did I still not count as a real-life friend? She and I told each other things we had never told our “real life” best friends, our parents, our psychiatrists…nobody. We spent literally hours every week writing to each other—yet I still wasn’t close enough to count as a “real life friend.” Was there some sort of trial period I wasn’t aware of?

Still shaking and confused, I continued to read the e-mail (which I really must emphasize was so elegantly written) until I got to this sentence: “The nature of our relationship (pen-pals, basically) dictates that…”

That’s as far as I got. My eyes wouldn’t move beyond those three words. “Pen pals, basically.”
I couldn’t wrap my mind around the concept that that was all she considered us to be. With those three words, she managed to devalue our entire friendship (excuse me, “relationship”) to the level of an assignment for a high school French class.

I was reading this e-mail in my office at Very Serious University when a colleague (I’m frankly too terrified to call anyone a “friend” at this point since people seem to bolt whenever I use the word) passed my door, noticed the look of horror on my face and asked what my problem was.

“I think…I think my best e-mail friend is breaking up with me,” I said, kind of bewildered.

Somehow (I don’t remember how) I crafted a response which wasn’t nearly as expressive as hers and waited. I didn’t have to wait long.

What arrived a few days later was, without a doubt, the most beautifully written ending-a-friendship letter I’ve ever received (and I’ve received several). I won’t quote it here out of respect for her privacy, but it was so overwhelmingly eloquent that I immediately wrote back requesting a few days grace because she deserved an answer as carefully written as her letter had been.

Oddly, the same colleague who had read "the penultimate e-mail" was chatting outside my office with a professor from another department and I waved him in. At this point, I was literally in tears. I just got up and he sat down at the computer and read what Meg had written. Because he knows me so well, he was able to point out the exact phrases that were like daggers and said, softly, "she's extraordinarily well-spoken. I can see why you loved writing to her." Then he handed me tissues and closed my door and let me grieve in peace.

I can’t express how I felt (and still feel). I was angry, deeply confused, hurt, heartbroken, crushed, dejected, disconsolate…all with the overwhelming feeling that once again I had done something to drive yet another close friend away. Her e-mail, beautiful as it was, was actually unclear as to why she was ending our friendship, though she did say she was “pulling away from her e-mail acquaintances.” (I have to admit that I wondered, briefly, if she meant all her internet acquaintances, or just the ones who were “high maintenance.”) She also gently assured me that this was something she was “not going to change her mind about.”

My ultimate reply to her was emotional and visceral, and I’m ashamed of most of it now.

I keep thinking about the things I’ll never know about her future. I’ll never see a picture of her in her wedding gown. I’ll never see pictures of her children. I’ll never meet her in person (which I was planning on). She has invited me to continue to read her blog, but it’s much too painful right now—it would be too much like she was writing to me again.

The thing is, though, I know she reads my blog. And I hope if she reads this entry, she’ll know exactly how much she hurt me, and how utterly destroyed part of me is now, how I feel part of my soul is gone, I and how I’m going to think about her and miss her for a very, very long time…possibly years. And I will absolutely never really get over it.

I know a lot of my readers have many online correspondents whom they do not consider to be “real” friends, either, and I only ask one thing of them. Please, please remember that there is a human being at the other end of that keyboard, who feels the pain of rejection just as much as you do. If you are blessed enough to have friends—in person or online—please be gentle with their hearts. You may never know how much you helped save someone.

Wait A Minute, Mr. Postman

"Deliver the letter, the sooner the better..."
--The Marvelettes

I have never, ever trusted my mailman.

I’m not sure what it is. As a 40 year old adult, I have no problems with mail carriers, or anyone who works for the U.S. Postal Service. But when I was a teenager, our family’s mailman gave me the serious creeps. He was about 50, fat, and had a puffy red face. It got to the point where, when we left our front door open in the summer, I would run screaming for my dad whenever I saw him coming down the street.

In 1983, however, I wasn’t too concerned about the mailman—yet. The biggest drama in my life at that time involved the repertory. I was in my second year, and it happened to be the year that Scott had his Big Gay Crisis and left us. This left Victor (who had been planning on directing a show in which Scott would star) kind of in a quandary. With Scott gone, the only other actor who even approached “good” was Joe.

Now, I liked Joe a lot (see previous entries), but even I, at age 15, didn’t think he could handle a serious leading role. Joe’s main attributes at the tender age of 16 were (1) if given enough time and a hacksaw, he probably could act his way out of a paper bag eventually, and (2) he was really good-looking.

Victor (wise man that he was), however, saw yet a third aspect of Joe—he was so popular, if all his friends came to see the play, we would make a killing. Victor went off in search of a play which could feature Joe without making Joe work too hard at it.

He came up with L’il Abner.

It’s a dreadful play, really. For those of you fortunate enough to have not experienced it, here’s the “plot”: The United States government wants to test a new, powerful superbomb (think the Manhattan Project with one-tenth the I.Q. points), and they search for “the most unnecessary town in America.” They end up picking Dogpatch, which is, of course, where L’il Abner and his worthless, stupid, soulless friends reside.

The characters spend most of their time trying to convince the government that Dogpatch actually is necessary, and they search like hell to find something useful in their town to keep from getting bombed. By the end of the play, most of the audience feels like going out and getting bombed, too.

Hating every minute of it, I went through auditions. I had no idea what part Victor was going to stick me with. It sure wasn’t gong to be Daisy May—we had a very slutty, blonde, talentless twit who was currently sleeping her way through the company that had that part pretty much sewn up. There were no other large female parts at all.

And, finally, the call sheet went up. I was going to play a secretary, in Washington. I had fourteen lines.

This bruised my ego tremendously. The year prior, I had had a second lead, and no one could understand why I had been “demoted” like that. When the night of the first read-through came, I was so disgusted by the inanity of my part that I told Victor I didn’t even want to be recognized and asked if I could wear a disguise.

Weirdly, he called my bluff, and I ended up wearing a blonde Marilyn-Monroe type wig. Because my natural hair is straight, honey-colored, and to my waist, I hoped no one would recognize me. Despite repeated attempts at bribery, I could not get the crafts people doing the program to leave my name out. Even worse, during tech week, the press showed up, and for some unfathomable reason, instead of taking a picture of the leads for the newspaper, they took one of me and the guy playing my boss and ran it.

Opening night came. I tromped onstage. I said my fourteen lines. I tromped off. This went on night after night, until, thank God, the run ended.

Two weeks later, I was sitting in my living room when I heard the familiar, horrifying sound of the mailman coming up the sidewalk. I bolted off the sofa and yelled for my dad, who didn’t really understand why I was so freaked-out by this man. However, he came to the door anyway to deal with him. I cowered behind the door, out of sight.

Dad tried to take the mail, but the mailman just stood there, huffing, and said; “I saw your daughter’s picture in the paper.” (Ewwww!)

“Well, she’s in there a lot,” said Dad, again trying to yank the mail.

“She looked really hot in that blonde wig,” said David Berkowitz. (And in my head I was screaming, “dude, I’m 15!”)

“Um…okay,” said my father, clearly getting uncomfortable.

“I went and saw every performance, too,” hissed the mailman from hell. “And every time she came out in that wig and that slinky dress—I almost lost it.”

Mentally, I sent to my father: “Why the hell aren’t you decking him?”

“Can I just have my mail?” asked my dad, who really isn’t good in a crisis.

“I don’t suppose,” the mailman began, in a lecherous tone, “that you have any color photographs of her dressed like that, do you?” (Ewwww!)

“Nope,” said my father, and shut the door.

“You see?” I said, leaping out at him. “I told you there was something wrong with him! Why didn’t you believe me? Why does no one ever believe me?” And I walked out in a huff.

Two weeks later, my family and I were eating dinner in front of the 6:00 local news. I wasn’t really paying attention (the news depresses me), but suddenly, my mom dropped her fork and said; “Oh, my God!”

I looked up. There, on my television, was our mailman. He was being dragged away—in handcuffs-- from a very seedy apartment building in our town, in which he apparently lived. The reporter was talking, but we were so busy staring that we missed what he said. In the following day’s paper, it all came out.

Due to an anonymous tip by a mother who had become concerned that the mailman had been getting “too friendly” with her son, the police searched his apartment (I have no idea if this is a Fourth Amendment violation or not, but when you get to the end, you won’t care, either). Upon entering, they found the walls of the apartment covered from floor to ceiling with photographs of naked pre-pubescent children (boys and girls) and pictures of teenagers which were either blatantly sexual or very revealing.

And on the rear wall, near a closet, were five color Polaroid pictures of me in the Marilyn Monroe get-up. Apparently, the mailman had showed up during tech week pretending to be a member of the press, and was therefore able to shoot as many pictures of me as he wanted. Also on the wall was the legitimate picture of me which had been in the newspaper.

It took me two weeks to stop shaking.

I am currently very close friends with a very powerful, very brilliant, and very talented criminal lawyer. When I told him this story, he blinked twice and said, “if your dad had shot him, I’d have argued justifiable homicide.”

Stay safe out there, my friends.

Next time: Perhaps something about someone I once knew who was profoundly stupid.

My Vietnam War Story

In 1985, I starred in The Unsinkable Molly Brown. It’s a dreadful show, really, but when you think about it, there are only a handful of musicals that have a strong female lead only (with the exception of Funny Girl or Evita). Despite the show’s awfulness, I vowed to give it my all. Fortunately, I had a very strong supporting cast.

The worst week of any theatrical run is Dress and Tech Week, because that’s when you find out everything that goes wrong. Costumes don’t fit (I’ll bet you didn’t know that professional theatre costumes—especially elaborate period pieces—are only held together with Velcro. All those buttons are purely for show, and if the actress turns wrong, she ends up naked on the stage), lighting cues are missed, props disappear, scenery falls down around your ears, you deal with the orchestra for the first time—everything.

We generally opened on a Friday night. However, the Thursday night before, we always had a special free preview for senior citizens and the residents of our local Veterans Hospital. I’m not sure why veterans were so interested in musical theatre, but they showed up faithfully every time anyway.

Here’s where my ego goes off the charts.

My absolute favorite part of any live performance is when, after the curtain calls (which are pretty damn awesome too, let me tell you), the cast stands in the hall in the back of the stage and the audience files past us telling us how good we were. Keep in mind that I was hearing all these compliments while I was still flying on adrenaline and endorphins, clutching a ton of flowers and kind of shaking. To this day, I tell my students that that particular rush is better than any drug—legal or illegal—I have ever taken.

Finally it seemed to be over, so I went into my dressing room to change into my street clothes and meet up with my friends at the diner. While I was doing this, my friend Sue knocked on the door and told me that “a guy wanted to see me in the hall.”

“What guy?”

“I don’t know, he’s just a guy.”

“Does he have a name? What does he want?”

“How the hell would I know,” she asked, getting irritated. “Just come out.”

I put everything down and went out into the hall. Waiting for me was a bearded man with longish hair in a flannel shirt and jeans. He was in a wheelchair. He looked to be about 50 years old.

He had no legs from the knees down.

I wasn’t sure what to do, but when he saw me, his eyes brightened. He wheeled himself over. “Hello,” he said, in a nice voice. “My name is Gary.”

I shook his hand. “Hi, Gary,” I said. “I hear you wanted to see me?”

“Yes,” he said, still not letting go of my hand. “I’ve been coming to these plays since I’ve been in the V.A. hospital. And I have never seen a performance like yours. Ever.”

“Thank you,” I said, not knowing what else to say.

“I just have to ask,” he said, seriously. “How do you get the courage to do that?”

I blinked. “Do what?”

“Get up there in front of six hundred people and sing, dance, and act. I don’t get it. You’re the bravest person I’ve ever seen.”

I looked in his eyes, which were soft and grey. Very quietly I said; “You were in Vietnam, weren’t you?”

He nodded. “Yes, ma'am. Two tours,” he said. “Marines.”

I was trying very hard not to cry, and was failing at it. “Sir,” I said, “if you don’t mind me saying, I think what you did was a hell of a lot braver than what I just did. And if my acting gave you any kind of distraction from the memories you must have of that—well, I’ve more than done my job.”

I might have gone on babbling forever, but he took my hand. “Honey,” he said, “all that stuff I did over there—I’m proud to have done it, but there was never any beauty in it. The show I just saw you do…that has beauty in it.”

That’s when I lost it. Through tears, I asked Gary if I could take a picture of us. He said of course. I rounded up Victor (who always had a camera at the ready) and we took some shots.

The bus back to the V.A. Hospital was leaving, so he had to go. I pushed him down the hall, kissed his cheek, and we hugged. We both said “Semper Fi”, and I never saw him again.

I have that picture framed and on my office wall.

I never knew his last name.

Next time: How I helped convict my mailman of a felony!

Hitting The Nail On The Head

Throughout my life, there has only been one thing that I actually like about my physical appearance—my hands. They’re delicate and slender and have long, tapered fingers. I get a lot of compliments on them, and have been asked several times if I’d ever modeled them (I haven’t).

When I was in high school, I decided to try to grow my nails out. It was more of an experiment than anything else—I wanted to see how long I could grow them before they broke. It worked out surprisingly well and they grew to a nice length and everybody noticed them and liked them.

I began to pay attention to them and paint them and buff them and pamper them. I only had one problem; they were very, very thin, and when they got wet, they were as fragile as paper. As a result they literally tore off whenever I took a shower. I even attempted showering with latex gloves, but to no avail.

I struggled with artificial tips for years. I hated them—they looked phony, the glue was messy and they felt weird. Also, they were much too big for me—my ring size is only 3 ½..

And then I heard about acrylics.

I was fascinated by this concept. You can actually sculpt artificial nails? Without huge tips? And they lasted for months? I absolutely had to look into this.

I began talking to other women who had acrylics and asked them how they liked their acrylic nails. That’s when I started to hear the horror stories.

Horror Story #1: Once you start, you can’t stop. (Kind of like meth). You are doomed to having acrylics forever and ever.

Horror Story #2: Acrylics ruin your real nails and they’ll never be the same.

Horror Story #3: Actually getting the acrylics hurts.

Horror Story #4: Acrylics can lead to nail fungus, which causes your real nails to fall off entirely.

This petrified me, and put the idea out of my head at once.

But I kept coming back to it. I kept admiring the acrylics of all my co-workers and I began to wonder if it was worth the risk.

I gathered my courage and called a local nail salon. I asked if they took walk-ins. They said yes.

“Okay,” I said with determination, “I’m walking in!”

I walked in. The nail salon appeared to be run by several middle-aged Vietnamese women who may or may not be related to each other. When they saw me mosey in, one of them came scooting over to me and asked: “Can I help you?” She looked outrageously happy for some reason.

“How much for a full set of acrylics with nail art?” I asked (I love nail art--decals, stripes, foil, you name it).

“Twenty-five dollars.”

Well, you can’t beat that. Hell, two months ago I spent one hundred and seventy-five dollars having my hair highlighted. “Let’s do it,” I said.

“Sit down at my station,” said the Vietnamese woman.

I’m gregarious by nature, and as she drilled and filled and brushed and dipped I asked her her name (Tina), where in Vietnam was she from (Nha Trang), how old was she when she came to America (21), and how long she’d been a manicurist (ever since she got here). What was the hardest part about adjusting to America? (learning English).

I then told her that I was actually an English professor, and she got all excited and asked if I ever taught any Vietnamese students. I told her yes—I’ve taught students from many Asian countries. She asked me if I knew any Vietnamese, and I had to admit I did not. She said, “it’s okay, I’ll teach you!” By the time I left the salon, I had learned how to say “Hello, how are you?” “Thank you,” and “Please take me to the American Embassy” in Vietnamese.

The funny part is this; although she speaks excellent English, she only speaks angry English, as if the person who taught her English was perpetually pissed off. Even when she compliments me she yells. “You have beautiful eyes!” she screamed. “You’re so funny!” she yelled. Whenever I go in for a fill and she sees me she hollers: “You! English teacher! Go sit at my station!” It’s quite intimidating, really.

Three weeks ago after getting a fill, she took me by the arm and whispered to me: “I’m going on vacation for a month. Don’t you go to any of the other girls. You wait for me to get back.” She then told me she wouldn’t be back until October 15th, which was five weeks away. I knew I couldn’t go that long without getting a fill…it would look awful. So, sadly, last week I cheated on her. “Please don’t tell Tina I was here,” I said, nervously. The manicurist just giggled.

As far as the acrylics go…I love them, I have no problem with them, and I’m sorry I didn’t do this ten years ago. They’re gorgeous, and best of all, they’re durable. I can do anything with them.

Sometimes you just have to take a risk.

The James Woods Story

“Someone to care for,
To be there for,
I’ve got…James Woods.”
--Peter Griffin

I have always really liked James Woods.

I know, I know. I can’t figure it out either. It’s not like he’s a Shakespearian trained actor, or is especially outstandingly handsome. I just like him. I enjoy every movie he’s in. (My favorite is The Hard Way, which also stars Michael J Fox.) I also like him because he's just so intelligent--he's in Mensa and went to M.I.T.

Anyway, a few years ago, the BeowulfParents decided they apparently had too much money in the bank, so we went to our favorite casino to squander it.

When we got to the casino, there was a lot of noise and confusion surrounding the poker room. There were almost a hundred people standing outside of it looking in with great interest. I asked a passing cocktail waitress what the fuss was all about, and she explained that the casino was hosting a celebrity poker tournament for charity.

We thought that was pretty cool, but since none of us play poker, it didn’t affect us in the slightest way. We headed down to the casino floor and hit the slot machines.

I ran out of money embarrassingly fast and with my last few dollars I went to the central bar and ordered a Fuzzy Navel. As I sat there sipping it, I looked around the floor to see if I could see my parents.

Suddenly, a strange middle-aged man began thundering towards the bar with a determined look on his face. It was a face I recognized and was absolutely stunned to see—it was James Woods. What the hell is he doing here? I wondered.

For reasons I will never understand, as soon as James got to the bar, he pounded me on the upper arm like an old Army buddy and said, “hi!”

“Hi,” I said, just kind of staring at him.

“Having any luck tonight?” he asked, after ordering his drink.

“Not really,” I said. “How about you?” Then it dawned on me. “Oh, wait! You’re probably here for the celebrity poker tournament.” He confirmed that he was. I asked him how he was doing and he told me he was down almost sixty thousand dollars. For some unbelievable reason, he didn’t seem phased by this at all.

“So, what do you do when you’re not gambling?” he asked. I was happy that he was trying so hard to be friendly, but the whole thing was still kind of weirding me out.

“I’m an English professor,” I explained.

That did it. James proceeded to launch into a long speech about the problems in our educational system which allow functional illiterates to go to college (which they almost immediately flunk out of) and how college tuition is going to bankrupt everyone. He was very dramatic about it—he waved his hands around and talked at lightning speed.

There aren’t a lot of subjects that I can talk about with aplomb, but education is one of them. James and I started talking over one another as we each agreed with the other one. The conversation went something like this:

“And you know what else?...”

“Oh, I totally agree. And another thing…”

“Right! I can’t see how…”

“Yes! No one seems to know…”

“Exactly! And then when you…”

“Oh, absolutely. And then you…”

"I know! And also..."

"I totally understand where you're coming from! And..."

It went on and on for easily 15 minutes. He forgot entirely that he was in a poker tournament, and I forgot entirely that I was having a conversation about education reform with a major motion picture star. When he finally snapped back to reality, he wished me a good night, I wished him good luck, and he went back to the poker room to win his sixty grand back.

I left the bar to find the BeowulfParents. When I did, I said; “I just had a fifteen minute conversation with James Woods about the state of education in America.”

“That’s nice, dear,” said my mom. Absolutely nothing phases her.

Later, I felt badly that I had missed my chance to tell him how much I enjoyed his movies, and ever since then, I kind of giggle when I see James Woods in a movie or on TV. And don’t even get me started on that episode of Family Guy when Peter becomes best friends with him.

Larry: Beauty King

If you went to my high school between the years of 1975 and 1979, you would have known about Larry ItalianLastName. There was no way you could have avoided him. He was legendary. In fact, I often wonder who got shorted because God spent so much time making Larry.

Larry was the quarterback on the football team, the pitcher on the baseball team, and was drop-dead gorgeous. Seriously, it’s difficult to find someone that good looking outside of a movie theatre. He was also an incredibly gifted actor, and of course Victor snatched him up at once.

Victor often griped about the fact that I had been born five years too late, otherwise I would have been able to act with the legendary Larry. As it was, I only knew him on a casual social basis when he would drop by the high school from time to time to talk to Victor.

One day during lunch as I was sitting with the other losers, I thought I kept hearing my name being shouted. Finally, one of my friends said: “Um…BeowulfGirl, I think Mr. S. is trying to get your attention.” I turned around and there was Victor, with, inexplicably, Larry. They were both making dramatic “come over here” gestures.

Now, I had to admit that I was enjoying this immensely. One of the most legendarily handsome, charming students to ever go to my high school was demanding to speak to me—in public. I sauntered over there. Larry gave me a hug and asked how I was. I said I was just jake.

Victor started talking and because if I told you what he said verbatim we’d be here six years, I’ll sum up. It seems that Larry had entered himself in a male beauty pageant called “Mr. New Jersey Male America.” (It’s true—you can look it up). The reason they wanted my help with this is that when I was sixteen, I had entered and won first runner up in the New Jersey Junior Miss Pageant, and they wanted someone with pageant experience to coach Larry through the interview portion (believe me, he needed no help in the formal wear and sportswear portions). I told Larry I’d be happy to help him, and the three of us set a date to meet at Victor’s apartment that weekend.

Throughout the week, I hauled out all my Junior Miss information that I thought would help Larry (including copies of the questions they had asked me in my own interview portion) and that weekend brought it to Victor’s apartment, where first he, Larry and I had to have dinner (Victor was an excellent host). Then things got going.

Victor and I pretended to be the panel of judges and, referring to my sheet of actual interview questions I had been asked during Junior Miss, bombarded Larry with questions about his life and times. We asked about how it felt to be an All-State football player. We asked about his future life ambitions. We asked about how he felt about sex before marriage (really). We asked about what he would do if he saw a pretty girl in a mall. The whole thing was really intense.

We decided to take a break. I asked Larry if I could see some of his pageant information and he gladly forked it over. As I was glancing through it, I suddenly stopped in terror.

There was another contestant from my home town named Jerry, who had been in the same graduating class as Larry. He lived on my street. When I was six, Jerry (who had been eleven) beat me up and stole my bike. It was never made clear why he wanted my bike (a girl’s bike!) but to top off matters he punched me in the mouth, making me bleed. I ran all the way home to my parents, bawling.

My father grabbed my hand, marched me to Jerry’s house, and confronted his mother. Jerry’s mother was dismissive: “We can’t do anything with him,” she said, drunkenly. “Your bike’s in the back, though.” I retrieved my bike, and, had I been older and known about lawsuits, would have retained counsel.

In any case, when Larry came back with a wine cooler for me, I grabbed him by the upper arm. “Larry,” I said, “I don’t care what place you come in, but you have to beat this guy. I’m serious. You have to.” I told him the story of the bike. Larry looked surprised and said that Jerry seemed like a nice guy. “He’s faking it,” I said.

There was more intensive questioning from Victor and me and we finally deemed Larry suitable to go out and compete in Mr. New Jersey Male America.

The pageant was held at the state capitol, and Victor and I had trouble finding it. Once we were in the auditorium, we spent two hours watching good-looking young men in tuxedos prance around the stage. We cheered loudly for Larry, who looked good.

Unfortunately, Larry ended up winning second runner-up; but, he did beat out Jerry, who won nothing at all.

Sometimes, karma works.

Next time: The James Woods Story