vituperation

July 20, 2002

By request, in lieu of a real entry today, I offer a couple of previously written items from the old days. The first is from November 2001 (the massage entry that was requested on the mostly lifeless forums), and the second is from December 2000.

For the last several months, I’ve been talking about going to get a massage, which I’d never done before. All my talk, coupled with all my whining, finally got to my wife and she told me it was basically time to shit or get off the pot.

I shat.

I called a local day spa - no, not that kind, one with a real licensed masseuse - and made an appointment for a 1:45 massage.

It’s funny. I was all nervous about disrobing in front of a strange woman, but she was very good at putting me at ease. She let me leave my boxer-briefs on, which made me practically comfortable. I mean, good night, half the country has seen me in my underwear.

I was still all self-conscious about my flappy manboobs, though.

The massage was an hour, and she did several different styles (more on this in a moment). All was well until she started working on my legs. On my thighs, actually.

And I popped wood - the kind a cat couldn’t scratch - right there in her face.

I was mortified, to put it lightly. My mind went blank as I desperately tried to think of something - anything - to say.

“Heh,” I tried, smiling weakly at her.

“Hmm?” she asked, looking up at me.

I looked at my crotch, then back at her.

“I guess I’m enjoying this a little more than I thought I was,” I said, my face flaring a bright red.

“Pardon?” she asked.

I nodded my head in the erection direction.

“I guess I’m enjoying this a little more than I thought I was,” I repeated, praying for the ground to open up and swallow me.

“Oh, that,” she said, “that happens all the time. I didn’t even notice.”

Man. She didn’t even notice.

Dissed by the massage lady.

The spud is currently working on a project for one of her classes in which she has to write facts about cranes (the birds, not the heavy equipment), and her teacher directed her to use the MLA style for her bibliography. Specifically, she (the teacher) told the class that they could visit www.mla.org for instructions on exactly what MLA form is.

She went downstairs to Robyn’s computer, fumbled about for about two minutes, then came back upstairs and flung herself onto her bed, crying because she couldn’t find what she wanted on the MLA page. I realize she’s at “that age” where girls tend to whine and cry (my wife told me that, I would never make such a sexist statement), but it was still just a little annoying because we’d JUST been through the same sort of thing on Sunday night when she couldn’t find her bag of CDs and was moaning and crying (”Is it hanging in your closet?” Robyn asked her. “No, I looked there.” Anyone want to guess where I found the bag?).

“Why are you crying?” I asked.

“Because I can’t find anything on that site!”

“Oh. You decided this after two minutes? Are you telling me if I go look on the site I’m not going to find anything?”

Questions like that always work when she gives up easily, and she plodded back down the stairs to look, with me following behind. Turns out I couldn’t find anything on the official MLA site, but I found assloads with Google, and printed some for her. We had a discussion on the importance of asking for help, which I hope sunk in. I’m a firm believer in the idea that if there’s something I don’t know, the best thing for me to do is find someone who DOES know, and ask them.

That’s right, I even stop and ask for directions. With no shame at all.

After dinner, I was downstairs staring blankly at my computer and wondering why only one person - out of the roughly one hundred who’ve read it - took the time to write me about my latest short story, when the spud came down ready to discuss her crane project some more.

“I have a problem,” she said quietly.

“What’s that?”

“I’ve got my twenty facts already, and never used the book.” The project asks for 15-20 facts about the subject, and requires one encyclopedic source, one book source, and one online source.

“Do you have to use the book?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“So how are you going to solve the problem?”

“I don’t know.” With this, she starts to get the I’m-about-to-cry tone in her voice.

“You have to use the book, right?”

“Yes, but I have 20 facts.”

“Why don’t you look at the book and see if some of the facts are the same, then credit the book with those instead of crediting the encyclopedia?”

“Oh.”

She ended up deciding to remove 3 of her 20 facts, so she could get them from a book. The night didn’t end there, however. Still later, when I was in the kitchen making a bag of microwave popcorn, she came out of her room to ask Robyn if Robyn had bought any vaseline for her to use on her flute. Apparently some of the other flutists in the school band use vaseline as a lubricant to help the pieces of the flute fit together smoothly. Robyn told her it was downstairs, and she went to get it.

Hmmm. Speaking of flutes and vaseline, did anyone see American Pie?

A minute later she was back in the kitchen, looking at me in a perplexed and downtrodden manner.

“I can’t use that vaseline.” she said.

“Why not?”

“The tube says it’s for lips.”

“It’s vaseline, right?”

“Yes.”

“Then it’ll work.”

“But it’s for lips, not flutes!” She didn’t say it, but I heard the implied you stupid fucking moron in her voice.

“It’s vaseline!” I said (not angrily, just emphatically), “It’s all the SAME. It’s ‘pure petroleum jelly’, and it doesn’t matter whether you use it on your lips, your flute, or your BUTT!”

In times of trial, I find myself becoming anal-oriented.

“Why would you need vaseline for your butt?” she asked, cackling gleefully.

“I don’t know,” I said, knowing full well what some people used it for. That hadn’t been on my mind when I made the original statement, I had just been going for the funny. “Maybe it helps farts slide out easier!”

And that was the end of that.