I spent several hot hours this afternoon in a state that seemed simultaneously a part of waking, a part of sleeping, definitely involved in sweating, highly aware of felines, and disgusted by the telephone and its attendant messages.
Having hoofed it to the bathroom upon shaking off all of the above, that was where I screamed a tender "Bye-ay-ay! Have-ah-ah gooo-oo-d thai-aye-aye-am!" to Fred, who was off to consort with the Militant Lesbian Existential Feminists at their regular Wednesday Night Supper. (I always wonder what Fred actually hears me screaming, since my phrases are sucked up by Marlinspike Hall's intramural echo effects --
It's all those Garderobe Chutes, remember?)
Oh, drat, I didn't quite get that right, did I? I meant to say: the Militant Lesbian Existential Feminists and
The Mousse, she of the
indeterminate persuasions. The Mousse was tagged as The Mousse due to her fondness for the chocolate version of this dessert, the only food [besides a garlic pizza] to ever strike me low with food poisoning.
As it would happen, The Mousse participated in the previously mentioned "several hot hours," horning in on my rest by leaving a long, idiotic, breathless message for Fred, complete with ingratiating references to my various past contributions to these weekly culinary adventures. In fact, I was planning to get up and cook something fascinating for My Clueless Darling to take... but something, something, something seemed to push me back into my steamy lethargy, lolling about the bed, smushing one incubating hairy feline after another.
[And when I use "loll," I mean
lax, lazy, AND indolent. Take that, you verbmeisters.]
In an effort to eat cake and ice cream at every possible opportunity, The Mousse strives to celebrate any birthday, inoculation, anniversary, voter registration, first or last drunk, momentous sexual indiscretion, substantial retail discount, and
whatever. It turns out that tonight is Elaine's birthday and Llewellyn-Femme's Fifth Anniversary of Her First Swim With Sharks. Tiger shark diving season is getting ready to kick off down in the Bahamas, so The Wednesday Supper Gang is also going to lay hands on Llewellyn-Femme -- in a non-Christian (yet inclusive) kind of pseudo-ecumenical militant lesbian existentialist feminist way -- in order to bless and protect her from sharp white teeth and iron jaws during her stints in the cage.
Anyway, so The Mousse opines during her extended whine on my voice mail service that Fred should probably help out by bringing ice cream, which would go nicely with her shark-themed birthday gateau.
I know that everything she says is in code, and when I break it down, I toss and turn and incorporate her ball-breaking bullcrap into a fresh, restless dream.
I was hoping to sort of pull myself back together while Fred is partying down at E-Cong, a vast repast before him on the long folding table, surrounded by women who don't share his spiritual beliefs, and one who wants to jump his bones.
He's not the only guy. The Church Secretary is a guy. And sometimes our old friend Sven shows up.
I am hoping, though, that Sven didn't decide to attend this evening's supper -- because Fred recently decided to take Sven's inventory -- a very rare thing for even-keeled, sweet-hearted Fred. With a little time, he'll remember that Sven's a friend, even if we've all been pretty weak in the Friend Maintenance category.
It has to do more with Sven's wife, Hazelnut. She's an honest-to-goodness Minister, having trained in Existentialism at the knobby knees of Rev. R. Lanier Clance, Founder and Minister Emeritus of the First Existentialist Congregation. Somehow, she learned very little, and over time, has forgotten that.
Anyway, this is not a critique of her sermonizing... but of her vast talent for taking hostages.
Oh, okay, it's all about her every-sixth Sunday delivery of the same message:
How Christianity Hurted Me (pout::pout::pout). Her father, damn the man, was a missionary who inflicted the habit of prayer on his children while tending to a lost flock of Native Americans who had the gall to claim pre-existent spirit-oriented lives.
At some point in her childhood, Hazelnut suffered a severe injury, lost a leg -- She lives in pain.
I think that she has pain as her core. I think pain is what is going on.
So Fred is hot under the collar, almost continually, about the feminist inroads being made at E-Cong. He's at the point where he responds to any challenge by demanding that you ("you" standing in for one Militant Lesbian Existential Feminist) "define your terms." Unfortunately, some internet genius cobbled together a list of 74 different "types" of feminism, a list which Fred declared authoritative and inviolate, and which he promptly committed to memory.
Should you defy authority and, undaunted, offer up a 75th version, Fred will stomp his feet, sputter, and craftily reply: "Yeah? Well, spell it!"
Sven is blind.
I am not trying to elicit any particular response by informing you that Sven is blind. I am simply trying to advance what may appear to be a stalled narrative. I wish the story could be told without mentioning either Hazelnut's missing leg or Sven's missing eyesight.
I'd much rather do a commercial for their jazz music -- Sven tickles the ivories, Hazelnut croons; They're wonderfully good. Neither is disabled, both are achievers, maybe even overachievers. That Hazelnut manages to be a full time teacher, pursue her musical ambitions, and serve as a Minister, is downright inspirational. Sven is equally busy, also holding down a challenging job while serving as the driving force in their jazz career.
I mention their achievements to the Fredster, adding the raising of two fine sons to the list. I'm hoping that he'll remember that Hazelnut has a right to her opinions, that he really does like and appreciate her, and that Sven is quite capable of critical thought and is no one's captive minion.
"Yeah? Well, spell it!"
Fred is so angry at Hazelnut he could just spit. He tells me that she trashes Christianity, and with glee. He tells me she is rewriting the history of E-Cong (a large part of which is his own history) and inserting feminism into a perfectly fine stand-alone existential foundation. The beginnings of this Existential Fellowship were solidly grounded in philosophy and psychology, in personal responsibility, and in caring for one another -- never a simple task. "No one used the F-word back then!"
I never thought that I would be a sounding board for attacks on feminism, and in my own home, too. Okay, so,
technically, we are just caretakers here, squatters in this vast manor until such time as Captain Haddock and Company resume their occupancy -- but it feels like home. I don't think I've ever been so close to an Indentured Domestic Staff before coming to Marlinspike Hall.
Just the other day, hands on his hips, standing in the middle of the Fragonard Hobby Room, lost in its thinly veiled erotic frills, Fred had something of a hissy fit, and dared to define fair feminism as
stuff women do. So very frustrated with E-Cong and its revisionist historians, he now mistakes gender as the driving force behind feminist thought... an easy mistake to make, but tiresome, too. The pink tits and ass of Fragonard did not help matters any. [I'm just sayin'.]
Yes, yes. We have waltzed around "what's-wrong-with-calling-it-humanism?" and there's been fervent fomentation of Søren Kierkegaard and philosophical approaches to Christian theologies. Unfortunately, Hazelnut could be heard, in the background, improvising melody and turning "phallocentrism" and "don't-it-just-beg-the-question-baby?" into pure rhythmic scat.
As a result of these highminded debates and other equally muddled communications, Fred resigned from the E-Cong Board of Directors, and Sven promptly signed on. Fred thinks that Hazelnut forced Sven to put himself up for nomination and that his presence signals the beginning of Militant Lesbian Existential Feminism's heyday.
"Yeah, well..."
My patient and compassionate Fred recently decided that Sven would be an Excellent Guy were he just free of Hazelnut. His reasoning is that Sven doesn't know or have the capacity to navigate this world (being blind from birth and all) and has come to so depend on his wife that he is "clearly" suffering from... Stockholm Syndrome. That's right, Sven has been held hostage and has come to sympathize with his tormentor, his wife, his partner in song -- Hazelnut the Haggling Hun.
I don't mind listening to most anything Fred has on his mind. Like everyone, he works things out sometimes by talking things out. He's very procedural. He's an incredible writer, very clear, his words pristine in concert with his thought. His humor will surprise you. His elegant persuasions sway, his logic is rarely fallacious.
But he isn't budging on this one. The Fredster fails to progress, his labor stalled. Which would also be fine, even kind of fun to debate, to examine -- but for one unanticipated twist:
Sven needs to be enlightened. That's right, Fred plans to inform his friend that he is being manipulated and hijacked in the worst way. He plans to soften the blow by reminding Sven that he certainly doesn't deserve this fate, and shouldn't be judged for having subverted his good judgment to Hazelnut's ill-conceived opinions and attitudes. What with Sven being so handicapped 'n all, no one will judge him harshly for his singular lack of backbone and his inability to agree with Fred over Hazelnut.
I heard a peculiarly soft voice issuing from my gaping maw, and thought:
Uh-oh. My superior tone was dripping with condescension, equally at ease when among the people as when mingling with my equals.
I was
enunciating, in the manner elicited back in my school days by a demonic French prof who would mark cadence by fierce taps on my curly head with a wooden ruler. Always a bad sign, this patient, sneering enunciation.
Fred promptly made me define my terms. Feeling kind of antithetical (also nauseated), I proceeded to draw a distinction between being
correct and being
right. As in, he may be
correct, but I am clearly
right. Miss Marmy Fluffy Butt, my Debate Coach, nodded her approbation.
And so I cling to my rightness. He has no business saying anything of the sort to Sven. "Sven, my friend, your whole life is but a regurgitation of your wife's bullshit... It's called the Stockholm Syndrome... It's a psychological paradox and I just thought you oughta know that you haven't had an idea to call your own in over 20 years... But I wanna reiterate that you couldn't help it, you're blind as a freaking bat!"
I don't think Fred heard any of my reasons to
shut-the-hell-up-about-the-silly-stockholm-syndrome but I think I saw a flicker of something in his eyes when I said: "Well, at least promise me that if you say this awful thing to him, that you will stand by him as a friend after it is said. You have a responsibility to do so..." It was probably a trick of lighting.
Who would have thought that these Wednesday night "church" suppers had so much at stake? Jealousies of all sorts, machinations worthy of Machiavelli, insincerity as an art form, suffering bodies, suffering minds, troubled souls.
I guess I can decide not to give a crap about The Mousse. Given the Sven, Fred, and Hazelnut Triad, she just doesn't measure up as a worry or concern. She's a simple annoyance. Just try and jump his bones, you dessert-driven nagging harpy, I don't care. Whose Manor does he come home to, hmmm?
I'm up in the Computer Turret at the moment (obviously, huh?!) and it looks like Ruby the Honda CRV is coming down the road, throwing up dust and scaring our herd of Square Island Buffalo. Yep, that's her, weaving and dodging those giant hooves. Unfortunately, La Bonne et Belle Bianca Castafiore pulled up the drawbridge when she came home from rehersals earlier -- he's gonna have to leave Ruby to crank it back down...
What the... ?
Even from here, it's clear that Fred has the mother of all black eyes and two (maybe three) fingers in a splint. And I am not sure, but I think he is GURGLING.
Bless his heart.
I think I'll just sleep up here tonight.
