Another Bloody Friday Night
Kicks just keep getting harder to find....
I had a tiring week and after work I had to make a stop at a nearby studio to pick up something from a friend, but I didn't have a drive-on. He told me to park near Gate 2 and he'd come meet me. Since they set aside entire blocks as fire lanes on either side of the gate, I had to park a block and a half away in the back parking lot of a bank. Where two cats were owling and howling and getting ready to fight and people came and went from the ATM machine, interrupting their fight for survival.
By the time my friend came to the car they'd moved under and behind a car and out of sight. We had a pleasant but brief chat and then I started home. I just wanted to get home and hit the couch. Tomorrow I have what I hope to be my final dental visit, so I want some down time first. A few moments of nothingness.
So, I'm all geared up to hurry up and relax! All this anticipation to get home, sit down, and do nothing for a few hours has me so wound up in my car I might as well be headed into a boxing ring ready to pummel or be pummeled.
First, I took a wrong turn, got myself heading west into Toluca Lake on Riverside instead of east toward Burbank and the 5 or 134 freeways and onward home. To get turned around from that blunder I wound up having to take a series of lefts. I nearly drove into the busy orbit of Universal Studios and the terrible traffic that surrounds it.
So to get turned around, at every light I had to wait in the left turn lane to be the last person through each light; only to hit the red at the next light right away. All this stopping and starting. The exhilaration I'd feel when I started to drive again was fleeting at best and was met with an instant crash and explosion of rage 12 seconds later when I had to stop again.
Repeat three times, and while I'm at least going in the right direction, I am now a mad-man. I have turned, like in some zombie movie, into someone who has just got to go! Not "go" go, but get up and go, get up and go-go, perhaps; at least someone who has to move. But I can do no such thing because it's Friday night and I'm in LA and someone went and invented the automobile about a hundred and twenty years ago and their inheritors killed mass-transit in America about a hundred to fifty years ago, and, well, here we are.
At times like these a sane American can suddenly become a Teabagger, you know, with a capital T and that rhymes with Glee, and that spells Trouble. Right here on Riverside Drive in Burbank, if I had been holding a pool cue I would have cracked it over some unsuspecting trombone player's head. I swear to God.
I was well aware that I could snap right then and there. I could change my radio to right-wing talk and wind up standing on the street corner dressed up as Sam Adams (the Patriot not the beer or the Boston rapper) with a sign that contains at least two out of three correct spellings and a picture of you know who wearing a Hitler mustache, the symbol of Islam, and hammer and sickle bellowing about.... Well, just bellowing.
It could happen, people. I could have snapped right then and there.
Thank God for NPR. For their word game show, in particular. I forget what it's called, but their wit and word play kept my "left" brain working, and I was saved by the diversion, and thus have not become the political equivalent of a Star Wars geek who lives in his mother's basement and never changes his underwear.
Without publicly funded radio, I'm sure I would have flown my PT Cruiser into an IRS building tonight. To protest the constitutionality of having to give a shit about other people, I could very well have murdered a Vietnam Vet IRS worker tonight. You don't know how close I came.
But I made it home. Some time around 8:15. I get in my door. Frank needs his usual attention and I walk around holding him for ten minutes. Overall in the aggregate night-by-night this helps me relax. Tonight it did not help me relax. I began to imagine converting my PT Cruiser into a small private plane instead.
Next, there's the needy transition period in which I need to change my clothes, put sodas or whatever away, grab some water, set up my computer, and all that; and Frank needs...
.... me.
To be on me, around me, picked up by me, pet by me, loved and cooed and shnuggy-shnuggied by me.
This is all workable, except of course that while I joke about snapping in traffic, Frank does snap in traffic every single night. While we're traveling from me holding him to me putting him down and getting something done, he snaps. It's my legs that do it. My naked legs. For all I know they would drive each and every one of you just as wild, but I do know what happens to him. Every night while changing clothes Frank snaps this way.
It's as if he no longer sees "me." The "maternal" being that he recalls from that moment when he was smaller than my hand and had been starving for weeks and I picked him up and held him to my chest disappears. The memory of that instant bonding seems to become broken by either the change of texture from clothing to my skin, or the smell, or some combination of these. He no longer recognizes me as that maternal creature. That creature has clothes and wears jeans.
Short-wearing me, at least during this separation-anxiety period, is not that "maternal" being any longer. Short-wearing me is an antelope to his lion, plain and simple. This response is instinctual and will never disappear.
So in the bathroom he attacks me and from there it's a game, albeit a game for my life. I do best when I prevent him from attacking by facing him and using my finger and hand to fake him out. If I can keep him crouching on the ground looking for a way to attack I can keep myself from bleeding for the moment. The next step is to pick him up just at the moment I'm ready to retreat. The moment I start moving away from him, the instinct to pounce on a fleeing prey kicks in and he pounces on my calves.
So I pick him up instead and get my hand under his chest so he can't bite that hand and start massaging the living hell out of his chest. This triggers the recognition of me as the pleasure-giver again, if only momentarily. It's a battle for his consciousness. He remembers the clothed me for a moment and I lull him into a momentary complacency.
I set him on a table where I keep his food and retreat to my bag to get sodas and things to put away. Inevitably he chases after me again, but if I can make it to my bag in time I turn around and face him. I set things in front of him quickly from my bag to surprise him. To keep him from making that first attack. Water bottle, soda one, soda two. I nudge him with the water bottle to distract him while I get the lap top out, set it up and turn it on. I do that again to plug in the Internet card.
Once I have everything out that I need to bring into the kitchen, I quickly pick them up and leap over him. He'll give chase again, but I generally make it to the kitchen without him getting his claws or teeth into my calves. And really, that's all I need to count the day as a successful one.
Once I'm in the kitchen he generally stops, but it isn't guaranteed. This is where food comes from. He stops instantly 90% of the time. (There have been a few times when he has started an attack in the kitchen though. I haven't been able to figure out why it's okay to attack me during those times.)
Tonight, thankfully, he stopped. I put the cans of soda in the fridge in peace and surveyed my body for signs of injury and wear. The day--the week, the month--took its toll.
It usually ends here, our battle. I make sure he eats his food, safe above the ground on the table, and I'm typically safe for another few hours.
By now it was about a quarter to nine. `Now,' I think. `Now is the time to relax. To stop having to do anything. Anything at all.'
Then my nose begins to bleed. This happens about twice a year, so nothing to worry about. It happened yesterday, and it happened last year in February or March. So while it's nothing to worry about, it's also one more obstacle to that grand state of "doing nothing"- ness which I had really hoped to be able to achieve tonight. Thankfully, this nosebleed was not Niagara. I could deal.
Then the cat threw up.
Twice. I'm bending over now with a paper towel to clean up the cat puke. My nose is bleeding. I'm thinking perhaps I can attach wings to the PT Cruiser. I could still turn it into a weapon, hit the IRS building while dressed up as Paul Revere and the Raiders while singing, "Kicks just keep getting harder to find...." Bent over with one paper towel in my right nostril and one paper towel on the floor cleaning up cat puke, a revolutionary act of rebellion against the first president to give 95% of the American public a tax cut made perfect sense to me.
But then I stood up.
It's nearly nine thirty now, and even though I think I just felt another two aftershocks in the past hour and a half, I believe it is time to finally just fucking chill. Do you agree?
I hope you all have a great weekend.
I had a tiring week and after work I had to make a stop at a nearby studio to pick up something from a friend, but I didn't have a drive-on. He told me to park near Gate 2 and he'd come meet me. Since they set aside entire blocks as fire lanes on either side of the gate, I had to park a block and a half away in the back parking lot of a bank. Where two cats were owling and howling and getting ready to fight and people came and went from the ATM machine, interrupting their fight for survival.
By the time my friend came to the car they'd moved under and behind a car and out of sight. We had a pleasant but brief chat and then I started home. I just wanted to get home and hit the couch. Tomorrow I have what I hope to be my final dental visit, so I want some down time first. A few moments of nothingness.
So, I'm all geared up to hurry up and relax! All this anticipation to get home, sit down, and do nothing for a few hours has me so wound up in my car I might as well be headed into a boxing ring ready to pummel or be pummeled.
First, I took a wrong turn, got myself heading west into Toluca Lake on Riverside instead of east toward Burbank and the 5 or 134 freeways and onward home. To get turned around from that blunder I wound up having to take a series of lefts. I nearly drove into the busy orbit of Universal Studios and the terrible traffic that surrounds it.
So to get turned around, at every light I had to wait in the left turn lane to be the last person through each light; only to hit the red at the next light right away. All this stopping and starting. The exhilaration I'd feel when I started to drive again was fleeting at best and was met with an instant crash and explosion of rage 12 seconds later when I had to stop again.
Repeat three times, and while I'm at least going in the right direction, I am now a mad-man. I have turned, like in some zombie movie, into someone who has just got to go! Not "go" go, but get up and go, get up and go-go, perhaps; at least someone who has to move. But I can do no such thing because it's Friday night and I'm in LA and someone went and invented the automobile about a hundred and twenty years ago and their inheritors killed mass-transit in America about a hundred to fifty years ago, and, well, here we are.
At times like these a sane American can suddenly become a Teabagger, you know, with a capital T and that rhymes with Glee, and that spells Trouble. Right here on Riverside Drive in Burbank, if I had been holding a pool cue I would have cracked it over some unsuspecting trombone player's head. I swear to God.
I was well aware that I could snap right then and there. I could change my radio to right-wing talk and wind up standing on the street corner dressed up as Sam Adams (the Patriot not the beer or the Boston rapper) with a sign that contains at least two out of three correct spellings and a picture of you know who wearing a Hitler mustache, the symbol of Islam, and hammer and sickle bellowing about.... Well, just bellowing.
It could happen, people. I could have snapped right then and there.
Thank God for NPR. For their word game show, in particular. I forget what it's called, but their wit and word play kept my "left" brain working, and I was saved by the diversion, and thus have not become the political equivalent of a Star Wars geek who lives in his mother's basement and never changes his underwear.
Without publicly funded radio, I'm sure I would have flown my PT Cruiser into an IRS building tonight. To protest the constitutionality of having to give a shit about other people, I could very well have murdered a Vietnam Vet IRS worker tonight. You don't know how close I came.
But I made it home. Some time around 8:15. I get in my door. Frank needs his usual attention and I walk around holding him for ten minutes. Overall in the aggregate night-by-night this helps me relax. Tonight it did not help me relax. I began to imagine converting my PT Cruiser into a small private plane instead.
Next, there's the needy transition period in which I need to change my clothes, put sodas or whatever away, grab some water, set up my computer, and all that; and Frank needs...
.... me.
To be on me, around me, picked up by me, pet by me, loved and cooed and shnuggy-shnuggied by me.
This is all workable, except of course that while I joke about snapping in traffic, Frank does snap in traffic every single night. While we're traveling from me holding him to me putting him down and getting something done, he snaps. It's my legs that do it. My naked legs. For all I know they would drive each and every one of you just as wild, but I do know what happens to him. Every night while changing clothes Frank snaps this way.
It's as if he no longer sees "me." The "maternal" being that he recalls from that moment when he was smaller than my hand and had been starving for weeks and I picked him up and held him to my chest disappears. The memory of that instant bonding seems to become broken by either the change of texture from clothing to my skin, or the smell, or some combination of these. He no longer recognizes me as that maternal creature. That creature has clothes and wears jeans.
Short-wearing me, at least during this separation-anxiety period, is not that "maternal" being any longer. Short-wearing me is an antelope to his lion, plain and simple. This response is instinctual and will never disappear.
So in the bathroom he attacks me and from there it's a game, albeit a game for my life. I do best when I prevent him from attacking by facing him and using my finger and hand to fake him out. If I can keep him crouching on the ground looking for a way to attack I can keep myself from bleeding for the moment. The next step is to pick him up just at the moment I'm ready to retreat. The moment I start moving away from him, the instinct to pounce on a fleeing prey kicks in and he pounces on my calves.
So I pick him up instead and get my hand under his chest so he can't bite that hand and start massaging the living hell out of his chest. This triggers the recognition of me as the pleasure-giver again, if only momentarily. It's a battle for his consciousness. He remembers the clothed me for a moment and I lull him into a momentary complacency.
I set him on a table where I keep his food and retreat to my bag to get sodas and things to put away. Inevitably he chases after me again, but if I can make it to my bag in time I turn around and face him. I set things in front of him quickly from my bag to surprise him. To keep him from making that first attack. Water bottle, soda one, soda two. I nudge him with the water bottle to distract him while I get the lap top out, set it up and turn it on. I do that again to plug in the Internet card.
Once I have everything out that I need to bring into the kitchen, I quickly pick them up and leap over him. He'll give chase again, but I generally make it to the kitchen without him getting his claws or teeth into my calves. And really, that's all I need to count the day as a successful one.
Once I'm in the kitchen he generally stops, but it isn't guaranteed. This is where food comes from. He stops instantly 90% of the time. (There have been a few times when he has started an attack in the kitchen though. I haven't been able to figure out why it's okay to attack me during those times.)
Tonight, thankfully, he stopped. I put the cans of soda in the fridge in peace and surveyed my body for signs of injury and wear. The day--the week, the month--took its toll.
It usually ends here, our battle. I make sure he eats his food, safe above the ground on the table, and I'm typically safe for another few hours.
By now it was about a quarter to nine. `Now,' I think. `Now is the time to relax. To stop having to do anything. Anything at all.'
Then my nose begins to bleed. This happens about twice a year, so nothing to worry about. It happened yesterday, and it happened last year in February or March. So while it's nothing to worry about, it's also one more obstacle to that grand state of "doing nothing"- ness which I had really hoped to be able to achieve tonight. Thankfully, this nosebleed was not Niagara. I could deal.
Then the cat threw up.
Twice. I'm bending over now with a paper towel to clean up the cat puke. My nose is bleeding. I'm thinking perhaps I can attach wings to the PT Cruiser. I could still turn it into a weapon, hit the IRS building while dressed up as Paul Revere and the Raiders while singing, "Kicks just keep getting harder to find...." Bent over with one paper towel in my right nostril and one paper towel on the floor cleaning up cat puke, a revolutionary act of rebellion against the first president to give 95% of the American public a tax cut made perfect sense to me.
But then I stood up.
It's nearly nine thirty now, and even though I think I just felt another two aftershocks in the past hour and a half, I believe it is time to finally just fucking chill. Do you agree?
I hope you all have a great weekend.