Busy busy
Lots of work on my desk right now. My bestest oldest friend hired me to do some writing on his web site. He’s a hot shot in NYC so it’s actually good resume building work and pays well, which goes to show you that it’s all about connections. I am sorta nervous about it even though it’s an easy assignment because I love my dearest most Martest of all Marts (not just because he indulges my crush for Alan Cumming).
So let’s talk about Mart, shall we? We shall. Here we go.
Mart and I met at a kids’ dance club here in town. It’s the only time I hung around with people my own age (I was 17) because I was a terrible snob with a false ID. You know how being older is way cool when you’re young? Well, I liked to hang out with the generation ahead of me, as if that said something deep about my maturity level. I looked down my nose at the peons who had to sneak into bars with my help. (Here’s how we did it: I’d go in and get stamped at a few bars then come out and spray the back of the young’uns hand with hairspray and roll my stamps across their hands. Sometimes we’d do touch-up with magic markers. This was back in the day when you had to be 21 to get in anywhere.)
Anyway, I was going to this kids’ dance club because it was a great place for dancing and also, frankly, it was easy to impress people what with my premature history of bar hopping and all. Big fish, little pond — this was me. I tasted unearned greatness and I liked it. I was like Paris Hilton only not beautiful, not rich and not blond. I was like a Paris Hilton wannabe at a suburban strip-mall teen dance club.
One night I was sitting outside the door with my constant companion — my steno pad — trying to write and there was this very annoying young woman chattering in my left ear.
“Do you write? I write, too!” she squealed breathlessly. “I am really, really good at making up names so if you ever get stuck trying to think of a name you should tell me because I can probably think of a good one for you! Do you have any characters who need names right now? I could probably think of one right off the top of my head! Go ahead! Try me!”
Now I was writing poetry at that time. Not just any poetry either but truly deep poetry. Poetry that didn’t rhyme. Poetry that made my English teacher call me out of class in high school and ask me if I was suicidal, which I wasn’t but when you’re an aspiring punk rocker this is a high compliment.
I sneered at her as only a disgruntled adolescent with a false ID burning a hole in her pocket and slumming with youngsters can.
“Could you leave me alone?” I said stiffly. “I’m working on something.”
And this is when dearest Mart came to my rescue and shooed her away.
“Can’t you see?” he told her. “She is a real writer and she is trying to write!”
(We spoke in a lot of italics in those days.)
I loved Mart immediately. Seriously. I loved him. I wanted to put my tongue down his throat but as luck would have it, he was totally uninterested in accommodating my tongue in his throat. So I settled on being friends, which has worked out nicely.
I wrote him a little Ode to Mart about him sitting on the metal stairs outside the gyro place, which was next to the bar strip on campus. He carried it in his wallet for years and couldn’t let his mother see it because I made reference to his smoking, which is something he did with admirable aplomb.
We’ve been friends for (let’s see, counting, subtracting, blanching at the total) almost 17 years now. We saw each other through the heart aches (well, he saw me through, Mart himself has always been a pretty together kind of guy), through the boyfriends (again, I’m the one with awful issues and Mart is the one who listens patiently), the career angst (ok, there we’ve been about even).
I feel honored to still be on Mart’s to-call list because he’s such an upstanding person and also extremely popular. The fact that he makes time to see me when he swings into town is a tremendous boost to my self-esteem. I may be boring, I may be a housewife, I may be right this very minute wearing hot pink sweatpants (they were on sale) but when Mart comes by, I feel young and witty again. Why, I even feel just slightly cool. Not real cool or anything but just a wee bit cool. I’m not, mind you, and I know that but it’s like visiting the state of being cool for just a pleasant little while.
Smooches to Mart! Smooch smooch!!!
This funny entry made my day! Now I can go to bed happy and have sweet dreams. Thank you so much for brightening my evening.
“We spoke in a lot of italics in those days.” OMG, we did, didn’t we?!?! Great entry
I’m blushing from you latest entry, you make me feel so, um, loved! But boy was I fat in that Alan Cumming pic! Thanks for reminding me Dawnest Dawn. Geez, why didn’t anyone tell me that short guys shouldn’t eat french fries for lunch everyday? It would have saved me so many hours of sweaty exercise over the past six months. Maybe I’ll run into Alan again someday and we can do a “before and after” photo comparison.
I must say that despite your own self-effacing view of yourself, my dearest blogging friend, I think of you as one of the most interesting, funny and talented people I’ve ever had the pleasure to know. That’s what I thought of you when we met in 1987 (gulp … that sounds so long ago!) and that’s how think of you still. A full frontal labotomy couldn’t make you a so-called “boring housewife”! All of your readers out there are probably aware of that but I still thought it warranted a bit of digital ink on the subject.