Tonight the waiter simply shrugged, so it was up to the Americans to clear the air themselves. To make things just that much more insulting, they ordered their neighbors around in English, saying, “We’re trying to eat here,” and “Don’t you know that cigarettes are bad for you?”
Having been driven out of the United States by people like them, it pleased me to watch the American couple disappear into a bank of thick blue smoke. You can’t just march into someone else’s country and start telling everyone what to do—even the Marines have to practice a little diplomacy.
May 8, 2000
Paris
In 1976 Dawn Erickson taught me that, in order to ensure good luck, you’re supposed to say, “Rabbit, rabbit,” on the first day of every month. It has to be the very first thing that comes out of your mouth and you have to say it out loud or else it doesn’t work. I’d never been particularly superstitious, but ever since she told me, I’ve made it a point to follow her example. Everything I have can be attributed to “Rabbit, rabbit,” including Hugh, who started saying it himself shortly after we met. This is a big help, as he’s got a good head for dates and is always the first one to wake up. He says, “Rabbit, rabbit,” I repeat it, and then I go back to sleep, confident that I’ll be safe for another thirty days. When he’s away I’ll leave notes on the bed and the medicine-cabinet mirror to remind myself that it’s the first. This generally works, but when it doesn’t, the doom settles in and I spend the next month running after buses and scraping shit off my shoes.
On the thirty-first of March I was in New York, staying with Amy. She has a dwarf rabbit named Tattle Tail that’s been trained to use a litter box and roams freely throughout the apartment, happily chewing through the phone and cable-TV wires. Her feeding mat is in the bedroom, surrounded by the dozens of pictures and gewgaws people tend to give you when you own a rabbit. I logically assumed that I had it made on the “Coming Month of Good Luck” front, but when I woke at seven a.m. with Tattle Tail chewing on my eyelashes, my first words were not “Rabbit, rabbit” but “Get the fuck away from me!”
Hence the kidney stone.
May 15, 2000
Paris
I called Lisa last night. Bob picked up too and I talked to both of them until it was time for his pies to come out of the oven. After he got off the line, Lisa told me that the previous day she’d accidentally put a used Kotex through the wash. It went through the dryer as well, and when it came out, Bob held it up, saying, “These aren’t supposed to be laundered on their own, are they?”
Lisa said she guessed not, and Bob asked why she’d washed just one of them. “I looked for the other and couldn’t find it anywhere.”
“The other?” Lisa said.
“Shoulder pad,” Bob said. “Isn’t that what we’ve been talking about?”
He handed her the fluffy clean Kotex, still warm, and she put it in her dresser drawer until he left the room. Then she transferred it to the garbage can.
June 7, 2000
Raleigh
Last night I wore my Stadium Pal and learned that unless you’re lying helpless on a hospital bed, you really don’t want anything to do with an external catheter. The advice on pulling back the pubic hair should appear in large print, and it’s best to first test the sealing adhesive on something less sensitive than a human penis. I’m not sure I can describe the pain of removing this thing. I only know that, when I finally threw it into the garbage can, the condom part was lined with several layers of what used to be my skin. Then there was the bag, which closes with a valve that has to be shaken after it’s emptied, just like a penis, the result being that I got urine on my socks and the cuffs of my trousers.
Another drawback is that the Stadium Pal stinks. At a football game there might be other odors to cover it up, but in a hot bookstore there’s nothing but the scent of paper, which just isn’t enough. I won’t wear it again tonight but will give it another try later this week. It’s nice to be able to pee in your pants, but nothing’s worth the agony of peeling this thing off at the end of the night.
June 15, 2000
La Jolla, California
I was met at the airport by a media escort named Patty, who is fifty-two and could easily pass for a guy trying to pass himself off as a woman. The mannishness comes from her sloppy use of base makeup—that and her hair and, well, her posture. Patty smokes cigarettes, drinks, and rolled up the dope she found last year lying on the ground at a baseball stadium. She has eight cats and lives with a roommate who attracts snakes with the compost heap she keeps in the backyard. “There’s a reason they make belts and wallets out of those things,” she said. “They’re tough as shit. You ever try to decapitate a rattler with a shovel?”
Patty sells real estate on the side and is constantly being sued over nothing. Last year a client with a history of screwing people over caught her toe on a carpet nail and tried to collect $200,000. “Can you beat that!” she said.
Realtors can no longer advertise that a house is located within walking distance of a school—it’s unfair to childless couples. Family room offends the singles, and master bedroom smacks of slavery. She’s a great storyteller and I enjoyed hearing about the twenty years she spent tending bar, her two marriages, and her run-ins with people who won’t allow her to smoke. What luck to have an escort who’ll discuss her drug use. I’m enchanted. Patty goes to sixty baseball games per year.
June 28, 2000
Boston
The best thing about Boston is Sally Carpenter. No media escort has ever made me laugh as hard as she does. We drove to Somerville yesterday afternoon and went out to lunch with Tiffany. She had recently made the mistake of going to Walden Pond with a younger woman, and Sally said, “Oh, you should never wear a bathing suit around anyone who’s still in her twenties. My last vacation was to Sanibel Island, where everyone was in their nineties. At first I thought they were all looking for shells and then I realized that they were stooped over due to osteoporosis! God, it was marvelous.”
July 8, 2000
La Bagotière
It took most of the day to rewrite and cut my new story so I went on my afternoon walk armed with two pages of the simplest words I could find: ruiner—“to ruin”; flatter—“to flatter.” The night before, Hugh quizzed me, demanding that I use two or three words together in a sentence: “The complainer crawled to the information desk.” “Does the lesbian bother you?” It was a good format and I had to surrender only twice. I’ve got two self-improvement campaigns going on at the same time, and luckily they seem compatible. While walking I learn new words, and while riding my bike I talk to myself in French, often pretending that I’m on one of those rapid-fire issue shows that seem to run for hours on end.
Last night David (Rakoff) was playing down his skill as a reporter, imitating himself in an imaginary interview. “Yes, so you hid Jews in your attic?” he said. “So tell me, where did you keep all of your stuff?”
July 9, 2000