Conjugal Visit
The Wife arrived on Friday. Actually, I drove to New York, picked her up and drove her back to Providence. Everyone has a different set of skills. Sally's is not driving. I mind the waste of pick up and delivery and my unnecessary round trip far less than I mind the stress of worrying about her on the road on her own.
So the two dogs and the wife arrived for the weekend. We've established that. All is fine enough. Lying awake in bed the night before, I realized while tossing and twisting through most of the early morning hours, just what a problem the dogs are going to be here in an apartment. Especially the red one. He's a nutbar. A lunatic that I love and cannot stand at the same time. His name is Woody and he has never lived in the city before. He is aggressive with other dogs. Maybe it is a dachshund thing. After we all settle into our surroundings a momente, I take Cosi and her son out on their leashes for a good long walk around the block. She is easy.
Upon return, I see the result of Sally's eyeballing our new place. You can see her eyes flicker, pupils darting any time she enters a new place that interests her. Within an hour, she has moved a dozen things from one place to another. In the length of the time I've been out, the apartment has been transformed for the better, and these changes continue all through the weekend. Little things, big things; subtle things, some basic ones. The pictures have moved, along with a small mirror. It is so much nicer.
We drive to dinner at an Indian restaurant on Wickenden Street, student territory. The young collegiate couple at the next table amuses us. The girl is kind of flabby, slack-mannered, with a slight drawl. She is not from Rhode Island, but in the snatches of conversation that I am able to overhear, it is clear she possesses a naivete, and she has a nice laugh. Sally, seated in a better place to watch, notices that the girl has a pierced belly button, and that she scratched it at length when she stood up to leave. I missed this amusement. She revealed a wide expanses of her gut, a la mode these days. Let me note here that I don't think too much of this vogue, especially on the soft and fleshy bodies of American youth today. The amount of bared midriff and backcrack that so many young women reveal these days would be more appealing were they more taut and athletic. I hope this sloppiness in appearance does not mirror a deeper indolence, a deeper, societal failing, the sin of self-indulgence. What more is there to say?
As the weekend continues, we walk all over town. The weather is fine, especially sunny and warm for mid-winter in Rhode Island. We don't need to wear overcoats for the first time since before Christmas. We walk down the street to visit the wonderful Athenaenum and wander past some stores. Sophie is proud to show Sally our new hang-outs, in as much as we have any. We watch an Italian DVD titled "Bread & Tulips" at night and Sally, in her cusomary way, goes to sleep within the first ten minutes or so, just like at home. Sophie and I really like the movie, and wish that she would have watched it. Before bed, I take the dogs out for a walk. Woody barely makes it past the porch before pissing copiously, poor guy.
Sunday dawns upon another mild, sunny day in Providence. Sally and I get up while The Adolescent sleeps in a bit, and we take in the length of Benefit Street while walking the dogs, returning a block higher on the hill along Pratt Street. We have to be very careful because there is black ice on the streets and sidewalks. One false move and that's it. An old person's fear. We have close calls, but no disasters. This is dangerous stuff. Sally says I walk like my old man.
Later in the morning we go to Petco to take advantage of its discounted innoculation services for rabies and distemper. Woody and Cosi get overdue vacinations, while creating general pandemonium among the other pets there, not to forget the ride in the car as well. Cosi gets so frustrated with her son that she bites him. Woody wants to eat a little cocker spaniel and a bichon frise. Frankly, the dogs are not much fun to be with. So much noise and aggression! This makes me wonder whether on balance, they are worth the time, energy and money invested in them? It is not black and white for me, especially Woody. He is such a challenge. We drive around, trying to discover what is nice about Pawtucket, Woody moaning and jumping from one seat to another, back to front. Pawtucket's charms have eluded me one more time, as they have in several other meanderings there. It remains a mystery to solve another day.
On Sunday afternoon we hit the East Side Pocket place for a Gyro and a Felaffel, just like the old days in Greenwich Village. Cheap and tasty, and we sit in the window watching a never-ending stream of students and collegiate-looking types line up by the grill to order. We eat mostly in silence, seated in a row, looking out. Thayer Street is as busy as I have ever seen it, with college in session, a beautiful afternoon, and a Superbowl lined up for the evening, pitting the local favorite Patriots versus Philadelphia's Eagles, it is a great weekend afternoon to view the river of humanity before us. Afterwards, around the corner we discover a terrible leak in a house that we admire. It has water pouring out its foundation. I ask my landlord's wife about it; she says they do not care much for its owner, and elect to let the water run. It's a sick, sad world, is it not?
Sophie and Sally are off together at this point. I have had enough of the daughter's adolescent rudenesses and Sally's contentious spirit and one too many of her undermining, insidious comments. Sophie has issues with any eating or chewing sights and sounds that emerge from my mouth. If I swish my tongue around my teeth, or make vile crunching noises, I am censured. She is aggressive in her pursuit of my flaws, a storm trooper, heedless of her own transgressions. I discipline the dog for repeatedly trying to, and finally succeeding to eat shit, literally. The daughter decries me as cruel and horrible. I have no more time for this. Sally pretends to make nicey-nice while fanning the flames. She's no peacemaker, that's for sure. I walk home alone. And in the evening the Superbowl comes and ends with the hometown's team declared a "dynasty." The television ads, often the best creatively inspired examples of their craft were lame, especially considering their $2.4 pricetag per minute. And what about Paul McCartney of Beatles fame? Is this the best 'halftime entertainment' the NFL can muster?
Monday morning comes quickly. A walk with the dogs, a trip to school to drop the sullen kid there for the day, a cup of coffee at Olga's, along with Sally's onion rolls and we are out of town. Sophie has to go to school and accept her mother's going back home along with the dogs in a moment. We are gone, ruptured. There is a lot of domestic debate at full volume between Providence and New Haven. It is just the thing to make time fly, to ruin a half, no more than half of a good weekend. And then a quick touch and go in South Salem for me, switching cars, watering, an important money transfer from account B into account A and back to Providence. I pick up Sophie within a few minutes of the normal time. Mission accomplished!
The dogs are gone. The wife is back at the hacienda in New York. The matter of the virus-laden computer has been fixed, sort of. The kid's been excessively rude, pushing this part of the parental envelope that is feeling limited and inelastic. Here I am, wondering what it is all about, wondering if these interuptions are a positive on balance, or not. I am really wondering.
So much never happens and what are the relationship's rewards? The food is better and the pictures move around and the interior decor improves, if not the decorum. But the tension and the frustration levels are so high. The answer is not a plain one, the jury's out, and I am it, as well as judge. It is all the same, the dogs, the wife, the child. Lurking beneath all this is, I am sure, the crisis of the fifty-something male, unemployed and seemingly unemployable, filled with failure and regret. Will this pass soon? I look with idle curiosity at the cialis and the viagra and the other ads before me in the sports section, like what's going on, all this sexual stuff? Who gets any? It is surely not me. I look at the pretty undergraduates out on the street and wonder, resignedly. They makes me feel beside the point, irrelevant, a kind of walking dead. It is as though this life has passed me by, and if that's not bad enough, I cherish no illusions that there is something more, an afterlife. Our life is here and now, and I'm not feeling very good about very much. In short, my here and now has up and went. Have I missed the boat? Herewith are some reflections upon the aftermath of a visit with the wife. All that is domestic is not bliss, to be sure!
So the two dogs and the wife arrived for the weekend. We've established that. All is fine enough. Lying awake in bed the night before, I realized while tossing and twisting through most of the early morning hours, just what a problem the dogs are going to be here in an apartment. Especially the red one. He's a nutbar. A lunatic that I love and cannot stand at the same time. His name is Woody and he has never lived in the city before. He is aggressive with other dogs. Maybe it is a dachshund thing. After we all settle into our surroundings a momente, I take Cosi and her son out on their leashes for a good long walk around the block. She is easy.
Upon return, I see the result of Sally's eyeballing our new place. You can see her eyes flicker, pupils darting any time she enters a new place that interests her. Within an hour, she has moved a dozen things from one place to another. In the length of the time I've been out, the apartment has been transformed for the better, and these changes continue all through the weekend. Little things, big things; subtle things, some basic ones. The pictures have moved, along with a small mirror. It is so much nicer.
We drive to dinner at an Indian restaurant on Wickenden Street, student territory. The young collegiate couple at the next table amuses us. The girl is kind of flabby, slack-mannered, with a slight drawl. She is not from Rhode Island, but in the snatches of conversation that I am able to overhear, it is clear she possesses a naivete, and she has a nice laugh. Sally, seated in a better place to watch, notices that the girl has a pierced belly button, and that she scratched it at length when she stood up to leave. I missed this amusement. She revealed a wide expanses of her gut, a la mode these days. Let me note here that I don't think too much of this vogue, especially on the soft and fleshy bodies of American youth today. The amount of bared midriff and backcrack that so many young women reveal these days would be more appealing were they more taut and athletic. I hope this sloppiness in appearance does not mirror a deeper indolence, a deeper, societal failing, the sin of self-indulgence. What more is there to say?
As the weekend continues, we walk all over town. The weather is fine, especially sunny and warm for mid-winter in Rhode Island. We don't need to wear overcoats for the first time since before Christmas. We walk down the street to visit the wonderful Athenaenum and wander past some stores. Sophie is proud to show Sally our new hang-outs, in as much as we have any. We watch an Italian DVD titled "Bread & Tulips" at night and Sally, in her cusomary way, goes to sleep within the first ten minutes or so, just like at home. Sophie and I really like the movie, and wish that she would have watched it. Before bed, I take the dogs out for a walk. Woody barely makes it past the porch before pissing copiously, poor guy.
Sunday dawns upon another mild, sunny day in Providence. Sally and I get up while The Adolescent sleeps in a bit, and we take in the length of Benefit Street while walking the dogs, returning a block higher on the hill along Pratt Street. We have to be very careful because there is black ice on the streets and sidewalks. One false move and that's it. An old person's fear. We have close calls, but no disasters. This is dangerous stuff. Sally says I walk like my old man.
Later in the morning we go to Petco to take advantage of its discounted innoculation services for rabies and distemper. Woody and Cosi get overdue vacinations, while creating general pandemonium among the other pets there, not to forget the ride in the car as well. Cosi gets so frustrated with her son that she bites him. Woody wants to eat a little cocker spaniel and a bichon frise. Frankly, the dogs are not much fun to be with. So much noise and aggression! This makes me wonder whether on balance, they are worth the time, energy and money invested in them? It is not black and white for me, especially Woody. He is such a challenge. We drive around, trying to discover what is nice about Pawtucket, Woody moaning and jumping from one seat to another, back to front. Pawtucket's charms have eluded me one more time, as they have in several other meanderings there. It remains a mystery to solve another day.
On Sunday afternoon we hit the East Side Pocket place for a Gyro and a Felaffel, just like the old days in Greenwich Village. Cheap and tasty, and we sit in the window watching a never-ending stream of students and collegiate-looking types line up by the grill to order. We eat mostly in silence, seated in a row, looking out. Thayer Street is as busy as I have ever seen it, with college in session, a beautiful afternoon, and a Superbowl lined up for the evening, pitting the local favorite Patriots versus Philadelphia's Eagles, it is a great weekend afternoon to view the river of humanity before us. Afterwards, around the corner we discover a terrible leak in a house that we admire. It has water pouring out its foundation. I ask my landlord's wife about it; she says they do not care much for its owner, and elect to let the water run. It's a sick, sad world, is it not?
Sophie and Sally are off together at this point. I have had enough of the daughter's adolescent rudenesses and Sally's contentious spirit and one too many of her undermining, insidious comments. Sophie has issues with any eating or chewing sights and sounds that emerge from my mouth. If I swish my tongue around my teeth, or make vile crunching noises, I am censured. She is aggressive in her pursuit of my flaws, a storm trooper, heedless of her own transgressions. I discipline the dog for repeatedly trying to, and finally succeeding to eat shit, literally. The daughter decries me as cruel and horrible. I have no more time for this. Sally pretends to make nicey-nice while fanning the flames. She's no peacemaker, that's for sure. I walk home alone. And in the evening the Superbowl comes and ends with the hometown's team declared a "dynasty." The television ads, often the best creatively inspired examples of their craft were lame, especially considering their $2.4 pricetag per minute. And what about Paul McCartney of Beatles fame? Is this the best 'halftime entertainment' the NFL can muster?
Monday morning comes quickly. A walk with the dogs, a trip to school to drop the sullen kid there for the day, a cup of coffee at Olga's, along with Sally's onion rolls and we are out of town. Sophie has to go to school and accept her mother's going back home along with the dogs in a moment. We are gone, ruptured. There is a lot of domestic debate at full volume between Providence and New Haven. It is just the thing to make time fly, to ruin a half, no more than half of a good weekend. And then a quick touch and go in South Salem for me, switching cars, watering, an important money transfer from account B into account A and back to Providence. I pick up Sophie within a few minutes of the normal time. Mission accomplished!
The dogs are gone. The wife is back at the hacienda in New York. The matter of the virus-laden computer has been fixed, sort of. The kid's been excessively rude, pushing this part of the parental envelope that is feeling limited and inelastic. Here I am, wondering what it is all about, wondering if these interuptions are a positive on balance, or not. I am really wondering.
So much never happens and what are the relationship's rewards? The food is better and the pictures move around and the interior decor improves, if not the decorum. But the tension and the frustration levels are so high. The answer is not a plain one, the jury's out, and I am it, as well as judge. It is all the same, the dogs, the wife, the child. Lurking beneath all this is, I am sure, the crisis of the fifty-something male, unemployed and seemingly unemployable, filled with failure and regret. Will this pass soon? I look with idle curiosity at the cialis and the viagra and the other ads before me in the sports section, like what's going on, all this sexual stuff? Who gets any? It is surely not me. I look at the pretty undergraduates out on the street and wonder, resignedly. They makes me feel beside the point, irrelevant, a kind of walking dead. It is as though this life has passed me by, and if that's not bad enough, I cherish no illusions that there is something more, an afterlife. Our life is here and now, and I'm not feeling very good about very much. In short, my here and now has up and went. Have I missed the boat? Herewith are some reflections upon the aftermath of a visit with the wife. All that is domestic is not bliss, to be sure!
posted by Stonechuck at 12:10 AM
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