Authors: Ian Frazier

Dating Your Mom (2 page)

BOOK: Dating Your Mom

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It has been over a year now since, in the wake of demoralizing setbacks, I finally abandoned my West Village apartment to the North Vietnamese. It was a time of great chaos. In my haste I had no choice but to leave behind hundreds of dollars' worth of appliances, clothing, and plants. The panic, the loss of my security deposit, getting my phone turned off, packing my small traveling bag, grabbing a taxiâall that seems like a dim nightmare to me now. But as the painful memories have lost some of their sharpness, my curiosity has grown. How has my apartment changed in the past year and a half? What have the Communists managed to make of the place where I sustained a free and democratic life for the better part of two years? I, of course, have not been allowed to visit my old pied-Ã -terre,
but from accounts of Taiwanese businessmen and Belgian journalists who have been allowed in I have managed to piece together a picture of the new Apartment 6-A at 226 Waverly Place.

More than a year after its fall, 6-A appears to be an apartment still in transition. In the living room, the Communists have retained much of my furniture, including my stereo and my portable color-TV. All the furniture and appliances that used to belong to me have been registered and given identity cards. My two end tables have been removed, under the Communists' Return to Deco Shop of Origin program. My terra-cotta fish poacher and horseshoe-crab-shell lamps have been relocated out into the country. My couch has submitted to voluntary reupholstering. The Communists have kept all my record albums, and I am told that they play them a lot. My cat, Bill, who likes to watch pigeons, seems perfectly happy with his new name, Ho Chi Minh Domestic Animal. My clippings of “Ziggy” and “Today's Chuckle” are no longer taped to the refrigerator, and in their place are Communist maxims: “Advance in the Flush of Victory with New Vigor and Remember to Get an Extra Set of Keys Made!,” “Strive Resolutely to Pick Up the People's Laundry before Five!,” and “Work for a Striking Development of Our Sunny Breakfast Nook!” In general, the kitchen has a more functional, lived-in look than before, when I mainly used it to prepare cans of Campbell's Chunky Beef Soup.

Among the more important dynamics at work in the redesign of my apartment is a division between two schools of thought in the Politburo of the Workers' Party. One school, the moderates, maintains that illiterate
peasants who have only recently emerged from the jungles and paddies after a twenty-year period of war and apartment-hunting cannot be expected to have any sense of design, style, color, or fabric, and that the new government should not be afraid to hire interior decorators who may be foreign-born or who even may not hold to the strict Communist Party line. The hard-liners, on the other hand, believe that coming up with a decorating scheme is well within the powers of the North Vietnamese Army, and that all they really have to do is put a couple of coats of barn-red deck paint on the floor, paint the walls and ceiling off-white, buy a couple of nice rugs and some hanging plants and some big pillows, and then get a wheel of Brie and throw a party to break the place in. A similar theoretical split exists among the members of the Phong-trao Phu-nu Giai-phong, or Freed Women Movement, whose efforts to fix the bathroom so that the cold-water pipe under the sink doesn't leak on the physical therapist in 5-A have been beset with problems. The moderates advocate trying Liquid-plumr or an Epoxi-Patch, while the hard-liners believe it is the landlord's problem, and if he doesn't do something about it pretty soon they favor going after the windshield of his Mercury Montego with a Volkswagen jack. At present, the moderates hold sway in most areas of the renovation of Apartment 6-A, and the success of their efforts over the next few months will very likely determine whether they or the hard-liners will continue to formulate apartment policy in such unresolved areas as the potentially divisive matchstick versus traditional-plastic-venetian window-blind issue.

In recent months, the Communists have been entertaining
moreâhaving more people over at Plenteous Rice Harvest Brunches and Revere Progressive Elders At-Homes, and guests have remarked that they notice a new atmosphere of hope in my former residence. After all, it's in a nice neighborhood, and it's convenientâright on the IRTâand there are lots of things to do in the area, and the Communists have my list of sitters. They have a two-year lease on the place, so unless rent control is repealed the rent won't go up right away, and they also have a sublet clause, just in case they ever want to move on. It's a fairly safe part of town, and just a couple of blocks away there's a delicatessen that's open until two, where they sell Pepperidge Farm cookies, and there are some terrific new courses they can take at The New School, and things just might turn out to be not all that bad.

A GOOD EXPLANATION

(A Con Ed Customer's Account of Why the Lights Went Out)

8:37 p.m. All is quiet at Indian Point No. 3 power station, when suddenly a huge dog jumps out of the bushes and eats several of the parts vital to the operation of the plant's main generator. As quickly as he has come, the dog disappears.

8:56 p.m. Ten miles away, at the Millwood power station, another huge dog, not the same as the first dog but a different one, jumps out of the nearby woods and eats some insulation off an important transformer. This triggers circuit breakers.

8:57 p.m. Every person in Queens between the ages of fourteen and thirty-six gets out of the shower and turns on a blow-dryer. This places an enormous strain on the power reserves of the system.

9:06 p.m. A guy, I don't even remember his name, nobody had ever seen him before or recognized him at all, happens to fly his helicopter over Con Edison's computerized control center on the West Side and throws a cigarette butt out the window of his helicopter, and in a one-in-a-million chance an ash lands on some computer tape and burns some holes that spell out “Shut down all systems” in computer language.

9:10 p.m. While technicians work frantically to fix the computer, yet a third huge dog attacks the power lines between Westchester and Manhattan, eating the insulators off the towers and triggering circuit breakers.

9:14 p.m. Further strain is placed on an already stretched-to-the-limits situation when every Cuisinart in Westchester turns itself on simultaneously, as if following some eerie brand-specific command.

9:17 p.m. Con Ed repairmen have just about fixed one power station when suddenly, out of the sewersâhundreds of giant white alligators! (There really is such a thing, and if you don't believe me you can call the Department of Sanitation and ask them whether there is such a thing or not.) The repairmen have to go back into their trucks and wait for the alligators to go away, and this costs precious minutes as station after station loses power.

9:19 p.m. One of Con Ed's chief engineers, working desperately against the clock, devises a plan to forestall blackout by “load shedding”âi.e., allowing power loss in some areas until the system regains its balanceâand he gives the plan to Con Ed chairman Charles Luce. Before Luce can put the plan into effect,
however, while he is giving the first instructions by phone, he accidentally leaves the plan where his baby sister can reach it, and she gets into it and scatters the papers around and crumples up some pages and gets her teething cracker all over it. By the time he can get the papers away from her and copy them over, the domino-like sequence of power-plant shutdown is well on its way.

9:20 p.m. Throughout the five boroughs, packs of huge dogs begin eating the actual power lines.

9:30 p.m. Herds of buffalo, nobody has any idea where they came from, probably from Canada, begin stampeding across New York State and start rubbing up against the exposed power lines where the dogs have eaten off the insulation. Also, walking catfish and poisonous Mexican spitting mice do this. They impede last-minute efforts to restore power.

9:34 p.m.Total blackout.

THE END OF BOB'S BOB HOUSE

In the thirties, it was in the basement of the old Van-derbob Towers Hotel. In the forties, it moved into the first floor of the Youbob Building on Fifty-second Street. In the late fifties, it settled in what was to become its final home, the plush revolving lounge on the top of the BobCo Building. No matter where they found it through the years, patrons of Bob's Bob House (and there were many who were much more than patronsâdevotees might be a better word) knew that anyplace old Bob Bobson, God love him, was hanging out there was sure to be excitement, fun, and big thick steaks nearby. I'll never forget back in '54, I'd just been fired by Bill Veeck for alcoholism, and I walked into the Bob House with a face about a mile long. Bob took one look at me and hollered, “Christ,
you're
sober
, Doc!” (He always called me Doc. Of course, I didn't have a medical degree, but I did have my own stapling gun. He called me Doc ever since the war, over in Korea.) “Anything you want, it's on me.” My God, I drank the place dry that night, and then I had a good solid piece of American grain-fed beef and got in my car and ran over a claims adjuster and ended up in Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. That's the kind of guy Bob was.

If you were a friend of Bob's, there was nothing he wouldn't do for you, even to the point of making soup out of your underwear and drinking the broth, as he once did for longtime crony and companion Maria Montessori, the Italian educator. But if you fell among the unfortunate few who Bob considered enemies, then look out: he might refuse to give you a good table or, looking serious, say he was going to put your dog through the bologna slicer. I'll never forget, it was June of '58 and my first ex-wife had just won a thousand dollars a month alimony so she could go and shack up with that big Mennonite buck she used to run with, plus custody of my little son and daughter. I told the judge, “God damn it, she's got the boy sleeping in a basket of fish headsânow, I don't think that's right. She's making my daughter lick dead bugs off the car radiator grille. You think that's the behavior of a fit mother?” Well, hell, she got custody anyway. The judge gave her custody. I suppose he knows better than me.

The only friend I had left in the world in those days was old Bob. I spent most of my time at the Bob House. “Mother of God, Highpockets,” he'd say. (Always called me Highpockets. Course, I was only five-eight,
but I did have my own cattle prod.) “Highpockets, buddy, let me tell you what happened to my luggage” âand off he'd go on a long involved rigamarole that never failed to make me feel white again.

It was through Bob, of course, that I first met Senator Robert Mebob. This was back before all the controversy surrounding the Committee to Re-Bob Mebob, as we all called it, which Bob got tangled up in with that crazy prank where he and someone on the Senator's staff put a Saltine in a cup of warm tea (an allegation that was never proved, by the way). At any rate, Bob took me over to the Senator's table at the Bob House one night. “Curly,” he said to me. (He always called me Curly. Course, I didn't have any hair of my own, but I did have my own meat thermometer.) “Curly,” he says, “I want you to meet the Honorable Robert Youbob MebobâI call him Bob, buddy of mineâhe's the greatest guy, he's a helluva guy. God, I love him. I'll bet you didn't know that this guy right here, Senator Bob Mebob, he's the father of my oldest boy, Bobby.” Then he grinned and grabbed the Senator in a big bear hug and his eyes filled with tears, and I have to admit I was surprised, even though I knew that Bob's wife, who used to wait tables at the Bob House, was a great and beautiful lady and a fine helpmeet and a terrific gal who shacked up with any damned guy she felt like, and a terrific mother who loved to drink and drive. Later, when the Senator got indicted, Bob never forgot him, and once sent him five dozen red roses with a note asking if he was still in love with Otis Sistrunk, of the Oakland Raiders. That's the way it was if you were friends with Bobâyou
were in love with Otis Sistrunk, although probably you weren't.

Now, after forty years and who knows how many stomachs pumped, they're closing down the old Bob House, where so many of us had such great times and blacked out so many times over the years, and we're sure going to miss it. Of course, Bob has slowed down a lot, and he can't threaten people as well as he used to when he was younger, and that, along with the incident last fall where a bunch of kids broke in after hours and taped live ferrets to the salad bar, has taken a lot of the fun out of the Bob House for him. Bob is moving to Jersey, where he plans to just take it easy and collect moving violations and rifle the desks of guys who know him and trust him, and we wish him the best. I know I speak for everybody else who has known Bob and his Bob House when I say that we love him and think he's the greatest guy and the cutest guy and has done a terrific job not only for the restaurant business but also for the city as a whole.

THE SANDY FRAZIER DREAM TEAM OFFENSE