It's All Relative (9 page)

I tried to picture Johnny Depp as a mime but knew he was too smart to ever take such a thankless role.

“Are you okay?” the mime asked.

“You're a … mime?” I finally asked in a squeaky voice. “I thought you were in PR.”

“Oh, I am. I help handle the press as the circus travels from town to town, but I also work as a mime. It's my passion!”

The mime's teeth took on a yellowish hue next to his white face paint. Worse, he had that hideous acrylic stench that surfaces only when you have to dress up for Halloween or theme parties.

I sat in silence, staring at him, cradling my butter knife, thinking the world would be a much better place with one less mime in it.

He sensed my discomfort.

“Hey, would you mind if I went and washed my face?”

He grabbed a duffel bag he had shoved away under the table, and when he was around the corner, I seriously toyed with the idea of just leaving—simply standing up, running to my car, and driving away. That is, if my legs would only work.

“A mime is just a person in makeup,” I told myself, before altering the line to better suit my state of mind. “A mime is just a man … and I need to have sex with a man.”

When the mime returned, sans white face paint, I was stunned. He was cute, very cute, actually, in kind of a Billy Crudup sort of way. He had shed his bodysuit and changed into tight jeans and a formfitting T-shirt. He had a great body, lean and muscled, like a gymnast's.

He's smokin
', I thought irrationally, kind of like when I saw Jeffrey Dahmer on TV for the first time and my initial reaction was, “He's not bad-looking … 
for a serial killer
.”

And then the waitress came over to take our order and my date did exactly what I had prayed he wouldn't: He broke into mime mode. He pantomime-rubbed his belly—“I'm so hungry!” he seemed to say—before stretching his mouth into a rubber-faced smile—the “How delicious!” part of his act, I guess.

It was finally at that moment I had the breakthrough my therapist
had never been able to reach: I realized maybe I wasn't
terrified
of clowns and mimes. Maybe I just despised their act.

I don't even remember what I ordered, but it got a series of mime-like gestures of jealousy, like, “Why didn't I get that?”

For the next hour I sat quietly as he entertained the waitstaff and surrounding children, doing a painfully bad Marcel Marceau shtick.

Just get out of the box already
, I wanted to scream.
There has to be a lid on it, otherwise you couldn't have gotten trapped inside it in the first place
.

And it's not windy inside the restaurant, and there is no trapdoor in the floor—I can still see your legs under the table
.

And please, please, stop fake crying because that little boy wouldn't give you a bite of his chocolate cake. You're just scaring the kid, and he's going to carry lifelong scars from this day, just like I have
.

At the end of lunch, the mime turned his attention back to me and said, “I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to ignore you. It's just so hard being a recognized artist.”

Recognized artist?

When did a mime officially become an “artist,” I wanted to know? If so, shouldn't caricaturists and rodeo clowns be included in that special group of gifted performers?

“Excuse me,” I said. “I need to go to the bathroom.”

Instead I walked straight to the door and left.

The last image I had of my mime as I scurried past the restaurant window was of him sitting there, his mug all squenched up in a troubled look, his hands in midair, doing the “I'm confused!” bit to a nearby group of diners. As they laughed, he transformed his rubber face into some sort of goofily asinine expression and began swirling his right forefinger around his temple in order to indicate that I was crazy.

Perhaps I am, I thought as I strolled down the street, but at least I knew I was sane enough not to have sex with a mime.

I mean, can you imagine the hand gesture that would have prompted?

T
he only Irishman I knew growing up was my father.

Okay, he wasn't Irish in the least. And we lived in the Ozarks.

He was “pretend Irish,” as my mother called it, “which is exactly like being a little bit pregnant,” she'd finish. “Either you are or you aren't.”

My dad looked Irish, however, with his sandy-blond-reddish hair, his short, scrappy stature, his pale skin, and, of course, his love o' the ale.

And my dad attended the University of Missouri-Rolla, an excellent engineering school that was perhaps more famous for its St. Patrick's Day celebrations. My father was in a fraternity that helped lead the green riot on campus, and every St. Patty's Day he prided himself on wearing an old sweatshirt from his frat-boy days that featured a drunken leprechaun dancing on a four-leaf clover.

When he looked in the mirror, I'm convinced he saw Danny Kaye.

I remember emerging every year as a high schooler on St. Patrick's Day morning to a giant pinch from the green Grinch.

“Ouch!”

“Where's your green?”

“Stop it, Dad! I don't wear kelly green! No one should!”

“We're Irish!” he would say.

Now, our family was about as Irish as the O'Charley's restaurant chain. We were mutts, Ozarkians, a chromosome away from being cave dwellers or performing in minstrel shows. We were anything but Irish.

I would roll my eyes dramatically at my father, who would pinch me again, harder, out of spite, before returning to a skilletful of scrambled eggs that he had dyed with green food coloring.

Every St. Pat's Day, on cue, just as I would pour my bowl of Quisp cereal, my dad would look out the kitchen window, the strong March wind whipping our oak branches around, and say, in an awful Irish brogue, “Oh, you know, a windy day is the wrong one for thatching.”

Come again?

“Looks like it might rain,” he'd continue. “You know, you can take the man out of the bog but you can't take the bog out of the man.”

Seriously?

“May your blessings outnumber the shamrocks that grow, and may trouble avoid you wherever you go.”

That's when I would grab my books, coat, and keys, and sprint for the back door.

And then I went away to college, and my father's Irish eyes smiled upon me, and my first roommate was as stereotypically Irish as you could get: Irish name. So pale as to burn under a one-hundred-watt bulb. Solar system of red hair (in fact, a full-on 'fro in homage to Julius Erving). Funny as hell. Could drink the entire Rat Pack under the table. He was even prone to offering up phrases at the drop of a hat, such as when making a toast: “May the road rise to meet you. May the wind be always at your back. May the sun shine warm upon
your face. The rains fall soft upon your fields. And until we meet again, may God hold you in the palm of his hand.”

Though he would lead me into more trouble than Eve, he became one of my best friends, and my father couldn't have been prouder—more so even than if I had gone on to marry Angie Dickinson.

In graduate school I seemed to have been blessed by my father's green blood again, as another Irishman danced into my life via one of my journalism classes. He, too, was clever as hell and prone to partying. I remember my first week at Northwestern, when the professors tossed us newbie reporters onto the streets of Chicago and told us to return at the end of the day to hammer out a story on deadline on a typewriter. It was so
All the President's Men
.

I returned, feeling like a real city boy for the first time in my life, only to be called out by a professor for using the verb “get” in my lead.

“Laziest verb in our vocabulary!” he screamed. “Who wrote this?”

I raised my hand, head down, the professor continuing, “Class? Give me twenty verbs better than ‘get'!”

As my new classmates fed off my carcass to prove their worth, my soon-to-be new Irish friend finally said, as the class quieted down, “Get off his ass and
get
a life, you pathetic suck-ups!”

He saved my life. He could've led me to the top of the building after class, told me to jump, and I would've giddily catapulted to my death.

Instead I spent months slowly killing myself, hanging out with him on Rush Street, a main center of business and nightlife, which was where he lived, interned, and also worked in a club as a bartender.

When I wasn't writing, I drank.

When I wasn't studying, I drank.

When I wasn't drinking, I was drinking.

Usually with him.

Of course, St. Patrick's Day was a huge celebration not only for my friend but also for the entire city of Chicago, which has a huge Irish population and great heritage. They toss a citywide party, complete with a huge parade and an official dyeing of the Chicago River a shade of green so iridescent, so shocking, it's like seeing Mickey Rourke in person: You're mortified but mesmerized.

Considering it was my first St. Pat's Day in Chicago, my friend offered loads of advice, all bad, culminating with this: “If you want to be in the middle of all the fun, I can get you into the festivities
if
 …”

Whenever anyone says “if,” I shudder.

If
is the word that introduces the most nightmarish of situations:

“If you only loved me as much as I love you …”

“If you would just put this in your mouth …”

“If you would only swallow these drugs in a balloon and haul them across the border you could make ten thousand dollars …”

His
if
was: “If you would be willing to sport a leprechaun costume, you could walk with my bar in the parade and get all your drinks for free.”

Now, I was roughly 240 pounds. And I was sure I'd never seen a leprechaun that big, or they'd be sent to Jenny O'Craig. Still, I was intrigued. My parents were paying mucho dinero for me to attend grad school, I was not working, and any little savings seemed like a good idea.

“If you think you could find me a costume that fit …” I mistakenly uttered.

He didn't.

Instead the bar provided a Goodwill bag of green hodgepodge, including a supersized kelly-green tux with tails, a green bowtie, a giant green top hat with a bouncy shamrock, giant shiny black pilgrim shoes with big buckles, and white tights in which to shove my pant legs.

I looked like the Hulk.

Especially when surrounded by hot bartenders, including my friend, who sported “sexy leprechaun outfits” composed of a green vest and bowtie over a bare chest, a shamrock painted on their biceps.

“Holy Rosemary Clooney!” I screamed at my friend outside his bar after taking the El downtown with a throng of drunken Chicagoans taunting me with calls of “They're magically delicious!” and “Pink hearts! Yellow moons! Fat leprechaun!”

“I look like an ass!” I said.

“You do!” my friend said. “A green ass. But you get free drinks all night!”

I called my dad for some reason, at the height of my drunkenness, to wish him happy St. Patty's Day.

“Where are you?” he yelled, so I could hear him over the din.

“In an Irish bar in downtown Chicago! I watched them dye the river!”

“Are you wearing green?”

“I'm dressed as a leprechaun! And I'm wasted!”

I thought I could hear him crying.

Then he gave me the best advice of my life. “Listen, sonny boy. An Irishman is never drunk as long as he can hold on to one blade of grass and not fall off the face of the earth.”

“I
haven't been on holiday in years,” Gary said to me the third fall after we had moved to Michigan.

“Who are you? The princess of Monaco?” I asked. “
Holiday
?”

“It's just that winter is nearly here …”

And then Gary's voice trailed off.

We were outside raking leaves at the time, and there was already a skiff of snow dotting the woods and high points in the yard. We could see our breath. Gary was blowing on his hands, and I could see him shiver.

And this was still, officially, fall.

Winters in Michigan are a lot like John Holmes's penis: awe-inspiring but way too long, leaving you to wonder—after the initial fascination and get-to-know-you phase wears off—if you can really take the whole thing.

I knew I couldn't. I'd tried. I knew, pardon the inevitable pun, what was to come.

Which is why I was already loading up on antidepressants and sleeves of cookie dough. I had already purchased an African violet to set on my windowsill overlooking the woods, a single dot of purple to cheer the vast wasteland of whiteness, knowing it would likely do
as much good as placing a Nexium on the distended, pale paunch of a serial belcher.

However, I was floored to hear my ever-optimistic partner—the one who loves to ski and make snow angels, the one who doesn't go bonkers after three straight weeks of whiteout—express his desire to retreat from winter's battle.

“Why
can't
we go on holiday?”

Gary dropped his rake and was again blowing on his hands. He was staring at me with that look that kids give their moms right before they scream like a banshee at McDonald's because they received the wrong Happy Meal toy.

I was shoveling frozen coils of dog poop, my nose dripping snot.

And then I thought, Why can't we holiday?

“Holiday” is what older gays call spring break. Except that it is an extended winter vacation. It's not a week to Disneyland or a three-day Funjet trip to Punta Cana or a college frat week in Cancún. It's fleeing the cold for a more tropical clime for a few months.