“No! Kids are not making the whoopie yet!” and the End of the Sex Talk
I LOVE my nephew. He is awesome. He loves me and therefore that makes me awesome. I have finally achieved my life’s work. My nephew has hit the precise age where I am not too old to be cool and he is old enough that he wants to impress me. He’s been by my side since the minute I showed up and in between stretches of hormone-induced staring off into space or just sitting with his eyes closed, he would just want to tell me everything that is going on in ninth grade including, get this, updates about his latest girlfriend, the break up with his last one, AND detailed breakdowns of clique formation on the part of the “emos, scenesters, preps and jocks.” Cloud fucking nine. It took every bone in my body to try and remain just the right amount of indifferent and detached so that my ecstatic sense of self-worth didn’t show and ruin everything. He showed me all the latest you-tube videos and said things like, “Don’t you hate it when you like really like a band, and have like liked them for a long time and then all of the sudden they get cool and popular and everyone likes them and it just sucks.” I respond by saying, “Hello, Dave Matthews Band? After Crash? I know exactly what you are talking about.” He has no idea what I am talking about. He will also still play leg wars with me on the coach (foot to foot, push til knees touch thighs or both legs go up straight and its a draw.” I’ve been crafting this perfect Aunt-ship since the minute he was born and if it ever changes I will probably have to kill myself.
I visited my cousin Beverley and her three children in Fallbrook, CA, The Avocado Capital of the World and had no avocados, drank tremendous amounts of wine and told my big sister everything about my life, and got not one but TWO people to either drive or send 100-dollar cabs to Long Beach to pick me up….
One of those people was Elizabeth Zepherine McDonough, who was host to all of my New Years good behavior and Zeno-esque fits of decadence and fancy. She was house sitting in one of those silly Beverly Hills houses with pink lawn furniture, a pink kitchen, life-sized Grecian statuary and a 100-pound bulldog named Pinky for which her primary responsibilities are to drive Pinky to the park twice a day so it can shit, and wipe the black sludge from it’s face crevices. We rang in the new year at a bar near her boyfriend’s house with our shirts tucked into our bras while grinding on helium filled latex balloons in the faces of inevitably less-drunk, innocent bystanders. All the rest is extremely well-photographed history.
Elizabeth dropped me off at the train station minutes before the train left as I force-fed her her lucky servings of black-eyed peas from a can. Wish to god we lived closer. I don’t want to be this far from anyone who will repeatedly take such big bites of something she describes as tasting like vomit. I used the first hours of the train-ride to nurse the worst hangover of my life. Met an awesome girl doing Fullbright in Korea who was also going to Tucson, talked with her for hours but I guess didn’t like me enough to give me her phone number. I’ve been in Tucson for less than 24 hours and I already have a V-neck sunburn. tbc…
LA was delicious,
Bee
