When Esteban started feeling like crap last summer, one of the things he did to attempt to remedy the situation was to quit caffeine cold turkey. Then he quit his rather excessive soda consumption entirely and began drinking seltzer water instead. So much seltzer water, in fact, that he has gotten a tad compulsive with it. For instance, one week I went grocery shopping and came home with 18 20-oz bottles of seltzer for him and 18 16-oz bottles of Dasani for me.
Two days later, I ran back to the store for something and as I was walking out the door, I said, ‘Do you need anything at the store?’
‘Yeah, I’m out of seltzer water,’ he replied.
‘No you’re not. There’s some in the breezeway,’ I replied, ‘I just bought you a bunch the other day.’
‘Uh’ yeah,’ he replied sheepishly, ‘I know. I mean, I’m out again.’
I bought him more 20-oz bottles and also all of the 2 Liter bottles of seltzer they had in the store (which amounted to five). Esteban was skeptical about the big bottles, figuring that they would go stale before he finished drinking them, but soon he realized that he could sit at his desk and not have to get up as often for more seltzer.
Then a few months ago, Esteban was watching the Tivo when I crawled into bed and then squealed as something cold and hard touched my bare skin. I looked down and he had propped a chilled 2-Liter bottle of seltzer between us.
‘Uh’.’ I said, about to seriously object.
‘Yeah, I have a problem,’ he said, clutching his water bottle closer to his side.
Except that it’s not. It’s not even bad for him. It’s just water with bubbles in it. The only thing I can think of that is wrong with this addiction is the possibility that all of those plastic bottles are bad for the environment.
Esteban wears baggy jeans. I hate how they look, and always want him to buy normal fitted jeans. He prefers the ‘loose cut’ kind of pants because they are more comfortable. But these’ these were now ridiculously baggy. Like clown pants. He could hide things in there, perhaps engaging in a very profitable career at watermelon thievery.
I asked him if he was losing weight but he pshawed my question. Or maybe that was just the sound of another seltzer bottle being opened. Later, Mo asked him the same question but he shrugged.
‘We need to buy you some new pants!’ I said, knowing full well that Esteban loathes shopping for clothes and would much rather send me to buy him pants and then try them on at home and declare them unworthy, leaving them in a heap on the floor of the bedroom for me to reassemble and return back to the store.
Hence the reason he hasn’t had any new pants in a very very long time.
‘Why do I need new pants? Why do I even need pants?’ Esteban’s motto: the best defense is to question societies most inherent dogmas.
‘You need new pants because the crotch on the ones you are wearing is currently swinging down around your knees.’
Normally, when faced with a comment filled with such potential for double-entendre (or even single bald-faced entendre), Esteban will always devolve to the lowest common denominator. I fully expected him to retort ‘Yeah, my pipe finally has enough room.’ Or ‘Oooh, you give me half a stick when you talk dirty.’ Or the perennial favorite ‘Why don’t you get down on your knees and take a closer look?’
Esteban looked down at his belt, which he had tightened to the fifth hole and then his pants, the cuffs of which were dragging on the ground.
‘Yeah, ok, these are almost a dress. Fine,’ he conceded, and then wandered off into the dining room, dragging the ass of his pants behind him.
Today at lunch, I went back to the park by the river to eat my cheese, lettuce and tomato on whole grain hippy bread. It is very sunny and lovely today but also sort of nippy, hovering in the low 50’s, but just fine if you’re in a car with only the sunroof open.
No pelicans today, but after I was sitting there eating my lunch, listening to a CD and staring at the waves on the river, I noticed that the other car in the park was occupied by two people having sex. Which was, you know, interesting. Not as cool as, say, pelicans, but very cool, because you just know that they were on their lunch hour and it was probably an illicit tryst and one or both of them were cheating on their significant others. And he’s her husband’s twin brother and really the father of the baby growing inside her, and he just found out that his wife is a post-operative transsexual crack addict. Or at least that’s the story I’ve invented in my head.
I must make a note to go to that park more often. I can’t wait to see what happens next time.
A few years ago, I found a bill that had been marked with a Where’s George? stamp on it, so I registered it on the site and realized that the Where’s George thing is kind of a silly little cool thing. Since then, I’ve gotten about five or six more of the bills, some with actual custom stamps, some with colorful handprinted messages, some with just the website address scrawled in the margin, and I dutifully log them as I get them.
A few months ago, I got another one. However, at some point, I forgot which of my five passwords I used for my account, and I locked myself out of the site. When I requested a new password, they either never sent one or it didn’t make it past my spam blocker. I kept the Where’s George bill dutifully in my wallet, trying not to spend it whenever possible, but always forgetting to further investigate the website issue or just signing up as a new account. Then I decided that it would be cool to take the bill with me to England and exchange it there, so it would get hella amounts of mileage. But then I ended up not spending it in England because I really never exchanged actual paper money, preferring instead to just go to an ATM and get British pounds that way, without paying a commission. As we were packing to come home, I shoved it into my makeup case, which I always end up using as a wallet in my carry-on. And promptly forgot about it.
So, George is still there, folded small and nestled betwixt an eye shadow brush and my ass splinter pearls. Now I’m afraid to release him into the wild. I’m afraid that I’ll get a little email from him saying he’s in Vegas. Maybe it’s best to not know where George ends up. He might just be dancing in La Cage dressed up ass-less leather chaps like Christina Aguilera, flexing his butt cheeks in time to ‘Dirrty’.
Actually, maybe I’ll just bring him with me to Vegas in a few weeks. Save him from riding in the gold lame’ fanny pack of a divorcee who just got her eyes done.
Yesterday, I stopped at Lane Bryant after work to see if anything caught my eye to wear to the Bad Bar tomorrow night. Nothing did, but I ended up buying a wife beater with a bralette in it and pair of boxer shorts to sleep in. As I was wandering around, there was a lady in there, mid-forties, wearing a lime green sleeveless sweater with a navy bra underneath (and I know this because you could see the band through the sleeves). She was chatting with the sales girls, bragging about going to Hawaii and how she wanted to find a man and how she drove a lime green VW bug and blahety blah blah. I wanted to shake her ‘Stop trying to make the salesgirls like you!’ But then, sometimes I have an attitude, particularly when I am shopping.
As I was paying for my purchases, she was back by the lingerie. She fingered one of the Dayam!Bras and said, ‘Wow, these are really cute!’ The salesgirls chimed in immediately on how they are buy one get one half off right now (So what? I’ve never seen them not on sale) and she said, ‘It’s a good deal but I certainly don’t need more padding.’ And she was right. Her lugubrious breasts were hanging down around her waist.
I couldn’t help myself. ‘Actually, they’re not really padded, so much as reinforced. I’m wearing a DD right now. The padding is just there to kind of push everything forward, like a Wonderbra.’
She checked out my rack, which was fairly evident in a slinky black t-shirt. ‘You’re a DD? I’m a DD.’ And I could tell she was looking at my perky girls standing at attention and thinking there was no way that we were the same cup size. I assured her that the perkiness was all me and she’d be surprised at what the Dayam!Bra could hoist. Then I quipped that my husband is a big fan of the results of the Dayam!Bra as well.
She looked wistfully back at the cute lime bra and said, ‘Well, I wish, but it’s not like anybody would ever see it on me.’
Without thinking, I shot back incredulously, ‘You’re somebody. And you deserve to look cute!’
She looked at me, furrowed her brow and replied, ‘You know, you’re right. I’m getting it. I’m totally getting it!’
‘Great! You’ll love it. Trust me.’ I said over my shoulder, walking out of the store.
‘Thank you! Have a good weekend! Thank you’ thank you, Bra Fairy Godmother!’ She yelled across the store at my back.
I prefer the term ‘Guerilla Fashionista’, but whatever.
