Fun House

So thank God Thanksgiving blend is finished. Jesus, that sounds so retro-jappy/Carrie Bradshaw. But when half your daily spending allotment goes toward that Venti bold no-room with the potential unlimited free refills (I am vehemently anti-Pike), a bad blend can seriously affect attitude. Maybe this is for my New-York-on-$4-a-day blog my gynecologist keeps begging me to write. Along with the comment that if I give him a really valuable piece of thrifty advice, he'll discount my pap smear accordingly. He did. $6.39. He probably didn't even send it in. Do I care at this point? Way cheaper to die than get a diagnosis. Quicker, too. Maybe I should call it 'Dying in NYC on $4-a-day'. I like the sound of that. But I've heard a cemetery plot anywhere in the 5 boroughs is like more expensive than the average UES coop. And smaller. No view, so maintenance might be cheaper. No electric. Low ceilings...etc. ad mortem.

I actually am developing a serious phobia of sounding like Carrie Bradshaw, now that she is dated and maybe the same age I was when I swore an oath against ever watching a single episode, even shading my eyes when I saw them filming live in my 'hood, walking with their Tasti-D-Lites on the day my friend was hired as an extra and was furious when she witnessed me refusing to look. Actually she never forgave me. Actually I don't deserve her forgiveness, for other petty sins I've committed against her. Carrie Bradshaw wouldn't say peccadillos, would she? I wrote this same friend, when she mentioned she had flirted with one of my more dysfunctional exes, wanting a reference. I suggested she take out a personal ad saying "Tax deduction available. Will cook and clean (well, at least at first). Knows the lyrics to Castles Made of Sand and most early Dylan (this is where she begins to lie). Can tell Wolfmother from Led Zeppelin (Pinocchio-worthy). Has a vagina (actually, I've never fact-checked)." Maybe I'm becoming Carrie Bradshaw. I'm confused. Was she fictional or real? Was she the fictional version of the actual columnist? Can you fear becoming the fictional version of someone, or even a cartoon character? My mother used to remind me of a more elegant Edith Bunker. For a while I had fear-of-my-mother-turning into Marge Simpson. I have nightmares about the Simpsons. They terrify me. Even the baby. When I was small I feared the Classic Comic Quasimodo. I'd compulsively dare myself to open to a page, and then I'd feel like I had to vomit.

I have this new terror of early Alzheimer's, like my Mom. Not that she seems unhappy or frustrated. But she's totally lost her sense of humor, her edge. I have to keep checking to make sure I still hate Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm.

When I was there the other day, she was furious that everyone had rice pudding except her. But you've already finished your rice pudding, the caretaker carefully explains. 'No I didn't', she insists and stamps her foot in the most ladylike way, and then wrinkles her nose at us and says in her old snoot-voice: 'I HATE rice pudding!'

It was funny. I made me think, once again, that she is pulling the greatest marital practical joke of all on my poor father who nagged and criticized her for years, and has the patience of an angry flea. Also the fact that she defends Dancing with the Stars, even calls me when it goes on, like it is our private joke and worth the torture of it just to watch him writhe and utter non-verbal expletives.

Tonight I saw Michael Moore coming out of the 92nd Street Y. He is pretty fat. Does he do this to ally himself with middle-Americans who are fat? The ultra-rich, of course, like the extreme poor, are thin. I suggested to my newly-anorexic friend the other day that she is just trying to look rich. It is also easier for anorexics to do New York on $4 a day. I suggested she guest on my non-existent blog. She's not speaking to me either. I'm relieved.

Christmas blend. Blend. Everything is a compromise, everything is a hybrid-- diluted, cut with baking soda and corn-sugar, force-fed. People aren't black or white either. Black people are light brown and blonde, Swedes die their blonde hair Johnhy-Thunders black. Everyone's a blend, desperately trying to distinguish themselves with some pathetic fashion statement, women all incensed if someone has the same dress at an event and trying just as desperately to be exactly like everyone else with ther iphones and kindles and macbooks and shoes. I saw a girl at Sotheby's yesterday wearing literally 9-inch Christian Louboutins looking like a pathetic flightless bird with deformed bloody wings on her feet, walking like Barney in toeshoes, pretending her ass was not the bulgy ass of a 5'2" average Jill but the proportionally acceptable ass of a Victoria's Secret Angel. It was very Cindy Sherman, actually. Or Carrie Bradshaw.

Somehow my son's facebook page is now viewable by me. I don't read the posts, but I have noticed these girls with names like Summer Autumn Revere and Jessica Marble. They seem to be real people, but their names are like sculpted. Who are their parents? My son actually, completely accidentally, has a poetic name. His father's fault. I wonder sometimes if I didn't marry his father for the poetic last name...I mean, I think I was in love, but seem to remember feeling 'above' institutional traditions and probably would never have taken another name, except it sounded so nice... I was a little hypnotized... very Carrie Bradshaw. Then again, there was certainly no Vera Wang white for me. We were married (blended?)at the exact same office as Paul McCartney and his current. The woman who performed our ceremony had an enormous ass. Colossal. Proportionally speaking. My husband remarked on this, and I was convulsed during the entire brief ceremony, didn't hear a thing and he spoke for me-- said I was temporarily dumb-stricken. He was funny. I remember this.

I wonder if my mother forgets she's old, decides that grey face in the mirror is some old person who's come to clean the house. Madness is comforting, in the way that you convince yourself around Halloween that these people on the subway leering at you are just costumes and masks. In the way that you order your Christmas blend just like the Carrie Bradshaws behind you, and you get the same brew, no matter how much is in your wallet. There is some democracy. We all get old, we die, we get cancer, we go mad, we remember, we forget. We pay the same for our Christmas blends; it is not about the portion but the proportion.