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The Waterbug

I wanted to go into this weekend caught up for the week, so I’m recycling this old story I sent to Matt, back when I lived in Brooklyn. Enjoy!

Jesus Christ, man… last night Sarah and I were just settling down to bed and she looks up and screams - there’s an enormous waterbug near my ceiling. Do you know what those things are? They’re like 3 inch-long flying cockroaches. It was the filthiest, hugest, flyingest thing I’ve ever seen.

Sarah ran into the bathroom and shut the door while I was left to battle the monster alone with my shoe. “Turn off the light! It likes the light!” she screamed. “I’m not going to be alone in the dark with it!” I shouted back. I stood in front of the bathroom door with my shoe, she stood behind the door, which was cracked just a little bit. Neither of us are wearing pants.

The thing flew toward my closet. Suddenly, I couldn’t see it. I stand there waiting for it to make a move. I can’t wait any longer, I peek my head under the door frame and see the thing perched there on the ledge, just waiting to strike. I reach my hand around the frame and give it a quick wack. “Got it!” I screamed. The bug falls to the ground and immediately scurries into the corner underneath my dartboard. Sarah starts heading out of the bathroom.

“Stay in there!” I scream. “It’s still kicking!” After another 5 minute tussle with the thing running back and forth under the step ladder, trying in vain to fly, I finally counter it as it makes its way up the ladder and I crush the living shit out of the bastard. It was a fierce battle. The rest of the night, I kept feeling something crawling on me and slapping it away.

All I could think was that the heat, the insects, the fact that I had to carry 4 distinct, heavy bags home with me last night (workbag, gym clothes, Staples purchases, groceries), all of it was saying to me - “Get out of this city NOW, motherfucker.”

On Poop

I never gave much thought to poop before I became a dad. Even the word is difficult for me to say. It’s so round and bouncy and cutesy. As an adult, you can’t say, “I’ve gotta take a poop.” You just can’t. 

It is an awful word because poop is not cute in any context. And contrary to what you might assume, baby poop is absolutely no cuter than adult poop. It is not like adorable little baby toes, or puckered little baby lips. It is a smeared sheet of turd that coats their butts and their baby genitalia and spills out of their diapers and gets all over their clothing and yours. 

Which is not to say that cleaning a baby is the same thing as wiping an adult’s ass. If given the choice, pick the baby. I mean, unless it’s your own ass. If you must do both, I recommend cleaning yourself before handling the baby. 

Hazel has not had a poop since Monday. And before that, the last one was the previous Monday. Before you freak out and call child services, please note that it is actually rather normal. We asked our doctor. We weren’t just like, “well, I guess that’s what babies do.” We sought professional advice. And he says it’s fine. His advice was for Sarah to eat only fruits and meats. That’s his advice for everything. “Before bed, apply heat pad to breasts. Take warm shower.” He’s Syrian.

The first time we went to this pediatrician was when Hazel was about a week old. She looked a little yellow to us, so we asked him if she had jaundice. He produced a chart that had been photocopied so many times it was difficult to read. It listed ages and jaundice levels. So like, if your child is 1 month old and at a level 12 of jaundice she’s fine, but if she’s only one week old, that’s too high. 

I asked the doctor how he determined these jaundice levels.

“You look,” he said, pointing the pen at the baby. “You see, here 10 jaundice” — pointing at her arm — “here 3 jaundice.” — pointing at her forehead.

“I see,” I said, even though I didn’t really see.

“Here 8 jaundice” — her leg — “here 13 jaundice” — her cheeks — “here 5 jaundice” — her feet. “So that’s …” doing some quick calculations in his head, “7 jaundice.” He looked at the chart. “She okay.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“It’s okay. It’s no problem,” he said. 

“Alright,” I said. I assume he’s had some kind of training. She looks pink enough nowadays, so I suppose he probably knows what he was talking about. 

But we asked around about the poop issue, just to get some other opinions. We know about 3 other parents who have dealt with the same poop issue. Yes, we’ve spoken to at least three other sets of people about this problem. We talk about poop now like we used to talk about movies and bands. 

Some people have been aghast when we’ve told them our baby only poops once a week. These people’s babies pooped far more than once a week. The only people who say, “of course! That’s totally normal,” are people who have experienced the same phenomenon.

I admit, it sounds abnormal. It doesn’t make much sense to me. But I guess all she eats is breast milk. If milk was the only food I consumed, I might be able to get down to once a week, too. 

The downside of her not pooping is that she farts like a linebacker. She is so, so farty. And she’s always got this tight swaddle around her, so she just hangs out all day, bundled up like a mummified worm, filling her swaddle with farts. The farts are not cute either. We went to a party on New Year’s Eve and Sarah brought incense, just in case. More than a few people have, after holding her for a few minutes, said to us, “I think she has a dirty diaper.” Unless it’s Monday, you don’t really have to worry about that.

On the plus side, she’s healthy, she sleeps well, and she doesn’t whine much. And given the choice between farting and crying, I will gladly take farting. That is where I am, having to choose between farting and crying, with farting being as good as it gets.

A Terrible Name

Before our daughter was born, Sarah and I had four names we were trying to decide between. They were:

Charlotte. Plusses: It is a very cute name. Can be shortened to Charlie, and little girls think boy nicknames are pretty cool. Minuses: It is very popular.

Lucy. Plusses: It’s classic. Peanuts is the best. Minuses: A bit boring.

Juniper. Plusses: It’s interesting. Cool nickname possibilites - Juni and Juno. I have never met anyone named Juniper. Minuses: I have never met anyone named Juniper.

And Hazel. Which [spoiler alert!] was the winner of the name contest.

It first entered our consciousness the night that Lisi came to visit with her son, Fiver. Fiver is the name of the prophet rabbit in Watership Down. We were joking around and said that it would be funny if we named our daughter Hazel, because Hazel is the leader of the rabbits in Watership Down. And then Hazel and Fiver could hang out and, I don’t know, get attacked by owls or whatever rabbits do. It started as a joke, but the more we thought about it, the more we liked the name.

A week before she was born, my parents came out to visit. We had managed to keep our name choices a secret up until that point, but with the birth date so close, we decided to run our names past them. BIG mistake. As soon as we told them the names, they both said, “Ugh. Well, whatever name you choose, do NOT go with Hazel.” We were both totally surprised. To me Hazel seemed, at worst, innocuous. But their reactions made it seem like we had decided to name our daughter Adolf.

“Hazel is an old lady with cankles,” my dad said. Cankles! I had never heard my dad use the word cankles before.

“The other kids will call her witch Hazel!” my mom complained. Which, A) do kids have any idea what witch hazel is? and B) Witch Hazel is a badass nickname! 

The day before we were to go into the hospital and get induced … which we had to do because the baby was two weeks late even though in my estimation they totally misjudged the due date but whatever, I’m not bitter … and when I say “we had to get induced” I really mean Sarah … we told my parents that Hazel was the winner. They reacted well. “Well, she can always change it later in life if she doesn’t like it,” my dad said. We had since come up with the nickname Zellie, which seemed to soften the blow somewhat. And my dad decided as long as he could call her his little Hazelnut, he’d be okay.

We sort of had the last laugh when we announced her birth on Facebook. Commenter after commenter told us how much they loved her name. “You notice that no one of my generation said they liked her name,” my dad remarked, unwilling to budge an inch.

In the meantime, the name Hazel seems to have exploded onto the zeitgeist. Julia Roberts’ new daughter has the name. Barely a day goes by that we don’t hear about another Hazel somewhere in our extended social circle. By the time Zellie gets to school, Hazel could be the new Britney. We’re not worried, though. We’ll just change her name to Juniper.

One Wedding for the Price of Two

Sarah and I got married on October 20, 2008 in a state park near Malibu. We rented the park for the weekend and invited our friends to stay with us in the dorm room style cabins that were normally used for Girl Scout getaways. To our delight, we filled the place up, and ended up having a jam-packed party weekend full of parties and jam.

The wedding was beautiful, wonderful, best I’ve ever had. &c. But this is not about my wedding. This is about one of my wedding guests. 

A week before the wedding, I got an email from my friend Nathan. He had sent his RSVP in months before saying that his wife, Emma, would not be able to attend. He told me that things had changed and she would be able to come after all, and wanted to make sure it was okay. “Of course!” I said. “The more the merrier!” What I didn’t say was that she would be responsible for buying her own meals. Ha ha, that is not true. But so at the end of the email exchange, Nathan said “remind me to tell you a funny story when I see you next weekend.”

As it turns out, I did not need to remind him, because Nathan’s funny story was the talk of the wedding. The weekend before our wedding it poured rain in LA. We didn’t have much of a contingency plan (read: NONE) if it had rained during our wedding, but thankfully we didn’t need to worry about it. The clouds parted and the sun opened up for the weekend, and then immediately afterwards the entire city of Malibu was engulfed in horrendous flames from forest fires. 

The weekend of our wedding it did not rain. Yet, when Nathan showed up at our wedding, it was pouring rain. How does this make any sense? It’s elementary, Bugs Meany! Nathan got the date wrong. He flew all the way from Michigan to California the weekend before our actual wedding, flew back to Michigan, and then came all the way back again with his wife the next weekend.

According to legend, he got to the airport, picked up his rental car, and drove all the way out to the wedding site - a good 1/2 drive from LAX, probably more in the pouring rain. He parked his car and walked around the park in the rain for about 20 minutes. Not finding anyone, he called our mutual friend Abby to find out where he was supposed to meet us. “Um,” Abby said, relaxing in front of the fire in her beautiful cabin in Vermont, “the wedding’s next weekend, dumbass.” So Nathan drove back to the airport, rented a hotel room for the night, and returned to Ann Arbor in the morning, only to do the whole thing again 7 days later.

Now, no question this is a funny situation. Some might even say a legendarily funny situation. But, it is also the ultimate sign of friendship, and for that, I will always be grateful. Nathan didn’t just come to my wedding once. He came twice. And what’s more, he paid last minute ticket prices to bring his wife with him the second time. And that is a true friend. A dumbass friend, perhaps, but a true friend, nonetheless.

Hair

Sarah and I went to see Hair today. It was the first time we’ve been out of the house on our own since Zellie was born 8 weeks ago. Hair is my favorite musical of all time and there are a million things I’d like to say about today’s performance, but I need to bust out a quick story because it’s late and I have video games to play.

I’ve only seen Hair one other time in my life. I watched the movie many times growing up, but the movie was made in the 70s and is a totally different kind of experience than the play. It’s still great in its own right, but it has that 70s disco-ness to it that was inescapable for a few years.

The other time I saw Hair was when I was in college, at the Fox Theater in Detroit. Lisi and her family were big Hair fans, so we met them there. The Fox Theater is the coolest theater in Michigan and even though we only lived about 45 minutes away from Detroit it still felt like an extra special treat going there.

On the way to the theater, there were reports that a dead body had been found in Kurt Cobain’s house. They couldn’t identify the body because its face had been blown off. For some reason, my first thought was, “oh my God, Beck killed Kurt Cobain.”

The next day, I was listening to CK105, the shitty popular radio station in Flint. The opening chords to “Smells Like Teen Spirit” came on the air. I turned it up, ready to have a moment of respect for the lost king. But when the verses started, it turned out it was actually Weird Al’s “Smells Like Nirvana.” I picked up the phone and called the station. 

“Too soon, man,” I told the DJ. “Too soon.”

“Fuck you,” the DJ replied.

So far, I’m 0 for 2 with CK105.

To Catch a Thief

I have never stolen anything in my life. Well, that’s not true. When I was younger I would sometimes go to Perry Drugs in the Clio Plaza and stick one magazine inside another magazine, thus getting two magazines for the price of one. There’s really no reason to buy a magazine as large as Rolling Stone unless you’re going to stick a Metal Edge inside it. 

But that’s not really stealing, that’s just taking advantage of uninterested minimum wage workers. I never grabbed an item from a shelf and stuck it in my pocket, or went into someone else’s room and took one of their toys. That I never did.

I have, however, been wanted for retail fraud. 

It was my second or third week of college, and I was at Tower Records in Ann Arbor with my friend Sofia. They were having a big sale and the price gun was sitting out on top of a row of CDs. I really wanted this CD by a band called Possum Dixon, so I punched myself out a new price tag and voila! $6 markdown. I should have realized from my time spent in the retail trenches that stores do not just mark merchandise down willy-nilly. There was no way a 2 year-old CD by Possum Dixon, a CD that the record label had no reason to promote, would be on sale. Retail logic played no part in my decision, though. I was a rebel. I laughed in the face of logic.

I took the CD up to the counter and to my surprise, they let me buy it. I was feeling pretty good about myself as we left the store. Until one of the security guards stopped me at the door.

“Can we talk to you in the back?” he said.

“What’s going on?” Sofia asked.

“Nothing,” I said. “I”ll handle it. Don’t wait for me … I might not return.”

The guard took me deep into the control room, where the other security guards were waiting to tear me apart. You could smell the testosterone in the room as I entered. 

“Nice job, guy,” one of the guards said. “We got the whole thing on tape.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’m guilty. You saw me. What do I have to do?”

“One - pay us ten times the amount you marked the CD down. That’s $60. Two - never come back here again.”

“That’s it?” I asked. “That’s all I need to do?”

“Yep,” the guard said.

“Do I get to keep the CD?” I asked.

“I don’t see why not,” the guard answered. “You paid for it.”

Luckily, I had my checkbook with me, so I wrote them a check on the spot. I was a little bummed about not being able to go back to Tower, but  there were approximately 7 other record stores within walking distance, so it wasn’t that much of a loss. In retrospect it seems a little weird that they would have a rule where they charged ten times the amount of money I marked the CD down. That’s a pretty convoluted rule. But at the time, I didn’t care if the dude stuck the money in his pocket; I just didn’t want to have to call my parents from jail. 

Unfortunately, the Tower police weren’t very concerned about what my parents thought. About two months later, I got an irate call from my dad.

“What the fuck?” he screamed. “You just got a letter from the Ann Arbor police saying you’re wanted for retail fraud! What the fuck?”

I explained the situation to my dad, and he managed to cool down somewhat. Retail fraud certainly made it sound a lot worse than it actually was. He gave me the number of a police officer in charge of the case and I assured him I would take care of it. 

I hung up and immediately called Ann Arbor police.

“Well, you’ve got two options,” the cop in charge of dealing with price fixers told me. “Number one, you can plead not guilty, and we’ll take you to court. Number two, you can plead guilty and we’ll put you in the first offender program.”

“What happens in the first offender program?” I asked.

“First offender program is a $300 fine, 90 hours of community service, and 6 months of probation.”

That sounded like kind of a rotten deal, especially since I’d already paid the guys at Tower $60 for nothing. But I was torn, because I knew I was guilty. I decided to call a campus lawyer to get some advice.

“Always plead not guilty,” the lawyer told me.

“But I’m guilty,” I said.

“Doesn’t matter,” he answered. “The courts are so backed up that they’ll stick you at the bottom of the pile and you’ll probably never have to deal with it again.”

So I followed his advice. I pled not guilty. And the lawyer was right; I was never contacted again. I felt a little strange about it, because I knew I was guilty and I have a life rule that I will never lie under oath. I have not been able to demonstrate that rule yet, but if I ever end up on Judge Judy, be assured that the other guy is the one lying. 

There are two postscripts to this story. The first postscript is that I wrote a fan letter to the band, Possum Dixon, telling them the lengths I had gone to to get their CD. One night when I was home from college, the lead singer of the band, Rob Zabrecky called me on the phone.

“Hey man,” he said. “I just wanted to let you know that we thought your letter was hilarious.” It was probably the only letter Possum Dixon ever received. 

We talked for a few minutes. He told me the band was on tour with Frank Black, who used to go by the name Black Francis when he was a member of the Pixies. 

“Do you call him Frank, or Black?” I asked. 

“We call him Charles,” he told me.

Before we hung up, I made some really embarrassing comment about how we were now friends. Rob sort of half-chuckled and hung up, never to call again.

The post-postscript is that just last year, I was at the Magic Castle with my friend Ryan, a magician. The Magic Castle is a somewhat mysterious and exclusive LA club where  magicians perform magic for other magicians. You can’t get in without an invite from a member of the club and you have to wear a suit and tie. 

We were waiting at the bar for one of the shows to begin, when Ryan saw another magician he knew.

“Hey,” he said, introducing me, “this is Rob Zabrecky.”

“Rob Zabrecky?” I asked. “You didn’t use to be in a band called Possum Dixon, did you?”

Turned out: yes, he did. Same fucking guy. 16 years later, the guy who’d called me from across the country after I wrote him a letter about how I was wanted for retail fraud for marking down his band’s CD was now a working magician who just happened to be at the same weird magician bar as me and my friend who just happened to know him. I told Rob the story of our coincidental early encounter, but he didn’t appear to remember any of it. It’s possible he immediately remembered my weird comment about how he was my friend and he was feeling embarrassed for both of us. I maybe shouldn’t have ended the conversation by telling him we were clearly destined to be together.

The Night the Lights Went Out in the City

In 2003 I was working at a horrible company in Manhattan that produced entertainment websites but was really just a front for fucking people over. What they did was collect email addresses through various web campaigns in which they’d promise to help you win an iPod or whatever and then sell those email addresses to spammers. My job was to manage two “entertainment” websites that mostly consisted of pictures of scantily-clad women that had been stolen from other websites. I tried my best to include actual content, but I realized after about two weeks that it was a losing battle and that the only reason the websites existed was to steal people’s email addresses. 

The owner who I worked with most closely — we’ll call him Terry — fancied himself a graphic designer and he designed the sites himself and they were incredibly tacky-looking and I was pretty embarrassed to be a part of the entire venture. Terry was one of those guys who was always just a few inches off in conversations. Everything I said to him would go into a hamster wheel in his brain and get twisted around ever-so-slightly, until we were having two completely different conversations. Like, I would say, “where’s the bathroom?” and he would answer, “I think we need soap.” He was always almost there … you could sort of see how the connections had become jumbled … but you never quite got to where you wanted to be.

On August 14th at around 4:00 in the afternoon the lights went out and the computers shut down, making it impossible for us to do any of our important spamming work. We looked out the window. None of the surrounding buildings had lights, either. As we tried to puzzle out what was happening, we began to notice an eerie stillness. The thick blanket of noise that usually swaddled the city had disappeared. We never even noticed the noise when it was there, but the minute it went away, something felt desperately wrong.

This was two years after September 11th, and the wounds still felt fresh. At any minute, everyone in New York was prepared to leap into panic mode. My coworkers and I waited around for the power to come back on, feeling increasingly unsettled. After about 5 minutes, Terry came down from his top-floor office to join us. 

“It’s gotta be an attack,” he said. “They’ve taken down the grid.”

We were all in agreement that we were in the midst of another catastrophic terrorist event. New York does not go black by accident. Terry happened to live down the street, so we decided to leave the office and walk to his apartment. Only five of us went with him, even though there were about 20 people working there at the time. I guess we must have decided to let the others fend for themselves.

Taking to the street did nothing to alleviate our fears. Radios didn’t work because the radio stations were down. Cell phones got no signals. No one seemed to know what was going on.

When we got to Terry’s building, we had to walk up 25 flights of stairs to get to his apartment. We sat in his apartment and drank whiskey.

“If they’re smart they’re probably taking out the stock exchange right now,” Terry said. I wasn’t sure what good that would do them, but it sounded as plausible a tactic as any.

After about an hour spent in mounting terror, we finally managed to get a radio signal. To our relief, we learned the blackout had nothing to do with terrorism and everything to do with the crumbling infrastructure that will one day turn our country into a fetid swamp filled with sewage and potholes. Thank god. 

Terry had a friend who owned a bar in the East Village, so he suggested we walk down there and see if they were giving away their beer. It was the smartest idea he’d ever had … when we got there, that was indeed what they were doing. Everyone was in a good mood, on account of getting to leave work early and having free alcohol. I had my guitar with me because I was supposed to play a show later that night. I busted it out at the bar and performed a few numbers, and then I handed it around the bar and we all had an old-fashioned singalong. 

It was a magical, candlelit night. You might think New York would devolve into anarchy and looting under those kinds of circumstances, but you would be wrong. For one night, we were all free from the trappings of modern civilization. It felt as if the entire city had breathed a collective sigh of relief. 

After the bar, I took a bus uptown to my girlfriend’s apartment. She lived in Spanish Harlem. I had to walk about ten blocks from the bus to her apartment, which was a pretty creepy experience in the pitch dark. Along the way, I passed a shadowy figure on the sidewalk. “Better watch out, white man,” the figure said. I kid you not. That’s the only time I’ve ever been called “white man.” This guy didn’t seem to want to harm me, so maybe he was just trying to be helpful. Or he was alerting others that there was a white man coming, like “Watch out! White man!” Luckily, I made it to my girlfriend’s apartment free of incident. She had been sleeping and didn’t even realize there was a blackout.

The lights remained out in parts of the city for 3 more days. After about 24 hours the lack of electricity lost its magic and just became another thing preventing us from doing what we needed to do. 

The morning after the blackout I had to wait for 2 hours to catch a bus over the Williamsburg Bridge so I could return home. I could have walked home in about 1/2 an hour. But that’s what you do in New York: you wait. It’s far better to wait 2 hours to go 1 mile than to be walking that mile and have the bus pass you.