As I Lay Frying Read online

  It’s going to take several weeks for data tabulation, diagnosis and suggested remedies. Meanwhile, we’re trying a tip from the clinic brochure. Since people snore most on their backs, we’re supposed to sew tennis balls into her pajama backs to keep her from relaxing that way. While these lesbians don’t sew, we do own a backpack. We’ll fill it with tennis balls, tell Bonnie to strap it on (don’t go there) and say, “G’night, Gracie.”

  Romantic, no, but we’re willing to give it a try. As for the clinic report, we’ll keep you posted. I feel a nap coming on....

  October 1998

  MAX JACOBS-QUESENBERRY

  1984-1998

  Max the Wonder Schnauzer died on Saturday, October 31, at age 14 and one half. A life-long resident of Laurel, MD, with a weekend place in Rehoboth Beach, DE, Max beat the medical odds by having two more enjoyable years of boating, Rehoboth Beach social life, and overturning trash cans following his 1996 cancer diagnosis.

  He leaves his devoted companions Fay and Bonnie, new puppy Moxie, and a host of friends, including Tucker R. of Critter Beach, Belle from Hell Galloway of Trumbull, CT, and Elmo Ramoy-McFall of Silver Lake in Rehoboth Beach. He was predeceased by his girlfriend Rita Mae Peters-LeLacheur of Rehoboth.

  Max was pleased to have survived long enough to mentor Moxie in all of his bad habits.

  In lieu of flowers, the family requests kibble contributions to local animal shelters.

  February 1999

  NO GROUT ABOUT IT

  It’s all Bob Vila’s fault. Strange grunting sounds are coming from my shower stall, where Bonnie is trying to cut wall tile. She’s been working on this project for so many weekends, people seeing me alone around town are asking questions.

  Well, everything’s fine. It’s just that wisely, my manual labor skills weren’t requested, except to run for the occasional sandwich or caulk gun.

  But we got lots of help. At one point there were so many assistants in the 32”x32” shower it looked like a Marx Brothers movie. “How many gay people does it take to.... “

  They sent me to the old Lowe’s store on the last day it was open. With its 60 percent off sale, it was day of the locusts in there. Every gay (and straight) person I know was in Lowe’s. You think the Millennium 2000 gay rights march will be big? You didn’t see the lesbians marching to the cash registers with power tools. The boys picked the place clean of designer faucets.

  So now I’m sitting here with my laptop, hoping I’m out of grout splattering range. Is it just me, or do you also think spackle, grout and caulk are all the same crap in different containers? They should simply call it groulkle. No matter what phase of the project we’re on, there’s a pail of the same white goo to step in. I’m convinced it’s a hoax perpetrated on a nation of Vilaheads.

  And speaking of hoaxes, let’s face it, life’s been weird. Did you hear about the National Security Agency banning this year’s best-selling toy in the workplace? Our nation’s top spooks feared the fuzzy furry Furby robot would record and divulge defense secrets. Apparently government intelligence (oxymoron alert) failed to notice that Furby entrails don’t include tape recorders. No wonder we can’t find Saddam Hussein.

  But what really floored me was TV coverage of the president’s Senate trial. On the trial’s opening day, every single news program led off with 20 minutes on the retirement of dribbler Michael Jordan. It was a whole country telling Congress to take a quarter and call somebody who cares.

  It’s been weird locally too. Here in Sussex County we had the infamous trophy defacing—literally. A sore loser from the Punkin’ Chunkin’ festival went out of his gourd when festival judges failed to find the gourd he fired. So he sawed the face off the gargoyle atop the festival trophy. Jeeesh. If other people behaved that way, Barbra Streisand would have decapitated Oscar after losing for Yentl. (She didn’t, did she???)

  And for news of the weird even closer to home, here’s a report for those of you who have been kind enough to inquire about Bonnie’s diagnosis from the Johns Hopkins sleep clinic.

  After I wrote about my spouse’s snoring problem, we both took some heat. One person noted that I made good and sure Bonnie would never leave me. “Who’d go out with her after reading about the nighttime honking?”

  Bonnie’s comeback was “who’d go out with Fay and risk seeing every embarrassing thing they’ve ever done in print?” She had me there.

  Well, it turns out that Bonnie does have sleep apnea and yes, it’s being treated so we can both get some rest. Bonnie sleeps hooked up to a machine called a C-pap that blows air up her nose all night. No, I am not making this up.

  Bonnie told me to tell you that she’s sleeping like a baby, feeling rested, and the only downside is an inability to fall asleep at will during Ivory/Merchant films.

  Of course, for me, it’s like sleeping with somebody on life support. She’s got this snorkel over her nose, hooked to a rubber tube from the air machine on the nightstand. Yes, a sense of humor comes in handy.

  We visited friends in Connecticut and when our hostess spied the set-up she couldn’t help howling, “My God, woman, you look like Lloyd Bridges in Seahunt.” (If you don’t remember Beau and Jeff’s Dad’s show on Saturday nights before Gunsmoke, no AARP card for you yet.)

  Then we recalled when lots of people slept tethered by hoses to those big bonnet 1960s hairdryers. Heck, hostess and I got through our college social lives by having the roommate with the overnight guest put Keds on the wheels of the bed frame to reduce squeaking, while the roommate without the guest slept in the other bedroom with the hairdryer blowing on her head to muffle the er...noise.

  This story got Bonnie’s rapt attention, but hostess assured her that in those days, since I was still hanging in the closet with the bell bottoms and tie dye and had absolutely no interest in fraternity boys, hostess got most of the exercise while I wound up with a head full of dry split ends.

  So on the whole, hearing the gentle whirr of the air machine is not unfamiliar to me. And it sure lets us get our rest. Although we do have to report that one night when Bonnie heard the dog coughing that pre-barf thing dogs do, she instinctively leapt up, grabbed Moxie off the bed and headed for the bathroom. She forgot she was still leashed to the nightstand and got bungy-jumped back into the sack. The dog was so surprised he never did throw up.

  So it’s been pretty weird all over. With 65 degree weather in January, the Rehoboth off-season seems to have lasted about two days. In fact, I noticed hundreds of women milling about Baltimore Avenue and environs this weekend.

  “I bet they’re all here for the grand opening of the new Lowe’s on Route One,” Bonnie said, which sounded plausible until I realized it was just her way of telling me to fetch more spackle.

  “I want the kind called Fast and Final.” she said.

  Yeah, like those two things could ever be true about one of our Bob Vila projects.

  I’m going to turn in my column on the way. I hear that the new Lowe’s is so big they hand out hiking maps at the door. If I’m not back by the next issue of Letters, hire a Sherpa guide and come rescue me. I’ll be in the aisle with the groulkle. Or would that be spaulk?

  March 1999

  IT’S GEEK TO ME

  It was the day the Congressional report on the Y2K mess was released, with newspapers and TV all squawking about the coming computer crisis.

  Along with reports of the woeful unreadiness of government agencies came tales of survivalists digging shelters to hoard food and guns. They seem convinced that on January 1, 2000, when the whole country’s power grid goes down (oh, if it were only that simple to stifle Jerry Springer…), with frozen ATM machines and people bartering toilet paper for Lean Cuisine, they expect Bill Clinton to revoke the Constitution, declare a dictatorship and end democracy as we know it.

  Lock and Load! These rabid survivalists plan to lock shelter doors, load their AK47s and keep less prepared citizens away from their stockpile of Dinty Moore Beef Stew. One enterprising family ordered waterb
eds for extra H20 storage. Yecccch!

  All this sounds pretty alarmist to me, but then Congress recommends that Americans should prepare for the year 2000 computer bug like they would a hurricane, by stocking up on canned food and bottled water in case vital services are cut off.

  Now unless you’ve been under a non-digital rock, you know that many computers might not recognize the year 2000. To save expensive disk space, early programmers tracked dates with only the last two numbers of the year. If not fixed, many computers will read ‘’00’’ as 1900, no doubt causing them to crash since computers weren’t invented then. You gotta love one writer who called it a Geek Tragedy.

  But so far, my all-time favorite Y2K comment comes from an e-mail memo now spamming the web. It’s addressed to an unnamed company from an unnamed technical guru, noting “As you requested, staff has completed 18 months of work on Y2K Compliance. We have gone through every line of code in every program in every system, analyzed all databases, all files, including backups and historic archives, and modified all data to reflect the “Y-to-K” date change. All dates reflect the new standard: Januark, Februark, March, April, Mak, June, Julk, etc. as well as Sundak, Mondak, Tuesdak, Wednesdak, Thursdak, Fridak, Saturdak I trust that is satisfactory.“

  I’ll say. So with Y2K scenarios in mind, Bonnie and I arrived at our Rehoboth condo the other night to find a total power outage. No lights, no heat, no welcoming frozen margarita. No frozen anything. In fact, sticky low fat faux ice cream was leaching out the freezer door.

  In the blackness, I groped for the phone, hoped I dialed 411 and asked for the electric company’s emergency number. When the operator started to spout numbers, I couldn’t see to write it down. “Could you connect me? “ I asked, having a flashback to days on Walton Mountain when operators did those things.

  “You have reached the emergency number for Conectiv Electric. If you are reporting a gas leak, press 1, an electric outage, press 2….”

  Who can see the numbers? I’m lucky I found the phone. I punched something, heard an odd digital burp and realized I’d punched redial. I had to start again with the operator.

  “For a gas leak, press 1….”

  I prayed for the kind of kinetic memory accountants get where their fingers memorize the calculator key pad. The only number I seem to know without looking is 227-FAST for pizza.

  Finally, I accidentally hit a key that got me to an actual person. “May I help you?”

  “Yes! I have no electric in my condo and it’s freezing everywhere in here except my freezer. Can you send somebody to fix this?”

  “How many units in the building are out? How many people have no electric?”

  “Just two of us and a dog, but if that means you won’t send somebody then there are a hundred of us here.”

  Fortunately, she laughed. And told me she’d send somebody out but that it might take a while. “Do you have plenty of blankets?”

  This was starting to sound bad. Just because I’d been thinking about Y2K preparedness didn’t mean I needed a drill.

  “Do I have to stay here?” I asked, knowing that over on Baltimore Avenue there were lights and comfortable bar stools.

  “Oh yes, because if there’s an appliance or circuit in your apartment that caused the problem they want you to be there when the electric goes back on.”

  They want me in here when it blows up? Not being a survivalist myself, it didn’t make me happy.

  After lurching around and groping for the walls like Audrey Hepburn in Wait Until Dark, I managed to find a candle or two, but no matches. So I left Bonnie and Moxie waiting for Godot and went to the Blue Moon for a light. Hmmm. Nearly last call. I wonder how long it’s been since somebody asked for matches because they actually needed a light, not a place to write a phone number.

  I hadn’t been home long with the matches, when the Conectiv truck appeared.

  The driver spied the three of us, huddled together for warmth in a condo glowing like some retro counter-culture opium den. A thousand apologies, they said. They’d meant to turn off a neighbor’s electric, not ours. “Call the Claims Department and tell them about the food you lost in the fridge.”

  Well, to be honest, there wasn’t too much—half gallons of Mudslides and Margarita mix, some fat-free cream cheese, and a jar of Hellman’s Real Mayo (just in case medical data reverses itself and Mayo is prescribed to reduce cholesterol and stop hot flashes). Oh yeah, there was that Heart Smart stuff we use instead of butter, but that showed no signs of melting, like when you cook with it.

  And since our total culinary reputation lies in our making reservations, I’m sure even the Conective Claims Department would sniff fraud if we cited lost rump roasts and Tuna Surprise.

  As these things go, our little Y2K preparedness drill put the problem in perspective for me. Let folks in Montana dig their bunkers; let New Years Eve revelers chance the air and cruise lines. Let conspiracy theorists protect themselves from dictators, banking paralysis and less reactionary neighbors trying to replace their canned Spam with fresh arugula, portobellos and moral pollution.

  As for me, I intend to be here in Rehoboth with my friends, hunkered down with a stack of matches, a glow-in-the-dark Timex watch, and plenty of party food. We’ll lock (the door) and load (up the battery-powered blender) and welcome the next Millennium.

  March 1999

  STOP THE BELTWAY, I WANT TO GET OFF

  Hi. What’s new with us? Oh, nothing much. In the past three weeks I quit my job, sold the mini-condo, listed my Maryland house, took a great job in Rehoboth, bought a new house and we’re moving to the beach!

  First, we had to complete an assignment from our realtor before putting the Maryland house on the market. Little stuff, like touch up paint, remove puppy gates, ditch dust bunnies, dispatch half the furniture, re-carpet the steps, take the buck naked Venus magnet off the fridge, pack up every stray possession we own and make the place look like an antiseptic model home.

  “We can do that.”

  And by the way, said the realtor, “I want to have an open house next Sunday.”

  Oh good. God may have made the world in six days but he didn’t have this much to do.

  Gentlewomen, start your vacuums. Let home improvement begin. With gleeful abandon I went through the basement, storage room, closets and drawers, gathering up unwanted detritus from eleven years of residency.

  I had bags for Goodwill, Bags for Sussex County AIDS Committee, bags for recycling, bags for the dump and, since I was staying up well into the nights doing this, big fat bags under my eyes.

  Every morning on my way to work, I’d stop by the dump. There I was, in my Jones of New York corporate drag, hauling trash out of the Outback and chucking it into giant dumpsters. If it was after-hours for Mount Trashmore, I cased the neighborhood for deserted dumpsters, executing hit and run, drive-by dumpings.

  By Wednesday, I’m loathe to admit, I stopped caring whether I was flinging my goodies into the right bins or not. Years of obsessive recycling came to a halt as this woman in a power suit tossed and ran, becoming an eco-terrorist, mixing green and brown glass, paper and cardboard, plastic and aluminum.

  One particularly ugly morning as I peeled into the dumpsite and got ready to shot-put old magazines and newspapers (“Clinton promises…”) a rather, ahem, big-boned woman working at the site spied me. I figured she saw the rainbow on the back of the car and was coming over to help. No, she was coming over to laugh.

  Meanwhile, back home, we worked like mules to fix stuff we’d happily ignored for over a decade. Bonnie, armed with screwdrivers, hammers, caulk and spackle (yet again), sanded, patched, painted and fixed the stove burner which hadn’t worked since 1989, while I took care of ferrying massive piles of bric-a-brac to the garage.

  Here’s a yardstick: we had so much to do, that by late in the week I was reduced to actual manual labor. “Go paint the cellar steps,” Bonnie told me, “You can’t do too much damage to concrete.”

  Meanwhile, she
was hauling a mound of dirt from the driveway to the backyard, hoping to shore up a sinkhole that appeared during the Iran-Contra scandal. A neighbor, coming to assist, spied me grappling with paint brush and bucket and called for reinforcements. “Bonnie needs help,” he telegraphed to the cul de sac, “Fay’s painting.”

  Actually, it was a combination painting and exterminating. Whatever crawly creatures lived on those steps suffered death by paint ball. Yo! Martha Stewart! Did you know that if you back into already-painted places, your butt does sponge painting?

  After I painstakingly painted the top step, and slowly continued down the flight, Bonnie could stand it no longer. She poured the bucket of paint on the second step and proceeded to sweep the glop downward, completing my task in about a minute. To her, the Sistine Chapel would have been a half hour job.

  On his way to Rehoboth Friday afternoon, our realtor stopped by to see what the place would look like when he returned for the Sunday open house. Boxes rose to the ceiling, the place was a wreck. He took one look and retreated to his Jaguar in horror.

  With the clock ticking, we called two of our fussiest (in a good way) boyfriends to come do domestic science. Amid a flurry of Windex, we found the desk in the den with its drawers hanging open. Apparently, Quasimodo the carpet man, who single-handedly moved all the furniture to replace the carpet (with new stuff so cheap it shines like a bad suit), broke the desk drawers. Great. Prospective buyers will think the place has been ransacked.

  We took a teeny martini break around 9 p.m. Friday night and, our luck, the garbage disposal choked to death on an olive pit. Fortunately, the plumber next door had a replacement disposal in his truck, disposing us of $60.

  By midnight Friday we thanked the dust bunny twins and sent them home. Come Saturday morning, we touched up the last dog scratches by the front door, locked it and headed for the beach. The Open House verdict? “Great traffic, but no contract yet,” said Mr. Realtor, “but congratulations, the place looks fabulous, I don’t know how you did it!”