As I Lay Frying Page 9

The Principality of Monaco, high on a rock jutting into the azure Mediterranean, with it’s yachts, Grand Prix track and Monte Carlo Casino was something I thought I’d only see in a James Bond movie. It looks even better in person. And it certainly explains what Grace Kelly saw in Prince Ranier.

  And I wasn’t prepared for the glorious mountaintop towns, walled cities, narrow winding streets and ninth century cathedrals. And of course, I took so many photos I have carpal tunnel finger.

  Although, where photo ops are concerned, every single French historical site is under renovation. Want a picture of the Paris Opera? It’s got scaffolding on it. Notre Dame? Scaffolding. Versailles? Scaffolding. The only structure not covered by scaffolding was the Eiffel Tower, which of course IS scaffolding.

  O’er the ramparts we walked, in medieval walled cities with churches and homes built up to 1500 years ago. With tile roofs, stucco walls, stone streets, windowsill flower boxes and charm to spare, I managed, for sixteen whole days, to deny the existence of vinyl siding.

  Think we have grand homes in this country? The chateaus those Louies built for their wives, mistresses, horses, boyfriends, you name it, beat anything Claus Von Bulow ever built for Sunny. By comparison, American mansions are outhouses.

  And the only thing I can say about Versailles and its gilt-covered, gaudy, wretched excess, is that one look explains the entire French Revolution. The masses took a gander and said “That’s it, cancel the royal Visa card and cut off their heads.”

  French highways are manic. The speed limit is 130 kilometers, or about 80 mph. You can drive that fast in the right lane and have itty-bitty Renaults whip past you on the left. Leadfoot Bonnie drove our little rental car.

  Bonnie: “It’s incredible, I’m going 115 miles an hour and nothing’s out of alignment, nothing’s shaking.”

  Front seat passenger: “Except me.”

  The four of us got along splendidly, with everyone viewing the trip from their own particular perspective. Larry the Accountant translated what everything cost and made sure we knew that the 130 speed limit meant “kilometers, not miles per hour, Bonnie!!!”

  Fastidious Robert, who, on our last trip did such a great job keeping our boat spotless, made sure we got a tour of French car washes, and was overheard at Versailles’ Hall of Mirrors wondering what it cost to clean the place.

  As for Bonnie, her fascination with home improvement had her studying flying buttresses and vaulted ceilings in case the French government ever contracted her to renovate Notre Dame.

  And I just shopped ‘til I dropped a whole lotta French francs. As for the food glorious food, after one week Larry calculated that if he kept eating at a similar pace, he’d soon be his own principality. After two weeks, we were sweating butter. On our way home, we expected to pass through airport security x-rays and proceed directly to Angioplasty.

  Our only food faux pas was a seafood appetizer Bonnie ordered. It arrived looking like a plate of French fries, but a closer look found the fries looking back in the form of little fried whole fish. My girl toughed it out but subsequently insisted on complete disclosure before ordering.

  What you’ve heard is correct. French food is fabulous. We avoided 3-star places in favor of small bistros and some new, innovative Parisian restaurants. France has a nifty tradition of every restaurant offering a three-course plus tip fixed-price meal. We stuck to these Le Menu meals and ate like royalty.

  And that rumor about the French not being friendly is poppycock. All over the country, folks couldn’t have been more helpful to the four Americans sputtering broken French.

  Toward trip’s end we left the guys in Versailles for an extra night while Bonnie and I headed to Paris. At the hotel, it appeared we were being told, in rapid French, that something was wrong with the reservation. But then a cute male clerk came up and translated. “Zare is some troooble with zee reservaaceeone. Zee bed, it is a doooble. Non zee twin.”

  “Ah!” I said. “Zee doooble is, um, good, er, bonne, er, tres bonne.”

  The clerk eyed the two women in front of him, smiled with recognition and said, “Oui??? Yes, this eeez good?”

  Then he looked back at the reservation book and asked “Zee other room, pour tomorrow, Les Monsiours, zee same?”

  “Oui,” I said. The clerk smiled, helped us with our luggage and for the rest of our stay made sure the four of us had everything we wanted.

  I have stories galore but space prevents it. I haven’t yet told you about the beautiful mostly naked girls (and boys) in Paris’ famous Lido show, or the scenic drive to St. Tropez, or being trapped on the Paris Metro with, of all awful flashbacks, a strolling accordion player. Mal de Mer. At least he was playing La Vie En Rose, not the Beer Barrel Polka.

  Bon Soir, Mes amies!

  June 1998

  AS OLD AS VINYL AND TWICE AS SCRATCHY

  They found me. It was inevitable, but it was still a jolt.

  Every day for the past several weeks I’d skulk into the house, sweat trickling down my back, terrified of seeing the mail. And every day I’d say, “Whew. Just bills.”

  But with every day it wasn’t there, I knew I was closer to the day when it would be. And that, sports fans, was yesterday. I got my application to join AARP.

  For readers too young to understand the stake through my heart, the AARP (American Association of Retired Persons) is an omnipotent organization for persons over the BIG 5-0. Irritatingly, you don’t even have to be retired. You can still have years of office politics, bad coffee and homophobic bosses to go.

  But the second anyone ever born gets within spitting range of fifty, AARP’s database lights up like your birthday cake. Forget the CIA, FBI, or the Royal Mounties. AARP should be on the trail of Jon Benet Ramsey’s killer and the abortion clinic bomber.

  This is a group that recruits. Their tactics include brainwashing recent applicants so they cough up names of equally decrepit friends. “Are you now or have you ever been about to turn 50? Can you provide names of your comrades?” Somebody ratted on Al Gore this week and he, too, got his letter bomb.

  So I stood staring at the envelope, hearing the theme from Hawaii 5-0 in my ears, wondering how I got this old. I mean unless I make 100 I’m not even middle aged anymore.

  About a decade ago, when I was already feeling old, but I now know that I was really quite young, I visited St. Augustine Florida’s Fountain of Youth.

  I was sitting on the stone wall in front of a painting of Ponce De Leon with Bonnie. A friend, camera in hand, stepped back to get the scene in focus. As he was about to snap our photo with the words “Fountain of Youth” above our heads, a juvenile delinqent in a pick-up truck roared by, leaned out the window and yelled, “You still look just as old!”

  We laughed so hard the photo is blurry.

  Well, I’m here to tell you that staring at my AARP invitation, I not only still feel as old, but apparently it’s now official.

  I began to realize my fate a few months ago when some zit-faced talking head on MTV called Bob Dylan the Grandfather of Rock ‘n Roll. Mr. Lay Lady Lay a grandfather? The times they are a changin’.

  Then I was watching a TV sitcom, blithely laughing out loud at the episode where a mother was apoplectic about having a birthday that ended in a zero. Very well dressed and exceptionally youthful-looking, she was, nevertheless the leading man’s mother for heaven’s sake, so I didn’t understand why the scriptwriters had her so upset about turning 60. But I thought the show was hilarious.

  That is, until Bonnie told me I’d made a tragic assumption and the entire show was actually based on the angst of somebody’s TV mother turning 50. Since we don’t have natural gas and I couldn’t put my head in the oven, I spent the rest of the night with my head in a glass of Absolut.

  Then I got People magazine’s “50 Most Beautiful People” issue. The fact I didn’t recognize a single person was a big clue that my blip is slipping off the radar screen of contemporary culture. I mean how did these people get famous without my knowin
g about it?

  And the government isn’t helping me stay youthful and fit either. This morning, I was huffing and puffing on the treadmill when I heard about the feds’ new Body Mass Report. By adjusting the national weight barometer, even as I was pounding the treadmill, and without gaining an ounce or eating a Twinkie, I was declared fatter than yesterday. There is no justice.

  But the mirror incident topped all. Sometime back in my forties I began to notice occasional random little hairs on my chin. Hey, I realize nobody ever talks about these things, but girls, it happens. Have tweezers, will travel.

  Then, several months ago the random follicle sprouts disappeared. Good news. It was only after my arms got too short for me to read anymore and I got bifocals that I discovered the harrowing truth—I’d been fuzzy all along, I just couldn’t see it. My God! How long was I walking around like Billy Goat Gruff??? Now I have to wear my damn bifocals to the damn bathroom just to see in the damn mirror. I gotta tell you, I looked younger before I could see.

  Woe is me. What’s the next stop? Depends? Although, in honor of their upcoming customer base of Boomers they should rename the product Baby Bloomers.

  And I just loved the recent news report that the music industry celebrated the 50th anniversary of the invention of the long-playing record. They’re obsolete for pity’s sake!!! What does that make me??? There I sat, still in my forties for a few days, staring at my AARP application.

  Hmmmm. They offer travel benefits, credit cards, investment programs (“Buy Viagra and Polident”), health insurance...and spouses are eligible, too. Oh sure.

  Just spoiling for a fight (I’m old. I can be cantankerous), I called AARP to ask if my same-sex spouse was eligible—and I was shocked and delighted to find out that apparently they are progressive old farts. Bonnie, being 14 months younger can now be an AARP spouse, causing her to go into her own pre-5-0 spasms, ha-ha.

  So I wrote the check, sent my application back and joined the largest lobbying association in America. And this morning, with my actual birthday only hours away, I’m moving from denial to acceptance.

  Heck, Rita Mae Brown and Lily Tomlin are over 50. Gloria Steinem and Jane Fonda have been there a while. Meryl Streep has only a year to go. I could be in worse company.

  And even old LPs are called classic rock.

  Just as long as I don’t start walking around in a plastic rain scarf, rolling knee high stockings down to my ankles, or covering Kleenex boxes with crocheted covers, I think I’ll be all right.

  July 1998

  IT WAS THE BEST OF BOATS,

  IT WAS THE WORST OF BOATS

  Talk about change of life. Now I’m homeless.

  Okay, I’m not sleeping in a cardboard box on Rehoboth Avenue, but metaphorically speaking, at least as far as weekends are concerned, I am temporarily without a home.

  It started with the new puppy. Now when people hear this news, they clear their throats and whisper “does that mean that Max...er.…”

  No, the grand old dog is still hanging in there. In fact, we bought the puppy for Max—for company and to have somebody to boss around. It’s worked out splendidly—for Max. It’s Bonnie and I who’ve been housebroken.

  The disintegration began as we headed for our first two-dog night aboard the boat. First, there was a three hour Bay Bridge tie up.

  By the time we got to the marina, station wagon bulging with, among other things, puppy, puppy toys, and puppy food, (no puppy poop yet, hurry!) half of under-aged, liquored-up Dewey filled the parking lot. The crowd took turns barfing, urinating or hurling insults at these two women of a certain age trying to unpack the kennel club. It was disgusting.

  With our duffels, leashes, dogs, collapsible puppy crate, Milkbones, chew toys, kibble, laptop computer and provisions, we had to run the gauntlet through the parking lot fraternity boys.

  Then, dragging our brood up the pier we looked like the Von Trapps fording every stream. Rough water made the boat a moving target. Transferring life-jacketed Schnauzers, our belongings, our bodies, and ourselves to the boat was hair-raising business.

  And by the time we got the pups out of their personal flotation devices, stowed our stuff and collapsed for a breather, it was time to reverse the whole ugly process and take the boys back out for one last pee.

  Then, the puppy, appropriately named Moxie, got his exercise by bouncing around the boat like a billiard ball. It begged the question, what were we thinking???

  Is it any wonder that by morning, on our way for bagels, we wandered into a condo open house? And, following our typical cautious, deliberate modus operandi, we signed a sales contract in the time it takes most people to decide between an onion bagel and croissant.

  If all goes well, by mid-August we’ll own a teeny, tiny downtown studio apartment with its very own Murphy Bed. It’s got a bedroom and living room, just not at the same time. But we will be able to see who’s coming and going on Baltimore Avenue. And it’s double the size of the boat cabin. Cups and utensils don’t have to be velcroed down, and we’d gladly pay the mortgage for the in-town parking spot alone.

  Yeah, it meant putting the boat up for sale. But heck, we’d been threatening to unload our hole in the water into which we throw money for at least two years.

  Of course, we secretly counted on the reputation of the used boat market to save us. People make it to the top of heart transplant lists faster than they sell used boats. You can stroll Rehoboth Avenue on a Saturday night in August and get a table for twelve for pizza faster than you can sell a used boat.

  “Don’t worry, Bon, we’ll get the condo, keep advertising the boat, and be in the nursing home gumming Jello when the damn thing sells.”

  We had an offer in 24 hours.

  Do you take Dramamine for seller’s remorse? When our vitals stabilized, we agreed it was for the best. “I’ll miss cruising with dolphins around Cape Henlopen and taking trips to Atlantic City,” said Bonnie.

  “Yeah, I’ll miss crab pots stuck on our propeller, jellyfish sucked into the exhaust, and going to dinner in damp, wrinkled clothes,” I offered. “On the other hand, it’s bye-bye to fireworks on the Chesapeake, bounding out Indian River Inlet to the ocean and water gently lapping me to sleep.”

  “And waking up to black flies and jet ski exhaust,” said my spouse, adding “don’t forget marina bills, mechanic’s bills, gas bills, and large unnumbered bills gone with the wind.”

  “But I will miss the folks at the pier,” I said, wistfully.

  “Yeah, and how about the drunken jailbait in the parking lot?” Bonnie said, sarcastically.

  As Charlie Dickens might have said in his Tale of Two Biddies, it was the best of boats, it was the worst of boats.

  So here I am, at 7 a.m. on the day we hand over the keys to Dave, Bay Pride’s new owner. We don’t close on the condo for three weeks yet. Friends have rallied with heartfelt offers to put us up, but most of them also remembered a visiting cousin, or long-anticipated trip to Botswana when they realized we come with a traveling circus of dogs and dog accoutrement.

  A few hardy souls are willing to offer us shelter anyway and to them we say “you’re brave.”

  So we’ve carted six years of boating debris to the car, folded our rainbow flag, and packed the blender. We left new owner Dave the flyswatter, marine toilet paper and anti-mildew spray.

  And as I sit in my cozy boat, gently rocking in the slip, pecking at my laptop computer and trying to finish this column before Dave shows up, I wonder if I can really part with this boater’s life—the adventurous cruises, wonderful harbors, luscious sunsets, cocktails on board, frozen mudslides on the dock, the romance of it all.…

  “WOOOOOF!”

  “Yip, Yip, Yip.”

  Oh no. The dogs are up.

  “Bonnie, wake up. You get the life jackets, I’ll find the leashes. Hurry! Here, grab the puppy. I’ll take Max. Moxie wait! No!!! Bad puppy! I’ll get the paper towels. Careful, don’t let Max fall in the water...watch your step. Watch him.


  Hey, watch your keys, they’re hanging out of your pocket. You’re keys are…here, let me help you….”

  Splasshhhhh!!!!

  I think the old adage is going to be true. The two best days in a boater’s life are the day you buy it and the day you sell it.

  See you in town.

  August 1998

  HAPPY TRAILS TO HOWDY DOODY TIME

  It’s been a tough few weeks for Baby Boomer icons.

  First we lost Roy Rogers, known to Gen Xers and thirty some-things for Double-R-Bar-Burgers, but to us boomers as the consummate TV cowboy.

  I wonder how many of us FDAs (future dykes of America) used the Roy Rogers early warning signals. My mother should have known something was up when I threw a Halloween tantrum for being made to dress like fringe-skirted Dale instead of pistol-packin’ Roy.

  And when my sister’s favorite toy was Betsy-Wetsy, the doll whose sole claim to fame was wetting her pants, I could never understand why my parents thought my fixation with Roy Rogers and Trigger wasn’t sensible.

  Eventually I moved on to annoying my family by mooning over Annette instead of Frankie Avalon, and relegated my Roy Rogers lunchbox to the junk heap.

  Until we got word of Roy’s demise, I hadn’t thought about him in years. Except, that is, for noticing the occasional tabloid photo of Trigger and Bullet (Roy’s German Shepherd) taxidermied for display at his Happy Trails Museum.

  When almost everybody I know sheepishly admitted to wondering if Dale planned to have Roy stuffed, too, I realized that Roy and Dale had been much better publicity agents than I’d ever imagined. I know I’ll be watching the National Enquirer for an update.

  We’d hardly had time to sing Happy Trails to Roy when we heard that Buffalo Bob Smith, Howdy Doody’s faux cowboy sidekick passed away at age 80. Since nobody but Bob ever accompanied Howdy on TV or to personal appearances, I had to conclude that on July 30 Howdy Doody breathed his freckle-faced last as well.