Circadian Addiction

the visit from hell
It all started out quite innocently enough. My friend Celeste and I decided to go and visit and old friend of ours, Annelle. Annelle had pretty much fallen off our radar when she decided, radically, to get married, get pregnant and quit her job as an independent agent. We had tried to stay in touch, doing that "it does not matter that your entire life is now completely different from ours" thing. but, truth be told, she freaked me out beyond all measure. For a little background just let it be known that I did not like Annelle all that much before she did the 180 life around thing. she was pretty pedantic and boring. then when she met brad she was boring and pedantic in stereo. they were the perfect couple. Anyway, as a perfect example of how close we had all remained we were going to see her "baby" for the first time...who was now three years old.
The toughest thing, when you had a friend that had broken from the pack such as this one, was finding what to talk about. We complained about work, and men, and never having a good orgasm. she talked about gymboree and baby Einstein and how many times her kid had made "number two" in the potty this week. This woman could use the word "nipple" in everyday conversation and no one thought anything of it. How could the two worlds ever meet?
On our drive over there Celeste and I rehearsed the subjects that were ok to go into. we tried to steer away from anything that would get us into unknown and unwanted to be known territory, i.e.; diaper changing, the color and size of her kid's bowel movements, how surprising and unstoppable his genius IQ was, the latest sale at Baby Gap and what skids they had to grease to get him into the right kindergarten.
Celeste had a flask full of some kind of flavored gin and were were taking a few pulls off of that before the visit commenced. this is not our usual form of relaxation. oh, well, it was. But we were normally relaxing before a really raging night out. not a visit to romper room. but lets face it, neither one of us was good with kids...in case you may not have realized that.
"What is his name?" I asked her as we pulled onto Annelle’s street.
"Oh, Christ, I don't know...just call him the baby until she says it. We should be ok."
In the back seat of the car was a curiously wrapped stuffed giraffe that had quite an entertaining array of sayings, which he would spout off whenever you hugged him. we hoped this was the type of thing a three year old liked. the lady at the store had assured us that it was safe for toddlers. Apparently nothing would leap off and choke him at any rate. This was going to be one quick visit.
Right away it went badly. First of all, he was loose. running around like some kind of demented banshee. and he was naked. and wet. Annelle, a woman we had once admired, a woman we had once learned cutting edge business tips from, was chasing him with a blue fluffy towel and saying things like "come here monkeymuffin, come here to mommy, your little weewee must be cold." the aforementioned "weewee" had, at that precise moment, become an item of intense interest and we stood in the door, open-mouthed, and watched as the kid peed all over the very lovely oriental in the foyer. "Hi girls!" Annelle chuckled at us as she wrangled her budding young Chippendale into the towel.
"He’s loose,” I said. Celeste jabbed me in the ankle with her very pointy shoe (bought on sale the last time we were out together and much better than those horrible mary-jane type things she had been wearing up until then)
"Well of course he is silly. he isn't some kind of exotic bird needing to be caged. no clipped wings here. and we just had a wonderful bathie, didn't we Mason?" ah, the first sign of truly deranged parenthood. speaking as if you were still on entity. Give it up Annelle. the cord has been cut. pretty soon the only time you are going to hear from this kid is when he needs money. the inevitable path of evolution.
The visit didn't get much better from there. we found that Annelle had turned into one of those inane and bored housewives who arranged strategic play dates for her kid and tried to teach him other languages when he barely had a grasp of his own. She had also become a crazed gym-goer who tried recruiting us to curves several times. I wondered if soon they would be hitting the streets with their pamphlets, speaking the word of the thigh master and the butterfly crunch.
Needless to say we cut the visit as short as was politely possible. the kid spent the whole time hurling himself at me, occasionally biting Celeste and jabbering on in some monosyllabic language that Annelle seemed to translate beautifully.
If I relate any stories such as the above to my mother she informs me that I am merely jealous. that I can feel my biological clock ticking. She reminds me that I could have married Chad Hollenbeck, the chess champion of my senior class. She reminds me that she has no grandchildren and that every single other woman her age on this planet has at least one. She reminds me that my father has a bad heart and would go easy to his grave if he knew that his only daughter was being taken care of (preferably by some surgeon or top notch raking it in lawyer). gotta love those parents.
so, to top the day off and to celebrate the lovely weather we are having, I decided to cook for my friend Mitch. I made flounder in dill butter sauce, boiled new potatoes and asparagus boiled in white wine and lemon. not my best but it was a spur of the moment thing.
Mitch is my gay friend. but I, unlike some, do not have the girlfriendy,loves-to-shoe-shop-and-watch-chick-flicks gay friend. No, I have the only gay homophobe ever known. Mitch is constantly complaining about how other gay men make gay men look bad. I am not sure what he means by this. I wouldn't say that he has hidden his inclinations, nor do I care...but it seems to be an important subject to him. Whatever. he always brings over the best bottle of wine so that makes him tolerable. and he reads the same things I do so I can always steal a book from him when he is done. Makes for a beautiful relationship. but, as my mother often points our, no hope for grandchildren.

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