ooh, aah—that’s how it always starts—
Tuesday 24 February 2004 | I like a cookie
“—but then later there’s the running…and the screaming….”
(Jeff Goldblum as the redoubtable Dr. Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park II)
I am enraged to discover that Mandarin’s spouse hasn’t been sufficiently fixated on her, but instead indulging in some nonsense with an evil orc-chick. How could he?! I am perishing with concern and vast somethingness and a strong, entirely-in-character desire to wring the throats of all Miss Yalies everywhere, with all the panache and finesse of Gandalf Grayhame finally losing his cool and whacking Denethor upside the head. (And yes I realize that in posting that sentence I have just opened the floodgates to weeks of distasteful, creatively anachronistic banner ads.) And no I don’t want to think about the fact that I have acted on desires the spouse seems to be merely feeling.
I too have been losing my place in the script, the marital one, the bourgeoise one, the college graduate one, having spent the better part of my twenties in a library or under the duvet, and the first half of my thirties in either a cube or a marital argument. And now what am I, Queen of the Internet Vampire Sluts? Giving Hello Kitty a run for her Japanese money, wandering around with a simpleminded smile on my face, and staying up until four in the morning painting and painstakingly working out vocal lines and chord changes for standards I haven’t sung in a decade. I also bought a dark red brocade wingback armchair today for $40. I’m wild again, beguiled again, a simpering, whimpering child again—
Spring! It’s almost spring! Never mind that it’s bucketing down snow as I speak, never mind that I’m wearing multiple layers of thermal everything. Q.v. simpleminded smile.
But then there’s my former Physicist. (Low moan.) Aprés Homer, “Beer bring pain!” The Film Critic agrees with me: “Yes, this is how it starts. Then there’s the running, and the screaming, and the plastic surgery, and the relocation to South America….” This is what he gets for shagging a nineteen-year-old. This is what I get, for insisting on marrying someone I’d dated for six months. But I loved him! The oohing and the aahing. You know, she said conversationally, I really didn’t know it was possible to feel guilty and cheerful with such complete simultaneity. And right now, on the answering machine—the Physicist is calling me.
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