(Wo)Man at Work, or: Thank God I'm a Country Bear!!

My wife is home. The children are alive. Cue applause. No autographs, please, I just need some "me" time. I don't want to stain your program with the tears of a clown.

And she is already, again, still--back to work. Almost 11:00 on a school night and she is sawing away, in the garage, (on one of those kinds of saws that have to be plugged in and have different kinds of blades and are really dangerous and stuff), while I struggle through a very challenging bout of Games With Friends with this guy who went to fucking Yale Law School, for fuck's sake! And beneath her safety goggles there is a gleam in her eye. If she could hear herself think over the hum of the electric saw, she would whistle whilst she worked. "I almost feel like Gepetto," she said to me tonight, which immediately qualifies as One of the Best Things She's Ever Said and she's said a lot of great shit.

And then eventually I thought, as I always do, "How exactly in what specific way does that pertain to me?" And then I thought: Who do I almost feel like? Just think something and then say it right away. And I said: "I almost feel like Bartleby!! I almost feel like Gregor Samsa!!"

And then I thought: Oh, shut the fuck up. Don't be such a douchebag. I like to get up in the morning. I like to go to work. I like to build and create and convince and cajole and coast-when-I-need-to and, when all is said and done, cross the finish line or break my back or die trying. I feel like fucking Gepetto too godamnit.We're a couple of Gepettos here, and Fuck You if you can't handle a little gay marriage all up in your shit. Wrong century, bro.

I am built for the thing which I am supposed to fit into. I am built for the thing I find and fit into. I am made to be the man I am, or the man I will be; either way I Am Becoming. And that takes work. And us Huntingtons were born with orange vests and heavy beards and arms of steel.

Life Without You, Day 7

And we call this next piece: "I Miss Mommy: A Study of the Maternal Archetype in Wood, Paper and Ink." But we'll come back to that. First, I will give you something my wife is an artist at creating, like many other things, and something I am weirdly unable to figure out to how use and instead simply mangle and make fun of and co-opt in a kind of robot-trying-to-play-human way, like many other things: a list.

Since You've Been Gone I Can Do:

1. Whatever I want.
2. Virtually nothing right, it seems, about half the time.
3. Some things kind of adequately, some of the time.
4. Some things heartbreakingly, heroically, Rocky-Balboa-Vs.-Clubber-Lang kind of INCREDIBLY WELL FOR AN UNDERDOG, pretty much all the time in my own head including the time I remembered where the hand soap refill was, a heroic act! but in reality absolutely none of the time.
5. Any kind of dance you'd like, any kind of tune you want to hear, any kind of treat you'd like to eat, anything you want me to do if you will JUST. FUCKING. LISTEN. TO. ME. To my children, I mean. I am the dancing monkey, and I've got mantits.

Since You've Been Gone I Can See:

1. Whomever I Choose
2. Messes. Everywhere. Every minute there's another godamned mess! And nobody else sees it! Nobody else sees it but me! Come on!!!!!!
3. Why so many parents fuck up so many kids because they just can't keep on a lid on their own crazy.
4. The following scene (dig, if you will, the picture, to do a paisley mash-up): 5 year old Finnegan Joseph Huntington, sitting snuggled up against his brother, cloaked in a mosaic knit blanket his Grandma Bibi made for him (special ingredient: LOVE), sniffling and wiping away tears as I stumble out of the shower first thing in the morning. "What's wrong, Finny?" "Well, two things are wrong. I can't find my gorilla, and I had him when I woke up and I had him when I walked in here!!! And, usually, when I wake up and I'm alone in bed in the morning and Mommy is awake I walk into the kitchen and she hugs me!!!" Sweet Jesus, the hug I gave that kid then. The hug of all hugs, the primal, rocking, goes-from-standing-to-sitting-and-snuggling whole body kind of hug. The kind of hug that defines what the word "hug" means in your mind. And he perked up. And I did too.

Since You've Been Gone I Can Eat My Dinner:
1. (On the couch, in the kitchen, outside, in the dining room, in my car, at Chuck. E. Cheese, but definitely not in a...) Fancy Restaraunt.
2. With the constant perfume of cat piss in the air about my head. After finally dealing with the litterbox today and then immediately changing my clothes, washing my face, washing my hands, washing my hands, washing all the towels and rugs and clothes, washing my hands; I have come to the following conclusion: the catpiss lives forever inside my nostrils. It's just a thing that happened, and it can't un-happen, ever.

And that picture, up at the top there, that. Finny was working away with blocks in the living room while I worked on the laptop, then scurrying to get paper and a pen, then getting his child scissors, then returning to the blocks. Finally he called me over to show me what he had made: "A picture of mommy. I couldn't use wood, you know, for the face, so I had to draw it on paper."

My Bathroom...Smells...Kind of...Funky...

Blunt force. That's kind of how it goes, whether you want to believe it or not. Maybe it's a timeline like this: Innocence....Fear...Anxiety...Anger...Defeat...Sorrow...BLUNT FORCE!!! Still, the last one leaves the biggest impression, you gotta admit.

I have been taught some lessons in honesty, in authenticity, in love and in loyalty this week. I have been taught those lessons by a five year old child. MY five year old child, to be exact. The fruit of my loins, as it were (...if there were some expression like that except way less creepy and oily and "ok, thanks, nice meeting you, gotta go..."than that). And the kid has got a point.

He can't do anything except tell me the truth. He loves me too much to lie to me. He has been dealt with fairly, and he will deal with others fairly in return. He will take part in their joy, he will acknowledge their sorrow, and when their eyes meet his he will tell them the truth. He is the boy this slouchy half-man wishes he could be. He tells the truth.

At various times during the past three matriarch-less days, the Truth has been: "I love you daddy. But I REALLY love Mommy." "I ate all my chicken! I'm a good eater. But I don't want to get fat! Just a good eater, not fat!" "You should be Jabba the Hut or maybe Hagrid for Halloween" and the following exchange: ME: "I miss Mommy too, and I'm doing the best I can. We're having lots of fun! Aren't you having fun hanging out with Daddy?" HIM: "Um...sort of."

And he's right, every time. And he loves me, like a rock. Like I love him. And it doesn't occur to him to not tell the truth. It just doesn't occur to him. And godamnit I fucking hope it never does. Tell the truth, Finnegan!! Always and with pride, tell the truth! You are loved! Tell the truth!

So for my part, The Truth, tonight: I am lonely. I am anxious. I miss my wife. I worry, you know, about what's going to happen...to everyone, everywhere. I am afraid that if I lived alone I would very quickly qualify for a Very Special Episode of Hoarders. I feel like I've spent a fair amount of my life pretending I was toughening up, only to discover that I had really just been getting more fragile. That my shoulders cannot bear the weight of the villages I have constructed atop them. That I don't know anything and everyone else knows even less. That maybe there is something I'm missing about the band Rush, or L. Ron Hubbard, or that show about that vampire who was sarcastic but still totally had lots of wounded feelings. That there is no comfort but false comfort, and my greatest aspiration is just to weave fantasies out of pixie dust.

And that my bathroom...smells...kind of...funky. After only three fucking days. Come on!!!

Why You So Fat?

I hear voices, in my head...like everyone does, right? And one of those voices is the "why you so fat?" lady. I've talked to my wife and a few other friends about her before, but basically the "why you so fat?" lady is a short, middle-aged woman wearing polyester and bi-focals who, upon first meeting me, sizes me up right away, looks me up and down quickly, and says the first thing that comes to her mind. Which is, of course: Why you so fat?

I've actually kind of really had that happen before, but the story would sound so self-pitying and racist if I told it that it wouldn't get the point across, which is probably why I created this fictional version in my head. She greets me primarily in moments of self-sabotage. Moments when, say--and this is purely hypothetical, mind you--I might be sitting at Chuck E. Cheese, 62 pounds down since last July, having walked the wall in Carlsbad this morning even with the kid scootering at my heels, having kept under WW points all day, eating a salad from the World's Saddest Salad Bar(TM)...and I reach over and inhale half a piece of picked-apart pepperoni pizza off my son's plate in less than a second flat. She appears, then, across the booth and says, simply, plainitively...Why you so fat?

There are a lot of reasons why I'm so fat. Since you asked. I have a PhD in Advanced Studies of Phenomenogical Theory on Why Tom Is So Fat. A partial list:

1. Because I'm not you.
2. Because I'm me.
3. Because I'm fat.
4. Because I don't really give a shit about all the things that most people give a shit about, all right? I can't make myself care about it, I'm sorry. I can't make myself like "Glee." I can't make myself drink Vodka. I can't make myself want what I do not want, no matter how much I'm supposed to want it. I don't care about it the way you care about it. I want to look the way I feel. I am large. I contain multitudes.
5. Cheetos
6. Genetics.
7. Because you're all so fucking skinny. Why are you all so fucking skinny? Why are you all so plastic and skinny? The runner-up to the salad bar at Chuck E. Cheese as the The Saddest Place on Earth (TM) is the pool at the La Costa Hotel Resort and Spa. You can bounce a quarter off of everyone's "skin." Bronzed plastic Oakley tight. Why are you all so skinny?????? Is this an alternate universe where bacon was never invented? Get your dirty paws off me, you damn dirty ape!!!!
8. Because I Hate Myself (TM)
9. Butter. Pecan. Ice Cream.
10. I am in a constant struggle not to lose my shit. Every waking moment is a battle, another signpost in the war. I am a valiant warrior, a leader even, and I spare no mercy for the enemy. But late at night in the foxhole I crave some sustenance. I seek relief. There are times, as the man said, when I am so lonesome that I take some comfort there. By "there" I mean "double-double."
11. I may be way fatter than you but I just know you've eaten one of those Doritos (TM) tacos from Taco Bell (TM). And I would never do that.
12. Nobody pays attention to normal people unless they used to be abnormal. I am the "Before." Watch the fuck out for the "After." Cuz he will fuck you up.