The Big Hollow

Originally Posted Sunday, March 31, 2013

I couldn't find a bunny costume or I would have posted a Furry today.  This is as close as I could get to an Easter costume.  Lack of planning on my part. 

I spent a bunch of money last night on big steaks and wine and scotch at a restaurant I'd never been to before.  The steaks were tasty.  Afterwards we went for after dinner drinks at the place on the Boulevard where I had my last "encounter."  It went fine.  Hundreds of dollars later, I was in bed.  C'est la vie. 

This morning I am meeting a young woman at my studio.  I suspect that it will not go well.  Just intuition.  I am not excited.  The shoot is nothing new.  I didn't know it was Easter when I told her I was free.  Not that I am missing any egg hunts or church services. 

Yesterday's trip to the greasy spoon was unsuccessful.  When I got there, a little handwritten sign said they were closed Saturday and Sunday for Easter.  Really?  I don't think I'm going there any more.  I will need to find another dive.  I ended up with eggs Benedict back in my neighborhood instead.  I was hungover most of the day. 

But last night we started off with scotch at my house.  Scotch will always pick you up.  It is like speed in a way.  It will pick you up and keep carrying you for a long time, right until the floor caves in.  But that is the magic of scotch.  Everything has its magic.  Champagne "is like a mist before your eyes," as Jimmy Stewart says in "The Philadelphia Story," "and whiskey is like a slap on the back."  Wild Turkey always makes me mean. Wine is for holding your tongue and beer will make you stupid.  Cocktails are another matter.  They have their own alchemy. 

My day will become traditional after the shoot.  I will get Easter Lilies for my mother, and she will cook a ham.  She will be sad, I think, because I am a heathen and because I haven't produced a big family for such occasions.  I don't even have a girlfriend I can bring into the mix.  She sees us as failures, I assume, eating alone at a table for two on Easter evening.  I will not have joined her at church, etc.  No knuckleheads to hide eggs and candy for. 

As a kid, I always hated Easter.  I hated the colors, all pastels, and I hated the cheap candy we were given, hollow waxy "chocolate" eggs and bunnies, jelly beans, something squishy in a yellow wrapper that had a white spongy middle, and all those little foil wrapped suppositories they called chocolate eggs that were such a pain in the ass, the eggs having melted somewhere along the line so that the foil was embedded in it.  I hated the fake green grass in the yellow and pink basket, and I was not excited to eat cold hard boiled eggs that bled color on your hands.  There was dressing up and church and a bunch of reverence that I resented.  There was nothing good on t.v. on Easter.  It was just a big, hollow day, hollow like those horrible chocolates I ate. 

But I will not say those things to my mother tonight.  I will talk about how lucky we are to live here in this weather, to have the food and the beer and wine I will take, how lovely the flowers are.  And I won't be lying.  There is no doubt about it.  I am one lucky son of a bitch.  And that is not a comment on my mother except the lucky part.