Friday, January 07, 2005

yardman This is my yard man.  He comes by my house every couple of weeks or so to cut my yard. He doesn't have a truck or a trailer or even a riding mower.  He just has a little, pawn shop quality push mower that he pushes down the street. Today my yard man came by and asked me for work.  But on this occasion he didn't even have his little push mower.  He just had a rake and a shovel. My yard man said he really needed the work to get a meal and a room tonight, so I said okay.  Just rake or whatever, that would be fine. My yard man really does a pretty  good job for the price (about ten bucks).  But I hire him not so much for the work, but for the short lived feeling of power I get.  For about ten minutes I feel like some sort of benevolent, white-man provider.  Part of the leisure class.  One of the landed gentry. Today my yard man raked all the leaves in my yard until the sun went down.  With a special benevolent feeling I made up this little care package of food and drink.  I pulled a can of Chicken noodle soup out of my cupboard, and some tuna.  I also pulled this leftover bottle of champagne off my fridge. When my yardman was done I gave him the soup and the tuna and the champagne and $16 dollars in cash. I was about to close the door, but then I thought how rude it was that I had never asked my yard man his name.  When I asked, it felt like a touching scene from a made for tv movie. "My name is James," he said, stuffing the loot into his backpack.  "But most people call me Yardman." 9:41:04 PM    comment [] bowling Tonight I went bowling with Mariel, at these red-neckie lanes up on 9th street. I could feel the sanitized scum and germs penetrating my sock from the day glow bowling shoes. Bowling alleys make me kind of sad.  They make me think of diverting yourself the best you can from a stale and ordinary life.  Your dream was to be an astronaut.  But instead you deliver and install kitchen appliances.  Your wife is fat.  You have a transformer in your back yard.  On Friday nights you go bowling. But these people do well at bowling.  They know how to put that spin on the ball so it curves across the lane and gets you a spare on your second try.  These people bowl over two hundred, and once in their lives they get a perfect game and they put their picture on the mantle, grinning in a t-shirt. I haven't really improved at bowling since I was a kid.  As a kid I got about one strike or spare per game by luck.  At thirty-four I get about one strike or spare per game by luck.  My ball doesn't have the professional curve as it goes down the lane.  I roll the ball straight in this mechanical, one-dimensional way.  I overthink my throw as I walk down the boards, and the ball doesn't do what I meant it to do.  With dream-like impotence it never hits the center, but always to the left or right.  If I think someone is watching me from the next lane, its likely to go into the gutter.  Whatever it does, I do a little spasm dance to express my delight or disappointment. By the tenth frame the my score is something like 82. After three games my fingers ache and we return our shoes.  My scum and germs have joined everyone else's scum and germs.  My three games of bowling cost thrirty dollars.  Shit, that's ten dollars a game.  Fifty cents a bowl.  If I was getting strikes, it would be a dollar a bowl. How does the kitchen delivery guy afford that with his fat wife and three kids?  They must have coupons.  Or maybe they know the owner. 8:47:18 PM    comment []

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