Shufflin Dance

Beef patty breath

An upsetting turn of events, to be sure: you buy a fixer-upper, live there and do your art and make a little money and just try to keep on keepin’ on, only you fall behind with the taxes and the water bill and what have you.

The accounts go to a collection agency, then some fraudulent business organization, “oddly” named Beef Patty Breath, comes along and pays off all your debts—and then, much like chronic, meat-induced halitosis steals your appeal to other human beings, Beef Patty Breath steals your house from you, through some illegal paperwork shuffling plus a possible a lack of due diligence on the part of some beaurocrats.

Some eight years later, the Times prints a story, accompanied by this lovely photo of your old DVDs and cassette tapes, covered with parts of the roof and god knows how many species’ worth of feces.

(Look for my memoir, Species’ Worth of Feces, to be published by ECCO, Spring 2012).

Diaper Fish

Ingredients:

1.5-pound cod fillet from the greenmarket fish guy who, according to the nutty unemployed moms on the neighborhood listserv, yelled at someone’s kid for erasing some of the things written on the dry-erase board he hangs in his tent to let people know what he’s got today;

-handful of all-purpose flour
-Salt and freshly ground black pepper
-Splash of olive oil

-Too much butter
-5 cloves garlic, sliced into slivers
-About 1/4 cup assorted, irritatingly spicy olives left over from a weekend visit from family
-Splash of totally fine, no big deal Spanish white from the local liquor store

-Chunks of previously-roasted peeled sweet potato, completely unseasoned because if you weren’t so selfish you’d have pureed them for the baby like you’d intended. although maybe sweet potatoes contribute to his occasional constipation? Either way you’re a terrible parent/person.

1. Season the flour with the salt and pepper even though you know that there is never enough salt and pepper in the world to make up for what gummy bullshit will happen in the pan when you try and sear the fish in the olive oil, because your pan isn’t really hot enough, because you you are impulsive and impatient and therefore bought the first apartment you looked at, a loud, dark first-floor apartment in Queens with a shitty cheap stove, and your guilt-forged middle class values (and, frankly, lack of a credit card) prevent you from replacing it with a brand-name stove that makes it easier for people with disposable incomes to pretend to know what they’re doing in the kitchen but really just brands them as sad, striving pre-menopausal/prostate cancer nightmares.

2. Drink two glasses of wine in rapid succession. Feel a brief flicker of superiority about not having a credit card, followed by crushing guilt over recollection that husband paid off your credit card balance.

3. Husband enters kitchen to ask why cooking food smells “like diaper.”

4. Run with that particular ball by throwing the olives and the sweet potatoes together in the food processor, thinned with a little water. Run the motor until the result looks exactly like some odious baby shit. Serve directly on top of diaper fish, with remaining wine and half of another bottle.

is fear of appearing narcissistic itself a form of narcissism?

One of the wonderful, terrible things about the internet is the way in which it allows us to peer into the minds of other people with unfettered internet access (which should not of course be mistaken for the general population). One need only start a Google search with the word “is” and a few other letters (and then wait for suggested previous popular searches to present themselves) to understand that Google is serving as Ouija board/physician/Sunday school teacher/life coach/friend who backs up your particular brand of crazy to the vast (or perhaps tiny?) universe of disconnected human beings to whom all of this information and access and Facebook herding of people you went to second grade with might feel like a bit too MUCH.

Is it dangerous to drink half of a bottle of Oloroso sherry on an empty stomach?

Does the UPS man judge me?

Is there something deeply toxic in Bisquick?

At what point does my child’s recurring fungal diaper rash mean that I should expect a visit from a social worker?

If I deeply wound with a dirty kitchen knife someone to whom I am legally wed because his snoring and sleep-thrashing wake me up every goddamn fucking night, will I still go to jail?

Which person should I believe: the lady in the laundry room who says my baby and I will die if we don’t get the swine flu vaccine, or the lady on the internet who says my baby and I will die if we do get the swine flu vaccine?