Just a Couple of Days (7 page)

“Flake,” he smirked, drying a goblet. “What are you talking about? It was just a plate.”

 

18
“Which do you like better?” Sophia once asked me as she sat in her rocking chair knitting with the joy of a kitten playing with a ball of yarn. “The tingling, needles-and-pins sensation when your foot falls asleep, or the dizzy, seeing-stars feeling when you get up too fast?”

“I don't much care for either, actually,” I responded. “Besides, they're really both the same thing. Your foot tingles because it's not getting enough oxygen, and you get dizzy because your head's not getting enough oxygen.”

“Good.” She gave her chair an emphatic rock. “Now I don't have to choose between them.”

 

19
The union of Blip and Sophia is far greater than the sum of its parts. Singly, they are mere sounds, notes with no purpose. Together, they harmonize like a chord never before struck, dancing to a tune only they can hear, living in a world only they can see. They are a providential pair, a dyad reunited, and the
happiest couple I've ever met. Strangers are forever commenting that they look like twins, a dually flattering pronouncement, for each is tremendously delighted at being likened to the other.

Sophia and Blip had already been dancing together for five years when I first met them ten years ago, but they got married (or
merried
, as they insisted) only eight years ago. They made certain, however, that their wedding guests understood that they were not about to start counting their anniversaries all over again.

It wasn't a legal ceremony anyway. In fact, they promoted it as an outlaw wedding. And indeed, it was a blatant disregard for normalcy. No one presided over the ritual but themselves, and it was held deep inside a gorge at a state park where such activities were not permitted. They took great delight in this fact and played with it from the start, sending out parchment invitations sealed inside bottles, daring their guests to attend this bandito matrimonial, to applaud them as they sought treasure in one another. Flamboyant costumes were required.

When the day of the wedding arrived, and they had dressed those who hadn't taken them seriously about costumes (myself included), they divided their guests into five groups of six. They gave each group a separate treasure map, five different paths leading to the same secret rendezvous. Then they disappeared, by which I mean they somehow ducked out of the picnic area while everyone else stood around looking ridiculous and trying to meet up with the others in their group. There was some grumbling but much amiability, for Blip and Sophia had succeeded in turning us into an unlikely gaggle of gypsies and jesters and monks and pirates. Since even the grumblers weren't about to skip out on a wedding, there was nothing to do but follow our directions.

I was an elf. Blip gave me some green tights and a tunic, then popped elfin tips on my ears and painted my face, “emphasizing your laugh lines,” he said. “You don't laugh enough. I'll bet you get cramps in your cheeks when you laugh too hard. That means that you're not laughing enough. Your face should cramp up when you frown, not when you smile. When you smile, the corners of your mouth point the way to heaven.” He stepped back and admired his work. “Did you know that all of your laugh lines ultimately emanate from a single point on your face?” He touched his green eyeliner pencil to a central point on my forehead. “That point is your third eye.”

 

20
Blip, of Italian and Irish ancestry, likes to call himself a Hindu, though he practices almost nothing of the religion, condemns the caste system as a justification for inequality, and chides karma as a charming but silly concept. He is, however, very enthusiastic about imbibing bhang to celebrate Shiva's birthday. He claims that this prevents the quick-tempered deity (who really only symbolizes an aspect of our own collective consciousness, he never neglects to add) from growing irritated and destroying the entire world with his third eye. When is Shiva's birthday? I do not know, but I am quite certain that it is not as frequent as Blip seems to celebrate it. As for Sophia, she's half Huichol Indian and half Russian Jewish, with a touch of Romany buried somewhere. She practices as much Judaism as Blip does Hinduism. On some Saturdays, she studies the tarot deck with Rabbi Rainbow.

When they had a child a couple of years after the wedding, I couldn't help but ask what religion that made their daughter,
since descent is matrilineal in Judaism and patrilineal in Hinduism.

They only shrugged the question off, as if it were as obvious as the purpose of existence itself. “She's a Hinjew,” they spoke in unison.

 

21
Blip and Sophia are not averse to their Catholic and Native American spiritual influences either. Along with Christmas and Hanukkah, which they celebrate on winter solstice with some local pagans they've befriended, they fast on High Holy Days and were never hesitant to engage in peyote and other such ceremonies in their youth.

Mostly they practice good cheer, which, they maintain, is the obvious purpose of existence.

 

22
Blip and Sophia imitate the innocence of their daughter, whom they adore. They named her Dandelion, though her eternally astonished eyes are more like black-eyed Susans caught in the headlights of heaven. Her nickname is Dandy, and she is the benevolent and undisputed head of their household. If ever she has a question, all else ceases until it is answered to her satisfaction, at which point she does a little dance halfway between a skip and a jumping jack and scampers into the next room.

When she was very young, she would sometimes wander over and join any company Blip and Sophia might have been entertaining. She would listen intently to the talking, and after a while attempt to participate. Thus our conversation was often reduced to “yabble wuzzel fossy kline,” or some such piffle, no
matter how serious the issue at hand. At first this was quite innocent, but after a while it seemed to take on something of a mocking tone. She would dance around us, imitating the motion of our flapjaws with her hands, prattling and chanting nonsense. Or perhaps I project my own insecurities.

Dandy never uttered an intelligible word except for
gardyloo
until her third birthday, at which point she commenced speaking with nearly perfect pronunciation and syntax, singing “Happy Birthday to You” along with everyone. Prior to that, Blip and Sophia thought their daughter might have aphasia, a psychological disorder in which the affected person cannot use speech, cannot connect words and ideas. They were not particularly concerned about this possibility, reasoning that it would keep them honest, since you cannot lie to someone who doesn't understand language. “She perceives your actual emotional presence, not what you claim it to be,” they cautioned. “So no b.s.”

When she finally did speak, it was a considerable relief to the rest of the adults who interacted with her, though not because anyone was concerned about her cognitive development. She was clearly advanced in that regard. Rather, we were relieved that she simultaneously relaxed her somewhat unsettling habit of listening attentively to whatever an adult might be saying, and then invariably answering “Gardyloo!” while pointing and giggling. She had a disarming ability to make one feel utterly foolish with this pronouncement.

Sophia explained that she was partially to blame for this, as she was the one who taught her the word. It was, as I've said, Dandy's first “real” word, and the only one she used until she was three. Gardyloo, Sophia explained, was an expression common
in some towns of medieval Europe. It was hollered out one's window just before heaving one's pail of piss or bucket of shit into the street below, for that was the extent of indoor plumbing in those days.

“That was Dandy's first word?” I asked.

“She learned it when she was being potty-trained. I always said it when we flushed the toilet.”

“But we think she extended the meaning to when she thinks we're full of crap,” Blip added, lifting Dandy onto his shoulders.

“Hardly complimentary.”

Sophia shrugged. “That plumbing detail is often missed in historians' accounts of the plagues that swept through Europe in the Middle Ages. They were wading through their own sewage, and blaming their sickness on witchcraft. Anyone who tried to reason otherwise was burned at the stake for heresy.”

“You say that like they were a bunch of shitwits and we're so much more advanced,” Blip challenged her. “We have toilets that flush now. So what? We still eat, drink, and breathe our own pollution and wonder why we get cancer.”

“Actually,” I couldn't resist debating, “some of the most current research is suggesting that genetics plays a large role in causing cancer. It's often very difficult to demonstrate environmental influences.”

“What does it matter if there are genetic factors?” Sophia dismissed my comment. “Those are only predispositions that would decrease as the environment became more pristine. And what's the point of that line of research anyway? Are we trying to alter our genes so we'll be able to live in our own shit without getting sick?”

I fell silent, Blip laughed, and Dandy answered for everyone. “Gardyloo.”

 

23
While I am on the topic of excrement, it's worth mentioning that Blip and Sophia were quite fond of their own. They went so far as to save it, compost it, and fertilize their organic garden with the fruits of their rectums. Their commode was a composting toilet. I, however, was forbidden from contributing to their fecal fund. They had a second toilet connected to a septic tank for guests such as me.

“It's an
organic
garden,” Blip explained gently to me one afternoon in their kitchen. “And I've seen the food you eat. We only eat pure, organic foods. Humans are at the top of the food chain, and the toxins we dump in our rivers and spray on our plants and inject into our animals eventually work their way back to us in the food we eat. That's why our fertilizer has to be organic. otherwise we'd be cycling the toxins through ourselves. I hate to tell you, but human shit is the most toxic shit of any species in the world.”

“Our poop doesn't stink,” Sophia quipped. “Which is not to say that we think we're something special.”

“We're not hot shit,” Blip added.

“And we're not full of shit either,” Sophia continued. “You can take that figuratively or literally. I poop three times a day. Gardyloo hooray!”

“Me too,” said Blip. “And it's easy, clean, and has a pungent, earthy fragrance. If your shit stinks to high heaven, something's wrong, and Glade isn't the answer.”

Sophia chuckled. “It's like body odor.”

“Right!” Blip interrupted. “Have you heard about that? I saw this commercial the other day, trying to sell something called
deodorant
. Deodorant. Have you heard about this shit?”

Before I could answer his sarcasm, Sophia pursued the point. “An advertiser would have you believe that humans couldn't stand the smell of each other until deodorants and antiperspirants were developed in the 1800s. Tell me, Mr. Geneticist, how would that be conducive to the survival of the species? Body odor is most unattractive, and so how could such a trait be expected to survive the gauntlet of natural selection? If we stink, it's because our bodies are excreting poisons. Poisoned people are not healthy, and thus do not make very attractive mates. Consequently, we hide behind petrochemical perfumes.”

Blip nodded, tapping away. “And did you know the toxins we ‘throw away' from us reach their highest concentrations in our own bodies? There was a public health alert in California in the sixties that advised against breast-feeding. Toxins reach higher and higher levels of concentration at each level of the food chain. Because we're at the top of the food chain, human breast milk had dangerously high concentrations of DDT, absorbed from the food the mothers ate.”

“That reminds me,” Sophia asked with an abrupt air of sensuality. “Would you like some cheddar cheese, Flake? I made it from the milk of my own breasts. One hundred percent organic, free-range. Aged three years.”

I was astounded, horrified, and embarrassed. I was on the verge of either screaming or laughing out loud. “No thanks.”

“Are you sure?” She got up from the table and walked over to their solar-powered refrigerator. “Weren't you breast-fed?”

“Don't be ridiculous. I was also weaned.”

“No you weren't,” she teased. “I've seen you drink cow's milk.
That's
ridiculous. You'd rather drink milk that comes from the teat of a cow than from a woman.”

 

24
Once, when she was about four, Dandy tumbled into the dining room when Sophia and Blip had guests over. “Why do power flowers stink?” she asked directly, wrinkling her nose.

“Power flowers?” Sophia responded. “You mean flower power, Dandy, and flower power doesn't stink at all. Flower power is wonderful.” Have I mentioned? Sophia is what some crusty clerk at a gas station off the interstate in the middle of nowhere might mutteringly refer to as a “damn hippie.” She did not, after all, shave her legs.

“I know what flower power is, Mommy.” Dandy giggled. “
Power
flower.”

“You're the power flower,” Blip teased her. “You don't stink.”

“No.” Dandy was adamant and becoming frustrated. “The
power
flower.”

“Power flower?” Blip and Sophia asked each other, puzzled.

“It stinks,” Dandy added.

“It stinks?” they repeated.

“Yuck,” she nodded hopefully.

“Where is the power flower?” Blip attempted.

Dandy fell to the floor amiably. “I don't know.” She sat up suddenly. “The
power
flower, remember?”

“Where did you smell it?” Sophia inquired.