Yıldönümü.

The anniversary.

Without realizing it, a very special anniversary had come and gone, and I, like a lazy, beer-besotted louse of a husband, have neglected to celebrate.

This here blog was one year old as of the 10th of this month.

Huh.

238 entries worth of drivel : my gift to you all.

I remain, as ever,

Dom

The swan song of the corn.

I could provide a colon-load of weary excuses for not having 'blogged for so long, but the armload of methadone is wearing off and I am getting edgy again. No! I simply WON'T go down to the abandoned slaughterhouse to meet "Hank" for some pick-me-up! Shee-it, that bitch has gotten too 'spensive, an' I ain't playin'.

Dawn comes to the Republic not so much "rosy-fingered" but "well, yes - I suppose the sky IS the color of the carcass of a putrid cetacean that has washed ashore only to be picked clean by legions of carrion-beasts." I spent about twenty minutes standing mutely in the shower this morning before I realized I was actually supposed to be doing something in there; it is, after all, extraordinarily difficult to schmear a bagel whilst washing, rinsing and repeating. From the bedroom, Balthazar wailed like he was being drawn and quartered - apparently, he loves his daddy and wants to spend as much time with him as possible. If by "spend as much time" I mean "attempt to suckle upon at every opportunity", then yeah, that's what it was. I have no earthly idea why he's so fixated on nursing upon my ghastly-pale flesh- he wasn't weaned early. If it's a way he's chosen to bond with his daddy or mark me as his own, I can honestly say that I'd prefer he hosed my attractively gorrilla-hairy legs with his white-hot catpiss, because that doesn't make me feel like I am in some sort of deviant porn for fratboys and Japanese businessmen. Nothing reeks of bestiality like having a kitten attempt to savage your nipples through a t-shirt. Wait, I take that back - I guess I don't want to be Golden Shower Cat Daddy, either.

*slow exhale*

Driving from Greenwood (Motto: No, We're Not One of THOSE Pretentious White Suburbs! Hey! Get Off My Lawn Unless That's a Tan!) to the Republic a few mornings ago, I felt slightly akimbo and couldn't quite put a finger on why. Then I realized - hey, you just shat in your own pants. No, actually I'd noticed that something about the landscape had changed and it took me about ten minutes to figure out what was going on because apparently I am a high-functioning 'special needs' person.

The corn is gone.

I don't know when it happened, and honestly, I am glad I didn't see it go. Much as when you go to seafood shanty and mark a certain Maine-reared arthropod for death and feel a surge of intense, Judeo-Christian-inspired guilt, I couldn't have watched the corn get savagely slashed and ground into base feed for cloven-hooved ungulates.

(Aside: When Domonic was in Turkey, he spoke of himself in the third person just like he's doing right now. No, when Domonic was in Turkey, one of his "fondest" memories was of going to a tiny island's only seafood restaurant - located right on the minature harbor - and ordering octopus for his dinner. The garson took a live, very unhappy octopus from a previously hidden tank and scuttled out back, where dull "whack, whack, smack, punch" sounds issued forth, marking the creature's shuffling off this mortal coil. He came back covered in ink and announced that the octopus would now be "tender" and would be ready in about fifteen minutes. Try living with yourself for that one. )

With the corn gone, a piece of me has gone as well. Oh yes. How many nights did I drive home from a long, savage day at work with my windows rolled down, Bruce Hornsby crooning sweetly, with the heady scent of the sighing corn in my face and the sweet, yet vaguely insidious whispering issuing forth from the darkening fields? How many nights did I don a freshly-scrubbed tunic and a crystal-encrusted talisman pouch to walk between the rows, giving thanks with animal sacrifice to Gaea and Demeter for their delicious abundance? What will become of my rapidly expanding corn-husk voudoun-poppet collection? Also: when will the effing Kroger get some of that luscious goodness in stock? Because damn.

Our house is located squarely at a delightful piece of civic engineering called "an utterly unnecessary four-way stop, put onto this earth to be ridiculous and cause Domonic to wish to purchase a harpoon-gun." I'm sure that's not the official name, but it's close. So yes: the four-way stop. Indiana takes orgasm-inducing pleasure from putting four-ways in the most inappropriately busy intersections in the state, thus creating backlogs of traffic as far as the diesel-fume-smog-clouded eye can see. This is because *whispering!* Indiana is too cheap to put lights at important intersections; this would not only make sense, but would reduce the number of people I would have to slaughter every year. The best part of this particular stop is that the traffic rules that should dictate behavior on the road are suspended; suspended, too, is independent thought, as when one comes to a four-way, your share a brain with the other three people. Also suspended: laws of physics. It's a simple thing, my angels: whoever gets there first goes first, and should everyone get there at the same time, whoever waves the most gore-encrusted machete out the window goes first. I have been nearly sheared in half by a man who jumped the four-way in a Suburban as he simultaneously tried to talk on the phone, drink his morning Starbucks and light a smoke; by a special be-mulleted young man with a Confederate flag shaped like the southern states, I was nearly creamed beyond identification as he turned into my lane from the four-way. Last week, a soccer mom gave me the finger for letting her through the intersection first. I drew my lips back to reveal my vulpine incisors and hissed at her, of course. I took special satisfaction from the thought of her returning, exhausted, to her ass-smelling suburbanite hovel to try to balance her checkbook after putting Shrek II in for her filthy dirtbabies for the fifth time that day. Mostly, though, I was pissed about losing the harpoon.

This semester, I'm registered in a once-a-week, two-and-a-half-hour Media Turkish class so that I can "keep up my mad skills" in that crazy-ass Uralo-Altaic language. What I hadn't realized is that:

1) Kemal hocam thinks I know Turkish really, really well. Like, well enough to do well in this class. This is amusing considering how "well" I did during his phone interview with him early this past summer, wherein I all but told him that I was retarded.
2) Everybody in the class has studied Turkish for, like, eight years. One of the women worked at the American Embassy in Ankara for almost four years. They all speak perfect, accented Turkish even when Kemal isn't in the room. They make me want to bite the head off a puppy.

I'm no slouch in the Turkish Mad Skillz department, but c'mon. I am going to me totally raped in this class, and the worst part is that I took this class because, ahem, I invented it. Yes, this class was my idea, given to Kemal last spring. How was I supposed to know he'd carry it to fruition? How was I supposed to know I'd get this job, work 40 hours a week and would want to die really hard when I thought about how I hadn't even cracked a Turkish book all summer?
I am beginning to rue my decision to not tell Kemal that I'd contracted dengue fever while summering in... uh... Papua New Guinea this summer and that I couldn't attend his class.

{Dom: Yes, Kemal, Port Moresby is lovely this time of year, but I haven't been able to hold my bowels since I was probed by that nefarious Aedes aegypti mosquito! Why, yes, I have on dignity pants right at this moment!}

It's a Friday night, and Kirkwood Avenue is erupting into orgiastic celebration. It's not like I'd join, but since I am feeling like I am in my late sixties right about now anyway I think I will sit here in my office and listen to the block party going on down the street and shudder to think of what will be revealed in the harsh light of dawn come tomorrow.

Mindi: I think that asshole stole my diaphragm as a grim souvenir of his conquest! Hey, let's go to the mall!

Todd: What's that red bump on my petie? And why does it burn when I pee?

Amber: Did I really swallow my tongue ring? And why is my bra filled with urchin roe?

Chad: Why do I smell like embalming fluid? And why is that chick lying really still on my bed?


Oh, Chad. If only you knew.



I remain, as ever,

Dom

It rubs the lotion on its skin.

[fetching hose]

It's a balmy Sunday afternoon, and whimsy has taken me back to the Republic for some grub (I'll be goddamned if Noodle Town doesn't put smack in their Shrimp and Broccoli) and some good, old-fashioned effing-around time.

Out here in Bloomington, if you listen hard enough, you can hear a faint sound not unlike the sound that a Ziploc baggie makes when you seal it. That would be the sound of thousands of livers stitching together after a weekend of puke-though-your-nostrils binge drinking and debauchery that will leave a legacy of penicillin soaks. Indiana University was recently ranked the Number One Large State School in the U.S. by Newsweek Magazine, and heaven forbid the unofficial Number One Party School in the U.S. to not celebrate by hurling on its date's shoes.

I'm feeling a little old, truth be told. Twenty-five blindsided me a little bit. I got notification in the mail that my car insurance premium dropped by nearly half; while I was glad for the extra money for the second season of The Golden Girls I've been dying for, I also realized with a start that State Auto thinks I am a blue-hair driver now. I'll show them! 80 MPH in a 55 zone? You bet your sweet can, honey.

But mostly, I hear stories from some of my younger friends, and indeed, the internationals, that make me feel as though I need to go get some hasty innoculations:

"Dude, so I woke up the other night with this chick I don't even know next to me, and we'd -you know {wink and nod and elbow nudge}. My clothes smelled like gasoline and my eyebrows were shaved off. She has a piercing {gestures to pelvic mound} you know, down there, and a tattoo of Mothra on her left butt cheek. She said her name was Shri-Misralapartnatka, Queen of the Damned. Also, I can't find one of my earlobes."

Mostly, I find myself feeling old not because I would have ever done anything like that but because I find myself making mild judgement calls about it, whereas in the past I might have pressed for details about the Mothra art or whether the piercing was meant "for her" or "for him." I'm no angel (my readership speaks in unison: duhhhh), but damn. I guess the element of shock has re-entered my life and I am not so sure what to do with it. Does there come a time when you stop identifying with who you once were and are confronted with a newer, older incarnation who eats food specifically to stay regular and is in bed by 11 every night? Who turns off the news because "it's too depressing" and shops at Target in the $1 Sale Item section for a half-hour? Who listens to the oldies stations because they now play Foreigner, Steve Winwood and Phil Collins? (It's the total truth: when did the eighties become oldies?) Or am I, as my mother once said as she saw me reading a book about transubstantiation in the Catholic traditions in Mediterranean Europe at the tender age of ten, simply old before my time?

Do I now have more in common with the Greenwood soccer-mom, awakening to her spawn's shrieks to wonder how many can be fed on a Sam's Club X-Tra Cheez pizza and a two-liter of Dr.Thunder at 6 AM on a Saturday? With the sixtyish man in my neigborhood who strips to the waist and puts on a bandana made out of an old dishtowel to mow his grass with a riding mower at 7 AM on a Sunday, despite the fact that his yard is the size of a chinchilla's bladder? With the weary woman in the Dirt-Baby Kroger who animates her night-shift-workin' limbs out of sheer will as she drops a can of corned beef hash into her cart with the carton of Misty Light 100s and the six-pack of diet cola?

Am I going to have to rub the lotion on the skin? Will I have to do that whenever I am told?

Sucks to your ass-marr. <- movie? movie? (sigh)

Just when I think I am feeling a little too old, I am distracted by something shiny and I get it all back. All it takes is finding the stem of a broken crack pipe in the weeds to restore my faith in my inherent youth!

I bought a squirt bottle for Balthazar last night. I figure: he's old enough to start knowing right from wrong, and a little bit of liquid discipline never hurt anyone. I mean, look what the Squirt Bottle of Divine Intervention has done in my office! Here's a list of things that are OK for the wee one:

Eating
Sleeping
Taking a dump/peeing
Sitting
Playing

And the bad things:

Playing with moist logs of your recently extruded effluent
Gnawing on electrical wires
Sinking tiny fangs into Daddy's calf guerrilla-style from under the bed

These lists will surely grow as Balthazar matures into the tiny man-cat he aspires to be. And by "these lists" I mean "the second list, since at the time being he's confined to only one room of the house."

A steaming plate of butterflied shrimp in a rich brown sauce on a bed of broccoli awaits me at a dodgy-looking Chinese place across town; Balthazar with his newly-acquired Chinese cuisine skills would of course tell you it's Hong Kong-style. Duh.

I remain, as ever,

Dom

Trauma at bathtime.

Balthazar, Lawd Jesus love him!, has as of yet to learn the subtle art of self-cleansing. Granted, he's like a month and a half old, but when you're playing with him...and you are laying down and he decides to come love on your face...and then he turns around...

Let's just say that being given "the chocolate spider" by a kitten is cute, but sweet weeping Jesus on the cross! What the eff have I been feeding him? It's not his fault.

Consequently, Balthazar has been having a bath twice a week. In the interim, baby wipes seem to be doing the trick.

Here he is, strenuously objecting to a cleansing session. He's so pitiful; he weeps like I have been molesting him with a pool cue. But when he gets all wrapped up in the towel, be purrs like a whore and all is well again.

I remain, as ever,

Dom

Doktora gittim, yine.

"I went to the doctor, again."

Last week I was sitting at my desk, oh, I don't know, thinking about the torrid love triangle involving Brad, Jennifer and Angelina - Angelina who, as we speak, is preparing to adopt YOUR baby - when I began to feel like a mongoose was trying to escape from the corner of my eye. I decided to go into the third floor men's room (which reeks, at all times, like Calcutta in July of human effluvia) to check it out. As I held my breath for fear of internalizing what can only be described as an unimaginable pall of man-stench, I poked my eyelid open and gasped. There, in the corner of my eye, under the lid, was a tiny, lustrous pearl I'd produced from a wee bit of dust.

Well, if by "pearl" I mean "a hideous fire-engine-red lesion which pulsed with my every heartbeat as if it was attempting to leap forth from my skull ", then yeah, that's what it was.

Now I know you feed a fever but starve a cold and douche for cholera, but what does one do when a feverish lump the size of a chickpea erupts forth from your inner eyelid? Barium enema? Chinese herbal teas stewed from the hooves of endangerd ungulates? A compress made from the sweat of an ascetic and corn-silk? I grabbed a Ziploc baggie and filled it with ice and was reclining in my chair, moaning like a whore, when my boss Chris walked by. He poked his head in and asked if I was OK. When I peeled back my eyelid to reveal The Sore Whose Name Is Not Spoken, defiant and putrid, he deftly suppressed his gag reflex and then let everyone know he was taking me to the doctor. Oh yes, the doctor.

After a wait which caused several key vertebrae to telescope, I was ushered into a diagnostics area, whereupon I was met with a young woman whose charms could best be described as "Josef Mengele with less fashion-sense." She administered the blood pressure check, a pulse check, and an eye exam that included a special injection of blue dye "to see if [I] could look a little bit Aryan, for Christ's sake." She concluded the exam by telling me that I had 20/15 vision, which she told me would "help me spot vermin." Whatever "vermin" means.

So there I was, in a tiny antiseptic room decorated with enchanting diagrams of reproductive anatomy, reading a year-old Reader's Digest's Humor In Uniform section when a man entered and introduced himself.

Squirrely Weird Intern Dude: Hello! I'm interning here and I am going to be helping you today.

[begins to put on gloves; one of his eyes began to wander so that it looked at me independently from the other like a gecko]

SWID: So, what seems to be the problem?
Me: Well, there's a red bump inside my eyelid the size of a grape.
SWID: *nods and hmmms* Can I see it?
Me: No. Where's the real doctor?
SWID: Just give me your damn eyelid, mothertoucher.

He pries open my eyelid and, while I wasn't paying attention, squirts dishwashing detergent in my eye.

SWID: Is that uncomfortable?
Me: *swiping at my eye like a rabid badger* Yes, yes it is.
SWID: Interesting. Well, that should numb your eye for The Procedure. Now: can you tell me how this came to be?
Me: I don't have the first idea.
SWID: Well, have you been eating anything unusual?
Me: Like what?
SWID: Like human flesh.
Me: Nope. Gave it up for Lent and now I can't afford it.
SWID: I see. Well, how about your bathing habits? You do bathe, right?
Me: Well, when it rains.
SWID: Umm-hmm. Well, have you been orally pleasuring the homeless?
Me: Who told you that? Those charges were dropped and expunged from my record.
SWID: Ok. Well, you seem to have contracted a tropical parasite known only from a few autopsied corpses in the Congo. Any idea as to how you could have come in contact with that?
Me: Can I see the real doctor now?

He leaves and returns ten minutes later with a man in a nice white coat. Squirrely Weird Intern Dude has a needle in his sweaty palm and looks like a well-to-do child on Christmas morn in his post-present-opening-orgiastic bliss.

SWID: Can I pop it? Can I, can I?
Doctorman: No! Down, Jim, down!

[Doctorman takes out a squirt bottle and sprays Jim in the face with two controlled blasts; Jim whimpers and cowers in the corner]

Doctorman: OK, sir, there's an infection in one of the goo-producing glands in your eye. Jim here wanted to lance it, but I think some $400 an ounce medication should clear it up.

Jim looks down at the sterile needle he'd brought and looks back at me like I'd raped his new puppy. I arch my back and hiss at him. It's the best I could do.

The medicine, indeed, was $65 and contains about 40 drops of what I have to imagine are the tears of an uncanonized saint. As the orange-sized swelling in my eye weakened and began to perish, I could faintly hear Vatican records being opened to mark the miracle that was the salvation of my left eye. That, and the lesion began speaking to me in halting, strange tongues as it succumbed. It was like shaking the Burr Woman off my back but without the fifty-pound greyish hominid following me around, begging for some Tang.

*****

I've been getting emails like "I will disembowel you with a grapefruit spoon if you don't post pictures of the cat soon!" lately, so here he is (see above). So yeah, that's Balthazar, but lately we've been calling him The Wee One. Here are his stats!

Name: Balthazar Anatole Romulus Potorti
Nickname(s): Wee One, Bat, "Jesusgetbackoverhere"
Residence: One of the weird squishy blue pillows on my bed, in a nest he's hewn from it.
Favorite Color: Brownish-orange, like the forty reeking dumps he takes every day.
Doesn't Know How To: Clean his ass with his tongue. Yet. We're holding out hope.
Favorite Activity: Mewing like he's been poked with hatpins.
Second Favorite Activity: Hallucinating.
Third Favorite Activity: Defecating.
Special Talent: Sees dead people.
Favorite Song: Bad Moon Rising by Creedence Clearwater Revival.
Speaks: Mewlish and Portugese.
Hobbies: Hiding; biting things.

He's so damn cute I can't even bear it. He seems to have adopted me as his surrogate mother because he will not stop trying to suckle from any piece of my exposed skin.

All of you bastards who chortled at that will soon be crisping in Hell in your own liquid fat.

I will keep you abreast of his development. For example, I am now attempting to teach him to indentify by taste the regional cuisines of China and Keith, how to play the sitar.

I am off to peddle immigration documents to the confused and international.

Until next time, I remain,

Dom