I am a scientist, I seek to understand me.
I never did my homework. Ever. I remember having a project due, one of those poster-boards-with-glue-sticked-images-and-thought-bubbles kind of things, and for some odd reason I chose Henry Ford as the subject; I believe there was to be an essay accompanying the poster and the night before I stared blankly at the stiff red paper, my markers and the carpet for I'd accrued no images and, additionally, no information about Henry Ford himself. I'm not even embarrassed to say that I simply made up that he'd invented the automobile, made up the year that he did so and pieced together a few random images cut from our dusty collection of Funk & Wagnell encyclopedias purchased with stamps from the Pantry Pride twelve years previously. Just cut them right out of the encyclopedia, I did, and I didn't even bother to read the text -- I simply scanned it and plagiarized some blurbs that I thought sounded good together, wrote a half-assed essay and called it a night.
I didn't even make it past third period before I was called to the guidance office where Dr. Geuder had the pile of stiff red bullshit sitting on his desk and his hand on the phone. The best part of the day was my mother saying, "well, Henry Ford did invent the automobile, so it's not all wrong, right?" but rest assurred that I still got a beating, still got screamed at and punished not with grounding or withholding of stuff, per se, but with the silent treatment from my mother and an occasional, "You have no idea how much you embarrass me," which would have been as painful on its own without the accompanying physical abuse.
At school, I relished lunch and recess more than the average person because it was when I could sit with Harry and talk about music and Ingmar Bergman films, with which I would become increasingly familiar over the course of our relationship. Incidentally, our relationship was long and strange: We started out as friends, but not surprisingly Harry was removed from public education after middle school and placed in an all-male, Catholic high school which would separate us for a good year (an eternity in adolescence) before I yearned for his company again and contacted him; we began a romantic relationship that would be on and off for approximately four years before separating permanently after high school. During our on-time, we would obsess over REM lyrics (which were indecipherable on a tape deck), drive around in his powder blue Volkswagen Rabbit -- diesel, naturally -- blaring the Replacements, fall in love with bands like the Hoodoo Gurus and Jesus & Mary Chain and in and out of love with each other.
Harry, like my husband now, suffered greatly my unfortunate-but-inherited tendency to commitment phobia; unlike now, I would break up with him, quarterly, in a fit of stifling emotional claustrophobia and routinely chip away at his psyche and trust of me and simultaneously pushing him further to the fringes. During these breaks, I would attempt popularity with the so-called In Crowd, the crowd with whom Same Age was affiliated and although I don't recall any direct rejection I do know that these were not my people. I only ever lasted a few weeks before running back to Harry and being mysteriously accepted without question. Like my husband now, Harry now exists as the only other man from whom I experienced unconditional love and unfailing support, regardless of my emotional instability.
Oddly, my mother and PS loved him as much as I did, in a way that they never loved anyone else I brought home (except my husband, of course); my mother loved that he had a voracious appetite and would eat seconds or thirds of anything put on the table and PS loved that he would enthusiastically eat whatever culinary experiment [disaster] he was currently testing. I admit to contributing to these gastrocities: Being a teenage Europhile, I subscribed to Elle magazine and although it was primarily devoted to fashion, each month -- and they may still do this, I haven't seen a copy in years -- would feature two recipes, presumably to encourage creative entertainment in the realm of East Village dinner parties but their influences were farther reaching and thus was born Chicken and Apples. Probably German in its inception, this dish was modified by PS to accomodate our '80s dietary healthfulness of boneless, skinless and flavorless white breast of chicken; the cream sauce that was supposed to be so decadent with its creme fraiche and nutmeg was altered with half-n-half and cinnamon and I know that if it were made correctly, this is something that I would prepare now and eat with abandon, all by myself, because my husband wouldn't touch it...Harry, though, ate it over Minute Rice with great enthusiasm and verbally praised its uniqueness without ever complaining, although I know it was terrible and on par with most kitchen experiments inflicted upon us by PS.
If Harry came for dinner tonight (with whom I assume is a fabulous partner that doesn't chip away at his soul on a regular basis) I would properly make him this dish, with fatty dark meat chicken, creme fraiche and nutmeg and I would serve egg noodles, not Minute Rice, and I'd spare no expense in the beverage department...Brian will probably have to eat pizza.
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