If You Try To Hug Me, I'll Kill You

I met H. a few years ago. Our youngest sons were on the same team and we'd chat during practices and games, casual talk about our families and jobs.

One night we found ourselves standing next to each other without our kids or wives around. We started telling stories, about being in high school, and college, and what have you. Finally H. stepped back with an admiring expression and said, "You might be the first person I've ever met who would be a bad influence on me."

We've since become fast friends. We like singing loudly, tormenting our children, and whiskey. We've gone ice fishing together. Dressed as pirates, we called bingo for last year's elementary school fundraiser. We're both treating our high cholesterol with an aggressive regimen of salami and cheese. Most important, his wife and mine have gone back to school. They're just happy if we amuse each other and leave them alone.

Our love for singing is accompanied by a love for musicals. We've developed a habit of getting together every other Sunday night or so. We have a couple drinks and watch a show. The first night was at my house, Walk the Line, all well and good until my Lovely Bride came down at 12:30 in the morning to ask why we were singing "Ring of Fire" on a school night and what the hell was wrong with us.

Now we get together at H.'s house. H.'s wife is an awfully good sport. A typical evening has us turning on a movie, pouring a glass from our impressive collection of half-finished bottles of bourbon, and settling in with a nice plate of liver sausage and onion sandwiches. She'll walk through, shudder slightly, and escape as quickly as possible.

This Saturday we got a jump on the week. My oldest son and I spent the afternoon in one of our city's more interesting neighborhoods. We had lunch at a new restaurant, did some shopping at a wine and cheese store and a Ukrainian deli. It would have been a shame not to share this food and H. happily invited us over.

My Lovely Bride was studying so it was just H., his wife, another couple, my oldest son and I, sitting at the kitchen table, eating and talking. Eventually the conversation turned to hunting. My hunting is pretty much confined to threatening my dog and chasing pheasants around once or twice a decade. H. is much more serious about it and is planning on going this year with a mutual friend of ours. He asked if I wanted a deer if they got lucky.

"Sure," I said. "I like venison. Where do you get yours processed?"

"I do it myself," he said. "Out in the garage. If I get one, we'll do it together."

My oldest shook his head. He's seen us together. H.'s wife has too, and this was her garage.

"Listen," she said, "if you two morons think you're going to splatter blood all over the garage, you're wrong. I remember the time my husband dragged a dead deer through the back yard. There were blood stains on the ground until the next snow fall. I told him if one of the neighbors went missing he was going to have a time explaining it to the police."

H. waved his hand. "We'll be fine. Hang it up, gut it, make some sausage. It'll be fun."

"Fun," said his wife. "It's fun all right explaining to the kids why there's something bloody dangling under the tarp in the garage."

I took a sip from my drink. "This is great. We'll make a sign that says 'Bates Motel' and nail it to the front of the garage. Hey, that gives me an idea for this year's bingo night." H. and I are chairing the bingo committee this year. How nice for the school.

"Vampires," H. said, pouring a drink for himself. "We'll be vampires." His youngest son looked up with alarm from the other room. He hadn't heard the whole conversation but he's already worried about bingo. A statement like "We'll be vampires" didn't do much to help.

H.'s wife had had enough. She stood and told their child it was time for bed. H. and I talked a bit more about bingo night, then the other couple stood to go, I gathered my kid, and we all said our goodbyes.

On the way home, my son asked me, "Are you really going to be vampires?"

"Probably," I said.

"Are you really going to butcher a deer with H.?"

"Probably. I hope so."

He sat in silence the rest of the way home. I'm not sure he understands my friendships. I'm not sure I do. It doesn't matter. I enjoy them, and that's what I hope my kids see and learn, that friendships don't need a reason, sometimes they just are.

My Boy Is Just Like Me

It's a lot quieter around here this weekend. There was no school on Friday and the youngest is away at a farm owned by one of his friend's relatives and presumably chattering at the goats and chickens.

My dad needed a ride to the doctor yesterday. He lives a good distance from here so I asked the middle kid to come with me for company. He agreed, asking if I'd buy him a treat. I told him we'd see how things went.

We made the trip, picked up my dad, and arrived at the clinic. While we were waiting, my son, a middle-schooler, went over to the play area and started messing around in the sandbox and banging Matchbox cars together. My dad doesn't see the kids that often, but even he knew this was strange.

"Isn't he a little old for that?" he asked.

"By about six years," I replied. "He's not right in the head."

About then the boy wandered over with an Etch A Sketch. "Grandpa," he said, pointing to it excitedly, "I wrote something."

Sure enough, he'd written "Mi nam is B."

My dad looked at me skeptically. "He really liked 'Flowers for Algernon,'" I explained.

"Oh," said my dad, obviously not convinced this was normal. "What's that you brought to read today?" he asked his grandson.

The boy held up the book. "'In Cold Blood.'"

"The Truman Capote book?" my dad asked.

"Yeah, it's great."

My dad was clearly flummoxed. Fortunately, the nurse came out to get him about then. My dad gestured and said, "This is my grandson."

The boy stood up, removed his hat, and shook the nurse's hand. "Nice to meet you," he said.

An older woman who was waiting for her husband whispered to my son, "That was very polite of you, young man." He blushed.

My dad had to stop at the lab after his appointment. The clinic is a big place and the lab had its own play area, this one consisting of a couple of steering wheels and a mirror attached to a plastic cube. Suitable for a three-year-old. Once again my kid went for it, making motorcycle noises and pretending to drive until he got his arm tangled in the steering wheel and said, "Owie. Bad toy. Daddy, I don't like this toy. It hurt me."

The receptionist gave him a curious glance. My dad shrugged his shoulders and said, "My grandson."

Having exhausted his interest in driving, the kid grabbed a coloring book. "Look Grandpa," he said. "I'll color the bunny for you. I'm going to make him blue. Then he will know happiness."

My dad was starting to catch on and replied, "That would be very nice. I can put it on my refrigerator."

"Yay!" said the boy. "I love refrigerators. I'll make the picture extra pretty."

From the lab it was off to the pharmacy. There was a problem with the insurance company's classification of my dad's prescription, leading to a prolonged telephone call between the pharmacist and the insurance company representative. Meanwhile my son wandered off and returned with a rubber ducky bath toy.

"Can we get this?" he asked.

My dad laughed.

"No, son," I said. "Remember what happened last time you had something like that?"

"Yes," he answered sadly. "I almost choked on it and then I got my head stuck in the chair and the fire department had to come."

My dad laughed some more.

The kid left to return the duck to the shelf. A woman was blocking his way and he cleared his throat and said, "Excuse me ma'am, may I sneak by you?"

The woman smiled at him, said, "Of course," and moved out of his way. She walked over to where my dad and I were sitting and said, "He's a very courteous boy. You should be proud of him."

My dad grinned. "He's my grandson."

Our business finally completed, we took my dad back home. He thanked us, hugged his grandson, and went inside. I pulled out of the driveway, drove a block or so, and stopped the car.

"Hey," I said to my son.

"What?" he asked, puzzled and a little nervous.

"You had two strangers compliment your manners today."

"So?" he asked.

"You made your grandfather laugh."

"So?" he asked again.

"I'm proud of you. You're a good kid. I love you."

He smiled, this sheepish look he gets when he's a little embarrassed. "I love you too dad," he said in the robotic monotone he sometimes uses to irritate his brothers and amuse me.

"Thanks for coming today," I said, starting the car. "Let's go get you that treat."

Tag

"Jennifer" has tagged me. Now I just have to figure out how the hell this thing works. Pour myself a drink, pour myself another, yell at the kids, okay, here we go.

There are a set of questions below that are all of the form, "The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is…". Copy the questions, and before answering them, you may modify them in a limited way, carrying out no more than two of these operations:

— You can leave them exactly as is.

— You can delete any one question.

— You can mutate either the genre, medium, or subgenre of any one question. For instance, you could change "The best time travel novel in SF/Fantasy is…" to "The best time travel novel in Westerns is…", or "The best time travel movie in SF/Fantasy is…", or "The best romance novel in SF/Fantasy is…".

— You can add a completely new question of your choice to the end of the list, as long as it is still in the form "The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is…".

You must have at least one question in your set, or you've gone extinct, and you must be able to answer it yourself, or you're not viable.

Then answer your possibly mutant set of questions. Please do include a link back to the blog you got them from, to simplify tracing the ancestry, and include these instructions.

Finally, pass it along to any number of your fellow bloggers. Remember, though, your success as a Darwinian replicator is going to be measured by the propagation of your variants, which is going to be a function of both the interest your well-honed questions generate and the number of successful attempts at reproducing them.

My great-great-great-great-great-grandparent is Pharyngula.
My great-great-great-great-grandparent is Metamagician and the Hellfire Club.
My great-great-great-grandparent is Flying Trilobite.
My great-great-grandparent is A Blog Around the Clock.
My great-grandparent is Shakespeare's Sister.
My grandparent is Excuse This Mess...
My parent is Jennifer.

1. The best comedy in scientific dystopias is: A Boy and His Dog.

2. The best sexy song in rock is: Sex by Berlin.

3. The best cult novel in absurdist fiction is: A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole.

4. The best use of ground meat in American cooking is: the chili dog.

And with that I turn over the keys to Billy, Kathleen, and the famous Mr. almostinfamous.

Marvelous!

Loyal Friends of Befouled already know I'm a noted gourmand, a well-respected music critic, and a much sought after book reviewer. They may not be aware, however, that I'm also a bit of a fashionista. Let's take a peek at what's cooking in Snag's closet.

1. Ready to be on the cutting edge? Try an ermine ball gag. Made from the finest ermines, this ready to wear accessory lets the world know you're a playah. Available in a range of striking colors.

2. It's time to throw out the old rule about white after Labor Day. With a stunning acidwashed snorkel, you'll be turning heads uptown and downtown. Cut and shaped by hand from the finest pork, these snorkels have long been the rage in Paris, Rome, and Finland. Now you can bring one home.

3. We've all seen pierced ears, pierced noses, pierced navels. There's even a Fox reality series, "Mutilation Island." Have you ever seen a pierced colon, though? That's where the trendsetters are now. Do it yourself kits, complete with needle and liquor, are available in most larger urban areas. If spotting persists, contact your physician.

4. Not since JFK singlehandedly destroyed America's haberdashery industry has there been such an interest in headgear. We're talking surgically installed decorative antlers, the hottest thing to come out of Maine since, well, forever. Hip Bangorians can be found strutting their stuff outside the cafés of their fair city, replete with neon and kitsch hanging from what they slyly call their "headposts." Watch out when it's rutting season!

5. Guys don't make passes at girls without galoshes. That's right, these boots of yore are now retro. This year's catwalks feature classic A-lines on top and rubber and snaps below. That trademark sound can be heard from South Beach to Ibiza. Grab a pair and get clomping!

Avoidance

Today was a blessing, like the one before and the one before that.

I got home last night at 12:45, after driving three hours back from my meeting, rain pouring down, listening to music as loud as it would go.

This morning I slept in. Woke up in time to send my youngest off to school. ("Daddy loves you. Make good choices. Say goodbye to the dog. She has rabies.")

Then a lunch meeting. Drove there. Meeting canceled. Back home.

Oh good, email about a project. Not the "yeah, whatever" kind. The "this will trash whatever remains of my reputation if I screw it up" kind. Due next week. Fortunately it's a busy time at work.

Middle kid comes home. Says hello, does his homework.

I join him in the kitchen. Prepare the marinade for tonight's dinner. I'm rushed because it's his conference night at school. I turn my back and marinade spills all over the floor.

"Shit, fuck, sonofabitch, someone's going to die!"

He looks at me and says, "I'll get the mop." He does and we clean.

I remake the marinade, throw him in the car. We meet the Lovely Bride at the school. Conferences are good, he's doing well, the teachers like him, he's got friends, hooray for my parenting skills.

The conference ends. My oldest calls. He went to a teammate's house for dinner and needs a ride home. He gives me teenager directions and I get hopelessly lost. The gas gauge empty light comes on. I finally find him, call home to have the broiler preheated, fill up the tank. My oldest is mad because I've been short with him, won't talk to me on the ride home.

Come home, make dinner. Now I understand why that meat was on sale. Use enough peanut sauce, it's fine.

Get back in the car to pick up the youngest at basketball practice. Middle son wants to come. Fine. Youngest is spending the weekend at the farm of a friend's relative and needs a Halloween costume for a party they're having. We waste forty-five minutes deciding among the eight available costumes at the store. Finally I break the gridlock by throwing a princess costume in the cart. My son panics and swaps it for a bleeding skeleton costume and a plastic sword. Good enough.

We get back in the car and the youngest asks how his brother's conference went. "It was great," I said, "your brother's doing a good job. Nice and short."

"I wonder if mine will be short," he asks.

"Probably not," I say. "With yours we have to meet with the police liaison and the school psychologist."

The middle one laughs and the younger one sighs. We get home, again. The oldest is talking to me now, as much as he ever does, and I get a grunt as I walk in the door. I help the youngest pack, feed the dog, start the dishes, do a load of laundry.

The kids and I go downstairs. I plug in a DVD with some episodes of last season's The Office. We watch a couple, the kids get tired, go up to bed. I think about doing some work. I think, I've done enough for other people today. I'm going to do what I want to do. And so I write this.

Fire In The Hole

After dinner last night I decided use our backyard fire pit. I built it a few years ago as a Father's Day present to myself. I don't use it much, in large part because even I lack the poor judgment required to build a fire when my kids are around. It was a beautiful fall night, though, I'd had wine with dinner, and my middle son was sleeping at a friend's house, so I overlooked my misgivings and went out back.

Wisely, my Lovely Bride wanted nothing to do with this. She went downstairs to study, leaving me alone with my oldest and youngest sons, as well as a friend of the youngest. Recognizing I was outnumbered, I called a friend of my own who lives nearby. He soon arrived, accompanied by his son, also a friend of my youngest.

We've had a lot of rain during the past few weeks and the wood was wet. Fortunately, there was a fresh pile of leaves to use as starter fuel and four kids to throw crap in the fire every time it threatened to catch. With their help it didn't take us more than forty-five minutes to get the fire going. We had glasses, ice, and Scotch with us, however, so I didn't really care and we finally distracted the kids with a bag of mini marshmallows and instructions to cram as many as possible into their pieholes.

Once the fire was going, we did what all good fathers do, namely tried to give our children nightmares. I dredged up a couple of scary stories from my own childhood, about escaped mental patients and the havoc that can be wrought with a hook for a hand. My friend told a story about a bear who ate a kid who wouldn't stop talking, a long story made longer because my youngest kept interrupting him.

Then, much to the delight of the boys and the rest of the neighborhood, we decided to sing. My friend's a good Irishman and has a full repertoire of shanties and ballads. While I don't have the same sort of musical genetic imprinting, I do know snippets from hundreds of songs and so, like a DJ on powerful hallucinogens, performed a medley that ranged from "Rocky Raccoon" to "Moon River" to "Ode to Joy."

Much to our surprise, the kids wearied of this gift of music and, as boys are wont to do when bored, started pushing each other.

"Stop it before someone falls in the fire," I said.

"You never let us do anything," replied my oldest.

My friend looked at him curiously. "What are you talking about?"

"My dad wouldn't let us walk on the edge of the Grand Canyon last year," he said with a sneer. "He was afraid someone would 'get hurt.'"

"Well, yes," I said. "I thought maybe it would be a good idea to stay on the path, given that we'd just finished looking through a book in the gift shop called 'Death on the Rim.'"

My son ignored me. "And then when we were in Utah he wouldn't let us climb all the way to the top of Capitol Reef."

"It was sunset, for God's sake. We had to get to dinner and our hotel."

"Whatever," he said, dismissing me. "You just don't want us to have fun."

The younger son's buddies watched the exchange with interest. Snag family arguments make are great stories for the school cafeteria.

"Right, that's why my entire existence is designed around placating you. You know what I should do? Chain all of you out front with a sign that says 'Free to good home.' Nobody would take you, but at least I'd have some peace and quiet until somebody called the cops."

My friend laughed and poured himself another drink. If nothing else, this made his own life seem better by comparison.

The bickering continued for a few more minutes until I threw in the towel and started singing again. That was enough to drive my oldest into the house for a bit. When he returned, he was wearing headphones and listening to his iPod. And there we sat, my friend and I singing, the three younger kids, now at a safe distance from the fire, punching each other, my teenager diligently ignoring the rest of us, and my Lovely Bride staying as far away from it all as she could.

All in all, an ordinary night.

Sing A Song

More meetings today which gave me time to mentally listen again to some of my favorite lyrics.

"You kiss like a Russian."

"You're a store-bought woman."

"Are you okay with what you've got?"

"I never felt so wicked as when I willed our love to die."

"My love for you is something warm, like silver drops of laughter."

"Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high."

"So, I'd give this world, just to dream a dream with you."

"We belong together, on the beach, by the sea."

"I saw a friend who doesn't know if I'm his friend just yet."

"I'd walk away like a movie star who gets burned in a three way script."

"Cause I can't read the number that you just gave me, there's something in my eyes."