Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls(38)

Next I needed to:

4. Grow a mustache like Yosemite Sam’s.

5. Make a pi?ata but use precious documents instead of torn newspaper.

6. Eat at the Old Spaghetti Factory and walk out without paying.



There are other things I’d like to do, but this, I figured, was more than enough to start with. Seeing as the Old Spaghetti Factory wouldn’t be open until lunchtime and there was nothing I could do to rush the mustache, I decided to start by going to the bank and withdrawing some precious documents. The marriage license in my safe-deposit box was no longer worth the paper it was printed on, but that still left my birth certificate, my life insurance policy, and my social security card.

While driving to First Federal, I listened to the radio, an all-talk program I’m partial to where the callers were just as riled up as I was.

When I tuned in, Sherry was on the line. “If the gays can stand in a church of God and exchange vows, who’s to say my husband can’t divorce me and marry a five-year-old?” she said. “Or a newborn baby, heaven forbid! I’m not saying he’s into that, but I guess if he was, there’d be nothing stopping him now!”

The next caller identified himself as Steverino. “I remember as a boy we had this joke,” he said. “Your buddy might say, ‘I love this pepperoni pizza,’ and you’d say, ‘Why don’t you marry it, then?’

“At the time it was just a saying, but I guess now you really could tie the knot with a pizza, couldn’t you? I mean, if the guy who cuts my mother’s hair is free to wed his little gay boyfriend, why can’t I marry a slab of flattened-out dough with cheese and dried sausage on it?”

The host of the show is a guy named Jimbo Barnes, and on pretty much everything we see eye-to-eye. “There’s no reason I can think of why you couldn’t marry a pizza,” he said. “Hell, you could probably even marry a mini-pizza, one of those ones made from an English muffin, if you felt like it.”

Steverino said that he didn’t really like English muffins, and Jimbo said that was just an example. “Bite-size pizza or sixteen-incher, whatever floats your boat is what the activist state legislatures are saying.”

This was something I’d never thought of—marrying an object: my refrigerator, say, or maybe the riding mower I sometimes borrowed from my neighbor Pete Spaker. It’s a John Deere X304—top-of-the-line, with automatic transmission, cruise control, and four-wheel steering. Maybe I could just borrow it again, and when he asked me to return it, I’d tell him we’d eloped, that the mower was my new wife and until such time as we divorced, it was living with me!

Of course, by then they’d have probably closed the loopholes. Taking away anything that might benefit traditional heterosexuals, especially white ones and especially especially white males. This is something Jimbo Barnes addresses quite often—“an endangered species,” he calls us. No matter that we made this country what it is today. Thinking about this got me so mad that I missed my turnoff for the bank. This meant taking a side street, where I fell in behind a school bus, of all things.

I know you’re not supposed to pass them, but normal classes were out for the summer, so the only students on board were ones who had failed and had to go to summer school—dummies, basically, like my daughter, Bonita, had been. The bus stopped on the corner, and just as I was pulling around it, this kid—most likely a gay one—threw himself in front of my car. Someone got my license plate number as I was taking off, and the next thing I know, I’m in jail with one charge of second-degree manslaughter and three charges of first-degree murder! Plus the hit-and-run bit. And all because some high-and-mighty legislators in New York State thought they knew better than the rest of us! Of course, if I was gay they’d probably let me off, so I tried kissing my cell mate, an illegal immigrant named Diego Rodríguez, if you can believe it.

And I’m here to tell you that, as long as you keep your eyes shut, it’s really not that bad.





Understanding

Understanding Owls




Does there come a day in every man’s life when he looks around and says to himself, I’ve got to weed out some of these owls? I can’t be alone in this, can I? And, of course, you don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. Therefore you keep the crocheted owl given to you by your second-youngest sister and accidentally on purpose drop the mug that reads “Owl Love You Always” and was sent by someone who clearly never knew you to begin with. I mean, mugs with words on them! Owl cocktail napkins stay, because everyone needs napkins. Ditto owl candle. Owl trivet: take to the charity shop along with the spool-size Japanese owl that blinks his eyes and softly hoots when you plug him into your computer.

Just when you think you’re making progress, you remember the owl tobacco tin and the owl tea cozy. Then there are the plates, the coasters, the Christmas ornaments. This is what happens when you tell people you like something. For my sister Amy, that thing was rabbits. When she was in her late thirties, she got one as a pet, and before it had chewed through its first phone cord, she’d been given rabbit slippers, cushions, bowls, refrigerator magnets, you name it. “Really,” she kept insisting, “the live one is enough.” But nothing could stem the tide of crap.

Amy’s invasion started with a live rabbit, while Hugh’s and mine began, in the late 1990s, with decorative art. We were living in New York then, and he had his own painting business. One of his clients had bought a new apartment, and on the high, domed ceiling of her entryway she wanted a skyful of birds. Hugh began with warblers and meadowlarks. He sketched some cardinals and blue tits for color and was just wondering if it wasn’t too busy when she asked if he could add some owls. It made no sense naturewise—owls and songbirds work different shifts, and even if they didn’t they would still never be friends. No matter, though. This was her ceiling, and if she wanted turkey vultures—or, as was later decided, bats—that’s what she would get. All Hugh needed was a reference, so he went to the Museum of Natural History and returned with Understanding Owls. The book came into our lives almost fifteen years ago, and I’ve yet to go more than a month without mentioning it. “You know,” I’ll say. “There’s something about nocturnal birds of prey that I just don’t get. If only there was somewhere I could turn for answers.”