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Can’t locate my muse but I’m working on it…

G

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The Notion

In my dream I’m always gasping for air; as if the trillion or so cubic inches of ozone I’ve already blown through in my lifetime somehow counts for nothing.  I awake, step over the dog, and scramble downstairs in my boxers in search of a physical remedy to a metaphysical dilemma. Something is bothering me and I can’t quite place my finger on it. Life is short and, on this crisp autumn eve, I’m clearly too underdressed to even be considering my last breath.  Our fifteen-year old cat follows close behind, his own mousy demons no doubt,  in tow as well.

‘Dear God, please don’t let me die with money in my portion of the Charles Schwab account,’ I think as I root through the herbal medicine cabinet,  next to the dishes, above the microwave.  ‘That’s what the Prudential life insurance policy in the house safe is for,’ I obsess. It’s an odd recurring thought, I realize. Just being forthcoming.

We keep no real drugs in our house.

Ginkgo Biloba, Paranil, Senna, Licorice Root. Green Tea, White Tea, Black Tea…where the fck is the Alka Seltzer?

Over the years I’ve developed an internal ON/OFF switch of sorts; a requirement for any man whose livelihood  simultaneously hinges on rejection yet somehow also depends on the act of a total stranger purchasing something of considerable value; house, condo, etc…. every month. It’s an Acceptance thing, I’ve learned. This emotional circuit breaker has, for a long time,  assisted me in affairs of the heart,  finance,  most of  the Deadly Sins—Fear, Greed, Anger, etc… not to mention social and personal guilt.  And in case you haven’t  been following the box scores at home this season,  I’ve been in the OFF mode for a while now.

thankyouverymuchhaveanicedaybiteme….next

Over time I’ve learned to appreciate  the next ‘Next‘  in life—I just haven’t learned not to  eat Mexican food before retiring for the evening or found a way to avoid the night scares that have startled me ever since that stupid monster began squatting in my childhood closet at 39 Vineyard Road in Levittown.  And as my Life flickers before me this particular night, I wonder:

‘What to do with the lingering wreckage of my Past?’

Just as my faithful canine companion would rather bark at intruders from inside the  picture window when it’s chilly outside, I too,  prefer to write a quick note or better yet, cower behind electronic messaging for all breaking news, good and bad, anymore. Even my foxhole prayers begin with OMG these days. I’ve become shrinkwrapped into a Twitter mentality, 140 characters at a time.   If I feel any emotion at all I toss in an exclamation point or two. Even Facebook is becoming a burden. I don’t even call it Facebook anymore. I call it FB. OMG. WTF…is @ 2 me?!!  Critical mass approaches as my social network expands and my personal circle contracts….

But I mentally carve deeper and in a brief moment of clarity,  it hits me as I hover over the sink swirling the midnight elixir in a half washed coffee mug,  old as hell goddamn cat on the counter beside me. I tip-toe into my office, dig out some dusty boxes,  and begin tearing through decades of loose leaf pulp in search of a single folded sheet.

An hour later it is in my hand.  I examine the inky yellow page beneath the reading  light on my desk.  The Amends.  One unchecked-off task remains although the list is from another millenium altogether.  A previous Life, to be sure.

I walk back into the kitchen and toast the harvest moon through the window. I  boil some water for a final cup of Sleepytime and snoop through the fridge for a quick nibble.  The  cold white light is blinding—Soy this, 1% that, Non Fat everything else. Yogurt? I think not.  Flax seed, Organic, Antioxidant…my wife is clearly trying to torture me into good health.

And,  like most things in Life that have challenged me since those early monster days in (bucolic by name only) Violetwood, once I let the problem go, the solution appears on its own…

The Reunion

I step off the commuter jet in Pittsburgh and walk across the terminal to Avis. The girl behind the counter thinks I’m ancient, I’m certain.

“What brings you to Pittsburgh today, sir?”  She asks.

“Class Reunion,”  Me.

“High School?”  Her.

“College,”  Me.

“Pitt?”  Her.

“No. Slippery Rock….”  Me.

Silence, as  always,  follows.  Two underachievers, we stand an arms length and several generations apart,  avoiding eye contact.

“…I’ve owed someone $100 for almost thirty years and I’m going to repay my debt today…”  Me.

“…then reunite with some old friends.”  Me still.

More silence.  Silence and Judgement, I sense.  I’m being judged by a rental car clerk in Pittsburgh.

OFF.

“You reserved a Chevy Malibu?”  Finally,  Her.

My wife always makes my travel arrangements so alas,  a sensible Mid-Size American ride awaits my AMEX imprint.  I immediately upgrade to a Cadillac, confirming I guess, that I am indeed… old. We’ve been doing this for years. Mona has yet to ever rent me a car I’d actually be seen driving in real life and I always end up getting a Caddy because they don’t rent German cars in this country for what-ev…..

I exit the airport complex and drive north for an hour, texting on my iPhone and fumbling with the satellite radio the entire way. I push On-Star by accident twice.  The third time they inform me I’m being charged.  Bite me.  Besides the makes and models of vehicles cruising  in either direction along I-79 (and the daunt figure that keeps staring back at me in the vanity mirror on my visor), Western Pennsylvania hasn’t changed at all in three decades.

I pull into my old college town as the Homecoming Parade disassembles. As Fate, I suppose,  would have it,  I find a parking spot directly in front of the Camelot Restaurant.  There is a line out to the sidewalk. A hand painted banner hangs from above the awning: 

Everyday.  99 cent Breakfast.

Nothing has changed. I ate a hundred of these meals for free  thirty years ago and then left town without paying the tab. What a schmuck.  I step  inside and push through the crowd into the kitchen. The interior has remained stagnant over the years. The aroma of burnt, bottemless coffee fills a crease in my mind.  An old man is hunched over the griddle frying  a dozen eggs at a time. An old woman stands beside him slinging potato hash onto chipped plates.

“I’m looking for Gary,”  Me.

“I’m Gary,”  Him.

I stare back at a gray ghost of  the man in my memories. I  hand him the one- hundred dollar bill already in my fingertips.

“I’ve owed you this for thirty years?”  Me.

“What?”  Him. A little miffed. He doesn’t stop cooking.

Hey, I’m not in the mood for perturbation on this day; not when I’m attempting to make a grandiose gesture.  I just want to get a good night’s sleep, for crissakes. I continue…

“I’m Geno. I ran up a tab here when I was in Grad School and left town without paying. It always bothered me.”  Me. (white lie)

“I don’t remember you,” Him.

“I was an actor. Streetcar,  Equus,  Hot L Baltimore.  And a writer. I had a little column in the Tri-City News…. Geno…remember? You let me eat here  free for like a year…”  Me.

“Whatever. I don’t remember.  Amateur theater around here has never been very memorable.”  Him.

“Well I wanted to make good on my debt.” Me, also a little miffed now as well but it’s too late to slip the bill back into my pocket.

“Whatever.”  Him.

I place the C-note next to a toaster.

“I remember him,”  The old woman.  But she doesn’t elaborate. No need to I suppose. Yet another disappointed woman to add to yet another unresolved list.  Not.

I turn and head off to the reunion hoping that my reception there is a little warmer and wondering if there is a Starbucks anywhere in the tri-county area.  Ironic… I never had a buck for a plate of eggs thirty years ago but I’m quick to drop a five spot on a decent cup of coffee in a heartbeat today.  I pull a Green Tea capsule from my coat pocket and swallow it instead.  WTF…

I  stroll down the Main Street  (actual name) of  my Bohemian years and stop in front of an ATM. I check my balance and withdraw the maximum daily limit  just in case I suddenly kick the bucket as I make this final turn in Life with no intention of ever looking back.  After all, they say an unrealized expectation leads to a Resentment.  And holding on to a Resentment is pretty much like drinking the poison and waiting for the other person to die.  Don’t you think?

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Finally,  a bloggable thought!

Let me attempt to serve up something  palatable on the fine tapas Chinette as I poke through the  leftovers in the upstairs icebox. I know, it’s been a month of Sundays since I’ve broken literary bread with the family.

Hey, what’s this here?

Some freezer burned Zig Zigler?  Better check the expiration date on this mentally recorded morsel: 1976?  Hmmm…perhaps I’ll just let it thaw and feed it to the hounds with the dry food…

Insert  frosty Beta into Radarange and press PLAY

‘So there’s this Chinese bamboo tree that doesn’t grow an inch for four years, barely pokes its stem out of the dirt, then, in one amazing swing around the Sun, in year five,  it shoots up ten feet…..’ and  so I paraphrase the Zig man and countless other soap box derby wearers. It’s an old story.

I’ve tripped across many versions of the above Eastern yarn over motivational time and space; some prophets claim seven years for the phenomenon, some claim five, still others  declare overnight! The same question is always begged….does a bamboo tree (Chinese or otherwise) really grow ten feet in any amount of time (save a little daily watering) after laying  dormant for 1500 days ?  And if so, why?

Oh hell, we’re are all pretty smart dogs around here. We all know why.

Personally, it took this mutt over thirty years to complete and submit for publication, a written project that was greater in length than a thousand words and didn’t involve an iPhone snapshot. The notion struck me like a branding iron as I sat at my desk  completing the final U.S. Copyright  and Writers Guild of America keystrokes (along with credit card info, of course) into my tired machine.  I can only hope that after 60 days and nights of finger pecking toil (not to mention the 30 years below the soil), what I sent off , paid for, copyrighted, and registered, is even worth stealing.

So anyway, here’s a sample of what my bamboo tree just sprouted:

SCOTTY takes two more shot glasses off the tray and hands one
to CAT CHOW who reluctantly accepts the offering.

CAT CHOW
So, do you guys whack people?

MICKEY and SCOTTY look at each other. The housewives at the
next table are making out now. Patsy Cline plays through
the speakers. The lights come up for last call.

MICKEY
No. I’ve never whacked anybody.
Murder is above my pay grade. How
about you, Slick? You ever whack
anyone?

SCOTTY
Me? Nah. I’m a Buddhist. I did
staple a guy’s balls to his ass
once but I heard he didn’t die. So
no. Technically, no.

I’ll be back soon,

G

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In dog years I’m pushing 8; city dog 8, not country dog 8.  I like a crisp biscuit in the morning and a nice can of food with an ice cube in my water at night.  I enjoy a leisurely stroll through the neighborhood and don’t really care to muddy my feet in the parkway or venture too close to the curb anymore.  Not sure what I’d do if I had to rely on chasing rabbits for food or stray bitches for frolic.  If I want to press my point, I  piss in the bushes.  At the end of a long dog day,  I retire to my own bed where the cool sheets calm my simple soul and pull me into a dreamland of temporal puppy moments.

I stopped barking at the mailman years ago when I realized that he was merely the messenger.  I stopped chasing cars when the reality of an $800 per month payment finally stung me on the snout. I’ve learned to separate unconditional  love from raw, base instincts. I stopped humping legs for no good reason.

As a man,  I will always be some sort of a dog I am told.  The best I can hope for is to be the best dog  I can humanly be.  At the very end of the run I wouldn’t mind if my epitaph, carved into the side of a red Arizona mountain,  read something like:  ‘Here lies the ashes of Geno Petro.  He was a very good dog although his bite was much worse than his bark…’ Something like that.

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The base anticipation that precedes any journey to a new destination is always more vivid for me than the denouement that accompanies the physical descent to earth.  With rare exception (perhaps Paris and maybe Vegas), the image I conjure up in my two dimensional mind beforehand always seems to fall somewhat short of the real 3-D deal.  On our first trip to Maui, for example,  my notion of grass huts  and Woody Wagons clamped with surfboards was quickly dashed the moment I spotted a Costco and a  Wal-Mart just steps from the arrival terminal. It was raining  ukuleles that day and the lone, Port Authority hula dancer was, how shall I say… Samoan? I was expecting something a bit more, I don’t know….svelte?; like the subject of one of  those Sailor Jerry tattoos I threaten to get stenciled across my chest every 120  lunar cycles or so—-pure 1950’s  South Pacific paradise-of-the-mind stuff. I think we  bought our own leis for 8 bucks each at the gift shop, rented a Taurus from Avis, and called it a day.

And it’s not just Hawaii. The same holds true for Jamaica—or as I like to call it, The Bangladesh of the Caribbean, with its human squalor, smelly ceviche,  and over-abundance of  muddy water. Even the Antiquarium in Boscoreale, Italy, beneath the shadows of a nearby looming housing project,  is sequestered by a string of barbed wire and discarded heroin needles. Not that I don’t enjoy myself abroad, mind you. I’m an enthusiastic traveler, to be sure. The foreign landscapes that ultimately unfold just never fully mesh with the spatial images dancing around in my head before touch down.

Alaska was pretty spot-on but to be honest, I wasn’t expecting  too much from that particular latitude. And while I did not get a tattoo while docked in the port of  Juneau,  I was presented with a  shiny new Rolex Datejust in our cruise ship cabin later that evening.  Since I’m clearly never retiring from anywhere,  my wife decided to give me my ceremonial timepiece a few decades early— for my 50th birthday.  Just so you know, the name MONA, is tattooed on my left bicep. (It was only erased and changed to MOM once, and then back again to MONA as quickly as possible but as I often tell whoever will listen—that’s another story for another weekend writer’s block.)  I’ve long since  admitted to God, to myself, and to at least one other expatriot on foreign soil,  that I should have re-thought that whole laser/erase/redo episode beforehand. So what if  the Rolex is stainless steel and not gold. I’m just assuming its not a fugazi.

I’ve owned 20 different vehicles and  a half dozen dwellings in my 30+  years as an adult—each one, a little disappointing in its own way;  wrong model, too small an engine, obstructed view, wrong city.  Never ‘Sailor Jerry’ perfect like those carefree models on the vintage posters—forever young and beautiful.  Never what one thinks a tattoo is going to be before the alcohol wears off, the flesh begins to rip, and the ink sets in for good.  This causes me to think of the elder men who have preceded me in this life as I  ponder their own indelible whims.

My Uncle Zip never did move back to Hawaii after World War II, or own a brand new Coupe De Ville like he said he one day would, or meet Frank Sinatra in person (Vic Damone or Buddy Greco either, for that matter).  But every speck of his being, from here to eternity, let everyone within swinging distance know that these were items on his personal bucket list.  In my uncle’s case, the dream itself seemed to suffice in lieu of the destination or even the journey.  When the old Navy dog finally did make his final pilgrimage back to the Big  Island much later in life  he would, too, find his black sand paradise covered beneath a sheet of rain and asphalt.  He died in Levittown, Pennsylvania  with a  rusting Dodge Polara in the driveway.

And as I now recall my own father, a soul whose passing is still within clear sight, I’m certain he would have preferred to  spend his final years gazing at egrets and herons through binoculars from an Adirondack chair in Cape May, New Jersey; much more so, I think, than being held hostage by the Fox News Network and ESPN via his north Philadelphia blue leather recliner while fretting  over the  pink ink of  his Wachovia accounts. Think about it—a  man can  probably die wherever he wishes with some  proper planning, enough dough, and  a little luck. He just needs a willing spouse to help  move things along.  That’s all.

Truthfully though,  I don’t give this all too much thought.  I see little use  in being disappointed in something as anti-climatic as my journey to the After Life. Obsessions, like tattoos, begin to fade after so many years in the sun. But you must admit,  those  four-color brochures that the Seventh Day Adventists leave on the front porch every summer do catch your cosmic eye—like a Sailor Jerry classic. In Paradise. ‘Forever.’  On a deep six holiday.

image by sailor jerry

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To pluck a petal from the bloom of  friend and  recondite commenter, Don Reedy, I’ve been ‘face down in a slope of iceplant’  for 30 days. Yes, iceplant.  (I’ll let the man himself expound a little later but allow me to tempt you with the essence of his yarn—- it involves a houseboat in San Diego, a Belushi Halloween costume (including handcuffed briefcase), and a lost weekend somewhere in the bowels of the 1980s. Un huh.)

You see, I too have been on a pastoral  quest  of sorts this month and  presently find myself scurrying through the  Bloodhound shadows to slip this flimsy piece under the Big Dog’s door before the triple witching hour tonight—June’s last breath.  I take a peek around the literary pound and am relieved to  find that my Wordpress password is still active and that my name and mugshot are still posted on the BHB sidebar.  Only a handful of  hours remains between me and blanking an entire month on the hallowed front post page. Hopefully I’ll push Publish before the final strike of Midnight and keep the holy streak alive.  Admittedly, I’ve been remiss in my self-imposed dogmatic duties.

So this is what has gone down since I last posted Mother Nature is not a MILF on May 30th (an essay written mostly on my iPhone that netted a total of 6 unique comments including a few of my own trite responses). I pooled my talents, sunk my literary savings into a mental Ponzie marketing scheme, and found myself  nearly wiped clean from the blogarian grid as I danced 30 days straight ‘with the one who brung me’ to this economic station in life to begin with—real estate sales.  Eleven of them to be exact.  I’ve never done eleven of anything in a single month much less an activity involving commission checks with accompanying deposit slips.  And now, after eleven hard money contracts written and/or Closed in June, I come crawling back to my digital workspace on knees and elbows on this last day of the month, famished and thirsty for Google juice; mind, gut, and Adword account all but drained. On figurative creative fumes. A quip or two every few days on Facebook (again, via my iPhone) has been my only contact with the electronic media. I forgot to pay my Comcast bill. Twice.  When I finally booted up my laptop at home to begin this piece last Sunday, the bastards had already unhooked my shit. Some nice gentleman from a war torn Third World nation assisted me with the re-connect. I think he said his name was Billy Bob.  Billy Bob Pakhtoon.

I posted my first blog in December of 2005  because my lead generation efforts had basically dissolved into sediment.  Momentum alone carried me through 2006. It was only after reading a Time Magazine article later that year that I decided to change my real estate physiognomy and commit to a low carb regiment of  dietary backlink fiber.  For the next several months I was more concerned with the BMI on my Page Rank scale than the actual dirty act of  soliciting….ahem…. property.  And as my writing skills appeared to flourish, my sales skills began to atrophy.  I showed up at my accountant’s office in 2008 with my 1099s in hand and his secretary asked for ID. I was fiscally unrecognizable. I had become the Joaquin Phoenix of  his client base. I told her she should check out my blog, that I was now a writer and a Realtor. I believe her response was, “Whatever. Cash or credit card only, Mr. Petro.”  Whatever…

So, as Mr Reedy so beautifully explains it in the comment section of a previous post, “A friend found me two days later, face down in a slope of iceplant (I’ll bring a sample, because iceplant only grows where it doesn’t freeze). It took another two days for my face to lose the iceplant imprint…”

And there, too, is where I only recently found the other half of my creative soul.  In Iceplant. Face Down. On a Slope.  Imprinted.   I’ve said it many times before on this venue; I can either write or I can sell.  I just can’t seem to do both at the same time worth a darn. So for the next 30 days or so I suppose I’ll write.  I’m in a  Francis Ford Coppola Zoetrope Screenplay Contest with an August 1 deadline. Now that’s as good an excuse as any for not selling jack squat in July.

Publish

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Now the hard part—fabricating an essay that somehow pertains to real estate and ties in with the above catchy title; one that popped into my head while hydroplaning through a stop sign in a downpour earlier this month.  At the next red light I quickly texted the lofty thought to myself  expecting to come up with an accompanying  point (and several hundred additional words) once I made it safely back to my desk—my writing desk that is. Not my selling desk. I have a separate hard, cluttered surface for each, you see.

More accurately, what I’ve set up are creative stations for each side of my brain;  right brain/writing desk,  left brain/selling desk.  And it’s not hard to tell when I’m performing the wrong  creative duty at the wrong desk, either; I basically suck at whichever task is at hand, I’m always running  behind schedule, and I don’t make any money.  Anyway, that  Mother Nature idea was almost three weeks ago.

So tonight  I was reading  Jeff Brown’s latest post (and most of the 100 or so comments that were bound to ensue) when finally, the ideal segue hit me.  Transparency!  Why not try and give that clear concept a whack myself since, as hard as I tried to think of a comment to insert, I had nothing intelligent to add to Mr Brown’s already lengthy thread.  Perhaps  instead, I could unveil a few secrets of my own that the BawldGuy might feel are nobody’s fiscal business.  Actually, I  agree with him (and his grandparents) on this one but I happen to be sitting at my selling desk  in boxer shorts now so…. down they come.  Ah transparency.

* In 2006 I earned more income selling real estate than the combined government salaries of the Vice President of the United States and a typical  City of Chicago Streets and Sanitation worker on the ‘no show’ payroll.

* Last year, according to the cover of Parade Magazine, I basically matched dollar for dollar with the average preschool teaching assistant in Youngstown, Ohio (Fail perhaps, but not quite Perish).

* So far this selling season, I’m keeping  signing bonus pace with the two lowest paid relief pitchers on the Cubs roster who have but one Save between them.  That’s only one Save more than me and I don’t even play baseball. Still, it beats the hell out of  singing Barney songs to kindergarteners and cleaning up spilt milk…in Ohio.

* I’m yet to directly make a nickel writing anything in any year, sing-along session, or administration.

* Sometimes I imagine a cute saying or vivid scene,  edit  the content  for profanity and blue imagery,  QWERTY it into the Notes page of my iPhone then blog about it later, generally at my writing desk. I try very hard to keep at least an element of truth in these sorts of writings. If  the piece winds up getting  too far out there then I just stuff  it full of keywords and hyperlinks and post it on Active Rain instead.

* Other times,  the event actually does unfold before my very eyes which immediately hurls me into  multi-talkxting  mode (simultaneously talking with one person, texting another, and drinking a caffeinated beverage while operating a motor vehicle). This is always about the time I accidently drop my iPhone in one puddle or another.

* The rest of the time I just wait for Saturday evening to arrive and, if I haven’t dozed off in a corner somewhere,  log onto my Bloodhound WordPress account and try to slip  a semi-polished post past a couple of  the sleeping big dogs before midnight.  If I’ve had enough coffee throughout the week, it generally writes itself.

This morning  in the shower a new title popped into my head.  The New York Nicks:  a story of two cooks, both named Nicholas, who work at a Greek restaurant during the day and play in a Staten Island garage band at night.  How I’ll ever find a way to make that notion somehow  pertain to real estate, I haven’t a clue. But then again,  Mother Nature is not a MILF took since May 12th to end up here.

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It’s not that I couldn’t somehow get my hands on a late model Ferrari if I really wanted one (and I doubt I’m any different than most happily married men of my demographic in this regard). After the divorce, I’d simply have to move in with relatives, liquidate whatever is left for 100 pennies on the dollar, then slap down the balance on American Express between billing cycles, that’s all. With the proceeds I could probably score a pretty decent off-lease, if not road worn,  Enzo Berlinetta…in the least desirable color—with stock rims. I’m just saying.

I want one, but ideally…I want one 20 years ago.  (Actually, I’ll just take the 20 years ago and you can keep the Ferrari and this whole real estate business.)  A 32 year old Realtor in a Ferrari is a Bad Ass but a 52 year divorcee old living at home with mother is….well, just plain sad—especially when forced to park a high mileage phallus behind her Subaru in the driveway. (God how I hate that Freud.)

So this middle-aged guy zooms into my rear view mirror on the freeway entrance ramp last evening, hesitates for a double-bump tach rev,  then screams past me on the right in 1st gear. He was neatly tucked into a couple hundred thou of  handcrafted, precious scarlet metal and buttery cowhide.  His straw gray, combed-over tonsure hovered in the breeze above a sun-chapped bald spot. A rose gold Chopard watch, with matching cuff links, deflected all remaining rays of Envy as he dissolved into the North Shore Chicago smogset.  Judging from the pink gold blur, I pegged his left wrist alone at around 50 grand. Clearly, our little speedster’s got more jack than any man knows what to do with. His engine sounded like an amped-up Joe Satriani guitar riff in the dusky ether.  His license plate read RAINMKR. I’ve been behind this ass clown before.  He used to double park his banana cream Bentley at a renowned Viagra Triangle watering hole during happier hours. Must have gotten a divorce. If he got a red Ferrari then somebody got a house. You can bet on it.

I mentally counted the remaining months on my forest green 2006  BlahsMoW X3,  followed immediately by my own marital blessings–bountiful, to be sure.  I surmized (once again) that I have a personal mortality with which to wrestle and I don’t need anybody elses.  But…. if I did get the opportunity to be RAINMKR  for a day I’d probably hawk the pink watch if for no other reason than to see the look on the pawnbroker’s face .  Then I’d  go right  back to my wife where I belonged…..but not before doing 185 (that’s when the rear wing is actuated to maintain the downforce of 775kg) on the way home; just like in that song I sing to myself every time it comes on the radio.

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“You aren’t supposed to be smiling at a funeral,” my niece whispered out of the corner of her mouth as she sat between me and her older sister in the first row of  Salon A.  The three of us stared straight ahead studying  the grim subject before us; our beloved Pop Pop Gene.  My tiny mother sat slumped in a wing-backed receiving line chair just to the side of the casket; my youngest sister kneeling  beside her on one knee, patted her slightly shaking  hand.

I peeked over to my right. A chestnut shock of hair hung over half of  the child’s face as she silently reprimanded me. Suddenly moonstruck,  I realized how both young  girls looked  just as their mother did at that same mysterious age; prime numbered Eleven. Picasso beauties, all three of them. I couldn’t help but smile even on this, the  saddest of  all wakeful occasions.

We Italianos, besides wearing a lot of black, don’t mourn so much as think about food during times of great sorrow.  Ironically,  we fill our stomachs with the very fatty pabulum that slowly kills us in the first place.  Mangiare!  Morte! Mangiare! Too many cheese raviolis spoil the life span.  According to the heart surgeon, who admittedly did all he that could, my father had 95%  blockages in every artery. We are told he never made it past the initial catheterization.  I looked around the room and wondered if everyone was as hungry as me.  The pang soon passed as I once again embraced the still, silent  gravity of the moment.

I slipped my iPhone out of the breast pocket of my suit jacket and clicked on the Notes icon.  The screen lit up the entire front row. I scrolled down to a page I had earlier tagged ‘Cheat Sheet’  and quickly reviewed the names of each of my 20+ first cousins and their  respective spouses (both alive and deceased), children, and significant others as well as my parents’ immediate neighbors, long  ago retired  co-workers,  and dearest remaining friends.  Anyone beyond that realm of  entitled preparation would receive a simple and gracious  “Thank you so much for coming.” I do a similar thing at weddings and Christmas parties.  At age 52, my memory is clearly shot.

There are at least six variations Michael in our hyper-extended family; Mike, Mikey, Mickey, etc and nearly as many Johns and Johnnys. There are also a couple of Judys and more than a few versions of Elizabeth; Liz, Mary Beth, Mary Elizabeth, et al. The most beloved of these are committed to perpetual and everlasting memory.  Everyone else is on the List.

“Put your phone away,” my niece whispered  loud enough for everyone but my mother (and possibly father) to hear—and to be fair, my mother never hears anything.  I rose up from my chair and scurried into a private room reserved for Immediate Family to quickly review the names: John and Sandy, Ricky and Debbie, Judy and Mike, Monica and Mike, Elaine and Mike (Oops, divorced… I think. Maybe not. Or was it just an affair?… I think. Maybe not. Everyone got so fat I guess it doesn’t really matter anymore), Andrea and Mike (did they ever marry?)  Wait… more than a few of these people have passed on themselves. I needed to make a separate List just for the dearly departed.  Note… to… self…

I was starving.  I looked around the chintz and mahogany room. There was nothing to eat but wrapped breath mints and ice cubes from the pewter ice bucket. I picked up a stack of St. Jude prayer cards and fought back the tears as I read my father’s printed name on the back. I put three of them into my pocket and popped a breath mint. Smoking a cigarette seemed like a good idea for the first time in years but I refrained (although I was pretty sure at least one of the ‘Mikes’ smoked my old brand).

My father was wearing his best Brooks Brothers suit and a Hermes tie my wife Mona bought him for his 80th birthday.  Everyone said he looked great but I’m not even sure what that means. I could barely focus. My sister, up  on both feet by now, took a small bottle from our mother’s purse, walked over to the casket, and made sure the parlor attendant dabbed a splash of cologne on Pop Pop’s lapel. A Knights of Columbus 4th Degree Honor Guard volunteer stood at  swaying attention to the left. My other sister insists she saw him take a couple nips when he thought no one was looking but then again, she needed a drink  right about then as much as I needed a bowl of mussels, linguine, and a half-loaf of stiff Italian bread.  Guests began to arrive and we  ‘meeted and greeted’ for what seemed like the remainder of Eternity. Time seemed to stop for all of us,  including our father who art….

Toward the end of the night I fought off the sorrow, ignored the lingering hunger, and vowed to improve my life in all areas–not the least of which being what I shove down my throat.  Alone on a sofa in the Mens Lounge of the funeral home, I typed the following into the Lose it! application on my iPhone: Tasty Slim Fast in the morning;  A cracker for lunch; A sensible carrot stick for dinner. (I would ultimately blow my diet in First Class on my trip back to Chicago. Those damn…hot…nuts…) My father’s son in more ways than one,  I love anything salty, crunchy, sweet, or spicy.  Again, I fought back the tears….

As the remaining family members said our goodbyes beneath the mercury lights of the  parking lot I leaned down and whispered into my young niece’s ear. The shock of hair  still covered one beautiful blue eye. The other, pure sapphire under the moon and mercury, gleamed back at me.

“I always think about food when I’m sad.”  Her pretty little mouth flashed the faintest of smiles—a quarter turn upward, as she hugged me goodbye.  “And just so you know,”  I continued as her older sister left her own mother’s side and joined our personal embrace…. ”I always smile when I cry.”   But I really don’t.

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As winters go, the current capricious season has been as tolerable as any I’ve experienced sober since being administratively abandoned here 14 years ago against my will.  So what if I left a smarmy sales vice president waiting (with 45 life insurance presentation kits and a slide projector) in Baggage Claim 7 at O’ Hare International for an ‘inexcusable amount of hours’ on a cold March morning  back in 1990-whatever.  Big whoop. I figure the suited puppet is corporate milk toast by now anyway so I have  no regrets in that regard. A year and a half later I had my real estate license and thirty days after that, I sold my first multi-unit building for condo conversion. ‘God forbid’  the ass clown would ever think to spring for a cab. Thinking back on it now, that’s what he  most likely had to do.  I just don’t recall it being mentioned in my Fed Exed severance package that so quickly followed.

And what I’ve concluded since that liberating (if not sentimental) six-figure parting of  the ways is this: If ever there was a super-imposed bordered, semi-landlocked example of urban, bi-polar personality disorder just waiting to spit in the face of cabin fever, it exists in  my fair city, Chicago, between the months of November and April, pick a year.  And, as is the case of  so many frost-bound salesmen who have come and gone before me, my own personal demons continue to appear in a variety of veneers (with mere weather and  spirited drink being the least seductive of my temptresses anymore).

My final hours in corporate America began to un-tick in the following way one blustery weekend a millennium or so ago. I had been sitting on the same Viagra Triangle bar stool since Saturday morning when Last Call was finally announced.  I allegedly paid another unwilling patron to help me locate my car and drive me home. When I hit the pillow and cold crashed on the bed hours later it was the break of daylight the following Sunday. I needed to be out the door in exactly 24 hours to pick up my new vice president from his 8:02 AM  flight for an important Monday morning sales presentation.

When I awoke from my dehydrated coma and rack focused my blurry vision toward the general direction of  the deactivated alarm clock on my night stand, the numbers 7:07  burned my retinas digital red. I jumped up in a virtual panic, threw on a suit and Hermes noose, splashed on a handful of Bulgari, gargled a Red Bull and Diet Coke highball and flew out the door in search of my car.  Alas, God was looking out. I located the salt and cinder mottled vehicle less than a half block away, albeit double parked beside an alley dumpster with two City of Chicago orange tickets taped to my windshield and emergency flashers just barely groaning.  By yet another whit of Divine intervention, the engine turned over on the first twist of the key. I tossed the tickets into the glove box with all the others and tore westward toward the highway from my lakeside apartment.

Once on the Interstate, I needed to make it to O’Hare in record time. My BMW was running on fumes as I tried with one shaky hand to tidy up the interior.  No time to stop on this fated day. The road was empty of its usual bumper-to-bumper rush and I felt thrice blessed as I blew by mile marker after exit ramp neck- to-neck with the unraveling clock. I emptied the ashtray out the window and tossed as much as I could from the front seat to the back seat while driving, smoking, and curse/praying the entire way.

I recall glancing at my wrist as I slid sideways past the Valet attendant in Hourly Parking and into a handicap space, a crumpled twenty already clenched in my fist.  My watch read 7:55. I hustled alongside  the escalated  pedway until I located the nearest United monitor in Terminal 1.  Out of breath with thinned blood pumping, I stared bloodshot at the blinking  diode data for what felt like an eternity: Arrival. Departure. Gates. Times. Cities. Flights. Baggage Claim. Can’t. Figure. It. Out.

I looked up through the Helmut Jahn arched skylights above and made one last appeal to the Fortune 500 heavens. The sky was a hue of impending doom, getting darker by the minute. A full hour later with the boss man inexplicably delayed, my head throbbing and empty gut wrenched dry, but  still somehow standing, I realized it wasn’t Monday morning at all…but still Sunday. Sunday evening in fact. Darkness quickly swallowed my entire being.  And it  was still winter in Chicago.

I took a seat at the airport bar and vaguely remember drinking  with a pilot until closing; either a pilot or a baggage handler, I don’t really care to recall. I lost my car again. Towed somewhere. Declined credit card or something.  Took a cab back home to the lake  and woke up the following  Tuesday. Got Fed Exed on Wednesday.  Haven’t touched a drop since.

Except once. That was New Years Eve in Puerta Vallarta, Mexico.  In 1999. Just like the song.  But who has the time to muddle through that long story. Buy me a club soda at Bloodhound Unchained later this month and maybe I’ll spill the rest of the beans.

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I choose to live in a big American city because frankly, I stick out like a sore sport in most rural settings and my accountant says we can’t afford London. One of my earliest pre-school memories was a Trenton to New York City train ride with my mother on a blustery Saturday morning.  How much of  that early 1960s day trip I accurately recall and how much is anecdotal family filler (pulled, kneaded and peppered over the redolent decades around my parents’ kitchen table) I’m not quite sure.  Still, certain sepia frames have been imprinted in my mind for life— gazing up at the sky scrapers whose dizzying heights give me vertigo to this day; creeping like a mouse through the bowels of  The Museum of Natural History, terrified of the mummies and the smell of all that marble; seeing  a man get his arm tore off by a taxi cab while standing at a busy Broadway corner…I’m pretty sure; sitting on a New York City phone book for a child’s eternity at  Mamma Leone’s, waiting for the dessert course to arrive.  Feeding the ducks in Central Park.  Observing  the landscape artists with easels and tams, their turpentined pigments slathered on thumb-holed palettes, probably all long dead by now but  full of  abstract perspective on that day.  Not peeing my pants for the entire afternoon.

A similar ferment churned in my gut when I first strolled the arrondissements of Paris; same thing along the canals of Rome; and Gaudi’s Barcelona.  And while I can easily inhale the woodsy fragrance of say, a Walden Pond (or even Dyer, Tennessee) without much complaint, I am clearly no Thoreau.  Once you think you see a guy get his arm torn off in Times Square, you can never really go back to the suburbs.  Not entirely.

As each year strikes like lightning, I find myself  being both drawn to, and repelled from, the urban twist of what once was Sandburg’s Chicago with its animal sense of outcome and yellow inner eye… ‘ hog butcher for the world.’  Liebling’s Second City.  On a calm evening the whispers can still be heard beneath the newer, vertical townhouses that just 40 years ago were stockyards.  On the hottest of days, the mephitis still rises from the soil. I had a listing down there once (before the market downturn) for over 500 days. At the very end, everyone involved got slaughtered.

I read each morning, with curious attention, as my real estate compatriots post their streaming routines on Twitter, Facebook, and the Blogosphere du monde. I imagine what it would be like to mentally attend a ‘Four Day Foreclosure Conference in Fresno’ or physically prepare ‘REO Listing  Paperwork til Midnight’  in Raleigh or hobnob with @townsquare.  I find myself, instead, cherry picking the downtown Chicago buyers I wish to work with from our own brokerage website registration and passing along the rest. I attend to only one listing these days; a favor to a friend.  I’ve become an Accidental Realtor of sorts, sitting on a virtual phone book in my iPhone, waiting for the big hogs to fatten.  The Entree. I sell metropolitan real estate because (aside from luxury yachts and illegal drugs) it’s the biggest ticket item around here that pays a commission large enough for my wife and I to live comfortably in our empty nest, still do some social good, and travel the world—or at least the country. (We’ll be in Phoenix this April for Unchained.)

At the end of  Henry James’s life the historians say he finally realized that no matter how much a man loved his adopted foreign city or how long he claimed residence to a particular Transatlantic society— unless he was actually born there, he never quite belonged.  Again, not entirely.  I’m not sure where I’ll wind up at the very end.  I can’t really recall where I came from, come to think of it.   I suppose for now I’ll just stay put here in the Midwest and wait for this house I sold myself to at least reclaim some of its original value. As long as I’m paying the property taxes on time, the City of Chicago promises not to tear off my arm. Not entirely.

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Most days I simply breathe, terminus. I place one foot in front of the other, chomp on whatever elephant is in the room—one bite at a time, and mind my own real estate business.  Occasionally,  I stick two cents worth of my neck out into the Social Networking traffic snarl… then quickly retreat and power-lock the doors after posting a terse one liner or two in the Comment section but  before the light turns yellow reminding me to STOP,  lest they find me out and veer into the HOV lane where yes, I sometimes poach alone.  The rest of the time I’m thinking of something decent to compose that doesn’t state the obvious or contribute to someone else’s conspiracy theory.

I’ve mentioned before that I only need to be 51% in favor of something to concur, though it’s not as easy as it sounds. I find myself  indifferent about so many things, in these,  my middle years, that I’m often unsure where I stand on even the simplest points or issues. Lobbying for those last few votes in my own head seems a waste of  electromagnetic energy better spent on, I don’t know…. apathy?  So here’s what’s been brining  in the mental stock pot since last I published here:

My economic survival instincts tell me I’m a conservative but my starving conscious contact still whispers liberal.

I can barely tolerate NAR but I sell real estate to make a living and thus, support the paper tiger.

I think I support NRA but I’ve never been too crazy about weapons.

I often get the two groups mixed up.

Same with AA and AAA.

I can’t stand the thought of cruelty to any animal but I love a T-bone steak,  rare.

I can usually recall the names on Facebook but not the actual faces.

I loathe the New York Times but enjoy The New Yorker.

I admire anyone who admits a mistake promptly although I’m generally intolerant of mistakes.

I prefer being a Buyer’s Agent over a Listing Agent any day of the week, especially Sundays.

‘The Take Away’ is the most powerful Closing technique  if you really want closure.

I don’t particularly like the genre but I’m working on a screenplay entitled Chick Flick.

There are some mob guys in it.

I no longer smoke or drink except in my dreams where I’m always smoking and drinking.

I wonder why guys like Lowell George make small, deep cuts in pop culture then suddenly die leaving the rest of us to listen to their small bodies of work over and over and over again.

Little Feat looks old as hell on Facebook.

Where the hell is Tehachapi?

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1960

“Genie… here’s a quarter. Now run down to the corner and get me a Hershey’s from the store.  You keep the extra coppers for pin money.  Don’t tell Big Gene.”

My father’s mother was sneakier than any of her twenty-one grandchildren when it came to copping a candy fix in broad daylight.  A final stage diabetic, her pancreas barely running on fumes, Grandma Petro somehow managed, through simple fear of the Lord and all that His wrath might subsume in the afterlife beyond, to squeak out a few extra years of existence in the back bedroom of my uncle’s Levittowner before slipping away forever one snowy afternoon in front of  the 13″ black-and-white that rose above the medicine bottled landscape of  her night stand.  The last words I remember her telling me shortly before she died were,  “Remember Genie, God did not put us on this earth to be happy.”  I looked around her tiny room and dwelled on the thought as she prepared in her own way to pass away. I’ve tended to resist the pundits, across the board, ever since.

I was  the only youngster in the clan she trusted enough to routinely make the street corner run and actually return with her chocolate dope; the few copper coins from the grocer, a meager compense for my silence. “Pin money,” she’d insist. Whatever that meant.  The woman terrified me and loved me at the same time.

For half a generation, eight people lived under the pitched roof of that modest three bedroom, one bath tract home just north of Philly and across the river from Jersey.  Grandma occupied the tiniest room in the back; my aunt and uncle, the largest; the five children of varying ages and gender split the square footed difference with blankets and pillows strewn in every remaining  corner of carpet.  By 1968 the family finally added another bedroom and bathroom to the tax rolled address along with three more kids and a foster child.  Life trickled on.

1980

On occasion of the long anticipated and touted Mortgage Burning Party celebrating the last and final payment to the Savings and Loan, the soggy, ragged hovel barely teetered on its crumbling concrete slab as it rested on the residential shelf  alongside volumes of other Post War War II life stories in neighboring burgs with names like Violetwood, and Bristol, and Fairless Hills.  There stood Dogwood, to be precise.

Still, to this day, it’s the only house  (and owners) I’ve ever known of whose original loan actually ammortized without re-finance, equity loan, or line of credit over a thirty year period; $122  per month, one payment at a time,  for 360 months. That’s exactly $43,920 paid out over a thirty year period for a house that originally sold for $9,999 in 1950. Plus of course, the apple tree,  garden hose, and ‘grape vine on lattice arbor’ as advertised in old man Levit’s brochure.

And true to the original actuarial projection, the house was worth around $50,000 at the time of that  final payment.  When the last remaining grantee on the original deed passed away in April of 2008,  it sold on the block  for $132,000 and three years back taxes.  After the auctioneer’s cut, attorneys fees and funeral expenses,  the surviving children, numbering ten by now, all adults and with Levitowners and multiplying children of their own, pocketed about $6200 apiece.  Pin money.

2009

It was shortly thereafter I had occasion to ask  my 83 year old father, Big Gene, what the term actually meant—that cryptic monetary family saying. I’d been wondering about it for years in the back of my mind but somehow, the thought never materialized enough to make it past my tongue. Now, as we watched CNN together one afternoon, I needed to know once and for all.

“Pin money?”  I inquired during a commercial break. “What exactly is that?”

My father thought for a moment before answering, silently mouthing the question aloud to himself through his own personal filters and analog gatekeepers of facts and fictions…

“Spending money for….you know…at the bowling alley.  You pay the boy to set up the pins after each frame. Or you earn money for setting up the pins, if you’re the boy.  Either way,”  he told me.

“Set up the pins?”

“At the bowling alley. Your Grandmother’s brother used to own an alley with a bar back in Pittsburgh during the Depression,”  he continued.  “Tomko’s Bowling Alley. She used to serve drinks in the beer garden. She also worked at a distillery during the war. And at a brewery, too after that. You paid a kid to set up the pins. Or he made pin money setting up the pins…”

He sat in his leather reclining chair staring at the new flatscreen in the family room—a present my sisters and I all pitched in to buy a few Christmases ago— as his own mind wandered between decades; centuries now, really. Medicine bottles were lined up in order on the folding table beside him, their labels all facing the same direction awaiting their turn in the queue. Crossword puzzles, cut out from the daily newspaper and clamped to a foreman’s clip board, sat on his lap alongside the remote control; everything within easy reach. We watched together as the talking heads waxed prosaic, in the family room of a  townhome that has been refinanced with an Interest Only Arm at least three times in the past ten years at 100% LTV.  To be sure, there will be no Mortgage Burning Party in that household; not during  his lifetime— or mine either, for that matter.

I make a mental note to whisper in my own grandchild’s ear, if such an event should ever one day arise, before I pass into the  dark cool wrath clinging to my own fearful soul…

2030

“Remember, Little Geno,  God did not put us on this earth to  hold clear title to our primary residences.  I know.  I used to work as a Realtor during the last Depression in 2010. Here’s a sawback. Now run down to the corner and bring Pap Pap back a lottery ticket and a Snickers bar. You can keep the change for pin money but stay away from the bowling alley. And don’t tell your mother.”

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I know someone who knows a guy who might know of a ‘pocket listing’  back in the old neighborhood. That’s how everybody refers to a certain kind of good fellow in one particular ‘Near West’ Chicago block of stoop and brick row homes—guys. They call them guys. Guys from the Neighborhood.

“He’s a guy.”

“Who?”

“Him.”

“Him?”

“Yeah, him.”

“He’s a guy?”

“Yeah, he’s a guy.”

“He ain’t a guy.”

“Sure he is.”

“No he ain’t”

“He ain’t?”

“Nah.”

“I thought he was.”

“Nah. You’re thinkin’ of his cousin.”

It’s the sort of community where adult children inherit the homes from their parents and never move away; the same homes their parents inherited from the grand parents.  The housing stock is a  block-by-block mixture of  row homes,  traditional city bungalows, wood framed Two and Three Flats circa 1900, and turn-of-the-century brick Multi-Unit tenements. The same Italian restaurants, corner bars, and beef joints have lined Grand Avenue from Ogden to Ashland for generations. Guys, both young and old,  loaf in front of their social clubs three seasons a year blocking the side walks in both directions, their Caddys and Buicks double parked against the curbs.  Nobody gets a ticket.  Nobody seems to have a job.

“His cousin?”

“Yeah.”

“But not him?

“Nah. They got the same first name and hair.”

“I did not know that.”

“Yup.”

“I thought they was the same guy”

“Nah. Different guy. Same hair though.”

“I did not know that…”

And so on for hours.  Or years. Generations.  Anyway, I know someone who knows someone who has a place he might want to sell on the down low  (that’s Not Listed on the MLS for all you traditional RE peeps).  A real guy, apparently—and like I said, also someone from the old neighborhood.  Of course, this guy my friend speaks of doesn’t live in his building anymore and hasn’t for almost a decade. He’s been…well…he’s been away.  Away, serving his country and the great state of Illinois to the tune of  concurrent life stretches which, I learn from my friend (who is my age and stills lives at home with his mother who is also seated at the table in a house coat this snowy morning) is much better than consecutive life stretches.  His mother nods in agreement. I look around the kitchen and think I spot a St. Joseph statue  on top of the Frigidaire ice box next to a bottle of Benedictine.

Either way, I do not  wish to  know the intimate details of this prospective seller or his collection of concurrent stretches. My friend tells me this guy just lost his last and final appeal and figures now is as good a time as any to ‘finally bite the bullet and sell his last building.’  I clench my teeth and close my eyes, mentally blocking the imagined gun powder and enamel sensation in my own mouth as I ponder the tangled mess of quit claim paperwork that’s probably involved.

“Dear St Joseph,” I silently pray toward the general direction of the antique ice box, “Oh how I don’t want to be the one to break the grim news to this or any other guy and his mother on this particular block.” Not yet.  At least not until the Stimulus Package passes the Senate.  Messengers get squashed around here all the time I’ve been told. It’s still a very Roman neighborhood in that regard.

You see, the most acclaimed, albeit notorious, loafer of this tiny Chicago enclave over the last 45 years is a fellow named Joey ‘The Clown’ Lombardo who was just recently handed a life sentence or two of his own. The papers say the conviction was based on some very harsh hearsay testimony from the few remaining family turncoats he apparently never got around to whacking  (none of whom, I understand, were Realtors or Bloggers, praise the Lord).  Bottom line, neither The Clown nor this other guy I’ve been talking about are coming home for Spaghetti Wednesday this or any other week and as bullet biting luck would have it, both unfortunately have properties in the family portfolio they may be forced to unload in the worst market in the history of housing history.

And to further add to the pasta fasul simmering in the cooker, Joey The Clown’s building, a yellow brick 1920’s un-restored Four-Flat  just down the block, out of respect and courtesy, has to get sold first. Then this other guy’s  building is free to go on the chopping block (as it were), from what mother and son are telling me.  Both buildings are on the down low meaning instead of appealing to the Chicago Association of Realtors for my inevitable, impending procuring cause case for commission (if I’m even so lucky to snag a buyer at all) I’ll probably end up dealing with the Teamsters Local 705.  I reel my thoughts back to the present as my friend continues…

“And no sign. Nobody wants to see a For Sale sign on this block.  You understand?”

I swallow the back of my tongue and nod. We sit around the kitchen table in silence now. The house smells like cabbage and coffee grinds. And cats. I wonder what the vacant building down the street smells like after ten years.

“So what do you say?” my friend asks. He thinks he’s doing me a big favor.

“I don’t know,” I respond slowly. Buying time, mere seconds really. My eyes rest once again on top of  the ice box.  “Maybe try burying Jimmy Hoffa upside down in the front yard?”

His mom looks at me as if to say “Jimmy Hoffa?…We haven’t seen him in years.”

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I am not a gay man but I’d play one on television if I thought there was a Golden Globe in it for me.  In fact, my wife insists that her next husband will indeed, be a gay man and I’m cool with that as long as I’m not still around to witness all the fabulous shopping thrown back  in my face.  And  just so you know that this Op-Ed is not coming from a squinted biased eye, I’m hereby going on cyber-record to announce to the entire Blogosphere that our bride’s maid was a male fashion designer, my best man was a lesbian, and we first encountered our bisexual ceremonial minister at a coffee shop in Boystown.  If you don’t believe me,  just ask our poor parents.  And perhaps this is why a certain Jason Wu recently ‘Requested’ my Friendship on Facebook.  (The fact that I even know who the man is serves as the premise for this piece.)

And thus, without doth protesting too much, if you ever met me in person you’d clearly see that I’m not physically fit enough to be gay—or at least, not the sort of gay I’d prefer if druthers were in order. I do know a little bit about fashion, though, and I have to declare that I am totally pissed that Michelle Obama did not wear Maria Pinto at the Inauguration. There, it’s out. I said it.

Allow me to digress.  Maria Pinto is a well known Chicago based fashion designer who studied under Geoffrey Beene.  She is the twin sister of my best friend and managing broker, Joe Pinto,  and a personal friend and designer-of-choice of my wife, Mona. For the past 18 months,  none other than the Michelle Obama, has been  frequenting  the Pinto showroom for complimentary couture and thus, dangling the possibility of  wearing Maria Pinto for The Inauguration.  There were nods and winks but I can say no more.  And since ‘ The Dress ‘  will ultimately hang in the Smithsonian alongside the likes of Jackie Kennedy and First Ladied others…well, needless to say…this was all a pretty big deal for a lot of people here.

And so, all collective eyes  in Chicago were glued to the television screen this past Tuesday.  Maria had been picked up in a limo and whisked away to DC  just one day earlier. The buzz in our social circle was ear numbing; the text messages, encoded and endless. We were all sworn to secrecy. I microwaved popcorn and took the entire day off.  Mona buried one of my Saint Joseph statues in the pocket of a Maria Pinto cape she paid $1800 for. I called my bookie and tried to get the over-under on a side bet. Evening finally fell and the first of a dozen fabulous Balls began. The cameras panned left and the First Lady appeared with something sparkly strapped across her back.  All at once, things did not look promising (on so many different levels).  “IT’S NOT HERS.”  my iPhone immediately pinged. And alas, it was ultimately a little known designer named Jason Wu, who got The Inaugural nod while the rest is,  and will forever be,  haute history.

So,  to say the least, I was a bit surprised that Mr Wu himself requested my FB Friendship when I checked my Text messages this morning. I logged-in and noticed that we also had 34 ‘Friends in Common’—all real estate bloggers and not one of them fashionistas from what I could tell from their pictures. Hmmm….the new ‘Request’ reeked of the same Donald Trump icon that I couldn’t shoo away from my BlogLog widget a few years back. I went to my Facebook Dashboard and searched for  ‘Jason Wu.’  500+ entries came back.  Duped again.

But still, I find myself  reticent to click ‘Deny’ although it seems like every time I  post one of these types of pieces,  a handful of soon-to-be ex-Friends promptly ‘Remove’ me from their rosters. (Unsubscribed, as it were.).  It’s not cool to shun those who identify with the fashion elite, I decide.  Anyway, I always welcome a hot tip on a truckload of Man’s Purses; COACH, preferably, if you’re taking notes.

postscript:  My wife just walked into the room and asked me if I wanted to go for a Mani-Pedi.  Am I dead yet?

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