Daily Blague

Dr Magid was encouraging. On the spot, he rang up two of the other doctors who minister to various aspects of my illness and its side-effects. (It helps that I've memorized almost all their numbers.) Medication was changed. I left in much better spirits, but that's only to say that I wasn't worrying about presently collapsing after an aneurism or a stroke. Not so worried. And I was looking forward to dinner with Ms NOLA, who was kindly to keep me company at dinner - Kathleen is in Florida. I stopped at Agata & Valentina on the way home to pick up one or two things, and then, not having eaten since breakfast (it was now nearly five), I thought of a quick bite at the coffee shop catercornered from the store. I crossed First Avenue and decided to take a picture of St Monica's, a church that I stared at for however long it was that I stayed with Kathleen in the summer of 1979, when she had a sublet in an apartment opposite the church, and I was on my way up to a summer of clerking for my uncle in New Hampshire. Later I would learn that a priest from the parish had baptized my sister way back in 1949. That's another story, and perhaps not mine to tell, but I think of Carol every time I pass the church. I have never been inside it.

Dinner was a chicken dish from the new issue of Saveur. The chicken is baked in a hot oven and then bathed in a Swiss cheese sauce. It would have been great if the chicken hadn't been underdone. Very stupidly, I neglected to test the meat; it has been so long since I turned out an underdone chicken that I simply couldn't be bothered. I had a number of issues with the recipe, but the culprit was the pizza stone that I keep meaning to remove from the oven; it greatly prolongs the preheating period, and I haven't replaced the last broken oven thermometer. Forty minutes at 450º would have done the job. When I get this dish down, I'll upload my version. Happily, the breasts were edible, delicious even.

Ms NOLA told me that I'm an unusual man in that I really like women. This was very depressing. Is it really unusual? I know that a lot of men have no use for women beyond the carnal commodities, and I long ago realized that these men have more in common with some gay men than they do with me. We talked about men being "threatened" by women. This is a concept that I understand less and less. I think it's psychobabble. I think that these "threatened" men simply want to have their desires gratified without comment or qualification. They imagine that that would be normal. Mind you, I can't take any credit for really liking smart women, because I simply really do. (I threw in the qualification that modesty prevented Ms NOLA from mentioning; I am indeed very uncomfortable around the intellectually challenged, which means I'm no better than someone who's only happy around beautiful people.) If I've done anything, it's having avoided the socializing claptrap that can interfere with this pleasure.

I was supposed to call Kathleen at 6:30, to wake her from a nap that she needed to take and propel her to an important conference event. But I forgot. Never mind the explanations and the excuses. As we were sitting down at eight, Ms NOLA asked if Kathleen had called me, and I cried out in dismay. I went into the blue room and called the number that she'd given me, and left an apologetic message. Over an hour later, the phone rang with Kathleen's special ring, and I hastened to my judgment. It seemed early for Kathleen to have returned from her event, but I was really shocked when she said that she'd just gotten up. "But I called you at eight!" I decided to test the number right away, and, indeed, the number that appeared on her bedside phone couldn't be reached by me. I had to dig up the link that she'd sent me to her hotel's Web site. Kathleen wondered what movie she ought to watch, and Ms NOLA and I both jumped at The Incredibles, which I have not seen but which Ms NOLA adored. I look forward to hearing how Kathleen liked it, although I won't be surprised if she'll have fallen asleep in the middle of it. My poor dear is working off a very serious sleep deficit.

But don't worry about me. If I could walk to the HSS and back, I can't be that sick. Can I?

Update: Kathleen called at just about the time when The Incredibles would have ended, but she hadn't watched it; she'd fallen asleep again and just awakened. So we will probably see it for the first time together.

I neglected to mention my admiration for Ms NOLA upon her account of why she took a course in "Modernism" at Bryn Mawr in her senior year: she was determined to get the most out of James Joyce's Ulysses by reading it in the context of a college course. Intelligent or what?