Unfortunately, this is not where I’ve been spending the last week. No, I’ve been in my house for 5 DAYS AND NIGHTS battling some interplanetary virus that I swear was released when NASA drove a bus into the moon. While it was kicking my ass, I watched more bad TV than I imagined possible, ate weird food foraged from my kitchen (tomato soup with walnuts on the side), slept on the couch with all the lights on, and in the process, lost 3 pounds (!). All in all, an eventful week. Tonight I have a Z-Pak, Mucinex, codeine cough syrup, a frozen pizza and a People Magazine – another rockin’ Friday in AARPville. (Come to think of it, though, I’ve known some young Deadheads who would think a frozen pizza and hydrocodone cough syrup spelled P-A-R-T-Y.) But when I think what I could be doing on a Friday night if I weren’t an invalid, I have to admit the alternatives aren’t all that different:
1. Go to a downtown art opening where everyone is 350% hipper than I am. The men will be wearing porkpie hats, and the women will have on odd, velvet swagged dresses picked up for a song at vintage shops. The dresses will have a patina of Jazz Age authenticity that I mistake for dirt. I will know no one and will wander around with a steno pad pretending to take notes. The art students passing drinks will be dressed as famous paintings. I will probably spill red wine on the boy in Andy Warhol’s soup can.
2. Move on to the bar near my office and pretend to be totally unaware of all the meat market men out past their expiration date, because I am oh so absorbed in writing deep thoughts in my journal and looking supercilious and literate. No one hits on me, and I pretend to be relieved.
3. Still at the bar, I check my watch repeatedly and surreptitiously call my gay husband and beg him to meet me at the bar and pretend we had a prearranged date to discuss…something or other. Since he just put a frozen pizza in the oven, it’s a no-go. Leave a big tip because I want the bartender to like me.
4. Casually drop by a married couple’s house at dinner time (married people generally have regular meal times) ostensibly to replace a lemon I once borrowed, planning to hang around til they’re forced to invite me to dinner. Find they are leaving for a church oyster roast. They urge me to join them, but I am afraid of being burned as a witch.
5. Go home, put a frozen pizza in the oven, sip leftover cough syrup in a bottle I find in the bottom of my sock drawer while I wait for dinner to cook. Wait, sip, wait. Burn pizza, fall asleep on couch with lights on while I watch Dateline NBC. Dream I gain 3 pounds being force fed tomato soup.
