Trip Home (5 of 13): Snitch.

Twice in the past like 5-7 years my dad has reported homeowners on the lake to the local Department of Environmental Quality:

- the people who bought our neighbors the undertaker's house after him and his wife split up, and the adjoining lot of swampland.

- the guy who bought the little point for a private beach.

In both cases, they had started to uproot bushes and reeds and trees and turn wetlands into beaches, which is illegal.

"Don't tell anyone I did that," my dad told me each time.

Trip Home (4 of 13): Private property.

Everyone where my parents live is talking about how people bought up the point this little sliver of land that you can't build on, but has a nice little beach sticking out into the lake that everyone swims or boats to and brings their kids and let them play in the sand...

The guy who owned it got behind on taxes for 3 years, and then 2 people from the lake bought it, this one guy who had been (rightly, my dad says) accused of murder years ago and sued the county and made some money, and this one guy who's kind of crazy and has an office job at a big state university in the state and is an inveterate gambler, preferring poker.

So, they got the land, and put up six signs all around, saying -

 PRIVATE PROPERTY 

NO TRESPASSING

- and then, in the prefab area where you can write on the bottom of the sign -

NEW OWNERS

So, that's what we're all talking about.

I swim over there a lot when I'm at my parents, and so I just stand in the water there now to rest (riparian rights), before going back.

"And make sure you stand there and piss on it," my dad was like. "That'd probably fall under riparian rights!"

My dad even heard through people that the university guy, who has a summer home on the other side of the lake, says he wants to make it a private beach, and takes out binoculars and checks to see who's going on the point despite the signs.

"Why would he do something like that?", I asked my dad.

"Because it's like [our neighbor the judge] said," my dad said, "That man's strange and an asshole."

The judge's husband even counted the signs, and was telling everyone that there was 6 of them.

When I talked to the summer people next door, this (older) (white) wealthy biz guy from Detroit and his (older) (Polish) wife, both kind of conservative and always going to mass, the wife even brought up the point, and how she can't take her grandkids there.

"Did you hear there's new owners?", she said, wryly.

"I say we nationalize it," I told her, and I got her to laugh.

I bet in her youth in Poland, people always talked about nationalizing this and nationalizing that.

Trip Home (3 of 13): Post-train wait.

After I got off the train and the bus connection to the town where my friends from home were picking me up on their way north, I walked to a local Middle Eastern restaurant, and got something to eat, then sat out front on their patio to have some rice pudding and coffee and do some Latin.

After like 20 minutes, an (elderly) (black) lady walks out with her food to get a table and asks me what I'm doing, and I tell her Latin, and in particular prepping a saint's life of a converted prostitute, and I tell her how a monk in disguise hires her in order to convert her, and as she takes him from room to room in the brothel and he keeps asking her for something more hidden, she finally stops and says, "If you're trying to hide from the eyes of men, we are safe, but if you are trying to hide from the eyes of God, you can never escape" - which is the seed that he uses to convert her.

"Isn't that just beautiful," she was like.

Later, the woman's sister comes out, and she just couldn't stop saying how great it was that I did Latin and made some sort of a living off it.

"But then again," she was like, "I'm a harpist, and there's not much room for me in the modern world, either."

Trip Home (2 of 13): Intensity.

Every time that I talk about school or politics, my mom's been telling me that I'm so intense, that I need a rectal valium.

Also, whenever she asks me if I'd like something to eat, I'm like, "No thank you, I'd prefer justice."

Trip Home (1 of 13): Amtrak.

On my way home, I was getting off the Amtrak train and the sullen-faced (early 50s) (black) (female) conductor was standing by the stairs as everyone passed by, and so as I got off, I was like, "Have a blessed day."

As soon as I said that, she grabbed my arm and lit up and was like, "Thanks, hon, I needed that!"

Addendum.

I forgot –

When I had had drinks with that one tranny chaser that one night at the club, we were in the middle of talking and I had just started telling him about Christine Jorgenson, when I realized I was out of beer.

“I hate to do this,” I was like, “But can you buy me a beer?  I wouldn’t ask you, but I really don't have the money.”

I then promised him that I wasn’t hitting on him.

“And,” I was like, smiling, “I think you’d like hearing about Christine Jorgenson, I got a lot to say.”

He laughed and said he would, and he went and got me another beer.

Then, I started telling him about Christine Jorgenson, how she was a slim blonde kid of Danish immigrants, very slight of figure and with a pretty face.

“I bet she made a gorgeous woman,” he was like.

“She sure did,” I was like, “A blond bombshell, big tits and just enough curves around the waste.”

Then, after I pause, I was like, “And she always said at the time that she didn’t date, that she was a good daughter to her parents, but after she died her friends said that she always used to complain that her vagina was too short.”

Then, after another pause, I was like, “So you know that guys really gave it to her.  Hard.”

Then, there was yet another short pause between us.

“I bet they did,” he was like, and then took a swig out of his beer, nervously, like his mind was elsewhere.

Later, my one Latina tranny friend (acquaintance?) came up and grabbed the tranny chaser by the shoulders and was like, “I see you’re talking with my boyfriend,” like she had already started dating him, and he had done more than just say hi to her briefly on the way in.

After she left, he asked me about her some more, and when I mentioned a few memorable jokes she had made, he nodded approvingly and was like, “You can tell she’s got a great personality on her.”

 (Because he had had a lot of call girls, and was an informed consumer?)

 

Bad Spanish...

The other week I was telling my one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend about the McDonalds protest that I went to, and how my friend and I who went ended up chanting several slogans in Spanish.

"Like what?", he was like.

"Oh, I was like, like -

el pueblo
unido
jamas sera vencido!"

(= the people / united / will never be divided).

"The people want hummus...", he was like, and he let his voice trail off as if the translation stumped him.