2007-08-01

-

It was inevitable. After several days of packing, refinishing, reupholstering and throwing shit out, I have hit a wall and do not want to fucking do anything that has to do with this move. It's my WEEK OFF, damn it. Am I not entitled to do NOTHING? I got home from my shrink appointment, looked around at all the boxes and just felt like someone had let the air out of my pretty red balloon.

So I talked to Mark for about 15 minutes, made plans to make plans about tonight, then called the houseboy, who assured me that it's perfectly okay to not do anything move-related today if that's the way I feel. Because we had us a smallish adventure last night which simultaneously gave me a taste of the fresh hell to come while reminding me just how much I love my family.

I was in dire need of a new dresser. I've had my current dresser since the Reagan administration, and it is falling apart. The thought of moving this dilapidated monstrosity into our sparkly new abode was depressing the shit-eating fuck out of me, so I went to the Great God Craigslist in search of something decent-yet-cheap, which I found rather quickly. Nice big dresser for sixty bucks. Little matching two-drawer nightstand thrown in for added measure. Lady selling it lives nearby. Perfect.

The houseboy and I drove over. The lady selling it lives on the third floor of one of those "modern" brick apartment complexes with boxy little units and rather treacherous stairwells. I lived in such a place before moving to Jamaica Plain. If that's your bag, man....great. I just prefer my abode to have a tad more character. I digress. We sized it up (not very well, as it turned out) and decided to buy it. After maneuvering it down the stairs and onto the sidewalk by our car, we realized that there was a very high probability that it was NOT going to fit into the back seat. We have an early-90's, beat-to-hell Dodge Intrepid (we call it "Tha Knight Ridahh") which is quite roomy. We have fit my entire drumkit in the backseat, with room to spare. Alas, this would not be the case with my sixty-dollar dresser. We heaved, we shoved....to no avail. I was not going to freak out about this. I was not going to scream at the houseboy. A few phone calls were made, and within 5 minutes, my cousin Keith was there with his minivan.

"Keef!" I wailed in gratitude. "Dude, I OWE you, big time."

He shrugged. "Not a problem."

Of the eleventy-billion cousins on my dad's side, I am probably closest with Keef. We don't hang out the way we used to, since he's become a dad (one cute-as-hell little boy with another on the way). As is the case with my cousins -- with pretty much everyone on my dad's side of the family -- our conversations are tinged with a fair amount of verbal abuse. It's just the way we roll on the McColgan side. A typical exchange with my cousin Shawn, for example, usually goes something like this:

"You fuckin' suck, you fuckbag."
"No, YOU fuckin' suck."
"No, YOU."
"YOU."

I used to be mildly uncomfortable about this. It just didn't seem like any of my friends' families spoke to each other that way. I remember being in the room years ago with my dad and his older sister Joan, and Joan turning to me and saying, "Y'father was a twin, you know."
"Mmhmm. I know."
"Yeah." She paused, almost reflective. "Mumma had a boy and a turd. The boy died."
I was speechless, and looked to my father to gauge his reaction. He just sat there smirking.

None of this is done without affection. There are some who might say that these exchanges, or this making light of personal tragedy with very black humor, represents an emotional disconnect. They can think what they want. And I would invite them to go somewhere and pleasure themselves real hard while they do so.

Keef's thing is calling me a "bastard." Which, in his musical accent, sounds like "bastid." We drove up to the new place, and he and the houseboy carried the dresser through the back door into our kitchen. He stopped for a second, took in the supreme spectacular glory that is our new kitchen, and muttered: "You bastid. You unbelievable bastid."

We got everything in, and stood in the driveway, where I did the ol' stealth-slippage of a tenner into his hand when I went to shake it. That's another tradition of sorts. My grandmother was the undeniable master of the stealth-slip; at her wake, we all stuck fivers into her casket.

Keith felt the tell-tale bill. "Awwww, no."
"No, come on, Keef. You saved my ass here. Just fuckin' take it."
"All right, all right. But you really didn't have to do that."
His cellphone went off.
"That your phone?"
"What that is, Lees, is a REMINDAH...that my youth...is OVAH."

It's hard for me to fathom not having this big family...MY family...sometimes.

lisamcc at 3:40 p.m.

previous | next