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  “You got inspired to clean,” the Bride says. “How nice of you.”

  “I wish I could take credit for such a noble gesture but I can’t,” you say, sounding strange. “That’s not what happened.”

  “What happened?” she says, removing her leather jacket, dropping her beautiful black purse on the table.

  “Something terrible happened,” you say, and then you retell the story. A big shit, massive overflow, no plunger, a second flushing, water everywhere.

  “Poor you,” she says, “that’s awful.”

  And then, like always, you go too far with your descriptions. “Yeah, I even saw the grape leaves I ate yesterday.”

  “Yuck,” she says. “Now I’m going to barf.”

  Why would you tell her something like that? You look down and see another spot on the floor and rub it out. Then another. Soon the Bride, who frequently takes on the role of nurse with you, tries to lift the pitiful patient off the floor but he weighs too much. She tells him to stop cleaning.

  “It’s over,” she says, and kneels down, kisses your sweaty forehead. She is infinitely kind. “I’m going to make myself a fruit drink, do you want some?”

  “Can you smell it?” you ask.

  She tilts her ballet-dancer face back, and sniffs. “Well …” she says, and closes her eyes for fine-tuning, “sort of.”

  You stand, a little light-headed (ah, the elephant rises). Suddenly there’s nothing to do. The job’s done but you won’t let go of the sponge.

  The Bride walks into the bathroom and lights a tiny pyramid of incense. You go down to your playpen in the basement thinking this would make a good story. In a way, you enjoyed the experience.

  Sometimes you leave your laptop computer on all night and that’s what you did last night. When you approach your desk, you see water everywhere, books, papers, and drawings soaked, and a smell even worse than your previous upstairs encounter. First you were ankle-deep in goop. Now you are under it, a thin layer of feces above you. You look up and see a big coffee-colored drip.

  Say it: “I defecated on my computer.”

  You just clean and clean, that’s what you were put on earth to do. You mess yourself, you wipe, you crawl around, and then you clean some more. You pick up all the sopping wet papers, smeared and stained, and throw them in the trash—don’t even think about what you’ve ruined, just dump it all in the basket. Oh look, all your plunger drawings You hang them out to dry on the clothesline, 30 of them, reeking and streaked with brown. Since you’re one of the infirmed, it makes sense that you live and work in your pajamas. Now scamper upstairs like a nice boy and tell the pretty lady what else has happened. The whole process is second nature to you. You take all the dung-infested books outside and stand them upright with the pages fanned out. Maybe they’ll dry without sticking to each other. But is it really possible to read Emily Dickinson when you know that every page has been simmering in your own excrement?

  How do you get something like this repaired? If you send feces in the mail the government will prosecute you. It is indecent and against the law. Even though you’re a person with a short fuse, none of this has caused a serious tantrum. In fact you have not reacted. You’re numb and at peace. Your breath is steady, and that terrible smell is fading, or so you’d like to believe.

  O please, dear reader, drop that stone. Do not judge me, for I am an unfortunate person, a silly man, who doesn’t know up from down. Open your heart, diaper me. Lay me down in my crib. Press a cold compress to my brow. Let me rest. My world has caved in and I am weary. If there’s a lesson to be learned, maybe it’s this: If you feel a giant Number Two coming on, flush it down in installments, not all at once; and if your plunger moonlights as a model for figure-drawing, make sure you acquire a second plunger that is young and full of appropriate suction. Humble is the man who is backed against the wall by his own bowel movement. Lest we need to be reminded, the rear end is the devil’s public address system. It points in the opposite direction for a reason, to contradict all the good the face and eyes create, and it will always steer us into hell.

  BABY HAIRS

  Baby Hairs has terrible luck with women. He could use my help, but Wilhemina, the roadblock, said no. I wanted to set up Baby Hairs with Carla, but Wilhemina, Carla’s friend, thought it wasn’t a good idea. I thought it was, and I’m the premier matchmaker with a short list of miraculous successes to my credit, pairings that naysaying bystanders initially poo-poohed but eventually marveled at, which is why I thought but did not say to Wilhemina, Back off, chick, get out of my way, because I’m polite, calm, even-tempered, and I know what I’m doing. I’m a pro.

  Wilhemina said she didn’t think Baby Hairs would like Carla. Since I knew Baby Hairs better than anyone on the planet, and that includes members of my immediate family, I didn’t think she had a leg to stand on, which is probably why she made this discouraging remark slouched in a chair, weary and wilted like an old banana peel. It wasn’t that she hadn’t thought about this unique pairing deeply. I’m sure she had. I just think she has a corrupt take on things that serves herself over Baby Hairs and Carla, which brings us to a key point.

  A matchmaker must never think of himself, or herself, when embarking on the coupling of others. It’s one of our basic commandments, along with Thou shall not needle, nor pry, pressure, police, nor make predictions, mediate dialogues, send gifts, chaperon, escort, salivate. Following in the footsteps of O.M., the Original Matchmaker, our methods must be covert, subtle, and yet, like the King of Kings, we must remain humble, modest; our heads bowed, never looking for standing ovations, even if we deserve them.

  Why was Wilhemina disrupting my beautiful pairing? I threw coins and the I-Ching said, “Energetic progress in the good.” Foolish me assumed that Wilhemina was a fellow matchmaker. Aren’t we all, I sometimes ask myself. In other words, once we find love and happiness for our own body and brain, like food and shelter, isn’t it our obligation to make said necessary items available to others? Even though she hadn’t really thought about the situation as deeply as I—which is understandable since I’m the fellow who has seen bleak lives of solitary confinement featuring mismatched socks, infrequent bathing practices, and poor oral hygiene blossom into something approximating happiness. When love had the possibility of entering the lonely hermited life of Baby Hairs, she said No, and when I persisted she stuck with her answer, No again, only this time a bigger, more emphatic No, an angry No that featured bulging eyes and tense facial muscles that hinted at door-slamming, thick phone books heaved across rooms, fire extinguishers, restraining orders, and the like. That, needless to say, sent me into a tailspin. I had trouble with her edict, the final word from the top boss in a sealed-off room with thick bullet proof glass, a no means no type of no, which briefly turned me into an adolescent. So I said, Who died and elected you bully queen? Show me the corpse and the death certificate of the previous tyrant, if you don’t mind.

  And then I switched gears: Charming Wilhemina, I rehearsed privately to myself, associate of the planet, comrade in arms, why are we fighting like this, struggling over the potential joy of our friends, risking our own solid rapport as earthlings and love scholars? She of course must have thought, Why does my life have to by marred by the existence of you? and that was my point, that she and I were unimportant players in this romantic equation about our special needy friends. In this way the matchmaker is more scientist than social worker. Don’t disturb my lab work. My subject needs plenty of air, water, a room with a view, and loads of affection. He needs to be scratched on the back of the head, spoken to softly.

  Then Wilhemina shocked me with two revealing admissions. One, she said that she was no longer friends with Carla; and two, that the commingling of Baby Hairs and Carla, her sudden ex-friend, would make her uncomfortable. These statements were made while seated in the same chair, her posture even more melted than previously mentioned. Uncomfortable? I thought. Uncomfortable like a stray eyelash jabbing one’s cornea or a paper cut
or bunched-up underwear creating havoc with the genitals? Uncomfortable in what way? Hunched over my rolltop desk, I couldn’t stop repeating the word uncomfortable because I couldn’t stop thinking how much smaller than an atom that statement was when observed under my infuriated cerebral microscope. Uncomfortable how? Where do I gather the strength to respect such a tiny particle of utterance? What type of mechanical instrument should I use as a hearing device to comprehend this oral discharge? Where does earth supply its citizens with the fortitude necessary to cope with such foolishness, and challenge wrongdoers? I also thought, Uncomfortable why, uncomfortable because you now resemble discarded objects frequently seen in dumpsters? So badly I wanted to ask Wilhemina this, along with a theatrical, Who the hell do you think you are? which my mom said on a daily basis to windows and mirrors, as well as actual people like store clerks and waitresses. Since I have never said such a thing to someone’s face before, I was at a loss as to how to deliver or perform my righteous question, which is why I kept it all to myself. I have cowardly genes. I shy away from confrontation. I actually fear real interaction and cross words. Just the thought makes me shake. Consequently, insults grow in my head like boulders of hemlock.

  Wilhemina said she didn’t think Baby Hairs would like ex-friend Carla, because ex-friend Carla is difficult and troubled, kind of a freak or lunatic, depression prone, that she can be a scary psycho at times or every second. And then I said—I addressed her as Lil’ W, thinking maybe if I pretended that we were both truck drivers talking on CB radios I could get through this conversation without crashing headon into another semi-tractor trailer—I said something to the effect of, Lil’ W, that’s music to Baby Hairs’s ears. That’s exactly what he craves, really and truly. He desires the mental-ward girl, the smart, cute, sexy fräulein with black hair blunt-cut in a 1920s Berlin style. Plus she has a cleft chin that makes her sort of masculine. Baby Hairs’s last girlfriend, a person he met on his own, turned his car off while they were driving on the freeway and threw the keys out the window. He had to roll to a stop, guide the car to the shoulder with the steering wheel locked in place, climb the low concrete barrier, and retrieve the keys while oncoming traffic zoomed close and threatened manslaughter. Desperate maniac love, that’s what he likes. Fighters.

  When I informed Baby Hairs a few days later, at lunch, while he ate his high-protein cottage cheese scoop and hamburger patty with multiple squirts of catsup, that Wilhemina was running interference with my matchmaking, that she said, No, no, no about hot, sultry Carla, his first reaction was a simple, Why, and then he, child of Freud, asked the million-dollar questions: Did Wilhemina say no because she craves sex with me? Is this not a classic case of displacement? Does the young lass want me all to herself? This is one of many reasons why we love Baby Hairs and why we’re working overtime to find him conjugal happiness and why he holds the Kraft-Ebing Chair in the Psycho-Sexual Dept. at Fontanel University. He is prone to insightful observations such as, “The ego which has discarded all ethical bonds feels itself at one with all the demands of the sexual impulse.”

  I was quick to say, No, she does not want you all to herself, before I really had a chance to mull over the intriguing possibility of Wilhemina, a lifelong dyke, breaking lesbo rank and lusting after the flat hairy ass of Baby Hairs. One year, 10 months, 14 days ago Wilhemina fell in love with The Angel, the greatest little femme our earth has ever known, and they are happy together, perhaps ecstatic is the appropriate term, which is why they recently acquired a talkative Mexican Parrot that repeats the phases Shut up and Eat me all day long. I also said No because I didn’t think we should get sidetracked, and No because I didn’t believe Wilhemina was thinking, Must retain Baby Hairs as hetero side dish, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t get me thinking in another direction: Maybe Wilhemina the Selfish, Wilhemina the Jealous, doesn’t want to see Carla, her skinny, pale friend with the dented chin, win the prize.

  This is a difficult predicament for someone like me, a person with a discrete halo over his head, pusher of all things fair and true, to see Wilhemina hogging an inordinate amount of life’s pleasures for herself. Understandable if one were to see things from an adolescent’s point of view, but still not right at all, something the Bible warns us about repeatedly in Deuteronomy, the fifth book of Moses, and Genesis 33 where Jacob conciliates Esau.

  Am I good? Baby Hairs, the cryptic, asked during a moment of low self-esteem. We had just hiked to the top of a giant snowfield. It was late spring; the snow was granular and melty. We were playing chess on a tiny magnetic board. Each move had to be done carefully, the tips of our fingers functioning like tweezers. He was sad, his blood sugar low. He’d just lost his queen.

  He reached down and scooped up a layer of snow and put it on his head, then rubbed it briskly into his scalp. Tiny fragments of snow remained in his thin wispy hairs. I removed a small camera from my backpack and took his picture. Yes, you are good, I said, you are solid in every way.

  Solid like a stool? he asked, just as he smeared a cracker with liver pâté using his Swiss Army knife.

  No, I said, like a solid friend, a reliable horse, a monument.

  Baby Hairs is nothing like The Angel, who’s perfect to the extreme with sparkling blue eyes that actually twinkle, as if lit by God. The Angel: soft, little, smelling like a bar of Ivory Soap, a sergeant of Sappho’s army. Baby Hairs, the opposite, wanted to know how he seemed to people in the outside world. So I told him he was mad and loopy like Carla, this girl who he may never meet as long as he and she both shall live, that he’s generous and brilliant, possibly even a catch (a fixer-upper might be more accurate), that he has more humor inside him than all the suffering comedians of the world; he’s self-deprecating, doesn’t talk about himself all the time (girls appreciate that), he dresses down, almost to the point of looking like a gentleman with no source of income. I’ve seen him wandering the streets in his bathrobe (girls do not appreciate that). Baby Hairs is tallish, six-foot-one, almost handsome, bordering on cute, with funny little hairs that poke straight up from his head like pin feathers on a newly hatched duck. Doesn’t drink. He’s macho, but not murderous. Comes from old Plymouth Rock (rip-off-the-indigenous-people) ancestry, born in D.C., his great-grandfather the governor of New Hampshire. On more than a dozen occasions, I’ve heard him say that his mother is a liar (i.e., hundreds of hours of therapy, 10 years twice a week, substantial emotional progress, yes, unfortunately continued pain and suffering). Baby Hairs, the spotted lamb with bitten off fingernails who was shipped off to boarding school as a young lad, was put on earth to love and be loved. Also petted, scratched, kissed, teased. That much is certain.

  I, a simple matchmaker, an agent with a magical gift of bringing people together, am trying to spread and smear love around as often as possible or whenever it seems appropriate, but I’m having trouble accomplishing this vital task. I could’ve signed off in resignation, saddened as an oppositional force tampers with my ability to work wonders, a rival, the anti-matchmaker, a shrew who will stop at nothing to keep her frisky ripe ex-friend away from my lopsided amigo, but I didn’t. I violated certain trusts and statutes and side-stepped the human barrier and set up a clandestine meeting with Baby Hairs and Carla.

  The three of us met at a diner owned by the brother of dead Mafioso John Gotti where the matzo ball soup has big pieces of chicken, carrot, and celery. Baby Hairs looked perfect. His dirty torn up Carhartts gave him working-class appeal, like he knew how to hammer nails. Carla wore a tight black T-shirt and nothing else. Correction: She wore pants and shoes, too, also black. She was ready to go undercover, to kill for love. When they shook hands, Baby Hairs revealed his perfectly broken smile. Carla leveled a deep smoldering gaze that seemed to suggest come hither, or come as your are, or come again? One eyebrow darted up and her upper lip curled slightly. If I said it was love at first sight I wouldn’t be lying, though it could’ve easily been fear or repulsion. Those initial reactions are hard to gauge even for a professional
like myself. You gather data and then you wait.

  I took a deep breath and went to the bathroom and examined my own friendly face which seemed less green, more yellow. Why did I look like I was about to cry? My lips were parted. I was panting. Couldn’t I breathe with my mouth closed? My ears were bright purple, new hairs sprouted at odd angles. My nose hairs were equally rude and Brillolike.

  The bathroom air vent was right next to our table. Carla was speaking. I overheard a mumble from her wishing I was gone—she called me that creepy dude—she said I took up too much air, that I smelled like a cheese product, that my interest in other people’s lives was well-intentioned, but also intrusive, and kind of disturbing. She said I was kind of a loser. That’s what she called me. She said it would be cool if our little matchmaker could disappear.

  Not to worry. Been called one before. Losers are experts at being called losers. We know how to handle it. Special defense procedure in place.

  Rule #1: Keep moving. Stay afloat. Mustn’t injure self.

  Rule #2: Stay cheerful. Smile through it. No tantrums. Breathe in love. Exhale hate.