THREE-BUCK-AND-THIRTY-NINE-CENT CHUCK

At Trader Joe's in Ohio, Two-Buck Chuck costs $3.39. My cashier told me that Ohio has the most expensive Two-Buck Chuck in the country. Could this be true? Even if it isn't, I make a sad little face every time I see that $3.39 price tag.

At least I don't live in Britain, I guess. Oh, wait...

UNDERGRADUATE PARTY

Last night I went to a party with undergraduates, in a absolutely dilapidated house in Little Italy. Not everyone at the party was an undergraduate—I had been taken to the party by my wonderful graduate student neighbor. But here's what the party looked like: foosball in the kitchen. Good beer, vodka, and clam dip. A very cute eighteen-year-old knocked on the bathroom door, realized it was occupied, and so went outside to vomit in the trash can. When he returned, smiling, I had to point out that he had a little schmutz on his tee shirt.

Meanwhile, in the living room, everyone was sitting on futons and watching a cable channel that I was heretofore unfamiliar with: Nick GaS. More specifically, they were watching seven-year-old reruns of Family Double Dare. You could tell the reruns were that old principally because of the prizes offered (a huge DVD player! A Nintendo 64!), and secondarily by the moms' hairstyles (the "Princess Di 1988"!). No one, to my knowledge, was stoned—they were just really enjoying watching small children climb through vats of ice cream. I will admit: their enthusiasm was contagious.

My wonderful neighbor and I stayed a little less than two hours. While I had been getting sucked into a succession of slime-based "physical challenges," the drunk teenagers in the kitchen were getting increasing rowdy, leading to a pile of gropey making-out on the kitchen floor. At this point, my neighbor fetched me from the living room and told me in no uncertain terms, "we're leaving." As we walked away from the dilapidated house, she furrowed her brow and said, "I think if they were all models and had been doing lines off the kitchen counters, that might have been acceptable behavior. But they weren't."

However, for the purposes of this blog, I did learn one piece of crucial Cleveland-related information: one of the sloppy drunk girls made me aware of the existence of the Cleveland Shuffle:



I honestly did not know that there were hip-hop line dances. Two of the sloppy drunk girls demonstrated the entire routine for me. I'm reminded of when I learned, during my very brief contact with the world of gay country-and-western bars, that there are particular line dance routines, which to the untrained eye are completely indistinguishable from any other country-and-western line dance, but which are only performed in gay country-and-western bars. Who knew? But back to Cleveland: I enjoy the knees-up-mother-brown quarter-turn, but most of all the there's-no-place-like-home heel-clicking. What could it all mean?!

GARY

So, I'm walking through Little Italy on Labor Day, on my way to the office. The street is fairly deserted—one of of the few people I could see outside were a couple old men sitting outside the brightly-lit dive bar in the middle of the block. The bar is pictured above. At most hours of the day, that bench and the white plastic chairs are filled with large old men smoking cigars, and occasionally little old ladies smoking Virginia slims.

As I walked by, a large old man seated on the bench asked me if I had a light. I did. He then asked if I would join him in a smoke. I did. (Two smoking posts in a row! I'm still not a smoker, really! In fact, you can see in this story and the previous that the best thing about smoking is, in fact, the social space that it opens up, almost inaccessible through other means.) He said he liked my red striped socks, and then quickly qualified the compliment, "I mean they're not something I would wear..."

There was a Labor Day airshow going on, and the USAF Thunderbirds (or whatever) passing overhead prompted him to tell me about his childhood friend who is now an independent contractor in Afghanistan. This, in turn, led to his telling me his plan for Iraq, which was, in essence, a version of the fire-bombing of Dresden. Not a simplistic "Nuke 'em all," mind you, but rather an elaborately worked-out method for evaluating residential districts and leveling them one-by-one. I listened with the noncommittal smile-and-nod face that I have previously practiced during discussions with my racist uncle.

But this old man with dirty fingernails, whose name is Gary, was completely pleasant. Midwest-nice, in fact! As horrifying as his opinions were, I left the interaction smiling. He actually wanted me to have another cigarette, which I declined.

He also wanted me to come into the bar, where there was a Labor Day buffet set out. "Real good food," he explained, "not like the food you eat." I have no idea what he thinks I eat, but he said this simply as a statement of fact, as if it were self-evident, without a hint of insinuation or judgment.

In Cleveland, even the dirty old drunks are nice.

Note [23 Sept]: I actually wrote almost all of this this a week ago, but left it saved as a draft all this time.

È LEI!

So in the evening of the very same day when I first heard her voice, I met my singer neighbor! Actually, to be precise, that's not true, since it was well past midnight.

I arrived home from the office rather late Sunday night, not because I was working, but because it's more pleasant to work in my comfortable, well-furnished and air-conditioned office than in my muggy, largely furniture-less house filled with cardboard boxes and strewn with the crumpled newspaper that until very recently wrapped my dishes. When I got to my front door, there was a note saying "Greg(?) - Party in Apt 8. Drop by! D—" The question mark after my name indicated that we had only met once in the laundry room, and she wasn't sure of my name.

Sure enough, there was a party downstairs from me, with D— and her friends in the midst of a spirited game of Jenga. D— is an elementary school art teacher. Also there was the neighbor from apartment 2, who works at the wonderfully-named Plain Dealer. We all drank beer.

I stepped outside to do a bad thing. A thing I only do socially, I swear!. And as soon as I stepped outside, a very small woman with her very big boyfriend staggered their way up the walkway. She was barefoot, while he held her shoes. (And they were beautiful shoes—kitten heels in a jewel-tone blue and green brocade.) It became clear in out earliest exchange that she was the singer whom I had first heard about, then heard. She complained about her music theory placement. She explained her fach. She encouraged me to come up an accompany her on the piano sometime. She was very drunk.

She asked for a cigarette. I looked quizzical, her boyfriend frowned. "I haven't touched one of these things in a month! Today was my audition! I can celebrate now!" I had heard her, that morning, doing final preparations for the auditions to cast all the opera productions for the whole term. She had, it seemed, been celebrating all night. She visibly enjoyed the cigarette.

And that melody that sounded so familiar, but I just couldn't place? Somewhere between Britten and Schubert? It was "Trees on the Mountain" from Carlisle Floyd's Susannah.

BEFORE AND AFTER

This was my living room at 9:00 am on Thursday.


And this was my living room at 10:00 am on Thursday.



Having professional movers carry boxes off a truck and up the stairs for you really makes the whole process significantly less painful. Now, where is my army of lackeys to unpack the boxes for me?

QUAL VOCE LONTANA?

This morning I started to unpack boxes, and then became discouraged and frustrated, and decided to curl up with the New Yorker and a mug of tea instead. (Speaking of: I am almost out of PG Tips. Where, oh where, in Cleveland can one find more?)

And through the walls floated the voice of my neighbor, the soprano. I've heard of her, but not yet met her; we do not share an entrance. This was the first time I'd heard her sing. She has a very beautiful voice, or at least, a voice that became very beautiful when filtered through a wall or two. I could not tell if she was actually practicing, or just noodling around. Maybe a little of both? It seemed to me she was just vocalizing on "ah," but I'm not quite sure, and I kept hearing snatches of melodies I thought I recognized. Was that Britten? Schubert? Handel? I could never pin any one thing down.

It was like the best performance of Salvatore Sciarrino's "Cantarellando" ever, except better. In "Cantarellando" (which means "Singing to Yourself") a trained operatic singer appears on a stage and sings bits and pieces of whatever pops into her heads while she does something else, like a crossword puzzle, or a flower arrangement, or washing dishes. This morning was like that, except the body of the singer seemed far away, and I was cocooned in my papa-san chair, with a mug of PG Tips reading Acocella on Dante.

And, just then, everything was perfect.

I AM NOT, IN FACT, SKINNY

So, if you have not already clicked the little YouTube clip in the upper right-hand corner if this page, you should. It is funny. At one point, a stranger stops Tina Fey on the street and says "Are you a model? You're so skinny! You should eat something!"

THIS TOTALLY HAPPENED TO ME. For the record, the exact phrase was "Mary Kate Olsen thinks you need to eat a cheeseburger." And it was a co-worker, not stranger. And in his defence, I was wearing my grey flannel suit, which is rather flattering on me, if I do say so myself.

But still. Midwesterners: they are a large people.