Blebbziversary 15: Me to You, You to Me

Courtship (Woo-tie Tang)
“We have Louis C.K. to thank for this,” I said to Sue as we walked through downtown Mystic not holding hands (winter gloves left behind/#AlwaysForget), West Main Street temporarily home to a wrapped Trojan condom seen at different intervals of the day in the same location on the sidewalk.

“For the term ‘bang bang’?” Sue asked me, her tummy full of ice cream as we neared a favored pizzeria.

“No, for us.”

“Oh, right!”

Fifteen years prior I was supposed to visit Sue’s apartment to pick up a taped-off-HBO VHS copy of Louis’ latest stand-up special. She requested that we watch it together because nothing says falling in love like an extended routine about duck vaginas. Hours later, Sue was pregnant with our first batch of triplets.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

The most recent activity Sue invited me over to complete was providing medicine to her butter-tailed cat Tobi, a friendly old lady the vet had recently warned was on life 8½ of her allotted nine. However, antibiotics and the daily dose seemed to be working wonders on Puffy, the fresh nickname a reference to the rotting tooth inflaming Tobi’s cheek. I arrived on Wednesday and shot the load in her kisser for the tenth straight day…only for the stinky molar to plummet to the carpet. 

Within hours, Sue texted that Puffy was eagerly chomping by her bowl. This is how you keep the fire burning, I thought. The heroic acts of an unexpected domesticated animal savior.

Returning the following afternoon, I gave Puffy her dose while Sue’s muted TV featured the Music Choice Top 40 station. Struck by the still image illuminating my peripheral vision, I offered a gentlemanly acknowledgement concerning the handsome countenance of a brunette named Sofia Carson.

“She’s, like, twelve, Blebbz!” Sue told me.

“There is no way that woman is twelve. There’s also no way I’m attracted to a twelve-year-old.”

We Googled.

“She’s twenty-eight!” I said while chuckling. 

And that’s how you douse the fire with a bucket of Gatorade.

Following a donation-heavy trip to Goodwill and stop for freedom fuel—the only acceptable current term for g*soline—I parked at the Asian grocer.

“I want two tall ones of the radish,” was Sue’s kimchi order. “And you’s guh ‘head and get cherself sumpin’ nice,” she told me smirking while handing over two rolled up twenties.

“Who are you? Robert De Niro?!”

The Other Woman (Nailed Her)
En route to Mystic, the site of our first Blebbzventure with an overnight stay, I shared an anecdote from my therapy session the previous morning.

“Lorrie was a couple minutes late, so I listened to the birds and picked my nails while intensely staring out the window. She joined the video chat and said I looked lost in deep thought, which led to exploring my lifelong nail biting. I told her how my mother and I have had a standing bet since I was eight. If I grow them out, she’ll give me one hundred dollars. Then I told her how I’m reading Andre Agassi’s autobiography. He’s a chronic nail biter too. Brooke Shields made him grow out his nails for their wedding.”

Lorrie asked me, “Would you do it for Brooke Shields?”

“I’d do it just to play with her hair.”

You’ve been put on notice, Sofia Carson.

4play (8 is Enough)
A regular customer entered The Outlet on Friday carrying a wooden box. He’s usually in a depressed mood, fresh off another infuriating shift at work, but was more chipper than usual. I used to consistently forget his name—I called him Dave; he called me Ralph as friendly payback—but I obeyed his parents’ wishes this time.

“What’s that, Scott?” 

“An 8-track player. I told Gary I’d bring it in. Thing is, I’ve only got this Christmas tape.”

Gary surfaced to check out the player and, to surprise Scott’s inner Beatles obsessive, told him he’d better plan to go looking for his socks in a moment because they were about to be rocked the fuck off. Or something like that. Two briefcases sat on the carpet, one housing thirty former Beatles’ solo albums, the other with twenty-five Beatles studio albums and compilations. Imagine got inserted in the player and unleashed crystal clear sounds.

“This is the first time in my life I’ve listened to an 8-track,” I informed them. “I’d only heard that they made big clunking noises and sounded like shit.”

Endorphins racing at the opportunity, I pulled out a few cartridges before I found the exact one I wanted: Abbey Road.

We listened briefly before a boring proclamation tumbled off my tongue: “Man, the bass sounds phenomenal.”

“Well, it is Paul McCartney,” Gary said with an uncharacteristically bitchy retort. Dave and Ralph got a kick out of it.

Scott stood a few feet from me for forty-five minutes, curious to see if each 8-track program played through and automatically flipped to the next program. He smiled throughout the “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” jazzy instrumental, alerting me in advance to anticipate the joyful moment.

“I’ve got nowhere to be,” Scott told me with his arms crossed satisfyingly as if the Fab Four could cure his (and humanity’s) woes.

I relayed this anecdote to Sue on our ride south, giddy at the thought of hearing some favored albums on 8-tracks, prior to concluding with a cautious vow.

“I’m not going to buy a player though.” 

Les Rapports (The Acts, The Scene)
Parking in the closest possible spot to Mystic Disc, a tiny but superb record store we’ve visited for a dozen years, was a good start. 

Dan, the animated owner, sported a red beret and sweatshirt featuring a slogan imploring us to all be nice to one another. Forever friendly and adrenalized, he asked what brought us to town and I explained that a celebratory trip to our favorite Connecticut locale was the logical choice.

“Fifteen years? That’s big. Most people don’t mask it past twelve.”

“I haven’t heard of that,” I replied.

“I got divorced at twelve years,” Dan said.

“At least you made it past seven,” Sue said. “No seven-year itch.”

“I’m itchy all the time,” Dan joked prior to shifting topics. “I read your book. Really liked it. Good stuff.”

I graciously thanked him and asked to use the bathroom, a can of fat free chicken broth and a Noank Fastpitch Association All-Star Champions trophy atop the toilet, surrounded on three sides by towering shelves housing future dollar bin records. Dan blasted French electronica while trying to explain to a caller how she’d have to bring in a Mötley Crüe record for him to accurately grade and price it. 

“I’ll wait for you to finish,” he impatiently said. Seconds later: “Do you call a grocery store and ask how much is food? Steak and lettuce are two different prices, right? A first pressing of this record could be worth five hundred dollars. A second pressing is no more than twenty-five. But I need to see what condition it’s in no matter what.”

The caller wouldn’t be visiting. One customer commented on how crammed Dan’s shelves were; he said his slogan should be: “We put ten pounds of shit in a five-pound bag.”

Sue and I laughed before she mentioned that a Tool cassette was in the rack on the wall. I spotted some Ratt cassettes and asked her what one she wanted to play during the ride home. Then she pointed at a pair of wooden boxes perched on the highest possible shelf. After joking about how he’d be immune to a lawsuit if I fell off the ladder, Dan told me that a customer had recently given him the two 8-track players in question.

“I’m keeping the bigger one,” he said. “You want that other one? Forty bucks. Take it home and try it for a month or two. I know you guys, I trust ya. You contact me if you want it, and we’ll figure it out. If you don’t want it, bring it back next time you’re nearby.”

“Wow! Really?”

“Yeah! Happy Anniversary!” 

Indulging myself, I purchased all four musical formats in the store: seven LPs (including a twelve-inch single and picture disc), three cassettes, a library copy CD of a Broadway cast recording of a musical titled Kismet(Sue and I love the word so it felt situationally appropriate) that Dan said was on the house, and a Duke Ellington 8-track (also included gratis) to test on definitely-not-my-player. In trademark fashion, Dan validated our parking as well.

The defense: I didn’t buy the player…yet.

Two imperative stops later—a bag of delights from Sift (sweet and savory croissants, loaves of bread including scalloped potato flatbread, cookies) and deep-fried artichoke hearts with tarragon aioli from Mystic Pizza in hand—I returned to see Dan, gifting him a ginger molasses cookie while thanking him again for his generosity.

Since we’d be eating dinner in the area at night, Sue and I drove across town to Olde Mystick Village, a tourist trap in need of a proofreader. A seagull stood atop an SUV and eyed our artichoke consumption before we visited a peaceful store full of incense and carved elephant and Buddha figurines, a doughnut joint lacking inventory, and a gift shop overflowing with stuffed animals.

“This can’t be a meerkat, right?” Sue asked me, the stuffed animal on all fours, not standing like the critters most commonly associated with manors. Careful inspection of his five tags revealed that he was a black-footed ferret.

“I think it’s a woodpecker,” Sue said while holding up a new source of inanimate intrigue.

“Nope,” I told her. “Barn swallow. Yes, please.”

We fondled a peregrine falcon, a couple owls, a rhinoceros, and a mongoose—unconvinced of the latter’s classification despite its tag—all smoother than Al Green eating soft serve while wearing a velvet bathrobe standing on a marble floor.

“I guess soft is the new hard,” Sue said.

“Not in my experience,” the barn swallow replied.

Poking around the adjacent general store, Sue fell in and out of love with an enormous stuffed cow named Caroline in a matter of two seconds, the NOT FOR SALE sign directly above the heifer a disappointing reveal.

“There’s that mongoose…allegedly,” Sue told me after finding the same undercover agent we’d furrowed our brows at next door.

“You got somebody here years ago,” I said.

“Big Fat Kitty Cat!” Sue exclaimed.  

“You didn’t donate her, right?!”

“No way! She has her own theme song.”

Searching for an elusive black and white Mystic sticker to affix to my bookshelf, Sue’s years-long hoodie obsession topped mine: “I just want a tie-dye zip-up. I don’t care if it says Lifeguard or Mystic or I’m an Asshole. I just want it.”

She inquired about the stickers on my behalf to the cashier. While I was mildly disappointed, the girl complimented Sue’s hair before her co-worker did the same only for Sue to offer positive feedback in return, my scalp retreating in on itself beneath my hat during the exchange.

We visited a fancy popcorn boutique, admired one pond full of ducks and another containing enormous goldfish, and whispered questionable judgments about the people in line outside a dark-colored wiccan-friendly building. I pointed at the Taylor’s Sports building’s banner reading THANK YOU FOR THE LAST 15 YEARS.

“Me to you, you to me,” Sue said about our time together.

“Oh yeah! Good one.”

“Hey, thanks. I want those nuts.”

She wasn’t talking about mine. Upon returning to the general store the overwhelming smell of roasted sugar smacked us in the face before we chatted with the same stickerless cashier, a conical blue wrapper reading CASHEWS in Sue’s hand.

“We came back because she wanted more hair compliments,” I joked.

“I really love your hair,” Sue told the gal, asking if it was a balayage. 

“No, it’s my own hair grown out with blonde highlights,” she offered while smiling nonchalantly.

If only Sue knew how I instantly daydreamed about growing out the nails on my right hand for a few fistfuls of it.

Thinking About Baseball (Don’t Let It End)
Whenever we’re in Mystic, we typically stop at the beach in neighboring Westerly. We parked by the cottage where Sue and her parents stayed during her teenage years. A fierce wind blew as Sue changed into boots, afraid she’d get sand stuck in the furry soles of her Crocs. She grabbed some shells then asked me to take a few photos of her with the golden hour lighting up the low tide behind her. I patiently waited—“I don’t want photos with my hair blown back”—before getting a dozen-ish. Minor reminiscing beside the Windjammer, serving as a townie bar in the offseason, led to frozen extremities.

A bookstore we’d enjoyed visiting was closing but I located a nearby one open until eleven. Once the owner realized we were there, she gave us the spiel: watch out for books on the floor, buy two paperbacks get a third free, and feel free to ask questions. Sue learned about vegan firefighters—“I love reading about how eating meat leads to erectile dysfunction after fifty,” was her primary takeaway—while the owner, Jill, oddly asked if I was a movie buff, handing me a paperback containing essays about legends I love like Jeanne Moreau, Robert Mitchum, and Warren Oates.

Sue asked if she could buy me Andre Agassi’s autobiography—my reading copy due back at the library soon—because I’d yet to finish it yet it already qualified as a top five sports book. (I declined to get the nearby Brooke Shields autobiography despite thumbing through it.) Meanwhile, a (presumed) regular walked in and said, “You can’t make any money if you’re closed,” telling Jill how the last few times he’d been by she wasn’t there. While cashing out, she asked Sue and I what we like to read, genuinely curious about genres outside her purview to stock in the store. It was clear that Jill loved books more than any other used bookstore owner we’d met; I’d heard her melancholically reveal to the regular how a potential seller offered her leftovers after dumping his best stuff at the nearby Book Barn. Her tone suggested it wasn’t the lost profit that hurt her, it was the chance to befriend some fresh titles before they found a new home.

In the course of relaying my love of essay authors, I alluded to my own book and gave her my card.

“I couldn’t find the book I wanted to read so I wrote it.”

“What’s it about?”

“My life. Its main purpose is to make you laugh. If it does anything, that’s what it should do.”

“He’s such a good writer,” Sue told Jill, “and I’m not saying that just because I love him. It’s wicked funny.”

Jill said she could talk to us all night—saying she often stays open until one a.m. or so—but didn’t want to keep us from pizza. We guaranteed to return following our annual summer trip to sit on the beach.

Sue paid for the Agassi book and told me “Happy Anniversary!” followed by a kiss. 

The Finish Line (Climactic Ecstatic)
Afraid that the ice cream parlor might be closed following dinner, we opted to have dessert first, parking on a side street we’d never encountered. During our short walk, the rubber soles of my sneakers kept making a noise that led to Sue’s question: “Are your feet farting?”

She ordered coffee Oreo mixed with Almond Joy while I had an Americano and one scoop of mango. While we cynically observed far too many people in dark-colored clothing—along with me (half-in-jest) threatening to push a guy wearing a Notre Dame hat into the Mystic River—I morphed into my role of Listmaster General, probing dairy-free memories to confirm if the place was home to the best vegan ice cream in Connecticut. Suggesting a trip to Providence for her upcoming birthday, I told Sue how I’d thought of said excursion the other day—a bite of ice cream momentarily numbing my mouth—and explained to myself, “She won’t say no to thishhh.”

Sue began hysterically laughing, which naturally led to cry-laughter. I couldn’t fight the urge to join her.

“What possessed you to speak that way?!”

“I was already talking so I just kept going.”

More laughter, which led to another mishap.

“I just spit on my face.” A sentence that’s yet to leave the mouth of a barn swallow.

After we walked by the unused condom for the final time, navigating the labyrinthine entrance to Pizzetta led to us sitting beside the downstairs bar. A group of five visibly drunken twenty-somethings yelled at one another, all of them downing cocktails while college basketball aired on television. Desperate to say something to mess with the testosterone-heavy quintet, I revealed to Sue how I became addicted to fucking with people beginning in fourth grade. She probed for details like I was her off-the-record informant until nature called.

Looking at myself in the bathroom mirror led to an alternate topic upon my return.

“Have I ever told you how I make faces in the mirror every day after I shower?” I asked.

“Uh, no. Why?”

“Just to see what I’d look like if my face froze that way forever. Having an underbite is one of my favorites to do. I guess it’s now the ‘She won’t say no to thishhh’ fayshhh.”  

She laughed again but didn’t quite cry. The drunkards cleared out without an altercation. And I matured into an adult in that moment.

Every Path Hath a Cuddle (Hold the Spoon)
On the ride home Sue used a flashlight to review her notes documenting the most recent SNL episode, an instant classic hosted by John Mulaney, followed by breaking down The Book of Awesome, a fifty cent find she’d read then loaned me. Despite disliking the prose style, I made a list of the topics I loved most—the cool side of the pillow and smell of gasoline, among others—so we could share our agreement about why they were deserving of the book’s namesake.

Upon taking a turn, Sue’s purple reading glasses and my flashlight slid off her lap onto the floor.

“How’d that happen?”

“I figured they wouldn’t move.”

“Do you no longer believe in gravity?”

Sue asked me why I didn’t include the laugh echo on my list. Admitting I’d probably read it incorrectly, she explained it meant calling back a topic and laughing at it again.

“Kind of like ‘she won’t say no to thishhh’?”

She cry-laughed once more, literal proof of the laugh echo’s awesomeness. 

The Morning After (The Talk of Flame)
Tom walked in The Outlet around two p.m. eager to purchase both 8-track briefcases. I’d called him on Friday (he’d inquired about their price a week prior) and raved about the sound quality, giving a middle finger to recency bias. I played half of Revolver before he anxiously asked if he could buy them and put the relics in his trunk, joking about the similarity to a drug deal.

Todd Rundgren’s balladeer skills became a conversation piece before I showed him the list of favorite albums in my book.

“When did you publish this?” Tom asked. “Why didn’t Gary tell me about it?!”

I fingered the vial in my pocket containing all the tears Sue cry-laughed while reading her copy—wishing she was on hand to hold court as the LBS’s biggest fan—and resisted the urge to tell Tom that he’d gone ahead and gotten himself something nice.

Fifteen years of incomparable echoes.

143, B(rooke).