How To Arouse a Married Woman

I used to work at a jewelry store. Jewelry stores are the type of place where fingerprints and streaks can ruin a sale. People like to see things as they best appear. A fingerprint on a diamond can easily hide its true beauty. A smudge on the showcase and you may as well have a portable toilet in the middle of the floor.

This one time a customer came in complaining the diamond ring we sold her husband was fake. She said the diamond didn't shine like it used to. She'd only had it a few weeks. It must be fake, like how fake gold turns skin green. Only her understanding was that a fake diamond loses its sparkle. I'm not even sure how you'd go about giving a diamond artificial sparkle. Like magic you can use lights to dress diamonds up a bit, but start applying stuff to the surface of a diamond and you may as well throw a robe around Michaelangelo's David.

In fact, the best way to sell a diamond is to let the customer see it in the sunlight. Sunlight won't give it a tan, but it'll tone up the diamond. Make it slimmer looking in its dress. All the right curves pop out so it looks bustier in all the right ways. It just shouts "I'm beautiful inside and out". That's what jewelry's all about. It's a beauty contest.

The way we'd clean jewels is with hot water. Steam is the best remedy for a dirty jewel. Something about the mist seems to put the spirit back into it. Or maybe it's more like a spa treatment. It wipes away not the dirt, but those achy feelings that make you feel old and decrepid.

Sometimes the steam treatment would take too long on its own. I once had a woman hand me an ivory Buddha she wore around her neck. I have no idea what was caked all over this little Buddha but it was gross. Black, globby. It was all over. The dirt was like butter that had melted into every nook and cranny of her fat little muffin. I figured this Buddha wasn't the enlightened one, but more the wallowing in pig shit variety. I almost threw up as I carried Buddha to the back room. If this were a mobster flick, I'd have just shot the bastard in the head before he even turned around.

I stuck that little Buddha into the utrasonic. That's like a hot tub for jewelry. You leave the item or items in a special jewelry solution. The ultrasonic vibrates the solution back and forth at a rapid pace, similar to an electric toothbrush. It gets in all those little places a human finger can't fit.

Unfortunately, ivory is one of those pieces of jewelry that doesn't respond to heat very well. It cracks like hatching eggs in the heat but without any chicks on the inside. I kept praying back there. To my God. To Jesus. I asked Jesus not to let Buddha's head fall off. How the hell would I put it head back on? Superglue could do the trick, but he'd have a scar forever like Frankenstein's monster. I could picture them calling this mishap Grabowski's Buddha if the head fell off. Or worse. What if his trademark potbelly just slipped right off? She asked me to clean it, not put it on a diet.

Fortunately for me, I rounded up an old toothbrush. I could dip the brush in the hot solution and not overcook the ivory. The bristles do the trick though you can't rub too hard. We're not talking teeth here. We're talking ivory. I succeeded in restoring Buddha to his unnatural white self. The guy was Chinese. They don't have white skin. The whole piece stank of racism to me. I wonder if she even considered the green jade Buddha that must have been on sale next to it wherever in the Caribbean or Asia she purchased this guy. These things always come in a variety of colors. And jade is more of a Chinese novelty than ivory.

The Buddha victory was a long time ago. I'm still waiting for karma to pay me back. Now I had to deal with Mrs. Fake Diamond.

Another thing about the jewelry industry is that the customer always assumes to know more than the jeweler. It's the same situation as the patient telling the doctor how to do his or her medical profession. I'm saying you should always listen more to the professional though the client's opinions and concerns should never be disregarded. Still, jewelry stores are one place where the customer is always delusional.

The problem with Mrs. Fake Diamond was that she had become an intense germophobe. The lady washed her hands at least 15 times every hour. That dries your skin down to cracked leather. To fight the leathery hands she applied cream at least 15 times every hour. At this point I understood she had no idea how physics works.

The soap would get stuck on the bottom of the diamond. It's damn near impossible to just rinse that part of a ring off. Especially when on the hand. Water has a tendency to take a path of least resistance. It sticks slightly more to other things than itself. So the soap underneath was able to cling on and make home like a bum under a bridge.

Then you throw the cream on. There's nowhere for the greasy mess to go. The diamond won't absorb it. Now you have a virtual third world situation underneath the first world setting. The sun wouldn't even be strong enough to make its way around the diamond dragging the inner sparkle out. It stops where soap starts peeing for lack of a bathroom. Or maybe where the cream asks for some change in a dirty paper cup. It high tails it out of there and lets the slums be.

The customer hears all about how soap, cream, hairspray, you name it, it isn't good for a diamond. It's not a piece of bread you can explore different spreads upon. There is no jam for a diamond. Butter will do worse than give a diamond a heart attack. You want to protect your ring, take it off for certain activities. Diamonds are not indestructable, but that's for another story.

A few minutes in the back with an ultrasonic bath and a steam rinse and the diamond is Jesus raised from the tomb. I'm not trying to blaspheme here. It's just this woman's whole life found a new meaning. No longer had her idiot husband been sold a fake diamond that slipped out of its sparkle. She had simply made a forgivable mistake. The diamond's heart attack was only heartburn. Take some Tums, call if it gets worse.

Original Thought On Cleaning, I Think

I will go so far as to claim that I believe the following to be an original thought that I've come up with on my very own. I will say that it would not surprise me to find that someone out there, present or past, has said, implied, or thought something similar to it.

The process of cleaning is essentially to erase the proof of your existance. That is to say, your home is supposed to look as though you've furnished it and then left. The lack of dust is a sign that some supernatural force has made sure to preserve the home's integrity. Something like God making the moon without so much as a footprint to show he was ever there. Mankind landed and now no one or no thing will every forget we were there. I have an innate fear of being forgotten.

Today, It Wouldn't Be Words

I'd really like to have more things to share on the blog. Unfortunately, I just don't. The medium is best suited for porn, photography, videos. Ah hell, if it's visual it's on here. I just can't compete with those types of things.

Still, I'd like to get more in tune with my artistic side. Photography is pretty easy. Just get a picture and snap away. With the digital form, you don't have to worry if you take a bad pic. Or in my case a million bad pics. You can just delete them. Now I don't have a fancy camera. Actually, I don't have a camera at all. I use my parents' camera because they claim to not understand this new technology and leave me to it.

We've finally gotten some snow around my parts and I decided to grab the Olympus 12 megapixel and take some photos. At night, with the snow and all, everything has an orange hint to it. Orange is my favorite color, and it always awed me how when it snows the nights are so bright. But the photos were coming out so dark. The flash wasn't helping. Maybe if I played with the settings I could have worked it out. But it was night, snow had fallen, and I was cold. I snapped away and turned to the computer just to play around.

What you see above is the result of my very amateur photo manipulation. I suppose it looks interesting. Sadly, that is all. Feel free to say if you've stopped by. Or not. This way is more mysterious and keeps me guessing.

Pulls

bruised and battered

this heart no longer shines

dimly mottled

stretched

is your reflection

the only thing that

pulls

Astral Travel

About midway last year I wrote a poem titled "Dream". I pause now while writing to debate if I should share said poem here. I don't think I will. It would be like those scientists who are sending messages out into space in hopes of finding extraterrestrial life. I have a feeling if anything reads this post, it won't bother to respond.
Still, the major point of the poem was how dreams must be stored some place truly safe. I picked the back of the universe, far behind even the stars. A truly Earth-centric view, but that's really the only view man can come to know. We've never been anywhere beyond the moon. And photographs are never the same as standing somewhere in person.
So, the poem pointed out how safe dreams and even nightmares really are. Untouchable to human hands and unreachable in terms of distance. And there, I was in bed feeling vulnerable in the world. Didn't anyone dream of me? The answer had to be no for I wasn't tucked away in the deepest reaches of space but in bed smack dab in the middle of Earth.
I shared that poem on a forum, and one of the other members commented on it. She went as far to say that if the last line, the one about no one dreaming of me, was meant in a literal sense than I was welcome to enter her dreams. But, she cautioned, I'd have to do some astral travel at that.
I stop here to contemplate the message sent. While this isn't anywhere near as serious as telling someone you love them, it must fall along the same rules. That is, you can't say it unless you really mean it. Imagine if I did stumble into one of her dreams only for her to feel violated. How would either of us recover from that?
And yet, if I actually knew how to project myself I think I just might. Though the whole thing doesn't seem possible to me. And how on Earth would I find this one person whom I've never met? I'd be amiss to recognize her in a crowd of people. How would I recognize her through her dreams?
Andre for a time a while back was very interested in astral travel and dabbled in it a bit. I've always meant to ask him if he's kept up with it, but he's so busy lately that I doubt he would have the time. I'm sure when he does sleep it is strictly for the rest. Traveling tires, why would the astral kind be any different?
In the end, this whole thought reminds me of how I've often times wished I were a thing rather than a person. A poem rather than a poet. A song rather than a musician. A dream rather than a dreamer. The body hurts, eventually and for always. The soul is trapped in a sinking ship forced to go down as its captain. But a poem travels from eyes and lips to other eyes and lips. A song burrows through ears and leaps from throats. A dream does whatever dreams do. They are always searching for the perfect home and are bound to find it. Younger, prettier, wiser. A fuller life awaits them. People await death. And you know the rest.

Big Fish

So, it's a new year. As much as there is only room for anything to happen, the possibilities seem limited. A whole year to change, but this beginning feels a lot like the last. I'm not even old yet, and I've already begun to get nostalgic.

Take for instance the last post. The photo of the couple in the tub is a still from the film Big Fish. I never intended to see that film, even though I was on a Ewan McGregor high. I thought he was an excellent actor and didn't get the proper respect. I still feel that way, but I'm not so keen to just run out and see one of his films.

Anyway. I never planned to see the film. But my friend Andre recommended it highly. I figured it was worth viewing. Generally, we agree on films among other things. And so, I set out to see it which was rather depressing. Obviously, I wanted to see this movie with Andre.

He had moved away at that point. For college, he picked a school in Boston. I was still in Connecticut, so I guess a visit either way could have been possible, but what was the point? I suppose there were other options if I really wanted them. But it wouldn't be the same.

And so I found myself at the theater alone to watch the film. It was a great film, even if it did leave me upset in the end. The tale of a man who lived every minute that he bragged about, but dressed it up in the retelling just for fun. I guess it reminded me of my grandfather. He could always pull a prank on someone, or tell them one of those white lies not meant to hurt but tease. Like the time he convinced his nephew, about 13 at the time, that a little man sat in the radio and read the news. Silly games like that. Point is, he could always make people laugh and so always had a friend.

The old man in the film was sick and dying. At the point of the tub scene, he gets into the tub pajamas and all so that he can cool off. His wife climbs in with him, and they just embrace. I really fought the tears back hard. I'm talking Rocky style. I gave it everything I had, and that first bout ended a draw like Balboa-Creed I.

The embrace was everything I wanted, but knew I didn't and wouldn't have with my girlfriend at the time. The man in the film was confident, and supportive, and happy. I was 0 for 3. I just accepted that if I didn't love myself, no one else could. Quite frankly, there wasn't much to love.

Still, I put it out of mind about as fast and sloppy as this transition here. I let it be to watch the movie. Yet, I couldn't stop thinking about that scene. It was a fictional account. Sure, such a scene may have happened to someone, or may still happen to people. But the fact that it was in a movie didn't mean that it had or would. It seemed like most things in movies, larger than life. Not possible. As likely as Uma Thurman's character killing all the Crazy 88's in one take in Kill Bill volume I.

Victory was that now I vow to work for that kind of love. Try to make it happen with every breath. But it's easier said than done, and I've no one to work on it with. But it still feels like fiction.

I was able to finish watching the movie, and it had the expected sad ending. For all the malarky of the flashback scenes of the dying man in his younger days, the scenes his son drove showed that death was the only way out.

There at the funeral, all the people the old man spoke of congregated to celebrate him. Every single one. None of them exactly as the man had described, but similar. The siamese twins weren't siamese, but they were identical. Carl wasn't a giant, but he did stand over 7 feet tall Danny DeVito's character may not have been a werewolf, but he sure looked like one. And so on.

The son saw this, all these people smiling as they recalled the history of a man extinguished. He joined them, and laughed. He appreciated his father in a different way. He realized that his father wasn't a liar.

Balboa-Creed 2 began. But I didn't have the luxury of Adriane waking up and telling me to beat Apollo. The fact was, I had an assignment in college that originaly got me thinking about what my funeral would be like. I wondered, if I outlived my parents and sister, would there be anyone to bury me. I couldn't picture the type of funeral in the movie. No friends from foreign places and times. No one to remember any cheer I placed into their lives. Nothing.

And then, the knock out. As the credits rolled, Pearl Jam's "Man of the Hour" started playing. I've never been the man of anything. Not so much as a minute or a breath. I don't think I could handle that type of pressure.

I snuck out the back of the theater so no one would see me. I remember crying on the way to the car. And there was no one to tell me how stupid I was. No one to tell me it would be all right. No one.

Trying to go to bed tonight, I feel the same way. Only worse. I, too, feel a man extinguished. Nothing more. Some start to a new year.

As always, your advice is appreciated.