 Pajama Weekend |
 It's always kind of glorious to be in a place where the leaves actually change color in the fall. Keeping that in mind, I decided that there was really no place I should be this weekend other than Washington, D.C. I knew that Melissa would be in town with her husband and would be visiting with Elizabeth, and I knew that the fates had ordained that I be there, too, when I got the last minute opportunity for a really cheap fare in my inbox. So I surprised them by announcing that I would be crashing their weekend! And I'm really glad that I did. We really do not see each other often enough. My mother kindly drove me to the airport, and we had a nice visit on the way there. She told me a story about how the forces of evil will conspire to take really harmless situations and force our minds to spin them out of control. She said that the speaker at a conference told the story about how he saw a man in the restroom and asked him how his presentations were going, and the man ignored him and shook his hands in frustration and walked out. So the speaker agonized for the rest of the conference that his talks were obviously sucking ass. And he saw the same man later and asked him about their bathroom encounter, and the man was like, "What? You talked to me in the bathroom? I hope it wasn't on my left side because I am stone deaf in that ear." So the speaker said, "But you shook your hands and looked so aggravated at me!" and the man replied, "Dude, there weren't any paper towels." And it was all very fitting that my mom was telling me this story about how we all tend to mindfuck ourselves. Let me break it down for you. Picture it: Airport. Friday morning. I am standing at the gate waiting to board. My friend's husband, Dean, walks up with his carry-on. I greet him in friendly surprise. He looks vaguely ill. I assume he suffers from a fear of flying and proceed to make small talk. He's going to a wedding. I'm going to visit friends. Yay. His cell phone rings, and he says, "That'd be my wife." I joke, "You should let me answer it! That would really freak her out." He does not laugh. I shrug inwardly and turn around to face the gate. I hear him say, "Do you want to talk to her?" and he hands me the phone. I take it. "Hi, Claire! What's up?" "What are you doing?" "Oh, Dean and I are running away together." Her shrieking voice responds. "ARE YOU HAVING AN AFFAIR WITH MY HUSBAND?" "Oh, come on," I say, fully assuming that she is joking. "I AM SERIOUS." "Claire, come on! I am so sure." "I AM SO SCARED. PLEASE TELL ME THE TRUTH." I turn to look at Dean, who is pale, wan, and appears to be about to vomit. "Claire, have you lost your mind?" More sobs and hysteria ensue. I hand the phone back to Dean. He says, "Honey, I have no idea why she is going to Washington. It is just a coincidence. Call her friends if you don't believe me. Call her mother!" She hangs up, presumably, to do so. (Indeed, my mother yells me later that her caller ID has listed a missed call from Claire at this time.) I peel my jaw up off of the floor and look at him with the most What the Fuck of all What the Fuck expressions that has ever graced my visage. He explains that Claire heard that I was also going to D.C. and he has been trying to convince her that we are not having an affair. By this point, those waiting near us are so interested in this exchange that they are practically wetting their pants. His phone rings again, and he says, "Baby, come on. Okay, go ahead and fly up there if you don't believe me ..." The attendant announces that my row is boarding, so I shuffle onto the plane in stunned confusion, dialing my mother to whisper that she might be getting a call from a clearly deranged Claire. My mother does not hesitate before replying, "She must be having some kind of postpartum breakdown. We need to pray for her." I sit in my seat and blink stupidly, trying to take it all in. Dean boards many rows in front of me and shrugs and mouths, "I am sorry." I shrug helplessly in return. I had the next two and a half hours to mull this all over. I cannot tell you how maddening it was to not be able to have any contact with home and not be able to find out what in the hell was going on. I didn't know whether to be angry or offended or what. Mostly it was just so ludicrous that I almost felt amused but then I would feel guilty because Claire is my friend and clearly she was in a great deal of pain. When we disembarked, Dean waited for me and apologized again and I said, "I have no idea what is going on, but if there is anything I can do to give her some peace of mind, please call me." I told a waiting Elizabeth and Melissa the story and they were accordingly gobsmacked. I got a voicemail from my co-worker and friend Lynn, who said, "I just got a really strange call from your friend Claire. You need to call me." Claire had called the office and demanded to know if I was with her husband, and Lynn was like, "Um, dude. Settle? What the hell? Are we talking about the same Eliza here?" The more I thought about it, the more I realized that whatever was going on had nothing to do with me. I was upset, and I was worried, and I was baffled, and mostly I just felt really sorry for Claire because even though it was preposterous, clearly it was very real to her, and that is a horrible, wretched thing to feel, betrayal, and I know that. And then to realize -- as I was sure that she would -- that it was all in her mind -- well, that must have made it all the more awful. Part of me wanted to hold on to feeling indignant about the accusation, but mostly I just hoped that everything was okay and that she was okay. Although all of this was never far from my mind throughout the weekend, we still had a wonderful time. We went to eat at Matchbox on Friday night with Greg and Annie (Melissa's friend from The Usual Suspects), and it was great to see both of them again.  I realized that Annie and I met on the last night of my vacation the country where she lives, and we met again on the last night of her vacation in the country where I live. She was just as delightful as I remembered and had on the cutest coat I've ever seen to boot. Greg is still smart and funny and seems to have really great taste in TV shows. If only we could bring him around on The Sound of Music! After dinner, we decided to go to the Jefferson Memorial, which I'd never been to at night, and it was so moving and lovely. I could not for the life of me get the entire libretto of 1776 out of my head as we read the quotes on the walls and stared out at the water and contemplated futilely why and how there is no railing to keep people from tumbling to their watery graves.  Saturday was jammie day, and never a more lazy jammie day was spent. After a yummy breakfast of toast and scrambled eggs and brie courtesy of Chef Elizabeth, we spread out a buffet of junk food on the coffee table ranging from cheese in the can and crackers to M&Ms to chex mix to cookies to potato chips. We ate ice cream and magic shell. We baked chocolate chip, walnut, and caramel cookies. We drank wine and mango rum and blue martinis. We read magazines. We watched The West Wing and Sports Night and Shakespeare in Love and Down with Love and Once More with Feeling and would doze off intermittently as necessary. We also watched the first Anne of Green Gables in its magical four-hour entirety, and it was wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. It was so great to see how Elizabeth enjoyed it as much as we knew she would. Some of the first bonding I ever did with these girls was over some of these things (Sports Night with Elizabeth and Anne with Melissa), and it was so fun to finally watch them together. Every single time the theme music would come on during Anne, one or all of us would begin to blubber until we finally just started passing the kleenex around. However, Elizabeth is clearly deluded if she thinks that Gilbert Blythe in any way resembles Johnny Castle, and she will never convince me otherwise. We watched the leaves falling through Elizabeth's amazing wall of windows. I tried to befriend her very cute cat, in whose future was no plan to befriend me. We got white pizza and ravioli delivered for dinner. We ate some more ice cream. We didn't force ourselves to talk about deep, dark fears and hopes and dreams, because I think we all just wanted the chance to relax in the ease and comfort of knowing it was okay not to talk about anything we just wanted a little break from. It was really kind of a perfect day. On Sunday morning, Elizabeth made chocolate chip muffins for breakfast which we finished with some more cookies. We talked some more about raging into action. We packed up the car and headed to the airport. We sang Avenue Q the entire way there. These are good people. I am very glad that I got this chance to spend a little bit of time with them, and I am better for knowing each of them. When I got home, I had received a very long message of apology from Claire, and we have talked, and all is well. I mean, how can you really be angry at someone who clearly went off the deep end? I don't know if it was evil forces or exhaustion or postpartum depression that made her mind jump to such a bizarre assumption, but I know that she is still my friend, and that I would like to be there for her however I can.  I think one of the things I will remember most about this weekend is the Jefferson Memorial. I was born in Washington, left at six months old, didn't return until a high school trip, and haven't been since a work conference five years ago. I was glad to be there the weekend after the election, as kind of a way of bearing witness. I saw those monuments and the Capitol and the White House lit up in the cold night sky. I saw Thomas Jefferson's quote: I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. And I got chills, and not because of the chill in the air. I still believe in this country and the people in it. I really do. In other news, I have self-diagnosed myself with eczema, and Saturday my little brother called me in the middle of the night to inform me that he was in the midst of partying with Johnny Knoxville and the cast of Super Troopers. About this time in ...
© Copyright 2004 elb |
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