Sinister: stronger than alcohol, more great than song, deep in whose reeds great elephants

Today I tried to subtly mold two impressionable youths into Belle and Sebastian fans. It’s been two weeks since I started being an ‘English-speaking play mate’ to two 8-year-old twins. Every time I got home, exhausted, and went into #sinister to bitch about the brats, someone would inevitably ask, “So have you made them listen to Belle and Sebastian yet?” “Ha!” I always remark. AS IF I bring a B&S CD with me and slide it into the family stereo. AS IF they would appreciate. AS IF. Well, today I happened to have my laptop with me and as I taught them how to play Snood I happened to put B&S on repeat on my media player jukebox. And I left it on the entire time. Ahhh. Sweet sounds. So when one throws a tanty and the other squeals with glee and throws balls off the ceiling, I have Stu telling me it’ll all be okay. Or making some sly reference I know they will never understand. Did it calm them down any? No, not really. But by the end, the girl was recognizing songs and humming a bit. And when the music stopped, the boy asked for more. Oh yes. I shall repeat this experiment. Today I also got yelled at by the mom. AGAIN. Last time she yelled at me it was because I had allowed the twins to run around inside the house; when she came in, things were in disarray. My lesson: the kids will inevitably run around the house, but clean up after them, dumbass. Or lure them outside. Outside = GOOD. Anyway. Yesterday, I got yelled at for letting them hide in closets during hide-and-seek. Um. Where else are they going to hide??? Hmm. Today.. what was it? Oh! I didn’t eat enough. Or something. Something I forgot: yesterday, the mom stayed home and I desperately tried to think of something to keep the kids occupied and quiet in their room. I thought, wouldn’t it be nice if they wrote little letters to my sister? Yes! They will write. They will think they have a penpal. It will be good. The girl wrote a nice message, something to the effect of: “I love Stacey and I love you too.” The boy scribbled away in earnest. Then I chased the girl out of the room into another room to make cutout snowflakes and an hour later the mother cries out for the boy (Vangelis) and marches in with the letter he had been writing my sister. “Who is Sandy?” she demanded. “What is this?” she said, waving the letter around. “Er. My sister? They wrote to my sister?” I stammered. Perhaps this sounds odd? Hmmm. I hadn’t even read it. She did. “You read Greek?” she asks me. I lie and say no. So she reads it out loud to me, translating: “Dear Sandy. I love you. You make my body hot. I want to have sex with you. Will you have sex with me? Love, Vangelis.” Oh lordy. This is an EIGHT-YEAR-OLD. Needless to say, Vangelis was scolded. And my role? Um.. uncertain. Every day as I leave that house I wonder if I am going to be invited back. She fired the last girl because she “couldn’t control the kids.” And I feel that although the kids love me in some inexplicable way shocking to all involved, she keeps giving me little tests and I keep failing them. Yesterday, for instance, me and Francesca get yelled at because we left a mess in Vangelis’ room. She tells us to go clean it up. Francesca refuses to go until she finishes a drawing. The mom insists. I stand there, willing Francesca to go with my eyes and thoughts. But she does not budge. So the mother looks at me and says, “you tell her!” I do, and of course she ignores me as well. Does this mean I have no control over them? Today I took a stand. I thought it would be fun to bring along my digital camera and laptop so the kids could take photos of each other and alter them on the computer and all that. It would be educational! Yes! And it would keep them quiet. Yes! Well, Vangelis really took a fancy to this camera and refused to give it back. It eventually ran out of “film” but he refused to believe he could take no more pictures. Eventually, there was a showdown in the garden. I won! I got the camera back. Then he tried to climb a wall to spy on the neighbors. I told him to come down. He did not listen (they do this innovative trick where they pretend they don’t understand English at just such moments). So I made a face at Francesca and we ran away and hid in some bushes so that he would jump off the wall and come find us. It took awhile, but it worked. He started crying though, upset that we had abandoned him, and marched inside to call him mom and tell on us. I let him, figuring this would work to my advantage. He would cry, “Mommy, Francesca and Stacey played hide-and-seek when I didn’t want to and I didn’t like it. And, well, I wanted to climb a wall and spy on the neighbors and play with her camera but she took it away and wouldn’t let me and now she turned off the tv when I wouldn’t talk to her.” And the mom would think: good, the girl’s finally disciplining the brats. He whined, then Fracesca grabbed the phone and explained (she’s got my back! Yay!) and the mom told her to run off and play with me and let Vangelis watch TV if that’s what he wanted to do. FINE WITH ME. Yar. Oh, I get mixed signals. Like, she’ll yell at me, then she comes over and says she knows some other families who might like my services, am I open to referrals? Ha! Hell yeah. And she whispers, “Their kids are better behaved than mine,” at which point I grin. She says she’d like to help me, that I’m a “good girl.” That she moves in the right circles. Or something. Hmm. Go figure. So next weekend, I meet their friend Fanny, who I already met and who was wonderful and sweet and speaks much better English. And then I will become Fanny’s ‘play mate’ as well. This is very exciting, because there is good money in this play mate business. Spending just 8 hours a week with the brats pays my rent. A few more hours a week with a sweet-natured girl should cover food and bills. And then there’s any other kids I might pick up through her “circle,” and my actual career - writing - which occasionally brings in large sums of cash. That should cover fun things - like chocolate and cheese. Yes. I’m set. Soon I’ll be able to buy a walkman, so I’ll have something to keep me occupied during the 4 hours a day I spend traveling to these rich suburbs. Mmmm hmm. I feel a bit ill. I think it was the greasy potatoes I attempted to make for lunch. The mom left out some chicken fillets and a vat of oil, ready to receive some raw potatoes. Now, I usually shallow fry my potatoes in a big skillet, with very little oil, and they become brown and crisp and not at all disgusting and oily. But these potatoes, sizzling away in the vat of oil, became mushy and gross. As a last-ditch effort to save them, I drained them and threw them in the chicken skillet, but they did not brown. No! And the kids looked at them in disgust and refused to eat them. So I was left with a big plate of mushy potatoes. And carrots. While they ate the chicken. And carrots. An hour later, I felt like I was going to vomit. Enough about the brats already. Is this all I’m ever going to talk about now? Has my life dissolved into mindless chatter about what horrific or tantalizing things Francesca and Vangelis did today? Dear me. There was one other thing that happened this weekend. It was last night, after fleeing the brats and waiting 40 minutes for the bus, in the freezing night, with the other hired help in the neighborhood. Get this: I went - by myself - to a SHOW! Yes!!! It was only the second show I’ve ever been to in Athens, which is quite telling of the music scene here. There was a time when I would be going to an average of 10 shows a month. Now - two shows in 7 months. Anyway, it was a random band, Tilsbury Cloves or something, in a teeny CD store - the only cool CD store in the city, actually. It was a 7” release gig. It was awkward. Did I mention the store is teeny? Very. And there were all sorts of hip and semi-hip kids there, a rare site for me actually, and they all seemed to know each other. Which makes sense, considering how tiny the scene must be here, with so few shows and so few fans of such bands. I felt awkward going alone as it was, but when entire groups of people stared and pointed at me, it made it that much worse. The band was actually quite okay. They had this semi-electronic/synthesizer thing going on, and the singer at times sounded very Field Mice. There were a few sad attempts to rock out electronically, but overall, not too bad. AND there were visuals. Slides projected, backwards, against a far wall. Going to shows is such a love-hate thing. There was a time when I was so sick of going, and would spend hours debating whether to get off the couch and walk 100 feet to see a friend of a friend play drums or sing or.. whatever. Many times, if the show involved any sort of drive, it was ruled out almost immediately. What’s the point of going to a small little club, pay a few dollars to stand uncomfortably in the back of the room and scan the same small crowd of faces I had memorized years ago? And the smoke and the bad beer and running into the crazy guy I always seemed to run into. Or getting annoyed at the little twerps who think they have discovered indie. All to hear a few songs I sort of liked, played live. But now I miss it. So much. I miss the cozy feeling of being in a small area with a group of people with whom I have this unspoken bond. It doesn’t matter that I don’t speak to half the people in the room, that I never have and never will. I know their faces, their names, their stories. I feel part of a ‘scene.’ I know who every local musician is, what their day jobs are, and the incestual, instrumental, inter-band musical chair games. I see them on the street and I nod and smile. We acknowledge each other. We KNOW. We all know. So I stayed at the show. Even though I felt awkward. Even though the doors were kept open and my toes had turned into icicles. Even though my back was aching from chasing brats and standing too long. I stayed because I needed the people to memorize my face, to begin to recognize me in a crowd, to acknowledge me, to become part of a scene. And maybe eventually I will meet one of them. I have discovered a good cure for the blues. It’s a song, by Loudon Wainwright III, called ‘Pretty Good Day.’ It goes a little something like this: “I slept through the night, I got through to the dawn. I flipped the switch and the light went on. I got out of bed and put some clothes on; it was a pretty good day so far. I turned on the tap, there was cold there was hot, I put on my coat to go to the shop. I stepped outside, I didn’t get shot; it was a pretty good day so far. I didn’t hear any sirens or explosions, no mortars coming in from those heavy guns, no UN tanks, I didn’t see one; it was a pretty good day so far. No snipers in windows taking a peek, no people panicked running scared through the street. I didn’t see anybody without arms, legs or feet; it was a pretty good day. There was plasma, bandages and electricity. Food, wood and water, the air was smoke free. No camera crews from ITV. It was all such a strange sight to behold. Nobody was fightened, wounded, hungry or cold. And the children seemed normal, they didn’t look old; pretty good day so far. I walked through a park, you would not believe it. There, in the park, there were a few trees left. And on a few branches there were a few leaves. I slept through the night I got through to the dawn. I flipped the switch, the light went on. I wrote down my dream, I made it to song; it’s a pretty good day so far.” Yes, perspective. Does me wonders. And oh.. Kingbury Manx is lovely too. Who knew? Mr. Howie did. Thanks, David. Any other suggestions, send ‘em this way. Please. Thank you. Thassall, I promise. Be good! MWAH! ~dahling http://www.geocities.com/dahling007 _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. 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