Temptation is everywhere
MY FAVORITE recent celebrity article, here in the City of Self-Denial, is about an actress and her favorite L.A. breakfast diner. In the article, she said she loved the joint because the smell of bacon really permeated the place. She explained that, since she’s a vegetarian, she never actually orders the bacon. But she really loves the smell.
Me, I eat the bacon.
But is it any wonder why the people back in Baltimore or Indianapolis think we’re all a little nuts? Because a substantial portion of us are. Not a majority, mind you. Not even close. But a significant minority. Enough to fill the Rose Bowl, certainly. And somehow the nuts keep getting most of the press.
Thing is, functional people are all a little nuts. God, please watch over the soul of a rational man in this irrational world. The odds are so against him.
Take me. Please.
In the next room, I can hear my wife primping for bed. Each night, the routine is the same. She flushes. She brushes. She flosses. A cupboard door opens. A cupboard closes, thud-dum. The water runs in the sink. Long silence. Another flush. A cough. Some gargling. Some clipping. The rasp of an emery board. I think I hear a power drill. A cupboard door opens again, a cupboard closes.
Thud-dum.
This goes on for about an hour and a half. I know her pre-bed routine the way I know the national anthem. Against all odds, I wait for her to show up. The Donald has a better chance of romancing Rosie.
Finally, my wife slowly lifts the sheets and slides into the sack. Then she gets up out of bed to help the beagle up into the bed. Then she slides back into bed. Then she gets up again to help the cat. Then the other dog. There are now five of us in bed, and I am the only one she has not touched. The temperature of the sheets? About 2,000 degrees.
“Where you going?” I ask when she gets up yet again.
“Forgot to turn on the dishwasher,” she says.
Forget anything else, honey?
At the gym each morning, I try to keep myself in shape for her -- healthy, trim, supple. In the event of actual intimacy, I don’t want to tear a muscle.
So each weekday I rise at 5:30 a.m., get to the gym and find the parking lot nearly full.
“Do these people ever sleep?” I wonder. “I know they don’t eat. But don’t they even sleep?”
Seriously, L.A. is the only city in the world where eating is considered an inconvenience. But I thought they’d at least catch a little shut-eye. No.
Anyway, the gym is packed every morning in early January, and still I go. The treadmills are full. The busy pool is whipped into 3-foot waves. Even the weight room’s bustling. Sure enough, misery loves company.
The best bods, by the way, belong to the divorced women. It’s as if they’ve tapped into some fountain of youth, when really all many of them did was call Dr. Melman for a tuneup of the tummy, the chest, the squishy derriere.
I’d like to think that, had they called Dr. Melman a little sooner, they’d all still be married. But divorce is way more complicated than that, my wife tells me -- though I tend to tune out when she gets to the part about men needing to listen better.
Truth is, I need Dr. Melman too. Maybe he can cinch up my hamstring, the one I tore while jumping out of my chair during the Boise State game. As any athlete knows, pulling a hamstring is the equivalent of breaking a bone.
So I tried to sell my lovely bride on a little round of a new home therapy: spank-u-puncture. It’s a new treatment I dreamed up, a combo of mild corporal punishment and traditional acupuncture. It stimulates nerve endings even as it deadens them. It cures about anything, including cold sores and mild depression. Just wait till the oversexed gang on “Grey’s Anatomy” hears about this.
Of course, my bride wouldn’t agree to any spank-u-puncture, after a whispery late-night dispute over which one of us would be the spanker and who would be the spankee. (Guess for yourself, OK? I try to be pretty private with my private life.)
Needless to say, spank-u-puncture remains a promising but still unproven medical-marital breakthrough. I see a big future for it. Eventually, I hope to do for spanking what that Jarvik dude did for plastic tickers.
Till then, I will wait in bed each night, though the primping, the flushing, the brushing, the dogs ...
Life is nuts, isn’t it? So go ahead, girl. Eat the stupid bacon.
Chris Erskine can be reached at chris.erskine@latimes.com. His MySpace address is myspace.com/chriserskine.
