This Randy Life

Bored on the Fourth of July, or why the “spermies” likely turned me gay.

So, this is the first Fourth of July I’ve spent on my own in 16 years, and it has made me slightly more grumbly than usual. Overall, I generally dislike our national holidays. Memorial Day is motorcycle mania (you’re telling me all those bears on bikes aren’t gay?). Labor Day is laborious in its insistence that one can no longer wear white once it passes. President’s Day. C’mon, really? Washington and Lincoln? Great men, yes, but why not celebrate the achievements of Coolidge and the one with the grand, bushy beard whose name escapes me at the moment. (It was either Harrison or Yogi, don’t recall.) But July 4th rests on a special shelf in my “Pantry of Annoying Holidays.” Not for what it stands for, as what it stands for is quite nice, actually — Happy Birthday, America and all that rah, rah, huzzah — but for what it expects us to do: Gaze up at the sky going “Oooh” and “Ahhh” at a billion bits of exploding light. As Gertrude Steinberg (second cousin once removed to Gertrude Stein) once remarked, “A fireworks display is a fireworks display is a fireworks display.” A true expat, that woman. And a menopausal lesbian, to boot. But I digress…

The very notion of fireworks makes me pissy. Though I’m not sure when that pissiness first arose, because in my younger years in D.C. I would gleefully trundle down to the Mall with the rest of the lemmings, exclaiming “Oooh” and “Ahhh” and even “Whoooooah!” as I craned my neck skyward. I remember turning to a friend once and actually burbling, “Oh my God, did you see that squiggly one? It looked like glowing sperm!” We coined the term “spermies” on that very night. It would have been profoundly romantic had my friend been gay — or at least open to experimentation. But, either way, I’m fairly certain watching the spermies explode is what made me a homosexual. That, and whenever I had sexual contact with a man I saw fireworks of a different sort. But I digress…

I mean, here it is Fourth of July and everyone is cuddling on The Mall, on blankets infested by ants, gazing upwards in anticipation of a billion points of light. Or they’re at festive group barbecues, swilling beer, wine and soda, and scarfing hot dogs and hamburgers fresh from a charcoal grill, or maybe, if they’re really swank, barbecued chicken breasts (not thighs, though, as thighs are cheap). Or perhaps they’re out drinking, which is something I did last night, neglecting my doctor’s orders, which, I suppose, if I want to live a few years beyond that of a Redwood, I have to generally abide by. But not me. Nope, I’m on my own. And, as I mentioned, this is the first 4th of July I’ve spent alone in many years. Not only that, but as I haven’t made it to the Safeway before they shut, I’m likely feasting on a cheap baloney and a Kraft American Processed Cheesefood sandwich for dinner, minus the bread, which makes it less of a sandwich and more of a “cheap baloney and Kraft American Processed Cheesefood roll up.” Then I’ll likely read. Or bathe. Or read while I bathe.

To be frank, it’s not like the ex and I ever really did anything special on July 4th. Typically we would burrow at home all day in sedentary recline (because burrowing in sedentary recline beats doing laundry and cleaning the kitchen), and wind up watching the fireworks on PBS. And yes, there is nothing sadder than watching a magnificent fireworks display occurring less than two miles from your home on TV. It’s like being asked to go on the (now-retired) Space Shuttle for a quick celestial orbit around the globe, and responding, “Nah, I’d rather look at it in my TIME/Life Atlas.”

The one fond memory— the only fond memory — I have of July 4th in my adult years was the one spent on Sean Bugg’s rooftop many years ago, back when Sean was an unmarried heathen living in a fairly tall apartment complex in the heart of D.C. A gaggle of us clustered together on the roof, arms slung ‘round one another’s shoulders, alternatively singing “Kumbayah,” “America the Beautiful” and “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap,” as we gazed at the kazillion points of light, exploding yonder in glorious fashion just above the Washington Monument. Of course, we soon discovered that, if you positioned yourself just right when one of the spermies went off, the sight resembled an orgasmic penis. Okay, a really large orgasmic penis made of stone, but an orgasmic penis nonetheless. 

So, you know what? Maybe I’ll go out and watch the fireworks tonight after all. If only to see those happy, squiggly spermies light up the sky.

Photo: Fireworks on the Fourth of July (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

One thing I’ll say about my ex, he was a technical whiz

One of the things that I miss about David, I have to admit, is his technical prowess. With him around, I never had to worry about things like “port forwarding” or finding the right cable if my external drive wasn’t being recognized by my computer and a different type of connection might do the trick. Last night, I couldn’t forward a port to save the life of me. Not that I really needed it at the moment, but it would have been nice to have felt like I accomplished a task that most tech-heads find relatively simple. I spent an hour on it before giving up.

Tonight, I’m having the idiotic cable issue, which is a bit more serious as there’s photo editing to be done — and it looks like it’s not getting done at the moment. I’ve tried every solution in the book but the fact is that when David left, he took his 1 billion cables and connections with him. I have about a three left. And they’re all the same type of connection. As my soon-to-be-former-employee-but-hopefully-still-friend-but-we’ll-see-how-competitive-he-gets-over-at-Buzzfeed Chris Geidner might say, “What a shitshow.”