Reviving My Crush On Mary Louise Parker
(By
Richard Goodman, 21 July 2013)
This weekend, I saw two of the new
movies that came out. One of them was
Red 2 and the other was RIPD. I enjoyed
both of them, for the same two reasons.
First, they were a nicely done blend of action-comedy. If you liked Men In Black 2, then you should enjoy
RIPD, which is essentially the same movie, just with dead people filling in for
the MIB aliens. Red 2 was like Red 1 but
with more humor and less drama, i.e. what Die Hard 5 (A Good Die To Die Hard) tried
to be. The second reason I liked both
movies was because they both featured Mary Louise Parker. She was incredibly amusing, adorable and
attractive in both movies. In RIPD, she
played an efficient but quirky administrator and in Red 2, she was the eager,
optimistic spy-in-training girlfriend of Bruce Willis’ “I’m too old for this
shit” retired spy.
I was mesmerized every time she
was onscreen and I loved all her little tics and gestures and her enthusiastic
spirit. It could have veered into
annoying in the wrong hands, but in her hands it was comedic gold; the audience
was laughing in appreciation the whole time.
It’s because she wasn’t quite playing the Manic
Pixie Dream Girl, it was more of the ultimate incarnation of the girl next
door girlfriend. I was thrilled to get
this one-two punch all in one weekend but now I’m wondering how to get my MLP
fix in the near future since she probably won’t have any more movies coming out
for a while.
You may have noticed that lately
I’ve been posting some stuff that is a few years old. That is because I had a bunch of things that
I had been hanging onto because I was debating whether to do another Year In Review
or just throw in the towel and post it in blog/electronic form. I pretty much think I’m done with the paper
version but now I have 6 year’s worth of backlog to figure out how to
handle. I decided to dig into this
backlog and post something today since I had a nice long set of articles about
Mary Louise Parker plus things written by her as well. This should tide me over until she comes out
with another movie. You know, if the two
movie weekend hadn’t revived my crush on her, rereading these articles would have
done it. So when is Red 3 coming out?
Beauty and the Bleak
(by Adam Sternbergh, 2007)
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Like many
people who appear on TV, Mary-Louise Parker doesn’t watch a lot of TV. This
makes sense, if you think about it; if you worked at a circus, you probably
wouldn’t spend much of your downtime going to other circuses. But a few weeks
ago, at the house in L.A. where she’d been staying while filming the third
season of Weeds, she was feeling a little under the weather, and her
3-year-old son was safely in someone else’s care, so Parker decided to kick
back in front of the tube. And then something embarrassing happened. She
couldn’t figure out how to turn on the TV.
“I got so depressed,” she says,
recalling this moment during a recent lunch in the West Village
The natural, unavoidable, slightly
James Lipton–ish question, of course, is this: So, Mary-Louise Parker—single
mother, longtime earner of plaudits, target of furious tabloid fascination
after your boyfriend left you when you were pregnant with his kid—if you were
the subject of such a biography, where would you be in that narrative arc right
now? “Assuming I have one 90-minute
special?” she asks. Yes. “How does the arc go again?” Ascent, crisis, optimistic dénouement. “Somewhere around there,” she says. “Optimistic
dénouement. Though optimistic is a big word for me. But you don’t want to
anticipate any more crises in your life.”
As an actress, Parker is a cultish taste; she
doesn’t have fans, she has converts. The road-to-Damascus moment may have come
with Fried Green Tomatoes, in 1991, or when watching her as the
deliciously marble-mouthed Amy Gardner on The West Wing, or seeing her
onstage in Proof, or watching her play Harper, the hallucination-prone
Mormon in HBO’s Angels in America, in 2003, a performance that won her
an Emmy and, had the movie aired in theaters, might well have won her an Oscar.
(She certainly should have beaten out Renée Zellweger’s jug-band mama from Cold Mountain
Still, for most of her career,
Parker has been best known for two things: (1) delivering stunning stage
performances (Prelude to a Kiss, Proof), then being passed over in the
film versions for lesser actors but bigger stars, and (2) being that talented
actress who never quite broke out, whose name was too easily confused with
Penelope Ann Miller or Mary Stuart Masterson, who never had that one big
romantic-comedy smash (the kind of movie in which, as she says, “there’s a
montage where the girl tries on a lot of hats, then goes on a date”). So
instead, she got saddled with that qualified compliment, the “thinking man’s sex
symbol,” as though discerning her appeal required a devoted period of apostolic
study. Then she became known for a third
thing. In 2003, her longtime boyfriend, actor Billy Crudup, left her,
apparently for his younger co-star Claire Danes (denied at the time, but the
pair coupled shortly thereafter), when Parker was seven months pregnant. This
was personally devastating, obviously. Four years later, she says, “It’s weird
to me the way that people receive it. Not so much that they speculate on it,
but that they feel they have the right to comment on it.” But the general reaction to her breakup was
not the usual prurient, someone-got-shipped-off-to-rehab gleeful wallowing. Instead, it pricked a primal nerve. Whatever
emotional messiness had been splashed behind the scenes, the public story line
was linear and pure: Dumped by a cad! Whilst pregnant! With his baby!
No one confuses her with Mary Stuart Masterson anymore. In the cold calculus of
celebrity, the worst possible thing in the world actually helped her. It made
her sympathetic. It made her relatable.
To find
Parker now, at 43, on Weeds is, for the cultish fan, to be both
thankful she’s got this showcase and wistful for something more—shouldn’t this
woman be off torching stages, stealing films, hoarding Oscars? Parker’s career
is a testament to the fact that there’s a hunger for a woman who, as our own TV
critic John Leonard (himself an unreconstructed Parkerphile) once wrote, can
seem like she’s “always thinking about three things simultaneously, one of them
scandalous.” Her characters often teeter on the brink of lunacy, but
charmingly. Or, as one MLP devotee put it to me, “She’s convincingly smart. You
know—she’s not Drew Barrymore.” In fact,
imagine for a minute that Barrymore starred in Weeds. The show would
be a buffoonish disaster, rather than a compellingly kooky examination of what
one suburban mother will do to keep her family together (sell pot) and what
repercussions that has on her (occasionally jumping nearly naked in the
swimming pool and screaming her head off underwater). Given how, in two seasons
(the third premieres August 13), Weeds has drifted from a
semi-plausible family drama to a brazen farce, it sometimes seems that Parker’s
not just scrambling to keep her family together, she’s scrambling to keep her show
together.
She turned down the Teri Hatcher
role in Desperate Housewives (and imagine that alternate reality,
Parker exiled to Wisteria Lane, picking her teeth with the likes of Nicollette
Sheridan), but said yes to Weeds because, as she says, “it was
uglier.” Since then, it’s gotten prettier. “I think the pilot was uglier than
the show turned out to be. Sometimes it slips into more broadly comic, which is
not my favorite. I like it best when it lives in that more bleak, black-comedy
place.” Bleak, black, comic: That’s not
exactly soothing. That’s not Drew Barrymore. That’s not a neatly packaged story
of ascent (critically beloved young actress!), crisis (left pregnant and
alone!), and optimistic dénouement (now star of her own TV show!). But people
only live their lives like that on A&E. “Those shows follow a formula, so
you know what’s coming,” she says. “They have happy endings. Sometimes you kind
of need that.”
(By Mary-Louise
Parker, Esquire magazine, November 2002)
I seem to have a lot of pictures of myself naked. A few are sexy, but most are decidedly
unglamorous, ones in which I have sand on my feet, spaghetti on my face. Some
were taken while I slept. The truly awful ones, which wrecked my day upon
viewing, have doubtless by now been reincarnated as a paper towel or a
Starbucks cup. It is difficult for anyone over the age of seven to see his or
her body with any sense of perspective, and I don't know at what point that
changes and being naked becomes naughty. My friend came into her son's room one
evening and found him sitting on his bed very still and staring straight ahead
with a small smile on his face. "What are you so happy about, honey?"
she asked him. He looked at her, unblinking. "Because I am naked in my
mind," he said.
There can be a certain hopefulness that precedes seeing your
picture, naked or no. Maybe some small truth will be revealed, maybe I will see
myself how others see me, but, more important, maybe I will look hot.
Ultimately the pictures I like are the ones in which I recognize myself, in
which ego doesn't figure into it. In one of my favorite pictures, consequently,
I am extremely naked, romping on a not-nude beach on Plum Island , Massachusetts
Your average photo tends to conceal rather than reveal. Only
truly great art photos, by Robert Frank, for example, seem so true that you
feel like a voyeur for just looking at them. They speak so much about their
subjects in such an artful, deliberately nondeliberate way that they take my
breath away. A naked photo is trickier; usually the intent is to get the viewer
horny, or to fill out a subscription card. It's tough, too, because nudity is
the greatest distraction. I didn't love the angle of my head in the naked photo
I did for this magazine two years ago. The Polaroids I saw during the photo
shoot showed this shiny naked chick kickin' it on a couch and feelin' it. But
the one that was published made me look, I thought, sort of stiff or demure,
like one of the somewhat hornier sisters on The Waltons. I sort of hated that
about it, to which my niece responded: "Who you think is gonna be looking
at your head with your crazy butt flyin' all up in the air like that?"
(This theory of hers is proven whenever someone approaches me with ten copies
of said photo; when I say, "I'll just sign right here on my naked
ass," the picture holder counters with, "Oh, no, just below it,
please.")
In the end, despite having my bottom dusted with gold powder
while the photographer yelled out, "Work it, baby! Oh, yeah, work it,
Mama!" I think the picture is very PG-13, nothing to blush about. The
Catholic Church, though, might say otherwise. The Catholic Digest Web site and
the U. S.
I wonder if it is even possible for a nude to avoid any
controversy. It seems to come down to the compartmentalization of particular
body parts into the proper and improper, which seems a bit random. I don't
quite see how, if we have a shot of a woman fully clothed--more than fully, in
a beekeeper's outfit, no less--and somehow a nipple is exposed by accident,
like, "Tra la la, here I am just taking care of my bees, thinking pure and
virtuous thoughts," and that scant bit of flesh just, like, busted out
somehow, then is that porno? Is a nipple itself just inherently nasty? Is it
possible to show a nipple somewhere, in a men's magazine, for example, and have
the photo deemed artistic? Does a nipple, by its very appearance in Esquire,
have to scream Lick me?
Now, despite my own apparent willingness to rip it all off
now and then, I admit to a couple of reservations. On one hand, if the intent
is to get you hot, then the subject is objectified to some degree. The issue is
mostly gender specific, and if it reemphasizes a woman's worth being tied up in
her looks and sexual appeal, if it feeds that concept in some way, then a nude
photo isn't really innocuous, I guess. The second factor is what it represents
for me as an actress. I don't want to encourage the perception of acting as
mere posing, akin to modeling, or that physical beauty is a prerequisite for
talent: The question posed to any model or pretty girl who has found success
singing disco or figure skating is, inevitably, "Are you going to try
acting?" Since more than one career was founded on a woman's ability to
smile well or look good in shorts, it might perpetuate the idea that acting is
something that you do when you are good-looking, and if you want to do it, you
better "work it, baby, and oh, yeah, work it, Mama." You better bare
your ass and hope you look good. Love me, lick me, hire me.
So there, for me, is the problem. The being naked part I
kinda like. I wondered if there was a way to circumvent this inner conflict, to
turn the naked-actress phenomenon around a bit. When I pitched half a dozen
ideas for this piece, the "what if I write about being naked in Esquire"
idea was mysteriously latched onto, the first response being, "Would you
consider posing naked again?" I received an e-mail from the editor the
next morning in which the word nude appeared no less than five times in the
course of one paragraph, and it ended with "We agreed that it would make
sense if you posed nude again." So. Well, anyone who might suggest a very
public display of nudity for me must be very open-minded, I thought. So I rang
him up and said, "Well, yeah, I think it's an idea, and I was also thinking,
actually, that as the editor of the piece, it would make sense for you to
appear naked as well. And I thought maybe I should choose the photo of you that
runs, so you can really experience that loss of control and possible
objectification. Just as an idea. I mean, I thought it might make sense."
I was met with some sputtering and somewhat choked,
mortified laughter, the way people laugh when they feel suddenly light-headed,
or when they view something both compelling and grotesque, like, say, two cats
having sex, or a child vomiting into his Easter basket. He said he would get
back to me. I didn't mean to be sinister
or punishing, wouldn't dream of running an unflattering shot or making him show
his willy if he didn't want to. We could just both do some fairly tame, PG-13
to R-rated photos, nothing much showing, if anything, just so he could get the
feel of the experience. That way, whenever he suggests a photo or looks at one,
he will have a whole other, more deeply informed point of view. And, champ that
he is, he shocked me. God love him, he said yes. The whole thing ended up being
wonderfully reciprocal. Egalitarian. I'll show you some of mine if you show me
some of yours.
How To Get Some On February 14th
(By Mary-Louise
Parker, Esquire magazine, Feb 2007)
Recipe for Valentine's Day: Take a piece of construction
paper and a red crayon. Draw a heart on the paper, the more crooked the better,
and inside write BE MINE with your left hand, or your right if you are
left-handed. Fold the paper over, cut it into the shape of a heart, and write
something profound to acknowledge how special she is. If you are dim, write
LOVE, ME. Go to the market, get a box of Duncan Hines Chocolate Lover's brownie
mix. Dump some hooch in the batter -- pecans if she is Mormon. Bake them and
cut the brownies into the shapes of hearts. It's okay if they are burned. Put
them in a shoe box with some tissue paper, hide the Duncan Hines box in the
garbage, and sprinkle some flour on your counter. I'm not suggesting you lie,
just set the scene. If this is a real strain, best to find a new gal or get
some quality downtime, and ask your doctor about Celexa. If you have problems
with the commercial aspects of the holiday, swallow it -- it's not about you.
If she fails to reward your sweetness, get a new gal, or make her ask about
Wellbutrin.
If you planned a big romantic dinner out, I suggest doing
the valentine beforehand. The common misconception is that in order to make
manifest the ideal evening of romance, you have to begin with the tasting menu
at Bouley. I am going to dispute that.
By the time the molten-chocolate cake with passion-fruit foam arrives, I can't
tell you how many fingers you are holding up. I am suggesting that you go out of
the expected order and possibly pair a little boost with the aperitif to get
the evening going. One could go straight to GNC and pick up something like
Uptime Energy caplets, loaded with ginkgo biloba and a safe alternative to hard
narcotics. If you are a board-certified physician, not just a musician with a
convenient supply of syringes, consider bringing along vitamin-B shots for two.
It could be a great icebreaker, not to mention a way to get a preview of her
knickers. Head to the restaurant when you are really hungry, a little late, and
you have s-e-x written all over you. Go somewhere with big bathrooms. In case
you miss each other. Remember, you
fellas who are loaded could put something sparkly at the bottom of the
valentine box, or something lacy if you are medium loaded. But truly, it's the
effort that counts (if she has a heart), not what you show up with.* All you need to do is hunt down a red crayon
and pucker up. So draw back your bow, honey. Be a man, that's how we like you.
*Unless you are a Spanish saddle-backed bush cricket, in
which case you need to show up with an ampulla of doped-up Jell-O a third of
your body weight to attach to your date during the act of cricket love. If, God
forbid, your offering is considered too meager, she might chirp off to get it
on with as many as forty-five other crickets and leave you in the dust.
Watching.
Shut Up And Push Play
If you want to rock
this girl (or yours), these are the songs you need to know.
(By Mary-Louise
Parker, Esquire magazine)
I want my next lover to speak little, if any, English. It's
really only necessary for two people to have a few things in common: sex, food,
and vacation destinations. I can envision getting by with a friendly “Hola” as
we pass each other on the veranda in the morning. It might be wonderful to
stare blithely at him as he yammered away in Amharic or something; then I would
have something concrete to point to when I didn't understand anything he was
saying.
Truthfully, I believe that much communication can happen
through music. The right record can be a surrogate for conversation and more
potent than a chemical aphrodisiac. "Music is a beautiful opiate,"
wrote Henry Miller, and I concur. Some
songs make me feel intoxicated from the first five notes, and when you feel
light-headed and electric, it's always better to be lying down, sharing it with
someone else. If you are less than articulate, just putting on a song can make
you a deputy to greatness. Maybe you couldn't write "Tupelo Honey,"
but you can play it and tell her that you wish you had written it for her. Your
ardor will be reified in the form of melody, and she will dissolve if she likes
you even a little. Conversely, if the evening isn't going well, just bust out
the soundtrack from Annie.
If you need inspiration, here are some suggestions for when
that special someone is on your couch, or for after you've graduated from the
couch to the bed, or from said couch to up against the wall beside it, or to
her place if you have only a futon. Hopefully, if you do end up at her place,
she will put on Sade. Sade means only one thing, honey, so get to it.
1. "Gone, Gone, Gone," By Carl Perkins: If
your lady is big-boned, you may want to bury this one in the middle of a
playlist, lest the lyric "I know my baby, she's so round and fat"
seem a pointed attack on her metabolism. It makes me want to crawl into the
back of a truck and put my heels on the window.
2. The Partridge Family's "I Think I Love You"
is actually quite dark and laced with a bit of rage. Don't pretend you don't
know the words.
3. Prince's "Adore" is the hottest song
ever. Maybe right for a little striptease. I'm just speculating.
4. "To Turn You On," By Roxy Music: Just
put on the whole record, Avalon, and if by the time you get to this track you
ain't havin' sex, you ain't gonna.
5. "Go All The Way," By The Raspberries: Go
there. Finish off with the Rolling Stones' "Beast Of Burden." I
realize I'm cheating, but Esquire allotted me only 650 words.
6. Ryan Adams's "Come Pick Me Up" makes me
want to &%#$ the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker.
7. "Ain't Nobody," By Chaka Khan: In the
best possible world, you will end up with a tiny bruise or two.
8. Bach's Cello Suites, By Yo-Yo Ma: Light bondage
and Cool Whip.
9. "Reasons," By Earth, Wind & Fire:
Think Sweatin' to the Oldies.
10. "Glory Box," By Portishead: Drinks
spill and glasses break when you knock over the table in the White Horse Tavern
as somebody climbs over it to get to somebody else. The establishment will ask
you to leave.
11. "Swing Gently," By Leona Naess: It's
not even out yet, so if you are cool enough to put on this song, you don't need
to be reading this article. Check out the pictures and turn the page.
The Ten Types Of Music No Man Should
Own
(By Mary-Louise
Parker, Esquire magazine, March 2009)
Actress Mary-Louise Parker has some helpful advice for you:
If one of these appears in your music collection, you're never getting laid
again.
1. Records by any act whose name is of a Greek or Latin
etymology, i.e. Styx , Megadeth, Yanni.
2. Any recording of Carousel, original Broadway cast or
national tour.
3. Any recording by an act or artist who owns a copy of any
recording of Carousel.
4. Any soundtrack involving earnest undersea creatures who
sing or play drums as they struggle to find their way home.
5. The soundtrack or singles from any aerobics movie
featuring Olivia Newton-John or John Travolta (e.g. Xanadu).
6. Any album containing a pop song with recordings of whales
or dolphins in the background.
7. Any album by Paul after George died, any album by George
after John died, and any album by Ringo after Elvis died.
8. Any of the volumes of Lilith Fair: A Celebration of
Women. The DVD is equally, if not more, unacceptable.
9. Any album released between 1984 and 1988 by men wearing
unitards or kimonos. Except Boy George.
10. Any tracks or bootleg recordings of the Kiss: Alive II
tour. Unless you are twelve.
Why Are Singers Such Pussies?
(By Mary-Louise
Parker, Esquire magazine, March, 2009)
Aside from the tragic, there exist many mundane but still
unsettling ways in which my three-year-old son could choose to individuate:
surfer, Republican, Japanese-comic-book enthusiast, or, to wound me, member of
a college fraternity. There is also that tiny chance that he could join a boy
band. Would there be any kind of deprogramming available for a boy who might
spontaneously lose all musical taste despite being force-fed classic rock,
alt-country, Bach, and Motown from the moment his face hit air? I suppose I
could pay the aged guys from Menudo to strap him to a chair in a white room and
lip-synch "Like a Cannonball" in relentless repetition. Maybe I could
get a Britney Spears look-alike to come in and vomit, pantyless and bloated,
onto a Kevin Federline doll that cries when she tries to stimulate it because
it can't get erect from years of straining to maintain falsetto. Or I could buy
him a car.
I worry that in twelve years music won't have much to offer
him in terms of great tunes to blow out your speakers to. Things seem a bit
airbrushed at the moment. How do you get rowdy to James Blunt? All due respect,
"You're Beautiful" kind of makes me want to hurl. I would rather hear
Van Morrison snarl something unintelligible in the midst of "Sweet
Thing" before he falls away from the microphone, or Joe Cocker rasp out
his last breath. I once told Elvis Costello that Imperial Bedroom made me want
to punch someone in the face and then go have sex with the wrong person, but in
the best way. Rock 'n' roll isn't a pretty boy on MTV; it isn't "gorgeous."
Maybe the popularity of American Idol has produced all this music that seems
like it could be lifted from a consensual-rape scene on Days of Our Lives. The
radio seems to play great audition material, or super first-dance songs at
someone's third wedding.
I suppose that any mother who has a teensy moment of
disquiet when her boy turns to rock should take her cue from a woman who took
out a personal loan of sixty dollars to buy her boy a Kent
Why Having Sex In Public Is Worth It
(Every Time)
Minor Transgression
Violation No. 18731: Public lewdness, Probable Penalty: A warning, or a fine in
the hundreds and, possibly, probation.
(By Mary-Louise
Parker, Esquire magazine, March 2009)
Unless you are a prostitute, hotels are a little
exhilarating. Tiny amenities wait in the bathroom; sometimes a cookie or a
weather forecast on your pillow at bedtime. Soup tastes better than at home.
Twenty-dollar cashews. Hotels are
essentially about fleeing: your spouse, your contractor, a needy house pet.
Hanging the DO NOT DISTURB sign is a harmless way for me to tell the world to
go eat a Clark bar, but even when I check in hoping to disappear, I may decide
I want to be at least partially visible. For a different kind of freedom.
Public and even semipublic sex will get you a burst of
cortisol and a particular delicious anxiety. If you can't stomach the thought
of a light felony charge or possible public stoning, consider the hallway — the
door handle is a great balancing device and has the hard and manageable feel of
a gearshift for more control. If you're a novice and get spooked by the thought
of the maid's cart approaching, just fall back inside and shut the door. Should
you get busted, blame it on the thermostat in your room or say you lunged for
the doorway because you felt seismic vibrations, which will make you appear
conscientious and up on earthquake-safety rules. For the daring, there is the
actual hall, or for extreme halling, the spot near the ashtrays in front of the
elevators is terrific. And for God's sake, don't rule out the ice machine. I
find that the tongs, the bucket, and the ice itself offer endless possibilities.
You may spot some pervert leaning out his door and taping you on his
BlackBerry, but try not to get indignant. Instead, calm yourself by remembering
that you, also, are a pervert, and revel in the commonality of mankind.
Josh Ritter Is Not At All Pretentious
(By Mary-Louise
Parker, Esquire magazine, March 2009)
Josh Ritter stands up. "I'm just gonna see about your
drink," he says softly, heading to look for my missing cocktail. I look at
the book he brought me that he thought I'd like. He comes back and I give him
some poetry, apologizing for the Band-Aid stuck to the Simic. "No, it's so
much better like this," he says. "The Band-Aid stays." He thanks
me four or five times. He is wearing a tie and has the bright, interested smile
of someone not overburdened with self-image. He is so unlike a rock star that I
wonder if he landed in the West
Village
Ritter is usually compared to the legends, the ones you have
been listening to since you were fifteen, the ones you love most. He has
already appeared on lists of the greatest living songwriters. He is not at all
pretentious, though he reads Pinsky and just finished a book about Cicero Lincoln
In a live show, he says sometimes it's best when he finishes
a song and "there is silence, like the audience doesn't know what that
was. When it's live, I can push it, and I'm never afraid, because I know the
show will end and the people will go home. I can either ride the horse or be
tied to it and let it drag me around behind it. If I don't take a chance, give
them something special, I may as well be reciting something." I ask him what it's like now that people are
putting him up so high, investing in him: "What do you do with
that?" He laughs, looks away.
"Yeah," he says. "I just figure that's a compliment I can never
live up to."
If you love music and have a device on which to play it, you
should listen to Josh Ritter whenever you need sound. If you bring a woman
home, or if you need to sit and disassociate, wishing you had a woman to bring
home. During takeoff and landing, after they've told you to shut off all
electronic devices, hide your iPod and listen; it's good music to be alone with
up there. Really just listen whenever, because the records are that good, and
you are a person who thinks and loves and wears pants.
A Thank-You Note To Men
(By Mary-Louise
Parker, Esquire magazine, May 2009)
To you, whom it may concern:
Manly creature, who smells good even when you don't, you
wake up too slowly, with fuzzy, vertical hair and a slightly lost look on your
face as though you are seven or seventy-five; you can fix my front door, my
sink, and open most jars; you, who lose a cuff link and have to settle for a
safety pin, you have promised to slay unfortunate interlopers and dragons with
your Phillips head or Montblanc; to you, because you will notice a woman with a
healthy chunk of years or pounds on her and let out a wolf whistle under your
breath and mean it; because you think either rug will be fine, really it will;
you seem to walk down the street a little taller than me, a little more aware
but with a purpose still; to you who codifies, conjugates, slams a puck, baits
a hook, builds a decent cabinet or the perfect sandwich; you who gives a twenty
to the kids selling Hershey's bars and waits at baggage claim for three hours
in your flannel shirt; you, sir, you take my order, my pulse, my bullshit; you
who soaps me in the shower, soaks with me in the tub; to you, boy grown-up, the
gentleman, soldier, professor, or caveman, the fancy man with initials on your
towels and salt on your chocolates, to you and to that guy at the concession
stand; thank you for the tour of the vineyard, the fire station, the sound
booth, thank you for the kaleidoscope, the Horsehead Nebula, the painting, the
truth; to you who carries me across the parking lot, up the stairs, to the ER,
to roll-away or rice mat; to you who shows up every so often only to confuse
and torment, and you who stays in orbit, always, to my left and steady, you
stood up for me, I won't forget that; to you, the one who can't figure it out
and never will, and you who lost the remote, the dog, or your way altogether;
to you, wizard, you sang in my ear and brought me back from the dead, you tell
me things, make me shiver; to the ones who destroyed me, even if for a minute,
and to the ones who grew me, consumed me, gave me my heart back times ten; to
most everything that deserves to call itself a man: How I do love thee, with
your skill to light fires that keep me warm, light me up.
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