Cheese and Thank You

And I still have all that cheese.

Last week started off like a blindfolded bronco ride through the darkest regions of Hell, but I somehow managed to survive.

First I got sick or had an allergy attack or pissed off some local witch who put the horns on me, but whatever it was, I started coughing and sneezing and dragging myself through life like I was half-dead.

It sucks to be sick, of course, and it sucks even harder to get sick in the summer, my favorite time of year when I like to think I have temporary immunity all those nasty germs and viruses just waiting to lay me low as soon as the mercury goes south.

And what made things worse was the fact that I was scheduled to do a reading with my most wonderful writing class on Thursday.

My sister was coming to watch and one of my classmates was zooming in from her new home in Tucson for God’s sake. And now I get sick?

But the real Horatio Hornblower of the week was when my local laundromat, where I’ve been going for years, lost my laundry.

I’m not talking about a missing sock or a misplace dishrag. I’m talking about the entire load—the kit, the caboodle, and the kitchen sink. My clothes simply vanished and the ladies in charge had no idea what had happened to them.

I swore that if I got my hands on that witch who had hexed my life, I was going to ram her broomstick someplace where the full moon don’t shine.

But then I forced myself to calm down. The laundry owner said he’d look for my stuff and promised to reimburse me if he couldn’t locate the load.

As far as my health, whatever illness I had would soon pass. I was well enough to stand and read for 8 minutes and listen for the rest of the evening.

At night, I tinkered with the section I planned on reading and then I rehearsed, reciting it aloud and using a stopwatch to make sure I didn’t go over the allotted time.

Yes, I rehearsed. I didn’t leave things to chance like I’ve done far too often in my life; I didn’t rely on luck, pixies, voodoo, magic spells, astrology, good intentions or the Keebler elves.

I knew that if I wanted to do well on Thursday night I would have to work at it.

Gouda for You

I would have to force myself to speak slowly—instead of my greased tommy gun style of flapping my gums to a blur—and enunciate each and every word, as opposed to spewing a sonic stew of vowels and consonants and letting the listeners try and sort them out.

I would have to speak like a human being.

I started to feel a little better as the week went on, but the rehearsals kept getting worse, so by Wednesday night I was stumbling over phrases and lines I thought I had nailed down.

I could hear Horatio Horblower warming up his lungs in the wings, getting ready to blast Thursday’s reading into dust.

I did one last rehearsal at my office on Thursday and then went down to the American Can Company, a fabulous location on Third Street in Park Slope for the reading.

I met up with my sister, Joan, my teacher, Rosemary, and all my writing class buddies.

The evening was broken up into two sections and I was the last one to read in the first section—right before the bathroom break.

When it was my turn to read, I just forgot to be afraid.

I guess I was so worn out with all the worry that I didn’t have any energy left at the podium. I’m not sure why, but I was relaxed to the max.

There were a couple of rough spots, as you’ll have in life, but I did get the words out, and I had a great time doing it.

Afterward the readings, we had wine and cheese and great conversation. And as Rosemary was cleaning up, she asked me the question for the ages.

“Rob, do you like cheese?”

Hold up a second. Was this woman seriously asking me, a registered cheese-aholic if I wanted to take all those delectable leftover cubes of edible ecstasy back to mi casa?

That’s like asking Long John Silver if he likes parrots. Yo, girl, put that shit in a sack and call me a taxi. I’m late for my one-man cheese orgy.

So, it’s Sunday and I’m feeling much better, aside from a meteoric spike in my cholesterol levels and God alone knows how many extra pounds I slapped on my middle thanks to Rosemary’s cheese award.

And my wash has been recovered. There’s a bit of language barrier between me and the ladies at the laundry so I don’t know exactly what went wrong—maybe the witch couldn’t fit into my underwear—but the important thing is I got my goods back.

So, Hell Week turned out heavenly, I rode that bronco right into the corral, and now I need to celebrate.

I think I’ll have a piece of cheese.