My Fair Lazy: One Reality Television Addict's Attempt to Discover

by Jen Lancaster

  Stacey cuts her eyes away from the road to glance at me. “You realize this is exactly why you have to study poetry now.”

  “Um, no,” I reply.

  “You say you want to challenge yourself, and poetry presents a challenge, so why are you completely dismissing it out of pocket? I’d be willing to bet there are poets you’d enjoy. Poetry’s one of those things people write off without giving it a chance because it can seem boring and scary.”

  I nod vigorously. “Exactly my point.”

  “You don’t have to embrace it all; rather, it’s that you should keep looking until you find the piece that speaks to you. Poetry’s like anything else you’ve worked on—you haven’t loved every opera, but once you found Carmen, your whole perspective changed.”

  “Your voice of reason intrigues me, and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter,” I mutter.

  “You’re saying you’ve never read anything that appealed to you? Nothing? I don’t believe that.”

  She’s got me there. “I’m okay with Robert Frost,” I admit. “You sort of know what to expect when you read him. Like, he’s totally reliable and unswerving. He’s kind of the McDonald’s of poetry; I mean, his poems aren’t the best burger you’d ever eat, but they’re consistently tasty.” I think about some of my favorite work, like “Fire and Ice” and “The Road Not Taken.” “Or no, wait, he’s not that pedestrian. He’s more like . . . the In-N-Out Burger of poetry.”

  Stacey says nothing, so I continue. “Also, I always connected with ‘If ’ by Rudyard Kipling. Back when I was my sorority’s rush chairman, I memorized all the words. When we’d all be up late getting ready for the next day’s party, and everyone would be bitching about how hard I was making them work, I’d quash their complaints by reciting stuff. I’d be all, ‘If you can make a heap of all your winnings and risk it all on one turn of pitch and toss and lose and start again at your beginnings and never breathe a word about your loss.’ ”

  “They hated you.” This comes out as a statement, not a question.

  “Absolutely!” Years later, their animosity is still a source of pride. All good rush chairmen are despised.

  “Maybe you need a mentor?” Stacey suggests. “I didn’t really know which poets I loved until I studied under the resident poet at my college.”

  I bark with laughter. “Your college had a resident poet? Ha! How often did his place get tee-peed? Daily? Hourly? Did he ride around campus on a recumbent bike with a jaunty orange safety flag flapping in the breeze? Did he carry a valise? Did he wear an ascot? Or was he a she, and did she wear long hippie skirts and never shave her legs, ever?”

  “I bet your school had a resident poet, too.”

  “Doubtful.”

  “Not doubtful. I bet they have one, and you just don’t know about it.”

  “Well,” I muse, “if my school does have a resident poet, he’s not to be found in the Phi Delt house.”

  “Just do me a favor, after lunch, go home and Google ‘famous poets.’ A lot of their stuff is online. Read through some of it. I’ll make you a deal. If you don’t find something you like, I won’t harass you about learning more.”

  “What do I get if I do find something I like? Then what do I get?”

  Stacey purses her lips and pulls her brows together. “You get the pleasure of reading something amazing.”

  “Pfft, that sucks.” Stacey gives me her thousand-yard death glare and I relent. “Fine. I’ll do it.”

  But I won’t like it.

  When I get home, I dutifully sit down at my computer and Google “famous poets.”

  Okay, fine. It’s actually three days later when I finally work up the motivation to input this particular search string. And then I make a typo and accidentally search for “famous pets.”

  I’m surprised at how many presidential dogs I know. There’s Millie, Barney, Buddy, Checkers, Manchu, and Sailor Boy. I wasn’t sure of LBJ’s dogs’ names, but I did know he used to pick them up by the ears.184 What’s funny is I’m not sure I could name all their respective vice presidents.

  I’m interested to read that Winston Churchill had a cat named Mar-gate. I find this curious; I never pictured him as a cat person. I see him more as someone who’d have had dogs, like maybe English bulldogs. That seems so veddy, veddy British, doesn’t it? Personally, I want a pair of bulldogs someday, and coincidentally, I’d like to name them Winston and Churchill, but I’d probably call them Winnie and Chilly for short and—

  Ahem.

  Famous poets.

  I decide the fairest way to do this is to research what people consider to be the top one hundred poems of all time. I run across a good list, and luckily, it links to everything I need to read.

  I plow through work by Ezra Pound and Oscar Wilde. Nothing they have to say speaks to me much. Neither Stephen Crane nor William Butler Yeats does it for me, either. I hit a string of Robert Frost work, and I like all of it, but it doesn’t count because I already admitted an affinity for him. Robert Burns does not write in a language I even remotely recognize, so he’s out. Sylvia Plath makes me want to stick my own head in the oven, and Allen Ginsberg needs to set down the bong, man.

  I’m completely confident in my poetry-hating stance until I read “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe. I know many lines from this one because of that “Treehouse of Horror” episode on The Simpsons, so I’m giggling to myself as I picture Bart as the raven. I finish The poem fairly quickly and figure this is as good as any stopping point.

  I feel as though this poem has no effect on me, yet while I’m walking down the hall to throw a load of laundry in the dryer, I notice a pigeon staring at me from my neighbor’s window ledge.

  And I almost have a frigging heart attack.

  “How’s it going? Anything speak to you yet?” Stacey and I are in the car, on our way to our weekly Whole Foods shopping expedition.

  “Other than ‘The Raven’185 scaring the bejesus out of me, no,” I reply.

  “You can’t hate what you’re doing, or you’d have quit by now.”

  “I’d admit to being intrigued, but that’s it. I’m not yet fond of any work, but the observations are interesting to me. First, who knew how much poetry had worked its way into pop culture? Like the speech the president gives in Independence Day that always makes me tear up? Bill Pullman uses a line from a Dylan Thomas poem when he talks about not going quietly into that good night. Cool, right?”

  “Cool that you recognize it now,” Stacey adds.

  “Also, how come Shel Silverstein’s considered one of the greatest poets of all time, yet no one’s said shit about Dr. Seuss? Not only did he rhyme, but he drew! I mean, come on, let’s give credit where it’s due. And, wow, did Sylvia Plath have daddy issues or what? And Emily Dickinson? Jesus Christ, she makes me want to stab myself in the eyes and then shove handfuls of Prozac in the empty sockets.” I slump back into my seat, exhausted at my own diatribe.

  Stacey’s nodding after I finish. “I never loved Dickinson. But want to hear something that might make her work a little more enjoyable for you? Almost everything she wrote can be sung to the tune of ‘The Yellow Rose of Texas.’ ”

  “No!” I exclaim.

  “Take a listen—‘Because I could not stop for death/He kindly stopped for me/The carriage held for just ourselves/And Immortality.’ ”

  “That is AWESOME! Did she do that on purpose?”

  “She wrote in running meter, so her work lends itself to songs with the same beats. Lots of her poems work with the theme to Gilligan’s Island, too.”

  I let that sink in for a minute. Actually, that’s not true. I silently sing those lines, Gilligan-style. “Cool as that may be, I’m giving this part of the project one more afternoon to find something I love before I officially give myself a pass.”

  Stacey seems a bit smug as we pull up the parking ramp at Whole Foods. “You’ll find something.”

  Pfft. Not bloody likely.

  Well, hell.

  S
tacey was right. Again.

  Turns out there’s a whole genre of poetry I like . . . and some of it doesn’t even rhyme!

  I started reading Maya Angelou, and hers are the first words that actually reached up from the page and said, “Hey! Pay attention!” From Maya Angelou, I moved on to Gwendolyn Brooks. Those women can give entire books’ worth of a story in twenty lines.

  The site I used to research them suggested I’d like Robert Hayden, too, and damn if I’m not moved by his work. And Langston Hughes? His “Let America Be America Again” poem gives me chills, even though it paints a picture of this country that I hate to think could be true. I probably connect more with these poets now that I have a little background in the blues. There are common rhythms and themes between their work and the lyrics I’ve heard.

  I’m not yet sure how to articulate why their poems speak to me, and I’m completely green when it comes to figuring out various interpretations. But I know now that poetry is capable of holding my interest, and I want to learn more.

  I want to get some of their books, but . . . I probably won’t read their stuff by the pool at my club. Somehow that seems to go against the spirit of what they’ve written.

  By the way, if anyone wants to beat up Maya Angelou for her lunch money? They’re going to have to go through me first.

  ALTGELD SHRUGGED TWITTER:

  Expert: Most plastic surgeries are performed on the middle & lower-middle classes. Me: Duh, how else are they going to get on Rock of Love?

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Have Fork, Will Travel

  “Hey, you like cheese.”

  I say this to the back of Fletch’s head, prompting him to look up from his mammoth plastic storage bin of cords. He recently got a new desk186 and has been busy rearranging his office to accommodate it. Somehow in moving things, he’s unearthed a number of yet-to-be-homed power cords and computer cables. He carefully winds each one in on itself and secures it with a zip tie so he won’t find it in a Christmas-tree-light-string snarl when he needs it. And yet I’d be willing to wager all the money in my purse—again, about eight dollars—that he will never, ever need it because we have no powerless appliances and ten thousand spare cables. The dove gray one he’s oh so lovingly laying to rest right now probably belongs to the dot-matrix printer we owned in 1996187. Or maybe an Atari Pong console.

  Cautiously, he replies, “I do like cheese. But if you’re hinting at another one of your ‘Let’s have cheese for dinner!’ ideas, count me out. That’s not a balanced diet.”

  “Pfft, it’s totally balanced if you have grapes, olives, and crackers. Anyway, that’s not my point. I signed up for a class on wine-and-cheese pairing tomorrow night, and I want you to come with me.”

  I’ve done an awful lot of work on my Jenaissance so far, but most of what I’ve done has been with Stacey or Gina or my college roommate Joanna. This project isn’t driving us apart, but not much of it’s brought us together. Now that’s about to change.

  His expression is vaguely stricken. “Wouldn’t you rather take Stacey?”

  I shake my head vehemently. “Stacey already knows how to pair stuff. Don’t you remember when she told us about her ‘cheesemonger,’ and I kept giggling because it sounded dirty? She’s the main reason you and I have progressed past cubed cheese. Plus it’s being taught at the Chopping Block, and you said you wanted to take classes there.”

  “I said I wanted to take a grilling class there, not some mincing wine-and-cheese class.”

  “Well, you’re in luck! I signed us up for lessons on making Brazilian and Indian food, too. But tomorrow night, we learn wine and cheese.”

  Fletch then puts on an expression I call his “Muppet face.” He wrinkles his brow and flattens his lips so hard that his chin begins to curl up toward his nose, like he’s a sock puppet and the fist inside is clenching. “Any chance I can get out of this?”

  I consider his request for a moment. “Tell you what—you find the office machinery that goes with the cord in your hand, and I’ll rope someone else into going with me.”

  Fletch and I arrive at the Chopping Block with a few minutes to spare. We check in at the front counter, and I locate my sticky paper name tag. When I signed up I wasn’t quite sure who’d join me, so I simply wrote “guest” on the form. I pick up a blank name tag and a Sharpie and hand them to Fletch. “Fill this in.”

  “Why?” He’s been antagonistic about tonight ever since we got in the car. I swear he Googled every road under construction and made sure to take them, so our three-mile trip took forty-five minutes.

  If I had to guess why he’s uncomfortable, I’d say this is one of those instances in which he’s worried people will assume he’s gay, like when I ask him to hold my purse while I tie my shoe or suggest he might enjoy whipped cream in his mocha.

  (Sidebar: I blame Judd Apatow for Fletch’s sensitivity. Had he not written such a great scene in The 40 Year-Old Virgin, Fletch and I wouldn’t have spent the last few years telling each other, “You know how I know you’re gay?” )

  I massage my temples. “Because you have to. Everyone else is wearing name tags.”

  “Can’t I leave it blank? Or just fill in ‘guest’?”

  Barely containing my annoyance, I hiss, “Or maybe you can draw one of those round-trumpet-arrow symbols, and we’ll have the rest of the class call you Prince?”

  He gives in. “Fine. But you fill it out. I have the handwriting of a serial killer.”

  We pass all the upscale kitchen accessories and cookbooks188 and settle in on chairs around the big butcher-block counter filling the center of the room. Each place is set with a plate of seven cheeses, two wineglasses, one of which contains champagne, a cup of water, a pencil, some paper with descriptions printed on them, and a butter knife. We sit at the end, and I can see Fletch tense up when he notices every other person at the counter is female.

  As I am having none of his tomfoolery, I take a closer look at my plate. I’m delighted to recognize some of what’s there. There are a couple of pale, hard offerings that I’m sure are Manchego and Gruyère.189 I’m willing to wager the big white dollop is goat cheese and the soft, double-rind-covered one is Brie. Brie was my gateway cheese—I tried it for the first time some years back, and I loved it so much it gave me the courage to realize that not all cheese is rectangular, individually wrapped, and the color of Paris Hilton after a spray tan.

  Most of the offerings look delicious, save for the pile of debris sitting in the middle of it all. This heaving, yellowing, blue-green mass is lumpy and loose and crumbly. This is less “cheese” and more “gangrene.”

  As if this mass of unpasteurized unhappiness weren’t gross enough, it also reeks.

  A lot.

  If someone wanted to spread the taste of death on a crostini, this is what they’d choose. If I accidentally stepped in this, I’d find the nearest garden hose to remove it, as the sidewalk edge might not get it all off and I’d fear it would eat through my shoe.

  I point at the glob. “This one is terrifying.”

  “Yeah, but maybe if you understand it, it won’t be so scary,” Fletch counters.

  “Really, now you choose to be the voice of reason? Really?”

  Before he can reply, a late-coming couple takes the two remaining seats next to us. They appear to not only be heterosexual but also married. The husband catches Fletch’s eye, they both grimace and nod, and finally Fletch’s shoulders relax.

  The class begins and I’m so busy shooting daggers in Fletch’s direction that I completely miss the instructor’s name. The literature we’ve been handed calls her “the Wine Goddess,” so I decide to go with that.

  Wine Goddess instructs us to raise our glass of champagne so we can toast to good wine and to not being lactose intolerant but I already drank my champagne because no one said not to.

  Seriously, I paid sixty bucks a head for this; I will suck down whatever’s placed in front of me.

  Wine Goddess’s assistant refills m
y glass, and after strict instructions on how to swirl and sniff, we proceed to toast and I drain my cup. Nice. Very dry. Or not very dry. I’m not entirely sure I know the difference. Perhaps I should listen instead of mentally skewering Fletch with the kabob sticks that are now twenty percent off?

  Wine Goddess makes some kind of soften-up-the-room joke about how her job is about making pairings accessible to the proletariat, which causes Fletch to grab my sheet and scratch, “The proletariat don’t take wine-and-cheese classes.”

  We’re instructed to hold up our glasses and swirl again. I follow suit and drink all I have. This is tasty. I can’t tell you why it’s tasty, but it is.

  Then again, I never met a glass of wine I didn’t like.

  We’re sampling something called Gruet Brut Blanc de Noirs. I’m unsure of the literal translation, but I will verify that it’s vaguely less burp-inducing than other champagne.190

  Before we nibble on the first offering of cheese, we’re instructed to have another sip. I have to motion to Wine Goddess’s assistant for yet another refill, and she shoots me a murderous glance. Hey, you in the apron, listen up—when I am sixty dollars’ worth of drunk, then you’re allowed to get snarky. Till then, shut up and pour.

  Wine Goddess instructs us on the proper way to hold a wineglass, which is by the stem only. The reason for this is you don’t want the heat from your fingers to alter the wine temperature. Frankly, I’ve always held my glass by the stem because I don’t like smudgy fingerprints, so I’m pleased to have been inadvertently right about something. Apparently the true wine snobs grasp nothing but the flat base of the glass, yet when I try this hold, I almost dump the rest of my champagne in my lap.

  (Sidebar: The next time you watch any lowbrow reality show, pay attention to how all the girls hold their glasses. I guarantee each of them clasps it by the bowl. It’s crazy-making.)

  We huff and swirl, huff and swirl. Wine Goddess quizzes us on what we smell, but all I can come up with is that my champagne smells like champagne with a few undertones of rage emanating from Apron Girl. Other people at the table suggest they taste sour apples and yeast. How the hell do they taste that?