The Lexicographer's Rules

Airport. I say this all the time: When I return to the home state and step off the plane, there seems to be a large convention of band students, or Mormons, or Jehovah's witnesses or some other group of flubbery white people dressed in similar clothes and similar hairstyles. Turns out every time, though, that it's just shock. Shock at stepping out of the split atom chaos of the city and its ethnic coloring book and into the fogginess of cockscomb bangs and bi-level hair-dos and white trainers.

I think, Who are all these white people? Why do I feel threatened? Anxiety of the sort I once felt when walking around in shorts and flip-flops in Washington Heights listening to the Dominicans shout "Maricon!" Dominicans are too manly to wear shorts; wear them, you are queer. Also Venezuelans and Colombians and most Puerto Ricans. Ninety-five degrees, they're in long pants, sweating like weightlifters.

Searches. Everyone does this.

These search phrases brought sickos, weirdos and freaks here. Just this week. Makes me feel queasy.

bean bag chairs
boobless asian
danish porn
wet panties
busty latinas
boobless
my room
big breasts
big "penis"
bean bags chairs
big ass
panties
big-penis
penis massager
ass sex
bag chairs
irish child actors
bathroom girls
hooker furniture
bedroom furnitur
boca chica sex
biders edge
what does wearing two rings on the thumb mean?
blow job fucking
naked breasts
bitch
little nickel newspaper
fratboys
monicke
naked teensy
homeless expensive suit
ass sniffers
whores of mo
fat gay guys
home furnituring
gap messenger bag
men wearing toe rings
rodeo girls naked
ass in pants
homo
kids think its cool wear ball cap backwards
curtain patterns
monickels
german porn free
nickel/money
child porn
drunk vomit puke barf pictures
schoolboys porn
nickels
monick
free porn pictures
my living room
exposed panties
tire production in south east asia
great american bagel
old tarts
paper mate gel writer pen
largest penis
dutch hams

Of course, the end result to this list will result in more.

Laura is Italian. Italian Italian, not New York Italian. She travels a lot, though she is finicky. These behaviors mesh well: she has, for example, found the perfect shampoo on her travels. Made and sold, however, only in Malaysia. She bought it last time in Macau, she says, in a black market. Three cases. She is unsatisfied with other than her brands. To me, they look like knock-offs of American products, or the equivalent of generic brands. She likes them. She prefers a particular brand of bar soap from Switzerland, a certain hard candy from Bangkok, a variety of Peruvian potato unknown in North America, Swedish cheese, Turkish incense, Egyptian figs or dates or some prunish looking thing, and Colorado free range turkey from a certain dab of land near Fort Collins. Yesterday she called all excited. "Okay, so you know how I've been missing my brands? My shopping? Here's my new plan. Everyday, I will visit each store and ask them if they have what I want. I know they don't, because I've asked before, but I will ask anyway. Excuse me, do you have the Pulp-o orange juice? Pardon me, do you not carry Bar-Boy litchi gummy candy? I was wondering if you had Prithee hypoallergenic shampoo? "Everyday I'll ask a different clerk. "So then, later, when they're ordering stock, it'll be like a bunch of people were asking for it, and they'll starting carrying stuff just for me." How are they going to get these things if you can't? "They run stores. This is what they do. They're all from someplace else, anyway. They'll just call a brother-in-law." So they're going to buy all this merchandise for you? What happens when they only sell one or two a week? "No way. This stuff is good. Once they start carrying it, everybody will want it." Then you won't be able to find it again. "I'll stock up."

You cannot answer one of Mother's type of people with, "I don't want anything for the holidays. No gifts. I'm not being polite; I am never polite. I-really-don't-want-anything." This is because people like Mother buy crap for you whether you want it or not. They mull and sulk and get their hair done daily to buck themselves up, chatting to the wife of the son of the sheriff about you and how you mistreat them. If you say nothing, nothing, nothing, she still buys something like panda-logoed short-sleeved shirts, three reels of nylon fishing line and a year's subscription to the large print edition of Reader's Digest, like she did Father.

We had tea at Takashimaya, expensive Japanese department store on Fifth Avenue today. Many nice things. She accepts my overtures for events fifty percent of the time. Better than usual, but I am somewhat discouraged.