Flames

We hadn't seen Max and Lucine in ages (well, weeks, but still), and last evening they called as they were on their way home from an outing and asked if they could drop by (and, when prompted, renewed their pledge of indifference to the proto-squalor of our surroundings). We were all delighted to see them, including Cassie, who promptly dragged Lucine into her playroom, and kept saying "Lucine?... um... um...," not really having anything to tell her, just wanting to be sure she still had her attention.

Pete had taken Cassie to the grocery store Wednesday (Cassie's in day care Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday--Wednesday is Daddy Day), and in with the frozen blueberries and whole wheat bread, had splurged on steaks and frozen pierogis. So when we couldn't bear to let Max and Lucine leave before the evening was spent, that's what we all had for supper. (Well, I myself am not so much with the eating mammal flesh, but anyway I was a pierogi participant.) Plus a few little stalks each of some lovely young asparagus left over from when my dad and his wife Susan were here and made us all dinner. Pete cooked the asparagus and steaks out on the grill, out in the lovely late-spring evening (a novelty, as until this week we've been having about 3 months of March).

Max and Lucine have recently started Weight Watchers together, and I am recently renewed in my quest to not eat everything I possibly can. This week I had a check-up so I could get paperwork filled out for my clinical rotation, and I weighed 10 lbs more than I did last August, and my blood pressure, formerly a predictable 110/70, was 130/80. Not a horribly shocking number in itself, I guess, but jeez. I'm hoping that getting my weight down a bit will result in my BP coming down also. I have a tickly little thought that maybe it's the Prozac messing with my blood pressure--I don't know whether it does that or not. I'm just crossing my fingers that the weight thing does it, and I don't have to switch meds again. Prozac is my Dumbo's magic feather, if nothing else. Whatever comes up, I can always think "oh, heck, I can deal with this--after all, I'm on Prozac!" and it seems to work very nicely.

ANYWAY, there was this whole big discussion about whether to make one or both packages of frozen pierogis, and I started to bring up the fact that Max, Lucine, and I were all... but then I stopped, because "dieting" is such a repellent verb, and "trying to lose weight" sounds just so weak and whimpery, and I didn't know how to finish my sentence. But then Max chimed in with something about the three of us "reducing," which cheered me up immediately. That's what we're doing! We're reducing! I'm sure if we were British, that would have loads of unattractive connotations, too, but since we're not, it's just kind of cozy and vaguely euphemistic. (It reminds me of how swearing in a foreign language never carries the same emotional punch, even if you know full well what the words mean and native speakers have carefully explained to you how strong they are.) So since the three of us are reducing, we only fried up (fried up, mind you, in butter) one box of the frozen pierogis. Such steely restraint.

And then, as we were lounging about and not yet ready for the evening to be over, Pete turned on the television and looked through the menu of what our cable service offers "on demand" for free. There were a few documentaries, some thick and gooey cheese (Gidget Goes Hawaiian, St Elmo's Fire, something called Teen Sorcery...) And there was Richard Pryor, Live on the Sunset Strip. So we watched that.

It wasn't what I expected it to be. Somehow, you think "Richard Pryor," and you think "shocking" in all the predictable ways--sex, drugs, and ooh those terrible swear words. I don't know. Just the living definition of "working blue." But what was actually striking about it now, from this remove, was how genuine and vulnerable and sincere it reads. This particular show dates from 1982, I think, which means it's after his catching-fire-while-freebasing-and-running-down-the-street-in-flames episode. In fact, in this show, he spends a lot of time talking about addiction and then does a whole description of what it's like to be on fire, and then what it's like to be in a burn ward. And it comes to a raw place where it somehow doesn't even matter whether it's funny or not. It kind of is, and it's kind of not, and both the funny and the not funny stem from the fact that he's up there telling the truth in a way that frankly is not too socially acceptable. If you were at a party and said those things that Richard Pryor is up there saying, people would look stricken and move away from you. It's not the "fuck" and the "shit" and talking about cocaine that's impolite almost to the point of obscenity--it's the bare need and pain. And the naked hope for redemption. That's scalding. And then it's haunting. It hangs over you afterwards, making it seem like life is sad and difficult and kind of important. At one point, he gets a nice laugh with "Racism is a bitch, man," and goes on to observe that just plain old being a human being is hard enough.