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shameless, noshless wooing
Friday, April 5 2002
This evening Gretchen and I were invited up to Ernie's fourth floor apartment for some sort of purportedly social occasion, and given recent run-ins with with two other co-op neighbors, we thought it politically prudent to show up, if only briefly. Besides, we wanted to show him the psychotic letter Jane had included with the hostage keys she'd returned.
At around 6:30, we climbed the stairs to Ernie's apartment, our little dog Sally racing ahead of us as usual. Ernie was alone with his baby daughter, dog, and cat; his wife was elsewhere. Nothing had really been prepared for our visit; there was a solitary Rolling Rock in the fridge and a cold bottle of white wine. Most disappointingly (for Gretchen, at least) was the complete absence of any noshes. This confirmed her suspicions that Ernie is, first and foremost, a WASP. Gretchen has been formulating a comparative theory relating WASPs to Jews, and most of the details of this theory relate to food and alcohol.
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Item
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Jews
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WASPs
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dinners
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food in great excess, wine
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martinis, wine, beer, tiny portions of food
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casual gatherings
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plenty of noshes, wine, beer
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martinis and perhaps beer, no food at all
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musical entertainment
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classical
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none
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problems
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a wide variety of neuroses
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alcoholism
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conversational style
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confrontational
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cool detachment
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typical examples
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the Costanza Family, Seinfeld
(I know, they make like they're Italian Catholic.)
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the Fisher family, Six Feet Under
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(Note: this chart was compiled without any input from Gretchen. Also - please refrain from writing me "Don't you think this is a bit of a generalization?" emails.)
We did all have a good chuckle over Jane's crazy letter, which Ernie took the time to read aloud.
Ernie moved the conversation along to the topic of other crazies in the co-op. Ultimately, he said, it was May that he feared the most. For those of you who have already forgotten about May, she's the woman with the job of co-op housekeeper who, in a fit of co-op bylaw enforcement, unplugged all the network equipment in my basement batcave. Evidently May has been on something of a bender of unpleasantness. When new co-op member Susan decided to move her stuff into a storage area beneath the basement stairs, May retained a lawyer to find out whether or not this was in keeping with the bylaws - and then had the lawyer bill the co-op for his $250 expenses. Then, when forced to move her shit back to its original basement location, she hired a locksmith to cut a bike loose because it was purportedly in her way. In a gross act of locksmith malpractice, this locksmith cut through the bike, not the lock, and charged $70, a bill which May forwarded to the co-op.
Because he is co-op treasurer, all this bullshit is ending up in Ernie's lap, and it's got him frustrated and overwhelmed. "I didn't even want the job, but I was the only [qualified person] who came to the co-op meeting," he said.
It soon became clear that the only reason Ernie had invited us over was that he wanted to lobby for support to make the treasurer position a paid job, just like May's housekeeping position. To do this, he exaggerated his workload while playing down the tasks that earn May $150 per month. "People don't send me their checks and I have to go around knocking on doors," he pleaded. This reminded me that I'd yet to write our co-op dues check for April.
Possibly the worst thing anyone can do to Gretchen is act friendly as a transparent means to extract something specific. As soon as we returned to our apartment, Gretchen turned to me and said, "I hate him!"
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