Ba Babam bib nobocam, a play in 1 act

At the electronic goods megamart after getting a filling at the dentist:
Man: (looking in vain for iPhone charger for wife)
Salesman: (hiding from customers between coffee machine aisle and room ventilator aisle because it is about 2 minutes before quittin time)
Man: (spots salesman)
Man: (all dialogue translated from German to English) BEA AH ZA CHACHAKABA HOA IHONE?
Salesman: Ehm…
Man: (with great effort) CHACHA. KABA. HOA. IHONE.
Salesman: Do you know which model? Is it a new model or an older one?
Man: EGUGA I HINK HMMM NOT SO NUU EBI OAD ON? OAD USB?
Salesman: Actually may I recommend the standard Apple brand product in that case? Same price as the knockoffs.
Man: (Takes recommended products, thumbs up, exit via cash register)

Silicone baking mat

I was baking baguettes today — still am, actually — but I was doing stretch-and-folds on the old silicone baking mat when it finally came apart. 80% hydration baguette dough was too much for it. In its defense, it has been falling apart for some time now. It all started when I rolled out pasta dough on it and cut it into noodles with a pizza wheel; the wheel was sharper than I realized and left big gashes in the silicone baking mat.
At first it still worked, but eventually silicone fatigue got the better of it and a big piece came out; I had planned for a while to head to the mill to get baking supplies, especially a mat, but today, when I am working from home and the mat fell apart into five or more unusable pieces, I realized it was now or never.
So I went, and noticed right off that, since the last time I had been there, they had expanded the shop by about 100% so now instead of being tiny it is small. And the lovely mill lady was there along with her lovely daughters, which was bad news as I have no sales resistance against them when they are alone and sure enough they ganged up on me today.
Everything unraveled immediately, all of my fiscal resolve, when one of them asked me, Can I help you find anything? And I replied, yes, in fact, I am looking for a silicone baking mat thing, have you got anything like that?
To which she answered, In fact we do. And sure enough, they had silicone baking mats that were far nicer than my old one, with circles of various diameters and in the margins various units of measurement and their conversions, not to mention, haptically, a very sexy texture.
Oh excellent, I said, I ruined my last one cutting noodles on it.
Oh! She said. Then, immediately, by the way we have noodle machines.
Oh, I said. I have always wanted a noodle machine. But I’ll have to think about it.
But of course we all knew by then, I wasn’t leaving that shop without a noodle machine.
I picked out a few flours (all-purpose wheat flour, baguette flour mix, rye and rye whole grain, and what the online dictionary translates as rye scrap, or, in other words, crudely ground rye.
Then the mother explained the differences between three noodle machines they had (price and finish – the stainless-steel was the cheapest, the copper the most expensive, in between they had a red one. Otherwise they are identical, she said. Just pick whatever matches your kitchen best. You don’t put it away, you leave it on the counter.
If you don’t have a cat that pisses on everything you might leave it on the counter, I didn’t reply.
I asked her to explain the stainless steel model to me.
By the way we have a set with additional rollers that make spaghetti and ravioli, she said.
Oh, I absolutely need that, I said.
I looked at spice mixes in between but most of them contained anise, and some of my bread customers hate anise. Then I found the mill’s own spice mix, which costs twice as much but does not contain anise, and added a can of that to my pile.
How do you wash the noodle machine? I asked.
You let it dry out and clean it with a stiff-bristled brush, by no means are you to put it into water, was the answer.
It sounded almost like an admonition in a fairy tale, shortly before the peasant’s son embarks on a heroic journey on account of he put the noodle machine into a sink full of water after slicing the heirloom silicone baking mat into horizontal strips.
Any special brush, I asked.
I use one I found in my husband’s shop, she said.
Ok I have a brush at home.
I sighed, but gee. Hm. Phony reluctance so as not to look too eager.
It’s the Christmas season. It’s a nice present.
Yeah, for myself. I am the noodle maker in my house.
Sure, why not? She said. And your wife will be eating the noodles. It’s a present for both of you.
And we *were* in Piedmont in October and loved it, I said, tipping the scales for her and putting myself out of my misery.
See there you go, she said.
When I got home I carried the flour into the house.
Oh by the way I got *us* a pasta machine, I said.
Hm, said Alpha.
Yeah I’ve really been wanting one since we were in Piedmont, that was such a nice trip.
Hm, she said.
One has to clean them with a stiff-bristled brush; by no means is one to submerge them, or even get them wet.
Hm, my wife said.

At the shop

Man: My wife wants Intimacy.
Clerk: Intimacy or intimacy?
Man: You mean, did she capitalize it? She was speaking. I assumed she meant a brand.
Man: You know that ad with the model reclining in a black dress with a freaky long leg.
Clerk (holds up 2 spray bottles): This is the scent Intimacy. This other one is intimacy.
Man: I think she meant the scent.
Clerk: You sure?
Man (shakes head)
Man: What else do you have?
Clerk: We have a bunch. This is enlightenment, for example.
Man: Small-e or capital-e?
Clerk: Lower case. Here. (sprays man on wrist)
Man (smells)
Man: Whoa, I’m an asshole.
Man: Dude, I mean, a real dick. Ffff. Sshhh… I…
Man: Geeze.
Man: Oh my god. My poor family.
Man: I had no idea I was such a prick. I’m a total prick.
Clerk (looks at spray bottle): Hang on. Sorrysorrysorry. Wait.
Man: What.
Clerk: Sorry. My bad. That was self-knowledge.
Clerk (sprays man with a second bottle): This is enlightenment.
Man: Whoa.
Man: You’re also kind of a jerk.
Man: We’re all jerks.
Man: We’re all like, jerk cells in god’s digestive tract.
Clerk (puts bottle away): That one’s new.
Clerk: It just came out.
Man: It might need a little work.
Clerk: Intimacy, you said?

Pow! Kabang! Watch out!

Watch goes down the street. The street is lined with the heads of guys in suits hollering POW and KABANG and WATCH OUT!

Watch tunes them out. A crow follows him, he notices, flying from tree to tree.

Mechanical spiders are running all over. I SEE YOU ARE GOING TO THE STORE MAY I RECOMMEND A SALAD? says one.

A second one says, PEOPLE WHO BUY SALAD OFTEN BUY SOME FRUIT AS WELL.

Watch tunes them out too. He notices how wide the streets are without traffic.

It is a sunny day. Warm, early fall, is there any better season?

Gravity is light today if you can ignore the distractions.

And the air is full of flowers.

Watch gets a sandwich. He gets a long one because he wants to see how many crows he can feed on his way back to the office.

The line at the cash register is slow because the guy in front of him is having problems with his cash card.

REJECTED, says the cashier. The young guy tries again, a little more flustered.

REJECTED, says the woman again.

I’ll have to come back, the young guy says.

He has a German accent, notices Watch.

I’ll get it, Watch says, but no one hears him.

He takes out his wallet and gives the cashier a ten. I’ll get it, he says.

OH, she says.

The young guy doesn’t notice and starts leaving without his stuff – a box of sugar and some snack for lunch.

IT’S OKAY, says the cashier. THIS GUY PAID.

Outside the young guy says thanks.

My pleasure, says Watch.

He feeds two crows on the way back – the one who had been following him, and a big black one watching him from a tree.

POW KABANG! holler the heads.

Take the afternoon off, says Watch.

Composition

A friend in Australia has requested permission to use the recordings some of you sent me in 2009 reading your shopping lists for a piece accompanying a university dance performance and I mailed them to her (all but one recording, from one of you who recently denied me permission to use something else, so don’t worry) with the caveat that I would post this to the blog today informing you and if any of you contact me letting me know that you prefer your recording not to be used that I would tell her and it would not be used. Otherwise, fire away. So let me know if you have any objections, thx.

On writing

3.30 AM is a good time to write. The house is quiet, except for the kittens rolling around the kitchen floor in a Tupperware mixing bowl, their current favorite toy after the concert harp, which is off-limits. Gamma is sleeping upstairs, Alpha is in Japan and Beta went back to her dorm last night.

If you close the kitchen door, Gamma can’t hear you when you slam your forehead on the kitchen table to wake yourself up every ten minutes.

In this fashion, 2000 words get written in, roughly, 2 hours.

Random words, mostly:

the,orange,the,shopping,list,a,water bottle,tile,ceiling,pyjamas.

Sserd liatkcoc

The wind is loud in the chestnut tree outside the window.

Disaster has not struck. The sidewalk is covered in leaves. They are wet, so they do not kick up so well when you walk through them, and many are still mostly green, because it was so rainy and windy last night, so they are not as blindingly gold as they often are, but they are still really super pretty, green with gold edges, and it is still nice to walk through them.

Rounding the bend in the freeway, a wall of low cloud rolls over Vienna like a white catastrophe, pushed by another wall of grey cloud shaped like a snowplow blade, or the walls of dirty snow beside the road at the end of winter in cold places.

Traffic is pretty light.

The kittens are cuddly, and the woman is in a good mood.

He doesn’t realize until he’s already feeding the cats that it’s only 4.30 in the morning. He thought it was later.

He’s pretty hungry when he gets home from the city. He eats and reads and talks and goes to bed.

The rain gradually stops.

He makes a little effort and shakes off the tunnel vision. No cars in front of him and none behind him. Things are mostly black, with a little brown, and the road is silver, slick with rain and stretches out in front of him until it disappears. He wonders how low the coefficient of friction is. Pretty low. No way could he stop quickly, at this speed. No choice but to keep going. He checks the rear-view mirror. Some cars way back there, headlights in the dark. He takes his foot off the gas and the car gradually slows. This would work, as a way to stop, taking his foot off the gas.

His daughter’s dorm is across the street from Vienna’s best single-malt shop! Why didn’t anyone tell him? And over there? she says, over there is another dorm where they have better parties. She gets out of the car and runs into her dorm. He lifts his hand to give a little wave but she doesn’t look back.

Driving in Vienna in the pouring rain at night is quite disorienting, but he pretends to know what he is doing and see where he is going, and nothing bad happens.

The rain is pouring down when they leave Starbucks, so they stand under an awning and finish their chai and share the sandwich. Despite the awning it rains into his shoes, the backs of his legs get wet somehow, it’s raining so hard. She talks to a friend on her phone, the same friend. The rain doesn’t slow down, so she packs his camera and he puts her new dress under his coat and they run for the parking garage. The parking ticket thing is soaking wet by the time they get to the machine, but it still works.

She decides to get the white dress with black dots. He pays for it and they leave the store. She says she’ll get him something at Starbucks. It’s starting to sprinkle.

She tries on several more dresses. At one point she starts talking, and he assumes she’s talking to him, and answers, but it turns out she’s talking to someone else on her phone, a friend she is meeting later. He’s glad she sees her friends, and makes new ones. Another guy waiting for another woman trying on dresses too gives him a funny look because he was talking to someone who was talking on a phone, not to him. He looks back at the guy like, did someone say they were interested in what you think?

She comes out of the dressing room and shows him the first dress she’d tried on, cocktail dress, white with black polka dots. She looks beautiful, and happy. She has a big grin and her pale skin and dark hair, all that, look beautiful. Young and happy. He’s glad they finally got to do this. She goes back into the dressing room to try on a few more dresses. He looks at himself in the giant mirror at the end of the corridor. He is a sad-looking cunt, he tells himself. Jesus. That hair. Suit’s okay, but work on the posture. Get some sleep. And some exercise. He hates surprising himself in mirrors like that.

After work, he drives to the parking garage by Schwedenplatz. It is drizzly so traffic is slower than usual and it takes him nearly half an hour to get there and he starts getting antsy and thinks, no wonder I’m always rushing my kids, I’ve done it to myself all my life. He resolves to stop. Walking to the store, he calls her and she is already trying stuff on, she says.

So when are we going to buy that dress, she says. And he says, after my next paycheck. Two weeks from now, how about that? He’s been waiting to do this forever. What evening is best for you? Email me, or I’ll call you.

There’s this hotel on the Ring in Vienna somewhere, paneled and stuff, not far with the opera, and this guy was in it, years ago, with some guy from work, at happy hour, for a drink and at the time he thought he’d like to take his kid there for a cocktail when she started going to college, and he could even get her a cocktail dress or something. She’d probably like that, he thinks.