Checks & Balances

A friend of mine at work sent me the following email. It’s about the government stimulus rebate check that will be sent out to tax payers in order to jump start the economy.

WHEN YOU'LL GET YOUR REBATE
The order in which the IRS sends out payments will be based on Social Security numbers. If your return is processed by April 15, here's what you can expect.
Direct deposit payment
If last 2 digits of your SS# are: Your rebate should be sent by:
00-20 May 2
21-75 May 9
76-99 May 16
Paper check
If last 2 digits of your SS# are: Your rebate should be sent by:
00-09 May 16
10-18 May 23
19-25 May 30
26-38 June 6
39-51 June 13
52-63 June 20
64-75 June 27
76-87 July 4
88-99 July 11

Source:IRS

Up until now I had not really thought about what I would do with the check once I received it. One idea I had was to continue what my father used to do with his extra cash and send it on to my cousin in New York, He’s a guest of the state there and won’t have access to creating a decent life for himself for a hell of a long time; life in fact.

Another idea, the practical one was to pay off a bill or set it aside to pay upcoming bills like my gym membership or cell phone bills. I should do something an adult would do, something dull, something dreary. But I know I won’t.

The third idea is to get an iTouch media player to replace my iPod. I can get one for $599 and if I went to Delaware I would pay no sales tax and walk away with a dollar that I can use to buy a soda or play the lottery. Can you imagine if I won the lottery on a dollar tax rebate, it would be like the gift that didn’t stop giving. I would be so excited that I would probably nutt, ejaculate automatically right there on the spot. I would be so grateful I would have to join the Republican Party and start supporting the war. I would get so crazy, I would have to run down the street and holler that Bush should be made a saint. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

What I’m actually thinking about now is that I can really help the economy by buying shares of Bear Stearns. As everyone knows, the share price for that venerable company went from over $90/share less than 2 months ago to $2/share yesterday and there is an offer for JP Morgan Chase to buy them out, although I believe it went up to $5 today. Of course it’s always risky to get into something that is a reflection of the failed policies of both the Federal Reserve and the government, but how much lower can the price get? And anyway, it’s only $600. Even if I lost every cent, no one is going to have to worry about me jumping off of some building in downtown Manhattan. There are other things that would keep me much closer to home.

Oh I know, if I’m going to throw the money away, I can go back to Morimoto. It’s a restaurant in Philly that is owned by Stephen Starr and the Iron Chef of cable fame. I had dinner there once last year. I was with a friend, Curtis. I’m always dragging him out some place, one day he’ll turn on me. Anyway, so I ordered a bowl of soup and sushi and he got a basket of cold noodles that you had to pour a sauce over it to add flavor. We also ordered a bamboo shoot of Saki to wash the stuff down. Yes I said bamboo shoot; I guess having it come out in a bottle would have been just too Western.

I think with the tip, the whole thing came up to $180. That was $90 for a bowl of soup, 4 pieces of sushi and something to drink that reminded me of my own stomach juices. Crazy.

I still wake up in the middle of the night with night sweats thinking about that dinner. It’s a memory that still lives with me. Hmm, now there’s a thought, I can stimulate the economy and have a lifetime of nightmares. Money well spent I think.

Life without Father

I went to Tampa for two of the last three major holidays, which is a lot for me. When my parents first moved down there I didn’t go there for the two or three years. Due to our family squabbles, it was not my sort of place to go and have a good time. Actually my family fights all the time. I’m not sure if we exist in spite of, or maybe because of our fights. We have child molesters, thieves, pimps, pushers and priests. We have all kinds. You know the old joke; in our family tree I would fall into the fruit section. Just don't let me hear some family member say that cause there would be hell. There are some who work for the State, while others are serving time for the State. So we have disagreements all the time. Anyway, for a long time, it was so long God bless and maybe I’ll see you on the other side.


You see most of the men on my father’s side die young. The women on my mother’s side seem to live forever. My mother still lives. She is basically looking after her mother who is getting close to ninety. Although, it’s even money that she may or may not make that number, but who knows. That being said, “Mommie Dearest” has passed the seventy year old mark herself and even though she is strong and relatively healthy, she may come to that point where things start to get too much for her. She has said that after my grandmother passes, she may sell the house and get something smaller, but that would require some sort of financial acumen and as Kurtz said in the Heart of Darkness or Apocalypse Now, “The horror! The horror!”

It’s not that I don’t have any trust in her financial savvy. For instance, I remember when she would she would buy clothing for me when I was younger. There was no Woolworth’s bin or bargain basement store that was too good for her first and only son. Every penny spent would be prized and accounted for no matter how I felt about the situation. I would only hope afterward that no one I knew would see me, or at least question me.

Take the time when I was eleven. She bought me a burgundy colored cardigan for school. It matched the colors that we were allowed to wear in class, but the length came down to just over my knees. “This is for women,” I told her. “No,” she said, and went on to tell me that she found it in the men’s section and that it was the latest fashion and everyone one would be wearing it. If they were, then all I can say is that I never went to drag shows at that age so I never saw them. There I was, the only fool in school wearing this long nightmare of a thing, clinging to both cheeks of my backside. Making me look like Mrs. Simms the assistant Headmistress who’s biggest attributes, I am sure anyone can ever remember, were the size of her tits and behind. I wonder if that’s when I first started to change my sexual interests.


Anyhow, dearest papa keels over a few years ago and I realize this woman, my mother that is not Mrs. Simms, does not have a clue about what she has, where it is and what it’s supposed to do there for her. After all these years of me thinking that she was today’s woman, emancipated and in control of her own life; I find out, as it happens in many households, that all money matters were handled by the man of the house and she just signed papers and followed orders.

My father had left things tied up in so many knots that I think that was partly what killed him. In fact that the day after he received a letter from the IRS telling him that he owed over 37K in taxes, was the day he moved on to glory.

“Tell them you’ve been recently widowed and knew nothing about the finances. Then offer them 10%. They will settle for 35. That money is just peanuts to the IRS. They’ll be glad to get anything. It’s just a number for somebody’s quota,” I told mother before I left Florida. But she didn’t listen, I was not my father.

One week after the funeral and two days after I left, mother decided to pay off the entire tax bill leaving me with yet, another regret to add to the list of regrets in my life. I had not taken care of things for her when she was vulnerable.

Mother, like so many of the elderly today would be happy just to get the 2% interest from Wachovia and wherever else she has her retirement accounts. My fear is that she will believe that she is not entitled to more until some slick bastard comes along, smiles and tells her that he can give her the world for just a small investment with no risk involved. Will I be able to protect her?

It’s true, I do have a rather large extended family, most of them live in New York, but some of them live in Florida. However, for the most part, they are as old as she is and whatever schemes that would fool her would probably fool them. There is Andre, a cousin of mine a year older than me who lives about fifteen to twenty miles away from her but I think he must have smoked too much ganja when he was younger or suffered a head injury that I haven’t heard about. I don’t think he would be much help.

Well, maybe I’m just worrying too much. After all when my mother took me to lunch the last time I was in Tampa, she decided it would be her treat. She took me to Romano’s Macaroni, a restaurant between the mall and the local highway. As long as we got there before 3pm the value of the coupon she received from the senior center would be doubled. As I looked around and noticed the chachki that you can only find in fine highway dining establishments located in the suburbs and the other grey and blue haired ladies that surrounded us, I thought two things, “look at the ladies who lunch – Central Florida style. God save me,” was one of them, and the other one was that some things never change. And you know what, maybe they don’t need to.


My mother has been living her life her way for the longest now. Pinching pennies when she could and throwing away money needlessly because she could. Bending when she has to and stiffening up when it was necessary. She can make her own mistakes and recover from them. She can make her own choices and be happy or not happy, because that’s what people do. We learn or we don’t learn but we keep going. And I’m sure she will, maybe even long after I’m gone.

Dinner with Auntie

There is a book that they are hawking on NPR called the Complete Book on Aunts and it states how as a “group title” Aunts are dying out. I haven’t read the book, but it shows how aunts have played or not played various roles in various cultures. In fact, the role of aunty wasn’t really established in English speaking cultures until sometime before the Victorian period and it really started to flourish after civil war in America and the World War I in Europe.

Writers like Jane Austin and later Charles Dickens would sometimes write about maiden aunts who would take in and care for lost and forlorn orphans. They would also guide pubescent young men and women into making suitable choices for marriage. Later in the mid twentieth century, we were introduced to aunts like Bea and Mame who would guide children into making suitable choices for life.

Before the 18th century, you never heard of anyone named Aunt Ruth or Jezebel in the bible even though I am sure they were somebody’s sisters. You also never hear mention of Aunt Drusilla or Aunt Julia Minor from the early days of the Roman Empire and sisters of which ever Caesar was in power at the time. The term Aunty never really became popular until society with its Victorian mores started justifying why someone’s sister had reached a certain age and still had no man in her life. Why Bertha was sitting at the end of the table hogging all the bread rolls as her only comfort with no marriage looming in her future. They had to explain why Sally was living by herself or with some other spinster woman down at the end of the street? So they came up the title Aunt and let’s face it, Aunt is really code for dyke.

Now there is nothing wrong with being labeled a dyke. It just means that no one is laying down that pipe unless it’s made of rubber or plastic, and is strapped on. No shame in that. I know a lot of women that don’t need to call themselves aunty anymore and live their lives and enjoy it. This is the twenty-first century and no one needs to act like the strange man behind the curtain in the Emerald City any more. No, the embarrassment only comes when you are living your life still trying to get some and you end up in a crowd of people looking like somebody’s great aunt who has never seen it and probably never ever will.

Take for example my recent dinner at XIX, a restaurant in the Park Hyatt Philadelphia at the Bellevue. “What, the Bellevue?” you say. “Isn’t that the hotel where legionnaire’s disease came from and all those people died?” Yes, but let somebody else’s blog talk about that shit, I’m talking about dinner.

Anyway, I was surrounded by all of the old world charm and opulence that the "Grand Old Dame of Broad St" could offer on the 19th floor of the building, The dining room, although not too large but actually small enough to be intimate, was bathed by a low light that reminded you of sitting on the banks of the Seine or riding in a gondola on the Canal Grande in Venice. In other words romantic. There was a humungous string of oversized pearls that hung from the ceiling in the dining room over our group of mainly gay men. How appropriate.

We were there to celebrate the birthday of a friend of mine who having turned or about to turn 40 had decided to commemorate it by going to this restaurant. He had his partner with him, whom I am actually closer to and almost everyone else there was also similarly paired with their partners. The only exceptions were my friend’s sister another guy and of course you guessed it, me.

Now during the last two or three years, I have become used to being the one with no special person to turn to, or even being with someone who would not last longer than the night. Hell sometimes they wouldn’t even last the length of time that it would take to think about it. But this night, this night, something different happened.

I was speaking to the person across from me and I asked him, for what reason I forget now, how he felt when he turned 40, since except for the young-uns, I thought that was the general age group and theme of the party. Well faith and begorrah, shock and awe, Captain and Tennille. Alright, I don’t know how to describe the distress and anger that he was going through. But you would have thought that I had just made a sexual proposition to his mother or some other nearest and dearest as he clutched his imaginary pearls.

So I looked to my left and then to my right and apart from the old man at the end of the table with the nineteen year old, don’t ask I don’t have all the details yet, I suddenly realized that I was the oldest one there. I was the elderly maiden aunt that everybody tolerated but spoke about behind her back. I felt embarrassed for myself and I decided then and there that I should keep quiet and to myself before someone started asking me questions about what it was like during Prohibition or something. Suffice it to say, I realized that even if I didn’t hog any of the bread rolls, I behaved and was probably perceived as somebody’s maiden aunt who was to be helped and pitied.

I shall let NPR know that not all maiden aunts are dying out. Some of us are alive and well, keeping the tradition of saying the wrong things at the wrong time. By the way, I kept the pen that I signed the check with as a keepsake of the event. That’s so old womanish.