The fire burns.

In short order I will wake up entangled in my blankets. Soft morning light will permeate the room while I savor the sweetness of morning-- the relaxed muscles, the warm feet, the disobedient eyelids. I will force myself into my chair before the computer. Then I will read news websites and various liberal blogs while pondering whether or not to jerk off. I will decide not to. I will urinate and shower and then brush my teeth. At some point while putting my contacts in (a task at which I am not yet qualified to call myself an expert) I will swear silently at the saline solution.

A dead turkey will be warming to room temperature on the counter. This animal my roommate will soon violate in ways antithetical to the order of the Universe, but these violations will be delicious. It's proteins and sinews will be ingested with pleasure, first by gnashing teeth, then by insatiable acid-filled stomachs. We will be careful not to cross the line between respectful and worshipful. Worshiping your meat is gauche. Respecting it is right.

Grateful.

I will ascend the steps to the kitchen with thoughts of pyrex and precision. My challenge will be to concoct two dishes: mashed potatoes with parmasean and mozzarella and sausage/chestnut dressing made with sourdough bread. Both recipes call for measuring but I plan to rely on instinct and odor.

When squeezed, soft notes of pain course through my left thumb. This is from this night's task of peeling roasted chestnuts. They are defiant little creatures, their oaky flesh protected by two layers of casing. Tonight I learned, however, that, like women, with the right coercion they yield. Tomorrow they will be rough chopped and added to the dressing recipe I plan on attempting. Like Frankenstein of lore I hope this mish-mash of parts is more than its sum. I will cheer and cackle if it rises from the table and delights tomorrow's guests.

The other dish, mashed potatoes, is pure home-cooking, a recipe I learned straight from space. Teevee taught me this one. Digital satellite TV to be exact. It starts with potatoes and ends with love, heaping scoops of saturated and mono-unsaturated forms of love. Salt and cream and butter. Enough to make the heart pump harder than it should... Yum.

Eventually family will arrive and the smiles will be similar to the many and many that have showed up on their doorsteps over the years. They will have concoctions of their own, some to be chilled and some to be warmed, but all to be eaten-- sent down the gullet on one-way missions of digestion and affection.

Not all of the family will be there, of course. This Earth is too big and complicated to allow us all the same bit of square footage on one particular day. Older brother is fertilizing his soul with wife and child in Berlin. Younger brother will be forty-five minutes away but farther distant than anyone I know. A rift exists and I struggle to reach across my half of it, but I do, and I will, because I love him. Dad is in northern Wisconsin with his buddies hunting deer and telling stories and nursing hangovers. For the last twenty-eight years he has had thanksgiving with them, those hard-working hillbilly warriors. Twenty-nine years ago he was here in Illinois during a similar November week while his then wife squeezed out his second child... Me. Apparently I slid out quick and easy; he came back from a pee break and had new mouth to feed. Fancy that.

And tomorrow for the first time my front door will be knocked upon (well, actually, either my cellphone or my roommate's cellphone will be rung when the family finally finds parking and needs to be let in through the front gate) and my Thanksgiving cherry will be popped in delicious fashion. I will host well. Food will be warm, forks will be sterile and family will be family.

The fire burns.

Make my day, Shoes!

Late last week, Wednesday it was, while driving from the Salvation Army thrift store in Lakeview to the Village Discount Outlet thrift store in Roscoe Village it occurred to me the absurdity of the task to which I had embarked upon. I was costume shopping, gathering the components of an alternate me. I was intent. I had a design in mind, one of manly kind.

At the first place I spent a good eight minutes pondering the purchase of a woman's belt. It had a large buckle made of silver (shiny metal, not real silver, of course) and those turquoise rocks that are smooth and glossy, whatever those are called. It was $4.50. Pricey. It was just about what I wanted for my costume, considering that it was a belt with a buckle that was large. I passed, figuring I had time to explore other sources, and besides, I was really there to find a pair of boots. That's when I noticed a sign pointing me upstairs. TOYS, KITCHEN, SHOES, MISC.

Stairs hurt just slightly these days (minor softball injury, but that's beside the point)

The upstairs was a flea market of hope and dashed hope. As I moseyed along the aisles, hoping I might find a shelf or case stocked with donated belt buckles or that I might find the best cowboy boot section in the city I glanced down the dishware aisle and saw stacks of plates and dishes and cups. Tucked amongst each tower of plates grew a peculiar weed-- scratched and discarded serving utensils, spatulas and slotted spoons, grill forks and pie servers, potato mashers and kiwi cutters. Something about the stacks of plates gave me pause. In a moment of impromptu archeology I had a vision of a history of meals eaten and served, macaroni and hot dogs pecked at by hungry three-year olds, chicken breasts hacked asunder by dull but determined butter knives, tears and wine spilled over tablecloths, candle shadows and dimmed chandeliers, witness-bearing dining gear to heartfelt graces and heartfelt dining room table sex, Thanksgiving scoops of homemade cranberry sauce, sticky Easter saucers of sugar birds, grandmothers imploring to eat more, have more. Just another slice. Grandmothers like mine, women forged and wired in an era in which food was love. (Although it's good that that era will never die)

"Dude, it's just a bunch of used plates and forks. Relax."

So said the voice in my head that keeps me from going insane. I relaxed.

I bought the ugliest shirt that I could find that fit me. And I bought a "Captain Jack Sparrow" hat. At the last minute I grabbed a set of two-pound dumbbells. They were for my mom, for her to use for her daily exercises since she and I have talked about how some light weights might help her recovery. There is so much one can do with simple dumbbells, I always tell her. Although truly they were essentially just another gesture, a heartfelt effort to help a helpless soul. Through no fault of her own she would most certainly ignore the gesture. That's just the way things are.

I'm ok with that. Why hurry to worry?

At the next store I found what I was looking for. The shoes were in the basement. Even though it was a different thrift store company it had the same odor of disinfectant and infectant. "Wash your hands when you get home," is the common thrift store shopper's advice. Good advice, indeed, although it's probably just as applicable to any day of existence in which a person touches something other than his own teeth and nipples.

In that basement I wandered along the shoes and boots, discarded carcasses of former feet. Just as I was about to give up hope I spotted a pair of caramel colored cowboy boots. They were mangy and marked, but most importantly they were men's. And they were my size.

Stepping into them I found myself two inches taller. So long had I longed to see the world from the eyes of my 6'4" brethren and now here I was, in the basement of a thrift store soaring above the racks at the women of miscellaneous origin and their children of American origin and their sad search for winter clothes.

I was tall and proud and wearing man-heels. They were perfect.

That's when I noticed a pair of Steve Madden's. They were a handsome, casual leather shoe of slight use with no outstanding blemishes. Turning them over the soles presented a story of limited wear and tear. "Sure, I can buy Halloween gear at a thrift store... but can I buy regular street wear? Can I wear some other man's shoes?" I wondered. I'll wear thrift store t-shirts, but shoes? Can I wear the shoes of some sad man who gave up on shoes? Hell no. I make good money. I already have good shoes. I took a breath of that basement, of the shoes and vcr tapes and embarrassing ties that should never have been made and I realized that my dilemma was one not likely shared by the average thrift store shopper. I gave in to the curiosity and I tried them on and they fit like a designer oven mitt. Not too tight, not too loose, and they would would protect me from temperatures up to 700 degrees. They looked right fucking proper under my jeans. And they were $4.

So I bought them, and they look great. I will wear them often and I will carve new memories into their soles, and I will soak their material with foot sweat, with the odor of me.

The cowboy boots were fantastic, by the way. But I had to go somewhere else for the buckle and the western shirt and the cowboy hat. The antennae I made myself... the story will continue... someday...