Moments

¡Hola! Everybody...
Ever had a really embarrassing moment... ?

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-=[ Embarrassing Moments ]=-
“The one thing you can do is to do nothing. Wait…You will find that you survive humiliation and that’s an experience of incalculable value. -- Thomas Stearns Eliot

I don’t know why I’m posting this. Not too long ago, some friends were sharing embarrassing moments.

::sigh::

My life – I couldn’t write this shit…

Two moments come up for me. One is a little tragic; the other is somewhat funny (if you weren’t me).

I grew up in some rough neighborhoods with some really strange characters. One friend, who had just gotten out of prison, was staying with me. He didn’t have anywhere to go and he was a close friend, so I agreed he could come stay with me while he got situated.

One day, I came home from work, when he promptly appeared in with a pillowcase full of jewelry. I mean there was a pillowcase and it was literally filled with high quality jewelry. I noticed there was a piece with the Jewish “La Chaim” symbol on it. I explained its significance to my friend (who couldn’t care less). He gave it to me, actually let me have my pick of a few pieces as gratitude for my generous hospitality. I knew it was stolen goods, but my ethics as a young manweren’t all that evolved.

The next day I wore the piece to work and the girls I worked with were all admiring it. At that time, I was a notorious fabulist: couldn’t tell the truth if you paid me and I always exaggerated or modified. So I asked about the piece, I said it was from my “new girlfriend.” I thought this was a good move on my part because it made one of the girls I had my eye on jealous.

Then there was this homely girl no one liked. She asked to see the piece and when she turned the medallion over she began screaming.

I mean she began screaming -- like horror picture-Friday-the-13^th-you’re-killing-me screaming. This was in a corporate office. Everybody stopped. Everything stopped.

She took a breath and then yelled out for everyone to hear, “This is my chain! This is my jewelry!” and she commenced to her banshee wailing.

Not knowing what to do and feeling somewhat put upon, I affected an annoyed attitude and calmly replied, “You must be mistaken. This chain was a gift from my girlfriend.” I looked at her as if she were a leper and asked her to let go of my chain.

She wouldn’t let go and she turned the medallion over once again, pointing where her now deceased mother left her an inscription with her name on it.

There are over 8 million people in The Big City, people... That had to be the most embarrassing moment in my life up to that poin

But there’s another, more humiliating experience.

I once dated a court reporter for several years. We were together for a while. I was in love with her ass. Literally. Her ass was a work of art. made you believe that there was a God and it was a man. She had the most exquisitely shaped ass ever. She was also 5’11” tall in her bare feet. She had the longest, most beautiful legs. I stand at 5’7” (actually 5'6" and three-quarters). I was in love with her lower half. She had one horrible deformity however: she was also very politically conservative. She claimed to be a virgin and would not engage in vaginal intercourse. She would fellate me and eventually I convinced her that anal sex was a good resolution to our sexual haggling, but I couldn’t enter the va-jayjay (eventually I would).

Anyway, we would have these huge arguments over political and religious matters (Reagan had just become president). One day, right before we broke up, she told me that I would never amount to anything. She said I was the most brilliant man she ever met (and the only reason she put up with me), but like most brilliant people, I assumed the rules didn’t apply to me. My response was to tell her to go fuck herself and how being a sexually repressed hypocrite didn’t give her the right to pass judgment on me.

Fast forward to about ten years. I am standing in a November drizzle shackled in front of the Manhattan courts. I have just gotten off the bus from Riker’s Island where I was incarcerated pending my case. It’s the day I’m going to be sentenced. Obviously, I’m not looking forward to this day. People, “regular” people walking to work, are staring at me and the group of men like me who are shackled hand and foot. Wall Street, Chinatown, and the courts, are all within walking distance of each other in NYC, and there are thousands of people walking by. It’s humiliating. And I’m thinking to myself that I hope I don’t see anyone I know. And who do I see walking down the street? Yup, my ex, the repressed wanna-be virgin of the conservative mind-set.

I try to make myself invisible. I stare at me feet and slump my shoulders. She walks right by me and I’m relieved. She didn’t see me, I think to myself. Then I hear...

“Eddie?” She stops, starts walking toward me and she says again, “Eddie?”

“Eddie?!!”

I look up and we make eye contact and there’s panic in her eyes, she’s concerned. She tries to run up to me only to be stopped by a corrections guard who tells her to stand back. My fellow inmates are by now commenting on the “fine bitch” trying to save me and she's walking alongside me asking me questions I can’t answer. All I can do is shrug.

Later, I allocute to my crime as part of a plea bargain, . Not only am I sentenced, I have to stand up in a court of law and verbally admit to everything I have accused of…

That was a dark day.

Love,

Eddie