Monday, December 03, 2007
I was with my mom and dad, hanging out in the morning trying to get ready for school. That vague anxiety of time slipping toward the day's obligations, obviously permeating my dream from a real-life awareness that it was getting to be time to get up. I contemplated buying a Saab. It was said they got 89 miles to the gallon. I considered bidding for one on some sort of eBayesque site. Suddenly Martin Scorsese's mother was with us. That matronly lady with the curly white hair and glasses who appears in his movies. She was telling us some funny story about men and women, how they interact socially, at parties, at dinners. "The most interesting men are always the ones who expect to be disciplined by their wives," she declared. It seemed to be something she was relating from her own experience, and it also seemed to be unquestionably true. I understood it to mean that when she flirted with men at parties, the ones who flirted back the best were the ones whose wives would later give them grief for it. A strange little syllogism. "No matter how you look at it!" I responded pointedly, somehow aware that what she said related to my mom's predilection for flirting and extramarital affairs, and hoping that my rejoinder would put an end to what could turn into an awkward conversation among us all.