Niff.Dot

I will begin a new job on Monday that will (sadly) rob me of my pedestrian commutes to work, which I have enjoyed for the last five years. These daily walks have provided me not only with a sense of pre-work zen but also with a variety of insights into human nature as well as allowed me to perform my own amateur sociological experiments on the general public.

This week, however, I have noticed an increasing trend in impractical wardrobe choices in the female population. Now, females have never been known to sacrifice fashion for comfort. (Though I myself may be an exception; I’ve been wearing these goddamn shoes daily since 2005…very Ally Sheedy à la The Breakfast Club.)

You may have noticed the weather has turned a bit, dipping down into the 50’s, a wee blistery, breezy, gusty at times…I tend to check the Weather Channel in the mornings before leaving the house to ensure I am dressed accordingly so there are no wardrobe failures on my 45+ minute commute to my place of employment.

Now, ladies and gentlemen. If you walk through the commercial district of Seattle, you will notice via the window displays of department stores what retailers are peddling to young women this season. And, like hordes of easily-led automatons, girls are flocking to the registers, treasures in tow, eager to stroll the streets of Seattle looking as adorable as possible. I admire their enthusiasm and never discourage people from being happy, no matter the source.

But when it’s blistery cold and the wind is whipping through city streets, is this the best wardrobe choice? (This particular example comes from American Apparel, a store I usually stroll by and regard their merchandise with a cocked eyebrow and an internalized “really??”)
These bloody things are everywhere, draped over shivering unsheathed legs terminating in four-inch heels, clomping along sidewalks, while well-manicured hands brace the sides of the fabric to prevent random breezes from baring their skivvies. I admire their self-confidence, I really do…heaven knows I wouldn’t mind having legs like that. But that self confidence just goes the wayside when they’re outside in the cold and the wind trying to manage the technicalities of their outfit and their oversized handbags and their mochas and they’ve forgotten how to walk in their heels with all the multitasking going on. I’m just so tempted to run over and HELP them…bloody hell they make being a girl so complicated. They need some Danskos and a hug.

Voulez-voulez-vous upskirt.

“Do you live here??”

My apartment door is next to the mailboxes in my building. This upsets Doppler. Doppler is protective and likes to alert me to noises in the hallway. People sometimes like to retrieve their mail. I’ve explained this to Doppler numerous times. He forgets.

I come home late on a random Friday night and find a woman leaning (slouching, swaying, stumbling a bit.) against the end of the row of mailboxes, partially obstructing my front door. Upon approach, I realize I’ve met her before.

As I’d recalled, this creature is unstable under normal conditions. There was an incident a few months back which involved a break-in, bloody doorknobs, and general disarray. Events such as this tend to unite residents in such close quarters. She had come galloping up to me in a gossipy fury, ranting about the apartment manager, about his refusal to believe anything she said, and how I needed to report this, because he hated her, and threw her sister out, and it was one great big conspiracy. Nodding and smiling I cautiously tiptoed back behind my door, closing it quietly, still smiling as not to alarm her.

Thus I am justifiably alarmed yet curious as I arrive home exhausted at 2 a.m. to find this woman in a gelatinous (albeit vertical) heap against my apartment door.

“Do you live here?”

“…Yes. Yes. I live here.”

Maniacal grin. And laugh. “You’re in big trouble then!”

For an odd moment I thought she was flirting with me.

“Excuse me, I need to open my door.”

Her eyes, which I now notice, are dilated to 200x that of what is considered typical for the normal human eye, dart furtively as she covers her mouth. “No! You can’t go in there…”

“Um, yes. Yes, I believe I can.”

“NO! There’s someone in there…I heard them.”

“One. There’s a dog in there. Two. If there were someone in there, he would have taken their head off by now, and you would be hearing nothing. Excuse me…I need to take aforementioned dog out now…”

She sidles to the right to block my entrance. “Hey! Hey hey hey heeeeyyyyyy…um…you have to stay out here. The cops are coming.”

Sigh. I hate people who are high in real life. Burning Man, parties, I can handle. In the hallway outside my apartment, I am not in the headspace to be a babysitter.

“Did you call them?”

“No.”

“Who did?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then how do you know they’re coming?”

“Someone told me.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know.”

This is going fucking nowhere. I shove her out of the way. She grabs my hand. “WAIT! Why are you wearing gloves!?!?”

“It’s cold out.”

Her glazed eyes widen as she stares at my menacing hands.

“That’s – really, wierd…”

“Is it.”

She stares at me, as a look of realization comes over her face. “You’re, like, a perpetrator, aren’t you…”

Sigh. “Yes. I’m a perpetrator. We all wear black North Face glove liners. I’m wanted in twelve states.”

“YOU broke into your apartment!” She points a chipped French-manicured finger at me.

I unlock my door and walk in. Doppler runs up, wagging his tail, grateful that I’ve finally opened the door, no doubt wondering what’s taken me so long to do so. “Look,” I say. “I need to walk my dog and go to bed.”

“OOOOOH!” She begins clapping her hands and bouncing excitedly. Doppler reciprocates. “Can I come with you?”

This is where a critical decision must be made. Either I say yes, and tolerate her erratic behavior for five more minutes, or say no, and risk unpredictable behavior for an unknown number of minutes. I opt for the former.

I look down. “You have no shoes on.” I am hoping this revelation will get me out of my forced dog-walking company.

“OH! My apartment’s right down here! C’mere!!” Fail.

I follow her down the hall and debate whether entering her apartment is really the safest choice at this point. I opt for hanging cautiously in the hallway. I peer in.

There is virtually no furniture to speak of. There are, however, about fifteen pairs of shoes littering the floor (so we have that issue solved), a disassembled cell phone, various outfits strewn about, emptied bottles of alcohol, and Jimmy Hoffa’s corpse.

(Ok, so I lied on the last bit.)

It ironically took her several minutes to find a goddamn pair of shoes.

“Ok!” She squealed, after finding a pair of red, patent-leather pumps. “I’m ready to walk the dog!”

Sigh. At least it matched her velour jogging outfit.

We retrieve the dog, at which point, she resumes her squealing and bouncing (in four-inch heels, I’m impressed), which gets Doppler all excited, and he starts barking and bouncing. I am neither barking nor squealing nor bouncing. Nor wearing heels. It is now 2:50 a.m.

“If you are going to join me, you need to keep him calm, please. Not only that, but people are sleeping…”

She raises her head to look at me, her dilated eyes ready to well up with tears.

Oh for fuck’s sake. Really?? I turn to walk out the door. She follows.

I’m walking the dog.

She’s going on again about the crime in the building and how the manager never tells anyone and the police are coming and there’s (still) someone in my apartment and am I sure I’m not a perpetrator? And she can’t believe he threw her sister out (boing boing squeal)and –

“Shh!”

Oh yeah sorry and I really like your dog we should be friends but they might arrest you because you have gloves and ew your dog is pooping –

Sigh.

Doppler mercifully finishes. We head back into the building. I inform her I am going to bed. There is no welling of tears this time. The crazy bitch starts full-on bawling at me. At my front door. It’s 3:00 a.m.

And I wonder why I’m not the one calling the police.

I de-leash the dog and secure him inside. I turn back to her.

“Look. I’m sorry. But – ”

“Do you have any drugs?” She’s stopped crying now.

“No. I do not have any drugs.”

“Because if the police come they’re going to look for drugs you know.”

“Right.”

“If you have drugs they’ll arrest you.”

I peer into her silver dollar pupils and say, “Reeeeally?”, grinning like an idiot.

Suddenly a door opens across the hall. A neighbor I’ve never met before, a young-ish guy, maybe late 20’s, emerges. She turns and exclaims excitedly:

“SEE!!” and points to me again. “I told you she broke in!”

Now, I can tell from this poor guy’s face that, a. he’s never seen her before in his life and thus, b. has NO idea what she’s talking about. He looks to me for help. I throw my hands up helplessly and shake my head. Cracked-Out Girl starts in again.

“She came home and was wearing gloves and I BUSTED her! And she has DRUGS!”

At this point I confess that I wish I did. Or at least a good Merlot.

As she was turned away, I mouthed “sorry…” at the guy and quietly snuck into my apartment, breathing a sigh of relief that she was now someone else’s problem.

Changed into my sweats, prepared for bed. Knock at the door. Holy hell.

Peephole.

Seattle’s finest. At my door. At 3:30 a.m.

Goddammit. I’m paying too much rent for this shit.

I open the door, bright smile on my face. “Well, good morning. And what can I do for you today?”

“Sorry to bother you, we were told someone broke in – ”

“Oh yes. I did.” (I thought, fuck it. I was done with this situation. What were they going to do, arrest me for having a sense of humor?)

“Ma’am?”

“Oh, yes. According to the girl on acid at the end of the hall, wearing black gloves makes me a perpetrator, and thus I broke into my own apartment. Luckily I had a key, so I didn’t have to bust the lock or break the door down.”

Officer #2 starts laughing hysterically. Apparently Cracked-Out Girl was quite enchanting on the phone so they were expecting something like this when they arrived.

After some more conversation, they apologized, said they needed my name and information for the report, asked for my account of the evening.

Thet tipped their hats and left.

Bed.

Crash

“I DONT NEED TO TAKE CARE OF ME!! YOU NEED TO TAKE CARE OF YOU!!!”

I run to the peephole to catch to officers walking past, shaking their heads and laughing at the words of advice being screamed at them down the hallway.

4:00 a.m.

Bed.

Voulez-voulez-vous drugs are bad, mmmkay?

For the last year and several months, my co-workers and I were in good with the parking lot attendant and his kindred before him, having the privilege of free parking. Ordinarily it would have set us back approximately $8.00/day to lug our vehicles to work, so we were tickled by the unexpected rapport with the Diamond Parking Company employees.

Until four days ago.

Fortunately, I had randomly decided to walk that day, spurred both by the poundage brought on by 1) my recent sedentary lifestyle and 2) by my desire to save cash on gas costs, so I was spared from the sudden reversal of fortune. For the last year of my employment, and even some time before it, the parking attendants had kept the license plate numbers of the select few who were in their favor programmed in their cell phones so they would remember who would remain unscathed in their daily ticket-writing routine. This was passed down from attendant to attendant as employee turnover changed, much to our relief. Often, they would even look up at the windows, wave at us, and point to strange vehicles in the lot in order to ascertain whether they belonged to members of our staff or not. So we rested assured that we remained safe driving to work, day in and day out, without fear of reprimand from the parking citation gods.

Until four days ago.

We’re not sure what happened. Maybe his girlfriend dumped him. Maybe his boss found out what he was doing. Who knows. But suddenly he paused at my co-worker’s truck, the selfsame truck he had passed by hundreds of times before with nary a glance…and began to enter its license plate into his little keypad…and the three of us in the office stared agog at the incredulity of what was transpiring and what it meant for us from that day forward. There would be no more free parking. My boss, of course, had his golden ticket parking permit that he expensed to the company so he had no worries. My co-worker lives in Tacoma so he has far worse problems than I. Granted, we have no cause for complaints over the loss of a privilege we have no rights to in the first place. You get used to a convenience, and when it is removed, some scrambling is necessary to compensate for it. My scrambling involves a lot more walking, not too much of an inconvenience. Unless it’s raining or snowing. If it’s exceptionally horrible I may just say screw it and hand over the eight bucks.

Right now it’s all about heirloom tomatoes and Logan’s Run during my lunch break, and I’m hoping it doesn’t start raining. There’s this business of walking home I have to deal with. I feel I should thank the parking attendant however…turns out I’ve lost five pounds since I’ve switched to a bipedal commute.

Voulez-voulez vouz feets don’t fail me now.

I live across the street from a food bank.

Now, when say I live across the street from a food bank, I live across the street from the Cherry Street Food Bank. The Cherry Street Food Bank is the single largest and most popular food bank in all of Seattle. It also happens to be located near the Crazy Hospital. The one with metal detectors in the lobby and x-ray machines in the entrances. I live in Madness Central.

Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays are the party days. All the cool kids go on these days, because that’s when they have sandwiches and pre-packaged meals and warm and toasty goodness, and you’re not limited to Top Ramen and cans of string beans. It’s like being in with the really awesome camps at Burning Man with kitchens that have microwaves and refrigerators instead of just Clif Bars and Tasty Bites. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays…Cherry Street becomes a very, very busy place pedestrian-wise.

I leave for work, on average, at about 8:00am. The favorite waiting spot for a particular gaggle of Chinese women is the front steps of my apartment building. Now, this is *my* building. I live here. I pay rent. Yet as I attempt to wade through their hunched over, impatient little bodies as they cackle to each other in Chinese, they glare up at me and hiss in their native tongue, as if I have the vaguest idea as to what insults and profanities they’re hurling at me. They wiggle and grunt and shove their shoulders and elbows at me, pissed that I’m in their way. Seriously, ladies…I fucking LIVE here. I want to kick them. Badly. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. They’re so old and small I could drop-kick them into Cherry Street. Just because they’re less fortunate and hungry does not give them cause to hiss and spit at me for trying to leave my building. Sometimes I pretend I’ve forgotten something just so I have to go back into my apartment and wade through them again not just once, but twice. I’ve been tempted to trip and fall on them. Bloody hell.

Now today…

Walk up to my building. And I notice. Someone has set up residence.

He looks quite pleased with himself…a couple backpacks, some shoes, random bits of clothing. He’d obviously come from aforementioned food bank as strewn about him in a semicircle were various food wrappers, plastic utensils, a couple beer cans (I’m certain Northwest Harvest has not taken to dispensing alcohol as of yet…), and with what teeth he had left, was intermittently munching on what looked to be some sort of sandwich, though he had to sort of “gum”-it, as he had few teeth left, and gulping mouthfulls of “Icehouse” beer. Oh, and mumbling incoherently to himself.

Now, I’m not one to judge the plights of others. We all find ourselves in less than ideal circumstances, they suck, misfortune falls upon some and not others, etc etc. But when they dump their plight all over the front steps of my apartment building when there is plenty of room on the nearby lawn across the street, or even under the I-5 overpass across 7th Avenue…then we have a problem.

I realize soon enough that making my way past this gentleman to get into my building wasn’t going to be the problem. Getting myself and my dog out of the building for Doppler’s nightly constitutional was going to be the real challenge, due to two factors: Doppler’s love of 1) food and 2) people.

As we left the double doors to the building, the gentleman shied away, assuming Doppler was going to engulf his cranium in one mouthful, which unfortunately I have been unable to train him to do as of yet. Instead, he wagged his tail like a drunken fool in an attempt to elicit a pet from our unpleasantly scented guest. This was a fail, all Doppler managed to accomplish was some twitching and mumbling from our uninvited stoop decoration. I led my dog down the steps to the shrub across the sidewalk which is the official first stop on the nightly tree-marking regimen and he elegantly hiked his leg and went about his business. On a tree. Which is where he is supposed to be going.

This is where the irony kicks in.

As Doppler is taking care of his business, this person, in clothing that hasn’t seen soap in months, a beard filled with droplets of beer and mayonnaise, a mouth full of rotted teeth, a stench unlike anything I’d caught walking past the dumpsters alongside the building, looks at my dog, and mutters through his toothless gums,

“That’s disgusting!”

This is where my brain began to fold in upon itself a bit, and as I slowly turned my head to glare at him, all I could manage was,

“You prefer your feet over the shrub, then?”

I can only assume his brain gave up because all he could manage was some twitching and a few savage grunts. Doppler and I haughtily took off down the sidewalk to continue around the block. When we made our way back to the steps, our dinner guest was frantically packing up his belongings, peering at us out of the corner of his eye. As we made our way back up the steps I permitted Doppler enough slack on his leash to make the fragrant vagrant just a bit uncomfortable. It amused me.

Now please don’t get me wrong. Like I said, I do not judge the less fortunate. I do, however, get irritated at those who camp on my steps and act like I am the inconvenience, then insult my dog. Then the gloves are off.

The Chinese women are next. They go off on me one more time…I’m bringing Doppler out later than usual. Might even let him lick their faces.

Voulez-voulez-vous…um…shit. I have no voulez-voulez-vous today. Wow.

The story so far:

There are algae in my Brita pitcher.

I inadvertently uploaded every song on my hard drive onto my iPod so at the moment it is spewing forth a great deal of rubbish.

The printer is on a hiatus while my co-worker is trying to print out payroll so he, too, is spewing forth a great deal of rubbish.

Laundry must be done today as I was reduced to wearing hiking clothes to work.

The phone is incessantly ringing with sales calls which I instantly put on hold and let sit unattended to, no doubt causing the sales reps to question their career choices.

In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.

I keep sneezing. And it’s not even Thursday yet.

I may have to take Doppler to the dog park today. If I don’t, I fear his cabin fever might take hold to such an extreme he’ll go all Menendez-brothers on me and the landlord will find him feasting on my rotting flesh with Petri laughing maniacally in the background.

Ok. That was a bit messed up.

Sneezing again. Still not Thursday.

Continuing to overuse sentence fragments for effect.
(Oooh…perhaps some parenthetical statements for good measure…and some ellipsis for pizzazz…!)

We need to take the blog away from me now. I’m going so far as to abuse verb tenses.

Voulez-voulez-vous a vouler tu nous sommes moi vous? Merde.

I am writing this on a new keyboard, since last night I clumsily overturned a bowl of miso broth on my original keyboard. (Dammit.) Surprisingly, the only thing that seemed (initially) affected was the space bar. SoIendeduptypinglikethis. Several expletives were uttered.

Thanks to many friends with many computers I was able to procure a replacement, albeit a Dell keyboard and not even close to coordinating with the pristine white of my Mac and it’s accompanying mouse. There’s no way I can invite people over now.

Doppler is staring out the window again. Looking for CAT. CAT has now become this annoyingly persistent saga. Spraying water in CAT’s face no longer deflects CAT. Doppler barking: no effect. Must find CAT solution. Because as it stands, it’s a 0-0 tie between Doppler and CAT, with 99% of altercations involving standoff in which Doppler has his paws on the windowsill, growling menacingly, and CAT on the landscaping logs, with a crazed, wild-eyed gaze, back arched in a manner not unlike a Slinky in the arc position. And then it’s as if someone hits ‘pause’ on the DVD. Until I bang on the window to upset their strange domesticated-animal-seance or I close the blinds, which results in Doppler walking about in circles, whimpering…pining for his one and only love/hate relationship. He doesn’t believe me when I tell him it would never work; the whole dog/cat dichotomy, CAT being from the wrong side of the tracks and seemingly harboring a deep hatred of his species. I can’t be too harsh on the old boy. I’ve seen people fight tooth-and-nail for much more complicated relationships.

Admittedly, he’s still easier than a kid. I can leave him alone in the apartment all day and not go to prison. Pure win.

Though we’ve got to work on the underwear-stealing issue.

VoulezvoulezvousIneedspace.

I’m not altogether sure why I (as well as several friends of mine) were given Monday, July 5th as a holiday from work. My assumption is that due to Independence day falling on a Sunday, the injustice of not getting an extra day work-free was just too overwhelming for our over-worked employers, thus a three-day weekend was in order. Had the 4th fallen on a Tuesday, the same considerations would not have been made. At least I don’t remember that ever having been the case. At any rate, as a result I had all of yesterday to do with as I pleased.

Well, not necessarily as I pleased.

As most of my weekend had been spent with friends and just general running about I had failed to notice the disheveled state of my apartment. Having no such activities planned for Monday, and knowing I had to work on masks for the Steampunk Festival for the upcoming weekend, the idea of cloistering myself in my unkempt apartment for hours on end while sitting amidst the chaos was not ideal. So. Dishes, laundry, etc etc.

Then Doppler started barking incessantly at the window. What the hell. Investigate.

Ah.
Notice the complete look of not-terror on the cat’s face. This is because, as I observed over the next several hours, this feline was completely unfazed by the obnoxiously loud beast menacingly barking at it through the glass. Not just from my windows, but also from the windows next door, where a rather large Burnese Mountain dog resided.

Cat bounces back and forth among the ivy.
Boingy boingy boingy.

The dogs react predictably. “ARGHARGHARGHARRRRHHHH!!!!”

Cat pauses, sits. I swear to god it fucking smiled at them.

This proved exceedingly annoying when I was trying to do fine detail work on the aforementioned masks, and in a moment of highly focused silence Doppler launches into his full-blown canine tirade, I jump, the paintbrush shoots off, and triage is required.

I began to look for heavy objects around the apartment to hurl at the cat.

Thankfully I did have dinner plans that evening with a friend of mine so I was able to escape the randomly noisy seclusion for at least a few hours. Dressed, put shoes on, grabbed sunglasses, bid farewell to the dog, flipped off and yelled obscenities at the cat, and headed for the wine bar.

Lovely evening ensued with good wine, good food, good conversation. At the end of the evening, we headed towards my apartment. As we drove past my building, we noticed a Seattle PD cruiser in front and the main door propped wide open.

Terrific.

Parked the car, cautiously strolled up to my building where, oddly, there was no one to be found.

Then I happened to notice the droplets of blood on the tile in front of the door to my building.

Terrific.

Maintaining caution, trepidatiously approaching my unit (which is midway down the first floor), I slowly unlocked and opened the door, ensuring that Doppler was still alive and breathing. Check. Ok. My place seemed to be in order, at least. As Seattle’s finest was still on property, and nothing seemed amiss with my apartment, my guest bid farewell and I hurriedly locked the door behind him explaining to Doppler that his walk would have to wait until morning.

After some time had passed, I decided to check the hallway and see if the officer had returned to his vehicle. Indeed he had. And he had already left.

It was then I noticed some pieces of paper taped to the door. Despite my apprehension at leaving my apartment, my impulse control failed and I walked to the doors anyway. The small, robins-egg blue post-it caught my attention first:

“Do not touch door handle –

Blood!

I looked down at the door handle.

Terrific.

Then over at the yellow sheet of legal paper.

“Do not use door – handle has blood on it”.

Yeah, I got that.

Thus my mind began conjuring up all of the endless possible scenarios of what occurred in my building that evening (murder, assault, rape, robbery, slaughter with an axe…). I checked the Seattle PD blotter online but alas no information was provided for my location for that evening.

Sleep was difficult. When I finally did nod off, I was awoken at 2:00 am by Doppler vomiting all over the carpet.

Terrific.

This morning, I was able to reach an officer at one of the precincts and was given a brief rundown of the previous evening’s events.

“Robbery, 2nd floor, suspect cut open hands, fled scene bleeding (obviously). No arrests, still at large.”

Voulez-voulez-vous…

Terrific.

It goes something like this.

Voulez-voulez-vous…

Perusing my old college’s Visual Arts and Technology page, I noticed they had their 2010 Student Juried Exhibition online. This is often one of my favorite pastimes, since I am able to witness how little the curriculum has changed since my attendance. This is due to the same instructors teaching the same classes semester after semester, apparently never tiring of seeing the same output of product. Nowhere is this more evident than the following.

Observe:

This is a piece I did for my 1998 2-dimensional design class, called an “Isometric” problem.

Media: acrylic. 12″X12″. Instructor: Tom Willome.

1998 Juried Student Exhibition.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Twelve years later:

One Mr. Random Second-Year Student.

2010 Juried Student Exhibition, 2-Dimensional Design.

Isometric Problem.

Media: Digital Print. (Cheater). Dimensions: 10″X9″.

Instructor: Tom Willome.

 

 

 

 

I rest my case.

Though it probably took Mr. Random Second-Year Student a total of 45 minutes to complete his assignment wheras mine, more like nine hours. Craftsmanship, people. Process. These are principles which rule my world.

Voulez-voulez-vous maximum technical effort results in maximum visual output. Niff’s principle #1.

This is the interior of St. James Cathedral, just a stone’s throw from my new place and the home of the Archdiocese of Seattle (the cathedral, not my new place). If I knew what an Archdiocese was, I could tell you. As it stands, you’ll just have to Wikipedia it, or phone the Pope.

Each day as I walk past this architectural giant I crane my neck so as to take in the elements that make it so stunning, sometimes cutting through the courtyard in order to listen to the fountains and gaze at the marble sculptures.

Alas, I’d never seen the inside.
Ironically, on my way home from the Gay Pride Weekend festivities on Sunday, I am confronted by the peals of the bells of St. James as I pass by, and to my utter delight the doors happened to be open, the bells no doubt a “last call” to parishioners to get their asses inside.
I pass by churchgoers, making my way to the large, bronze-cast doors to get a peek into the nave of this oft-admired structure, alas it is obscured by the large, rose-marble columns flanking the interior. I try the opening on the other side. Damn. It occurs to me to take a few steps onto the threshold, but my fear of being struck down by fire and brimstone gives me pause. I climb down the portico steps in solemn defeat.

Then halt.
Then think.
Then about-face…
Think some more.
Then inwardly giggle.

As I ascend the steps back towards the entrance, the short, roundish, smiling usher who watched me peek in earlier gestures me inside, a knowing look of amusement on his face. Now, mind you, I hadn’t been in a church since May of 1996, the day of my ill-fated nuptials. Mostly due to the fact that, despite my fixation with secular architecture, I do not identify myself as Christian, so attending church services seemed pointless and until now, didn’t appeal to my wicked, hedonistic, foul-mouthed self. But I wanted to see the interior, dammit. And this seemed the most logical and efficient way of going about it.

Growing up, my family identified themselves as Baptist. Went to Sunday school some as a child, nothing exceptional. We stopped going because though my mother believed in God, she did not believe in religion. Which was just fine by me as I found church to be exceedingly boring and sometimes thought I was being dragged along as punishment for something.

Having infiltrated St. James as a non-Christian and thus a non-Catholic, I thought it best to hide in the back row of pews lest I be found out. I was completely unfamiliar with the ritual and protocol, my only urge being to bust out my sketchbook during the service. However, the Catholics make this impossible as every five minutes you are standing, sitting, kneeling, standing again…I felt as if I had signed up for an aerobics class. That and I wasn’t sure how my doodling in church would be received, and I didn’t want to be kicked out. Not that they would have, mind you, but like I said, unfamiliar with protocol. And though I’m not a bible-thumper I do know that doodling in church is not one of the seven deadly sins. Thanks to that Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt flick.

The interior was massively beautiful, screaming of a Romanesque Neo-Classical Renaissance hybrid that I admit choked me up for a moment. I spent most of the service looking up instead of at the preacher-guy, noticing details like the Corinthian capitals, instead of having rosettes between the scrolls, had cherub faces with wings, a detail I tried to capture with my camera phone later but failed miserably due to lingering battery power. The chanting and singing was beautiful, however…made the impact of the environment completely surreal. It amazes me what faith can inspire in art and architecture.

I passed on the stroll up to the altar for the wine and cookies bit, feeling like a complete poser and again fearing the fire and brimstone aspect. I did enjoy the shaking hands with my pew-mates and the exchanging of the “peace be with you”‘s, even receiving a hug from an elderly woman who was suffering from a L’Air du Temps overdose.

I put a big, hefty fiver in the collection plate, showing my gratitude for being allowed in to admire the place and I figured it was cheaper than a movie, even if I did pass on the free wine. After the service was over (and the 50th “let the lord be with you” “and also with you”) they let me hang out and take several photos with my rapidly-dying camera.

I must confess that I did pause in my gawking long enough to listen to the sermon, which, even though littered with scripture, was ironically applicable to this phase in my life and got me thinking about certain things a bit…which caught me completely by surprise. Who’d a thunk it. I go to church for the architecture and come away with a message.

Don’t think I’m converting or anything. Hell no. I like sinning too much.

Voulez-voulez-vous forgive me father…