An actual excerpt from "What I did over my smmer vacation: the gross part"

(Background -- my 10-yr-old son and I were visiting my parents in an undisclosed locations. The names probably should have been changed to protest the extremely embarrassed.)

Everything was going nice and smoothly. Then dinner hit the fan.

We hade chosen Applebee’s because, well, it just seems that what people do when faced with so many decisions. They pick the easiest and safest, partially explaining the popularity of such mediocre restaurants like Applebee’s, Chili’s, TGI Fridays and the worst culinary offender of them all, Outback. I, for one, will never understand Outback’s appeal. It can’t be Foster’s, which somehow passes as beer in Australia (like we have something to brag about with Bud, Coors and Miller). I have been to an Outback only because of misguided friends who think a $50 gift card there is actually a good thing. However, when told there is a two-hour wait for a steak that is as overpriced as it is mediocre, even a gift card isn’t worth hanging with people stupid enough to take a coaster-shaped beeper who spend the wait talking about how nice it is when they’ve saved enough aluminum cans to be able to get out of the trailer park for a nice meal.

So we were at Applebee’s because Bryson’s grandparents, are, well, how do I put this – too old to worry about being discerning anymore. They smile when told the wait will “only” be 20 minutes. Hell, that ain’t nothing for the fine fare that is served at one of America’s finest dining establishments, heck no.

Once seated, each of us perused the 76-page menu (because when you don’t have quality, you better depend on quantity). Except for Bryson, who stuck to the kid’s menu. He is young enough to order off of it, too old to color it (guess that’s what they mean by being a ‘tweener).

A young, cheery woman approaches, her radiant smile almost screaming, “Sure, I’m making minimum wage right now, but I will make your brief stay here excruciatingly joyful if it kills me, because I’d do damn near anything for a 20 percent tip, so please don’t fill up on the appetizers.”

“Hey everyone and welcome to Applebee’s,” she said.

“What? We’re at Applebee’s? Holy fucking Christ, how in God’s name did that happen,” I wanted to say. But didn’t. One day I will. When Bryson is old enough to hear his dad curse for no good reason. Because he’s already heard me curse for good reason – like that time I was at stop sign and despite a lack of traffic, the three cars ahead of me were not moving, leading to a well-earned, “Will someone please fucking go at some point in time?”

“I know you probably haven’t had a chance to look at the menus,” she said, “but I can take your drink orders if you’d like.”

“Actually, I think we’re ready to order,” said my dad.

Yeah, the guy who comes here weekly and orders the same thing is ready to declare his food desires. Mom was ready as well. On those rare occasions when they do try a new restaurant, my dad looks up the menu on the Internet, and know what they are going to choose even before they leave.

It seemed everyone was ready to order. Dad asked for fish, mom chicken (most of which would go in a doggy bag that, yes, would go to there 18-year-old “You mean that dog ain’t dead yet?” Basset hound), Bryson mac and cheese, and me, well, the only page of the menu I was able to examine was alcohol, so I flipped to sandwiches and picked out the French dip. Mm mm mm, that’s good eating.

Food arrived within five minutes or so, since “profit margin” = “table turnaround” (and reflects directly on potential tips).

Bryson ate with the fury of a child who had not consumed solids for at least two hours. It took him longer to drench his dinner in ketchup than it did to eat. Dad had taken a few forkfuls of the halibut, while mom continued to talk about how delicious her chicken looked. She would not actually start eating it until well into the meal.

I dipped my tepid roast-beef sandwich into the slightly warm au just, which is French for “Whatever those drippings are at the bottom of the grease trap, add some water and heat it up.” Yeah, pretty much what I expected.

As I took my second bite, Bryson was done, my dad was surgically separating his green beans from his fish, and mom was searching for another adjective to describe her chicken (“This just looks so yummy.”)

I was dipping my sandwich when I heard a noise that, had I been in a hospital, I would have guessed someone else just died. It was a quick gag and silence, a breath so short it seemed to have been stolen away by Death.

I looked up and saw my dad’s eyes wide, cheeks bulging. He dropped is fork and quickly waved at his with his right hand as if to say, “Yes, I am choking to death but please don’t make a scene. This is, after all, Applebee’s.”

I could think of only one thing – “Please, if my dad is going to suffer a humiliating death at the hands of halibut, please let it be at a dining establishment that does not reek.”

Another gag and, still waving, he coughed up bits of fish swimming in a mixture of bile and saliva. Another cough, another upheaval of bile and saliva. Vomit, yet dainty vomit. His throat finally relented and allowed him air, my dad gulping it in in huge mouthfuls, coughing between each struggling inhalation.

“I’m fine, I’m fine, wrong pipe, that’s all,” dad croaked. “Nothing to worry about.”

And with that pronouncement, he picked up his fork and scraped the regurgitated halibut under the green beans and within 10 seconds, started eating again. With gusto. As if, it were possible, he would have ordered the halibut with a side of bile and partially chewed fish.

Once he seemed as if he would live to see another meal, I looked at Bryson, who had turned his head and was staring at the Applebee’s bar.

“Bud, don’t worry, he’s all right,” I said. “He’s not going to embarrass us by dying.”

He said nothing, but continued staring at the bar.

“Bryson, that’s rude,” I said. “He’s your grandfather. It was an accident. Now turn back to this table.”

He swiveled his head and looked at me. That’s when I knew.

This was only going to get worse.

His cheeks puffed up and his Adam’s apple bobbed. He bent over and there was a splashing noise of liquid on vinyl. Looking down, a thick, odorous liquid was splattered across the bench.

He convulsed again, and this time he struggled to hold it. Instinctively I grabbed a napkin and cupped it in my hands. He vomited into it like a pro. This time it was a viscous yellow liquid. Another gag and, napkin full, I balled it up, placed it on his empty place and grabbed my own dinner, holding the platter in front of him. A torrent of macaroni bits and fries spewed forth, engulfing the remains of my sandwich.

Later, after we had cleaned up and waited outside while dad paid the bill, I marveled at the talents of the stomach to separate and expel like ingredients. Ketchup, then cheese, than macaroni and fries. I wondered how we might be able to turn that into a circus act.

But only briefly.

Many years ago, my father surprised me when he asked for my help in buying a computer.

“What do you need a computer for?” I said. “You’re retired and you spend most of your time around the house. You get the newspaper and Time. What else could you possibly need?”

“The weather,” he said.

“Weather?”

“Yeah, I want to be able to look it up. Anytime, anywhere.”

“You could go outside for that.”

“Not if I want to know the weather tomorrow.”

And so we went down to the local computer store and bought him a machine that far exceeded his needs (and now, five years later, is hopelessly out of date, which is fine, he says, “because it suits my needs, like checking the weather”).

I was surprised again during a recent visit home when my mom asked for my help in buying a cellphone.

“Why?” I said. “You’re always home. Mobile phones are designed for people who are mobile.”

When my parents do go out, it is to shop for groceries or have lunch. Mostly lunch.

“We don’t go out to dinner,” my mom says. “Too crowded. Even at 4 now you’ll have a lot of people out. Sometimes we’d have to park two or three rows away from the front door. So now we just go out to lunch.”

This is not the demographic Alltel and Cingular had in mind when introducing unlimited anytime minutes for $79.99 with a free camera-phone. My parents’ telecommunication needs had been well-served by the touch-tone phone that had hung on the kitchen wall for more than 20 years. The six-foot radius of the cord satisfied their mobile needs.

A cellphone seemed about as necessary as dinner reservations. This is, after all, a couple that has refused to get an answering machine because, “If anyone wants us that badly, they can call back.”

“It’s not for me,” mom said. “It’s for your dad.”

Ah, so the gadget-master had something to do with this. My dad, like most men, has a desire for devices that is inversely proportionate to the device’s usefulness. When I was a young child with no understanding of man’s lust for gadgets – especially those that came with manuals that would be picked up only in case of emergency, like sparks and fire – I did not question my dad’s request for a bottle cutter. According to the commercials that blanketed each of our five available TV channels, with the Amazing Bottle Cutter, you could cut various bottles to make ashtrays and any other items requiring a cut bottle (which were numerous in the ads, but I think each was a variation on the ashtray).

My dad used the gadget to produce any number of weapons-grade cut bottles, not always successful in avoiding the lethal edges that never appeared in the ads. Many a Michelob bottle was magically transformed into shards, since the bottle cutter employed techniques (etching a line with the cutter portion, which was supposed to crack cleanly using heat and cold) that now would feed a generation of personal-injury attorneys.

Later on my dad would ask for, and receive, a winemaking kit (the smell from the first and last try lingered for weeks), a flashlight powered by squeezing its handle (leading to the invention of carpal tunnel syndrome), and a weather radio (real-time weather for those not blessed with windows and a door).

“Does dad really need a cellphone?” I said. “Or is this another bottle-cutter moment?”

“Well, he’d carry it,” my mom said. “But it’s for me too. Sometimes he’s out and I want to know I can call if I need to.”

So I accompanied my dad to the wireless store. Good thing because left to his own devices, and a clerk who could not understand how anyone could pass up unlimited minutes including voicemail and text messaging for just $79.99 a month, my father would have walked out of their with the Cadillac of phones when all he needed was a two-wheeler.

“Let’s call mom,” he said the second we stepped out of the store. “To see if it really works.”

Sure dad, because maybe the pixie magic required to make phone calls out of thin air hasn’t been fully charged.

“OK, just punch in the number-“

“Wait,” he said, holding the phone to his ear. “Something’s wrong. I’m not getting a dial tone.”

“It doesn’t work that way,” I said. “You dial the number first, then press the send button. The phone then connects and makes the call.”

“You mean I don’t need a dial tone?”

“You will get a dial tone, but only after you hit the send button.”

“What’s the send button?”

“That green one right there.”

“This one? It’s pretty small. Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure. Size has nothing to do with it.” Why does that sound familiar?

“Is there anything I need to do before I just start dialing?” dad said. “Or do I just start hitting numbers?”

“You can turn on the phone.”

“Where?”

“That button on top.”

“Here? I don’t see a button.”

“Just press it and see what happens.”

A tinny chime came from the phone.

“Well, how about that?” dad said. “The button’s right there but you can’t see it. Clever.”

“OK, now dial your number and press that green button there.”

“No, you do it. I just want to watch for now.”

He was open to more hands-on exploring when we arrived home. For the next hour we added phone numbers to the address book (there were only five, though I regret not putting 911 on speed dial) as I showed him the various features.

“Now I’m going to show you have to use the voice tag,” I said. “That way you can just say the person’s name and the phone will dial it automatically.”

“Really?” dad said, his eyes lighting up like when he saw the Amazing Bottle Cutter for the first time.

“I’ve programmed a few, so let’s try this one,” I said. “Press this button here, hold it and say ‘Call mom.’”

He took the phone, put it an inch to his mouth and leaned forward. “Call mom.”

“No, you have to press and hold this button, then say it.”

“Call mom.”

“OK, first you don’t have to be so close to the phone. Hold it out here. Now when you press that button, you’ll hear a series of tones. Then say, ‘Call mom.’”

The phone beeped. “Call mom.”

“See, you have to press and hold the button,” I said. “If you just press the button, the phone beeps and your address book comes up. Here, watch.”

I press and hold, and the phone chimed. “Call mom.” A few seconds later, the kitchen phone rang.

“Got it,” he said, taking the phone. “I just press this and … Call mom.” The phone chimed.

“You have to wait for the tone,” I said. “Maybe it would just be easier if you dialed. Now let’s see if you’ve got voice mail.”

Abandoning all that my dad had taught me, I reached for the instruction manual, opened it to the appropriate page and learned how to do something without 15 minutes of fruitless experimentation. It was an odd feeling.

“This seems pretty easy,” I said. “I think I’ve got it. I’m going to call the number from the kitchen. Just let it ring.”

“OK.”

I lifted the kitchen phone off the hook and dialed. The cellphone trilled.

“Hello,” dad answered.

“Dad, what are you doing? I told you to let it ring.”

“I did let it ring. Then I answered it.”

“Well, hang it up. I need you to let it ring to see if it goes to voicemail.”

“But that phone doesn’t have voicemail. We’ve never had an answering machine.”

“Not this phone, the cellphone.”

“Oh, right, right,” dad said. “This phone is separate from the phone we have now, right? Or do we have to buy an answering machine? Because I don’t think we’ll want that because the only people who call us want to sell us new windows.”

The lessons ended shortly afterward. I just hope my dad never discovers the “Accessories” part of the menu. How am I going to explain web surfing and ring downloads?

“You have to get the Mango Sugar Glow, it’s absolutely amazing.”

I had just remembered that advice as I finished scheduling my “treatments” at Tucson’s Canyon Ranch, a very high-end fat farm that has a gym, hundreds of classes geared toward getting you to ear right and exercise, and a dozens of massages for people who forget to go to the gym and blow off diet class (which applies to 98 percent of the people here).

“OK, you’ve got the Hot Stone Massage, the Shiatsu Massage, the Swedish Massage and the Watsu Water Treatment Massage,” said the woman at the front desk. “Anything else?”

“Yeah, there’s some sort of Mango Massage, a sugar glow thing?” I said.

“You mean the Mango Sugar Glow? It’s absolutely amazing.”

“Yeah, that’s it. The Sugar Glow.”

“OK, let me print out your schedule for you,” she said as a machine below the counter began to hum. “You’ll need to arrive 15 minute before the appointment, just come back here to the waiting area and your masseuse will come out to get you.”

“Sounds perfect,” I said, pulling on the cottony soft belt of my plush white robe. Every guest here wears a robe and slippers because most of them are at some point getting a massage, and it’s just cool to walk around as if you’re at the Playboy Mansion. It’s amazing how quickly you stop worrying about robe gappage, since most people are strolling around in bodies you wouldn’t want to look, so voyeurism is about as much a part of this place as fried food (there are guys at the Ranch’s gated entrance whose job includes turning away pizza deliveries as well as any unauthorized food ordered by guests dying to eat something other than 2.5 ounces of boiled halibut served on a few sprigs of lemon grass, oh my God, don’t you people have a conscience?!)

“Wait, I forgot one thing,” she said, scribbling something on the schedule. “For the Mango Sugar Glow, go through the men’s locker room to the sauna area. Tell the attendant what you’re there for and he’ll take care of you.”

“Ok, no problem,” I’d already been to the men’s locker room, where you can toss your robe in a wicker basket and get a freshly laundered robe at absolutely no extra cost, though it’s probably factored somewhere into the $2,288 per week charge. Did I say meals are included? Because they are. That’s several ounces of fish and vegetables thrown in for free, a $12.18 retail value.

No matter, because it’s all about the massages. Well, except for that Hot Stone Massage, which consisted of an older woman hoisting smooth rocks from a crock pot and placing them on your body in places you don’t even think about until someone places a hot stone there. Near the end this rubless treatment, the attendant (she can hardly be called a masseuse, since that implies a massage is taking place) wedges small skipping stones between your toes. Perhaps they found this practice on the Abu Ghraib website.

It was nearing time for my Mango Sugar Glow, so I slid into my slippers, closed my robe and walked the quarter mile to the men’s locker room, passing the gym where the only sound coming from inside was that of crickets and the whisper of a tumbleweed.

I sat in a plastic chaise lounge next to the hot tub currently being shared by two large, sweaty, please-don’t-forget-your-robe men sipping in ice water with a wedge of lemon (damn, where’d they get the lemon? That could’ve been lunch). Men in robes occupied the other four chairs. Looked like the Mango Sugar Glow was a popular treatment.

I snagged a white fluffy towel from one of the 12 stacks of white fluffy towels strategically placed so that you would never be more than an arm’s length from cottony comfort. I put the towel under my head since I really couldn’t think of another use for it, and with the resort filled with such towels, it would be just wrong not to use one. Hey, it’s free. And now someone has to wash it (doing the math later, I discovered that of the $2,288 per week, $2,200 goes to the laundry. The rest is split between the kitchen and the guy who bitch-slaps the Domino’s dude).

“Mr. C--?” said a man who had emerged from the back. A white T-shirt clung to his wiry frame, sinewy muscles rippling along forearms that once belonged to Popeye look. His white pants lent to his clinical look, save for the snake tattooed on his left bicep, the serpent dancing as he swung his long arms by his side while walking toward me.

“That’s me,” I said. Leaning forward, I grabbed the towel and threw it into a small wicker basket that, I assumed, was for soiled linens. On its way to the basket, the towel was intercepted by a laundry attendant who, and I swear this is true, suddenly appeared as if out of a wormhole. As he disappeared into the back, I could swear each of the towel stacks raised the height of one more towel.

“Good, I’m Jim, nice to meet you,” he said, crushing my hand. “Now let’s see, you want the, uh, the Mango Sugar Glow?”

“Well,” I said, hesitating because the way his voice went up at the end of the sentence. It started as a statement, ending as a question. “Yeah, the, uh, Sugar Glow.” Had I just said “Sugar glow”?

“That’s what I thought,” he said. “Could you just wait here a few minutes? I need to go over to the ladies’ side to get the mango, uh, glow.”

The two sweaty guys in the hot tub looked at me. Smirking. The other guys sitting in the plastic lounges pulled their robes a little tighter, eyes glued on their magazines that included Maxim, Sports Illustrated and Popular Mechanics (Popular Mechanics? Who knew that was still around?)

“Ladies’ side?” I said. “Why?” Just asking this seemed to rub more Sugar Glow into the wound.

“It’s not something we offer on the men’s side,” said Jim, emphasizing “men’s.” “Don’t worry, it’ll just take a few minutes.”

Before my testosterone levels dropped to levels from which they could never recover, I waved him off.

“No, that’s OK,” I said. “I really don’t know anything about this mango thing. A friend suggested it. A woman. So it really isn’t that important to me. At all.”

“OK, if you’re sure.”

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

“If you’re still interested,” Jim said, “what we do on this side is a sea-salt scrub.”

“Definitely, then let’s do that,” I said. “Yup, sea-salt. Scrub. That sounds perfect.”

“It’s pretty abrasive,” Jim said. “But it’s a great exfoliate. Your skin will really breathe when it’s over.”

Exfoliate? Hey, Jimbo, doesn’t that belong on the women’s side?

“Sounds perfect,” I said.

Jim smiled. Not a warm “Welcome back to the men’s side” smile, but a “You say that now, but just wait” smile.

Whatever. Bring on the sea salt, baby. I looked at the two guys in the hot tub, hoping they had heard. About being rubbed with sea salt. Not about it being an exfoliate. But they’d closed their eyes, perhaps dreaming of a different ending for “Mango Boy” – “So this big beefy attendant has to go to the woman’s side because this guy insisted on being slathered with some kind of sugar lotion, can you just imagine his humiliation?”

Jim pointed to a door past the sauna. “Go in there and take a shower. Don’t dry off, though, just like on the table and drape this towel over yourself. I’ll be in in just a few minutes.”

White spotless tiles covered every square inch of the walls in the small room. A nozzle jutted from the wall, opposite a drain in the floor. A thinly padded massage table took up the rear half of the room, under which was the familiar stack of fluffy towels.

I twisted the knob underneath the nozzle. Needles of water splashed against my skin, and I turned slowly to soak myself. I turned off the water, grabbed and towel and stretched out on the table, waiting for Jim.

A few minutes later he entered with a clear plastic wide-mouthed bottle. He tipped it toward his palm and shook, a rattling sound echoing off the tiles.

“What I’m going to do,” he said, standing over me, “is rub this salt over your skin, removing the dead cells and reviving the skin underneath. All you need to do is relax. Oh, and let me know if I’m a little too vigorous. Some men have, you know, a lower tolerance for the scrub.”

You mean like men who ask for Mango Sugar Glow? Of course he meant that. Do your best, Salt Man, because I was about to prove I was no Mango Boy.

I closed my eyes as he started on my arms, a burning sensation that could only be caused by intense chafing. I could actually hear my top three skin layers say goodbye. What I could not hear was the distinct buzz of the power sander he must have been using.

“How’s that?” he asked, the salt creating its own wounds in which to be rubbed.

“Really nice,” I said, trying to remember if Jim had said this would take 30 or 45 minutes.

For the next several hours (I was surprised to find the clock had moved just 50 minutes during the procedure), Jim was careful to find every patch of skin previously exposed to air, removing it with the efficiency of a man who nearly had to go over to the ladies’ side, seeing his life flash before his eyes.

The worst was the inner thighs, where his hands came dangerously close to body parts never meant to experience salt crystals, let alone have them ground in. The towel did not stop Jim’s ruthless pursuit of skin cells more than a few days old. As he continued to scrape my inner thighs, I wondered if this was a feeling similar to that of a marathoner in the last mile of the race, his flesh rubbing together to a point where friction should set his shorts on fire.

“Everything OK?” Jim asked.

“This is great,” I said. “I can’t believe I’ve never had this done before.”

“Yeah, it really stimulates the skin.”

That made me feel good, indicating I still had skin left.

When it was over, I was glowing – a very bright red. I shrugged into my robe, a once comfy outer layer that now stuck with a million tiny barbs. I walked gingerly with legs spread, as if I’d just spent the last eight hours riding naked on a horse through Death Valley.

“A lot of guys are surprised how refreshed they feel after a sea-salt scrub,” Jim said. “All that dead skin was just suffocating.”

Yes, exposing muscle and sinew to air was certainly preferable to being suffocated by several layers of epidermis. At least that is what I expressed to Jim as I left, thanking him for his strong hands and determined nature.

“Yeah, it’s great to be able to breathe again,” I said. I just never thought I’d be able to do it through my inner thighs.