Captain Fruitcake

My honeymoon phase with my daughter is waning. It only took 11 years, which lasts longer than most. It died with my wife after a stream of milk squirted out of her nips on our honeymoon in Australia, especially, after I nibbled on them for old time’s sake while totally blanking on how they now tasted like a regrettable non-fate latte. Our plan was to get married in Australia on Mother’s Beach, where my wife grew up around, yet my mom.crashed that concept real fast. Mom calls, “Fuck Australia Scoops. Australia is a long flight from New York. And your father doesn’t love you that much. You’re the sloppy second son for a reason, remember?” I console my wife later and say, “Babe, assuming we have a boy, instead of hiring a Rabbi for the circumcision, will hire Crocodile Dundee. Just so we can hear a roomful of Jews say, “Now that’s a knife. You can chop it all off with that thing.”  Most honeymoon phases fade after their sweaty sex period anyway. Where the bed achieves blast off despite perpetual poundage downward, which defies all laws of gravity all together. 

So, I’m not sweating the prospect of my honeymoon phase coming to a deflated end with my daughter at 11 years old. She has breast buds now, so I know she can’t remain my little girl forever. It’s not as if I identify with Woody Allen in my late forties now either. Who pines for the days of keeping naked pics of a 9-year-old Soon-Yi in his top sock drawer to tap for future script ideas on scripts such as Crimes and Misdemeanors the Early Years or was it The Plowing Field? Shit, the only crusty pic missing from Woody Allen’s top sock drawer was Soon-Yi crying on the cover of Time Life Magazine. Still, 11 years old feels early for breast buds, don’t you think? Wife says, “Matilda and Shannon are the last girls in their class to get breast buds.” And I said, “Then why haven’t yours sprouted yet?”

I’m cooling on my daughter because of her overuse of the word “Nice.” Had a pothead friend Cling in college cool dude, worked as chef in Nantucket during the summer to pay for his high-end hippie lifestyle. But he could also throw down like Leo and went to Berkshire, a boarding school that got printed up in the NY times in 96 after a student sold 90 doses of acid to a student population of 300, although I’ve been told nearly every student there was tripping balls, including some of the professors. Headmaster calls in the dealer. “You really thought you’d get away with this shit? Are you smoking coo-coo puffs or what? Who’s your supplier?” Student breaks out into the giggles and can barely muster, “You, said, coo-puffs.  That’s the funniest thing I ever heard.” Headmaster adds, “I knew that hiring that English teacher from Berkley was a bad idea. O Captain, my Captain Trips was his quote in his high school yearbook for Christ’s sake. He quoted that fruitcake Robet Frost to. I bet those woods were lovely, dark and deep on 5 hits of acid, when the Maple Tree morphed into Aunt Jemima ordering you to sodomize each other with your lacrosse sticks because the ghost of Jim Brown will shit on your dreams of breaking his scoring records at the University of Syracuse regardless.”

Yeah, so Cling, the same guy who rolled perfect joints, who’d blow smoke rings that shaped into the contours of the skeletal shape seen on Deadhead shirts, would use the word “nice”, if you said something he liked. For example, “Hey Kling, saw 311 live last night. They kicked total ass. I practically touched the rafters. For once I no longer felt whiter than White Man’s Disease.  And Kling says, “Nice”, despite it being way more momentous than nice.  And I didn’t have to compete with an I-Pad in front of him for his attention. So, when I say, “Matilda, Daddy’s final comedy record, Last Licks, will be my Siamese Dream, Too Fast for Love, Appetite for Destruction and American Idiot, all wrapped up into one.” Only to hear back in return, “Nice daddy.” In other words, “Sell some comedy records later summer whether it be Last Licks or Billionaire Brain in my honor, and I’ll give a bigger shit. I’m sure I can find you an emoji for that. Just let me get back to being a budding pre-teen already, who doesn’t have to suck off the totality of your ego every two seconds. Besides, isn’t that what mommy is for? I get it, making comedy records at home is like playing with yourself. You can only spend so much time jerking off your own material without wanting others to do it for you. Is that what Brian Wilson meant when he sang, Wouldn’t It Be Nice? Anyway, let me plan my 1st sleepover with Kendel at our house with the tent in our yard Daddy. Just be glad I’m not pushing for more horse riding lessons that you can’t afford because you’re so broke, your Hebrew name is under judicial review.  Just make enough money for a Bat Mitzvah trip in 2 years to France, so I can practice my French while ordering you some high-end Rose from Provence, Captain fruitcake. We can toast my official entry into fully budding womanhood, and you finally making it a semi-working artist writer comedian of some kind, so you can stop freaking out about not having enough new lovers of you yet. Nice enough Captain Fruitcake? Nice lives, Challah. Thanks for the stroll down memory lane Kling, very, very much.

Michael Kornbluth