Cabin Fever And Strippers, Oh My

This has been a bad day, just the most recent in a series of bad days.

I need it to stop snowing, I need the temperature to rise above 0 degrees. I need the flowers to bloom. I need a self-cleaning house. I need to lose ten pounds. I need my husband to fuck off and take the cats with him. I need SPRING!!

At first I thought I was going through (God forbid) another phase – I mean, how many phases does a person go through in one lifetime. I have experienced childbirth, raising children, empty nest syndrome, divorces, grandchildren, menopause, and retirement. I figure I've just about run the gamut of transitional phases – so what is going on? Is it cabin fever or am I certifiable? I'm opting for cabin fever.

This condition is not treatable with wine. I tried that last night with a girlfriend. The best thing to come out of our foray into the vineyard was a funny story about my daughter that I had forgotten. My friend and I were swapping stories about life, love, old age, husbands, and male strippers.

I have never been to a place where there were male strippers but, many years ago my daughter brought one home. I got up one morning and there he was, sitting in my dining room! He wasn't your stereotypical stripper – he was quite scrawny, but as I was later informed by my daughter “they have ways of compensating for lack of physical presence.”** As I shared my male stripper story with my friend, the image of a scrawny protuberance with a rubber band almost sobered me up. We had another glass of wine.

Cabin fever can make you crazy.


** Ed. note: he wasn't a male stripper, exactly, and I hadn't exactly brought him home. I was 17, and he was a friend - a very gay friend - who had been kicked out of his home and who was working amateur strip nights at Vancouver bars to try to kick-start what he thought - mistakenly, given his build - would be a lucrative career. He was one of many strays I brought home. Mom only liked them if they were colorful. He qualified.