holden caufield

The fruit fly invasion is no longer all over the kitchen. Now it's just in the garbage which means that when I empty the garbage, the glorious Fruit Fly Dawn will likely return to the kitchen.

Before last night they'd been roosting by the hundreds at the top of my cupboard where I'd put out white wine and apple cider vinegar traps for them. Then last night, I walk in and there's nothing, not a stir. None of them tried to fly up my nose or swarm around my wrists. However, neither were there bodies to evidence a final and magnificent end. Where did they go? Clearly they all died, I decided. But where are the bodies? Where? Do they turn into dust? Do the living sweep the dead under the oven? Is there a secret fruit fly burial grounds somewhere in the bowels of the sink? (I bet that's what the Drosophila suzukii strain does. Apparently it's an invasive species. Can't trust it with your daughters or your Cadillacs. Can't trust it to die decently and leave a corpse for evidence).

But enough of this. I know where they are now. They're in the garbage, nuzzling up to a peach pit or whatever else is rotting down there. I just emptied the can, but whatever, go to town, fruit flies. I don't want to know how many eggs you can lay at a time. I squished a copulating pair with a paper towel and felt just fine about it.

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Title for today: "Everything makes me dizzy except lying on the couch and reading novels."

I'm sick! Score one for Fall: fevery, icky, lazy, work-canceling stupidness. Making no money today that's for certain. New survival plan currently being formulated and will mostly involve eating garlic and not reading "The Catcher in the Rye" ever again. I can't be sure but I think it made me sick.

Apart from causing my sickness, I think I hated it because it succeeded at what it set out to do. It made a true voice and maintained that voice. Good on you, Salinger. Unfortunately, it's a voice I hate. My instinct with "Catcher" was to never read it because the only people who recommended it over and over were 1) boys who 2) said they read it in high school or as freshmen in college and it 3) changed their lives but 4) they, despite this change, remained boys and were fairly useless though perhaps they've recovered. I need to call my friend T. and talk to him about "Catcher". I think I could respect his opinion and appreciate Holden Caufield's place in his life. Everyone else, all you 20-something boys, nope. Sorry. Probably I'm immature. I'll take that.

The whole time I'm reading it I want to push Holden Caufield into a large, muddy pool. Or constantly nay-say him, which is (more or less) what I did in my mind but I think I was largely directing comments at various boys I've known who have reminded me a lot of H.C. and probably only remind me of H.C. because they read "Catcher" and decided H.C. was amazing and DEEP and TRUE and tried to emulate him around the time I crossed paths with them in Eugene when we were all more-or-less, freshmen in college. Oddly though, most of my male friends are probably guys who read "Catcher" and adored it. But they grew out of (or maybe into) the adoration in a different way than the guys who are still like H.C. and have fallen like dead fruit flies and disappeared. (Tying it all together. Point!)

But it's some sort of classic. So now I've read it. I feel a sense of relief akin to the time I finally read and finished a Thomas Hardy novel. Oh Thomas Hardy, ye olde darlin' manny.