An 85 year old man, buried in a G-String

We have quite a few neighbors; they’re all good neighbors, actually great neighbors. We live in a nice, well-maintained condo complex. However, we’re ready for a house, but in the meantime, if we have to have neighbors in close proximity, we’ve got it pretty good. Although, sometimes with living this close, we find out certain things that we don’t want to know. You know what? I’m lying, I do want to know these crazy things, I’m just not supposed to admit it. We all have skeletons, some more plentiful than others, but they usually make for good story telling. And I want to hear them all, if I pretend to not want to know? Ignore me and tell me anyway. I’ll appreciate it later.

Well, we have a neighbor who sadly lost her father last year. He was a retired, high-ranking military officer, so they buried him in his uniform. Under the uniform? A sequined thong. I’m totally serious. He was 85, as the title says…dude…I’m not certain what was more disturbing; that his daughters picked the underwear that would travel with him in the afterlife and could double as a slingshot should he need it, a slingshot that glitters in the dark, or that I knew about it. And now you do as well.

While going through his things in the house that he lived in for 40 years, his daughters found quite an extensive video collection – all porn, around 700 of them. They also found hooks, reinforced hooks, in the ceiling of the living room. They were a bit perplexed until they found the trapeze and harness in the hallway closet that hung perfectly from those hooks. Suddenly, they had a new respect for his 65-year-old girlfriend. Do you have a visual? Unfortunately, so do I.

At first when our neighbor was telling me, I was trying to listen empathetically and not react like it was out of the ordinary, which didn’t last long. She was actually guffawing over the situation, so I did as well, though a little reserved. After all, they buried him in a G-String! Apparently, it was one of many in his collection. She wasn’t embarrassed; she’s much too bright to care what people think. She was very matter-of-factly about it, which I greatly admire in a person.

Sometimes when I leave on a vacation, or even just to work, it crosses my mind to think, “Ok, now what if I die, what will they find?” I don’t know if everyone else thinks about this or not. But I do. I suffered severe liver damage from Wilson’s Disease (a rare genetic condition) in my late 20’s. I was almost dead when I was 29, or at least that’s what they told me. A doctor a couple of years later was looking at my chart assessing my situation and said, “You know, you almost died.” Really? Thanks jackass, I must not have been there. God, sometimes people just say the dumbest things… okay, often, they say the dumbest things. Anyway, I think that my mortality was just shaken enough that I think of these absurd circumstances. I worry about the porn mags under the bed and the videos in the back of the entertainment center. I worry about unpleasant streaks in my underwear, which I don’t know why I worry about that? I haven’t had skid marks for a very long time, at least 2 weeks. I wipe my ass pretty good. And I have very few white undies; most are black and dark blue. Which is a whole other story.

We’re having a going-away party for our friend, Heather. She’s going to Boston for graduate school. We’re happy for her, but we’re also heart-broken over her departure. Another friend in the group thought that we should have a Britney Spears Tribute Dance-Off for the party. We’re going to dress like trash, drink cheap beer and eat garbage. Once enough beer is consumed, we’re having the dance-off. I don’t even know exactly what this means, but I’m sure that it would make Britney proud, or jealous, or pissed. So, our friend went psycho over the party and decorated our entire place with Britney and K-Fed pictures, they’re everywhere. My first thought? If we die before we can take this shit down, and our parents have to walk into the place…I can’t even imagine what they would think. I don’t really care, but it still crossed my mind. And then I thought about our neighbor’s Dad. I bet he didn’t care. He was too busy having fun, swinging from the ceiling, wearing sequins and watching videos to care what the hell we thought. Maybe if everyone else were too busy with his or her own lives no one would care what the hell anyone else did. Now, that’s an idea. And once we’re dead? Who cares? You’re dead! It doesn’t matter!

I’ve often thought about what would happen with all of my writing. Would anyone take the time to keep track of it? Would anyone actually understand any of it? Would they even think that it’s worth keeping? Would they think that I was even more retarded than previously thought? Why do I even think of this crap? Once I die, it’s not going to matter, ever. An old friend of mine who is obsessive beyond belief (completely unlike myself) was so concerned about her ‘Will’ and where everything would go. Everything always had to be in complete order. It just doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t. I don’t want to flatter myself into thinking that it does. Once we’re dead, we’re dead; we’re onto something else. Whether we’re reborn as a turtle, another human, a tree, or whatever comes next, we’re not going to give a rat’s ass about the shit that we leave behind. Bury me in a G-String anytime! Add a bra if you want. I’m not going to need it where I’m going.