3.19.2007

you want this? well, you can't have it!

I took a new shortcut to the super-secret West Coast Dunkin' Donuts yesterday. Oedipus always drives with me these days -- now that I taught him to read a little bit, he likes to practice on street signs and building marquees. It's funny how excited he gets -- eyes squinting in the wind, mouth hanging slack, and tail always waving. Some say he's just a dog, he'd stick his head out the window anyway, and I need a better way to test his literacy, but to those straw men I say screw off.

Anyway, because Oedipus is into it, I've noticed signs a lot more. On the way to the 'Nuts, I was really excited, because I passed a huge building with glass walls and loads of people on exercise machinery inside, and the sign said, "La Vitesse." It sounded so vibrant and alive, and yet French at the same time. I had no idea what it meant, but I liked the idea of a group of people buying into a workout program that had the pretension of an art-house film, and it made me ashamed that I was going to a place called "Dunkin' Donuts." So literal -- the sort of donut shop that Hemingway would have opened if he were a Cambodian immigrant. I felt very American in that moment, and not in the simple-people-simple-life way, but more of the XXL-Hawaiian-shirt way.

The joke's on them though -- it turns out that the place was actually named LA Fitness. I just misread the sign. I still feel guilty for being an American, but that has more to do with the half-dozen donuts I wolfed down outside the gym's glass windows to tease the sweaty women in leotards.

dls

1 Comments:

At 10:59 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

aha! i've found you at long last. and you still wear a secret tiger hat, i see. thank goodness.

xo stacie

 

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