Little John with nose so pointy

Little John

with nose so pointy

anoint your pants.

Anointy, Nointy!

Trish and John, circa 1993

Aw, man. I bet that right now he's praying none of his friends read my blog.

For the next week, my nephew John is staying with me. It has become a tradition of sorts: My sister flies John to NYC to spend a week with me every August. And every time he visits, it ends up being one of the best parts of my year:

The kid is just so cool. I mean, he's fifteen and he's working on at least one novel and at least one screenplay. He's writing a scene to perform with his friends as part of a competition for school. He can quote any line from any movie EVER. He likes Rocky Horror. He loves watching terrible B zombie movies. He's really good at drawing. He's practically perfect! Oh, wait. He doesn't like chocolate. That's a pretty big deal.

Anyway, we spent our first day together flying across the country, and then I put him in front of a movie while I scrubbed my apartment. He wanted to help, but seriously? This was supposed to be his vacation. The next morning we slept late, had a leisurely breakfast, talked about super heroes, and then headed down to Union Square. Me? I had to go to work. But he's 15 now, 16 next month, so I showed him where my office was and he was off on his own. He took the subway down to Times Square, poked around in some comic book shops, and then came back to Union Square. And that's when he experienced what he later said was one of the most interesting things he's ever experienced in his life: A religious nut preaching against homosexuality to a crowd of NYU students. And singing bible hymns. And I won't go into too much detail because I want him to write about it, but someone ended up saying something so brilliant, John and I were both floored. And I wasn't even there.

"If we are made in God's image, than God must also have a prostate and an anus with thousands of sensitive nerve endings to promote pleasure."

Or something to that effect.

Only better.

Also that night? John brought me dinner:



An apple and a peach, because he didn't know which one I'd like better, and a super-wonderful spinach salad that he fixed from the salad bar at Whole Foods. And blood-orange soda. It was awesome.

8/10/09