Thursday, January 15, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Goldberg: Karma police

By Tod Goldberg

It is always surprising to find out what karmic things will end up biting you in the ass. When you consider how often I talk about subjects in this very forum that deal with people I know, people I wish I knew (Rick Springfield, Neil Diamond, et al), people I know only vaguely or people I'm annoyed by and how I comport myself in front of them, you'd think I'd be confronted with more angry or delusional people who are upset about their portrayal in my 850 words of angst. Oh, sure, I get the odd letter every now and then and have been called mean names in people's blogs (Google rules!), but on balance what occurs here, stays here.

Except when it doesn't. And, except when it involves my own mother.

A quick history lesson for those who have come late to this world: My mother, while I was away on a book tour, rented the house next to mine. She subsequently moved a year later--two blocks away--but into a house that is the exact same floor plan as my own, but with a nicer view. She's retired and online, which means one night she thought she might finally find out what her young son was writing about lo these long years in the Mercury and found out I'd mentioned all of the above in a few different columns. Anger ensued, followed by threats of disownment, dismemberment and disinheritance. Not wanting to have another conversation with her beginning with "How could you..." again, I've opted not to mention too much of her lately (and besides, the holidays and my birthday were coming up). Lately ended this morning.

"I just read your old column about selling dirty socks online," my mom said.

"Hunh," I said. This is what I often say when I don't want to really go into depth about the despair of my own tortured existence.

"Well, I need extra money. What do you think? There's a woman with a pair of torn gym socks getting $36! I could do that."

"I think it's a bad idea," I said, remembering the tender and gentle e-mails I received from people asking me to crap, piss or ejaculate into the socks I had for sale.

"If I could make an extra hundred dollars per week, that would pay for my cleaning lady and my handyman, plus some nice stuff from Chico's."

"Mom," I said, "I understand that you have a fixed budget, but I really don't think selling fetish items online is the best way to supplement it."

"It's not fetish. I've bought shoes and clothes from eBay a number of times."

"Used clothes?"

"Well," my mom said, "no. But why would people want used socks unless they planned to wear them?"

There are a couple of borders I refuse to cross. Explaining to my own mother why people might want a pair of dirty socks to have and to hold and to warm up in the microwave to relive the toe jam smells in real time, well...that's goddamned Checkpoint Charlie in my mind. "No telling," I said, "but what if they're murderers and want to plant your DNA at a crime scene to throw the CSI folks off their scent? Have you considered that?"

"Tod," my mom said, using a tone familiar to me from my youth--it has meant, at different times in my life, everything from "Do you think I'm a fucking idiot, of course you broke the window out front!" to "Of course I didn't notice the dented bumper before, because it wasn't there!"

"I just don't think it's a very good idea," I said.

A few hours later, there was a knock on the door. It was my mom and she was looking for my wife. "I thought I'd take some photos using her legs, too," Mom said.

"Too?"

"I already have four auctions up," she said, "but it's hard to take pictures of your own legs and feet. I thought I could use her as a leg model. A stand-in."

"Jesus Christ," I said, "you want to whore out my wife's youthful legs so you can sell socks on eBay?"

"Yes," she said.

My wife, somewhat befuddled by the circumstances, acquiesced to my mother's demands, such as they were. While she sat munching a bagel at the dining room table, my mother shot action photos of my wife's feet in bobby socks.

"You realize," I said, "if people look at all your auctions, they're going to realize that sometimes your legs look like they belong to a retiree and sometimes not."

"It's all about the fantasy," my mom said.

As my mom drove off a few minutes later, a digital camera full of pictures of my wife's feet on her person, I had to stop and wonder at what I had wrought.

"She's totally lost her mind," my wife said.

"Yes."

"Aren't you concerned?"

"Yes."

"Is it rude to ask for a cut? They are my feet after all."

"Yes."

"Do you think my feet will fetch more money than hers?"

God willing, I thought, God willing.