I recently saw a show where a mother forgave the drunk driver who killed her daughter.

And as if that weren’t hard ENOUGH to imagine, forgiveness was only the tip of this enlightened iceberg.

She has this guy over for Sunday dinners. They exchange gifts at Christmas (nothing of the Jack Daniels variety, one presumes). She calls him to gossip about the neighbors. “He’s as special to me as if he were my own son,” she said on this talk show, as she gently took his hand and the audience (including me) sobbed into our Pop Tarts.

This is a level of compassion and absolution that is both stunning and admirable. And it’s one that I, too, aspire to achieve.

I guess I say “aspire to” because I know that if I were in her shoes, I would not want this man to spend his life in prison, either. But what I might want is for him to spend his life attempting to absolve his wrongdoing by replacing the daughter I lost.

Actually, physically replacing her.

Oh, sure, it might feel a tad awkward at first, having a 40-year-old sitting at the breakfast table wearing a Catholic school girl’s outfit. Sure, it might be hard trying to find Mary Janes in size 13. Discipline could be a challenge when trying to take a 160-pound man over your knee for a spanking – not to mention the creepy look of anticipation on his face.

I suppose it could get weird around the time the daughter would have hit puberty and you have to have that “special talk”. And braiding her hair might lose something when the wig keeps coming off his head.

But imagine the torture of a grown man having to pretend to be excited about The Vampire Diaries and Justin Bieber and auditioning lip gloss. Picture the deliciously excruciating moment when he has to use his first tampon. Consider the gratification of seeing your little girl all dressed up in the ugliest f***ing prom dress you can lay your hands on. (“If a wrist corsage was good enough for me, young lady, it’s good enough for YOU.”)

Yeah, I guess I’m not as enlightened as I’d like to be.

But come on, that would be FUN.

As someone in my obscenely late early 30’s, one of the life truths I’ve come to know is that, all too often, people aren’t the façade they present to the world.

Occasionally, that’s a good thing.

From a very macho Italian guy from the Bronx, who I worked with until recently:

“I used to man the men’s room at a strip club from noon to 4. Couldn’t start earlier, ‘cause I took ballet classes in the morning.”

Mostly, it’s not.

From a lovely, spiritual goddess type I got to know in a week-long personal growth seminar:

“My brother just doesn’t get it – he is so unenlightened. So I tried to have him killed.”

From an extended family member, who lived with me and who I didn’t know was an alcoholic:

“Yes, that’s vodka in the toilet bowl. I didn’t think you’d look in there.”

From a high-level executive and family man at the company I used to work for:

(looking out his office window with binoculars as his employees walk by the office) God, there are some HOT women in that building!

From a female friend who’s a senior HR executive at a global company:

“Our president bet me that I wouldn’t make out with this woman in sales, so I did. I won fifty bucks.”

From a woman I worked with who embezzled almost a million dollars:

(to the judge) “I wanted to get cornrows, and those are expensive. And then, you know, you just get carried away.” (She was white, which makes it even worse.)

I went to a conference in Dallas last week, and as I was driving to my hotel, I passed a billboard for the convention center, which was breathlessly promoting the upcoming GUN AND KNIFE SHOW.

This couldn’t have made me prouder, of course, since I’m all for killing things for no better reason than the thrill of it, or for the feeling of complete and utter control over the life of another living being.

That’s just good fun.

But as a longtime aficionado of the standard GUN SHOW, where one can purchase enough firepower and ammo to blow up a BET convention or the parking lot of a Home Depot – often without the inconvenience of either a license or a waiting period – I had to nonetheless congratulate the sensitive, self-aware individual whose idea was it to add knives to the mix.

I mean, it only makes sense. We live in a crazy world where technology is splintering our connections with others. We text rather than talk, email instead of visit, and “check in” at glamorous locales for no other reason than to make others jealous.

These are not real connections. Clearly, people are longing for a true sense of community and oneness. What better way to re-establish a sense of actual, physical connection than by killing things in an up close and personal way? And what accomplishes this better than a blunt knife?

Sure, some might argue that Texas is a state where the mascot is a bullet wound. And that the only reason they’ve added knives to the gun show is because once you own a rifle, a shotgun, a semi-automatic pistol and an AK-47, you go looking for a new high.

But I believe that this is about the all-too-human need to connect with someone or something else; to see the terror in the eyes of the person or animal you’re offing. Shooting something from a secure location a hundred yards away does not give one the sense of attachment and kinship that plunging a hunting knife into its jugular does.

And in support of this mission to bring souls closer, I encourage the creators of the GUN AND KNIFE SHOW to go one step further, and add even simpler items to their line-up of murder weapons – things we all have lying around the house. Things that will make it a snap to just up and kill and thus, commune.

I would suggest ice tongs.

Or a garden rake.

Or maybe some pinking shears. 

Items like these would not only invoke that simpler, more connected time, they would insure the necessity of real hand-to-hand combat, mere inches apart, often for impossibly long and uncomfortable and messy periods of time.

Which would provide you, the compassionate and deeply connected human being, the opportunity to come away from this event a changed person; made just a little bit better by having to kill that deer, or that guy who cut you off, or that neighbor who plays the drums at 2 a.m. by ripping open their intestines, painstakingly and personally, with a plaque scraper.

It is, quite simply, a killing that says, “I care.”

A friend of mine at work just announced that he is leaving his job at the TV network we work for and moving with his partner to Palm Springs.

Who DOES that at our age? Who just quits their job and moves to a retirement community like Palm Springs? It’s like a driven, fortyish New York Jew moving to Boca. Is he also planning to start driving a ’72 land yacht and eating dinner at 4:15?

Don’t get me wrong – Palm Springs is awesome. In fact, it’s the ultimate goal for lots of us gay folk. It is often portrayed as nothing more than a hot, desert wasteland with a little taste, a sort of Hell with Architecture. But it’s actually a spectacularly beautiful resort community with small-town quaintness and an overlay of swank sophistication. I call it Gayberry (like the old Andy Griffith town of Mayberry, but with a lot more homos).

The thing is, it shouldn’t be someone’s ultimate goal in their early 40’s.

In our 40’s, we should all be working our way up the ladder, accumulating cars and houses and stuff to put in those cars and houses. We should all be stressed because we have to work insane hours in order to afford all those cars and houses and stuff to put in those cars and houses. We should live in large cities and require constant stimulation and wake up each morning wondering whether any of this has any meaning.

We should NOT be uprooting ourselves and moving to a quieter existence in a town where we actually have time to think. Nor should we be downscaling our monetary ambitions and finding ourselves satisfied with less. That is, as far as I’m concerned, just crazy talk.

What good can possibly come of such a life? He’ll be disconnected from the glamorous life in LA, where you can go to dinner at any one of a hundred five-star restaurants, assuming the traffic isn’t bad enough that you go on a shooting rampage (that often delays dinner). He won’t get invited to glitzy premiere parties, where you can eat artichoke-stuffed dates while you’re bum-rushed off the red carpet in favor of the latest hair-pulling reality star. He won’t have easy access to the beach that no one goes to unless they can’t afford air conditioning or they live on it.

In Palm Springs, he’ll be forced to go to the same restaurants over and over, where people will learn his name, which is clearly an invasion of privacy. He’ll have to deal with CostCo lines which, although quicker because there’s about 5% as many residents, will be filled with walker-laden geezers complaining about their bursitis while they fumble for coupons for what feels like minutes. And he’ll have to sit by his pool, where the sounds of nothing but the breeze and the spa waterfall will force him to think – really think about what he’s done.

And I hope that, when he realizes exactly what he’s done, he feels absolutely, unforgivably terrible – that he didn’t take me with him. Thoughtless bastard.

My mother passed away last Saturday, which is the kind of thing that doesn’t really lend itself to amusing blog posts. But if you’ve read any of my writings about her, you might know that she’s given me a lot of material to work with.

And since we elected not to have a public ceremony, below is the eulogy I would have given had I had the opportunity.

_______________

For those who know, I wrote a book about my childhood in which my mom was not always painted kindly. Calling your mother “General Patton in pedal pushers” would, in most cases, probably result in gunfire and a grand jury…but to her credit, Mom was never anything but 1000% supportive. Even when the spotlight that I shined on her was a little bit harsh.

But, you see, I had a very good reason to be judgmental. You see, when I look at the people my sister and I have become as adults, and I see the lives we find ourselves saddled with, it’s very clear that it was all our mother’s fault.

Here, then, are 5 Reasons Elaine was a Bad Mother:

She worked nonstop – at her career, and at home taking care of us – and took very little time to relax. Watching this growing up, it taught my sister and I the importance of responsibility and hard work, which, let’s face it, are a big, fat bummer. I, for one, am a creative person – I should be all “Oh, I don’t have time to pay the electric bill, I’m busy being inspired!” But mom did not nurture our inner lazy, fat slob, like any good mother would. Instead, she made us into these responsible, reasonably good citizens. Uggh.

She read Time Magazine cover to cover every week, and took us to church every Sunday and Wednesday, and chattered endlessly about the state of the world. This blather about politics and Christian values and how to make society better made us more concerned about contributing something positive to the world than in taking advantage of people for our own gain. And had we learned how to screw other people, we’d probably each have four homes now.

She was extraordinarily generous – Christmas at the Poole house was a cavalcade of gifts that made it look like a Macy’s had exploded in our basement. And whether it was presents for the family, or flowers for someone who was sick, or graduation gifts for umpteen distant relatives and friends’ kids, or cards – all handwritten and full of the kindest expressions of love and concern – it made the rest of us look bad. I have never been as good at all these kinds of generosity as she was – my sister Valerie is much better – and trying to live up to a standard this impossibly high just made me feel like a loser. So, once again, you can see why she was just a terrible mother.

She had an amazing gift for being interested in others. If you encountered her at church or a dinner party or the office, you came away feeling as if you were the most important person in the room. Needless to say, my sister and I watched this – and have tried to mimic it ever since. And you can imagine how dangerous and irresponsible this kind of activity is, since giving friends and family unrealistically high self-esteem just sets them up for a fall, right? I mean, I’m only thinking of others when I say that this type of overly thoughtful and supportive behavior makes Elaine a very bad role model.

I’ve always wondered if maybe our mother didn’t really want kids when she first had us – I think she really wanted to be Gloria Steinem, but without all the protesting and ponchos. Now, I have no idea if this is true, since Valerie and I preferred to speculate wildly rather than ask. But when we were young, it wasn’t really clear whether she wanted us around. There were a lot of tantrums – usually related to her amusingly OCD need for a perfect house. But as Valerie and I became young adults, and she became middle-aged, everything changed. I think we all grew up.

And this is the last reason she was a bad mother. When we were young, she set up an expectation that she wasn’t gonna be the greatest mom a kid could ask for. And then she turned that expectation on its head. Because she became the most supportive, the most loving, the most accepting mother Valerie and I could have ever asked for. And trust me, we gave her a lot of things to have to “accept”.

Don’t get me wrong, up to the end she was still a little OCD. When she was in the hospital, recuperating from heart valve surgery, she fell while trying to CLEAN the floor of her room. IN ICU.

A few months later, I was visiting her in rehab, and she hadn’t walked for months and was very weak. We were sitting outside in this gazebo on a beautiful day, and I said to her, “What’s the first thing you’d like to do once you’re well?” She paused and thought about it for a moment, and then replied, “Just walk around the house. And dust.”

Mom, I know you’re dusting that giant living room in the sky. And I’m sure it sparkles like it never has before. And I can’t wait to pick up a dustrag and a can of Pledge and join you.