On Corian Countertops and Dropping the Kayfabe Act

I know two things aren’t metaphors for each other. For now, I'll just write them in the same sentence, let them lie next to each other.

My mom and stepdad had only moved into a new condo a couple years ago during the pandemic. They were still settling in, and mom was forever bugging him to unpack all of his golf and senior softball paraphernalia in the second bedroom, get them out of plastic tubs. 

Both wanted to get new countertops, but mom especially. It took forever to happen. Then mom died, and the counters still hadn’t come. As with everything else, a prolonged delay of a countertop installation resonates differently after your mom dies. 

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The countertops were Corian, a DuPont-made material that’s indestructible. I know about Corian because, back when we lived in Brooklyn, we were looking at countertops and considered Corian for our kitchen, since we couldn’t afford granite or Quartz or poured cement. 

The Sears guy we worked with was this dyed-in-the-wool Long Island Italian Stallion. Picture a blue Oxfords with horn and crucifix necklaces. He’d swing by, show us samples of cabinet finishes and countertops. One day, he mentioned in passing that the longest, continuous Corian countertop in the Western hemisphere was right here in Brooklyn, at a nightclub on Marcy Avenue. That’s in Williamsburg about five blocks from my old place, I thought. 

Then I realized: I had DJ’d at that place once — let’s put “DJ’d” in quotes, really, since it was me playing disco on a single turntable. But still: I’d been there! Home of the famous Corian countertop!

I told my mom all this when they were talking counters to cheer her up — she’d broken her hip and had whole afternoons to just shoot the shit in the rehab place. She loved this kind of story: stupid, maybe inconsequential, but still personal. Small world-type stories. 

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But I wasn’t done with my Corian countertop story! Years later, I went to see this band called Girls, Girls, Girls, the all-female tribute to Mötley Crüe, at the Brooklyn Bowl. I had written about Judas Priestess a couple years earlier, and there were shared band members. And I was invited to the after-party! Where was it? Marcy Avenue, same address. Turns out the Boogaloo Lounge had turned into a Duff’s, a heavy metal bar. The decor had drastically changed, with studs and black spiderwebs and black lights. 

I didn’t fit in with the crowd that night, like, at all, but I did talk to a young man with black eyeliner and multiple piercings, long enough to ask, Did you know that this bar is in fact the largest continuous piece of Corian countertop in the Northern hemisphere?

Maybe he was just being nice, I told my mom. But he seemed super impressed.

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My old therapist told me to keep a notebook by the bed so that, when I was taken up by fears and imagined disasters as I tried to sleep, writing them down would make them go away. In my experience, writing about disasters and fears never, ever worked to keep my disasters or fear at bay, but this therapist was a gentle soul and I obliged. 

The fears and disasters I wrote down qualify as cliche movie tropes. Looking off cliffs. Bricks or air conditioners falling from tall buildings. Fender benders. Hammers on fingers. And knives, so many knives. As each scene played out in my head, I’d lie in bed and, at some point, jerk my body awake. Then I’d write it down.

I kept this practice long after my therapist stopped seeing each other and she retired. Turns out writing down fearful shit doesn’t help much, but it does give me some head-scratchers for the next morning.

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The nightstand notebook has a page where I wrote, in neat cursive, three words: “breaking kayfabe pain.” 

I don’t remember writing it, but I do have a date, March 3, 2024, above it. My friend Marion taught me the term “kayfabe” years ago, how it came from professional wrestling, where there are all kinds of scripted, pre-planned pantomime in the ring. That’s the kayfabe part. 

Now, breaking kayfabe, that’s when something goes wrong. In wrestling, it’s when someone gets really hurt or cut up. It’s breaking character, essentially, talking to the camera or audience. It’s when shit gets real. 

So why “breaking kayfabe pain”? —and the feeling I lost yet another decent thought to get down on paper. I am hoping it comes back to me, but all I have are guesses. 

It can’t be inconsequential that I wrote those words down the night of March 3, 2024. Anything that happens in the days before and after one’s mother dies, as mine did, becomes weighted with meaning, metaphors for something else. 

According to my calendar, I was looking at a full Monday of marking papers, job interviews, a background check to fill out for a temp job that seemed sketchy, and a Zoom about freelance work.

My family sees birds or animals and sees them as signs from the afterlife. A cardinal at on tree branch? That’s grandpop trying to say something. A squirrel on a lounge chair while drinking the morning coffee? That’s Patti saying, “make sure those damn countertops get installed.”

I’m not as animal-centered in my after-death communication beliefs. I can’t help but look at my nightmare notebook entry page with “breaking kayfabe pain” and make some link to my mom dying 10 days later. For now, I will just write them in the same sentence, let them lie next to each other.

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If you take the train between New York City and Albany, you will spot an island in the middle of the Hudson River, just west of Beacon, NY. The island is taken up by a structure, Bannerman Castle. From the New York side, you see battlements and barbicans, turrets and towers, corbels and portcullises. Look closer, and you see that it’s all facade, a storage facility for a Scottish businessman named Bannerman who sold military surplus on Long Island in the late 19th century. He used the faux castle as a munitions arsenal. That, and a summer home. As one does.

You might already guess why I am telling you all this. It’s going to be a clumsy metaphor, so strap yourselves in. 

Here it is: so much of academia and stupid capitalism, so much of life and our presentation of our selves to each other in everyday life, they’re just facade creations, often set up by other people. I mean, a fake castle on an abandoned island, positioned so that people can see it from the train and be impressed? How much more metaphor do we need? 

We took a tour of the island a couple years ago. The guide told us that there was a huge explosion on the island in 1969 that darn near blew everything up. The guide presented this as some sort of tragic, preventable accident. 

Me, I couldn’t help but think, a facade castle filled with bombs and bullets, and it’s a surprise that the whole thing blew up?

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I can try to write what I want to get across without metaphor.

Here goes: I long to be in the space of performing myself and, at the same time, letting others in on the performance. I want people to know that I am trying to be a real person, with a particular character or mode of presentation, and let them in on the fact that I will always fail. I’m awkward, nervous, but also want to make connections with people, so I tend to let people in before I’m found out. 

I think that’s why I am into fallen divas or washed-up rock stars. These are artists who keep up appearances because their survival depends on it, right? 

Wait, that was me using metaphor. I’ll stop.

For everyday non-rockstars, what is the equivalent? It’s when you lose your job or your mom dies or you’re old and fear you’re not being present as a husband and father. Then you’re supposed to just have some small talk about freelance work in a Starbucks, or talk about next steps or work flows or strategic plans.

A metaphor, taken literally, is false.

A metaphor that is taken metaphorically is true in at least two ways.

Thinking over this kind of stuff helps me cope and bugs the shit out of me at the same time.

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In the past couple years, this set of feelings has felt more and more intense, rising to the surface. I could sense my workplace, and by extension career and the whole way of defining myself as a writer-professor, just crumbling around me.

I could not stop that iceberg heading our way — the declining enrollments, the calcifying decision-making, the loss of vision and focus — and there was nothing I could do about it, except for maybe updating my LinkedIn profile and hoping time would slow down. No matter what I could do, I think about how I knew that facade would fall. Or blow up. 

I think about breaking kayfabe, the real inflection moments in my life. My dad abandoning our family when  I was 16. Moving to New York City. Meeting my wife. Writing triumphs. Moving out of New York City. The birth of each daughter. Writing failures. Succeeding as a teacher.

I had gotten to the point, I thought, where these inflection points might slow down. Maybe I could just grow old, keep things smaller-scale. No more breaking kayfabe for me. This is the very definition of naive.

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Kayfabe is pig Latin for “be fake.” 

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I have wasted my life.

That’s the last line of a famous poem by James Wright, “Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota.” It’s one of those deep image, riddle poems that some people love and some people hate, depending on which poetry school one pledges allegiance to.

I think about that line a lot these days. Sure, I know I’m not wasting my life. I’m working. Our kids are awesome and they’re about to burst into blossom as these impressive adults, and it’s wondrous to watch. My wife and I walk our dog, Leo, and we talk about our future in positive and loving ways. But that noonday demon, the black bear, it’s always there. 

Mom used to call it the feeling down-in-the-dumps — such a mom way to put it. 

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A couple weeks ago, Bill sent an email to my sister and two aunts with the subject line “Countertops.” 

“Nan finally has her countertops and the coffee station. ”

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I have passed like a dozen background checks in the past couple weeks. It’s standard operating procedure when job searching, but a corner of my mind thinks that the check will come back with a detail from my past I had completely forgotten. Did I encounter a spy at Dirty Frank’s in Philadelphia in 1991? Rub shoulders with drug runners in the East Village in 1999? It’s possible! I want to think I possess some sort of dangerous part of my past. 

Back when I taught at colleges in New York City as an adjunct, my pay worked out to be just above minimum wage. Because of the low pay and that I was too busy working real jobs to subsidize my teaching habit, my assignments were basically souped-up versions of writing prompts from grad school. 

The colleges didn’t care. One thing on the plus side of adjunct work comes from doing whatever the fuck you want to do. 

Cut to thirty years later, and I’m dragging gigabytes of lesson plans, videos, rubrics, and student work over to an external drive, never to be opened again.

Another inflection point. Another break from being fake. I am putting old papers and printouts into the fire pit. 

In my heart of hearts, I don’t think I have wasted my life. But I am setting a lot of it on fire.

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Thank you for reading, as always. I apologize in advance for any typos. They drive me crazy when I spot them after I send this out.

Or maybe just buy me a coffee.