(cockroaches, part 2)
From the Insect edition of The Daily Beast I'm getting this: in New Zealand female snails exposed to the chemical TBT grow penises from their heads. An invasive species of predatory shrimp in England often leaves its prey uneaten after killing it.
You can only conclude: the insects are different than you and me.
As for cockroaches the more I find out, the more I respect the power of their culture. And fear it. You'll shake your head but it's a little reminiscent of the Tea Party Movement: relentless, oblivious. Instinctively proud. Seemingly fearless. Bound by a Darwinian obsession that anger, not might, makes right. And the more you say, 'but you are of no consequence, you don't represent anything significant. You just live...." The more they smile condescendingly. "Go Crimson, boom-ba," they say and so caustically.
Go Crimson boom-ba to you, you say, but you're not serious. You have no idea what you're saying, but they do.
It's their intelligence I've begun to understand. I see it. After all, they've been here for 2 billion years; they must have experienced some evolutionary upgrade. Recently, a scientist counted 1,000,000 brain cells in a cockroach, a fraction of the 100,000,000,000 humans have, but the point is they're on the board. They're still way down the totem but they're starting to make a run. And so when they feel the heat wind of your presence they can drop off a counter, a four foot free fall, with no thought, as though they're genetically trained for this, which I suppose they are, and then land like moon rovers and move off.
Moreover, they're don't have a hive like ants. There's no Hq. They operate much like al qaeda cells. And they're always looking for a new forward operating base. When you find one on a chair two rooms from the kitchen then you're seeing a searcher. A probe. And when they see you they spread the word. I am convinced they use a kind of neural IM facility. Insect telepathy. How else to explain the way they scatter, no two in the same direction. They know what they have to do as individuals in order to survive as a group.
And where do they hide? In a place "where they can feel pressure on their back." This according to the Terminex man. Like those bed-in-a-drawer stops in Japanese airports. It's as though you liked to sleep under the sofa, or in the overhead compartment in an airplane, or if you had the capacity to get in the crawl space behind the books in your bookshelf.
As an aside, this is from "Cecil's Storehouse of Human Knowledge," written in 1983, in answer to the question, what's the best way to kill cockroaches?
Calm yourself and pay attention to your Uncle Cecil. There are two proven approaches to dealing with la cucaracha: (1) borax, and (2) arson. Assuming your landlord objects to the latter line of attack, hie yourself down to the basement and mix up the following recipe: 4 parts borax, 2 parts flour, and 1 part cocoa powder.
Now, you may regard borax as "pansy-ass," but that's because you're young and ignorant and haven't yet grasped the subtleties of Total Insect Warfare, which requires fanatical dedication. You must mix up oodles of this stuff and apply it with the enthusiasm of Robert S. McNamara dumping Agent Orange on the Mekong Delta. Pour it in a continuous line along the walls. Put an extra dose under sinks and around kitchen cabinets. Hell, fill your damned house to a depth of one foot with the stuff. The little bastards will die piteously, I promise.
Incidentally, should you also be happen to be troubled by rats, I have here an ingenious formula for inducing rat death: Mix equal parts cement and flour. Place a pan of this powder out next to a pan of water. The rats eat the cement, then they drink the water, and by the next morning their bowels have turned to concrete. Sadistic, eh? I knew you'd love it.
We tried all that. Maybe it works. Not clear. Or else simply soapy water in a plastic spray bottle, envelop them in dish soap and they die right before you, suffocated, but you have to clean up, otherwise, night of the living dead, they revive, pick themselves up out of the drear and zombie back to the survival at hand. But yesterday the Terminex man arrived; an Irishman no less, the Terminating Angel; Sir-X-terminator, or simply Charon, the ferryman, coming for his vermin passengers.... And that is the best word to describe them: vermin — as difficult as that word is to use. Even now. When I grew up "vermin" was like "The Holocaust"; it had only one context, Jewish extermination. The word was out of bounds. If you used it in any context other than this particular historical one there was the suggestion, and the feeling just by saying it, that you were being anti-semitic.
Nevertheless, lately in my doldrum — when I turn on the midnight kitchen light and there they are, a dozen in all sizes, as though caught in some pornography, Satanic insect-baby abuse, suddenly six legs to the wind, running for any corner or shadow — that's when the word rings true. Even the sound of it is precise and evocative. Vermin. Something underneath, subterranean, but versatile, a smoothly adaptive thing like vermouth. Vermin. Verminesque. Verminating. Vermined! As though the despicable nature of roaches is below mentioning, at the root's end of evil — and incidentally we're including rats but not foxes or birds, although they're vermin.... As though the despicable nature of these creatures is boundless, beyond God or His understanding — and they don't care, they don't know, it's not efficient to worry, only to survive, so they're always on the move. Don't you marvel at the roach reich's ability to direct droids to find sustenance in shit, rot and grease; even the detritus you'd find in a dust breeze: body parts, fecal and pusicles. They are the filthiest of filthy, not to mention eating the glue that holds books together, undoing civilization, itself.
They've drawn me completely into their little 'talk shows'. That's where it's at. I think of little else. And now all the analogies and metaphors are merging. I don't know what's right or wrong. And it's so subtle, but also insistent, insatiable. I don't go into the kitchen anymore, ever, without having to confront their existence, without having to arm myself, to get set to kill. Anybody that knows about this, knows it's total war. Late at night I've been conceiving of an autobiogaphy. The title is "Call Me Gregor Samsa".
Sep 24, 2010
Sep 14, 2010
Sep 12, 2010
Three months ago an advance guard of German cockroaches arrived in the kitchen. They took up positions under the oven and frig, and, for a time, in the frig door hinges, as well as in a stereo receiver above the frig and in the microwave on a nearby counter. I can barely stand to use the microwave anymore.
Several even made their way down a short hall into the HP printer in our bedroom. The printer sits on a 20-inch high wooden book case. Wires from the printer run up to a table with an i-mac. Occasionally, you'll be looking at the screen and on top of the computer frame you'll notice something, and then you realize what it is and that you're being observed, by an intelligent life form, no less — by what looks like a little brown man crawling along with a surf board on his back.
I kill it immediately, and wherever there's one there's always another one. I kill them all immediately. And now it's become what you might think of as hand-to-hand combat. I, and now we, use books, magazines, the bottom of bottles, cans, plastic bags, old sponges, the broom, cooking tins, and our shoes. Roaches are prevalent around midnight, according to one sources I found. I verified that and sometimes — although it's hard, I have an increasing aversion — but sometimes I'll show up just then, throw on the switch and sure enough they're scurrying between oven and the frig. I step on them as quickly as I can. I may get 10 or more and make a special effort to get the smallest ones. I hesitate to use the word 'babies'.
Through an exterminator we traced the invasion to a man living in a downstairs apartment. He eats largely fried foods, the smell is horrific. The exterminator told us he'd never seen such a dirty kitchen. By the way, the man smokes himself to death. He must be in the last stages of emphyzema, the sound of his wretching late at night or early in the morning is death-defying. Yet whenever I see him he's striding down the street at a fast clip, with a placid expression, in his blue baseball cap with the name of a U.S. navy destroyer over the bill.
Lately, I've begun to think he may have lost his job because I hear him during the day, which I never did before. I assume he watches the Horse Racing Network because I hear him yelling out, "C'mon run, c'mon you can do it, run you bastard'. And then suddenly, inevitably silence.
I've asked the landlord to say something but he's reticent and doesn't. There is an illegality here that I won't go into. In any case, the exterminator comes every six weeks but he needs to come every day for six weeks. We've begun using Borax powder, spreading it in all the usual places, on ingress and egress routes as we used to say at SAC Hq.
Naturally, we have employed roach motels. But I've found the roaches always find a counter measure. I look in the motels and there are rarely any residents. These roaches are nearly human in their ingenuity and determination. I feel I am now leading a counter insurgency but frankly I don't know if I can win. This is the problem: I have no hearts and minds to convince.
Or do I? This is what I'm getting to.
You understand what I'm facing. The other morning, around 11, I walked into the kitchen unexpectedly and approached the sink. I didn't see the roach but it saw me and jumped off the top of a bread board on to a counter, which is fake, black fleck marble. I couldn't see the damn thing. I slammed the toaster on a shadow, I hammered the plastic dish rack on where I thought it might have gone. I tore everything up and nothing. I don't if it got away or not.
Later, I remembered two interior designers I interviewed years ago. Husband and wife. Quite attractive people but strange. One of them, I can't remember which now, had a withered arm. I think it was the woman. They always wore black. Black suit, black shit; black pants, black blouse. Their design breakthrough they told me was that they always did kitchens in black marble. This was their signature. It seemed like magic to them because they claimed that with black counters you couldn't see a mess. You could leave the dishes after a dinner party and it looked like an interesting photograph or painting. With black any deformity became artistic.
But you see now I don't know whether I killed that roach or not. I assume it's still there, out in that black marble no-man's land, but I don't want to look too earnestly. The other day I threw up just thinking about going in the kitchen...
If I had my way the kitchen would be virgin white. I would design miniature search lights and barbed wire. I would employ gheckos. Which I did years ago. This was in the mid 1970s. I lived in an apartment at 94th and Riverside Dr. in Manhattan. Nat King Cole's daughter lived on the same floor. Terrible infestation of roaches. So I bought a gecko and set it loose in this little pullman kitchen. You'd come home at night and that thing would be upside down on the ceiling. Sometimes it would run very fast from one end of the room to another. It made a lot of noise.
I don't know if it made any difference. I went away once on a trip out of the country and a colleague stayed in the apartment. He claimed he got the gecko stoned on dope. I don't remember what happened after that.
(end of part 1)
Several even made their way down a short hall into the HP printer in our bedroom. The printer sits on a 20-inch high wooden book case. Wires from the printer run up to a table with an i-mac. Occasionally, you'll be looking at the screen and on top of the computer frame you'll notice something, and then you realize what it is and that you're being observed, by an intelligent life form, no less — by what looks like a little brown man crawling along with a surf board on his back.
I kill it immediately, and wherever there's one there's always another one. I kill them all immediately. And now it's become what you might think of as hand-to-hand combat. I, and now we, use books, magazines, the bottom of bottles, cans, plastic bags, old sponges, the broom, cooking tins, and our shoes. Roaches are prevalent around midnight, according to one sources I found. I verified that and sometimes — although it's hard, I have an increasing aversion — but sometimes I'll show up just then, throw on the switch and sure enough they're scurrying between oven and the frig. I step on them as quickly as I can. I may get 10 or more and make a special effort to get the smallest ones. I hesitate to use the word 'babies'.
Through an exterminator we traced the invasion to a man living in a downstairs apartment. He eats largely fried foods, the smell is horrific. The exterminator told us he'd never seen such a dirty kitchen. By the way, the man smokes himself to death. He must be in the last stages of emphyzema, the sound of his wretching late at night or early in the morning is death-defying. Yet whenever I see him he's striding down the street at a fast clip, with a placid expression, in his blue baseball cap with the name of a U.S. navy destroyer over the bill.
Lately, I've begun to think he may have lost his job because I hear him during the day, which I never did before. I assume he watches the Horse Racing Network because I hear him yelling out, "C'mon run, c'mon you can do it, run you bastard'. And then suddenly, inevitably silence.
I've asked the landlord to say something but he's reticent and doesn't. There is an illegality here that I won't go into. In any case, the exterminator comes every six weeks but he needs to come every day for six weeks. We've begun using Borax powder, spreading it in all the usual places, on ingress and egress routes as we used to say at SAC Hq.
Naturally, we have employed roach motels. But I've found the roaches always find a counter measure. I look in the motels and there are rarely any residents. These roaches are nearly human in their ingenuity and determination. I feel I am now leading a counter insurgency but frankly I don't know if I can win. This is the problem: I have no hearts and minds to convince.
Or do I? This is what I'm getting to.
You understand what I'm facing. The other morning, around 11, I walked into the kitchen unexpectedly and approached the sink. I didn't see the roach but it saw me and jumped off the top of a bread board on to a counter, which is fake, black fleck marble. I couldn't see the damn thing. I slammed the toaster on a shadow, I hammered the plastic dish rack on where I thought it might have gone. I tore everything up and nothing. I don't if it got away or not.
Later, I remembered two interior designers I interviewed years ago. Husband and wife. Quite attractive people but strange. One of them, I can't remember which now, had a withered arm. I think it was the woman. They always wore black. Black suit, black shit; black pants, black blouse. Their design breakthrough they told me was that they always did kitchens in black marble. This was their signature. It seemed like magic to them because they claimed that with black counters you couldn't see a mess. You could leave the dishes after a dinner party and it looked like an interesting photograph or painting. With black any deformity became artistic.
But you see now I don't know whether I killed that roach or not. I assume it's still there, out in that black marble no-man's land, but I don't want to look too earnestly. The other day I threw up just thinking about going in the kitchen...
If I had my way the kitchen would be virgin white. I would design miniature search lights and barbed wire. I would employ gheckos. Which I did years ago. This was in the mid 1970s. I lived in an apartment at 94th and Riverside Dr. in Manhattan. Nat King Cole's daughter lived on the same floor. Terrible infestation of roaches. So I bought a gecko and set it loose in this little pullman kitchen. You'd come home at night and that thing would be upside down on the ceiling. Sometimes it would run very fast from one end of the room to another. It made a lot of noise.
I don't know if it made any difference. I went away once on a trip out of the country and a colleague stayed in the apartment. He claimed he got the gecko stoned on dope. I don't remember what happened after that.
(end of part 1)
Sep 10, 2010
Jimmy? Not the brightest bulb on the porch and sometimes, it goes out altogether. Just pitch black and you can whack it all you like and it still won't come on. Mamma Jimmy says, not her fault she always put that Borax in his cereal. So he does a little time here, a little time there. Then his friend Mikey Areola has an idea. It’s big. We gonna rob Peter to pay Paul. Sound good? Jimmy’s all ears: “what’s the plan?” You like hospitals right, says Mikey? “I don’t go to any”, says Jimmy. That’s okay, says Mikey, there’s a VA down in Escondito. We go down there, I know a nurse, we get to look around, maybe see where the meds are. You know what I mean? Sure, Jimmy gets it. “I like meds. That’s easy, then whatta we do?” Then, says Mike-o-rama, we sell ‘em. “Like out on the street?” says Jimmy. Out on the street, says Mikey. Real easy. Can’t miss. “I’m in”, says Jimmy. “I like it when it’s easy.”
So they hop down to Escondito, slip into the emergency room where Big Joannie does security. Carries a stick and a real mean expression. People look at Big Joannie and they’re thinkin’, I don’t like you. That’s okay, says Mikey, you’ll get used to it. “Yea, but I still don’t like her,” says Jimmy. “Plus who made her that big? That’s big.” Leave it to me, says Mikey. So he talks to Big Joannie on her break and says, now you know I’m gonna cut you in 50/50. Like old times, right? You just get us some — he pronounces it ‘more fine’ — some morphine and we’ll be gone and I’ll send you the proceeds in about a week. Shouldn’t be any longer than that. If it is, I pay interest.
Joannie’s not a smiling person but the bulb is always burning. Plus she’s got kids. She loves those kids. Little Bubba and Littler Bubba. Sure, says Big Joannie, with her sly eye real big. You just stay right here.
So she’s gone like maybe 20 minutes. Jimmy’s feeling good already. He likes the emergency room. Plus they got good magazines. So Big Joannie comes back with a little white bag. Here it is, she says but nothing is gonna put a smile on that face. You just run along now, she says and they do.
But just as soon as they’re out the twirling doors boys ‘n blue are all over that case. “What’s this?” says Jimmy. Grand theft, says the cop throwing on the links, fooling with a police officer, possession of stolen stuff, on and on. And meanwhile, Big Joannie’s lookin’ out. Like a bee, she’s saying, and dancn’ up and down.
So they hop down to Escondito, slip into the emergency room where Big Joannie does security. Carries a stick and a real mean expression. People look at Big Joannie and they’re thinkin’, I don’t like you. That’s okay, says Mikey, you’ll get used to it. “Yea, but I still don’t like her,” says Jimmy. “Plus who made her that big? That’s big.” Leave it to me, says Mikey. So he talks to Big Joannie on her break and says, now you know I’m gonna cut you in 50/50. Like old times, right? You just get us some — he pronounces it ‘more fine’ — some morphine and we’ll be gone and I’ll send you the proceeds in about a week. Shouldn’t be any longer than that. If it is, I pay interest.
Joannie’s not a smiling person but the bulb is always burning. Plus she’s got kids. She loves those kids. Little Bubba and Littler Bubba. Sure, says Big Joannie, with her sly eye real big. You just stay right here.
So she’s gone like maybe 20 minutes. Jimmy’s feeling good already. He likes the emergency room. Plus they got good magazines. So Big Joannie comes back with a little white bag. Here it is, she says but nothing is gonna put a smile on that face. You just run along now, she says and they do.
But just as soon as they’re out the twirling doors boys ‘n blue are all over that case. “What’s this?” says Jimmy. Grand theft, says the cop throwing on the links, fooling with a police officer, possession of stolen stuff, on and on. And meanwhile, Big Joannie’s lookin’ out. Like a bee, she’s saying, and dancn’ up and down.
Aug 6, 2010
Twenty years later Walsh returns, the ever reluctant visitor,
driving alone up out of the flats, past Our Lady of the Good Cadillacs
and the Polo Lounge, where martinis forever circled.
The patrons in those days, old friends of his father,
Eventually, he comes to the fork. To the right, the road runs up and over a ridge
the likes of Katleman and Bautzer, were $1,000-a-point backgammon players
and idea tycoons, much bigger than Mad Men. They wore diamond
cufflinks and oversized dark glasses, and carried alligator skin address books
filled with the unpublished numbers of studio heads,
Vegas casino owners, and starlets held in private-reserve.
The reluctant visitor — the ‘late Mr. Walsh‘ is how he thinks of himself —
The reluctant visitor — the ‘late Mr. Walsh‘ is how he thinks of himself —
continues up Coldwater Canyon, turning left at the fire station and the park
where he once ran down fly balls by the bucket full,
past the orange grove, underneath hanging tennis courts, and up beyond the house
where one of Errol Flynn‘s ex-wives once lived. Everything once and once upon a time.
Eventually, he comes to the fork. To the right, the road runs up and over a ridge
to Franklin Canyon and then up a long fire break through this part of the Santa Monica mountains to a ridgeline and Mullholland Dr., where forty-one years ago, in a ravine off the Drive, a Great Dane found her body
Aug 4, 2010
On the way to Providence, we stopped in Manhattan. I hadn't been back in years. It was younger and richer, thinner and cleaner than I remembered. More women than men; less diverse and vacant, at least just west of Grammercy Park, where everywhere you looked office space was up for lease or sale. Otherwise, the last of July was just as humid and earthy as I remembered.
We stayed with my wife's friend, Justine. She lives off 5th down almost to 14th Street. The building is completely anonymous and one would never guess the wealthy dwellers inside, including, did I get this right, a designer for Donna Karan, whose nanny has two assistants. And then the building’s owner, a nefarious fellow on the top floor with a wheel on his terrace, an enormous wheel that looks like a gyroscopic sculpture entitled, The Zodiac. It has a six-foot diameter; and the challenge is to mount it and hang upside down like a bat and then rotate as though you were on a rotisserie.
Justine’s apartment is in that New York, but perhaps more Jewish tradition. Piles of books and articles, the newest issue of Granta, a C. Bechstein piano with a sheet of Ernest Bloch, for flute and piano, above the keys. Stories by Saul Bellow. Supersex, by Tracey Cox, Stacks of The New York Review of Books, not to mention collection of personal kitsch here and there. And Justine’s own projects. She ghost writes for much less talented people who pay her a good deal of money to describe their trip to the far end of the earth, and occasionally even their emotional trips.
Justine is a talented writer and musician and has various other specialties, obsessions and guises, along with two husbands. One lives in Seattle; the other in Berlin. Interestingly, she spends most of her time in New York. Part of her secret is the distance she keeps, so that she is always hotly desired in some city or other.
It will come as no surprise to add that she is also a member of the Polyamorous Association of New York. That’s not quite the right name — I believe it 's an institute — and so you imagine going to a large second story men’s club, with every wall covered in books and the occasional original drawing or painting of nudes and naughty, and perhaps a small bar in one corner where colleagues stand around and discuss Leon’s Foucault’s pendulum and Michel Foucault’s history of human sexuality, taking time for a little hug, a complement about how great we’re all looking in middle age and perhaps you’d like to see the upstairs…. Justine told me the atmosphere was stodgy, not sexy and that recently she was rudely hugged by a huge man with TWO monocles.
By the way, Justine’s marriages are both legal and each man knows about the other. Although not always happy with this arrangement they abide and one has to assume that sex soothes all disappointments. Exactly the case. Justine is a sex goddess. Not in the conventional sense of the full boobied, blue-eyed blonde, although Justine has large bosoms, which is just the right word in this case, large bosoms, but she is dark, European, with a low woman’s voice — it’s hard to imagine Justine ever having been a girl — and an enveloping, overwhelming earthiness, a de facto sensuality that transcends guilt, shame or perhaps even consciousness itself.
When she decides to sally forth she announces her coming with just the right card, something you’d find at the Met, and you open to find a short, erotic poem that might begin with, “And now let’s get biblical.”
We stayed with my wife's friend, Justine. She lives off 5th down almost to 14th Street. The building is completely anonymous and one would never guess the wealthy dwellers inside, including, did I get this right, a designer for Donna Karan, whose nanny has two assistants. And then the building’s owner, a nefarious fellow on the top floor with a wheel on his terrace, an enormous wheel that looks like a gyroscopic sculpture entitled, The Zodiac. It has a six-foot diameter; and the challenge is to mount it and hang upside down like a bat and then rotate as though you were on a rotisserie.
Justine’s apartment is in that New York, but perhaps more Jewish tradition. Piles of books and articles, the newest issue of Granta, a C. Bechstein piano with a sheet of Ernest Bloch, for flute and piano, above the keys. Stories by Saul Bellow. Supersex, by Tracey Cox, Stacks of The New York Review of Books, not to mention collection of personal kitsch here and there. And Justine’s own projects. She ghost writes for much less talented people who pay her a good deal of money to describe their trip to the far end of the earth, and occasionally even their emotional trips.
Justine is a talented writer and musician and has various other specialties, obsessions and guises, along with two husbands. One lives in Seattle; the other in Berlin. Interestingly, she spends most of her time in New York. Part of her secret is the distance she keeps, so that she is always hotly desired in some city or other.
It will come as no surprise to add that she is also a member of the Polyamorous Association of New York. That’s not quite the right name — I believe it 's an institute — and so you imagine going to a large second story men’s club, with every wall covered in books and the occasional original drawing or painting of nudes and naughty, and perhaps a small bar in one corner where colleagues stand around and discuss Leon’s Foucault’s pendulum and Michel Foucault’s history of human sexuality, taking time for a little hug, a complement about how great we’re all looking in middle age and perhaps you’d like to see the upstairs…. Justine told me the atmosphere was stodgy, not sexy and that recently she was rudely hugged by a huge man with TWO monocles.
By the way, Justine’s marriages are both legal and each man knows about the other. Although not always happy with this arrangement they abide and one has to assume that sex soothes all disappointments. Exactly the case. Justine is a sex goddess. Not in the conventional sense of the full boobied, blue-eyed blonde, although Justine has large bosoms, which is just the right word in this case, large bosoms, but she is dark, European, with a low woman’s voice — it’s hard to imagine Justine ever having been a girl — and an enveloping, overwhelming earthiness, a de facto sensuality that transcends guilt, shame or perhaps even consciousness itself.
When she decides to sally forth she announces her coming with just the right card, something you’d find at the Met, and you open to find a short, erotic poem that might begin with, “And now let’s get biblical.”
Jul 23, 2010
Jul 16, 2010
Just back from lunch with the city's 'last icon'. After all, who better represents the incestuous, convoluted, and contradictory nature of this city? Who better exemplifies its heart and total disregards?
As we sat down he asked if I had any appointments for the afternoon. I shook my head so he ordered drinks and when we finally left the restaurant an hour and some later we were both bobbing and weaving. He was once a middle-weight prize fighter, and showed he could still bob and weave with the best of them.
He looked great by the way. And for a man in his 70s he said he was feeling well, although his left shoulder still gives him fits and a few times I noticed he had difficulty lifting his arm. I told him it was just as well; he shouldn't be diving off any more cliffs up at Yosemite. He did that once, in his 50s, dove off a high cliff into a shallow mountain lake and should have died.
"Yea, don't count me out," he said.
If there's one thing you know about the boss, it is that you never count him out.
He had his characteristic smile; his hair was long and majestic. But at the very top of his forehead the hair turned in a curlicue and from time to time he looked like a laid-back toddler, but salty-mouthed and feisty. He was ever so glad, giggly at the thought, that Ms. K was having some bad hair days lately.
"That little shit," he said.
We traded stories, gossip. Just like the old days. But it was the last story you want hear. I asked him to clarify a long-standing rumor that he'd had a 3-way with Janis Joplin and one of her Lesbian lovers. He smiled his mischievous smile and said that actually there had been a third woman involved and that was the one he fell in love with and who later "saved" him.
Saved you? I asked.
Yes, he said, Janis had gotten jealous of his wandering affection for her friend, woman no. 2, and so gave him a stiff shot of heroin. An injection not to kill him but more to throw strange sand in his face. In that purple haze he remembers being with a lot of people in a public space and then seeing a huge shadow, which at first terrified him and then turned out to be the shadow of an enormous bird that picked him up in its clutches and flew off. He remembers looking down at the world and then it was as though the bird was clobbering him with its wings. The next thing he knew he woke up and there was a woman slapping his face, trying to get him to come to.
Which he did finally, he was saved, and then sometime later he fell in love with that woman, woman no. 3.
I told him it was high time to write his autobiography. He agreed and added that this was probably the right moment because the statute of limitations has run out on most of the crimes he's ever committed.
As we sat down he asked if I had any appointments for the afternoon. I shook my head so he ordered drinks and when we finally left the restaurant an hour and some later we were both bobbing and weaving. He was once a middle-weight prize fighter, and showed he could still bob and weave with the best of them.
He looked great by the way. And for a man in his 70s he said he was feeling well, although his left shoulder still gives him fits and a few times I noticed he had difficulty lifting his arm. I told him it was just as well; he shouldn't be diving off any more cliffs up at Yosemite. He did that once, in his 50s, dove off a high cliff into a shallow mountain lake and should have died.
"Yea, don't count me out," he said.
If there's one thing you know about the boss, it is that you never count him out.
He had his characteristic smile; his hair was long and majestic. But at the very top of his forehead the hair turned in a curlicue and from time to time he looked like a laid-back toddler, but salty-mouthed and feisty. He was ever so glad, giggly at the thought, that Ms. K was having some bad hair days lately.
"That little shit," he said.
We traded stories, gossip. Just like the old days. But it was the last story you want hear. I asked him to clarify a long-standing rumor that he'd had a 3-way with Janis Joplin and one of her Lesbian lovers. He smiled his mischievous smile and said that actually there had been a third woman involved and that was the one he fell in love with and who later "saved" him.
Saved you? I asked.
Yes, he said, Janis had gotten jealous of his wandering affection for her friend, woman no. 2, and so gave him a stiff shot of heroin. An injection not to kill him but more to throw strange sand in his face. In that purple haze he remembers being with a lot of people in a public space and then seeing a huge shadow, which at first terrified him and then turned out to be the shadow of an enormous bird that picked him up in its clutches and flew off. He remembers looking down at the world and then it was as though the bird was clobbering him with its wings. The next thing he knew he woke up and there was a woman slapping his face, trying to get him to come to.
Which he did finally, he was saved, and then sometime later he fell in love with that woman, woman no. 3.
I told him it was high time to write his autobiography. He agreed and added that this was probably the right moment because the statute of limitations has run out on most of the crimes he's ever committed.
Jul 4, 2010
If you're a petition gatherer with white hair, listen up. First thing you need to know is, you're threatening to people. That's why you're not having a lot of success. Now don't get excited. Throttle back. This is not personal, but you need to get a hat.
I got this advice earlier today from Martin at the Fillmore St. Jazz festival while trying to sign up people in support of Wall Street financial reform. This was at the Organizing For America booth in front of the Junior League thrift shop. You couldn't miss it because there was a life-sized cardboard replica of the president, in a superman outfit.
Martin explained this to me. He's an old hand with petitions. First thing is you have to accept that you can be threatening just by the way you look. You could have the heart of a Golden Retriever, the animosity of a shag carpet, but the white hair throws people. It reminds them of the future. If you're 25, even 35, or God help you if you're 45, the last thing you want to think about is getting old. You want Comedy Central. You want cheery. You keep going back to, "There's something about Mary."
But I can hear you saying "yes, but I'm asking people to sign a petition for Wall Street reform and if you've read Paul Krugman we're in for the third great depression since 1873 and there's absolutely nothing we can do about it. The 'Repubicans' are going to block any policy they didn't intuit from watching Ronald Reagan doing 20 Mule Team Borax ads. The world is deserting us. This is serious. The whole culture is bankrupt. And bankers are the most bankrupt of us all, morally speaking."
All true but that's why it's so important to be calm and friendly. You want to think of 'Good morning, America' as you say to people, "Would you like to sign a petition in support of Wall Street financial reform?"
That's actually long winded, because by the time you've said, "would you like to sign a petition," the person or the couple are past you and they're saying over their shoulder, "No thanks." Or, "maybe when I come back." Or, "I did already." Or, "Nope, leave the banks alone and why don't you get a real job."
But isn't activism a real job? It's not what Mark Levin does but it seems like a real job.
Martin says not to go there. "Don't ever be sarcastic. Someone says that and you wish them a happy day with all the genuine good feeling you can. Pretend everyone is your grandmother."
Now by the same token you don't want to look like a smiling psychopath, but you want to look easy, you want to look like what people see when they look in the mirror: wisps and filaments of themselves, a flattering hologram, a fond memory of cheek, an abstraction of neck.
So, you buy a hat and the next thing you might want to do is put on a lot of stickers. Put 'em everywhere. All over your shirt, your hat, make a boa out of a sticker strip. Look a little disorganized. Practice dishevelment. Look harmless but not clownish. Have a couple of clipboards but be careful that the sign-up sheet has at least one signature. Nobody wants to be first. You're looking for the follower. Remember that the Willy Loman in you is always in search of the Willy Loman in someone else.
Now for example here's a man coming toward you but it's the couple behind him that you really want so you say to the man you know you won't get, "would you like a Vote 2010 sticker", so that the couple behind him is now put at ease, they think they're going to get something, and then when the man passes — and says under his breath, "get away from me, creep" — you say, "well have a great day, sir", and now the couple thinks that that man was rude and they've arrived at the IHOP and everything is cool. So then you say to them, "and would you like to support Wall Street reform, as though you were saying, "would you like to support motherhood?" "Would like to put in a good word for Jesus?"
Now there's a couple of other tricks. Don't bother to ask Asian-Americans to sign a petition. Don't approach white men over 50. If in doubt you want to kowtow a little more. You want to remember that every kid under three is the cutest you ever saw. You want to remind people that even on the Fourth of July it's okay to be conscious. It is a holiday, and this is a jazz festival, and you know people are busy and even though they call it Independence Day it's really just a holiday and you know you don't ever want to get heavy and talk politics. That's for Thanksgiving.
One last word of advice: be politically androgynous. This is San Francisco but remember there's a lot of closet conservatives. What they won't say to you, or even their good friends, is that they believe that anybody without a job is lazy and extending unemployment benefits is just playing to people's base instincts. So sound moderate.
And don't mention Obama unless you're talking to black people. Just say, "this is not about socialism. This is not about the end of free markets." which is true, but it sounds better, more neutral if you don't mention the president's name.
Above all, what you don't want to do is to defend the president. What you don't want to say is, "the president is not a socialist", or "Obama has no intention of ending free markets". Why? Because people just don't believe that and they won't believe YOU. They'll think you're just another spitting liberal.
Like the short Jewish man who got right up to my face. "Afghanistan?" he said. "Afghanistan? Do you have any idea how much money we've spent in Afghanistan? Do you even know who the Taliban are? Do you? Ok, then don't talk to me about Afghanistan."
But you wonder how it is the President has gotten such a bad rap. Well, it's the times, it's just so easy to fall in to line. people don't know where they even got it, or where they first heard all these bad things, somewhere they did, they heard that this effort to bring the banks to account, to make them take responsibility is not as simple as it seems because the banks have to lend money, they're just businesses, like the bakery down the street, and they're already regulated, taxed half to death, and it really is all Obama's fault we got in this mess. We knew he knew Lew Ayres but we didn't know the rest of the story and now we do.
The little Jewish man is back in your face. He's got his cell phone up to his ear. You can hear his wife saying, "I'm lost, I'm lost. Where are you?" He's going to clear that up in a minute but first he's got to tell you something. And you realize that even the old guard has turned. "You want people to sign up for financial reform? Are you kidding me? You think Obama is interested in financial reform? He's another Judas. Have you ever heard the names, Geithner and Summers? Have you? Well look them up and get out of my face."
I got this advice earlier today from Martin at the Fillmore St. Jazz festival while trying to sign up people in support of Wall Street financial reform. This was at the Organizing For America booth in front of the Junior League thrift shop. You couldn't miss it because there was a life-sized cardboard replica of the president, in a superman outfit.
Martin explained this to me. He's an old hand with petitions. First thing is you have to accept that you can be threatening just by the way you look. You could have the heart of a Golden Retriever, the animosity of a shag carpet, but the white hair throws people. It reminds them of the future. If you're 25, even 35, or God help you if you're 45, the last thing you want to think about is getting old. You want Comedy Central. You want cheery. You keep going back to, "There's something about Mary."
But I can hear you saying "yes, but I'm asking people to sign a petition for Wall Street reform and if you've read Paul Krugman we're in for the third great depression since 1873 and there's absolutely nothing we can do about it. The 'Repubicans' are going to block any policy they didn't intuit from watching Ronald Reagan doing 20 Mule Team Borax ads. The world is deserting us. This is serious. The whole culture is bankrupt. And bankers are the most bankrupt of us all, morally speaking."
All true but that's why it's so important to be calm and friendly. You want to think of 'Good morning, America' as you say to people, "Would you like to sign a petition in support of Wall Street financial reform?"
That's actually long winded, because by the time you've said, "would you like to sign a petition," the person or the couple are past you and they're saying over their shoulder, "No thanks." Or, "maybe when I come back." Or, "I did already." Or, "Nope, leave the banks alone and why don't you get a real job."
But isn't activism a real job? It's not what Mark Levin does but it seems like a real job.
Martin says not to go there. "Don't ever be sarcastic. Someone says that and you wish them a happy day with all the genuine good feeling you can. Pretend everyone is your grandmother."
Now by the same token you don't want to look like a smiling psychopath, but you want to look easy, you want to look like what people see when they look in the mirror: wisps and filaments of themselves, a flattering hologram, a fond memory of cheek, an abstraction of neck.
So, you buy a hat and the next thing you might want to do is put on a lot of stickers. Put 'em everywhere. All over your shirt, your hat, make a boa out of a sticker strip. Look a little disorganized. Practice dishevelment. Look harmless but not clownish. Have a couple of clipboards but be careful that the sign-up sheet has at least one signature. Nobody wants to be first. You're looking for the follower. Remember that the Willy Loman in you is always in search of the Willy Loman in someone else.
Now for example here's a man coming toward you but it's the couple behind him that you really want so you say to the man you know you won't get, "would you like a Vote 2010 sticker", so that the couple behind him is now put at ease, they think they're going to get something, and then when the man passes — and says under his breath, "get away from me, creep" — you say, "well have a great day, sir", and now the couple thinks that that man was rude and they've arrived at the IHOP and everything is cool. So then you say to them, "and would you like to support Wall Street reform, as though you were saying, "would you like to support motherhood?" "Would like to put in a good word for Jesus?"
Now there's a couple of other tricks. Don't bother to ask Asian-Americans to sign a petition. Don't approach white men over 50. If in doubt you want to kowtow a little more. You want to remember that every kid under three is the cutest you ever saw. You want to remind people that even on the Fourth of July it's okay to be conscious. It is a holiday, and this is a jazz festival, and you know people are busy and even though they call it Independence Day it's really just a holiday and you know you don't ever want to get heavy and talk politics. That's for Thanksgiving.
One last word of advice: be politically androgynous. This is San Francisco but remember there's a lot of closet conservatives. What they won't say to you, or even their good friends, is that they believe that anybody without a job is lazy and extending unemployment benefits is just playing to people's base instincts. So sound moderate.
And don't mention Obama unless you're talking to black people. Just say, "this is not about socialism. This is not about the end of free markets." which is true, but it sounds better, more neutral if you don't mention the president's name.
Above all, what you don't want to do is to defend the president. What you don't want to say is, "the president is not a socialist", or "Obama has no intention of ending free markets". Why? Because people just don't believe that and they won't believe YOU. They'll think you're just another spitting liberal.
Like the short Jewish man who got right up to my face. "Afghanistan?" he said. "Afghanistan? Do you have any idea how much money we've spent in Afghanistan? Do you even know who the Taliban are? Do you? Ok, then don't talk to me about Afghanistan."
But you wonder how it is the President has gotten such a bad rap. Well, it's the times, it's just so easy to fall in to line. people don't know where they even got it, or where they first heard all these bad things, somewhere they did, they heard that this effort to bring the banks to account, to make them take responsibility is not as simple as it seems because the banks have to lend money, they're just businesses, like the bakery down the street, and they're already regulated, taxed half to death, and it really is all Obama's fault we got in this mess. We knew he knew Lew Ayres but we didn't know the rest of the story and now we do.
The little Jewish man is back in your face. He's got his cell phone up to his ear. You can hear his wife saying, "I'm lost, I'm lost. Where are you?" He's going to clear that up in a minute but first he's got to tell you something. And you realize that even the old guard has turned. "You want people to sign up for financial reform? Are you kidding me? You think Obama is interested in financial reform? He's another Judas. Have you ever heard the names, Geithner and Summers? Have you? Well look them up and get out of my face."
A four-bedroom villa at the end of a cul de sac, around Redwood Shores, in the shadows of Oracle, a boat tied to the dock, Huis Clos literally and figuratively; a two story facade over the mantel; a heartland inside. Good people, the hosts, very good people, kind and straight, hard working, and not vulnerable to nonsense, what can you say. Sometimes, our friends don't reflect who we are.
The sign in the often remodeled kitchen, set above the sink, says, "Happy Fourth." The center of this kitchen is a 25-foot-square island of stone. Nearly a dozen women are holding on for dear life. Drinks in one hand, dipped chips in the other. And on the tip of their tongues: Brazilian wax, unsightly moles, viagra for women, tattoos and Pilates.
"Is that Pontius Pilates you're talking about?" asks one of the outlier husbands moving uneasily through the area, leaning on the back of a high chair, then reaching for the top of the refrigerator, as though he were lurching down the passageway on a sinking ship.
"There's my baby-Jesus," says the man's wife, with a mock Southern accent. "You just let him through there. He'll pass out in a little while."
Much is mock here, or to be mocked. But of course you get anyone alone, pick them out of the pack and they'll tell you about their breast cancer or the mother with dementia, or the real financial situation at home, or some excruciating bed death, or really and truly, they would tell you, even if they can't look you in the eye and hold it that they're just so damn tired of spending and spending.
You'd never imagine it but right in the heartland of the material world, folks are sick and tired of it all.
Even the men are tired of it. Sure, they're tea-party regulars underneath, which is about the right to and the rightness of spending, but even the head of a local nonprofit that sends recycled medical supplies to the poor black folks in old Africa, and thinks this administration has got to get its checkbook in order — and if millions of people have no jobs as a result, it's a horrible shame, but it has to be, and it would all be fixed over night if the Government would finally just scrap taxing business.... Even he will tell you that materialism has gone too far.
And if you don't think he's serious, why recently he and his wife throttled back from more than 5,000 square feet to less than 3,000 square feet. And they bought a Prius. They're so proud of what they've done. And if they can do that, you see anyone can do that. It's all proportional. It's just common sense.
Meanwhile, the house we're talking about is at 68 degrees. Just the way the wives like it. But the pack-husbands have gone outside, where it's 80 degrees in the shade, two hours from dusk, no breeze, still as still, not even a far away sound of firecrackers, not a single song bird, just the murmur of males on Independence day.
By the way, they're all wearing coordinated shorts and long shirts, high end sandals. Everything is the finest beige: skin, clothes, temperament — except for one gentlemen in his teal best and wicked tongue.
These middle aged men look seven months pregnant is what they look. One man is standing with the palm of his hand on the top of his hip, the way women do when their bone-carriage is about to break. They're all good Catholics by the way.
And they're all mostly salesmen. They work in large corporations or large dealerships. They have long commutes and closely cropped hair. Their children are the pride of Pleasanton, although lately there's been a rash of car crashes, including one in an empty parking lot at the mall.
"Yea," says Alpha-in-teal, "when the police called me, I said, 'hell, it may be the same last name but that meat-head is no relation of mine.' I said, 'maybe you could use some of that overtime you guys are getting down there to look it up in the phone book. There must be ten thousand Corey Mosbeckers on Night Hawk Lane. Why pick me? Whose ever kid that is I wish 'em luck."
One man is crying it's so funny to hear that. Funny and true. Because in middle age it's not only materialism you're fleeing, but teenagerism.
Then everyone tells a story about going to Europe with their kids and how tough it is to see nine countries in eight days and, 'yea, no we had a ball, but you know what? I was glad to get home. Joanne says, 'why don't we stay over a week?' You know, yea, but I'm thinking... I mean I like Europeans and even if they've been done in by Socialism, which I just keep thinking is gonna happen here with this jigaloo in the White House, there is something to be said for that culture. But I just wanted to get back. You know why? Go out to PacBell and just watch Tim Linescum throw. Right? Just watch him throw a ball. I mean to me that's beautiful. That's as beautiful as....."
He checks himself because he doesn't want to sound ignorant, he's never forgotten that he went to Cal Poly not Stanford, and so he dutifully adds, "Well, maybe not the Mona Lisa but who's then who's that guy that does the horses rearing up on their hind legs?"
A senate of nods. Everyone takes another sip and thinks, "aren't we lucky to be sitting right here, right now"
"Did I tell you," asks one of the men, a wannabe-an-alpha-so-badly-but-I-just-can't, "that when I was in Russia I had to have half a dozen body guards. That place is intense."
"Well that's because everybody knows how scary you really are," says the real Mr. AlphaTeal, an especially big man with ferocious lips and a strange little mustache that smells of Grecian formula. You can smell it no matter where you're sitting.
"Speaking of you," he goes on. "I looked you up the other day."
He turns to the others at the table to explain. "Whenever I meet someone I always look up their company. I go right to the web site, find the organizational tree and see where they are, and then I find out if maybe anyone's leaving that division because there might be a spot and now I know somebody who maybe can help me get in."
"But now in your case," he says, and suddenly you realize that the lingual toreador is preparing his first kill of the evening — even as the bull has no idea, he's getting the cream cheese with strawberry jam smeared double thick on his wafer, and he's just opening his mouth.
"I could hardly find you," says Senior Alphanso, sticking the pica in as far as he can. "You are so deep down in that place. I mean it must have taken me an hour to get down that deep. What do you do there anyway?"
The man who was crying before is crying again. "He is so funny, isn't he?" he says to no one in particular.
The sign in the often remodeled kitchen, set above the sink, says, "Happy Fourth." The center of this kitchen is a 25-foot-square island of stone. Nearly a dozen women are holding on for dear life. Drinks in one hand, dipped chips in the other. And on the tip of their tongues: Brazilian wax, unsightly moles, viagra for women, tattoos and Pilates.
"Is that Pontius Pilates you're talking about?" asks one of the outlier husbands moving uneasily through the area, leaning on the back of a high chair, then reaching for the top of the refrigerator, as though he were lurching down the passageway on a sinking ship.
"There's my baby-Jesus," says the man's wife, with a mock Southern accent. "You just let him through there. He'll pass out in a little while."
Much is mock here, or to be mocked. But of course you get anyone alone, pick them out of the pack and they'll tell you about their breast cancer or the mother with dementia, or the real financial situation at home, or some excruciating bed death, or really and truly, they would tell you, even if they can't look you in the eye and hold it that they're just so damn tired of spending and spending.
You'd never imagine it but right in the heartland of the material world, folks are sick and tired of it all.
Even the men are tired of it. Sure, they're tea-party regulars underneath, which is about the right to and the rightness of spending, but even the head of a local nonprofit that sends recycled medical supplies to the poor black folks in old Africa, and thinks this administration has got to get its checkbook in order — and if millions of people have no jobs as a result, it's a horrible shame, but it has to be, and it would all be fixed over night if the Government would finally just scrap taxing business.... Even he will tell you that materialism has gone too far.
And if you don't think he's serious, why recently he and his wife throttled back from more than 5,000 square feet to less than 3,000 square feet. And they bought a Prius. They're so proud of what they've done. And if they can do that, you see anyone can do that. It's all proportional. It's just common sense.
Meanwhile, the house we're talking about is at 68 degrees. Just the way the wives like it. But the pack-husbands have gone outside, where it's 80 degrees in the shade, two hours from dusk, no breeze, still as still, not even a far away sound of firecrackers, not a single song bird, just the murmur of males on Independence day.
By the way, they're all wearing coordinated shorts and long shirts, high end sandals. Everything is the finest beige: skin, clothes, temperament — except for one gentlemen in his teal best and wicked tongue.
These middle aged men look seven months pregnant is what they look. One man is standing with the palm of his hand on the top of his hip, the way women do when their bone-carriage is about to break. They're all good Catholics by the way.
And they're all mostly salesmen. They work in large corporations or large dealerships. They have long commutes and closely cropped hair. Their children are the pride of Pleasanton, although lately there's been a rash of car crashes, including one in an empty parking lot at the mall.
"Yea," says Alpha-in-teal, "when the police called me, I said, 'hell, it may be the same last name but that meat-head is no relation of mine.' I said, 'maybe you could use some of that overtime you guys are getting down there to look it up in the phone book. There must be ten thousand Corey Mosbeckers on Night Hawk Lane. Why pick me? Whose ever kid that is I wish 'em luck."
One man is crying it's so funny to hear that. Funny and true. Because in middle age it's not only materialism you're fleeing, but teenagerism.
Then everyone tells a story about going to Europe with their kids and how tough it is to see nine countries in eight days and, 'yea, no we had a ball, but you know what? I was glad to get home. Joanne says, 'why don't we stay over a week?' You know, yea, but I'm thinking... I mean I like Europeans and even if they've been done in by Socialism, which I just keep thinking is gonna happen here with this jigaloo in the White House, there is something to be said for that culture. But I just wanted to get back. You know why? Go out to PacBell and just watch Tim Linescum throw. Right? Just watch him throw a ball. I mean to me that's beautiful. That's as beautiful as....."
He checks himself because he doesn't want to sound ignorant, he's never forgotten that he went to Cal Poly not Stanford, and so he dutifully adds, "Well, maybe not the Mona Lisa but who's then who's that guy that does the horses rearing up on their hind legs?"
A senate of nods. Everyone takes another sip and thinks, "aren't we lucky to be sitting right here, right now"
"Did I tell you," asks one of the men, a wannabe-an-alpha-so-badly-but-I-just-can't, "that when I was in Russia I had to have half a dozen body guards. That place is intense."
"Well that's because everybody knows how scary you really are," says the real Mr. AlphaTeal, an especially big man with ferocious lips and a strange little mustache that smells of Grecian formula. You can smell it no matter where you're sitting.
"Speaking of you," he goes on. "I looked you up the other day."
He turns to the others at the table to explain. "Whenever I meet someone I always look up their company. I go right to the web site, find the organizational tree and see where they are, and then I find out if maybe anyone's leaving that division because there might be a spot and now I know somebody who maybe can help me get in."
"But now in your case," he says, and suddenly you realize that the lingual toreador is preparing his first kill of the evening — even as the bull has no idea, he's getting the cream cheese with strawberry jam smeared double thick on his wafer, and he's just opening his mouth.
"I could hardly find you," says Senior Alphanso, sticking the pica in as far as he can. "You are so deep down in that place. I mean it must have taken me an hour to get down that deep. What do you do there anyway?"
The man who was crying before is crying again. "He is so funny, isn't he?" he says to no one in particular.
Jun 22, 2010
Here's what's happened. Let me begin by saying, a little immodestly, I am a tennis blue blood. The B-player but from 'Old Tennis.' As though you were from old money in Old Westbury.
I took my first lessons from Lester Stoefen (B. March 30, 1911 in Des Moines, Iowa - D. February 8, 1970 in La Jolla, California), who was 6'5", or maybe it was 7'5", in his late 40's in the mid 1950s when I knew him, when he stood out on court 2 at the La Jolla Beach & Tennis Club shoveling one ball after another, to kids of all ages, the littlest standing four across at the base line. He was the machine before machines, hour after hour, in sun glasses and rumpled hat, looking at the tennis on the next court, looking at anyone who came in the front door of the club, looking up at the moon for relief. Thinking of rum cokes in the club bar... In the '30s he won three grand slam events, including the doubles championship at Wimbledon.
On my mother's side we go back to the beginning of the Lawn Tennis Association. And to all those clubs, like Maidstone at the end of Beach Lane in East Hampton. My mother learned how to play the game from Bill Tilden. She was in her thirties. This was when he was living in ignominy at Charlie Chaplain's and had a drink or two before every lesson.
Years later she was "involved" with Tony Trabert. Perhaps this was just in my father's mind. Perhaps, there was no intimacy at all. Years later my mother like people to think there was. This was the kind of drama I grew up with.
There's one other thing. My mother got to be an excellent player. She taught the game for a while, at a doctor's club in San Diego. But late afternoons, weekends, she was out on the show court at the LBT&T Club, usually with three men. She could get to the net in a flash, she had a flat, hard first serve. She had great ground strokes and played like a "tiger" at the net. And that's what she told her doctor students. At the net be like a tiger.
Until recently, I could have cared less about my mother's forehand or my Old Tennis connections. But now I've begun to see it all as a chapter from the Camelot years. It's as though you remembered some famous actor from the 50 and suddenly, for very sentimental reasons, knowing that actor makes you imagine the past as a cure for the present.
But here's what's happened. All these years later, I'm out on Vincente and 23rd. Lets' just say, there's been some big time downward mobility. It's also cold, windy, no matter what time of year; two of the courts are knee-deep in pine needles. One of the nets looks like a Halloween spider web from two years ago. Completely shot through.
And of course no would think to fix the net or bring a broom. Actually, one of the players owns a body shop down the street. He put together a piece of tire at the end of 10 foot long steel pole. You have to be a weight lifter to work the damn thing. Which is shaped like a huge eyelash
And then on one of the other court one of the stanchions is bent in, like a davit on the Lusitania as the stern rears up.
Get the idea? This is outcastville. This is not maidstone, this is tombstone.
Plus everybody's psychotic. Shouting, fighting. You hear about everyone's life, things you don't want to hear. I don't want to know, for example, that
There's about 25 regulars and half as many irregulars. The cuckoo's club: Cab drivers, the professor, a couple of dentists — they're both getting sued — a gyno, and of course, Archibold who broke out of Australia years ago and is still on the lam. He's 71. No matter how close to the line your shot he always calls it out. "Oh that was out," he'll say. "Come and look at the mark." He's got the head of his racket right on the spot, which is a foot away from where you saw the ball hit.
And then he'll hit a winner and shout "Yeeha". And he'll keep shouting that out until the next point is about to be played.
And now the doctor is laughing himself sick. I think he's a gyno. He's in his 60s going on twice that at least. He bends over after every shot, leans on his racket. Are we going to have another heart attack? That's all I want to know. He's bent over. He's wearing a wrestler's eight inch black leather truss. You understand the picture he's low and fat. Real fat, but hard. You can tell it's hard fat, so if you gave him a body shot he'd laugh himself sick. Shorts half way down his thigh, like a little rich kid in 1950. Hahahahaha, he's saying. You make a mistake: Hahahahahaha. Over and over. I want to put the racket right on his temple. Hahahahahahaha.
Not a point goes by when he doesn't go into a paroxym. I'm praying he has a heart attack.
And he's not the only one. This is a street club for the insane. I'll tell you about the fight we had in a minute....
I took my first lessons from Lester Stoefen (B. March 30, 1911 in Des Moines, Iowa - D. February 8, 1970 in La Jolla, California), who was 6'5", or maybe it was 7'5", in his late 40's in the mid 1950s when I knew him, when he stood out on court 2 at the La Jolla Beach & Tennis Club shoveling one ball after another, to kids of all ages, the littlest standing four across at the base line. He was the machine before machines, hour after hour, in sun glasses and rumpled hat, looking at the tennis on the next court, looking at anyone who came in the front door of the club, looking up at the moon for relief. Thinking of rum cokes in the club bar... In the '30s he won three grand slam events, including the doubles championship at Wimbledon.
On my mother's side we go back to the beginning of the Lawn Tennis Association. And to all those clubs, like Maidstone at the end of Beach Lane in East Hampton. My mother learned how to play the game from Bill Tilden. She was in her thirties. This was when he was living in ignominy at Charlie Chaplain's and had a drink or two before every lesson.
Years later she was "involved" with Tony Trabert. Perhaps this was just in my father's mind. Perhaps, there was no intimacy at all. Years later my mother like people to think there was. This was the kind of drama I grew up with.
There's one other thing. My mother got to be an excellent player. She taught the game for a while, at a doctor's club in San Diego. But late afternoons, weekends, she was out on the show court at the LBT&T Club, usually with three men. She could get to the net in a flash, she had a flat, hard first serve. She had great ground strokes and played like a "tiger" at the net. And that's what she told her doctor students. At the net be like a tiger.
Until recently, I could have cared less about my mother's forehand or my Old Tennis connections. But now I've begun to see it all as a chapter from the Camelot years. It's as though you remembered some famous actor from the 50 and suddenly, for very sentimental reasons, knowing that actor makes you imagine the past as a cure for the present.
But here's what's happened. All these years later, I'm out on Vincente and 23rd. Lets' just say, there's been some big time downward mobility. It's also cold, windy, no matter what time of year; two of the courts are knee-deep in pine needles. One of the nets looks like a Halloween spider web from two years ago. Completely shot through.
And of course no would think to fix the net or bring a broom. Actually, one of the players owns a body shop down the street. He put together a piece of tire at the end of 10 foot long steel pole. You have to be a weight lifter to work the damn thing. Which is shaped like a huge eyelash
And then on one of the other court one of the stanchions is bent in, like a davit on the Lusitania as the stern rears up.
Get the idea? This is outcastville. This is not maidstone, this is tombstone.
Plus everybody's psychotic. Shouting, fighting. You hear about everyone's life, things you don't want to hear. I don't want to know, for example, that
There's about 25 regulars and half as many irregulars. The cuckoo's club: Cab drivers, the professor, a couple of dentists — they're both getting sued — a gyno, and of course, Archibold who broke out of Australia years ago and is still on the lam. He's 71. No matter how close to the line your shot he always calls it out. "Oh that was out," he'll say. "Come and look at the mark." He's got the head of his racket right on the spot, which is a foot away from where you saw the ball hit.
And then he'll hit a winner and shout "Yeeha". And he'll keep shouting that out until the next point is about to be played.
And now the doctor is laughing himself sick. I think he's a gyno. He's in his 60s going on twice that at least. He bends over after every shot, leans on his racket. Are we going to have another heart attack? That's all I want to know. He's bent over. He's wearing a wrestler's eight inch black leather truss. You understand the picture he's low and fat. Real fat, but hard. You can tell it's hard fat, so if you gave him a body shot he'd laugh himself sick. Shorts half way down his thigh, like a little rich kid in 1950. Hahahahaha, he's saying. You make a mistake: Hahahahahaha. Over and over. I want to put the racket right on his temple. Hahahahahahaha.
Not a point goes by when he doesn't go into a paroxym. I'm praying he has a heart attack.
And he's not the only one. This is a street club for the insane. I'll tell you about the fight we had in a minute....
Jun 9, 2010
A friend in Casablanca recently sent this....
Here's a funny story, last friday I took a taxi at 9 p.m. in Casa. The driver never stopped at any red light. I was a bit scared so I asked him why he does that. He went on about how he'd been driving for 20 years and how you can't be logical or respect laws in this country because you'd lose your mind. "Everything around us is chaos so why should you stop in the red light?" Then he went on about how everyone hates the king, and how he killed the minister of interior, whom his father dearly protected. And that in '81 the king was arrested with some other socialist trouble makers. He also told me that the king bribed every policeman in Casa, that that was his way to see how ethical people are. At the end, he told me that I look like a serious girl, and some day I'll be hired in the government in some important position. He looked like a nice guy, quite entertainning, he could be in a play, his role would be the role of an angry man no matter what play he's in. He could be me, he could be my grand mother, the woman who just opened her restaurant, the woman who left her husband, the one whose husband left her with kids, the battered woman, the woman who desparately needs love, the woman whose father left for 15 years, the one who comes drunk to work, the one who used to be rich and now has to accept any job, the gay man arrested for his homosexuality, the old man who does not trust anyone, the son pressured to take care of his family, the woman who can't raise her own daughter, the man forced to leave his own country, the man whose father never gave him his name. And the one who regrets never having children.
Here's a funny story, last friday I took a taxi at 9 p.m. in Casa. The driver never stopped at any red light. I was a bit scared so I asked him why he does that. He went on about how he'd been driving for 20 years and how you can't be logical or respect laws in this country because you'd lose your mind. "Everything around us is chaos so why should you stop in the red light?" Then he went on about how everyone hates the king, and how he killed the minister of interior, whom his father dearly protected. And that in '81 the king was arrested with some other socialist trouble makers. He also told me that the king bribed every policeman in Casa, that that was his way to see how ethical people are. At the end, he told me that I look like a serious girl, and some day I'll be hired in the government in some important position. He looked like a nice guy, quite entertainning, he could be in a play, his role would be the role of an angry man no matter what play he's in. He could be me, he could be my grand mother, the woman who just opened her restaurant, the woman who left her husband, the one whose husband left her with kids, the battered woman, the woman who desparately needs love, the woman whose father left for 15 years, the one who comes drunk to work, the one who used to be rich and now has to accept any job, the gay man arrested for his homosexuality, the old man who does not trust anyone, the son pressured to take care of his family, the woman who can't raise her own daughter, the man forced to leave his own country, the man whose father never gave him his name. And the one who regrets never having children.
May 23, 2010
In Buddhist scripture, in the Anguttara Nikaya, it says somewhere, "I know nothing that brings suffering as much as an untamed, uncontrolled, unattended and unrestrained heart."
At the Point this weekend, a vacation it was supposed to be, unattended or unrestrained hearts were strewn everywhere. Everyone's imagination was on edge. Last night while preparing dinner, one of the three muses ducked out on to a deck for a smoke. It was early dark, a few last echos of light in the Redwoods. Suddenly, she heard a man shouting through what sounded like a bullhorn. But there was no plausible explanation. This is a remote place. You can't see any other properties much less hear neighbors. This is the last place you'd ever hear a bullhorn.
She came inside and returned to the kitchen completely unnerved, and for several moments stood in a corner with the tea pot warmer in her hands. It's the wind, she said. It has something to do with the wind.
"Gins," said one of the other muses. The conversation turned to the ghosts that haunt the Atlas mountains and then the notorious Aejej wind in Morocco, and that brought to mind the Sirocco and what about the Abroholos in Brazil, the Bad-I-Sad-O-Bist-Roz in Afghanistan, the Austru in Romania, the Brisote in Cuba, the Kolawaik in Argentina.
Here, it's the Chinook and the Santa Ana, which ruins the fruit trees. But this wind in the last few days was neither of those, it's been from the north. Very unusual.
The muses fell silent.
There have been several other strange happenings. The muse that heard the shouting fell down the stairs two days ago. The right side of her face is black, as though she'd been burned. She was coming down the stairs with fresh sheets and then something happened. Now, still in great pain, she's trying to find meaning. Which brings to mind Susan Sontag's warning about the danger of metaphor.
"No, I'm not talking about quite the same thing," said the black-eyed muse. "It's not whether I'm being punished. I don't believe that. But what does it portend? What am I falling into, or from? Have I forgotten how to put one foot in front of the other?"
Everyone nodded. We could all see that.
Someone else told the story of how they they'd been involved in a minor car accident and then a week later lost their job. "As soon as that car hit me I knew my job was gone. I've always associated cars with career."
Someone else said that sometimes — so some Buddhists believe — sometimes a small accident absorbs the impact of what might have been a much larger accident, which has now been avoided.
One of the muses told about the time she had a terrible fight with her husband, only the second time in their marriage. She left their bed and slept in the cabin that faces the sea. Out that window you feel as though on a clear day you could see all the way to China. She said it was the worst night of her life. Filled with ghosts and hauntings and nightmares. This was on the night of December 26, 2004. The next day she read about the great earthquakes and tsunamis that had struck the Indian ocean basin and it occurred to her — and she later came to believe — that perhaps some of those 100,000 spirits had flooded through her house.
And still another story, about a man who had a near death experience and said later, "If I'd only known that I had control of my life."
Everyone nodded even if they had no idea what the man meant.
On that note we began dinner.
The next morning the phone rings, there's bad news. A man across the way, in his 40s, killed himself. He lived with his sister. Apparently, she saw it coming, for years or hours, who knows. She called police, told them he was armed, and dangerous to himself at least. The police arrived. Call out on a bullhorn. But it's too late.
Just this man and his sister. Maybe half a mile away as the crow flies. She works down in the bakery. He sold dope. Then lately something happened. Remember that the wind has been blowing for days. And of course things have not been going well financially for anybody. So he's sitting there. It's early dark, just the echos of light in the redwoods. He's got a gun and he's reached that point where alternatives are falling away. His personal fate is moving like water just before it goes over the falls, heavy and unstoppable. And then the gun itself is saying, 'c'mon now kiss me. Kiss me like you mean it.' And maybe he's thinking of those people that go up to Bixby bridge and jump off. But that takes a courage he doesn't have. All he can do is this. All he can do is think a good thought and hope like mad and then do it. And maybe he can be that happy thought firing around the universe.
Carlotta, the local masseuse, has a theory that people who jump off the Bixby bridge need that beauty, the view of the coastal range and the ocean, to help them jump. And it's all part of a natural process and somehow mother nature is helping you work it out, giving you something when you're past needing anything. A kind of sedative.
At the Point this weekend, a vacation it was supposed to be, unattended or unrestrained hearts were strewn everywhere. Everyone's imagination was on edge. Last night while preparing dinner, one of the three muses ducked out on to a deck for a smoke. It was early dark, a few last echos of light in the Redwoods. Suddenly, she heard a man shouting through what sounded like a bullhorn. But there was no plausible explanation. This is a remote place. You can't see any other properties much less hear neighbors. This is the last place you'd ever hear a bullhorn.
She came inside and returned to the kitchen completely unnerved, and for several moments stood in a corner with the tea pot warmer in her hands. It's the wind, she said. It has something to do with the wind.
"Gins," said one of the other muses. The conversation turned to the ghosts that haunt the Atlas mountains and then the notorious Aejej wind in Morocco, and that brought to mind the Sirocco and what about the Abroholos in Brazil, the Bad-I-Sad-O-Bist-Roz in Afghanistan, the Austru in Romania, the Brisote in Cuba, the Kolawaik in Argentina.
Here, it's the Chinook and the Santa Ana, which ruins the fruit trees. But this wind in the last few days was neither of those, it's been from the north. Very unusual.
The muses fell silent.
There have been several other strange happenings. The muse that heard the shouting fell down the stairs two days ago. The right side of her face is black, as though she'd been burned. She was coming down the stairs with fresh sheets and then something happened. Now, still in great pain, she's trying to find meaning. Which brings to mind Susan Sontag's warning about the danger of metaphor.
"No, I'm not talking about quite the same thing," said the black-eyed muse. "It's not whether I'm being punished. I don't believe that. But what does it portend? What am I falling into, or from? Have I forgotten how to put one foot in front of the other?"
Everyone nodded. We could all see that.
Someone else told the story of how they they'd been involved in a minor car accident and then a week later lost their job. "As soon as that car hit me I knew my job was gone. I've always associated cars with career."
Someone else said that sometimes — so some Buddhists believe — sometimes a small accident absorbs the impact of what might have been a much larger accident, which has now been avoided.
One of the muses told about the time she had a terrible fight with her husband, only the second time in their marriage. She left their bed and slept in the cabin that faces the sea. Out that window you feel as though on a clear day you could see all the way to China. She said it was the worst night of her life. Filled with ghosts and hauntings and nightmares. This was on the night of December 26, 2004. The next day she read about the great earthquakes and tsunamis that had struck the Indian ocean basin and it occurred to her — and she later came to believe — that perhaps some of those 100,000 spirits had flooded through her house.
And still another story, about a man who had a near death experience and said later, "If I'd only known that I had control of my life."
Everyone nodded even if they had no idea what the man meant.
On that note we began dinner.
The next morning the phone rings, there's bad news. A man across the way, in his 40s, killed himself. He lived with his sister. Apparently, she saw it coming, for years or hours, who knows. She called police, told them he was armed, and dangerous to himself at least. The police arrived. Call out on a bullhorn. But it's too late.
Just this man and his sister. Maybe half a mile away as the crow flies. She works down in the bakery. He sold dope. Then lately something happened. Remember that the wind has been blowing for days. And of course things have not been going well financially for anybody. So he's sitting there. It's early dark, just the echos of light in the redwoods. He's got a gun and he's reached that point where alternatives are falling away. His personal fate is moving like water just before it goes over the falls, heavy and unstoppable. And then the gun itself is saying, 'c'mon now kiss me. Kiss me like you mean it.' And maybe he's thinking of those people that go up to Bixby bridge and jump off. But that takes a courage he doesn't have. All he can do is this. All he can do is think a good thought and hope like mad and then do it. And maybe he can be that happy thought firing around the universe.
Carlotta, the local masseuse, has a theory that people who jump off the Bixby bridge need that beauty, the view of the coastal range and the ocean, to help them jump. And it's all part of a natural process and somehow mother nature is helping you work it out, giving you something when you're past needing anything. A kind of sedative.
May 14, 2010
The feeling is vaguely familiar. What is that? Bile, perhaps. Can't catch a breath. A mouthful of dry-rot. What is that? You look outside. It's early afternoon one minute, late afternoon the next. Coastal summer has set in. Pale gray, the color of nothing. It's the day that never ends. The news from Greece is worse by the hour. And then out of one eye you notice your coat won't get out of the chair and hang itself up. What is that? And then suddenly, the bed has taken you in... Time passes and there's no way to file it.
The next day you hear this, "Is there a reason you don't want to renew your subscription to the New York Times?" You say, "I'm sorry. What was that?" You have not been listening. You've been taking care, shutting things down, but you haven't been paying attention. Still, everything will be fine, you're thinking. But there it is again. What is that? The last time you felt like this would have been.... Yes, it might have been that last year in Morocco. The super marche in Meknes comes to mind. And why that particular place, I couldn't say. Around New Year's Eve, wasn't it? No, it was later, in February. It was snowing in the middle Atlas. And piling up. Whatever year that was. As though the future was falling off the shelves, along with American cereals and Spanish wines. There were questions about muddling through and how that could be done and for what reason and for how long.
The next day you hear this, "Is there a reason you don't want to renew your subscription to the New York Times?" You say, "I'm sorry. What was that?" You have not been listening. You've been taking care, shutting things down, but you haven't been paying attention. Still, everything will be fine, you're thinking. But there it is again. What is that? The last time you felt like this would have been.... Yes, it might have been that last year in Morocco. The super marche in Meknes comes to mind. And why that particular place, I couldn't say. Around New Year's Eve, wasn't it? No, it was later, in February. It was snowing in the middle Atlas. And piling up. Whatever year that was. As though the future was falling off the shelves, along with American cereals and Spanish wines. There were questions about muddling through and how that could be done and for what reason and for how long.
Act 3.
Scene: Late at night in outer Sunset District. You're crossing 47th and Kirkham. You can hear the surf breaking down the street. The neighborhood is dark, dead. Waiters and teachers, TV technicians, the retired, people on disability, half-way house boys, sexual predators on early release, they're all asleep.
Suddenly a car comes careening down 47th Avenue, radio blaring. It's George Noory on Coast to Coast am, talking to a guest about the probability that one country or another is soon going to release public documents detailing communications with aliens. "We all know what's been going on," says the guest. "It's just a matter of time. Russia is the most likely country to open the floodgates."
You've read these stories of Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, the leader of the Buddhist Kalmykia region of Southern Russia, and president of the World Chess Federation, who claims he met with aliens in 1997. They appeared on the balcony of his Moscow apartment. His driver, his aid and a minister saw the whole thing. Then in 2001, Ilyumzhinov was invited to look around a UFO. Invited by who? And under what circumstances? But this is the fear. What if Ilyumzhinov sat down with an alien provocateur and talked? He knows state secrets. Did he say anything about the scalar wave weaponry or the new aircraft carrier. Andrei Levedev, an MP for the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party, has written Medvedev raising fears about what might have been compromised. There have to be procedures for what high-ranking officials can say to these creatures.
“I think this is the start of a new era, I really do,” says the guest on Coast to Coast. But you wonder, what if Hawking is right? What if this time we're the native peoples who will be raped and pillaged?
All this is happens in an instant, and as you reach the curb to avoid being run down, you look over your shoulder to see the car passing and then suddenly a white blinding light inside. Like phosphorus. Then smoke. The smell of burning. The smoke clears. The driver has disappeared. What kind of magic is this? The empty car keeps rolling down the street until it hits a parked truck. George Noory is still talking. Packs of raccoons trundle on. Dogs bark. The dining room light goes on in a blue house.
Act 2.
Scene: An hour earlier. Japanese sushi joint on the corner of Bush and Grant. Across from the Triton Hotel, where the bar looks like Helnwein's Hopper, not much going on. No Bogart, No Monroe. No James Dean. Nothing, save a tall thin blond with a guy. They look restless. Rich but restless. They're outside, they stand up from the table, they're trying to figure something out, she's shaking her head, they leave glasses half full. Across the street, in sushiville, two sushi chefs are having a good laugh at the expense of two customers in their early 30s. Both drunk. These two toast the chefs. The chefs giggle. The drunks want the chefs to share a toast. The chefs look at the two women who run the place. The older one visits every table. "You have everything you need, right." she says, and this is not a question. The younger woman, very tall, very pretty, very sexy, with the top two buttons of her black blouse undone, she brings food. There's a trick going on here somewhere, you can feel it, but what is it? All you know is that this is not what it appears. The movie is out of synch; the dubbing is off. For one, the two drunks are talking too much. They’re investment bankers telling tales out of school, about how they’re still making money hand over fist. "Thank god for the Crash," they say and raise a toast to the crash. "Thank god for derivatives", they say and raise a toast to derivatives. 'Hats off to Larry,' one of them says. Everybody laughs. Everybody's happy. The chefs are running their little 'we-get-you-real-drunk-so-you-buy-more-expensive-saki scam' and the women are running their little 'look-at-Japanese-cleavage-and-leave-me-big-tip scam’. Outside, a bus boy from the Triton is putting the garbage out. At the Grant Street entrance to Chinatown, a hand full of tourists scurry back to the parking garage. The homeless are curling up in the alcoves. The wind is picking up. Street lights seems less bright. The city's eyes keep closing.
Act 1
Scene: Half an hour earlier. A focus group at 250 Sutter. Second floor. Six people around a conference table. All ages. Three men, three women. Plus the facilitator. Plus somebody behind the two way glass. General Foods? General Mills? General Petreus? Who knows. The facilitator has flown in from Chicago. She has long straight red hair. She's an anthropologist. She likes everybody's collage and the diary that each person kept for a week recording their 'celebrations.' In the instruction manual it said, "We want you to have fun. Tell us the moments when you celebrated something? Tell us the props and brands you used? What made it special? Tell us the food and beverages you consumed. Tell us about the moments when you weren't celebrating. When you were dreaming, or even barely alive. When you were lying in your bed dying, when you got back from Falluja without your head? What was the non celebration like? You know what I’m talking about —that seam moment between celebration and non." So after all that — "and don't forget to add the music you listen to and send photos so we can feel your celebration" — the facilitator turns serious. She combs her hair with her fingers. As though she is going to say, 'I don't know how I'm going to ask you this, but you just have to bear with me.' She shakes her head. "I want everybody to take a deep breath," she says. "Okay, last question, and I want to thank you all for being here tonight. But now tell me this, how do we feel about chips? Do we think chips are passe? I mean seriously, do we not care about chips anymore?" People look up at the ceiling. They cup their chins. They shift in their seats. Brows furrow. Lips pucker. A woman takes off her shoe. "Oh and I forgot to add," the facilitator goes on. "Do we all understand that I'm talking about potato chips?"
Scene: Late at night in outer Sunset District. You're crossing 47th and Kirkham. You can hear the surf breaking down the street. The neighborhood is dark, dead. Waiters and teachers, TV technicians, the retired, people on disability, half-way house boys, sexual predators on early release, they're all asleep.
Suddenly a car comes careening down 47th Avenue, radio blaring. It's George Noory on Coast to Coast am, talking to a guest about the probability that one country or another is soon going to release public documents detailing communications with aliens. "We all know what's been going on," says the guest. "It's just a matter of time. Russia is the most likely country to open the floodgates."
You've read these stories of Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, the leader of the Buddhist Kalmykia region of Southern Russia, and president of the World Chess Federation, who claims he met with aliens in 1997. They appeared on the balcony of his Moscow apartment. His driver, his aid and a minister saw the whole thing. Then in 2001, Ilyumzhinov was invited to look around a UFO. Invited by who? And under what circumstances? But this is the fear. What if Ilyumzhinov sat down with an alien provocateur and talked? He knows state secrets. Did he say anything about the scalar wave weaponry or the new aircraft carrier. Andrei Levedev, an MP for the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party, has written Medvedev raising fears about what might have been compromised. There have to be procedures for what high-ranking officials can say to these creatures.
“I think this is the start of a new era, I really do,” says the guest on Coast to Coast. But you wonder, what if Hawking is right? What if this time we're the native peoples who will be raped and pillaged?
All this is happens in an instant, and as you reach the curb to avoid being run down, you look over your shoulder to see the car passing and then suddenly a white blinding light inside. Like phosphorus. Then smoke. The smell of burning. The smoke clears. The driver has disappeared. What kind of magic is this? The empty car keeps rolling down the street until it hits a parked truck. George Noory is still talking. Packs of raccoons trundle on. Dogs bark. The dining room light goes on in a blue house.
Act 2.
Scene: An hour earlier. Japanese sushi joint on the corner of Bush and Grant. Across from the Triton Hotel, where the bar looks like Helnwein's Hopper, not much going on. No Bogart, No Monroe. No James Dean. Nothing, save a tall thin blond with a guy. They look restless. Rich but restless. They're outside, they stand up from the table, they're trying to figure something out, she's shaking her head, they leave glasses half full. Across the street, in sushiville, two sushi chefs are having a good laugh at the expense of two customers in their early 30s. Both drunk. These two toast the chefs. The chefs giggle. The drunks want the chefs to share a toast. The chefs look at the two women who run the place. The older one visits every table. "You have everything you need, right." she says, and this is not a question. The younger woman, very tall, very pretty, very sexy, with the top two buttons of her black blouse undone, she brings food. There's a trick going on here somewhere, you can feel it, but what is it? All you know is that this is not what it appears. The movie is out of synch; the dubbing is off. For one, the two drunks are talking too much. They’re investment bankers telling tales out of school, about how they’re still making money hand over fist. "Thank god for the Crash," they say and raise a toast to the crash. "Thank god for derivatives", they say and raise a toast to derivatives. 'Hats off to Larry,' one of them says. Everybody laughs. Everybody's happy. The chefs are running their little 'we-get-you-real-drunk-so-you-buy-more-expensive-saki scam' and the women are running their little 'look-at-Japanese-cleavage-and-leave-me-big-tip scam’. Outside, a bus boy from the Triton is putting the garbage out. At the Grant Street entrance to Chinatown, a hand full of tourists scurry back to the parking garage. The homeless are curling up in the alcoves. The wind is picking up. Street lights seems less bright. The city's eyes keep closing.
Act 1
Scene: Half an hour earlier. A focus group at 250 Sutter. Second floor. Six people around a conference table. All ages. Three men, three women. Plus the facilitator. Plus somebody behind the two way glass. General Foods? General Mills? General Petreus? Who knows. The facilitator has flown in from Chicago. She has long straight red hair. She's an anthropologist. She likes everybody's collage and the diary that each person kept for a week recording their 'celebrations.' In the instruction manual it said, "We want you to have fun. Tell us the moments when you celebrated something? Tell us the props and brands you used? What made it special? Tell us the food and beverages you consumed. Tell us about the moments when you weren't celebrating. When you were dreaming, or even barely alive. When you were lying in your bed dying, when you got back from Falluja without your head? What was the non celebration like? You know what I’m talking about —that seam moment between celebration and non." So after all that — "and don't forget to add the music you listen to and send photos so we can feel your celebration" — the facilitator turns serious. She combs her hair with her fingers. As though she is going to say, 'I don't know how I'm going to ask you this, but you just have to bear with me.' She shakes her head. "I want everybody to take a deep breath," she says. "Okay, last question, and I want to thank you all for being here tonight. But now tell me this, how do we feel about chips? Do we think chips are passe? I mean seriously, do we not care about chips anymore?" People look up at the ceiling. They cup their chins. They shift in their seats. Brows furrow. Lips pucker. A woman takes off her shoe. "Oh and I forgot to add," the facilitator goes on. "Do we all understand that I'm talking about potato chips?"
May 8, 2010
I've been ill lately and have reverted to mumbling to myself. The two of us always have a conversation when I'm down and out. Just before I go to sleep it's particularly intense. I'll keep shouting out loud, "no, no, no. I don't. Go away." Or, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." We used to go on like that for hours.
"Go to sleep," says my wife impatiently. If I don't stop, she kicks me. I don't kick back and I don't reply. What is there to say? I can't escape my demons. When I'm sick they all come out, one after another.
It's always starts like this. I'm walking down the beach at low tide with my alter ego, a little sub-human, a scab-faced, blonde-haired 'Lepre-con. Imagine a pig-sized Glen Beck. He's pulling after him his blackboard, which endlessly falls over in the wet sand. He gets it back upright but I don't help or wait for him. Of course, sooner or later he catches up and, huffing and puffing, and looking up at me with these awful, bloodshot eyes. His cheeks are scabbed and dotted with little bloody bits of toilet paper where he's cut himself shaving.
I know what he wants. I pick him up and hold him in one arm, the way you might if you were teaching an obese child you didn't like to swim.
"Here you go, you flying pigo," I'll say, squeezing him until I hope he can't stand it any more. But he can take a lot of pain and he'll calmly reach out to the blackboard and write something like this:
"O = E"
"Obama Equals Enlightenment," he'll say in his pleading little voice. "That's what you statists all think. But he doesn't." Then he'll draw a line through the equal sign. "He doesn't equal enlightenment. He equals delusion and utter stupidity. He's a moron. There, I've said it. The president is a moron and worse."
Then he'll draw a line through the O so that it looks like the 'null set'.
"Obama equals nothing?" I'll say. "You equal nothing. You equal less than nothing. You're the moron. In fact, you look up to morons."
"Statists always sound the same," he'll say turning to look into an imaginary camera. "Is this the new civility we keep hearing about? Tell it to the 'teabaggers'? Your Obama called us 'teabaggers'. What kind of civility is that?"
I tell el-pigo I'll drown him if he doesn't go away.
"But you love me," he'll say. "In some way you do."
"No, I don't. No. Go away. You gopher-creton."
"Am I?" he'll say and then his face with come up to me like an icon magnified in the dock. "I know who you are."
"You don't know anything, you're just the horrible part of myself I can't escape."
"Ah yes, speaking of which," he'll say and his voice is so proud. "Speaking of which, I want to show you some of your finer moments lately. Shall we have a little review?" And he'll turn as though to the producer: "Clip No. 45. Go."
Sure enough it'll be some horrible thing I've done. Maybe it was even years ago. Some horrible thing I said to someone. He'll keep playing it over and over. Finally, I'm yelling, "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
This when my wife begins to kick me.
"Okay you cheap little trick what is it you want?" I say to the pig.
"Tell me that as much as you hate me you really love me. Why? Because I'm one of your 'founders' if I might say. I was there at the beginning and you need me."
And that's when I just throw up my hands and walk right into the sea, and I just keep going until I have to start swimming and even if there's a rip tide I'll keep swimming. I don't care. I don't care if I make it or not. And he'll be on the shore jumping up and down, throwing one of his tantrums, or else writing on the blackboard, and I can just barely see it: "Stay out there, you statist moron."
"Go to sleep," says my wife impatiently. If I don't stop, she kicks me. I don't kick back and I don't reply. What is there to say? I can't escape my demons. When I'm sick they all come out, one after another.
It's always starts like this. I'm walking down the beach at low tide with my alter ego, a little sub-human, a scab-faced, blonde-haired 'Lepre-con. Imagine a pig-sized Glen Beck. He's pulling after him his blackboard, which endlessly falls over in the wet sand. He gets it back upright but I don't help or wait for him. Of course, sooner or later he catches up and, huffing and puffing, and looking up at me with these awful, bloodshot eyes. His cheeks are scabbed and dotted with little bloody bits of toilet paper where he's cut himself shaving.
I know what he wants. I pick him up and hold him in one arm, the way you might if you were teaching an obese child you didn't like to swim.
"Here you go, you flying pigo," I'll say, squeezing him until I hope he can't stand it any more. But he can take a lot of pain and he'll calmly reach out to the blackboard and write something like this:
"O = E"
"Obama Equals Enlightenment," he'll say in his pleading little voice. "That's what you statists all think. But he doesn't." Then he'll draw a line through the equal sign. "He doesn't equal enlightenment. He equals delusion and utter stupidity. He's a moron. There, I've said it. The president is a moron and worse."
Then he'll draw a line through the O so that it looks like the 'null set'.
"Obama equals nothing?" I'll say. "You equal nothing. You equal less than nothing. You're the moron. In fact, you look up to morons."
"Statists always sound the same," he'll say turning to look into an imaginary camera. "Is this the new civility we keep hearing about? Tell it to the 'teabaggers'? Your Obama called us 'teabaggers'. What kind of civility is that?"
I tell el-pigo I'll drown him if he doesn't go away.
"But you love me," he'll say. "In some way you do."
"No, I don't. No. Go away. You gopher-creton."
"Am I?" he'll say and then his face with come up to me like an icon magnified in the dock. "I know who you are."
"You don't know anything, you're just the horrible part of myself I can't escape."
"Ah yes, speaking of which," he'll say and his voice is so proud. "Speaking of which, I want to show you some of your finer moments lately. Shall we have a little review?" And he'll turn as though to the producer: "Clip No. 45. Go."
Sure enough it'll be some horrible thing I've done. Maybe it was even years ago. Some horrible thing I said to someone. He'll keep playing it over and over. Finally, I'm yelling, "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
This when my wife begins to kick me.
"Okay you cheap little trick what is it you want?" I say to the pig.
"Tell me that as much as you hate me you really love me. Why? Because I'm one of your 'founders' if I might say. I was there at the beginning and you need me."
And that's when I just throw up my hands and walk right into the sea, and I just keep going until I have to start swimming and even if there's a rip tide I'll keep swimming. I don't care. I don't care if I make it or not. And he'll be on the shore jumping up and down, throwing one of his tantrums, or else writing on the blackboard, and I can just barely see it: "Stay out there, you statist moron."
Apr 28, 2010
The other day a old friend called for a reference. She was edgy and in no mood. She'd just been fired from her job as a senior editor in a large publishing house and needed to find something "quickly."
How quickly, I asked.
"It's impossible, I know. What is it? One month for each $10,000 you make. I am just so sick of this. Lately, I don't have the ambition to put one foot in front of the other."
She's been working as an independent contractor and so was not able to collect unemployment benefits even though she'd been at the house for several years.
This is the currency lately: you work as a contractor, with no benefits and an 'at will' contract. The employer pays no benefits and lets you out the dog door when convenient. But in this case my friend discovered that the IRS takes a dim view of this arrangement and found out that she might negotiate an 'unofficial' severance.
She didn't provide details but she did describe the scene in which she went to the publisher, a man in his 50s, with the home in Katonah, the wife in her 30s, the American eagle over the front door, while the middle aged ex-wife lives in a studio down in White Plains with the child and the dog.
"Now you understand," my friend began, "this man believes he's the master negotiator. If his office were suddenly taken over by terrorists he would be ecstatic. 'Ah yes, why don't you come into my office. I'm sure we can reach a settlement.' And before you know it they would be out the door with half their guns, amo and panties.
"So we sit down. His office overlooks Grammercy Square. He starts telling me he's just read a book — hooray, I thought — and did you know that until a couple of hundred years ago 25 percent of males died in Wars. Now it's down to 2 percent.
" 'That's very hopeful,' he said. 'Don't you think?'
"'How interesting,' I said. I'm looking down into the street thinking this is always the male world: always the fight. What we need is more flight.
"'I never go to war,' he went on. 'I always find a way to settle.' And then he set out to lay waste the countryside. But he's very clever, he takes away all the option and couches the whole discussion with a hopeful twist.
"'I know the economy is rough out there,' he said, 'but actually it grew by 2.3 percent in the first quarter. Of course there's joblessness and editors are especialy hard hit... And you have a child, no?'
Yes, I said. And I'm thinking I've been here almost five years and this is the first time we have ever had any kind of communication. In an office with 10 people?
"But you have a great education and you're smart as anything, I'm sure you'll find something quickly."
So then of course you can't say anything that implies you're not well educated and in great demand all over the world."
Then we began to talk numbers and his left eyebrow went right up when I mentioned a number.
'Now you realize, I don't feel as if I should pay anything. We've treated you fairly and you've been paid a reasonable sum.'
There was so much I wanted to say — that I had never worked a simple 40 hour week, that I had never took off any holidays. It's my own fault. I took the job far too seriously.
'I never go to war,' he repeated. "And we want to end things on good terms, we don't want to end badly. Because this is a small industry and who knows we might work together again. Anything is possible so I think we want to end on good terms. Let me say this, I think the number we're looking for is the one that you will feel as if you didn't get what you wanted, that it was too little and I will feel I paid too much. That's a settlement. Don't you think?"
How quickly, I asked.
"It's impossible, I know. What is it? One month for each $10,000 you make. I am just so sick of this. Lately, I don't have the ambition to put one foot in front of the other."
She's been working as an independent contractor and so was not able to collect unemployment benefits even though she'd been at the house for several years.
This is the currency lately: you work as a contractor, with no benefits and an 'at will' contract. The employer pays no benefits and lets you out the dog door when convenient. But in this case my friend discovered that the IRS takes a dim view of this arrangement and found out that she might negotiate an 'unofficial' severance.
She didn't provide details but she did describe the scene in which she went to the publisher, a man in his 50s, with the home in Katonah, the wife in her 30s, the American eagle over the front door, while the middle aged ex-wife lives in a studio down in White Plains with the child and the dog.
"Now you understand," my friend began, "this man believes he's the master negotiator. If his office were suddenly taken over by terrorists he would be ecstatic. 'Ah yes, why don't you come into my office. I'm sure we can reach a settlement.' And before you know it they would be out the door with half their guns, amo and panties.
"So we sit down. His office overlooks Grammercy Square. He starts telling me he's just read a book — hooray, I thought — and did you know that until a couple of hundred years ago 25 percent of males died in Wars. Now it's down to 2 percent.
" 'That's very hopeful,' he said. 'Don't you think?'
"'How interesting,' I said. I'm looking down into the street thinking this is always the male world: always the fight. What we need is more flight.
"'I never go to war,' he went on. 'I always find a way to settle.' And then he set out to lay waste the countryside. But he's very clever, he takes away all the option and couches the whole discussion with a hopeful twist.
"'I know the economy is rough out there,' he said, 'but actually it grew by 2.3 percent in the first quarter. Of course there's joblessness and editors are especialy hard hit... And you have a child, no?'
Yes, I said. And I'm thinking I've been here almost five years and this is the first time we have ever had any kind of communication. In an office with 10 people?
"But you have a great education and you're smart as anything, I'm sure you'll find something quickly."
So then of course you can't say anything that implies you're not well educated and in great demand all over the world."
Then we began to talk numbers and his left eyebrow went right up when I mentioned a number.
'Now you realize, I don't feel as if I should pay anything. We've treated you fairly and you've been paid a reasonable sum.'
There was so much I wanted to say — that I had never worked a simple 40 hour week, that I had never took off any holidays. It's my own fault. I took the job far too seriously.
'I never go to war,' he repeated. "And we want to end things on good terms, we don't want to end badly. Because this is a small industry and who knows we might work together again. Anything is possible so I think we want to end on good terms. Let me say this, I think the number we're looking for is the one that you will feel as if you didn't get what you wanted, that it was too little and I will feel I paid too much. That's a settlement. Don't you think?"
Apr 14, 2010
Suddenly, I wake up. I'm in the mezzanine at A.C.T., watching Vigil, with Olympia DuKakis and Marco Barricelli. It's intermission.
The woman to my left has a small faux leopard-skin pillow that she keeps against the small of her back. She's wearing a matching blouse. She's pretty, on the very last day of 49, blonde on top of brunette, a tall woman with short fingers and a lot of wrist bangle and billidoux. She's saying to the two men to her left that she completely sympathizes with Grace, the dying woman in the play. "I'm not going to have anybody when I die."
"That's why people have kids," says the man next to the man next to her.
"But I don't have any kids," she replies.
The man next to her appears to be her husband. But he doesn't fit her, except that he's tall. He's been to Big and Tall Men but all he got was blue jeans and a sleeveless wool sweater. This doesn't go with anything she's wearing or thinking about. You get the feeling he's out of her league. My first thought is that the escort married a client. He's from a small town. She went to college. He made his money with a hardware store. Her father loved hardware stores. It's a stretch but he's safe and he's rich. He started out on a whim as he always does. In the beginning he was full-hearted, now he's half-hearted. The black underwear has worn off. But it's okay. He doesn't talk much and she doesn't mind. They're taking care of each other. They're an echo from the play.
"But there's always my kids," he says. "They're nice."
She drops her head. "Danny's fiancee is a horror."
The man falls silent. She puts one hand on his arm and then another hand and then takes away the first and puts that on top, like that child's game you play. And then she squeezes. "No he's not. I didn't mean that. I mean I just want to die with people around me I know."
He nods but doesn't say anything because perhaps he notices that the people in the row in front of us seem to be listening.
The lights go down. The play goes down with it.
During the last 10 minutes it seems Panych has had a misunderstanding with his characters. As though he said to them, 'Should I be funny, should I be serious? I've been clever but what can I do now?' The characters shake their heads. They're of several minds.
He settles for sentimentality. That resonates here and there. Someone in back of me is clearly choked up. But the woman in front of me is snoring. Next to her the man is cleaning out his ear and making a terrible racket.
Lights up. Two rounds of bows. People get up to leave and it's as though the play has spilled over its banks into the audience. Everyone is old. The youngest man is wearing a cap with a pin from the Boer War. I notice another man wearing a sneaker but it's on a wooden leg. Meanwhile, Olympia Dukakis has gone to photo shop. She's replicated. That white hair in a page boy cut extends as far as the eye can see. Along with men in old black check coats, badly cut red-tinted hair pieces, gigolos of yesteryear with women bouffed and pouffed. Ancient CEOs, heads of small states now living in Atherton, great grandmothers from San Ramon. Everybody feeling the dead weight of age. Men hobbling off to the can, totally exhausted from their naps. Women slowly turning in circles, holding on to the banister. Trying to remember something or other.
It's the play and it's the times. This is the last theater audience. Who will replace them? They're the same ones that go hear a lecture on the Iliad at Stanford. As stricken as they are, they're holding up local culture.
And so that's all to the good, but you realize once more that this is going to be the scene from here on in: the theater is going to include very last boomer's story of becoming old and irrelevant, and the audience will always be coming to get some last atta-boys, wishing to God that someone could explain what happened in a life and how to go on without thinking too much.
I get to the garage on O'Farrell and the herd is flowing into the elevator and out at each floor. People go to their fine cars. You notice that each car has a noticeable dent. From the time the driver forgot the steel post in back of them or the pedestrian in front of them, or got haunted by that stranger's face in the rear view mirror.
The woman to my left has a small faux leopard-skin pillow that she keeps against the small of her back. She's wearing a matching blouse. She's pretty, on the very last day of 49, blonde on top of brunette, a tall woman with short fingers and a lot of wrist bangle and billidoux. She's saying to the two men to her left that she completely sympathizes with Grace, the dying woman in the play. "I'm not going to have anybody when I die."
"That's why people have kids," says the man next to the man next to her.
"But I don't have any kids," she replies.
The man next to her appears to be her husband. But he doesn't fit her, except that he's tall. He's been to Big and Tall Men but all he got was blue jeans and a sleeveless wool sweater. This doesn't go with anything she's wearing or thinking about. You get the feeling he's out of her league. My first thought is that the escort married a client. He's from a small town. She went to college. He made his money with a hardware store. Her father loved hardware stores. It's a stretch but he's safe and he's rich. He started out on a whim as he always does. In the beginning he was full-hearted, now he's half-hearted. The black underwear has worn off. But it's okay. He doesn't talk much and she doesn't mind. They're taking care of each other. They're an echo from the play.
"But there's always my kids," he says. "They're nice."
She drops her head. "Danny's fiancee is a horror."
The man falls silent. She puts one hand on his arm and then another hand and then takes away the first and puts that on top, like that child's game you play. And then she squeezes. "No he's not. I didn't mean that. I mean I just want to die with people around me I know."
He nods but doesn't say anything because perhaps he notices that the people in the row in front of us seem to be listening.
The lights go down. The play goes down with it.
During the last 10 minutes it seems Panych has had a misunderstanding with his characters. As though he said to them, 'Should I be funny, should I be serious? I've been clever but what can I do now?' The characters shake their heads. They're of several minds.
He settles for sentimentality. That resonates here and there. Someone in back of me is clearly choked up. But the woman in front of me is snoring. Next to her the man is cleaning out his ear and making a terrible racket.
Lights up. Two rounds of bows. People get up to leave and it's as though the play has spilled over its banks into the audience. Everyone is old. The youngest man is wearing a cap with a pin from the Boer War. I notice another man wearing a sneaker but it's on a wooden leg. Meanwhile, Olympia Dukakis has gone to photo shop. She's replicated. That white hair in a page boy cut extends as far as the eye can see. Along with men in old black check coats, badly cut red-tinted hair pieces, gigolos of yesteryear with women bouffed and pouffed. Ancient CEOs, heads of small states now living in Atherton, great grandmothers from San Ramon. Everybody feeling the dead weight of age. Men hobbling off to the can, totally exhausted from their naps. Women slowly turning in circles, holding on to the banister. Trying to remember something or other.
It's the play and it's the times. This is the last theater audience. Who will replace them? They're the same ones that go hear a lecture on the Iliad at Stanford. As stricken as they are, they're holding up local culture.
And so that's all to the good, but you realize once more that this is going to be the scene from here on in: the theater is going to include very last boomer's story of becoming old and irrelevant, and the audience will always be coming to get some last atta-boys, wishing to God that someone could explain what happened in a life and how to go on without thinking too much.
I get to the garage on O'Farrell and the herd is flowing into the elevator and out at each floor. People go to their fine cars. You notice that each car has a noticeable dent. From the time the driver forgot the steel post in back of them or the pedestrian in front of them, or got haunted by that stranger's face in the rear view mirror.
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