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Sunday, December 20th, 2009
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Originally posted by ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) theuglyvolvo, here.
I am taking the seeds out of a Pomegranate the way I was shown by Holly, the forty-two year old woman who I worked with two jobs ago. You cut the Pomegranate into fourths, leaving the knife in what looks like a puddle of translucent, magenta-toned blood on the cutting board. You fill a large mixing bowl with cold water and roll up your sleeves. Rolling up your sleeves should maybe be the first step, but I inevitably forget to do it until later—sometimes until after I have already gotten them wet or stained with Pomegranate juice and am holding my dripping hands out in front of me, yelling to anyone within earshot, “Hey—can someone come in here and roll up my sleeves?” And I stand there, soiled and thankful, as my mother folds my cuffs back and pushes them past my elbows. I have lost two good shirts to pomegranate juice.
But roll up your sleeves and immerse one of the pomegranate pieces in the cold water, separating the white pulp from the bright, jewel-toned seeds. The seeds will sink to the bottom and the white pulp will float to the top, and the water will keep the juice from staining your palms, keeping you from looking like Lady MacBeth in the first scene of act five, which really is not such a great look for anyone. When I spilled things on myself as a child my parents would take the garment, running it under cold water, and chanting, “Out, out, damn spot!” I was seventeen years-old—a junior in High School, before I learned that the phrase “Out, out damn spot,” was not about getting food stains out of clothing. I was twenty-three before I learned how to open a Pomegranate. I do not know at what ages other people learned these things, or whether they learned them at all, so I have nothing with which to compare myself. I will assume, for the time being, that my experience is normal.
Holly introduced me to pomegranates. They were her favorite fruit, she said, and her husband would sometimes bring one home for her, the way other men would bring their wives bouquets of roses. When she said this I nodded quickly to give the impression of understanding, as if I received bouquets of roses all the time—as if the men hoping to meet me were lined up around the block, like the nannies in Mary Poppins who are eventually blown away by the wind.
I was twenty-three when I learned how to artfully open a pomegranate and I was twenty-four when I first went on a date, which was something no one had ever shown me how to do.
I knew nothing about dating. I had not had a great deal of luck with the opposite sex. The Dorothy Parker adage states, “Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses,” but I had discovered several unfortunate addendums, including: Men seldom make passes at girls who wear loafers, Men seldom make passes at girls who are constantly doing Walter Matthau imitations, and Men seldom make passes at girls who sit in front of their computer for nine hours, trying to beat their high score in Minesweeper.
I was not normal, and I knew that boys did not have crushes on girls that were not normal. I had learned from numerous 80’s movies that cool, popular guys would sometimes ask you to go to the prom with them, but when you actually arrived at the prom in your dress and corsage it would turn out to be a trick and the guy who had asked you out would be laughing at you, standing arm in arm with a popular girl who was usually blonde with feathered bangs and whose mother was ok with her wearing eyeliner. I spent a good amount of time horrified that I might find myself in this situation, and decided that the best way to avoid it at all costs was to avoid anyone who appeared to be interested in me. This led to a decade in which I became extremely adept at playing Boggle, Scrabble, and Tetris. Also, I read a lot.
My very first date ever was with someone I met online. I wore a brown cotton sweater from the Gap over a blue crewneck T-shirt. We went to a bar that had two bowls of pretzels to a table and beer advertisements from the 70’s on the walls, and he told me about himself and why he had moved to the area and what his plans were for the future. And the whole time I sat opposite him in my brown cotton sweater thinking, “I’m on a date! This is what a date is like!” And at some point he took a calm sip of whatever beer he had chosen and asked about me, and I answered cheerfully with what I realize now is the mortifying statement, “This is my first date ever!” And he exercised what must have been a great deal of restraint and said, “Ever?” And I said, “Yeah, ever!” And I do not remember specific details about him, such as his name or what he looked like, or anything he said over the course of the night, but when we parted ways he said, “I’ll call you,” which I remembered from the movies meant, “I will not call you.” And I parted ways with him the way I had parted ways with everyone up until that point. I smiled and extended my hand and told him it had been very nice to meet him and thanked him for coming out, grinning with a smile normally reserved for disappointing job interviews. And as expected, he did not call to ask for a second date. I assumed that my biggest mistake had been wearing the brown cotton sweater and the blue T-shirt. The sweater, I remembered, had never been particularly flattering.
At the job where I worked with Holly there was me and there were a lot of girls my age or a few years older, most of whom were blonde and lived in Hoboken, one of whom would not talk to me after she caught me eating popcorn out of the garbage can in my cubicle. (And I would like to clear my name by saying that the popcorn was not actually touching the garbage—it was still in the microwaveable bag in which I had popped it, and there was nothing else in my garbage can but computer paper, and I had initially thrown the bag away hoping that the act of putting it in the garbage would force me to stop eating it. But I had not really committed to throwing it away, since I had placed the bag, opening facing upward, gently on top of the garbage where it could easily be pulled back out. My paltry allotment of willpower is no match for the olfactory supernova of popcorn.) I liked Holly best out of the people in the office because she understood that there are certain circumstances under which it is ok to eat food out of an office trash can and she liked me because I understood that there are certain plays that cannot really be appreciated until you have seen them fourteen times, namely, the Broadway musical “The Light in the Piazza,” and anything starring Brenda Bleythn.
Holly’s husband, the one who would intermittently buy her pomegranates on a romantic whim, had worked in an office until he one day decided that he couldn’t go on working in an office any longer. And he had said, “I’m going to be a playwright.” And Holly had been a little nervous, because, as she reminded me, they had two children at that point, and the life of a playwright is not particularly lucrative, if it generates any income at all. But she had said, ok, we’ll try this, even though the whole idea sounded crazier than eating popcorn out of a perfectly clean garbage can, and he turned out to be a successful playwright, and now they lived together in their little house with the caddy corner piano in the living room, and the 1989 Volvo in the driveway.
When you fill out an online dating profile it is divided into two sections: what you are like, and what you are looking for, which might also be accurately labeled, “Outright lies,” and “horrifically unreasonable expectations.” My favorite online profile that I ever came across was a man who claimed to be a well-respected surgeon, who (when he was not saving lives by deftly cutting out tumors) was busy flying his private plane or playing catch with his 4 year-old Labrador retriever, Watson, throwing a tennis ball off the back of his deep sea fishing boat. He played in a band when he had the time, and had fond memories of his grandmother, and his favorite food was sushi, and his favorite movie was Finding Nemo. All of his photographs appeared to have been cut out of an L.L. Bean catalog.
An online profile will ask you to list a great deal of information about yourself and it is important that you be as accurate as possible, while being careful never to include anything unflattering or extremist. It is a pre-requisite of online profile composition that you include the line, “I love going out, but sometimes I also like to stay in.” People who do not enjoy both going out AND staying in are not eligible for online dating. The beginning of your profile will look something like the following:
· 24 year-old woman
· Brooklyn, New York, United States
· Seeking men 26-33
· Within 25 miles of Brooklyn, New York, United States
Sometimes it will ask you questions, such as, “What sort of music do you listen to?” and you have to be careful not to write something like, “I love Phil Collins and own two copies of the Tarzan soundtrack,” because even if it is true, very few people will read that sentence and fall head over heels in love with you. There will be some parts of the profile where you will get to write long passages about yourself and there will be some parts where they will offer you a series of boxes that correlate with people’s interests and will ask you to check all that apply.
I am interested in:
· Camping!
· Coffee and Conversation!
· Dining Out!
· Gardening/Landscaping!
· Movies/Videos!
· Museums and Art!
· Playing cards!
· Travel/Sightseeing!
· Wine tasting!
I found two pictures of myself that I did not think were terrible and uploaded them to the website. In the first one I am sitting in my office cubicle in a coat and scarf reading a book. In the second I am wearing a homemade Halloween costume, dressed as a “chick magnet,” clad in a chunky turtleneck sweater and jeans, which are covered in dozens of small, yellow chicks. For a brief period I put up a third picture, depicting Steve Carrell’s character from the movie “Anchorman,” but the site took it down, claiming that posting licensed photos was against site policy.
You pick photos that depict you as you would like to imagine you look every day. And you look over your profile to make sure it says all of the things you would like the world to know about yourself and that it reveals none of the things you were hoping to keep secret. And you look over your photographs, wondering if you have any that are better. And then you realize that this is it, this is all you have and all you are, and that maybe someone will like you and maybe someone will actively dislike you, but that most likely, no one will care one way or the other. You check back every few hours to see if anyone has left you a message, and most of the time nobody has.
I am pulling apart the pomegranate underwater, hundreds of clustered seeds nestling in its crevices. Pomegranates do not look like most other fruit—there is no meaty flesh to be scooped up by a melon baller, and you cannot bite through a thin skin, the way you can with a peach or an apple. The first time I saw the inside of a pomegranate, I thought that it had gone bad—that the pure white of the inside had been compromised by what appeared to be a series of thin red worms tunneling through the pulp.
“That’s a normal pomegranate,” said Holly. “That’s how they’re supposed to look.”
“It looks gross.”
“Try it.”
“It looks infested,” I said.
“Don’t be put off by how they look,” she said. “Lots of things look fine but taste terrible.”
Someone told me once that the apple that Eve samples in the garden of Eden is a mistranslation—that the actual fruit taken from the tree of knowledge is a pomegranate, which makes that particular creation myth more palatable. As a child my mother would pack me a bag lunch five days a week, consisting of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich (which, by my lunch period had been flattened to the thickness of a sparsely packed Fed Ex envelope) with a juice box and a Red Delicious apple, deep red and broad shouldered with a waxy shine to its skin. Every day she would pack me a Red Delicious apple and every day I would walk politely to the cafeteria garbage can, lift the lid, and deposit the apple as if I were mailing a letter. My mother purchased Red Delicious apples because they were inexpensive and because they didn’t go bad as quickly as some other varieties of apple, but failed to take into account that the reason they are so inexpensive is because in blind taste tests Red Delicious apples are indistinguishable from pieces of cardboard.
“You threw them away?” she asked, years later, after my confession that I had discarded thousands of untouched apples, all of which were nestled in a landfill somewhere, clustered like pomegranate seeds, covered by the thin membrane of the earth.
“I threw all of them away. They were bad. They were gross.”
“Red Delicious apples almost never go bad.”
And that was when I explained to her that Red Delicious apples do not “go” bad because they are already bad. That the word “Delicious” was included in the name to entice people to use them as something other than paperweights.
* * *
My first date that was not a complete train wreck was also with someone I had met online (Height: 5’11”, Eyes: Blue).
“Hi, it’s nice to meet you,” I said.
“Nice to meet you,” he said. He was in his third year of a Ph.D. program and had a cat and liked comic books and we dated for three years, despite the fact that we had little to nothing in common aside from a love of spareribs and distaste for the movie “Seabiscuit.”
“How are things with Dan?” Holly asked occasionally. “Are you still together?” And I answered, “Yes,” for several years. And then at some point he realized that despite being in a relationship we were both lonely and not particularly well matched, and he broke it off. I was inconsolable for several months, at one point walking into a Ranch 1 Fast Food chicken restaurant and breaking into tears at the song, “My Boo,” being played over the loudspeakers.
And I would occasionally think of Holly and her wonderful family. Her husband, bent over his desk, scribbling endless pages of convincing dialogue. Her children asking if they could paint their rooms some horrible color like dark green or fluorescent orange and Holly politely telling them, “No, that is not such a good idea,” and the children exhibiting disappointment imbued with an absurdly mature level of understanding. Their home filled with warmth and good cheer and the innumerable things people hope to depict on holiday greeting cards. The last time I visited them at their house they were sitting around their Christmas tree, hugging each other. I wondered, at times, if I was visiting a co-worker or had undertaken a surrealistic journey through a Norman Rockwell painting.
* * *
I created a new online dating profile almost a year after my breakup, filled with fascinating tidbits about my personality (Pets I have: None! Pets I like: Dogs, Cats, Horses!) and forced myself to go out on dates. People would occasionally ask if all the bad dates blended together after a while, but I asserted that no, they were all unique in their awfulness. I had moved onto a new job in the city at that point and no longer worked with Holly, but e-mailed her occasionally to see how she was doing. She was always doing well, seeing Broadway plays and working and coming home to her two wonderful children and her cats and her two geckos and her wonderful husband who sometimes bought her pomegranates out of love.
I met a very nice guy online (Height: 6’0”, Eyes: Brown) who had curly brownish reddish hair and whose mother raised purebred dogs in Ontario. He was friendly and nice and we dated for a few months. He was many of the things I was looking for, which, rather than causing me to step up the intensity of the relationship, made me wonder whether the things I was looking for were horribly misguided. A friend of mine in college had once taken an evening and listed the traits of her perfect match—of her soul mate, she said. The list began with things such as:
· Funny
· Handsome
· Not allergic to dogs
· Gets along with my parents
· Kind
And in the middle it included things such as:
· Likes Thai food
· Speaks another language in addition to English
· Works in the music industry but volunteers at a Non-Profit
· Has a great singing voice
And at the end it included things such as:
· Has memorized the lyrics to “In Your Eyes,” by Peter Gabriel
· Favorite color is orange
· Second favorite color is brown
· Does not own anything from IKEA
· Is willing to watch my “When Harry Met Sally” DVD with me once every few months without complaining
And the very last bullet point, which is the only reason I remember her writing all this out in the first place, was the line:
· He should not meet all the criteria of this list.
* * *
The most ridiculous message I received while online dating was from a 33 year-old man living in Jersey City (Height: 6’2”, Eyes: Hazel) written under the subject line, “I hate puppies.”
“Hello,” he said. “I just read through your profile and thought, ‘Wow! I have never met anyone with whom I am so horribly mismatched and in whom I am so horribly uninterested.’ After going through your “About Me” section (and falling asleep several times, by the way) I made it to your “interests,” desperately hoping that you (like myself) are looking for a relationship based solely on a shared interest in seagull migration patterns and a passion for memorizing train schedules. That being absent, I thought that perhaps you were that person I have searched for all my life, with whom I could walk around lower-income Midwestern towns, buying antique Vaseline jars at garage sales. THAT being absent, I thought that perhaps you shared my disdain for adorable, large-footed puppies which, given the information in your profile, is also not the case.
"All that being said,” he continued, “I really liked your profile and am horrible at writing to people online.”
I responded in the only way you can respond to a letter of that sort, which is to tell him that I was unable to write very much at that time, being that I was involved with a 3-day project involving Busby Berkeley choreography and tarantulas. And that the following evening I would have loved to chat, except that I would be busy translating the phrase, “Where have all the flowers gone?” into a number of Mayan dialects. And also, I confessed, in actual seriousness, that I was involved in a highly intensive online project that would be completed in two weeks. But if he would like to write e-mails back and forth for two weeks, that it would be a welcome break from the work. And he said “Fine,” and for the next two weeks I received lighthearted e-mails from him in which he pretended to be senator Chuck Schumer.
“I’m at home,” he said. “Watching this great Schoolhouse Rocks! special about how a bill becomes a law. I think I almost understand it. On Monday I’m going to try and explain it to Congress.”
And occasionally I would ask about one of the details of his actual life, wondering if I might learn something about him.
“You live in Jersey City?” I asked. “Do you like it?”
“What’s not to like about it?” he asked. “Jersey City is not only the birthplace of the toothpick, it’s also the first place where churned butter was genetically modified in our attempts to create a biological weapon in our epic struggle against the soviets. It’s also home to some of our most renowned scientists, including Albert Einstein, Max Planck, Jefferson Davis, E.O. Wilson and Georges Sand. Also, it was recently named ‘Happiest City in New Jersey’ by Jersey City Magazine—the first time it’s won the award in the publication’s 127 year history.”
“Are you ever serious about things?” I asked.
“I’m not wonderful at being serious,” he replied. “But I can try, if you really want me to.”
At the close of two weeks I asked if he would still like to meet up and he said yes, he would, very much. And he asked what sort of food I liked, and I said, “Anything except Indian food,” and he suggested Ethiopian food and since I did not want to appear to be an uncultured cretin, I said, “Yes, sure, Ethiopian food would be fine.” I remembered that in the movie “When Harry Met Sally” they go out for Ethiopian food and the movie ends well—with the two of them getting together, so maybe there is something about Ethiopian food that bodes well with budding relationships.
And I received the following message:
“So I’ll see you on Saturday night then. We can spend an hour or two chatting over Ethiopian food before leaving the restaurant in disgust (with each other—not with the food.) And then we can part ways and think about all the better ways we could have spent the evening."
Before I left the house I brushed my hair and put on a three quarter sleeve tomato-colored peacoat. I took the subway to West Fourth street and walked past the basketball courts and past the hardware store and past a parking garage and a nightclub called, “The Fat Black Pussycat.” I walked past dozens of people my age, some of whom seemed happy, some of whom seemed confused, sitting thoughtfully in pizza parlors or on stoops.
“So I’ll be able to recognize you?” I had asked. “You look like you do in your pictures?”
“Of course not,” he wrote. “I cut the pictures out of a Land’s End catalog that my mother was throwing away. I look nothing like any of my pictures. But meet me in front of the restaurant regardless—I’ll be the four-foot tall man in the Stegosaurus costume with the extending telescopic eye.”
“Ok,” I said quietly. “I’ll be the nine foot tall Elton John impersonator holding a taxidermied nightingale and reciting lines from Nicholas Cage movies.”
“Ok,” he said. “I will keep my eyes peeled. I am looking forward to meeting you.”
I am walking down the street in my peacoat, wishing I had worn gloves. I get to MacDougal street and begin walking down the street, staring up at signs, muttering the words, “Ethiopian restaurant, Ethopian restaurant, Ethiopian restaurant.” I do not know exactly what I am looking for, but have the name written down on a torn piece of paper, which I continually pull from my pocket, unscrolling it and holding it taut between my cold, ungloved hands. I look down at the paper and up at the street and I hear a voice say, “Raquel?”
And I look up and standing politely by a doorway is a four-foot tall man in a stegosaurus costume, with an extending telescopic eye.
“It’s so nice to finally meet you,” he says, through an electronic voicebox that translates dinosaur-style grunts into conversational American English. His eye extends slowly, protruding from his reptilian face, looking at me for the first time.
“No, stop,” my mother said, as I recounted the story. “Tell the actual normal story.”
“Ok,” I tell her.
So I’m walking down the street in my peacoat, wishing I had worn gloves. I get to MacDougal street and begin walking down the street, staring up at signs, muttering the words, “Ethiopian restaurant, Ethopian restaurant, Ethiopian restaurant.” I do not know exactly what I am looking for, but have the name written down on a torn piece of paper, which I continually pull from my pocket, unscrolling it and holding it taut between my cold, ungloved hands. I look down at the paper and up at the street and I hear a voice say, “Raquel?”
“And?” a friend asks.
“And I turn around to see Senator Chuck Schumer, handing out informational pamphlets.”
“Stop it. How did the date go?”
“It went fine.”
“Was he normal?”
“No,” I said. “Not at all.”
So here is what really happened. Really. I promise. I heard a voice say, “Raquel?” and I turned around and there was a regular person behind me.
“What did he look like?” my friend asked.
“He looked like Waldo.”
“Waldo who?”
“You know Waldo from the ‘Where’s Waldo?’ books.”
“He looks like Waldo?” she asked.
“A little,” I said. “And a little bit like Adrien Brody. If Adrien Brody and Waldo had a baby, he would look like that.”
“Ok,” she said.
I looked at his face. He was tall and thin. He was handsome, with very dark brown hair and hazel eyes and freckles across his face and his hands. I looked behind him for lists of his interests or habits or an additional “More About Me” paragraph, but there was nothing except himself, wrapped tightly in a black jacket, hands stuck anxiously in his pockets. He extended one of them for a handshake, and his warm glove enveloped my hand.
“I’m Jonathan,” he said, and I smiled and said, “You seem sort of like a normal, regular person.”
“I am one,” he said.
“That’s ok,” I told him. “We might still get along.”
I am peeling apart the pomegranate the way Holly showed me, and pushing out the seeds, watching them float to the bottom of the bowl. I put them in the refrigerator so they will be cold for later, which was not one of the steps that Holly taught me, but you are allowed to add additional steps if you want to. There is no universal pomegranate preparation agenda.
I place the seeds in the fridge. I was twenty-three when I first learned how to cut up a pomegranate and twenty-eight before I had someone with whom to share one. In a basket on the counter are two additional pomegranates and zero Red Delicious apples. Later today I will bring one of the pomegranates out into the living room where Jonathan is sitting on our uncomfortable futon, reading a book, and I will offer to share it with him. We will sit in front of the gas fireplace and eat pomegranate seeds. I think back to Holly with her warm, enviable house and the visible vapors of bliss that emanated from her cats and her children and her husband and herself. I think back to her kitchen table where she sat, most likely, when her family ate casseroles or take-out Chinese food or pizza, and to their cared-for Christmas tree, and to the warm feeling I got being near her family, even though I am always notoriously cold, even when wearing layers.
“Teach me how to do this,” I wanted to say. “Teach me how to have what you have.”
I will be thirty years-old when Jonathan and I get married and start our ridiculous life together, but I was twenty-three when I looked over Holly’s shoulder, desperately trying to learn the two things she understood so effortlessly: how to be happy, and how to be loved. There is a lot of trial and error involved. I squinted and pursed my lips.
“Like this?” I asked her.
“Not exactly,” she said. “Try again. Sometimes it takes a little while before you get it down.” I nodded, trying to take in an invaluable lesson and still get home in time to have dinner with my parents.
“Like this?” I asked.
“No,” she said, frowning. “Definitely not like that.”
I paused, discouraged.
“Try again,” she says.
“Like this,” I say, with conviction. “You do it like this.”
“That’s it,” she says. “Like that.”
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Monday, November 16th, 2009
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Originally posted by anahata56, here.
On Facebook recently, I had the interesting experience of seeing a photo album posted to an acquaintence’s page. This acquaintence was someone I knew from having attended the same church she currently attends, long, long ago.
The pictures she posted were of a dance, conducted in the main meeting room of the church.
These pictures brought on a fit of uncontrollable laughter. I’ll explain.
When I was a young teenager, I recall a certain meeting of the “Brothers”, on the weighty subject of roller skating. You heard me correctly–roller skating. This special meeting was called because, apparently, there was much consternation that the church was sponsoring trips to the local roller rink, and there was some question as to the appropriateness of this activity for young people. You see, the crux of the issue was that they played MUSIC at the roller rink as people skated, and it was thought, by some of the elders, that this movement to music could somehow be interpreted by some onlookers as “dancing”. And if it was, indeed, dancing, or could be interpreted as such by those unsaved individuals who could actually see us skating, then what sort of a testimony for Jesus would we be, and how many of those unsaved would we cause to “stumble” in their quest for Jesus’ truth?
I remember quite a bit about this meeting–I was allowed to be there but, of course, being a female, I was unable to speak or participate. I remember the red faces, the shouting–even the tears as one brother pled with another on points of scripture, regarding our position in the world, and our duty to remain unsullied by the sensual pleasures of the same. I remember their discussing the finer points of roller skating, and which movements which were executed in roller skating crossed over from the wicked world of dance. Of course, there were some folks there who felt that being in the roller skating rink at all was sinful, because they played rock music in any case, and if you exposed yourself to that, even without moving at all, one was in a place that shamed the Lord, and no good Christian should even want to be there. And rumor had it that some folks drank beer in the lounge before and after skating–so there ya go!
Roller skating=rock music=dancing=beer=Hell. An astonishing slide from the Friday night mirrored ball to the Lake of Fire.
I remember the faces of my contemporaries as the old folks levied their judgment on what was turning out to sound like the most evil of activities–some were shocked, some were outraged, some were confused and some, clearly the most backslidden among us, were simply bored, and no doubt planning their next excursion to this den of wickedness on the next Friday night, in the company of the rest of the youth group or not. Those were the folks who, no matter how UNdevoted to the activity of roller skating they might be, were prepared to go and defend its honor, on principle. Or out of sheer rebellion–but then, it was the time in history when the line between principle and rebellion was very, very thin anyway.
And it was painful. Really, really painful. So painful, in fact, that many left that meeting, never to return.
I remember it in my mind as The Great Roller Skating Schism of 1971.
So you can imagine my astonishment when initially presented with photographs of young people from my old church, not only dancing, but dancing in the auditorium of the church. The very room in which the Lord’s Supper is served every Lord’s Day!
But not astonishment alone, but extreme amusement. Because while, at this stage of my life, trying to roller skate would no doubt mean certain death, and while dancing never was and never shall be my strong suit (having gone through my most formative “dance learning” years spending all my energy trying not to move to music), I am taken back in my mind to those days when it was such a big hairy deal as to be the final nail in the coffin of some folks’ connection to their “brothers and sisters in Christ”, and wonder at the ironic and hilarious way the world turns, and wonder at how things that, at one point in history, were so incredibly important to the fabric and dogma of The Church, are, after a few years, meaningless.
And it leads me, when I hear the screaming and hollering coming from the Fundamentalist faction of society about the dire consequences of some action or another, to picture them all on roller skates.
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Tuesday, September 15th, 2009
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Originally posted by amenquohi, here.
We lay snuggling in my bed, our nightly ritual after bathing, putting on jammies, reading and discussing the school day. I’d put her brother to bed a few minutes before her, then we snuggled in under the big comforter and she picked a subject for us to discuss – another ritual. The sky is the limit, and the only caveat is time: five minutes to be exact. Then we usually sing a lullaby, and I carry her (all 53 pounds of her) into bed with a kiss and an ‘I love you’ and a promise to meet up with her in my dreams that night. The night before we’d decided to meet in Egypt, to see the pyramids together. I hadn’t yet received the dream destination for the evening, but I knew she’d get around to picking someplace before I laid her in her own bed.
"So what’s the subject?" I asked, brightly, as I pulled her close.
"Holidays.” She said. “Like Friday. Why don’t we have Friday off to celebrate 9-11?"
I stared at her, at a loss for a moment. Once again, I have to wrap my head around something enormous and make it understood in a way an eight year old will get. You’d think it gets easier as she gets older, but it doesn’t really. She understands more now, and it’s a fine line between giving her the answers she’s looking for and information overload.
"Sweetie, we don’t celebrate 9-11. It’s not really a “celebration” kind of day."
"Oh, I meant the other word. You know…starts with a “C” and it means remember." She says.
"Commemorate?"
"Yeah, commemorate. A girl in my class is going with her parents to some field to commemorate. She’s missing school that day. We should all be off that day."
"Oh," I say, with realization dawning. "She’s going to Shanksville."
We live about 3 hours from the crash sight of United Flight 93, a lonely field outside of Shanksville, PA. I’ve never been there, but I think about going. I haven’t been able to yet, due to workload or personal reticence. I do think about it, though, every year.
“So what was important about a field? Didn’t 9-11 happen in New York? And to Stephanie at the Pentagon?” Stephanie is her cousin, and she was working at the Pentagon on 9-11. She survived, physically unharmed but mentally trying to make sense of what she lived through, as we all are.
So I explain the story of United flight 93, how brave the passengers were in the face of a nearly certain death, how they fought with everything they had, how many countless lives they saved by forcing an airplane into the dirt instead of into a building. How proud their families and we as a nation are of them, and of everyone who showed bravery in overwhelming adversity that day. She asks for more stories, so I tell her about her Aunt, an EMT for Fairfax County Virginia, and the work her unit did to help after the Pentagon attack. We talk about how the firefighters and policemen ran into the burning buildings in New York, when everyone else was running out. I told her about the two men who carried the wheelchair-bound woman down 80 flights of stairs to safety.
She asked if there were more stories, and I told her there were probably hundreds. We’re going to look them up online tonight, and talk some more. Then she smiled and said "You know what would be cool, Mom? If someone on Flight 93 had found a four-leaf clover, and all of the sudden a bunch of parachutes appeared for them!"
I ruffled her hair fondly and said "Yeah, that would have been great. It didn’t happen that way, though."
Finally, she snuggled in with her back to me and I sang her lullaby and stroked her hair. When the song was done, I got ready to tell her something wonderful about her – something I always do – praising her abilities or her good heart or her smarts. I want her to end her day with something good, always. I opened my mouth, and the words just poured out.
"Oh, Boo…it was an awful, awful day. So many people died, there was so much chaos….and the news – the news kept playing all night. There weren’t any other programs on TV, just pictures and video of people dying over and over and over again. I just kept holding you tight and hoping…praying….and thinking of your Aunt Sue. I kept praying “Please God, don’t let it be her child.” And I knew that all over America, thousands of mothers and fathers were praying that same prayer and they wouldn’t get the answer they wanted. Most of all I wondered what kind of a world you’d grow up in – a world where people could do something like this. I know, people do horrible things to other people all over the world every day, but we all felt it would never happen to us, and it did. It did, and everything changed and all I could do was hold you and hold you and promise that I’ll put myself between you and danger any way I can, for as long as you need me to. I promise, Boo. Always."
She rolled over in my arms, hugging me tightly. "You can’t stop bad things from happening, Mom. And when stuff happens, you just have to be one of the brave ones. That’s what I’d do."
In that moment, I realized why I clung to her so tightly that day. It wasn’t just that she was my only child at the time, and a baby, at that. It wasn’t fear for my life, her life, or the lives of my loved ones. It was what she represented in those hours.
Hope.
And as the years go by and we take the lessons of that day and teach them over and over again, we raise a generation of children who will do what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, because they will be the brave ones, just as many were before them.
I laid her in her bed, kissing her again, and she said sleepily, "Mom, I think we should go to that field tonight, in our dreams. Maybe we can tell them all thank you."
"I’ll see you there."
"Mom?"
"Yes?"
"Bring flowers."
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Saturday, August 1st, 2009
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(Originally posted on June 28, 2009 by msanborn here; locked entry, posted with permission)
In response to Billy Mays Death, Is there really that many or just that many being notable because they're in the media. As I just responded to flutterbychild's post about too many, too soon, what's going on...
"I believe it's called "Life and Death". We live, we die, no one is immortal - just seems a rash of celebrity deaths in a row; but think of all of the non-celebrities that are dying from all sorts of causes day in, and day out.
It's just the process."
Imagine if everyone; posted links to obituaries that affected them, or news stories of deaths of all sorts, accidents that ended in death, murders, suicides, alien abductions, deaths by misadventure... it would be page after page of death after death. We're focusing on < 10 in the past couple weeks from what I can tell - all because they were media featured.
What about Gramma, or Uncle Bob, or that nice family down the road that got plowed into by the drunk driver that walked away without a scratch. If we looked at all of the actual death in the world ... Just saying. Not sure where I'm going with this - it's sad that people pass on, by folly, by error, by disease, by any means; but - we do.
I thought some about death yesterday because the family in the hall was being told that their elderly male patient was under treatment to improve the quality of his remaining life. They were being asked if they understood that; whatever treatments (I'm assuming chemo from their conversation) he was undergoing will not cure him, whatever he had was incurable - these were to prolong his existence comfortably until the disease/cancer/whatever was incurable - finally won. From the voices you could tell one person understood it; one person was rejecting it - they kept making these future plans that the doctor was flat out telling them; he wouldn't be around for.
It's just amazing to consider all of the various ways people cope with news of death. I wish I were more compassionate but I'm missing that last piece of the puzzle; I'm sympathetic, but I also get very detached. I've had a few close people die, and even then - it's the same, I get detached, I cry about it years later, but then I put it back into that box I closed it up in when I first heard.
OKay enough morbid conversations.
/ death
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Thursday, July 30th, 2009
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(Originally posted by idiomagic here.)
Through all of this work with Iranian protesters, I have come into contact and become friends with three people there.
For their safety, I can't give you any details of who they are, but I'll give you their names, since they're very common there.
Rashid.
Fayah.
Ali.
Two of them have become very influential on a grass roots level, partially because they are in contact with so many people internationally, and have access to better information than most.
Through many, many email conversations, I have grown to love and admire and deeply respect these people, these friends.
Two of them are planning to deliberately seek martyrdom on Thursday. Here's what Fayah wrote to me:
"I love life. I love to laugh and be with my friends. There are so many books I want to read, movies I want to see, people I want to meet. I want to marry, to be a good wife and mother. I want to grow old with the people I love, to feel the sun on my face, to see the ocean, to travel.
My country is in a terrible state. People have no jobs. There is no money. People have no freedom. Women must hide themselves from the world, and we have no choices.
Our people--we are not terrorists. We hate terrorists. And that is what our government has become. They kill our people for no reason. They torture us in their prisons because we want freedom. They make our country look evil, they make our religion look evil.
We are fighting for our freedom, for our religion, for our country. If we do nothing while injustice abounds, we become unjust. We turn into the ones we hate.
I have to fight. I have to go back on the streets. I will make them kill me. I will join Neda, with my friends, and then maybe the world will hear us.
I never thought I would become a martyr, but it is needed. The more of us they kill, the smaller they become, the more strength the people will have. Maybe my death will mean nothing, but maybe it will buy my country freedom.
I am very sad that I will never be a mother, that I will never do the things I love, but I would rather die than do nothing and know that I am to blame for the tortures, the murder, the hatred.
Please tell the world how much we love life. That we are not terrorists. We just want to be free."
[Note: I have corrected spelling, removed identifying details, and cleaned up the word order a bit...English is her fourth language.]
Please, my friends, remember these names:
Rashid
Fayah
Ali
Please keep them in your thoughts and your prayers.
Gods bless the people of Iran.
If any of you want to reprint Fayah's letter, or disseminate it in any way, please do so. We are her voice, and it needs to be heard.
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Thursday, July 23rd, 2009
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(Originally posted by archanglrobriel here.)
I know this video is long, but it's worth watching anyway. I also know that I'm likely preaching to the choir on this one, but still...I thought it was so well done, I had to post it:
As I type this, my husband is on a business trip to Utah. His company's biggest client is in Salt Lake City and most of the people he's having to work with are staunch Mormons. A lot of them are the same people who helped fund the Prop.8 campaign here in California. Soren has to decide every time he goes there and deals with them how much he can safely reveal of himself without risking his job (and in this economy, you just don't want to be the tallest nail) or the jobs of those around him (making him the guy whose presence affects the team negatively.)
Soren had to go to a baseball game last night as a "teambuilding" exercise and all the straight team members and the straight Mormons were "bonding" and talking about their lives, their families. How much fun do you think he had there? Can you say "conversational mine field?"
I called him a few times yesterday and I can always tell the minute he's not alone anymore. Those are the phone calls that end with "Talk to you later, man" instead of "Love you!"
We're afraid every time Soren goes on this particular business trip, because if something happens to him while he's in Utah, we're not sure how that's going to be handled by the folks in charge. Would they let me see him in the hospital? Would I have to claim to be his brother? Would his business cohorts vouch for me? What -is- my legal standing in someplace like Utah?
It's scary.
It's not how people want to have to think about travel inside their own country, but it's how we have to think about it. Can I travel to Utah safely? What about Texas? Mississippi? Florida? If I get sick in the Bible Belt, will doctors treat me? Will they let my husband see me? Will they let me die while they stand around and laugh at me before they load me into the ambulance? Can I go have a drink in a bar without worrying that the police are going to come in and clonk me on the head just for being there? Think it doesn't happen? Ask a gay person. We know it does. I can tell you specific names and dates and places where it has happened.
This is what I've tried to explain to so many well intentioned but still largely clueless straight acquaintances of mine in the past. This is what I've tried to explain to my own Mom as she clumsily deals with my niece's recent coming out. She keeps saying to me "But does she have to be so in your face about it all the time? I mean, she's constantly announcing that she's gay to everybody...at church, at restaurants. It's embarassing!" Yeah, well....live in our world for a little bit and maybe you'll understand why she feels like shouting it at everyone after awhile. Especially if you're sixteen and full of fire and passion at having discovered this very big thing about yourself and your life.
You're constantly having to swim upstream to keep from being INNED all the time. Inning being the opposite of outing - i.e. the constant assumption that you're straight. You don't just come out once, you come out over and over and over again.
It happens in a million little ways. The woman who cut my hair last time asked me "Do you think your wife will like your hair this short?" The folks at my Weight Watchers meetings want to know what we did over the weekend and they ask "Did you go somewhere with your wife or girlfriend?" When I bought Soren roses, the florist said "Oh she's gonna LOVE you!" The nosy woman at Ree's school asks me "Are you a single Dad?"
And then I have to make a decision. If I tell people the truth, I'm "rubbing my lifestyle in their face" and "pushing an agenda." If I remain silent, I'm betraying myself and denying my soulmate and his place in the life we've built together. Either way, I get to feel like crap afterwards a goodly percentage of the time. You get to be really familiar with the "ew" face after awhile. Or the half step back, conversationally or physically, that says "what you are is not ok."
It hurts really badly when it comes from someone you thought was a friend, or was going to be one. I'm just sayin'.
So some of us are gonna be a little hostile or a little flinchy or a little "in your face" about it. Walk a mile in our shoes.
And while I'm on the whole "Walk a mile in someone else's shoes" kick, if you're gay and you're well aware of how difficult it all is, and how it feels to be the butt of every idiot on the street's joke and so on...don't pass that on ok? Do the world a favor and take a moment to think about what it's like to have all this going on and -also- be a woman, be a person of color, to be HIV positive, to be transgendered or a transsexual or bisexual or a crossdresser or polyamorous or any of the other less commonly heard from colors in the whole "Queer" spectrum. And then when someone starts to go off to you about how "embarrassing" the "trannies" are at Pride or how they wish "those angry dykes" would shut up and go away or how there's "no such thing" as bisexual....tell them you're not going to stand for that kind of nasty talk. Or vote with your feet and leave. Or at the very least, don't join in.
I wish I could help more people understand that we're only as free, as safe or as accepted as the least free, safe or accepted members of our community. And that's of -any- community, not just the GLBT community.
I tend to think that one of our jobs as sentient beings on the planet is about building up our reservoirs of compassion, empathy, tolerance, kindness. The whole "do unto others as you'd like for them to do unto you" gig that the J-man was so emphatic about.
Or as Bill and Ted said: "Be excellent to one another."
I'm very pro newer, kinder, gentler, more tolerant Universe y'know? It'd be much more fun than finding ourselves ass deep in an uglier, meaner, less tolerant one. More laughing, more fun, more drawing and singing and silliness. That's the kind of world I want to live in. You too? Let's build it! It'll be like a tree fort only much, much bigger...
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Thursday, June 18th, 2009
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Originally posted by rm here.
I live in a country where it is illegal for me to have the same rights as a cisgendered person in a heterosexual relationship. That's what the Defense of Marriage Act and a host of other laws addressing the lives of GBLTQ people mean.
But here's the thing -- and I assume this is preaching to the choir, but one never really knows who is going to stumble on my livejournal -- actually all this DoMA and related stuff effects you, the cisgendered straight people too.
Really.
Because you never, ever know what your life is going to look like.
Now, I'm not saying you're going to turn gay all of a sudden, and we certainly don't recruit. (Have you looked at my journal? When would we have time to recruit?) But I think most of us -- that's us humans -- reach a point in our lives, where we look around and we go "wow, this isn't how I thought it was all going to turn out."
Because yeah, I fell in love with a girl when I was nineteen, but I also spent years of my twenties desperately in love with men and wanting baby after baby.
I never thought I would be anything but a journalist. I never thought I would have an abortion. I never thought I'd one day put on a suit that didn't have darts and have it fit me perfectly. I never thought I'd have pets. I never thought I'd live in Harlem. I never thought I'd get diagnosed with an autoimmune disease. I never thought I'd be an athlete. I never thought that my parents would adore my same-sex partner more than any boy I ever brought home.
I never thought.
Most of us don't.
My parents certainly never thought their kid would be gay.
So whoever you are reading this, if you haven't figured it out yet, your life is going to surprise you.
And until a whole bunch of laws change, one day (if it hasn't happened yet, if it doesn't happen all the time), you're going to be sitting in a bar or at brunch or in a friend's living room or in your parents' kitchen and you're going to realize that somehow, for some reason, you and someone else in that room aren't equals under the law. And, whether you come out ahead in that equation or not, if you really take a moment to understand what that means, it's going to chill you to the bone.
I live in the United States of America. And it's illegal for me to be treated as equal to some of you.
Now, the other point I want to address -- and that's what I'm doing, addressing this so I don't go into our living room and start ranting at my girl, AGAIN, about DoMA and Obama and how much we've fought for and how much we just haven't won yet, and how we can't wait because it's not fair that people can pass through this world without even knowing the legal semblance of equality and its cultural connotation of respect -- is that my equality as a human being isn't up for discussion.
Sure, the pundits can talk about it, the churches can preach. Obama can say the country has to move together to an understanding on this issue. I can be made abstract, and I can be told I am impatient or politically immature. Hell, my government can even issue legal arguments that imply I'm a dog-fucking pedophile.
But here's the thing. My equality? Not up for the discussion. Because I am as just as good as you. I am not lesser for my nature, nor simple for the rhetorical necessity of this focus on identity. I possess the same basic animating force as anyone else.
So y'all can debate about it all you want, from morals to timelines of acceptance.
But it doesn't change anything.
Doesn't change me.
Doesn't change the fucking ferocious dignity LGBTQ learn to live with from the moment they recognize they are somehow perceived as other, eventhough, you know, we're not.
We're just like you: mundane, over-worked and forgetting to pick up milk at the grocery store. We're just like you: awed at simple beauty and the various stupid and absurd poignancies of the human condition.
So yeah, debate it all you want. But it doesn't matter. Because it's not that you're wasting our time; it's that you're wasting yours.
So let's get over it and get this shit fixed.
The thing about stuff like DoMA is this: it's embarrassing.
It diminishes us.
And by us I don't mean LGBTQ people, I mean everyone. I mean it makes us look like a nation of frightened children.
And maybe we are.
We all are, sometimes, in the dark. But sometimes the only way to deal with fear is just... to pretend we're not scared and force ourselves to breathe until the morning comes.
We can do that, can't we? The myth of America extends that far, right? Sea to shining sea? Manifest destiny? All that bullshit? Maybe equality can be the new West. Sound like a plan?
Time to get on with it then, because the fear is so deeply unbecoming both our nation and our natures, and I for one expect better than that.
Not just of me. But of you.
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Thursday, June 11th, 2009
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Original post by lienne, Aug. 19th, 2008 at 8:24 PM.
Even after two years, it's strange to remember that I know people who never met my mother.
It's even stranger, somehow, to remember I know people who didn't go to her funeral.
(LJ-cut to end of post - cut text: To give you an idea...)
To give you an idea: My mother was a part-time teacher at my high school before she got too sick to work. The administration of the school called a half-day so that any of her students who wanted to could attend her funeral. There were people there who I had never met before. I'd estimate more than a hundred, maybe more than two, maybe more than three. I don't even know. Too many to count.
Half of them were dressed in bright colours, because my mother specifically forbade people from wearing black at her funeral. She was that kind of person. She wanted people to be remembering the good times, celebrating everything she'd given them, instead of mourning her. Well, by their outfits about half the attendees didn't get that memo, but what can you do.
But because the crowd was so all-encompassing, it still surprises me sometimes to look at a good friend and have the thought, "This person never heard the story about me and speeches. This person never saw me read a poem I'd written just half an hour before in front of nearly everyone I'd ever known."
The poem, by the way, is called Forever. A few of the people organizing the funeral asked me to write something for it, so I did, right there on the bench with my mom in a box not twenty feet away. You won't have seen it anywhere, because the notebook I wrote it in is lost; I just spent twenty minutes looking for it, which explains why I'm writing this paragraph in a fit of grand frustration.
Moving on.
(I really don't take anything seriously ever, do I.)
The story about me and speeches is this: I won a short story contest sometime during the '05-'06 school year. Mum was getting sicker by the day at the time; I think she was off work, and I definitely remember that she had some trouble walking around. But, because she was an awesome person, she came with me to the little awards ceremony.
So there I am, in a roomful of a hundred-plus strangers none of whom particularly have any reason to care, and I have to make a speech about my short story.
I hate making speeches, for the record.
As a form of rebellion, and because I was still incredibly touched by Mum coming out to see this, and because I knew it would get her smiling, I made a speech along these lines:
"Hi. I'm Susan. The story I wrote is called Grandaddy's House, and it's about..."
I can't remember what I thought it was about at the time. These things change. At the moment, to me, it's about grief (how appropriate) and childhood and the nature of memory. On the surface, it's about my mother's father's house, until the end, where it's about my mother's father's death. I probably said something very like this last.
"...The thing is, I'm not good at making speeches, and I don't like it very much. And my mother's here. Mum, could you please stand up? That's her, right there. The little cute embarrassed one."
It gets hazy. I've told this story too many times. I think I can remember a sense of nervous wonderment at the fact that I was actually saying this to those hundred-plus strangers, because while I'm the type for harmless rebellions, I tend not to air them in front of large numbers of people I don't know.
"Mum's really not been feeling well at all lately, you see, and she probably shouldn't be out and about, but she came here with me today anyways because she's just that wonderful. So what I'd like you all to do, please, is clap for Mummy. Don't clap for me; she's the one who deserves it. Clap for Mummy."
And they did. A roomful of more than a hundred people, and they all applauded my mother at my word. I walked away from that podium absolutely bubbling over. There's this incredible feeling of power and acomplishment to doing something like that. It's hard to explain, especially so long after the fact (and I haven't felt quite that way since). It was the fact that, just for a moment, just for a minute or two, I had influenced a hundred strangers to do something nice for someone I love. It was a tiny reaffirmation of my faith in humanity. It was beautiful.
After the speeches were all given, when I had a chance to talk to her again, she was just as ecstatic as I had been. She was as touched by my gesture as I was by hers. We hugged. She beamed. I beamed back. She thanked me.
Half-jokingly, in that way that I sometimes do things, I made her a promise.
I said that from that point forward, whenever I was asked to give a speech, I wouldn't talk about whatever subject I was supposed to be addressing. I'd just get up there, in front of however many people. I'd tell them that story. And I'd ask them to clap for Mummy.
The more astute among you will understand where this is headed.
See, I was asked to speak at my mother's funeral.
And that is exactly what I did.
I stood at a podium in front of maybe hundreds of people, some of whom I'd known since I was born, some of whom I'd met once, some of whom I'd never even heard of.
I told them the story of that speech from start to finish, although I think I worded it better and I certainly remembered the details more clearly; it had only been a few months at the time.
Then I finished off with this, which is still a vivid memory for me after more than two years: "So now I'm going to ask you to clap for Mummy." My voice went a little funny, much as it would be doing right now if I were telling this story out loud, and I know there were tears in my eyes when I added: "And you'd damn well better."
The whole room stood up and applauded. What else would you expect? They all knew her. They all knew exactly how kickass she was, and exactly how much she deserved it.
I didn't bubble over. I wasn't ecstatic. You can't really expect ecstatic at a time like that.
But I couldn't stop smiling for what felt like ten minutes straight, even if I was also crying for most of it.
So there you go. That's it, folks. A little piece of personal history for you, out of the blue.
I remember four lines of Forever, by the way. I might as well put them here.
How long is forever?
As long as a moment
This moment stays with us
As long as we want it to last.
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"...with liberty and justice for all."
Originally posted by old_blevins, here.
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Originally posted by theuglyvolvo, here.
The train slows and the automated woman’s voice goes, “This station stop is: Pearl River.” Peering out I see a vacant lot and a dumpster overflowing with discarded, wooden-framed windows, and I immediately think how nice it would be to have them.
“Why?” Pam asks later.
“I don’t know. To make something.”
“What are you going to make out of used windows?”
I have no idea what I am going to make out of used windows. Greenhouses, maybe, even though I do not know how to build greenhouses. I have only a beginner’s carpentry set that has been used mainly to hammer nails into the walls and assemble shelving. But I could come up with something, I think. There is a full dumpster of rustic, faded-white windows that I could use for something but at this point the train is starting to move and I am watching the windows recede into the past but am still thinking, “I know where they are. When I get to my parents’ house I can borrow the car and then drive back here for them.” I press my face longingly to the train’s own window, watching the dumpster as though it were a relative I am sad to be leaving.
The train slows and the woman’s automated voice says, “This station stop is: Nanuet.” My friend pointed out that they normally have a woman’s automated voice for routine information and a man’s automated voice to warn you about things, like minding the gap and standing clear of the closing doors please. The woman’s voice says all the syllables clearly and distinctly, as if Nanuet is the final answer in a multiple-choice question that my teacher is reading aloud.
In 1863, the Civil War battle with the largest number of casualties was fought at which location:
a. Appamatox
b. Gettysburg
c. Dorney Park and Wildwater Kingdom
d. Nanuet
I grab my bag and wait by the exit, steadying myself with the tops of the high backed seats. The tan vinyl on one of the seats has been slashed and someone has fixed it by stitching it back together in a zipper pattern with light pink thread, the inch-long ends hanging frayed from either side. It looks like my knee after that time I slashed it open playing freeze tag on the blacktop and the doctor sewed it sweetly back together—close, even stitches as if he were hemming a skirt. The train pulls to a full stop and the man in his cylindrical, visored conductor’s hat says, “watch the ice” and nods and I walk down the steep train stairs to the sidewalk of the station, looking for my mother’s car. She honks and I see her and run toward the car, getting in quickly because it is freezing outside, and she says, “Hello, I love you, you can put my purse in the back if it’s in your way.” And I buckle myself in and tell her the purse is fine. The light gray interior of her car is uncluttered and calm. My mother is wearing a charcoal gray wool coat with a long, lapel, and a delicate white wool scarf that billows from her neck like an ascot. She is wearing light blue cashmere gloves, with her right hand at the top of the steering wheel, the other resting casually in it’s lower left corner.
She pulls her sunglasses from the dashboard—they are always in a small compartment in the dashboard—and puts them on and kisses me.
“It’s good to have you home,” she says. “If only for the weekend.”
“It’s good to be home.”
“Do you have a specific agenda?” she asks.
“To relax,” I tell her.
I am working at the type of office job that is inexplicably stressful and where I do not do anything that is interesting. The type of job where people say, “What do you do?” and rather than tell them what I do I tell them the name of the company I work for and they go, “Ohhhh. Aha, neat!”, as if I had answered their question. They go, “Do you like it there?” and I go, “It’s great,” and they smile and leave.
“But what DO you actually do?” a friend asked once.
“I’m not sure,” I said. Whatever it is that I do involves papers sometimes being left on my desk with dates on them, and I try, quickly, like I am playing hot potato, to finish them and get them to another person’s desk so that I do not still have them when the buzzer goes off. Whatever it is I do necessitates having a computer, I assume, since they have probably not given me one solely to check my e-mail and read the entirety of Wikipedia. I sit in my good chair with my bad posture, the gray waist-high walls encircling me like a playpen. To keep me occupied I have been given pushpins and binder clips to play with (don’t put them on your nose; they hurt) and a mobile of “things to get done today,” each written and dangling impossibly high above my head. As people walk by I reach up toward them, hoping they will slide their hands under my arms, scooping me up and putting me down somewhere more interesting.
“Are you an assistant?” my friend asks
“I might be,” I tell her. I knew when I interviewed for the job, what it was. I interviewed for the job wearing my office casual pants, which are something I own now. I stare at them sometimes, running my fingers over the tweed—the hidden inside button closure and the little metal hook that secures them to my waist. I own a suit also, and cannot put it on with out the urge to scribble a moustache on my upper lip with eyeliner pencil and pair it with one of my father’s ties. Sometimes the office that I work in goes, “Ok, everybody in the big room for a meeting,” but in a much more formal way—in an interoffice memo or an e-mail, and we all sit in front of a big screen and wait for presentations. Three or four of the executives will get to talk, decided amongst themselves either by a round of rock paper scissors or, more likely, by taking a vote for who is the most boring. I sit politely, crossing and uncrossing my legs, thinking of ways to make their Powerpoints more engaging and their speeches less soporific. My best idea, which I have not shared with my co-workers, is draping the people in the three front rows in plastic and putting the first quarter sales figures inside a watermelon and then smashing the watermelon. Everyone has to run around trying to pick up pieces of information and it will make the room smell like watermelon, which is a nice smell. And everyone would run home from work excited, going, “You’ll never believe what they did with the first quarter sales figures!” It was crazy!”
“When we get home will you help me get the groceries out of the trunk?” my mother asks.
“Sure.”
“You don’t have to start putting it away. Just bring the bags upstairs and I’ll go through them.”
My mother hits the button on the garage door opener, pulling in until she hits the tennis ball that is suspended from the garage ceiling by a piece of twine. If she goes past the tennis ball the car will smash into the boxes of whatever it is that we have stored in the garage. She puts her sunglasses back into the compartment in the dashboard.
“Pop the trunk,” I say, hoping she can hear me through the windows.
She pops the trunk and I start unloading; pulling out as much as I can carry so that I can make the fewest number of trips.
“Don’t hurt your back,” she says.
“I won’t.”
“Those soda boxes are heavy. Don’t carry so many of them.”
I nod solemnly and then proceed to pick up what is probably too many soda boxes, bending my knees and keeping my back straight. I walk back and forth between the kitchen and the garage, carrying double-bagged groceries and leaving them at the foot of the island. Milk, I put in the fridge.
“God, this room,” my mother says. Her kitchen is a pastel chapel of clutter, the bright sun through the skylight illuminating uneven stacks of plastic vitamin containers and cords and recipes that she has torn out of the newspaper that someday she wants to try because ‘Look, Kelly! Pesto and Eggplant!’ but that she will inevitably stuff into a Lord and Taylor bag and forget about. The kitchen table is littered with three pairs of scissors and a stapler, a mosaic of coupons where my mother anticipates saving a dollar on an Oral B toothbrush and 75 cents on a box of Reynold’s Wrap. I clear out a downed forest of nail files and place additional grocery bags on the counter.
The bags are heavy. Olives, kidney beans, rice, garbanzos. Progresso canned soups. One bag is filled entirely with 4-packs of Chicken of the Sea, solid albacore tuna in water.
“Tuna was on sale,” she says.
“Apparently,” I say. “And toilet paper and olive oil.” I pull out seven bottles of Tide, placing them labels out, in a row on the counter. “And detergent.”
“I had coupons.”
“And canned tomatoes,” I say, assessing. “And Brillo. And ten-packs of 100 Grand bars.”
“Each of those was only a dollar,” my mother says. She holds the long, thin package aloft, as if she were the statue of liberty, her other hand clenching a box of Low-Sodium Triscuits. “A dollar!”
A dollar is a good deal. I would buy the ten pack candy bars for my office sometimes. Or cookies. A lot of days I would run next door to Duane Reade and buy a pack of ten molasses cookies for a dollar and everyone walking by my desk would go, “Cookies!” and get really excited, like I had given them the rest of the day off or their supervisor had announced that it was a beautiful day and we would be having work “outside,” sending faxes from the park and signing memos under the trees. And someone from another department would take one of our cookies and would hand me a small-fonted form covered in lines of black text and suddenly the cookie would feel like gravel in my mouth, as if the paper were emblazoned with news of apocalyptic proportions.
Some say the world will end in fire.
Some say in ice.
Actually it will end in W-4 forms and copyright infringement lawsuits.
Please sign here to indicate that you have read and understood this poem and agree to its terms and conditions.
Signature ____________________________________
Print name____________________________________
“A little dramatic, are we?” my mother says. “No one likes forms.”
“I’m not being dramatic. I hate them. They make my throat close up.”
“Thank you Sarah Bernhardt,” my mother says.
I do try. I always try to read the forms but I can’t. In grammar school our librarian taught us the five-word rule, which means if you read the first page of something and there are more than five words you don’t understand, it might be a little bit above your reading level. There is no rule for when you understand all of the words on the page—contractual, stipulate, aforementioned, equity—and continue to sit silently, your head spinning, as if you are a five year-old who has been asked to write a summation of a James Joyce novel. “Your homework,” the teacher says, “is to read and summarize the first 14 chapters of Portrait of an artist as a young, young, young, sad, confused man who doesn’t like reading profit and loss statements and wishes he had a different job.”
There are thirteen brown paper bags lining the kitchen, as if someone has packed lunches for a family of giants.
“Where do these go?”
I am holding up three cans of kidney beans—holding two in one hand and one in the other, and there are 14 additional cans of kidney beans on the table.
“I don’t know,” my mother says. “Just put them anywhere for now and I’ll figure it out later.”
“Where do you have your other canned stuff?”
“I just sort of put it where it fits.” My mother is taking off her long overcoat and untucking her scarf to reveal a neatly ironed shirt she bought at Boscovs and wool pants that have a crease down the center of each leg. She is wearing a sweater but takes it off because she is always hot in the house.
“Is it hot in here or is it hot in here?” she’ll ask, fanning herself with her hand or a sheaf of papers from the counter. My mother used to say “Is it hot in here or is it me?” but stopped because Pam would always reply, “It’s you.”
“It’s me?” she’d ask, incredulous.
“It’s you,” Pam will reply dryly. “You’re going through menopause. Also,” she adds, “you’re crazy.”
“You’re not hot?” My mother would fan her face at close range, adjusting the thermostat.
“We’re freezing,” Pam would say. “Look at dad. He’s using a down comforter for his legs.”
My mother leaves to lay her sweater on the bed and then returns to the kitchen, biting her thumbnail, standing next to me. We stare at the clutter and she asks if there is anything I can do, as if her kitchen is an inoperable tumor and I am her last hope. I open the pantry doors by their brass knobs, each of us peering into a confused Narnia of dry goods and lost items. Peroxi-care toothpaste stares shyly from a nest of condensed milk.
“It’s overwhelming,” my mother says, smoothing out her shirt with her hands. Her nails are carefully shaped and buffed and painted clear.
“I know,” I say. “Everything is overwhelming.”
I am the person at my office who organizes the supply closet. It is one of the few parts of my job that I enjoy and that I am really good at.
“At which you are really good. Or, at which you excel,” my mother says. “It is one of the few parts of your job at which you excel.”
Here are my cardinal rules for organizing a work space:
1. If you use things a lot, have them easily accessible.
2. Keep pushpins near the bulletin board
3. Do not put things in containers with lids, because you are too lazy to unscrew a lid, take out a paperclip, and then put a lid back on.
“I don’t think I’m that lazy,” my mother says.
4. A lot of times you will think you are not that lazy, but you are.
5. Avoid junk drawers. They enable you to keep things you don’t need.
“I’m just—” she says. “I’m still stuck on the jars with lids thing. I don’t like that you’re using the word ‘lazy.’ It sounds like I’m intentionally slacking off.”
“Mom, I’m trying to do a bullet point list.”
“I’m sorry. I’ll stop. Finish your list.”
6. Keep a pad and pen by the phone, fastened to the desk if possible.
7. Have a large desk area clear for working.
8. Everything should have a place. If having a label maker helps you remember what goes where, buy one.
9. If something does not have a place and you do not need it enough to create a place for it, throw it out.
10. If things are still unorganized, adjust and adapt your workspace to the ways you discover you work. The definition of crazy is to do the exact same thing, expecting a different result. Be open to change.
“Let’s start,” I say, “with things that have no business being in a pantry.”
“Ok.”
“These,” I say, handing my mother a bag of deflated beach balls. “Why do you have these?”
“We got them at work,” she says.
“Why are you keeping them?”
My mother looks at me, smiling. To the questions of why she is keeping innumerable unused items, including (but not limited to) the beach balls, the candle shaped like an Irish Setter, the Fisher Price paintbrush, the ceramic jelly bean container, the used marbles, the broken wind chimes, and the sandwich bags full of dice, she will respond with one of the following:
• “For if I have grandkids someday.”
• “I like it.”
• “You don’t think it’s cute?”
• “I thought maybe someone would want it.”
• “It was a gift.”
• “You don’t think it’s cute?” (pause) “Really?”
• “Oh this? This I use sometimes.”
“When?”
“Sometimes,” she says, putting it back on the shelf.
I sigh, tugging on the pulls of my hooded sweatshirt. I walk toward the kitchen island—a light blue slab whose beaches are littered with thumbtacks and Reader’s Digests and photos that my mother prints out onto 8 ½ x11 computer paper. I grab a small garbage can and hoist it toward the counter.
“Don’t throw out the coupons!” she says, and she scuttles over toward me, her shirt coming slightly untucked. She is holding a green M&M dispenser to her chest like a baby.
I take a deep breath and let it out slowly, through my nose. I never remember if you are supposed to let the breath out through your nose or if you take the deep breath through just your nose and then let it out regularly. I walk into the living room and sit down in my father’s chair, pulling the down comforter up over my legs.
“I’m sorry,” my mother says from the doorframe.
“It’s fine,” I say.
“No it’s not,” she says. “We don’t get to see you that often. You came home to relax, not clean the kitchen.”
“ I am relaxing,” I tell her. “Being away from the city is relaxing.”
“Ok,” she says. “In your e-mails you sounded like your job was stressing you out. I just want you to have a place to unwind. I don’t want coming home to feel like work.”
“Coming home never feels like work,” I tell her.
“Or if you hate your job that much, you should find a new one. Look on Craigslist, or Monster—I always see these commercials at night for job websites.”
“I might,” I say.
It would be nice, I think, to have a new job that is not in an office and does not have gray walls and fluorescent lighting. It would be nice not to have to wear business casual brown pants and not to own nylons. It would be nice to have a room with a window, where I could see the people walking around on the sidewalks and I would know if the sun was shining. I think briefly of the dumpster overflowing with windows at the Pearl River station and debate mentioning it to my mother.
“What do you need them for?” Pam asks later in the evening, sitting upright in our father’s chair with the down comforter over her legs. “What are you going to make out of used windows?”
“I don’t know what I’m making,” I said. “I’ll build a house across the street from mom and dad’s house and I’ll live in it.”
“I mean, I’m not saying you shouldn’t take a few,” she says. “I just didn’t know if you had something specific you wanted them for.”
“I don’t know yet,” I say, “I just thought they were beautiful. Maybe I’ll go back tomorrow to see if they’re still there.”
“If you girls are going somewhere,” my mother offers, “take my car. I moved it to the driveway so your father can use the garage.”
I walk downstairs to my father’s tool bench, which is organized very efficiently—tools arranged on a pegboard, the most frequently used within easy reach. I wrap my wide hand around a hammer but then re-think the order in which I will need the tools and pull the saw from its perch.
I will live, maybe, in a house made of windows down the street from my parents, where it is always warm and beautiful and I am always in a good mood. The house will be very organized and well-stocked with cookies and ten packs of 100 Grand bars and people will go there to relax and work through their problems.
“If you make the whole thing out of windows there’s going to be a lot of glare,” my mother warns.
“I don’t mind the glare.”
“You don’t think you will, but it can get bad,” my mother says. “And when it snows and the glare reflects off the snow? Hold on.” And putting on her overcoat and white scarf even though she is only walking outside for a second, she grabs her keys and hits the button that beeps and makes the lights flash and unlocks the car. Opening the car door she reaches for her sunglasses, which are always in a compartment in the dashboard.
“Wear these,” she says, “When the glare gets really bad, these will help.”
I thank her and put on the sunglasses. I will wear these to work on Monday, I think. I will saunter in to the office in my mother’s sunglasses, holding an idyllic wood-framed window, which I will set on the wall of my cubicle, propped against a bookcase. I will leave it open—it is nice to have windows, but it is nicer, sometimes, to have open windows; to feel a little bit of air on your face.
I will leave the window open and the wind will rush through. It will blow the smell of cookies back into the far corners of the office, where people on other floors will suddenly realize that they are hungry, and it will blow the papers from my inbox—shooting them out in sheaves out onto 49th street, leaving the air hung with forms—white and blinding and precipitating like snow.
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Originally posted by rm, here.
The first time I worked clinic defense was the month after I turned eighteen. Now, most people stood in a particular phalanx by the clinic door, especially during the worst of the protests. The phalanx was designed to make sure protesters couldn't crawl through our legs, that there would still be a barrier if they stuck us with pins, which, yes, they did. Then, there were the people stationed inside the clinic, if it had interior doors. Sometimes women would pose as patients and lock themselves to the interior doors, blocking them. Finally, there were the people who escorted the women in and out of the clinic.
I did all three of those jobs at various times, but mostly I either guarded the inside doors of the clinics or escorted patients.
Mostly, the women didn't talk. But sometimes they did, either about nothing in particular or dark humour. It was strange, responding to them, and always being so careful not to reveal any particular sentiment to them.
"I hate this," one woman said. I couldn't but nod, because "this" could have been anything.
She kept talking. "Always being escorted, like I can't go to the doctor by myself."
"I'm sorry, sometimes the protesters pose as patients, it's for everyone's safety."
"But I feel like a child."
*
A woman's life is like that. We are always escorted: by our friends to the ladies and by our fathers down the aisle. It is what is expected of us. My debutante friends had to choose escorts -- one civilian and one military -- for the coming out ball and my high school dates always had to pick me up and drop me off at home, even as I was often older and more equipped to handle the world without such boys.
When I was engaged at 24, every professional service I talked to about the wedding planning wanted to speak to my fiance or my parents. When I called my bank today to discuss an issue they asked -- merely as a matter of security, but I know how it felt -- if there was a cosigner on an account.
There's a reason it's women and children first. It's because in the eyes of history and habit, we've long been mostly the same.
At least married you get the force of your husband's authority, if not your own.
*
Gay rights are, among other things, a feminist issue. If we did not hate and infantilize women, would we so question the masculinity and competency of gay men on the grounds that they must somehow be feminized by their romantic and sexual preference for males? If we did not hate and infantilize women, would we so condemn women who are not available to men, because they'd rather be with each other?
*
In the mid-90s, I traveled to Ireland with that man I was engaged to. Because I made all the hotel reservations, I quickly became Mrs. Maltese and he was referred to as Mr. Maltese. We learned quickly not to question this.
A vote was going on in the country then about whether to legalize divorce. The posters that supported divorce availability showed a photo of a woman and asked, "doesn't she deserve a second chance?" The posters against divorce also showed a woman and asked, "doesn't a man have the right to a family?"
The point of this is not that I was outraged. The point of this is that I am outraged now because my dominant reaction at the time, beyond anger and incredulity, was simply the quiet recognition of what I had always known as a woman: to be property is to be loved; to be married is the closest you will ever be to becoming an adult.
*
I never got married.
*
I'm 37 now. I'm not supposed to tell people that. After all, as perpetual children, women are also supposed to look perpetually young. Maybe if I looked my age I'd be more careful about it. Maybe I just don't care anymore.
I've got a lot more sense than I used to. I'm less complicated now in some ways. And way more complicated in others.
And in the great gay marriage debate, I keep coming back to this feeling that in the end this whole clusterfuck national debate on my humanity is really a secret, subconscious referendum on whether women can ever be adults, can ever be unescorted, can ever look like something that wasn't designed for the male gaze, can ever possess their own desire. It is also, it seems for many people, a referendum on whether masculinity can exist without the perpetual female child present to confirm its existence.
*
I've been an adult since I left home, because I've had to be. That was twenty years ago. Sometimes I've succeeded. Often I've failed. But I've continued on, and I've tried to do better. I don't regret much, but there was certainly some stuff I could have done without; I just didn't know it at the time.
That the world has both changed and that I'm a little bit crazy is so clear to me the more I meet people who have never felt all this, who have never had to.
That's hope.
So is the way much of this is just a pretty far gone memory to me now, like the butcher shop we got our meat at when I was a child.
*
In the late '90s I had an abortion. There were no protesters. The doorman in the fancy building on the Upper West Side smiled at me, and the man involved in the matter came with me, as was appropriate.
Which means I was once escorted.
In this particular lexicon of being, I wish I didn't know what that means.
*
Prop 8 and its ilk are not referenda on me as a gay person or as a woman, although they are the first overtly and the second covertly.
These votes and discussions and debates and decisions are referenda on what we deem an adult human to be or not be.
It really is that simple.
*
Sometimes people ask me what it's like to be bisexual or gay or whatever word we're using today. They'll ask how I knew. Or what's going on with my genderqueer stuff. Or for advice on speaking to others about these same issues. And I'm mostly happy to answer, because, let's face it, I'll run my mouth about anything if I have the time.
But I have things I want to know too: what's it like not always having to connect the dots about what people really think of you before you even walk into the bloody room?
Sometimes, people ask why I'm so public on my journal or why I want so badly to be famous and successful. There are flip answers to that, that you've surely heard me give. Oh, you know, like everyone in this business, my mother never loved me enough or No secrets, no blackmail are two of my favorites.
But there's a third answer. A truer answer. With a female body and a queer heart, my life was always going to be public anyway.
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Thursday, April 30th, 2009
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originally posted by amazoniowan, here. Note that there is quite a bit of formatting in this; I've tried to replicate it as well as I can.
(This is cross-posted from the blog Dan and I run to chronicle the progress of same-sex marriage in Iowa. I thought I'd put it here as well.)
*
There is, of course, so much to report from yesterday that it’s not possible to catch it all. But a nice place to begin is The Des Moines Register, where you can scan the photo gallery. It’s a riot of hugging and smiling and lines and lines of same-sex couples wanting to be married. There are a few protesters in there as well, but not many, because mostly yesterday was about the marriage licenses. There were petitions delivered at many County Recorder offices, but these were, thankfully, simply delivered. I have yet to hear substantiated reports of any serious tussles over granting licenses, and I hope that I don’t. You can see an interactive map of which counties granted licenses and how many here.
This article, also from The Des Moines Register, sums up both sides rather well, I think. It reports same-sex couples feeling relief that the legal issues are resolved and enjoying the validation, and then you have statements like this:
“We just feel this type of judicial decision not only doesn’t reflect what most Iowans believe, but it’s also harmful to our state and to our country,” said Kurt Korver, 42, an Orange City doctor. “If a neighborhood is filled with homosexual couples, you wouldn’t want to have kids in that neighborhood. The purpose of government is to restrain bad behavior for the good of society.”
As outrageous as this statement is to any marriage rights advocate (and hopefully to many who identify as neutral/undecided as well), it is worth examining because it illustrates the most difficult hurdle ahead of LGBT rights and peace among Iowans in general on this issue. There is absolutely no logical or practical leap between a change in legal status for couples already living, working, and parenting in Iowa and a sudden state of neighborhoods “filled with homosexual couples.” And if we were lucky enough to have this happen, we know very well we would soon see our neighborhoods either looking very much the same except that we’d be inviting over Jane and Sara or Bob and Dave instead of Jane and Bob and Sara and Dave for barbeque or any other boring, normal everyday events. But this isn’t how the opposition sees the LGBT community, and nothing short of living through decades where they realize their fears have not come to pass will convince them it has not, but even then they might find it hard to let go.
Yesterday I volunteered at the Story County Recorder. I was there to pass out information from One Iowa and Lambda Legal, to answer questions, and to provide moral support. The Story County Recorder was absolutely, one-hundred percent supportive. They had no “gay agenda,” but they did have a human agenda. Nine same-sex couples registered in that office yesterday, and one opposite-sex couple, and they were all treated exactly the same. The staff were helpful and patient and took time to answer all questions. They smiled. They made reassuring eye contact. They were not over-eager. They made no judgments of any kind. They looked, in fact, often very pleased to be helping people get married. I suspect that’s a high perk of that job. They were even patient with the press, allowing them back behind the counter to get better photographs of the event.
The couples themselves were, overall, quiet, eager, and happy. Some were very nervous. Several applicants had children. One couple was Mark Kassis and Terry Lowman, whom I know from Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Ames, and because of their high community profile and long-term status, came with high media coverage and a full cadre of supporters, though they were there mostly to finish the paperwork they hadn’t been allowed to finish in 2007.
One woman was slipping over on her lunch break at work and was simply picking up the paperwork, as her partner was still in Kansas City and would be moving up in May. She came into the administration building and bee-lined for me, asking, “Are you with One Iowa?” She was a competent, professional woman, but she was clearly glad for support at this moment. She was excited to move her family to Ames, hoping to find a house for their four foster children, eager to be married and make their union legal. This was all. She had no designs on anyone else’s marriage. She had no desire to rewrite anyone’s belief systems. She just wanted to get married, get a house, raise her children, and love her partner with full legal security.
A lawyer who works nearby kept popping over to “get the news” and see how the day was progressing, and she summed the day up best. “It’s all so very normal,” she said, a smile spreading across her face. And she’s right. When I look at the online photos, I see the couples going to register, and it is so very normal. There’s nothing special about it, because they’re just people in love like everyone else. It’s so Iowa.
I think a number of marriage opponents in the Midwest fear is that cultures they see and imagine from elsewhere in the world or even in time will somehow appear in their backyard. I think they imagine narrow, shadowy shades of gay nightclubs, painted from bad news reports and their own imaginations, and they mix it in with carnal, delicious and terrifying ideas of what bathhouses must be like. So much of this, still, is about sex. The midwest, more than anywhere else, is a place where we don’t discuss sex, and for the most die-hard marriage opponents here, there is no erasing the image of gay men as anything but Sodom and Gomorrah in the worst possible Biblical interpretation. It doesn’t matter that this image was never true, or that even when it has been, it has been so in small, isolated places, and was often born out of backlash of prejudice and discrimination. It doesn’t matter that every single couple who registered yesterday was completely interchangeable with any couple registering on any other day except that these couples were made up of same-sex couples. There is a mental programming of what “gay” means in the minds of many, and it will be long, hard work to make it go away.
Mark and Terry were married yesterday. They were, in fact, married in 2007, and they have been more married than most of us have for a long, long time now. They have been business partners and parents for decades. They are friends. They are lovers. They are everything that all of us wish we could have when we dream of being partnered in a relationship. They are prominent members of a community. They are leaders. They are examples. They are devoted, but they are, of course, Iowans, so they really aren’t showy about it. They are practical. They are kind, and generous, and human. They are, in short, just like the rest of us, except to be honest they do a great deal of it better than most of us, because they’re one of Those couples, for whom it just comes so naturally. And yet Mark and Terry and the countless other Mark and Terrys, visible and invisible in Iowa, are not enough to stop comments like the one I cited above, which goes to show us that very little will be able to stop them except time and patience. Even despite commentary like this, you have but to read the comment section to see it falls on deaf ears. Those who want to believe gay marriage is a threat will accept nothing but the threat, even when it doesn’t materialize.
Iowa has had its two days in the sun. We will get a bit of spotlight again during the next caucus cycle, but beyond this, it is over. We have had our days as civil rights leaders, and we are now a little higher on the international Cool Index. But I have news for Mr. Korver, and Mr. Hurley, and all the other people panicking and waiting for the rain of fire to begin: it won’t. The lawyer was right. Iowa is, as ever, pathologically normal. Even when we are the third state to legalize same-sex marriage, we are still normal. We will still be the butt of corn and pig jokes. We will still be told there is nothing to do here. We will still have weather that is too hot and too cold and usually in the same week. We will still eat too much of Things On Sticks at the Iowa State Fair, and it will still be so hot you nearly pass out while we do it. There will still be chronic construction on Interstate 80. There will still be morel mushrooms in the spring, which someone will pick off your land before you have a chance to get out there yourself.
We will still have floods and famines. We will still have tornadoes. We will still have fires and crises and calamities and sorrows. And we will still, as we have always done, help each other through them. We will volunteer and bake things and have fundraisers. There will still be jello with fruit in it at every church function--even Unitarian. The only thing that will change because of yesterday will be that, slowly, quietly, and probably with a bit of Iowa hesitation, straight people will begin to notice that there have been loving committed homosexual and bisexual couples around them all along. Which, once they get over their surprise, they will realize means that there is more community, and because everyone is recognized, it is a stronger community.
So normal. So very, very normal.
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originally posted by slammerkinbabe, here.
"I'm dead! I'm dead!"
The words came from a grizzled old man in a tan baseball cap, hollering at people through a few crooked yellow teeth. It was a beautiful day out, and I'd gone for a walk on the Commons on my lunch break. The grass was full of people lounging with sunglasses on and backpacks under their heads, or with kids and toys spread around them on blankets; the fountains were on in the Frog Pond, and children leapt through the water.
Until I came across the man I had been thinking how nice it was to be out on a day like this, the weather making everyone a little happier, the people around me getting the same lift I was from the sun and the breeze and the pretty surroundings. I heard the man yelling and my thoughts froze up a little bit, but my feet kept walking. Near me a child asked her mother, "Why is that man yelling?" The mother said comfortingly, "It's all right. He's just talking out loud."
"I'm dead! I'm dead!"
I was maybe twenty feet past him when I stopped, my back to him. The words he was shouting pulled me into a place I didn't want to be in, a dark place with rough walls where the air was dirty and got clogged in your lungs. I stopped because I'd been there before. Oh, I've never been dead. But I know what it is to feel that way. I knew he was shouting at the world that so much of what lived inside him had died that it didn't matter anymore that his body hadn't caught up.
I'm bipolar -- bipolar I, with psychotic features. I don't know if all my readers know that. If you don't you should know it now. I'm crazy, and so was the guy in the park. So I stopped, and looked the other way, and waited to see what I was going to do.
I must have stood there for five minutes, with his shouts of "I'm dead!" ringing out behind me every ten seconds or so. I had been planning on doubling around the park and stopping at McDonald's for a package of apple slices to go with my lunch. I felt in my pocket; one bill. Didn't matter what it was. I couldn't give it to him and still get my apples. And besides, giving him money wouldn't help. He needed a soup kitchen, a place to stay, a hospital. Something.
I looked around. None of those things were around.
I thought about it. If I gave him the money and gave him directions for how to get to a hospital on the T, would he go? Check into the psych ward through the ER? Not likely.
What if I walked him with me to the McDonald's, bought him something to eat? But I couldn't stay with him -- I had to get back to work, and I'd seen too recently what happens to crazy people in reputable establishments.
Part of me -- a big part of me -- wanted to go back and talk to him. And another part of me -- another big part of me -- wanted to walk away. λ's and my financial situation is tight right now; we have to be watching every dollar we spend, and the money in my pocket wasn't mine alone to give. And the guy was scary. He was crazy. He was sitting on a bench shouting at people and he could lash out if I approached him. As I thought about it, I heard him yell the word "Faggot!" I thought it was "I'm a faggot!", actually, but I couldn't be sure. Another time I thought I might have heard "Cunt!", but again, I couldn't be sure. The only words that were coming out clear were the ones he kept repeating: "I'm dead!"
And somehow I turned around and started walking back. Scared, feeling stupid, but feeling impelled. Something about the words touched me in a way I couldn't even fully explain, and still can't. He was dead. He wanted the world to know he was dead. He was breathing, and he was dead. I needed him to come out of that space in his head. I needed him to know he wasn't dead. I needed him to be better.
So I walked up to him. Very cautiously. I said, "Hey, guy, what's going on?"
His face took on a look of alarm. "Hey, no, I'm not --" he said, garbling the words. He thought I was somebody in authority, come to tell him to move along. So much for my being afraid of him -- he was afraid of me, and, I realized, probably with better reason than I had.
"No, it's okay, it's okay," I said, as reassuringly as I could. "I just wanted to ask what's going on."
He stopped shouting immediately. Tilted his head toward me. His whole expression changed. In one second he'd gone from angry and raving to polite and open, putting social manners on as you might adjust your jacket and straighten your tie.
"I'm Joe Haskins,"* he said to me. His speech was twisted and slurred, but there was no smell of alcohol off him, no bottles around him. Whatever was wrong with his speech was part of what was wrong with him. I didn't, and don't, think he was drunk.
"Hi," I said.
"I need you to know something," he told me.
"What's that?" I asked.
He pondered for a long moment. "I'm Joe Haskins," he said.
"Hi," I said again. Then, "It seems like you're having a bad day."
"You know what, little lady?" he said.
"What's that?"
"I need to tell you something. I really need you to know this."
"Okay."
"You are..." He paused, thinking about it. "You're my brother. My sister," he added. Still caught on "brother," I didn't respond. "And let me tell you something else. I'd kill for you."
Um, okay. "No, it's okay. I'm glad to meet you." I started to say, "I don't want you to kill anybody for me," but stopped myself. He was not going to kill anybody for me; that wasn't the situation, it had nothing to do with what was going on. I didn't feel like letting him know that my first impulse had been "oh, God, please don't act homicidal."
"I'd..." He lost track of his thoughts again. "I'm Joe Haskins. And you... let me tell you, little sister..."
"What's that?"
I couldn't understand his reply.
"Hey," I said, "I'd like you to feel better today. Can --"
He was already shaking his head vehemently. "No, no, no," he said, angry and sad. "No, no."
"No? That's not going to happen, huh?"
"No, no, no."
"I'll pray for you," I said, not that sure why, except that a lot of the homeless people I see seem to find solace in religious paraphernalia.
He shook his head again, as firmly as before. "No."
I went back to my original plan. "Is there someplace you can go?" I asked. "Someplace you can stay?"
He smiled at me, big. "I own this spot."
"Okay." I had no idea how the lives of the homeless worked, especially not in Boston Common, where their presence seems to be tolerated as a simple fact, as just part of the way things are in the city. I was gathering myself up to ask if he'd ever been to a hospital, and, if so, if he wanted to go, when another guy walked up and gave Joe a half-smoked cigarette. "Hey, Joe, how's it going?" he said.
I turned to the guy. "You know him?" I said.
"I'm his brother," the other guy told me.
"Oh, good," I said, immensely relieved. "Look, is he okay? Is he --"
"Well, not like that, but you know. We're brothers out here."
"Oh," I said, getting it. "You two look out for one another?"
He shrugged. "We do what we can, you know?" He reached out to shake my hand. "Sam."
"Hi, Sam." We shook, and he wandered off for a bit.
"Sister," Joe said suddenly, "I love you."
I smiled, but didn't say it back. How was I supposed to say it back? I liked him, cared about him, but I didn't love him. I have a lot of love in my life, a lot of people who love me and whom I love. It's only now that I'm fully realizing that I don't need the love of strangers -- I don't need them to love me, and I don't need to love them, either. It's only now that I'm fully realizing that Joe needs both.
"I'm really glad I met you, and I hope I see you around again," I said to him. I reached into my pocket for the money. He might have seen me do it, I don't know.
"Can I ask you a question?" he said. I said, "Sure," and he repeated it a few times -- "I gotta ask you a question. Can I ask you something? I just gotta ask. Honestly." Whatever it was, it wasn't too easy for him to say. "Sure," I told him, several more times.
"Do you have any money?"
Funny, since I'd been aiming to give him money all along. He hadn't been begging for it, I should add; he didn't have a cup out, wasn't asking for spare change. I pulled the bill out of my pocket, saw that it was a five rather than the ten I'd thought it was. I was relieved. We can afford five bucks more easily than ten. I pressed it into his palm.
"Little sister... I gotta tell you..." He seemed overwhelmed. The conversation went in some loops, more "I love yous," more affirmations of brotherhood. He stretched out two fingers -- I wasn't sure if it was a peace sign or an attempt to reach out to me. I pressed two fingers to his, like I was in E.T. or something.
He leaned in close. "Do you want it back?"
"No, no," I told him. "I want you to have it."
And he bent his head and started crying. Brittle, choking, broken sobs. The ashes from the cigarette Sam had given him scattered down his shirt front. He grabbed my hand and held it compulsively, shaking, sobbing, the brim of his cap covering his face. He glanced up once. "I'm dying," he told me, and I didn't know whether he meant that he was truly terminally ill -- he didn't look it, but how the hell do I know? -- or just that he could not see any way that a life like the one he was living could go on for much longer. "I'm sorry," I told him, watching my heart crack a bit from a long way off.
"I've got to go," I told him eventually, watching his hand over mine, the gnarled knuckles and yellow nails. "I have a job and I have to get back there or they won't be happy. I hope I'll see you again, okay?"
He looked up, his eyes dry. "I'm Joe Haskins," he said. "What's your name?"
I told him my first name.
"Kylie," he said. "Thank you."
I have not made any of this conversation up. It sounds saccharine, scripted, like an anecdote out of Chicken Soup for the Soul. But it's not. Sometimes I exaggerate stories for effect, mostly when I'm telling a funny story, but not now. I've rendered this as exactly as I can remember it because I need to convey that this was a man who was sane once, who once knew how to interact normally, who knew to say "Thank you" and how to introduce himself politely to a stranger and how to refuse offers of money if the giver can't afford them. If you'd been there you could have seen it in his face, like the flip of a switch when I started speaking to him. If he'd had all his teeth and had been able to speak straight, in that moment, you wouldn't have thought him any different from you and me.
He's certainly not that different from me. A tip of the wheel of fate -- born into a different family, not enough money, lousy luck in finding qualified mental health professionals (and I should add, an ability to find qualified mental health professionals who can save a life like mine from a fate like Joe's is not a foregone conclusion for even a middle-class girl) -- and I could have been exactly like Joe. That's what I see whenever I see a mentally ill homeless person on the street. I see myself hunched over a grocery cart, with wild hair and tattered clothes, loaded down with plastic bags and a battered sleeping roll.
Joe was beginning to let go of me when another guy showed up. "Hey, Joe," he said. He looked at me questioningly.
"You two know each other?"
"Know each other? I'm his father," the new guy said, settling down. "Jack Haskins the Fourth. Nice to meet you." I waved. "No, it's true, I really am," he said. I nodded. Meanwhile, another guy came up from the left. "Hey, guys." He reached out to shake my hand. "Paul Dowd. I'm his cousin."
"Okay. You guys will all look out for each other, right?" I addressed Paul, who seemed as sane and pulled-together as anyone else you'd happen to meet. "He'll be all right? Joe?"
Paul nodded. "Oh sure. Sometimes he just gets liquored up and he gets to feeling sorry for himself. He'll be fine."
"Thanks," I said. I addressed myself to Joe. "Bye now. Maybe I'll see you around again."
I don't remember what his reply was. I was already walking back to my job.
Walking back I thought about a lot of things. I knew, after the conversation, that if I'd tried to save Joe by bringing him to a hospital or a shelter or a soup kitchen or anywhere else, it wouldn't have mattered. He had his bench, his bench that he owned as far as he or anyone else was concerned. He had his family. I took a great deal of comfort from the family he had around him, his brother and his father and his cousin. As I'd left there had been a woman in a wheelchair coming over to join the group, a woman with an oxygen tube running through her nose. She had a family too. I had never known that. I had always thought homeless people lived entirely alone, cut off from the rest of the world. Now I know that at least in Boston Common, they have their own world. My assumption that the world of non-indigent, bustling, "normal" nine-to-fivers was the only world had turned out to be incorrect. Homeless people may be exiled from "polite" society, but some of them, at least, build their own societies to support their own lives.
And I thought about how I had always been scared of giving too much of myself to homeless people -- giving money whenever I saw them, even talking to them and putting that emotional investment into it -- because I thought they would take and take and take until I didn't know how to stop myself from bleeding dry. I thought of how little Joe had needed. His manner had changed the moment I'd spoken a kind word to him. It was very clear that no one had spoken kindly to him for a very long time. And maybe his short-term memory is shot and that's why he can't remember the last time someone was kind, but I don't think so. I think people are scared and uncomfortable and they don't think they can help and so they walk on by. And he kept shouting, kept shouting, "I'm dead".
And I don't know how long he'll remember me or whether he'll remember me at all, but I don't care. And I know he'll almost certainly use that five bucks I gave him for alcohol and I don't care about that either. The five bucks was not about getting him to a better place. Unless a miracle happens, he will never be in a better place than he is in now. He's settled, with a bench he calls his own and an adopted family around him, and change is too hard and too scary to even attempt when you have any kind of security at all. Five bucks was never going to change anything material, but when I gave it to him what it meant was that I cared, and my God but did he need that.
I am not telling this story to be boastful. I walk past dozens of homeless people a day and do nothing. I will come out and say something I didn't think I was going to confess publicly, that if he had been a black guy instead of a white guy I would not have felt comfortable approaching him, and I would have done nothing. I am not laying claim to sainthood. The only reason I did what I did was because I empathized with him because I am myself mentally ill.
But I needed to write the story for LJ, because I needed to tell people that there is a person in there and that person is as familiar as you or I. Not just "as human as you or I" -- I mean, duh. But as familiar. At some point when he was younger he had no idea he was going to end up where he is now, and neither did anyone around him. If things had been a little different he would have a life like yours or mine. And all of that was right under the surface. I mean, right under the surface.
There are plenty of mentally ill people who are violent and scary, and approaching them wouldn't have this effect -- I doubt most of them would lash out at someone who approached them kindly, or they'd be in jail already (prisons are full of untreated mentally ill people, and the court systems are not terribly lenient when it comes to homeless indigents who attack everyday upstanding citizens), but some would no doubt continue to yell aggressively. I'm not sure how it was that I evaluated Joe as someone who wouldn't do that. It wasn't just a guess and it was more than a hunch, but I couldn't explain it, so I can't pass on any advice, either. Other people will have to judge for themselves whether it feels safe to show kindness to people like Joe when they encounter them.
But I needed to have it known. Joe really, really, really needed someone to be kind to him, and it was so easy to show him that. Really. All the time I spent agonizing and pondering, I figured it would be this big damn deal to try and talk to this guy without getting hit or robbed or pleaded with endlessly, and the only thing he wanted was for someone to act like he was not a piece of shit they needed to scrape off their shoe.
I just needed to say it. I hope somebody who reads this will be in a situation at some point where they feel comfortable reaching out to someone who needs it.
I don't think I'll pray for Joe, because he told me not to. I'll keep thinking of him though. Maybe in some way it's the same thing.
*Not his real name.
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Tuesday, March 17th, 2009
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Originally posted by amenquohi, here.
It was Saturday, and we were bouncing.
Yes, bouncing. A local place down the road opened up with giant inflatable moon bounces, slides and obstacle courses – an indoor playground full of cushioned fun and energy-burning action. In short, it was a kid’s paradise and it only cost us $10 a head. Normal entry is $8 for a bounce-all-day pass, but we paid an extra $2 as part of the fundraiser. I caught the sign as I drove by on my way to work Friday morning: “BOUNCE FOR AUTISM 10-2 SAT”. Bouncing? For a cause I have a direct relationship to? I’m there.
So there we were, me, my kids, and a bunch of other people’s kids, some autistic, some not. At the center of the room was a woman in a black T-shirt, standing near a table with source materials on it. Lots of posters and pamphlets and papers – many of which were vehement in their branding of vaccinations as evil and full of information on hundreds of different vitamin supplements and alternative therapies like acupuncture and chiropractic work that can all help overcome autism.
*Sigh*
Maybe it’s because I’m just not a person who sees things in black and white, but I’m just not what you’d call an Autism Nazi. Do I think vaccinations play a part in autism? Maybe. For some kids. But not for all. Not for mine, I know. Tony showed signs of his disability almost from birth, though I didn’t recognize them at the time. Do I think cutting off his dairy or wheat intake will change him radically? No. It didn’t. But I do know of autistic kids that did better on a gluten and dairy free diet. I also know kids, like Tony, who didn’t benefit at all. Would I try alternative therapies on my son? Maybe. I’d have to evaluate them for myself and find out what they might have to offer. I’d certainly consider it. Who wouldn’t? I’m not going to delude myself that any of this will “cure” him, but if I can find things that make a difference for the better, however minor, I’ll go with it.
I’m not about to get into a militant discussion of stringent therapies and offer to protest vaccination clinics, but I am willing to talk to this woman, this woman who has a son trapped as mine is trapped, and offer her my support, my shoulder, and just plain let her know she’s not alone. I head over and introduce myself to her, and to the two other mothers she’s standing with. They all have newly diagnosed children, two boys and a girl, ages 2 ½ to 3, and they’re all, quite frankly, terrified.
What if their child never gets “better”? What if they can’t go to school? Or play soccer or football or join the band? What if it was something I did that made him this way? Or something I didn’t do? What if , what if, what if. I could spend a lifetime on what if. I’ve been there, done that, and wondered if I should have gotten a different colored tee shirt, if it would have made a difference. It is what it is, and our job, rotten and hard as it is, is to work through what it is to what it will be. Whatever that is. The hard part is, you know this is a lifelong journey for us, and for our children. That lifetime can stretch before you endlessly some days.
Just then, Tony runs by and I grab him by the hand, pulling him over to me. His attention is a million miles away. He wants to bounce, not talk. I make him talk anyway.
“Tony? Tony, this is Miss Andrea. And this is her son, Dylan. Can you say ‘Hi’ to Dylan?”
Tony glances at Dylan for a nanosecond, raises his hand and says “Hi Dylan! Mommy! I bounce!”
“I know, I saw you bouncing! Are you having fun?”
“Fun Tony! I bounce!” He’s trying to pull away, so I let him go. He runs a few steps, then turns back to me. “C’mon Mommy! Mommy! Bounce!”
“In a minute, Bubby. Mommy’s talking.”
“Bounce, Mommy!”
“Five minutes. Okay, Tony? Five minutes.”
He holds up a hand, showing five fingers. “Five minutes,” he repeats. “Bye!” And he’s gone, chasing after his sister, screaming her name.
I turn back to the other women, and they’re staring at me. I wonder what I did – was I not attentive enough? Did I not use the proper applied behavioral therapy listening techniques? Funny how you get so used to people judging you with your child that it becomes second nature. Finally, one of the other Moms breaks the ice.
“You just had a conversation.”
She says it like it’s hard for her to believe, and suddenly, I was spiraling back in time, to two years ago, when I wouldn’t have believed it either. Two years ago, that kind of back-and-forth was something I’d only hoped and dreamed we’d someday be doing. And now here it is, someday, and I take it for granted. I shake my head at myself.
“I know. It’s normal for me now, but two years ago it wasn’t. Two years ago, he didn’t talk. Not more than a word or two, anyway. Two years ago, he screamed and pointed and screamed some more. Or he shut down and ignored us all.” I look over to where he bounced, chasing his sister around, laughing and shouting and enjoying himself immensely, and I smile. I smile big.
“He called you ‘Mommy’”, says another mother. The longing in her voice cuts into me. “Mine can’t even say ‘Mommy’.” Her voice catches and she looks up at the fluorescent lights, blinking hard. I step forward, wrap my arms around her and I say “Oh, honey, he will. He will, and it will be so worth waiting for. I promise.”
We chat some more, about therapies and food and tantrums and other kids and what works and what doesn’t and why it’s all so damn hard. Pretty soon it’s time to go, and as I’m rounding up the kids, I see a very tired, very frustrated mother at the end of her rope, her child in front of her on the floor, locked in a tantrum of epic proportions because he spilled water on his pants and can’t bear the sensation of an inch-wide wet patch on his leg. She looks up apologetically and says “I’m sorry….he’s so loud, I know.” I smile gently and I say “Not as loud as mine. And don’t apologize. You have to know we’ve all been there. Do what you need to do.” She thanks me for my understanding, and gathers him in her arms, crooning and rocking and trying to distract him. No one rushes forward to tell her how to parent her child or what she should do to fix this because we all know that our kids are all individuals, and that Mom knows what works and what doesn’t. It’s kind of refreshing being with a group of people who get that.
I manage to get Tony’s coat on him, which is no easy task because he and Bella are so busy tickling each other and running in circles around me. I can barely get him to stop long enough to do it. We head for the door and he turns to look over his shoulder at the boy he just met.
“Bye, Dylan! Bye! Bye, Dylan! See ya later!”
Dylan and his Mom and all the other Moms wave, and I wave back with the papers in my hand, papers with hastily scribbled email addresses and phone numbers. I look down at Tony – who just became a sign of hope and doesn’t even know it - and I smile and say: “You’ve come a long way, baby” as I tweak his nose.
And I realize – it isn’t just him I’m talking to.
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Wednesday, March 11th, 2009
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So, today, IP and I built a neighborhood.
Well, technically, we helped build one.
We got called to an address in one of the quieter parts of the City for a patient that had fallen. Third-party call, no further information. We rolled up to the address, but ended up walking down a couple of houses to see a group of people waving us over. It should be noted that it's warm today (nearly 70 degrees) so all of the snow is gone and people are outside enjoying the weather. But this group of people is not out just to enjoy weather, they are helping.
Mrs X, one of the elderly neighbors has fallen in the doorway and cannot get up. Because she's sitting in the doorway, all of the people outside walking and sunning and weathering can see her. They called 911, because no one really knows anyone that well, and no one knew what else to do.
IP and I stood her up, popped her into a chair on the porch, and asked the $64 million question: "Would you like us to take you to the hospital?"
She paused, and sighed. "I probably should," she said sadly. "I've been sick lately and if I fall again when no one can see me or help me, I don't know what I'd do. I wonder what my doctor thinks I ought to do."
I produce a cell phone and offer to call the doctor, which gets done.
Neighbors are not drifting off now that the excitement is over. In fact, more are arriving. It's a 'hey, I wonder what's going on here?' scenario. As we wait for the doctor to call us back, a few neighbors creep closer and begin to ask questions about what happened. IP and Mrs X address them, while I go to answer the phone, since the doctor has called us back.
The doctor would prefer that she not go to the hospital. "If she does," the doctor said sadly, "I may never be able to get her out. The hospital will push her into a nursing home, and what she needs is to be as independent and mobile as possible. She just needs some help until she gets over this bug."
We now have a mission: keep Mrs X out of the hospital.
IP explains how the 911 call came about as I tell him what the doctor and I discussed. Apparently, Mrs X fell in the doorway, and one of her neighbors was out running, saw her, and found another neighbor doing yardwork, and asked yardwork-neighbor to call 911. A couple of other neighbors saw the two other neighbors talking, and came over to see what was up. None of them could figure out how to get Mrs X up, so they agreed to stay until the ambulance arrived. More neighbors came, and eventually the number increased to a fairly substantial number. I looked around, evaluating my resources and options, and decided to do what I do best: make things work.
"ALL RIGHT, EVERYONE! LISTEN UP!" I said from the top porch step. "I NEED YOUR HELP!"
Neighbors look eager. This is good. The Tao has not let me wrong on this one. IP eases over to back me up, looking rather like a very tall bodyguard. I suddenly realize that this is going to work.
"Folks, Mrs X is ill. She's got a pretty bad cold, and being sick and being on antibiotics has made her a little weak. So, that's why she fell. Her doctor does not want her in the hospital, because they will try to push her into a nursing home. The best thing for Mrs X is to stay mobile and independent. But since she's got this cold, she needs help. Which is why I need your help."
The neighbors lean forward. Excellent.
"Here's what I need you all to do," I begin to explain, starting to pace like Patton debriefing the troops. "Mrs X lives alone. This is her son, Bob." I point to Bob, who waves nervously. "Bob lives about fifteen minutes away. You all live right here. So, here's the plan..."
If only I had a flipchart.
"Bob is going to call Mrs X every couple of hours. If Mrs X doesn't answer, Bob will come and check on her. During the night, if she needs help, she will call Bob or she will call us. What I need you folks to do is just help keep an eye on her. Wave and say hi, or stop in just to make sure she's all right in between the phone calls. If you don't see her, come and check on her. Is that all right with everyone?"
Murmured nods of assent ruffle the assembly.
Excellent. My plan is working perfectly. "Who lives next door?" The next-door neighbor steps up, and I gather her into my Cunning and Clever Plan. "Okay, here's something I need you to do, if you're willing. Mrs X has a spare house key. IP here is going to hide it somewhere. He's going to tell Mrs X, Bob, and you where it's hidden. That way, if anything happens while her door is locked and, God forbid, us or the Fire Department need to get inside, we can do that without breaking down the door. You can run over and tell us where the key is hidden if you're here. Is that all right?"
The next-door neighbor grins and nods. She is more than willing to help. Fantastic. In fact, the neighbor goes over to Mrs X, and introduces herself. They've never actually met before. Names are exchanged, and I decide to get everyone in on this.
"Do you people actually know each other?"
Obviously, they don't. People are looking around and frowning. They've seen each other in a casual, 'oh, don't you live in the green house halfway down the block?' kind of way. But they do not know each other. I can fix this.
"Well, start saying hello. I'll go first. I'm Nemi, a Paramedic with the City. This is my Filthy Assistant, IP. We don't live in your neighborhood, but we're here to help you. We're both also firefighters. Now, you all try it."
And it's beautiful. People are going around, shaking hands. Rumbles of "I'm Mike" and "I'm Stephanie" and descriptions of who lives in which house are going across the assembly on the front walk. Bess the Dog is recognized, and someone admits to owning Ted the cat (the orange tabby that leaves chipmunks on peoples' porches). The three little red-haired girls belong to Amy and Trip, who live in the white house with the gray shutters. People come up onto the porch to greet Mrs X and Bob. A few come up and introduce themselves to us. They are no longer a collection of strangers living in the same geographical space. They are a community.
Paper is called for, and IP heads for the truck. He returns with a sheaf of blank paper and a hand full of pens. People take the initiative, and a neighbor phone list begins to form. Numbers are exchanged, addresses are noted. IP, Bob, and Next-Door Neighbor, Missy, head off to hide the door key. Someone on the porch notices that the front foyer of Mrs X's house has a lot of stuff in it from where she fell and tried to stand up. Would she mind if they straighten it up for her? She said she didn't mind at all, and three neighbors (and the eldest red-haired girl) get to it. Someone mentions that it's getting close to dinner-time. Another person says it is, and he'd planned to grill because of the lovely weather. Someone else had planned to grill, too. Hey, we live a couple houses down; why don't I grill this, and you grill that, and we'll eat together? I have a big table on the back porch. Oh, a third neighbor has no grill, but has two tables that will seat eight each; why don't we all get together, and non-grill-owning neighbor will provide a salad? Another neighbor has a couple of cases of soda and a couple cases of beer; would that be welcome at dinner? Absolutely. Neighbors begin making dinner plans, and would Mrs X and Bob feel like joining them? Soon, there will be a neighborhood block party at the blue house which is third down on the right (where the big tables are located), the couple from the corner will bring their camping table and some chairs, along with some fresh bread they picked up earlier, some other neighbors will bring lawn chairs and tiki torches, and everyone can bring food. One grill-owning neighbor's grill is mobile; why not just push it a couple of doors down, and they can talk and grill? A capital idea!
IP returns from playing Hide-the-Door-Key, and Bob is shocked when his mother's neighbors invite him to join them for dinner at the block party. He timidly agrees, and asks if his mother feels up to this.
Mrs X, sitting on her chair on the porch, is grinning. She absolutely feels up to this.
As the neighbors begin to shift - some go to move grills, some go to grab things from their kitchens, a bunch begins to wander from house to house collecting chairs and tables, and several remain on the walk chatting about shared professions or hobbies - I kneel down beside Mrs X. "Are you feeling up to this?" I ask her gently, knowing that she has a cold and this could weaken her further.
She looks around at her neighbors, and smiles. "I feel better than I have in years."
I look up and see what she sees: not just random people she nods at when they pass, but a community of neighbors who can say "Good morning!" and shake hands. They now know names, faces, homes, and professions. Their children are playing in the yards, and their families are getting to know one another. Maybe, over time, this new bond will grow and people will become friends. Men are chuckling, women are laughing, and children are having a ball. Bess the dog is made much of, and Ted the cat makes a brief appearance before deciding that Bess the dog and he are not likely to be bosom chums any time soon. A couple of guys come up and offer to help Mrs X over to the house where dinner is being had, and Bob is engaged to come and give his opinion as to whether the grilling neighbors should grill the chicken with lemon or with barbecue sauce.
One of the neighbors asks if IP and I would like to stay for dinner. IP assures them that we'd love to, but we're working. But if we're needed, they may certainly call us. Another neighbor asks if they can call and actually ask for us. We assure them that they may, although we might not be working. I give them the number to the main desk, and our names. IP (who is a better liar than myself) assures them that all of our colleagues are very skilled people who are lovely and good and willing to help. (Hint: that's a lie.) If help is needed, and IP and I are available, we will come. If not, our colleagues are just as lovely as we are. (Hint: that's another lie.) Mrs X stops her progress to hug us both and declare us "lovely young people" and some of the neighbors shake our hands, and we take our leave.
Upon arriving at our next post, Captain Farvo (whom I still do not want to see), arrives to ask us why a simple lift assist took us over an hour. IP and I both realize that explaining it to Captain Farvo is a lost cause. He will not understand why it was important, and he will not realize that sometimes, our job is not about saving lives and stamping out disease. Occasionally, our job is about preventing us having to go out and do the saving-lives-and-stamping-out-disease routine. Because we spent an hour doing this, one block in the City is a little safer, a little more educated, and is a better place. One resident of the City did not have to go to the hospital, and a whole bunch of people are having a pretty good time right about now. This is not something that Captain Farvo understands, so we didn't bother trying.
After EOT, I told LT and Cute-as-a-Button Supervisor what had transpired. Cute-as-a-Button Supervisor grinned and chalked it up to "Nemi's Endlessly Sunny Outlook on Life," my supreme cuteness and the fact that I am ridiculously sweet. LT waited until everyone left the office and hugged me very tightly. As I got hugged, he gave me my kiss-on-the-head and declared that things like that make him so very proud of me. I'm pretty proud of me, too.
The killer moment was when Girl Supervisor came in and said that someone had called in a compliment about IP and I. LT very nearly popped a button due to pride, and Girl Supervisor wrote it up for our jackets. Apparently, having an entire neighborhood call in a compliment is fairly cool. Mrs X's son had done it, at the urging of Mrs X and some of the neighbors. He also asked Girl Supervisor if we could come back after we left work and have dinner. She'd told him that we were out on another call (we were dealing with a 'chest pain' patient who actually had leg and arm pain because he ran out of medication for gout and wanted us to take him to the ER to get more) but that she'd pass along the compliment.
The supervisors played rock-paper-scissors to see who signed the compliment. In the end, Smooth Supervisor and Girl Supervisor signed it, seeing as Cute-as-a-Button Supervisor and LT get to write my yearly reviews. I got more hugs, and I headed home for some much-needed sleep.
Life's good, queridos. Life is damned good.
Originally posted by degeneratelyre on March 7th, 2009, here
Edited to Add: Since I posted this, degeneratelyre has locked the entry back to Friends Only for job-related reasons. Comments will be allowed on this post by request.
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Comments: Read 4 or Add Your Own.
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Friday, February 13th, 2009
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Originally posted February 11, 2009 by apiphile.
HEY GUYS IT'S NEARLY TIME TO EXPRESS YOUR AFFECTION FOR SOMEONE ON THE MANDATED DAY THROUGH THE CAREFULLY COMMERCIAL BARRIER OF TACKY PRESENTS AND IMPERSONAL CARDS!
About three years ago I wrote this:
[...] a pretty big step towards acquiring my [heart] is wanting to. Be interested. Want to be near me. If this reads to you like demanding worship then I worry about your relationships - I'd always thought that liking someone was a weighty prerequisite in the dating them field. Hell yes I want attention, for that's what relationships ARE - mutual attention and affection. Jesus. Think about me when I'm gone. Miss me when I'm not there. Be pleased to see me, because you know damn well I do the same about you.
I'd also like adventure and excitement (and really wild things), intelligent conversation, and not to feel like you're settling for me because you think someone better - usually one of my friends, as it happens - would turn you down. Sure, find other people attractive. Want to screw famous men or women. Go "Phwoar" when you see someone fit in the street. But like me. Find me attractive, even if I think it's absurd. Don't wish for my mind in someone else's body. Don't regret my scars, because I don't. They're mine. They're me. Admire my tattoos, be impressed by my sewing, laugh at my atrocious jokes. Be delighted, be charmed, be happy to be in my company and hope to make me feel the same about you.
I'm not remotely close to perfect, and neither are the people I love and have loved. I find flaws exciting, interesting, individual and above all, loveable. Someone (probably my mother) once told me that to love someone not instead of their defects but because of them is giving them permission to be at peace with themselves.
And now, in the run-up to Commercially Dictated Affection Day I'm afraid something else needs to be added to it. That's how I'd want to be loved, that's how I want to love people, even if I probably get it wrong, thinking about it like that. I've done some fucking stupid things in the name of love and, embarrassing and occasionally damaging though they were, and inconclusive though many of them are in the end, I don't think I want to make myself regret them.
I'm not cool. I don't get to be commitmentphobic or aloof or mope about claiming I have no idea how it feels love someone, my heart is a cold stone oh if only someone could change me, god my life is so hard. I'm a giant messy red-hot idiot and I fall in love like I'm going to war and it's amazing and stupid and giddying and horrible and life-affirming every single time. It's like base-jumping, I think; you know you're going to hit the bottom at some point, you know you're going to hurt either a little or a lot, you don't know that you're necessarily going to survive it, but the seconds before the impact are the most incredible rush. Sometimes you don't even need someone to love you back, sometimes it's just enough to turn your heart inside out and let go.
I have done enormous things for love, stupid things, ridiculous, mockworthy things. I've written letters most people would want burnt, I've said things that would make you want to swallow your own tongue in sympathy. I've bled of it and yelled for it and drunk myself unconscious for it, punched walls and mirrors and doors and myself in the head. I've chased it, clung to it, prostrated myself before it, lied for it and tried all manner of absurd gestures to convince the object of whichever affections that I'm sincere. That I mean it. Because I always mean it. And I won't be made to regret that because a retarded majority of people would rather be afraid than happy, would rather be dignified than content, would rather pull tiny threads until the whole possible edifice of joy unravels before their eyes than just fling themselves off the precipice and embrace the madness of it occasionally.
Perhaps your love is small things, remembering birthdays and finding the car keys or letting someone sleep in by five minutes. I'd call that basic consideration. You don't have to be wildly and impossibly smitten with someone to pick up their dry-cleaning, just kind. Perhaps your love is Third Tuesday Of The Month Carefully Timed Dates, perhaps it's just something that slides in beside your busy schedule of clubs and societies. Good for you and good for your order and neatness.
Mine isn't, and I'm not going to be made to regret the fact that it's chaotic and consuming and sporadic and unwieldy. I am a bloody romantic, in the worst possible sense. Not a pragmatist, not a I Think We Should End This Relationship Because It Won't Allow Our Careers To Blossom Fully And Doesn't Fit With My Life Plan person, but an unattractive moron who slumps on your fucking doorstep before you're awake. Yeah, love like this is childish and impractical and terrifying and unpredictable. It makes you feel ALIVE. If the only thing I can afford to do is drag you to the top of the tallest hill in the city and introduce the most beautiful person I know to the most beautiful thing I can think of - London at night spread out like a blanket of living souls - and see the one reflected in each other, that's my present.
I'm not going to be made to regret taking someone I'd never met before to Paris for five days and trailing dog stupid behind her the whole time; I'm not going to be made to regret stacks of frankly purple letters, I'm not going to be made to regret travelling half the country on a whim, and I'm not going to claim that love's not worth it on the measure of several broken hearts, or scars that may never fade, or getting stuck in Exeter bus station at 2am, several hundred miles from home. Sacrifices like that are always worth it.
Love is not a fucking INVESTMENT for your shiny achievement future, it is its own end, its own purpose, its own destination. Even when it doesn't work out - especially when it doesn't work out - it was always worth it.
I would like to stop having to see people who are otherwise worthy of respect cheering themselves on for being too self-absorbed to take that dive. Faux-is-me whining about how you just don't seem to be able to love any one is bad enough; denying that you ever did is shameful and pathetic. Own your goddamn infatuations. Hold your sodding head up and say, "Yeah, I was crazy about her and she didn't love me back. it was amazing and I wouldn't change that or the hurt for the world".
And btw, every living person on this planet "deserves" it, if worthiness is your pissing concern. It's self-reflexive: loving someone makes them worthy of being loved. You do, I do, the kindest and most sainted human beings and the biggest murdering assholes all "deserve" love from someone, most of all themselves. Ourselves.
No, wait. Go ahead and argue with me on this one if you want to, but I am fucking right.
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Wednesday, February 11th, 2009
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While the Large Hadron Collider may in fact not have destroyed the world yet, the very existence of it is to blame for some very strange anomalies.
For example, a miniature black hole seems to have formed not so long ago directly beneath my couch. What's peculiar about it is not that it's there - theoretically, miniature black holes can pop in and out of existence anywhere and any time - no, what's interesting is that it is a very selective and stable miniature black hole.
Most miniature black holes, you see, are indiscriminant about the nature of the matter and energy they attract and give off radiation at a rate faster than that at which they absorb energy. So, they appear, suck up a little bit of whatever is around, and promptly disappear in a puff of logic.
This one is stubborn. It's too small to absorb matter - otherwise the couch would be gone by now. I suppose it absorbs light to a certain extent since it is pretty dark under the couch. And it does attract dust bunnies and cat toys. But any ordinary miniature black hole could do that too.
Unlike your typical black hole, which radiates x-rays, this one emits exclusively gluons, the sub-atomic particles that cause protons and neutrons to stick to each other tightly enough to form atomic nuclei. Furthermore, this particular miniature black hole seems to only attract "bottom" quarks.
These two anomalies are what is responsible for the fact that as soon as I get home after work and briefly sit down on the couch, the gluon emissions attract my "bottom" quarks and keep me firmly planted there for the rest of the evening. It's a problem since there are plenty of things I think of during the day which need doing when I get home, but once there I seem to cross the event horizon and no subsequent events transpire. Sure, I am able to move my fingers a little, but hardly more than Steven Hawking, resulting only in a change in the channel on the TV. Once in a while I manage to establish an oblong, elliptical orbit between the couch and either the kitchen or bathroom, but the couch is a gravitational well I just can't escape.
It is only the formidable attraction to my wife, who gets home from work close to midnight, that helps me break free and escape to the relative safety of bed. I've lost count of the number of times she has saved me from a fate worse than death - having my "bottom" quarks collapse into a quantum singularity, rendering me a Higgs boson for the relative infinity preceding the unavoidable heat-death of the Universe.
It's yet another of the myriad reasons I love my wife. She has complete control over space-time.
Originally posted by jabber, here.
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Tuesday, January 20th, 2009
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Original post by pecunium, here.
I want to expand a bit on something I said in my last post. “This is not the country I signed up to defend. It’s not the country I, with reservations, went to war to serve.” Ignoring that there are no idealists in foxholes (atheists can be found), I did enlist (in part) from a desire to serve.
Not to “defend liberty”. No. That’s too plastic, and abusable a concept to be worthy of claiming it as an ideal. I signed up because I believed in the bedrock issues of the Declaration of Independence, their implementation in the Constitution, and their explication in the Gettysburg Address.
Really, the third is the one which had the greatest suasive power to my enlisting.
The Gettysburg Address was about the why of that war. Right up front: Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.
That’s what the war was about. It wasn't about states' rights. It was about whether a democracy, based on the idea of equality, could “long endure.” That’s what I signed up to defend. I don’t give a rat’s ass about “spreading democracy.” I like to see equality spread. If that means democracy (which seems the best bet) then so be it.
The “War on Terror” has to change. It has to become what it ought to have been from the beginning. A police action. Not in the fictional, "we aren’t in a war in Viet-nam” sort of way, but the “arrest the bad guys who are planning to rob the bank” sort of way.
Because the "War on Terror" is proving corrosive to the idea that all men are created equal. There is no way to reconcile that with the idea of indefinite detention of whomever the president wants to declare an enemy combatant. No way.
The meat of the Declaration of Independence (when one gets past the first bit) is really straightforward too. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
There you go. All men. Not all men who happen to be white. Not all Americans. Not all people who live in a country we like.
Everyone, full stop.
We used to act on that principle. Not perfectly, but it was the basis for our laws. The idea that the President can wave his hand and erase those rights is anathema.
That’s why leaving Iraq isn’t a big deal to me. We’ve blown it. I don’t see any way we can make it better. So why keep spending our blood and treasure to screw the pooch even worse? When the blowback starts to work toward making the President a kingly figure?
People like to say we can’t quit, because that dishonors the dead. We can’t let their sacrifice be in vain.
The last part of the Gettysburg Address answers that. ”It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
I’ve got the campaign medal for this little adventure. I knew some of the 4,222 (last I checked) of those honored dead. Three of them were in the battalion I was with in theater. One of them was from my battalion (but later). Some I knew. At Charlie Co. Dining Ins we toast them. Their memories go into the grog bowl, and silly-buggers in their honor come out of it.
They don’t die in vain if we “lose” Iraq. They die in vain if we start to let people have privilege. When we start to turn abuses into normal operating procedures. When we forget the mayors, governors, assembly members, representatives, senators and presidents are, at best, primus inter pares for a sum of years, and more often just the hired help.
They, as much (and perhaps more) than any others need to be reminded the law is even-handed, and no one is exempt from it.
That’s why I want investigations, impeachments and prison for those who are convicted. Because I have dead friends who deserve no less. Because they gave that “last full measure of devotion” for that idea.
Because they were right to do so. Because to do any less is to spit on their graves and tarnish their memory.
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Monday, December 15th, 2008
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Originally posted by steelbrassnwood. The original post is friends-locked; comments are enabled here by request of the author.
Buddy died last week. I'd known Buddy my whole life. He lived down the block from us in a small green house with dark blue trim and multiple cars in the driveway. He was a repairman, a gruff guy with a big birthmark on his face who loved baseball and had an opinion about everything. He knew a lot about cars -- he knew a lot about everything, practical things anyway, I don't think he had graduated high school -- and he wasn't afraid to tell you what you thought you should be doing.
I didn't like him. I didn't like anyone on my block, pretty much, and they didn't think much of me either. I was an introvert who read books and didn't like sports. I tended to stay inside when most of the other kids were playing, not least because they often beat me up. My parents were the only college-educated couple on the block, the only ones with white collar jobs, probably the only ones to read books to their kids. None of us completely fit in but I was the worst of all. Buddy would mock my attempts at playing catch, ask me what the hell I was doing inside on a beautiful day like this, or tease me in a way that I was too young and insecure to understand was his rough form of affection.
Buddy fit in completely. He had grown up on the block; he still lived in the house he had been born in. And yes, I think he had been born in that house, not in a hospital. He was a presence at every block party, and you wouldn't be outside working very long before Buddy would come over to help or kibitz. Like most of the men on the block he did his own work on his house, and helped everyone else on theirs. I bet there's not a single house on the block that doesn't have some of Buddy's handiwork in it somewhere.
Despite their many differences my Dad was very close to Buddy. If my dad wasn't around the house, chances were he was at Buddy's. Sitting on the steps and drinking a beer, helping with one of Buddy's endless home improvement projects, or vainly attempting to set Buddy straight about some misconception or other that he wouldn't let go of. He saw the essential goodness under Buddy's exterior faults, although you could also say he put up with a lot of shit for not-entirely-comprehensible reasons. I once saw it only the latter way, but now I can see the former, and I have been thinking a lot about my attitude towards the people I grew up with.
Let's be clear. My neighborhood was insular, racist, and not very friendly to a kid with more brains than social skills. My life as a child was more segregated than that of anyone my age (or frankly any age) who grew up down south, most of the priests at my church as cruel and close-minded as any stereotypical southern preacher, the distance from my block to the bookstores and intellectual life of Manhattan as long as the trip into town from a family farm. More than one kid from my block ended up in jail, and none of them went to college or now have anything other than blue-collar jobs, or the kinds of sinecures (running a cop bar, for instance) available to white working-class thugs with the right connections.
So, with some good reason, I had as little as possible to do with Buddy or anyone else on the block and was relieved to finally move away. I would see him or the other neighbors once in a great while when I came back to visit my parents but I had little to say them or them to me. He tried to be friendly, and as I got older I could enjoy socializing with him and the others, but it was always strained. I had no way of knowing anymore whether he disliked me or whether he was just responding to what had probably been my apparent disdain over the years.
Earlier this year, my father's mother died. She lived a few neighborhoods away, but everyone on my block knew her from her frequent visits and appearances at the block parties. Everyone from the block came to her wake. That's what they do for each other. Buddy didn't look well. He walked slowly and had to sit down, breathing hard, after walking up the few short stairs from the parking lot. But he clasped my hand and said he was sorry and talked with genuine affection about what a tough lady my grandmother was. And when they were leaving, he turned to me, and said, "Stop by when you're visiting your parents. Don't be a stranger."
Needless to say, I didn't. I wouldn't have known what to say. I never knew what to say, when I would walk past all the guys standing around in front of someone's house, drinking beer and joking around. I didn't care much about baseball and the Yankees, and discussing politics or current events wouldn't have been a good idea with that crowd. I had no connection with them at all. No connection except that they'd known me for my whole life.
Buddy died suddenly. Everyone on the block said, "I saw him a few days ago. He was fine." They'd gone over to borrow a tool, or just to shoot the breeze, or to see how his dining room renovation was going. As sick as he was, he was still working on the house. I went to his wake, because it would mean something to his family, and because it would mean something to my mom and dad who were so close to him for so long.
And there, as at my grandmother's wake, I had the feeling that I had missed something very important when I was growing up. That I had missed the good side of my neighborhood. Yes, it was a bad place for me. But they were my people, they were where I come from, and for better or worse they shaped who I am. Not just in their abuse, but in their self-reliance and ability to get things done and their values. I turned my back on them angrily and arrogantly, and not without reason, but by doing so I cut myself off from a community that would have accepted me, as weird as I was, as one of them, for better or worse.
They say that home is the place, that when you go there, they have to take you in. I could have had a home on that block, in that neighborhood. At my grandmother's wake, my brother was surrounded by friends from the neighborhood. Not the thugs, but guys with college degrees, who have their own houses now, their own families, kids who go to the same elementary school that we went to. I had no friends at that wake. I know almost no one from my neighborhood now, and it would have been too long a trip for people from where I live now, even if I'd invited them which I hadn't. I didn't even recognize some of the kids I'd grown up with.
My brother is long gone from the neighborhood too. He lives across the country, his world is academia, and he has great friends there who don't run bars and don't have prison records. But he made more of an effort to fit in our block, and as result, he still has more of a home there. And he can go into the bar run by a guy who used to be one of the block's worst thugs, and be welcomed. I have never walked into that bar, and I don't know what would happen if I did. But, as was probably true when I walked quickly past the guys in someone's front yard, it might be better than I imagine, if I at least made some kind of effort. I'm not sure that effort is worth it now, and those connections are so long lost there may be nothing left to rebuild or retrieve. I'm not even sure why I would bother, but perhaps I should have thought more, years ago, about what it meant to turn your back on your home.
*It was last month, actually; it took me a while to write this.
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Comments: Read 4 or Add Your Own.
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Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008
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Originally posted by rejeneration, here.
Ryan is nine when she is seven.
She cries quietly the entire drive. Mommy doesn’t like traffic and she yells when Kara cries, so she’s a good girl and tries to keep quiet, but she’s still sad she had to give up Pete. Mommy says she can see Pete when she sees Daddy again. She’s sad she had to give up Daddy, too.
Their new home, the apartment, looks like all the other buildings around it for as far as she can see. The only thing that makes Kara’s special is the little boy on her stoop.
“Hi, I’m Ryan,” he says as she makes her way past, trying to keep her backpack and her Holly Hobby suitcase out of the dirt. She wonders if maybe Ryan has a puppy he might let her pet.
- - - - -
Ryan is twelve when she is ten.
She climbs a tree, wind carding through her long, blonde hair. They have their places, her and Ryan. The overpass by the Mobile, the hill over by the school, and the spotty edge of poplars separating town from country.
There’s a bruise on the inside of her thigh, a secret place. Ryan straddles the branch beside her and puts his hand over it. The touch scares her. More than the one that left it there.
“I’ll race you to the library,” Ryan says. Today they’re reading Encyclopedia Brown. As always, Ryan’s a big cheat because he can jump to the ground. She’s always got so far to climb.
- - - - -
Ryan is fifteen when she is thirteen.
She stares at him before the tears come. The shock, as they fall, is that it’s really no shock at all. He doesn’t want her around, so Ryan picks today to hit her, open-handed, palm to cheek. The smack is still ringing in her ears.
“Oh, God, Kara,” Ryan says, shaking. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
She wants to say it’s okay, she understands. It’s a day in May when Ryan tries on the shoes of the only role model he’s ever known. It’s not his fault. He’s just emulating his step-dad.
She wants to say it’s okay, but his handprint burns against the side of her face and there’s no way he could have known about the one before it—the one that never bruised but still stings.
The betrayal is the tears she cries, they don’t belong to Ryan, and that’s the biggest betrayal of all.
- - - - -
Ryan is eighteen when she is sixteen.
“Lemme see,” he says. She turns away, but Ryan’s strong and fast, grabs her wrist as she mumbles, “S’nothing.”
“Dammit, Kara,” he sighs over smudgy, dying bruises and a burn that’s the obvious size of a pencil-tip eraser.
Kara lights a cigarette, breathes in a chest full of nicotine and tar. “I just gotta be more careful,” she laughs, flicking ash into a soda can.
“That’s bullshit and you know it.” Ryan shakes his head, thumbs lightly across the scars above it. “I’m leaving, Kara.” She already knew. She was just waiting for him to say. He whispers, “I wish you could come with me,” against her neck, holding her close. She doesn’t really believe him, but for a few seconds she’s willing to accept the lie.
- - - - -
Ryan is twenty when she is eighteen.
She hasn’t seen him in almost a year, but his mom dies and Ryan shows up on her doorstep at two AM with bloodshot eyes and whiskey breath. He kisses her hard and slow, soft skin shredding over the brute force of teeth, his tongue inside her mouth where it’s hot and wet. “I miss you,” he pants, her hair in his fists. “Come with me,” he says, so she takes his keys and drives them out of town, no place to go, but he looks at her on the outskirts and says, “I mean it, Kara. Come with me.”
She could. She could leave it all behind.
No one would really miss her.
- - - - -
Ryan is twenty-three when she is twenty-one.
He moves inside her, hips scraping hers, long, quick thrusts. “Let me hear you,” he begs, shifting, trying to push it out of her, sounds she’s not willing to make. He kisses her as she breathes, his face shadowed in darkness above her. There’s something there that’s better-left unseen. “I love you,” he whispers, pressing his mouth to her throat, his hands down the bird-bone arch of her back.
No matter how many times it’s said, she’ll never believe it.
- - - - -
Ryan is dead two weeks before she’s twenty-two.
The accident isn’t his fault, but it’s still an accident -- two sobbing teenagers who were just on their way to the mall.
“Ryan asked us to show you this,” a grey-haired attorney tells her, putting a DVD into the player. Ryan pops up on the screen, smiles like she’s known since she was seven, gives a nervous wave. “Hi, baby,” he says. “Figured after you told me, should anything,” he shrugs, “happen—well, I figured we should be prepared for the worst. These nice men, they’ll take care of everything, okay? It’s all yours. Remember, I love you.” Ryan looks past the camera, asks if his first take was a’right and the screen goes blank.
She spreads his ashes underneath their tree.
- - - - -
Ryan is two weeks old when she is twenty-two.
Kara’s going to get him a puppy. She hopes he likes the name Pete.
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