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Later, when he had to take a day job to make ends meet as an assistant manager at Arby’s, he got me my first job along with three other guys from the improv classes, which meant we got paid to run around like wanna-be comedians, trying to make people laugh and entertaining ourselves and our boss.  He took a lousy job and made it fun - one of the best jobs I’ve ever had, even to this day.  Good guy.  Good friend. 

Eventually his most ambitious production at the JCC crumbled before we got to the run-through stage - it was a big musical with a big cast, and the ragged group of once-a-week high school actors just weren’t able to realize his vision for him; as his dreams for the show became more grandiose and the show itself deteriorated, he became frustrated and depressed and the actors just walked out.  Including me, once the end was obvious and unavoidable.  And I wound up quitting my job at Arby’s, too; it was too far from home and I didn’t like working with all the grease and garbage.  Plus, the opportunities to advance on that track were both limited and distasteful to me. The result was that we didn’t see much of each other anymore, my friend and me, but we started using the telephone to stay in touch - not something I did often or for many people, but I valued this friendship so I made the extra effort. 

So it came to pass one evening that I was sitting on my bedroom floor, stretching the cord from the phone on the wall out in the hall down under the door I was leaning against, having one of those great deep rambling conversations.  But I start to notice that it’s getting a little one-sided - I’m doing most of the talking.  I ask him a question; he answers briefly; we go on.  I go on.  He’s really quiet.  I can barely hear him breathing. 

“Dude, you there?  What’s going on?”

“I’m okay, nothing’s going on.” His voice sounds a little strained.  I try to engage him in conversation; every answer comes back tight, like he’s doing some kind of physical exertion, wrestling or manipulating something, working with his hands.  His breath is coming in rapid shallow puffs.  Like he’s pumping something. 

Oh.  No.

“Dude, you aren’t doing that.”

“What do you mean?  I mean, I’m okay, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The words come fast in short stuttering spurts. He knows.  He knows that I know, too - more than he wanted me to know. 

“Okay, dude, I gotta go now.  It’s been good talking.”

His end of the line was silent again, but with a different kind of silence - that of realization, rather than preoccupation.  “Okay, Dan.  Goodbye.”

And it was.

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(Aside: I was realizing this weekend that I am pretty profane in my ordinary speech on a day to day basis, but I avoid any profanity on this journal.  It seems artificial now.  Maybe the redesign will shake me up creatively.  Time will tell.)

On the way to the airport, we were entertained as follows: * Store sign reading “Just Futon”.  Not even multiple futons, just the single one.  Maybe they rent it out?  Or use it as some sourdough-like futon starter?  Further research will be needed in the burgeoning field of futonology.  * From the “I’m Surprised They Let That Combination Slip Through the Cracks” department: Undistinguished black honda, driving slowly and defensively, license plate 4FKN869.  Okay those weren’t the last three numbers of this one but those were the letters and that combination would certainly have come up in the natural course of events.  I do know that the whole “4Q**” series of license plates were skipped by the DMV as potentially hilarious.  * Giant billboard for Jack Daniels, reading “Next Best Thing to a Backstage Pass.” I wanted to add the word “Out” to the end, but Kel once again came up with the winning strategy: Black out the first “a” and the “P”.  Anyway I thought it was funny.

Friday night we all dined at Cajun Pacific and finally had the po’boys, which were, to my recollection, totally authentic; I topped mine off with a cup of good solid gumbo.  The place has six tables and a rocking soundtrack, the tables are decoupaged memorials to blues and zydeco stars past and future; it was a great meal and afterwards we played a game of Fluxx and fell asleep blissfully. 

Saturday I started the day right with french bread sandwiches, which came out better than EVER before for a variety of reasons.  Someone said they were the king of breakfast food but I demurred, suggesting that breakfast food has a queen, not a king - and the blintz souflee is the queen of breakfast food. No, we agreed eventually, this was more of a Slutty Dutchess, which name is henceforward trademarked and zealously defended to the brink of paranoia.  So:

We ate Slutty Dutchess^tm till our gills bulged and then we cruised out to Dry Creek Valley where we went to four excellent wineries and had an increasingly fine time at each of them: Quivera (classy, cool, sophisticated; here we ate our delicious picnic lunches); Lambert Bridge (beautiful, rustic, with wisteria arbors and high chandeliers in the barrel rooms and rockin’ party favorites on the stereo; the staff were brassy and pushy, in a nice way); Teldeschi/Thumbprint (this was like crashing some mellow wedding - it was a barrel tasting party with loads of great food, strawberries dipped in mocha chocolate, an overwhelming number of wines from two great labels, kids running around playing games as we chatted with the obviously anesthetized winemaker); and then Meeker (in a tiny shabby old 1880’s bank building in Geyserville, where we hung out for a long time drinking big old glasses of profound fullbodied wine and meeting the guy who grows the Merlot and the winemaker’s daughter and all her dogs, and just sloughing off tension and filling up with euphoria).  The weather was warm and sunny and flowers were blooming everywhere.

We got home just in time to want dinner again so we dialed in a pizza from Greco Romana, which is a truly excellent pie.  More wine with supper: the Quivera Anderson Ranch ‘01 Zin, followed by a stashed bottle of Bonny Doon Framboise with chocolate pastilles - it was great to see Tara take a taste of it after a day full of wine and have her whole face respond to how different it was, how smooth and syrupy and sweet.  She fell asleep on the couch where she crashed after supper; Phil took the other couch and I had to stumble all the way back to my bed before I fell asleep.  That I made it unscathed speaks volumes for the skill of architects in this great country. 

Sunday we slept late and hit Clement Street for some light viet lunch before we went into the park and visited the Conservatory, which was a mindblower, as always.  It was fun to take the camera in; I have been practicing and learning how to get some decent shots, or at least how to gussy up some of the weaker ones.  Photoshop finally loaded this morning and once I get back to the house maybe I’ll be able to put up a few examples. 

We took Phil and Tara back to the airport Sunday afternoon, decompressed for a few hours, and then went back to the east bay to watch the Sopranos at Dave and Kim’s house. They caught us up on last week, too, which we’d missed, so I had two hours of underbelly in which to wallow.  We brought over a Teldeschi ‘97 zin, a big beefy wine that seemed to go well with the bloody machinations we were watching.  It was a satisfying, if gruesome and violent, way to close out a very nice few days off work. 

In the meantime, I could say more, but I’ll leave it at this: Great freaking weekend, people.  Seriously.

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I’ve mentioned PJ and his crew before, but it’s okay if you don’t recall the details.  That’s what I’m here for, after all.  PJ is my sister-in-law Heather’s husband.  By the way, if there’s a better name for that kind of relation than “outlaw,” I’d like to know what it is.  But this is not about relational nomenclature - it’s about competitive sports and being a team player.

PJ is ex-US Army special forces; he likes to hunt with a bow and arrow and he eats what he kills.  He’s tall and lanky and can drink beer all day long and still kick anybody’s ass you’d care to name.  His brother Michael is a firefighter, built like an underware model; the only thing tougher than him is the snowblower that took off his finger (since reattached).  And Murray is a big solid genial fellow, good-natured and funny, and oh yes he’s career defense intelligence out of Langley for the Pentagon.  They’re all nice as you could want them to be but honestly they came from a different world than I did and might even still live there.  It wasn’t that they scared me but I hadn’t known any of them for very long when the events I am about to describe transpired, and I wanted to make a good impression on them, or at least, not to make a bad impression.  Okay, maybe they scared me a little at first. 

Christmas in Wilkes-Barre: cold, but not icy; good drinking weather.  PJ’s crew was around, as were Pat and Phil and me - all of us married into the family.  Cousin Justin was on board too; he hates to miss a party.  Night had fallen in a hail of shotglasses.  We’d been sucking down the Tullamore Dew when suddenly someone decided we’d all play 4-on-4 the next day at the asphalt courts in the park.  Someone decided - it was not me.  That’s not the kind of decision I make.  I don’t play that kind of game.  But suddenly, there were three brawny friendly tough guys, and Heather, talking so much trash that we - including cousin Justin - were baited into accepting the challenge. 

Justin was our not-so-secret weapon - a blackbelt philosopher spidermonkey who could play any sport, climb any wall, beat any scam and befriend any woman he chose.  He evened the playing field, gave me hope that hope existed. Plus we had Pat and Phil, who surely had some sort of basketball skills.  But win or lose, this was shaping up to be about a lot more than basketball for me.  Over the course of the remainder of the evening I convinced myself that my credibility in the family depended on how well I played this game.  Justin was already close friends with PJ, Michael and Murray, and a star in his own right; Pat and Phil had established themselves with athletic careers in school and club play thereafter - not basketball, but sports is sports at a certain level and they’d done their bit for the team in their day.  In contrast, I’d done theater instead of sports, and only exercised physically (when I did at all) in solitude and a non-competitive atmosphere.  And since I lived so far away, I was generally known better by reputation - brainy gourmand - than in person. But at ten the next day I’d have to prove a mettle I wasn’t sure I had.  Basketball.  My nemisis.

Dawn broke clear, despite my prayers and imprecations.  They had two seriously ripped guys, one large solid army intel officer, and Heather - herself, a long-time track and soccer champ.  We had skinny amazing Justin, two earnest and smart weekend warriors, and me.  The game was to 20. Justin got the tipoff and the ball came out to me at the top right corner of the key.  My mates raced to the line, looking for a pass; they were covered.  I wasn’t.  I took the first shot.  It arced cleanly and we were up by 2 - but more importantly, 14 eyes went from that jangling net to my still-extended arm and lithe fingers that caressed ether where they’d once cradled the ball. 

Our opponents’ thoughts could be read in the vapor of their breath in the cold air.  PJ hissed strategic reformulations: Heather was rotated off of me and next I knew Murray was riding my shoulder.  I had earned my place already and the game was barely a minute old.

As we played on Pat and Phil also hit early jumpers, and then we went to our primary strategy - get the rock to Dut and keep his lane clear.  If he could see the basket, he could hit the basket.  But Heather is damn scrappy and all those other boys knew how to establish a defensible perimeter, so the game stayed close and competitive.  Around 10-10 Phil shuffled off to Dut out in left field; cuz began to power over to the launchpad.  Murray was near the left line and scrambled over to stop him.  I placed myself where Dut’s route crossed Murray’s intercept - a simple pick.  My eyes were on Justin but I could feel Murray closing in.  I concentrated my strength into an indentity and let Mur come on.  He had three or four inches on me, packed a lot of muscle and a little extra weight - but he bounced off me like a superball off the back of a substitute teacher’s head, stumbling backwards harmlessly toward the corner as Justin swooped in and made the shot.  As Murray shook off the impact and shrugged to his teammates, it felt as good as if I’d scored the basket myself.

Not long after that I was in the key facing PJ, who had the ball - I was in his face, arms up and out, frustrating his efforts to shoot and to pass.  WIth the ball between his hands he thrust forward at me to scare me off, but instead the ball slammed neatly into my nose, sending my spectacles flying.  I rocked back a little and PJ went into full family mode, solicitous and dismayed, apologizing profusely as he retrieved my specs.  “It’s a game, dude,” I replied.  “Assumption of risk.” We got the ball out of bounds and Dut turned it into another two points shortly thereafter.  The lingering sting in my nose felt good.

Finally, near the end of the game, when it was so close that either team could easily have won, the ball got loose and started rolling toward the center line.  Some guys from the other team began to pursue with tired flatfooted efforts.  I just wanted it more than that and threw myself down toward the ball, scooping it up as I hit the blacktop in a shoulder roll, coming back up on my knees and sending a bounce pass out so we could put the game out of reach. It was a sacrifice of the body for the ball, the self for the team.  It was a demonstration of committment to my teammates, and to our common goal.  It was almost - almost - macho.

We won the game, which truly was incidental to the simple playing of it.  But I scored, blocked out, took physical punishment, made physical sacrifices.  No one had seen me fight for victory before, couldn’t have know how I’d respond to the pressure.  Frankly, I wasn’t sure how I’d respond to it myself.  And afterwards, nothing really changed, but everything felt different.  I had gone from being some guy with glasses who’d married Kel and lived in that distant place with all the weirdos, to being a guy who, when called upon, could perform - not only beyond expectations, but beyond the call of duty.  The respect I sensed was intangible but I could taste it on the cold wind as we walked back to our cars.  I can taste it still.

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Let’s start with finding the part that you know you know: “team,” t-e-a-m, with an “-ed” at the end - that’s an ending you see all the time.  So it’s just team with an -ed at the end; it sounds like it has something to do with a team being formed, made, created: “teamed.” That’s the basic word right there.

Then, just in front of that: “de.” That can make a word mean “not” or “down,” or turns it into its negative or its opposite.  Examples include “depress” or “declassify” or “deviate.” So “deteamed” means “unteamed,” or “took a team apart.”

Okay: next, right in front of that, “re.” That means “again,” like in “revise” or “review.” If you re-deteam, you are breaking up a team again - not just for the first time.  Finally, the whole word starts with “tri” - that means “three,” like for “triplets” or “triangle.” When you put it at the beginning of this word, it means that it has happened three times. 

So you figured it out: “triredeteamed” is the condition of breaking up a team again for the third time.

I heard from Project Read yesterday that my learner had not responded well to some gentle admonitions from staff about her study habits.  My staff contact had called me to strategize, and we decided that I should conclude my sessions with my learner at our regularly scheduled meeting that night.  She has been seeing another tutor as well and we thought it best for the learner to continue with the other tutor exclusively, with a more rigorous program of study and greater accountability for doing her assignments - or, alternatively, she will be asked to exit the program.  I’ll get reassigned.  Again.

My first teaming at Project Read lasted four sessions, but my learner was unable to commit the necessary time.  My second and third teamings only lasted one session in one case, none in the other.  When I got this last team assignment I was really tickled, though - I was her fourth assigned tutor, she was my fourth assigned learner, and we were both ready to get some work done. 

It didn’t work out that way.  I was supposed to see her last night at six for a basic lesson but instead I was going to terminate the relationship.  Project Read staff were on board, alert to the situation, ready to intervene if necessary.  (My learner could probably lay me out cold with a single punch if she felt like it, but she never would.  We get along great.  Got along great.)

Anyway, I got there 10 minutes early and had a quick conference with the project staffer on duty, and then retreated to a small private room to organize my thoughts for the meeting I had so dreaded as to have avoided thinking about it concretely till that very moment.  I thought about the meeting for 15 minutes, by which time it was 6:10 - time for me to leave: if the student is more than 10 minutes late without calling, the session is cancelled.  My learner was always late, by 10 or 15 minutes.  Last night, she eventually showed up 20 minutes past six - missing almost 25% of our scheduled time together. 

I could have kept waiting but I chickened out, asked Brian to handle my learner if she eventually showed up; Heather could manage the case and do damage control as necessary when she got back to her desk the next morning.  I left.  I didn’t even stick around to say goodbye to a woman with whom I’ve spent 90 minutes at the library every week for eight months. 

Maybe I’ll call her tomorrow to wrap things up.  Triredeteamation isn’t something you like to go through alone.

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Upon ordering I noticed a man in his 50s, not quite short nor fat but almost both, in a windbreaker and unpressed chinos.  He stood at the counter as I ordered; a well-filled paper bag - clearly his own food - sat neatly folded at eye level in front of him.  He smiled very broadly, his small eyes burrowing deep behind his fat fleshy cheeks.  As I finished ordering and took a stool by the front window I honed in on his conversation.  He chuckled a lot as he chatted, rocking back and forth on his heels.  He was talking about coconut milk, trying to explain what it was to the two south-east asian types who worked there, describing how it’s obtained, how it tastes… the woman behind the counter kept saying, “it’s not really milk you know,” and the man with the bag just chuckled and rocked back and said, “They call - they call it coconut milk though - you’re not making fun of me are you?” It was clear that he was lingering; once coconuts were exhausted as a topic of conversation he talked similarly about baseball, the fry oil, the darkness of the night - always with that chuckle, rocking back; always asking, “You’re not making fun of me, are you?” As he finally shuffled out to the street with his bag of food in his chubby grip he tried to catch my eye, but I gazed soulfully into my hamburger and eluded him. 

Next up was a very tidy old woman in an overcoat and babushka.  She stomped her way along the sidewalk to a small trashcan by the door; then she put down her several bulging canvas bags and began to work through the garbage.  The can was tiny but she wrestled with its meager contents for several minutes, her face a study in aggravotration.  After investing far too much time she carried a single soda can to the curb and furiously shook it out, then stuffed it bitterly into one of the canvas bags.  Then she went back to the trash bucket and continued to excavate inside it.  A few more scowling minutes later she had a plastic water bottle to shake out and add to her collection.  Then she moved on to an ever smaller, almost empty wastebasket next to the first one, working through it with redoubled grimness and determination.  It seemed to take her forever. 

Then, having gleaned what she could outside, she moved into the shop, leaving her canvas bags of recycling on the sidewalk.  She lifted the top off of one of the two standard waist-tall garbage cans serving the café, methodically going through every item in it, slowly burrowing to the bottom, once in a great while pulling out a can or a bottle for shaking and stuffing.  Each time she went to step out with a can she’d turn to face us at the threshold and mutter “thankyou” in an alum voice.  Having bent double into the garbage can to appraise the soiled refuse even in its furthest reaches, she replaced the top on it and moved on to a second, identical can.  Once she’d finally, painstakingly pulled out all the recycling she could find, she began reorganizing the restaurant garbage, filling one can with the contents of the other.  Then she grabbed the liner out of the empty can and packed it in her bag, replaced it with a new clean one from a roll on a shelf just above her coiffed grey bun and kerchief.  She scorched the air with one more glare around the small café, spat out a final “thankyou”, bowed derisively, and left. 

All this time one guy had been sitting at a table behind me.  He had long stringy hair and a long stringy beard, worn out denim and canvas clothes; he seemed tall and skinny as he huddled over his basket of food.  A first cursory glance had led me to think he was the hippie who ran the pet food store, all shrugged up over the table as he read something with which he violent disagreed; as time wore on and he never changed his position or turned the page, I began to doubt that identification as well as his status, mental and physical.  He hunched and shuddered, shook and cowered, his rude tresses draping his grizzled face.  At one point he shouted to – well, it seemed, to heaven, but it was probably to the guys behind the counter: “Isn’t there any ketchup anywhere around here?” The fry cook stepped out and moved a jar of ketchup that stood on his small table closer to him.  In a quieter voice he replied, “I can’t hardly see anyway.” I finished my burger and chips and left before he did. 

One burger and one order of delicious chips; side of three lost souls.  That’s why this is mainly a take-out place.

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That project, the new ramp and lane, is part of a huge process underway to reroute traffic around the TBT while it’s being entirely rebuilt, and to create a new offramp where the freeway ends in the middle of the city.  I got to see some other action items on that punchlist last night as I drove the elevated roadbed to the east bay – at several sites, new freeway piers were going up, new tie-ins were being prepared.  Derricks and cranes surrounded clusters of rebar that erupted like stands of metal saplings from half-built concrete pillars.  The impression was one of strength and courage, cleverness and confidence.  It was fun to see what had been built so far, to try to figure out what the final structure would look like.  It was entertaining. 

But the ride back later that night gave me a view of a far more audacious project.  The 80 (here in CA we preface freeway names and numbers with a definite article – “the” Hollywood freeway, “the” 405, “the” Bataan death-commute) hugs the east side of the bay down to Oakland, and then veers west over the Bay Bridge.  The BB has two distinct sections: a beautiful and famous suspension span from the City to the island, and an infamous gritty cantilever section from the island to Oakland - infamous, because it partly collapsed in a 1989 earthquake and has been deemed seismically unsound ever since.  I, for one, like it, with its homely utilitarianism, its thick-headed rivets by the thousand, its machine-age ethic – but we all knew it needed replacing.

Last night as I rose skyward on the inexorable grade of the east section, my attention was drawn to a series of very tall red cranes rising from the wine-dark waters lining the northerly side of the bridge on which I drove. I counted them as I passed them – one through nine.  At the foot of the first two I was barely able to glean that earthworks had been laid, new land jutted into the water.  A massive pier was being constructed, sheer concrete walls bristling with rebar on top like some jarhead’s brush-cut.  Though the bridge roadbed rises to about 250 feet above the water, the cranes far overtopped traffic.  I was filled with awe. 

This wasn’t just another cool construction project, a new elevated road or 50-story building joining a host of others in my crowded overbuilt city – it was an act that approached hubris, an ultimate expression of humankind’s transformative capacities.  A bridge – a huge one – rising up slowly but solidly from where today seals swim and barges float, labor that overcomes the limitations of earth, tide and human smallness.  My heart soared as the car climbed up the long incline. 

Of course, on the other side of the tunnel and island, the suspension section was as beautiful and visually entertaining as ever, the city’s spires arrayed to the right, the depths of the bay to the left, and graceful five hundred foot towers punctuating the roadway.  Then I made the light at my offramp, and every light thereafter till I got home, straight up 9th and down Hayes to Gough to Fell and over the hill and along the panhandle and into the park, stopping only at a few stop signs once I was almost back to my abode.  I tell you, when the system is working for you, it is a beautiful and powerful thing.  It’s like you’re tapping into something much bigger than yourself.  As I watch them building the new ramps and the roads and the piers and the bridge, I can feel them pumping energy into the system.  When they’re done and I finally blow through those finished projects at cruising speed with no taillights in my eyes, I’ll reap that energy.  With luck, I’ll be able to send it on along somewhere.

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And for the record, neither am I.  But a bunch of them hang around the front doorway of my grocery store and that’s where exotic Jack was loitering a few nights ago, just waiting to catch my eye amidst the cukes and the zukes.  In fact, there was a whole bin of jackfruit, gleaming green in the foggy night.  $.79/lb, I think.  I’ll admit - I was intrigued.  It represented something of a departure for me, an untested variation on a theme, if you will.  Maybe I shouldn’t say it in such a public place, but I do have a bit of a penchant for tasting the odd strange fruit.  (Not the strange odd fruit, mind you.  These distinctions of word order matter to me, as will become evident hereinbelow.) And these bargain jackfruits fit the bill.  Curiosity began to get the better of me. 

Now, your jackfruit bears more than a passing resemblance to your durian, called by some the King of Fruits.  I tried to try durian once at an Indonesian restaurant in my ‘hood (I tell you, we’ve got it all out here in the central Richmond).  Durian milkshake was on the menu and I ordered it.  The waiter looked solicitously concerned.  “American people don’t like this,” he warned me.  “Well, I’m openminded.” “I’ll bring it out and you can see if you still want it.” “Okay.” I was confident in my ability to eat anything they served.  Then the waiter brought out a tupperware tub with a sliver of fruit in it, opened it up for my inspection.  It smelled like someone had found a severed finger in a pile of rotten tablescraps and left it to ripen in a bag on top of the fridge for a week. Here’s a picture of how it smells. I ordered a beer.

So durian was off my list. And jackfruit looked disturbingly like it - the size of an overfed toddler, a rich tropical green entirely covered with little pointed lumps.  But this wasn’t a durian, it was a jack.  I couldn’t let appearances dictate my cuilinary choices.  Otherwise I’d like mint ice cream and I’d turn down kitfo, and that’s not the kind of life our troops fought to protect in Grenada.  Despite myself, I started getting hungry for jackfruit, and I didn’t even know what it tasted like. 

I found out soon enough, though.  As we breezed though the indoor produce section I saw a clerk strolling around with a quarter of a jackfruit cut open, its golden flesh revealed nakedly to both neon lighting and god.  I seized my chance.  “Is this jackfruit?,” I asked him.  “How is it used?”

His language skills left something to be desired but he conveyed to me with words and in pantomime that I should yank from the quartered fruit a chunk of yellow flesh surrounding a white pit.  I was then to pull off and discard some connective fibers and eat what was left.  I had to wrestle with it a bit to get my fingers around the elusive prize, but eventually I outsmarted the produce and peeled off a few tasty morsels. 

I found the jack to be rather dry and a little rubbery, but easy to chew and delicately melon-flavored.  After I was done my hands were unexpectedly sticky with infinitesimal amounts of jack juice.  I wound up going to the frozen section and handling some random cans of juice and bags of veggies, letting the frost that dusted them melt over my fingers to wash it off. 

My experiment with jackfruit was a qualified success.  I liked the flavor, though the product overall seemed inconvenient in size and process.  I also was glad to share a special moment or two with the jack-man, who offered me his fruit. On the way home, I expressed appreciation for the richness of the experience to Kel.  She replied, “It’s great, sure.  He let you manhandle his jackfruit.  Or jackhandle his manfruit.” But while the former was true, the latter certainly was not.  And that’s why I say, word order matters.  For some it’s only a technical difference, but its extremely important to me.  How Jack feels about it, is something you’ll have to ask him.

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I used to think that such behavior - getting up, just like that, turning on your heel and leaving me on the bus - was a personal slight, as if I had driven my co-rider away somehow by some impropriety or error.  That’s because I’m not just neurotic - I’m irrational, too!  Lately, though, I’m a little more comfortable with myself: I’m willing to admit the possibility that people get up and leave after sitting next to me on the bus because they need to go somewhere near where the bus, at that moment, actually is.  Merely abandoning me on the bus doesn’t necessarily mean I’m a bad person.  Accepting this has been a big step forward for me.

But that does not explain why, on this particular day, the seat next to me remained empty all the way to the end of the line. I really got self-conscious about it after several minutes elapsed and several stops came and went and several people remained standing right in front of an empty seat with which the only thing wrong was that it was next to me.  It wasn’t that people didn’t need to sit. They just didn’t want to sit near me. 

So now I have a whole new range of neurotic overresponses to this public spurning of continguity with my person.  I just can’t stand it. The sense of personal failure, repugnance and distastefulness is more than I can handle. As a result, I decided to generate a list of excellent reasons why I should want that seat next to me to stay open - why other people really shouldn’t even try sitting next to me, and should probably get up and leave if I sit next to them.  I therefore am pleased to preview: REASONS NOT TO TAKE THE SEAT NEXT TO ME ON THE BUS

* Mysterious Stain
* Scowling Blogger
* Soccer Hooliganism
* Need the Space for a Fashion Shoot
* Police Tape - Crime Scene
* Smoldering Waste (see “scowling blogger")
* Interferes with Proton Accelleration Experiment
* Yoga Postures Require Me to Stretch Out Over Multiple Seats
* Need Room for IV Stand
* Seat Cursed by Beelzebub
* Exotic Dancer Requires Both Pole and Bench Access

With a list like this, I can’t imagine the seat next to me ever being empty.  No one but me would think that’s a good thing, but really, look at how I fret when it’s otherwise.  I need to make things easy for myself, even when that means getting cozy with an anxious muttering weirdo on the bus.  Think of it this way - we’ll have so much in common.

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The clerk at my office is a good guy, even though he really likes Disneyland.  He’s not the sort to ram it down anybody’s throat but he enjoys the rides, the atmosphere, the spirit of the place.  I like rides well enough, but Disneyland sort of creeps me out.  Too synthetic, too calculated, too commercial.  Plus, that damn mouse makes me nervous. 

The clerk returned from a Disneyland trip about eighteen months ago or so, bearing gifts.  That’s the kind of guy he is, just an all-around mensch - even though he’s a struggling student working part-time, he brought back a little something for everybody in the department: a keychain, a decal - and for me, a disposable ballpoint pen. 

I use pens a lot.  I use them at work and at play, and not just for writing - also as gougers and priers for minor household tasks, as sleep-discouraging devices (by pressing the point into the palm of my hand during particularly dull meetings when I feel unconsciousness slipping up on me), and as toys to keep my wayward fingers occupied when they’d otherwise be running wild and getting me into trouble.  Hey, I even used a pen to write this essay in my notebook last week.  But even though I was grateful for the sentiment of the gift, I had misgivings about this particular pen.  Not only was it from Disneyland, but it said so in those well-known goofy^tm gothic-revival letters.  Plus, the ink looked a bit too turquoise for a person of my intense masculinity.  Plus (and this was the killer), there was a little clear blue plastic mouse standing on the cap of the pen, waving at me.  That blasted mouse.  This was one pen I expected not to use.

Within a few hours, necessity intervened.  I needed to jot something down and the mouse pen was the pen that was handy.  (No, I did not write my notes on a mouse pad.  Try to concentrate here.) I grabbed the pen, tossed the garrish cap aside, seized the soft rubber grip and started writing. 

Let it not be said that I don’t know when I’m wrong.  Despite my misgivings, the pen was a pleasure to use.  The ink was a strong mid-blue, easy to read, neither overly somber nor cloyingly cheerful.  It dried fast, didn’t smear.  The grip was surprisingly comfortable.  The fine metal point glided across the page so easily it even seemed to improve my wretched handwriting.  Apart from the corporate sponsorship and the stupid mouse, that pen completely rocked. 

It rocked so hard, in fact, that I decided to use it only sparingly - to conserve it.  I wanted it to last.  (Also, I didn’t want anyone else to see me using it for fear of being called a Mouseketeer or a Disneydork or something.) So I set it aside for signatures, special inscriptions, little tasks requiring superior orthography.  And thus it lasted for eighteen months or so. 

Until last week.  As I wrote last week in my mini-notebook (the “ideas” notebook) that it would soon be exhausted, the ink stopped flowing.  As if on cue, it was finished.  Kaput.  Expired.  Spent.  Empty.  Dead.

I didn’t want to throw it away - over the months I had grown quite fond of it, forgiving it its waving rodent in light of its exemplary performance.  But in the end it was a disposable pen, and the time had come to dispose of it.  I dropped it in my deskside trashbucket with a pang of loss that I still feel today.  I have plenty of pens, but the good one is now gone. 

I think back to that clear plastic Mickey waving to me, and in my mind, I wave back.

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The woman was young, slim, with auburn hair and a velour lounge suit like the cool kids wear.  She had a small backpack over both shoulders and one knee was propped up, with the other leg laid out before her, slightly bent.  She was not going to get up anytime soon and the buzz was clear: she should not be moved.  I looked around - four people on the sidewalk with cellphones, including both of the women who’d been in the beemer and a couple of pedestrians.  The woman lay alone in the street.  I was digging in my pocket for my phone too but realized that other tasks were both more pressing and entirely unattended. 

I walked out amidst the traffic that crawled around and past her and dropped to my knees beside her, told her I would help her take off her backpack.  She let me, leaning against my legs for support.  Do you want to lie down?  No.  Okay then, let me help you sit here.  I hunkered down behind her and made myself her chaise lounge so she wouldn’t have to support her weight on her arms.  She said it was her fault; I told her to look forward, not back.  She said she was stupid; I told her to join the club.  She sid her insurance had just started the day before; I told her she was lucky.  She told me it hurt, it hurt a lot, she was a baby, she wanted her mother - we got one of the cellphone folk to call her parents and she told them what was going on.  She said she wanted this to be not true, not to have happened.  She wanted it to stop.  “Make it stop.” I told her that her body was going to take over for a while now; it would protect her and help her start to heal but it would feel strange; she had to relax and let it happen.  Let the body do what the body needs to do. 

I could sense she was going vagal - her breathing was getting shallow, I felt her getting damp and clammy under the velour top, so I spoke low and softly, told her to breathe deep, keep breathing, concentrate on the breath.  If it hurts, let yourself shout - shout it out, it’s okay, it’s good for you.  The pain was getting worse, she felt something happening in her leg.  I explained the mechanism - her muscles were locking up, protecting her till she could be treated by a doctor.  She was starting to slip away so I asked her where she worked, what she’d been doing that day.  Through gritted teeth she told me, and told me also that the pain was rising, that she wanted them to put her to sleep so she couldn’t feel it, she didn’t want anyone to touch her leg.  I held her against me, my arms cradling her slender torso as she shuddered with discomfort.  Would they be able to fix her?  Oh certainly, yes, they fixed me and I was really badly broken, I’m better than ever now.  She was stupid, walked in front of a car.  Yes, I crashed my bike into a post, I was barely moving and had to wear a cast for two months, they fixed me up great, I’m an expert in stupid injuries, these things happen, just keep breathing, fill those lungs, gently, deeply. 

Eventually we heard sirens - a pumper and an ambulence.  I don’t need all of that.  Yes, but a car was involved, it’s standard procedure - when I crashed my bike on a path they sent a fire truck and no cars were anywhere near me.  She almost laughed.  The ambulence worked its way against traffic to the curb opposite us and a paramedic hopped out who looked surprisingly like a muscular, long-haired Benjamin Bratt.  I told him what I knew: no loss of consciousness or obvious bleeding, responsive x 3, no evident head trauma, apparent fracture of left shin… He started cutting off her shoes as other crewmen slipped a collar around her neck, threading it between her head and my knees behind her.  The backboard came out and I had to get out of the way to let them position it.  As they lifted her from where she leaned on my legs she howled with pain, but soon they had her secured. 

I stood around for a few more minutes as they slipped the aircast onto her leg; she whimpered with tears but really she’d been very brave and strong despite her protestations to the contrary.  I made sure a fireman on site knew to grab her backpack.  He said he would.  I told him I was a fifth wheel now, I’d get out of the way.  He asked me something; I didn’t understand him.  He repeated: Are you an EMT?  I had to smile: “No, I’m just a guy who rides Muni.”

I never learned her name.  Stephanie?  Stacy?  Sheila?  She’d said it but I forgot it.  The bus ride home was jerky and bumpy and it nauseated me, but I really couldn’t feel too sorry for myself.  This morning I got up and ran my regular route into the park and out to Stanyan and back as dawn broke, shaving a full minute off my last record time.  I’m really really glad my legs are working for me, and for others who sometimes need them. 

True story.

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All three of them wear shades in the blue dusk, walking like they’re in an invisible snowdrift, their legs laboring and their gait constrained.  The guy in the middle wears a leather duster and leather boots with toes that come to scuffed yet severe points.  His black felt hat is broadbrimmed and flattopped, cut and blocked like a riverboat gambler’s.  He is dusty, head to toe, and his scruffy beard seems to be nothing more than an accumulation of an extra few layers of dirt over his jaw, which he holds humorlessly clenched. 

She walks at his right shoulder – not behind him, for damn sure.  Black biker leathers, head to toe, glossy and in good repair.  No logos.  No smile.  Lots of black hair; very pale skin; very very red lips.  Slim but muscular, it’s obvious even through the leathers.  Her motorcycle boots look like lethal weapons.  One fist is clenched; the other loosely grips a worn-looking ball peen hammer. 

Behind them walks an enormous man, broad and tall and heavy, a buzz-cut surmounting a head that would have been flat anyway.  Small eyes, wide apart; small ears; wrists like a normal man’s neck.  The pavement shudders with his every step.  He wears a Celtic’s away uniform and sweats profusely – down his face, his arms, his legs, his chest… He carries four bags filled with bottles of alcohol in a very secure bearhug. 

The man in the duster steps up to the driver’s door of the van and digs out of his pocket a keychain with only two keys on it.  He goes to unlock the door but then stops, slowly turns around and looks hard at the man in the sedan who is staring at him with amazed disbelief; asks him, “What?” His lips barely move and the sound does not carry, but the man in the sedan hears – and quite clearly.  “Nothing, nothing,” he stammers from the safety of his vehicle, glancing down at his lap and the passenger seat, wishing he had something to look busy doing till the van pulls away.

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