Thursday, June 29, 2006

Flightline - Patton’s Secret

Since I go to LA tomorrow for a commission meeting, I figgered this might be a good time to disgorge a little essay about airports, and something I saw in one not long ago…

Life during wartime does have some distinctive characteristics. One I’ve been noticing, is troops at the airports. I don’t travel all that often, but each time I do these days, wherever I start and wherever I’m going, I see our men-at-arms.  They stroll incongruously through the terminals in their fatigued fatigues, the worn camo patterns standing out sharply against the universally muted slickness of airport decor.  Their heads are often shaved, or shorn to nubbins; their boots pace anxiously on carpet that’s taken the place of foreign sands; and their duffels are stuffed to capacity with all they have been able to call their own during battlefield assignments.

What I notice next is, how the uniforms bring out the individuality of the wearers.  It’s like the way tuxedos force us to pay attention to people’s faces - they mask meaningless distinctions and focus attention on the important ones, the things that give people personalities.  It’s a remarkable effect, one that I find is only accentuated in places where the uniform is worn by a distinctive minority of the total population.  One soldier: I see the army duds.  But with many soldiers amid the mufti civilians, I get sucked right into the details and differences in their hands, their faces, their eyes.  I think of where they’ve been, and what they’ve seen.  I see the uniform, but I keep trying to look past it. 

Not long ago as I waited for a flight, I watched a whole fighting crew walk past me in the airport.  SIx men, weathered and hardened, pants tucked into their boots, floppy widebrimmed sun hats jammed on shining jar heads, strained straps of heavy duffels crushing down against broad shoulders.... They walked, though not in file, as a definite group.  Then, last among them, shorter, a little stockier, identical in uniform but distinct in all other physical particulars, she walked too - more comfortably, I thought, more like a vacationer and less like an invading force.  Though she had her regulation duffel slung over her shoulder, her head, unlike those of the other soldiers, was bare, and her brown wavy locks seemed to flaunt her stand-down status. Her clumsy sun hat - regulation camo, frayed from use - peeked out from a pink Victoria’s Secret bag that dangled coyly from her free-swinging hand.  Despite her army-issue uniform, her every step broadcast one message with unmistakeable clarity: she was home again, and ready to change more than just her clothes.

See ya next week, party peoples.  Keep your panties unknotted. 

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

NOverheard

Now, it can be told:

I wasn’t going to participate.  I’d been sending in trial submissions for their little contests for weeks, and never received so much as an “honorable mention.” I never heard squat, actually.  And if you’ve ever heard squat, well, not hearing it is a very lonely feeling in the ol’ earhole. 

I didn’t need the rejection.  I had plenty of it already.  If I wanted someone to tell me I was a loser, I could just ask someone on the bus.  We’re good at providing that sort of social confirmation for each other.  But I didn’t want that, either, so I kept my fool mouth shut.  And then when I got home I checked my email and I found:

“I’m writing to you because you’re one of the best headline writers for our Headline Contest; we have a complicated algorithm where we’ve ranked and rated the thousands of headlines per contest we’ve received, and yours have been in the top handful.  […] This is why I’m writing to you. As one of our best headline writers, I want to personally invite you to apply for the job of headline writer.”

Cool, huh?  I didn’t go out looking for rejection – it went trolling for me, in the sultry guise of potential fame and fortune.  It’s a shopworn disguise but it fooled me well enough.  In a palpitation of excitement, I sent in a handful of sample headlines.  Then, I waited – but not for very long, because soon enough (if not sooner), I got this email:

“Dear finalist, Thanks for applying [ ].  We’ve spent the past couple of days reading everyone’s headlines and letters.  [ ] Most of them were shockingly good.  Even so, some were so shockingly good that we put them into what became a very small pile of Outstandings.  Then we took the best of the Outstandings and put them into an even smaller pile of People Who We Can’t Live Without, and so forth, and the best of those into To Die For, until after all the dust had settled, we ended up with you and a few others of your ilk.  So if you’re reading this, congratulations.  Pat yourself on the back.  You are Officially Funny.  We are in awe of you.”

This email went on to explain how the final round of this application process was to be conducted.  Then I got another email from another staffer, making sure I got the first email.  They didn’t want me to miss the boat.  I, an inveterate boat-misser, appreciated the concern.  I generated a tasty sample, submitted it fresh and steaming from the murky spigots of my brainpan, and sat back, waiting for the media junkets and propositions from wealthy dowagers to start rolling in.

I was still waiting a week later.  It seemed unlikely by that point that I’d be hearing anything from anybody, ever – much less so, anything relating to this contest.  I’d been plucked from the anonymous crowd by the finger of fate for a Dirty Sanchez of my own devising, and I could now wear it at my leisure.  I gave up.  I’m sensible that way.  That is to say, in the way of the loser.

But then yesterday, I learned in yet another email:

“[S]orry it’s taken us so long to get back to you.  we’re mostly done with picking the new batch of editors and headline writers, and unfortunately, you didn’t get the gig this time around…. what we ended up doing is picking out a few specialist-type writers [ ] and rounding it out with a couple of general humor types.  so if you didn’t get the job, it’s probably because you’re just too well-rounded.  or something.”

(Ah yes, the curse of roundness.  How it rankles! But the email did go on….)

”we’ll be posting a “Best of” the applications pretty soon, because there were so many amazingly funny headlines….  And [ ] if you live in new york, send me an email, and i’ll put you on the list; we’ll have an unofficial beach launch party / happy hour some time during the first two weeks of july.”

Whoo-hoo!  Beach party!  Happy hour!  3000 miles away!  This is exactly how alcohol takes away the sting of critical scourges.  That is to say, by drinking it at a happy hour.  Hearing about it and staying sober is more like pouring alcohol directly into open self-inflicted wounds – clarifying, in a sort of blinding-flash-of-pain way.  I will be missing any party that is thrown for those who defeated me, and not even by choice.  I will join them in my own way, however, by cutting the faces out of US magazine pictorials, drawing disrespectfully upon them, soaking them in Everclear, and, finally, igniting them on the tabletop with blue-tip matches.  Oh, bitterness… we have so much catching up to do.

But then, shortly thereafter, I got one more email – the last, I imagine, that I’ll be getting in this little correspondence:

“hope you got the previous email.  so, sorry you didn’t get the gig.  i have to say, though, you were one of my superduper top favorites.  so we’d love to work with you.  at the very least we will be having guest headline writers, one a week, just for fun, once we get the kinks out of the software.  so i will be in touch about that if you’re interested (seriously).”

For seriously?  Sure dude, bring it on.  If a deskjockey in Fran’s Damn Disco can be making fun of overheard whatnot in New York, I’m the deskjockey to do it.  Thanks, Overheard sites, for considering me a worthy candidate, for keeping me in the running till I ran out of steam on those last 12 blurbs, and for salving my wounds with these words that are no less kind for being difficult for me to believe.  But, regardless of my belief structure, I would be happy to take another stab at being a headliner.  I’ve spent 40-odd years (some odder than others) being a byline, and it’s raising some disturbing issues for me.  So here’s my offer: You give me the line, and I’ll give you the head.  Of course, this offer is open to negotiation.  I regret that I have only one head to give, or words to that effect.

But I’ll tell you – now that I’ve had a brush with potential cybercelebrity, I can’t stop thinking of headlines for pretty much everything I see and hear.  I hope they contact me soon because that’ll be the only way to stop the funny little voices - and frankly, they’re starting to make me nervous. 

Thursday, June 22, 2006

Hammerthrowback

I work in an urban setting. 
Here’s a photo of my office building, in its natural habitat.  The area has mostly been built up in the last 20 or so years, though of course it’s been inhabited much longer than that.  Just a few blocks from my office, for example, you find
this gritty edifice.  For years I wished I needed a coppersmith, so I could go in and get my smithy fix there.  And then it came to pass that I actually did need such a craftsman - our ranma was in need of hand-hammered brackets so we could mount it on the wall without punching holes through its century-old self.  I’ll just go to the coppersmith, I told myself.  They’ll coppersmith me up something in two shakes of a crucible of molten metal.

But when I looked more closely, the coppersmith was just an old preserved facade on a remodeled building housing a design-build firm and some condos.  It hadn’t been a cool dangerous foundry for a very long time.  I was frustrated and I groused about it to my colleague a few weeks ago as we walked back from a site visit.  “I finally need someone to do some metalworking for me,” I complained, “and the coppersmith is gone.”

“Well maybe,” she replied, “but the
blacksmith is still in business.”

Blacksmith?  Turns out, yeah, there’s a blacksmith in downtown Suckafree City.  Klokar’s has been around since 1906, but it’s post-quake and therefore officially modern.  As modern as anyplace that does business using stuff like
this, anyway.  Tony runs Klokars, and he runs it his way.  He’s got a booming voice and he likes to curse and trade stories and shmooze and enjoy the time god’s given him.  There’s not a lot of business at the smithy’s these days, after all, so he makes the most of his time as the Mayor of the 400 block of Folsom.

When I walked in, he was on the telephone in his small, impossibly cluttered office.  I bided my time by looking around the front rooms, two dizzyingly chaotic spaces full of greasy old industrial equipment, pieces of iron stock, long tubes and worked plates, and thousands of little projects that had been done for fun or never paid for.  A round wooden table stood near the grimy front window, where an enormous plate of pasta in meat sauce sat on a plastic gingham tablecloth. The place resonated with the ring of thousands of
hammerblows, and the dust that blanketed the dirt was there honestly.  Everywhere I looked were bizarre, random elements - a towering stack of deck chairs, a juke box, an enormous belt-driven machine lathe built in Detroit and older than color movies.  I understood that it was supposed to be an impenetrable mess to anyone but the craftsman, for whom knowing what and where everything was, was such a key part of his craft.  It was part of the creative process, and I was there to partake of it.

When he hung up his eyes were goggling from their sockets.  “That was my gay nephew.  He’s gay, that son of a bitch.  That’s some bullshit, huh?  Damn.  We’re really not in touch much anymore but he called so we talked.  They caught him in the chicken coop with his son-in-law.  Now that’s bullshit.  Huh?  Huh?  So hey, what, do ya got money for me?  What do you want from me, anyway?  Do I know you?”

I explained myself, showed him a little schematic I’d drawn up in Word’s “draw” function ("Hey, that’s some good bullshit!  You made this on a computer?  Hey, now that’s some serious bullshit, there!"); he seemed to get my drift and told me he could work something up.  I called back a week later and he was ready with six beautiful brackets.  I brought my camera and took some photos of his
vise and his
scary fridge and a bunch of other stuff that didn’t come out so good.  I felt a bit self-conscious, frankly, with my shiny shoes and effete camera getting all dusty in the murk of his workshop. 

But I have to say, he did a really nice job on my brackets.  I can’t wait to see how they look when they’re holding the ranma in place, but for the time being,
they look pretty damn good lying across the top of my dining table.  I like the way the iron seems to contain many ages and patinas, and how it’s roughly hammered into broader leaves at the ends, and how it’s full of
texture and infinitesimal differences. 

And I especially love that I could get it hand-hammered and custom-forged by a craftsman who practices arts on which society was utterly dependent for thousands of years, but who is now a living anachronism, plying his ancient trade not ten minute’s walk from my bland beige cube on the fifth floor of a 12 story building.  As my old friend Tony would say, that is some good bullshit. 

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

born that way

It was mid-afternoon and Kel had just returned from the grocery, where she’d forgotten to buy the cheese and red onion that I needed to make my fabulous grilled sandwiches (patent pending).  So I hopped back into the Soob and drove back to the local supermarket.

This store is the biggest slice of ghetto in my quiet semi-urban neighborhood.  It’s right next to the park and is consequently heavily patronized by a solid contingent of the gravely sketchy and the hygiene-impaired.  I avoid it when I can, but it was nearby and I wanted sandwiches, dammit, so I sucked it up and drove on down.  If the sketch factor wanted a piece of me so badly, I figured I’d dare it to take its best shot.  I should have expected what I got.

As I pulled into the lot she was sitting on the pavement out near the payphones.  Her two crutches were laid out beside her with a piebald mutt tied to each one, snoozing in the sun.  Her dark hair was greasy, a viscous emanation of her scalp.  Her clothes were layered and various; the items that weren’t yet filthy would catch up soon enough.  The skin of her face and arms was streaked and grimy.  Another questionable character hunkered down beside her; they seemed to be conversing intently until she glanced up and noticed me.

I’d just parked the car unremarkably in a row of other cars and was walking along toward the store, minding my own business, allowing for plenty of clearance around the squalid spot where she unsanitarily reclined.  I was unshaven, hung over, dyspeptic, and a bit put out.  I wore shabby Bermuda cargo shorts that needed laundering and a buttonup short-sleeve shirt with a garish Polynesian masks pattern.  I was not there to be noticed—I was there for cheese and onions.  But that did not slow her down even a little. 

“There ya are!,” she shouted gleefully.  Her voice was the rasp of sawteeth on sheetmetal.  I didn’t even have to look around—she was obviously talking to me. I tried to just keep walking, as if ignoring her would dissuade her.  This strategy was, as anticipated, ineffectual.  She continued her salutation: “How come you always look so good?”

It caught me by surprise, and - involuntarily - I made eye contact.  She smiled broadly to me and a gap gleamed wide and dark where her upper incisors used to be.  I felt compelled to acknowledge her, even as I strove to maintain any distance I could preserve.  Her question hung fetid in the air.  “I can’t even begin to answer that question,” I demurred. 

With a sharp laugh, she replied, “It’s cuz you was born that way!” Though I doubted her logic, I let it go unanswered as I reached the doors and took my refuge in the garish neon interior of the supermarket.  I didn’t personally think I was born that way, or any way in particular, but I didn’t think I’d get anywhere debating the point. 

Thursday, June 15, 2006

random weirdness - in here, and out there

Fun night tonight, we saw Swingers and followed it up with the short subject, Swingblade.  We ate pizza and drank cheap wine.  It was a hoot.  Also a hoot, please enjoy:

cyberhippie – just try to lose him!
ninja wisdom and related chazzerai
I don’t even know what to say about this one

Wasn’t that fun?  Oh shut up about it then.  My god, you can’t please some people.  Well, if you came here for transit tales, here’s a few from a recent commute to work:

On the way to the terminal, 8:05 am: The sidewalk pulses with cellphones and caffeine; the world is going to work.  Business caz, business dressy, all manner of office-proper garb…. And, of course, the occasional misfit, the one who puts the “odd” in “odd man out.” This time, he’s just outside my bus window.  His scowl sucks the sunlight from the morning.  His hair is lank and greasy as it trails out from under his rancid hoodie, dark and pale at once. His overcoat is unseasonable, and thick with grime.  His pants are a wearable disease and his boots soil the sidewalk.  He walks fast with bitter strides, cutting purposefully through the pedestrians, pacing himself with a worn crookneck cane that mirrors his own twisted, battered nature.  Moving slowly in traffic, my bus passes him by, but then we stop at New Monty and he catches up, rage running cold in the deep lines of his too-tan face. 

As we sit at the stop he stops short too, just outside my window.  With suddenly redirected intensity, he drops like a rock to one knee by a “no parking” sign that’s bolted into a low metal curbside frame and swings his cane recklessly forward, grabbing it near its rubber boot-stop, which he presses hard into the center-point of the top of the white and red sign.  He drags the rubber stopper down the center of the enameled rectangle with visible force, drawing a faint vertical line with his cane from the top of the sign to the bottom.  Then he immediately, urgently repositions the cane-stopper to the center point of the line he’s just drawn and draws a second line diagonally to the lower left corner of the sign, and then another to the lower right.  His handiwork complete, he stands sharply up, his coat and hoodie distinctively dingy, and resumes his abrasive powerwalk.  He leaves behind him, faint in the bright morning, something very like a peace sign, mumbling a gritty plea to the grumbling street.

Just outside the terminal, 8:15 am: She is short and snarling, dressed in black from head to toe – her shawl and sweater and chemise and long woven skirt a uniform blot in the dawning day.  I see her coming toward me on a crowded stretch of sidewalk, stomping stubby black boots as if beating insults back into the strangled earth.  On this sunny spring morning it’s pretty easy to pick her out amid the crowds in flowing clothes of cheerful hues.  She, stocky and stunted, partakes none of that.  A sneer twists her wrinkled face into ever deeper rifts.  Even her hair, a charcoal pageboy streaked with bone, seems to hurl a challenge to the world. 

Pigeons congregate here, near a tiny patch of grass.  They preen and strut and search for casual mates in a cooing flock that scurries hither and yon across the sidewalk.  They are grey and brown and blue and white, each subtly distinctive, all functionally identical.  They are brave in the face of the towering humans who stride so intently through their coveying.  These pigeons ignore me and all my brethren… but the bitter woman, they do not ignore.  As she reaches the edge of this sea of pigeons, pounding along with unconcealed disgust suppurating from her every pore, one bird beneath her feet takes fright, takes flight - and then they all erupt in an ovation of wingflaps and rise up heedless of direction, seeking only the escape of the sky.  In less than a second she’s spooked a hundred streetsquab into the air.  They batter their wings in furious fear; they collide, panicking.  They begin to buffet her, striking her hair, her shoulder; one flies into her back, and another is trapped in the strap of her bag.  Her eyes bug from her livid face, and she shakes a pudgy fist at them in impotence. 

One block from the terminal, 8:20 am: I’d seen them on the bus, but I’d been writing something and didn’t much attend to them.  What I had noticed was their butts – they were both toting wide loads.  Not so big as to cause a problem, but big enough to be noteworthy – two undercarriages that swelled broadly from either side of their fleshy hips, stretching their respective denims to drumhead tautness.  He wore a buttonup business shirt and his paunch hung softly over his waistband; she wore a stylish spring blouse that accentuated her voluptuousness while effectively masking her extra poundage, her face pretty and shimmering with light cosmetics lightly applied. 

I’d ignored them on the bus, but it was harder to ignore them as they dawdled before me, taking up the full width of the sidewalk with their own full widths.  They held hands and walked as if time was too precious to be rushed.  Once they reached the corner they paused, embraced with heartfelt tenderness, shared one quick kiss, and parted company – he, crossing north up into the heart of downtown; she, waiting with me to head further east.  She gazed ahead fixedly into the street and the path before her.

I watched him turn three times as he crossed the street, looking over his shoulder for a final nod from her, hope written legibly on his face that she would glance his way and cast him a parting smile.  The light changed again.  She walked forward, eyes still locked on the crosswalk.  He shrugged his backpack higher on his shoulder and watched his feet as they carried him reluctantly to work. 

Back next week with, oh, maybe some dad’s day stuff?  Or a motel marquee?  Or that charming lady with the mutt dogs at the supermarket?  Play your cards right and you may find out soon enough! Till then, enjoy your weekend.  Remember, in South America, it’s Wednesday now!

Tuesday, June 13, 2006

conversatin’

Immigrant protest day promised an unusual commute downtown.  Market Street would be blocked by a parade and the weirdness just seemed to be flowing upstream, right into the Richmond.  When I got to the stop where I board, there were lots of people already waiting impatiently.  Among them, a harbinger: a middle-aged man, neatly dressed in white shirt and pale linen trousers; he had pissed himself prodigiously and stood, legs akimbo, drying himself slowly in the fresh breeze.  Please, I thought, don’t let me be stuck riding next to him.

It took another ten minutes for the bus to come.  Though it wasn’t a Limited, it didn’t seem prudent for me to keep waiting, so I got on - as luck would have it, right behind Mr Peepants.  Unwilling to endure his immediate proximity, I pushed past him when he decided to stop and occupy a spot halfway back. Moving to the rear of the bus, I found lots of spaces to sit.  There was even that most propitious seat - one row before the back bench, with the wheelwell footrest.  I took it, noticing that on the bench behind me - directly behind me - was an older man sprawled comfortably, wearing jeans and a light jacket.  He seemed to be a typically sketchy rider of the 38 regular line.  Next to him was an empty seat, and next to that, in the middle, sat a sullen, sleepy teen.  Then another empty seat, and a distinguished elderly gent with rich dark skin and a whiskery white beard in the far corner. 

Across the aisle, a little ahead of me, on an inward facing bench, were an attractive young man and woman who’d boarded at the same stop as I had, both in white pants and white “Brazil” t-shirts.  They spoke animatedly in Portuguese, riding along with us in their own little linguistic world. 

The bus started rolling and quite quickly I smelled something sour: the stench of the 38 rider.  It was a heady combination of powerful BO and cheap alcohol - gin, I guessed, or maybe vodka.  Within a few blocks I’d figured out it was the guy right behind me.  Oh, joy.  If history was any guide, he’d be there all the way downtown. 

After seven blocks, ol’ Tinkletrousers got off the bus.  Now I could see it had all been a ploy to get me to sit near the stinky guy.  He was certainly putting out a powerful stench, but that was apparently just the beginning.  Now that I could see the extent of the machinations that the fates had been willing to undertake to toy with me, I suspected that this guy had even more to offer than just a trigger for my olfactory gag reflex.

As Mr Whiz exited, two young women got on, light of frame and pleasing to the eye.  They strolled all the way to the back bench and one quickly took the furthest seat available from the reeking drunkard. The only seat left there for her friend was the one between the old stinkpot and the slumping youth.  She recognized the questionable rectitude of them both, and stood, vacillating: should she take a seat between the sketchmeister and the slumberthug, or remain standing, like a pud?

The old drunk dude cut through the confusion.  “Aay, yawanna cumovahea?” Everyone around internally drew back, uncomfortable and anxious.  Conversations paused, even those in other languages.  The old guy’s voice was garbled, as if mashed with a pharmacist’s pestle; his breath was 90 proof.  Nobody moved.  “Ohgwan - ahayn gunnabychu.  Doanchuwanna sidugetha?  Cumonguy, yuotta slydit ovahea.” He was now urging the teenager two seats away to rouse himself and move closer, so the two women could have adjacent seats.  I began to exchange little glances with the other riders. 

Suddenly, unexpectedly, the kid slumped into action and shifted over.  The woman still standing installed herself in the newly vacated slot, cheek and jowl with her friend.  “Thank you,” she said demurely.

“Ha!  Tainuttin.  Peeplwanna sidugetha.  Peeplegotta c’oparay.  Weyallin th’buztugetha.  Ha!” He mumbled cheerfully at her over the lap of the young guy who was again apparently comatose.  His drunken stumbling words, on their own, were not evidence of any particular incapacity, but I could sense, as he paused for a few moments, that he was just gathering steam.  And indeed, soon enough he started mumbling again, low and steady, in a stream of unintelligibilities that seemed to involve his money, his baby, his babymama, shooting hoops, and people just being friendly and getting along - a rambling monologue that slowly built in tempo and volume till we were marinating in his boozy exhalations. 

A big tough-looking guy got on at Diviz and clomped back toward us. He had a patchy beard and wore a maroon jersey with a big gold 8 on it, and he planted his ridership down across from the Brazilians, with whom I had been exchanging looks of mixed amusement and discouragement.  The big guy quickly sized up the situation, taking in the scene with hooded eyes, and scowling at the guy behind me.

His monologue continued for a few more stops. Then, the sleepyteen did something dramatic that totally changed the social physics at the back of the bus: he got up and left.  Now there was just open air between the old rambling drunk and the lovely young ladies. I felt him shift in his seat and focus his frayed attention on the nearer one. 

He opened with, “Hauyaduintheahunni?” A collective gasp was substantially suppressed.  I locked eyes with the Brazilians and with the older gent at the far corner.  The young woman, the object of the lush’s attention, remained wisely silent, looking steadfastly ahead.  Her friend’s revulsion, however, was almost palpable. 

“Aayhunni, yuuokay.  Thasokay.  Yuudonneedabe tokkinnohau.  Iain gunabychu.  Thas’awri.  Iain’nuthin.  Buhreeleynau, wuddaya wuhn’me tuhdu.  Ay’jus canvusatin’.  Ayjus lykta canvusayt.  So - unh - wheayagoin?”

She then made her single, fatal mistake - I could feel it through the back of my head: she made eye contact.  I suddenly felt the tide turn.  The sot shifted in his seat.  “Whuzzat?  Wheayagoin?”

“All the way downtown.”

“Whuzzat?  Hy’stree?”

“No, all the way downtown.  Market Street.”

“So-okay, hau ol’ahya?”

A brief pause.  This was a very sudden shift into a highly personal matter.  Destinations, those were public knowledge.  You couldn’t hide where you got off.  But your age?  That was something altogether different.  Then: “Thirty.” An answer.  An honest one.  Older than I’d expected.  Her friend was outraged.

“Why you tell him that?”

“A.  A.  A.  Is’okay.  Is’okay.”

“No it is not okay; you stinky an’ gross an’ it’s no respect to even talk to you.”

“Nau, tha’s jus’mean.  You sayinthiz, an’ih jus’tuh hurmi.  Hur’mifeelinz.  S’jus’hurfuh.  Hurfuh.”

“Well, I’m sorry.”

“Thazokay.  Thazzokai.  Aaa, Ste’yun!” He’d turned his attention to the big guy with the maroon jersey, the jersey with Steve Young’s number on it. 

They big guy glowered at him.  “Do not be givin’ me no crazytok now.  Now is not the right day an’ I’m the wron’ guy. Jus’ keep yer crazytok to yerself.”

“I juz’lyk Ste’yun...”

“NO crazytok.  Now it ends.”

The drunk dude fell back in his seat and sighed odiferously, and then suddenly realized: “Aaa, thizi Hy’stree.  Ahm ge’en ovhea.  Lemme thru.  Lemmethuu.”

Everybody eagerly got out of his way.  He stumbled to the already-closing doors and pitched himself forward into the stairwell, punching his way through with clumsy grace.  The air in his wake smelled like plastic-bottle vodka and ass. 

The rest of us looked discreetly around, relaxing our vigilance a few degrees.  I leaned slightly forward, sensing a fraternity, and spoke to big #8: “Good answer there, about the crazytok.”

“Yeah,” he replied, “you gotta stop these things quick or they get outta hand.” I nodded a concurrance and he sat back - but soon he leaned forward again, toward his neighbors across the aisle.  “Y’all Brazilian?,” he asked the couple in white.  They looked briefly at each other, sizing him up.  Unscented, freshly laundered and respectably shod – he could be dangerous but he seemed safe, so the woman answered affirmatively.  “I was in Rio last winter,” he confided with enthusiasm, “for a jazz festival.  Saw Gilbero Joao and Luciana Souza.  Man that Gilberto is the shit.  He be like the Brazilian Sinatra.” They then continued to speak together cheerfully for some time, about music and geography and heredity and the slave trade and politics and weather, till the bus had to stop and let us off way out at Taylor because of the demonstrations. 

We stepped down in front of the Columbia Hotel (the first choice for all your SRO needs) on a portion of O’Farrell street that partakes equally of Union Square and the Tenderloin.  Three men, reclined on the sidewalk, greeted us.  They leaned against the grimy hotel wall, shaking dirty cardboard cups, scratching, and mumbling to each other through their respective whiskers.  Passing them, I yanked the brim of my cheap generic baseball cap down against the sun.

“Nice hat!,” one of them shouted at my back.  I turned and gave him a grim grin, and a hand gesture that was both acknowledgement and dismissal.  I’d had enough crazytok already that day.  Plus, I was still quite a ways from work and it looked like I’d be late.  But at least, as I’d anticipated, I had been well-entertained. 

Sunday, June 11, 2006

Staying at Home

Yo, happy monday, blogsylvania.  Hope you had a fulfilling weekend.  Mine started early when I went home sick from work on friday.  I did have the energy, however, to go to our friends’ house that night and be hosted for a fabulous supper.  Added bonus: they gave us about a jillion great items of babywear that their baby can’t wear anymore, with a few awesome toys to boot.  I spent most of saturday cooking and cleaning, and most of sunday doing laundry and going out to the park for the free Cake concert.  I do like me some Cake, but it was a summer day in san francisco, which meant it was cold, foggy and windy.  We had the baby along and left after about six songs - even though they launched into our favorite song of theirs (is this love?) just as soon as we were too far away to turn around and go back.  Whatever; I definitely got my money’s worth.  We had tasty viet take-out for supper and now it’s now.  The baby is asleep, I think, and it’s time to reorient myself for the workweek. 

...which leads me to think that it’s time to post this little bitta drivel about going to work.  Hope you enjoy it.  I didn’t at the time, but I do in retrospect.

I needed that bus ride.  Morning came too early, and I was not at my sharpest.  Forty minutes of meditative isolation was the prescription, music in my ears and landscape scrolling past me, the details of my life fading away so I could focus more sharply once I disembarked downtown.  But such was not to be.

At the stop, I encountered my occasional transit pal.  She worked near my office, lived near my home; we rode the same line frequently enough to have introduced ourselves and had a few conversations.  Not much more than that did we share in common, but for some reason, that morning she felt compelled to capitalize on it and strike up a conversation. 

We rarely had much to discuss – her roommates, my family, our respective jobs.  But today she seemed pensive and our conversation steered toward a particular friend of hers.  “Old friends – friends from college,” she explained to me, though she was barely in her late 20s and college wasn’t that far back for her.  “We studied feminism together, wrote articles together.  She was a real radical.” She cast herself back into her past, on bygone dorm rooms and classes from another era.  “After graduation, we stayed in touch.  She fought for a satisfying career and for wage equality; we’d send books back and forth and have those long phone conversations about paradigm shifts and gender roles and the EEOC.  And I was really happy for her when she told me she’d gotten into a relationship with a guy who shared all this with her.  She said he could talk with her about all the things that were so important to us both.  She told me he could really support her in all those things we’d worked together to achieve.”

She sighed a little, watched the storefronts flash past through greasy smears on the broad window.  “He wanted to go to law school. The best one he got into was in Oregon, so they moved.  He started classes and she got a job in retail, and worked hard – on the corporate level, and on the political level too, till she was the store manager.  And it was a good store,” she assured me, turning her wide eyes on my bleary ones, “with an excellent socially conscious product line that was protective of worker economic interests and gender equity.  Anyway,” she continued, her gaze shifting forward, into the sea of riders sitting ahead of us, “she said she liked it.  It was a good job.  Fulfilling,” she gravely intoned.

And then, a hollowness crept into her voice.  “Her husband – well, they got married.  About two months later she was pregnant.  But she didn’t let it slow her down; she stayed at work through her seventh month.  And then she took off on leave and had a baby shower, and I went up to be there for her.  It was a couple of weekends ago.  I got her a book,” she told me, flashing a glance my way, “on feminist mothering.  What to ask the doctor, how to deal with sexist expectations, breast feeding rights.... It’s a really good book.  I guess.  I mean, I’m not a mom, but it’s by a really well-respected author.  Anyway, she was really tired at her shower.  She said she just didn’t have any energy; she didn’t feel like doing things and she slept all the time.”

“Pretty standard for the third trimester,” I ventured, but it didn’t really slow her down.

“Then she told me that she wasn’t even interested in going back to work.  She was ready to leave her job, her whole career.  She said her husband was going to do really well in law school and make a lot of money, and he could take care of them.  She was ready,” she concluded, “to be a stay-at-home mom.”

And with this, she looked squarely at me, to gauge, I suppose, my response.  Her voice was like a hole out of which she peered at me with abjured loneliness, waiting for me to offer her a rope or a ladder or a strong-armed hand.  All I was able to tell her was, “Typical, I suppose.” It was not the answer she’d been hoping to hear.  Then again, I wasn’t the person she needed to hear it from.

Well, back to work with you then.  I was wrong, the baby is entirely not asleep.  My work begins now, I suppose.

Friday, June 09, 2006

Initiate Randomization!

I’ve had a cough for a few days and today I’m definitely feeling a bit under the weather, though I’m at work so as properly to impress my supervisor since it’s just one week before my five-year review.  “Oh, that Dan, he works with black lung.  Why, he won’t stop reviewing files even when he’s giving his uvula a wedgie with his glottis.  What a trouper.  Let’s give him a raise. And also a new car and a year’s worth of bodywork.” That’s the way it works around here.  Come in sick, spread guilt as thickly as virus, and make off like a bandit.  Anyway, that’s the theory.

In practice, I got here a bit early and I’m tired of seeing that weird party story come up first thing when I check the ‘hut, so here’s another delightful sampling of crap from my memopad.  These are the items that stick in my brain and then slowly slide away, and if I don’t write them down I feel as if I’ve lost something of value. Then I don’t know what to do with them.  So I carry them around in my pocket for a few months, and then I disgorge them here.  Thusly:

At a public restroom, I saw a sign that urged patrons “Do not throw foreign objects into the toilet.” Scrawled next to this was the corollary: “American-Made Only!”

Boy Bawang Cornick. Though I’ve poked around on-line a bit for more information, I think I like it better the less I know about it.  I may get some today just so I can stop saying it to myself.  Come on, people.  It contains both wang and ick.  How could it be bad?

Reviewing a file recently, prepared by a program that has historically had challenges with proofreading (among other minor and less-minor issues), I noted that they were planning to produce a reference source using, among other materials, a directory produced by the U.S. Congress.  This directory has a yellow cover, so it’s called, in typical DC Doublespeak, the Congressional Yellow Book.  But in this case they were talking about the “Gongressional Yellow Boob.” Now that’s something I could really use on my desktop.  I’d think I’d be willing to overlook the jaundice if it’s really loaded with Gongression. 

“MUNI” is the name of the local public transportation district; they run the busses, trams, trolleys and cable cars.  I was riding the N-Judah light rail a few weeks ago and noticed, as it emerged from a tunnel near Church Street, a small kiosk in an area with several Muni structures.  This particular structure was a restroom for Muni employees, and it had two signs on it.  One was a plain metal placard that just said, “MUNI restroom - MUNI employees only.” The other was a fancier bronze plaque with an embossed quotation, attributed to someone whose name I couldn’t read, and it seemed to be the motto of the organization: “That All May Ride.” It’s a nice sentiment, but it just seemed to me that the two signs sort of contradicted each other. 

Apathetic is better than none. 

If I were to inherit a German bakery (and who’s to say I won’t), I think I’d re-name it “Stollen Moments.”

I was watching a film not long ago and noticed in the closing credits, a reference to one of the technical crew: the negative cutter.  This seems to me, and I’m an expert in this area, an unnecessary circumlocution.  Why call this person a negative cutter?  Why not speak affirmatively and call him a “put-together-er?”

On a final note, I watched Hauru no ugoku shiro last night, released stateside as “Howl’s Moving Castle.” I enjoyed the hell out of it - the colors and animation were fabulous and blended well with my supper of beer and cough medicine.  But it was very Japanese in its plot structure - the character development and resolution were abrupt and some of the plot devices seemed really forced. Even for a fantasy movie, it was asking too much for me to accept some of the developments.  However, the voicing was fantastic - Christian Bale, Lauren Bacall, Blythe Danner, and Jean Simmons (not the one with the tongue, the womanly one).  Plus, Moosie Drier!  I went to jr high and high school with him!  You might remember him from “It Happened at Lakewood Manor” (AKA “Ants!"), “Andrea’s Story: A Hitchhiking Tragedy,” “Kids Incorporated,” and episodes of many of the classic tv greats like “Hunter,” “CHiPs,” and “Family Ties.” It’s fun to see his name pop up after two hours of Japanese fantasy animation.  So here’s looking at you, Moosie.  I don’t know which voice was yours, but they all sounded great. 

Next week I’ll be back to the regular essays.  For now, it’s time for me to knuckle under and embrace my fate.  Have a good weekend, and watch for Meese.

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Ring Them Up: The Party that Went Too Far

Kel had just moved to LA a few weeks prior, from her subdued Poconos hometown.  We both had the false sense of wisdom that comes with a newly-minted college degree, but I felt especially sophisticated with my familiarity with the city and my old friends around me and my enormous thundering ego.  Kel had, at least, the native wisdom to maintain wide eyes.  Mine had to be re-widened by an outside agency.

That “outside agency” turned out to be a party in Woodland Hills. My sister got us invited, though she was out of town and did not herself attend.  Some of her friends from the Renaissance Faire were hosting it.  I wouldn’t know anyone else there, but it was a good way, I thought, to prove my smoove.  This is further evidence of how clueless I truly was. 

Kel is, by nature, somewhat retiring, disinclined to overexpose herself to rooms full of strangers, but I somehow convinced her she’d have a good time.  I’m not sure if that turned out to be accurate, but it was certainly a memorable night.

Woodland Hills is what every suburb wants to be – tidy, quiet, cool at night and warm in the day, and crammed to the gills with comfortable ranchstyle houses.  It’s where the Brady Bunch would have gone when they got a little more money. To speak of Woodland Hills is to speak of healthy lawns and wholesome living.  It certainly never made me think of bondage play. At least, not till that night.

Things started off quietly enough, with drinks and chips and small talk.  We sat on the deck near a hot tub where, by a strange coincidence, a good friend’s boyfriend was hanging around.  Eric was graciously answering the questions of several young women regarding his hair (yes, he highlighted the blonde streaks), and they discussed coloration products with cool enthusiasm.  It wasn’t an interesting conversation for me, but it was an interesting phenomenon. 

But the really interesting phenomena were going on, it turns out, inside – where, through the sliding glass patio doors, we could see four or five women standing together in the den, laughing excitedly in a tight ring.  All were bare breasted.  A silver chain wove between them, linking them all together.  By the nipples.  Kel looked at me with understandable curiosity, we shrugged to each other, and opted to stay outside and drink.

However, at some point we had to go back inside for more beer.  While there, a guy arrived with a pistol.  He was a scrawny weaselly fellow with a wan complexion and leather pants.  Actually, there were a lot of wan folk there, wearing lots of leather and lots of jewelry and all manner of piercings, and the more of them there were, the more enthusiastic they seemed to be to see each other.  Handgun dweeb was waving his piece around asking, “What do you want me to do with this?” Some chick knelt down in front of him and wrapped her lips around the barrel of the gun.  Then they all laughed. 

“These are your friends?” Kel asked me.  “I’ve never seen this before,” I admitted to her in a quiet voice.  “They’re kind of freaking me out.” “I’ve had enough,” Kel responded with quiet finality.  “We’re out of here.”

That sounded fine to me. I really didn’t want to know what those shrieking bondage hags and firearm fetishists had next in mind.  We left the party.  Kel asked me, once we were on the road, if I’d enjoyed myself; her voice was guarded and her question was loaded.  I don’t recall my answer, but the truth was that I’d enjoyed the party just fine – but it hadn’t been quite what I’d expected it to be.  We never did go to another party like that one.  In retrospect, I’d have to say I’m relieved. 

Monday, June 05, 2006

Weekend Envy (Yours, of Mine): New and Improved

Funny, isn’t it?  I’ve got all these little stories and suchlike to share with you but I just can’t get over the fact that my weekend totally rocked in every important way, and instead of disgorging some weirdo essay about freaks on the bus or motel signs or that party with all the weirdos, I’m just going to put up a few photos and call it good.  It’ll give you something to come back for.

Saturday was a bright sunny day, of the sort we don’t get too many of hereabouts during the summer months.  Kel and I both did some running in the park (consecutive, not concurrent, for you Law & Order fans) and then I went out again to drop my clothes at the dry cleaners (yes, that guy who literally tore a hole in the seat of his suitpants? that was me, goddamn it), and then we loaded up the babyschlepper-pack and wandered out yet again - this time back to the park, to meet our dear friends Sha and Helena for some sun and fun.  First, we cavorted on the lawns of the Conservatory, where the flowerbeds are starting to look suitably hallucinogenic; the whole concourse in front of the greenhouse was pulsing to the sound of cool bop jazz, played live by a small combo at the other end of a tunnel with such great acoustics that we could hear every note with perfect clarity. 

We then walked down to the foot of Haight Street and Amoeba Music, where our mutual dear friend Catharine was just tuning up for her band‘s mini-concert in honor of their new CD.  The store was, as always, an absolute overload of sound and visuals, even without the smooth tangoisms that Cath and crew started belting out within moments of our arriving.  We were all rapt, watching and listening to them.  There was even a bit of dancing going on, every bit as smooth as the tunes. 

At the end of the concert we bade Catharine farewell, got some ginger lemonade at the funky coffeehouse next door, and wandered back into the park.  I’d noticed, as we headed toward Amoeba originally, a few boxes of mazoh that were left out around various encampments and piles of personal goods that were lying around the open parkland; as we walked though the part of the park I’d call “Throwback Alley” for all the freaks and hippies stumbling around there, we walked past another older dredlocked wastrel munching out on yet another box of mazoh.  As our paths crossed, a tattered streetwise black dude leaning against a dumpster called out to the other dude, “I see you got them jewish cookies.  I like them jewish cookies!  Reminds me of when I was in Israel!”

In case the citation of jewish cookies (the snack of affliction!) was not enough to clue us in that today was opening day of freak season, the scene just over by Sharon Meadows clarified it for us.  These guys were all jamming out in a congas-and-brass circle of sound, and these guys were cavorting to the music.  The air was redolent of grass, of both the freshly mown and freshly smoked varieties, and people of all ages and descriptions were exchanging cheerful salutations. 

We walked back to the museum tower, took in the view, returned to earth, grabbed a hot dog, and then parted company with Helena and Shariar.  Kel and I got back home, gave Zach a snach, and then drove out to Kensington to dine with the Paiges, with whom I enjoyed a very tasty red mole chicken burrito and a fabulous horchata.  In lieu of photographic evidence, here’s the highlight of our conversation:

Me: What kind of mole do you think they use for this stuff?  The kind that burrows underground, or the kind that grows on your skin?
Dave: Both.
Kel: The kind that burrows under your skin.

Good times, people.  But it didn’t end there.  We got home, put Zach to sleep, and then I figured out a way to watch my favorite new dvds, The Ascent of Man, on the computer but in total comfort.  My secret is my own, but suffice it to say, it was both a hedonistic and an intellectual delight to fall asleep listening to Brownowski talking about Dalton’s discovery of Oxygen. 

I awoke on Sunday to a dark gloomy day, so I made pancakes with orangeblossom water and cinnamon, played with the baby for a few hours, and when he fell asleep and I’d sufficiently digested my breakfast, Kel and I both did about an hour’s worth of solid yoga.  Damn but my body needed that.  I could literally feel my vertebrae unclenching after having worn the babypack on my back for three hours the day before.  After we shavasana’d ourselves back into this plane of existance, we fed Zach a snack and then headed out to Chrissie Field and the Sports Basement to get a few items Kel needed for work and a pair of shorts for me.  By the time we left the cavernous store (it is housed in what was once the PX for the whole Presidio base), the sun was blazing down and the air was inexplicably warm and soft for the second day running, so we took a stroll along the field down to the warming hut for a hot dog (yes! a two-dog weekend!) and a ride on daddy’s shoulders.  Zach fell asleep amidst the lagoons and wildflowers and sultry breezes, and then we just brought him back home and cleaned and did laundry till he fell asleep - which leads me to right now.  (update: I erased this whole post at this point and had to re-create it this morning.  And let us say: whoo-hoo.)

I get to visit the dentist today, which is actually usually a positive experience for me.  Hey, free toothbrush, right?  And maybe, just maybe, if all goes my way, I’ll get a chance tomorrow night to type up one of those stories I’ve been holding back.  Time will tell.  Or not. 

Friday, June 02, 2006

Homecomings and Homegoings

In honor of it being time to go home for the weekend:

I thought I had come home again.  Of course, I didn’t live there anymore, but I’d spent my nominally formative years there and I still thought of it as my city in some way. Or perhaps I thought of myself as part of it.  In any case, I felt that we were linked - me and NoHo.  Well, it was NoHo when I’d left for a trip with my family in 1970; I got back six months later and it was calling itself Studio City.  Now I think it’s “Valley Village” or some damn thing.  But it was always Wortser Avenue, Coldwater Canyon and Moorpark Drive, and the house and the ‘hood I’d incorporated into the fiber of my being as I grew up.  So when a friend from my earliest days invited me to his southland wedding, I seized the opportunity.  For the cost of a cut-rate PriceLine rent-a-car I could renew my acquaintance with a land that was intrinsically part of myself.  Anyway, that’s what I thought I’d be doing.

I started, actually, in my second ‘hood, the one where I lived for two short but very dense years during law school.  At that time it was a mixed transitional zone between the Miracle Mile and the Westside, between the Fairfax District and Northern South-Central.  As I cruised the broad boulevards and tidy side streets, it all looked familiar, except for most every store and shop.  The area had been badly damaged in the King riots and all my favorite old haunts were gone.  In their place were a bizarre profusion of Ethiopian groceries and boutiques, and Jewish delis, yeshivas and tchkochketoria.  It felt different, even though all the houses seemed exactly the same.  Banners hung from streetlights denominating it the “SoFax District;” next to these were official civic community markers that read “Little Ethiopia.” I didn’t know which one to believe, but it was pretty clear that this was no longer my old ‘hood.  It had moved on, so I did likewise and kept driving.

The wedding was that night and by the next morning I was already on my way back out of town.  I’d stayed overnight with some old friends – the groom’s parents, actually - on a block adjacent to what had once been my elementary school.  As I drove out, the houses where I’d spent time as a kid called back to me – Randy W’s house, Danny F’s house, and of course good old Tommy L’s house…. Each one was like a page of sheet music to a song I’d forgotten that I’d forgotten, a displaced memory preserved in the morning air like a fish in latex.  The houses and streets were all immediately recognizable but the whole thing wasn’t right anymore.  It was alive, but not with my life. 

I headed on out to Riverside Drive and down Fulton on a sneaky surface street route to the airport that led me very near the house where I’d actually grown up.  It felt like fate. I felt compelled to take a brief side trip to see how the old homestead looked. 

The street names were as familiar as the lyrics of that once-forgotten song, irretrievable from my memory till I was reminded of them, each in inevitable turn after the last.  Soon I found myself at the corner of my old block, but truly I didn’t recognize it – the street signs told me to turn but without them I’d have cruised right on past.  Instead, I pulled a right, slowed down, and tried to reassemble history.  That – was Nana B’s old house, but they’d added a second story and taken out the avocado tree from the front yard.  That was the Frankels’ place, the Nivens’, the Galupo house.  Many homes had been significantly built out.  Landscaping was robust but most of my favorite trees were gone.  The Hunt place had been razed, and entirely replaced with a much larger, fancier house.  And that meant that my old home should be across on the other side of the street – and, indeed, it was still there. 

The gnarled elephant of an acacia tree in front was long gone – I knew that already.  The lawn looked fabulous and the driveway still shot clean back to the big garage.  The porch was still long and narrow; there was still an octagonal window off the front door and a bay window off the master bedroom.  It was neatly painted in subdued shades of putty and dark blue.  The houses to either side were faintly recognizable, but my old place was definitely still my old place, my home for 15 mostly uneventful years.  But the strangerchild’s tricycle on the porch mutely underscored what was growing ever more obvious to me: I had no place at my old place anymore.  It was just another house on another Valley Village street.  Others had made it their own, and no trace of me or what was mine remained there.  My home, I realized, was 400 miles away, and it was time for me to catch a plane and go back to it.  I could go home again.  However, I could only have one home at a time, and mine, these days, was elsewhere.

That’s it for now.  Have a good one.  See ya next week. 

IMPERVIOUS

i am impervious to yer pretzels

with sincere thanks to lace, who puts the perv in “impervious"

Thursday, June 01, 2006

Cast Off

I was no stranger to pain, and he knew it. So he should have believed me when I told him about the burning. 

I have been clinically diagnosed with an unusually high degree of pain tolerance.  My bad break a few years ago took me to levels of hurting like I’d never known before, and I pretty much dealt with it.  Of course, there were a lot of drugs in my system too, but regardless, I do believe I’ve learned to put up with serious discomfort when the circumstances demand.  And my whole point is this: this, I learned in grade school, when I kept falling down and breaking stuff.  Like my arms.  I’d had casts in kindergarten, second grade, fourth (both wrists at once that time), and then sixth.  Well that seems like too many, actually.  They sort of ran together.

Regardless, every couple of years or so, I’d break my arm, and in the process I learned more each time about what pain was and what I could do to endure it. 

The doctor who saw me through those broken arms, was Dr N.  He was the image of the kindly orthopod – tall and craggy and calm and a little befuddled.  We got to know each other pretty well as he repeatedly set, monitored, and uncasted me.  It was a healthy relationship built on a foundation of broken bones.  Maybe that underlying fault presaged his disbelief when I started to complain. 

I’d fallen again – this time, from my bicycle, while cornering through a stagnant puddle full of slick algae.  Dr N greeted me avuncularly, x-rayed me, confirmed the fracture, and initiated treatment.  When it came time to put on my cast, he asked me a novel question: Whether I’d like to try the latest experimental model, one of the very first casts made of fiberglass netting instead of plaster.  Till then, all my casts – all casts, actually – had been plaster, which was great for renaissance frescoes but not so hot for young boys who were sometimes clumsy or careless.  I often needed to have my casts repaired reapplied once I’d damaged them or gotten them wet.  Fiberglass, Dr N assured me, would be lighter, sturdier, and unaffected by water.  I could even take a shower with it.  Seemed like a winner to me.  I signed up to be Dr N’s fiberglass guinea pig. 

The new cast stank like a burning car as it went on, but after that it was very easy to deal with – light, comfortable, and strong.  Under its protection my bones knit right up and in six weeks I was ready to get my arm back, so I returned in innocent ignorance to the Dr N’s office – an office that had theretofore always been for me a place of succor and rehabilitation.  Little did I know what was in store for me.  But, to be fair, neither did Dr N.  As he wheeled in the saw with which I was so familiar already, no one suspected the consequences that would ensue. 

The saw had a circular blade, about four inches in diameter, and was ringed with small, somewhat blunt teeth.  With its big electric motor it looked a bit fearsome, but I knew it really wasn’t – rather than working by spinning rapidly, tearing up its quarry in violent gouts of plaster and atrophied flesh, it actually just vibrated, turning slowly, shaking and digging through anything rigid but imparting only a pleasantly ticklish sensation to my delicate self.  Dr N positioned my arm and his saw, turned on the equipment, and set about his business.

He started near my hand on the inside of my arm, and worked his way toward my elbow.  Within seconds I senses something amiss.  “It hurts,” I told him.  He stopped.  “What hurts?  The fracture?” “No, the saw.  It’s hurting me.” “Don’t be silly, Daniel – we’ve done this before.  You know it doesn’t hurt.” “This time it does.” “Well, it’s got to come off, so let’s take a deep breath and get through it.”

He didn’t believe me.  Not at first, anyway.  But as he continued to drag the vibrating metal disk through the rock-hard fiberglass, it grew progressively harder to discount my obvious discomfort.  By the time he completed the first cut his smile had evaporated altogether.  I was writhing in my seat and tears were flowing.  Still, the cast wrapped tightly around me; I needed one more long cut along the outside of my arm and a short one near my thumb before I was released from its grip of fiberglass.  But before Dr N went further, he gently touched the sawblade to ensure himself that my outburst was the mere whining of a coddled child, not evidence of a larger problem.

“Yow!” He’d burned his fingertip.  Turns out, the fiberglass was so much tougher than the plaster, that it had heated the sawblade significantly – hot enough to singe his own flesh, to say nothing of mine.  He wasn’t smiling at all now, and he even grimaced a little as he steeled himself for the remaining cuts.  “Hold tight,” he said softly as he took the blade along the outside of my arm, and then made the final slice at the web of my thumb, trying diligently to keep away from my skin.  I gritted and groaned as the cast finally opened like a clamshell. 

The flesh thus revealed was, as expected, withered from disuse and pasty and soursmelling.  It also exhibited long gashes up either side of my arm, and a short one between my fingers and thumb – all seeping blood and as tidy as if they’d been drawn with a ruler.  A searing hot ruler that had been pressed hard right into my arm.  We all stood there looking at my wounds for a few moments, and then the doctor sprang into action, swabbing and cleaning and bandaging me.  He apologized profusely and I, a child in recovery, accepted.  And that was the last time I saw Dr N.  The scars, however, lasted 20 years. 

MORAL: Don’t be so sure it doesn’t hurt.  Being wrong lasts a lot longer than being right.