reruns

When my mother died I wasn’t there.  I wasn’t that worried though because I expected to see her that evening, in the form of a ghost, of course.  I was staying at my house, her house, and so she knew where to find me.  We had a lot to catch up on, and she would want to say goodbye and I would want to say goodbye, and finally we could have some privacy.  It had been a long, surreal day, finding out that your mother has died while you were living across the country, taking photos with your Pentax 35mm camera for photography class on a sunny San Francisco day; yes, she has been dying but I didn’t see it that way, and yet, as much as I hate to admit it, I had already started to forget about her.  It seemed she was no longer human, an exhibit at the hospital that would always be there.  My brother called me while Jaime was driving me to the airport, and immediately, I knew could never articulate or have a connection to this loss.  It would never be mine.  It was like playing parachute in elementary school gym class.  Everyone’s hands gripping the rainbow parachute, forming an unbreakable circle, and when the hands go up, everyone’s hands are pulled up and stay there, uncomfortably.  You hold up the parachute, fluttering, hesitant and strong at the same time, and lose the ability to form an opinion while you decide if you will go under and sit in the epicenter of it all, awaiting the slow colorful group hug in the form of a duck and cover exercise.

I wasn’t ready to be the grieving daughter and felt bad for my friends who were feeling bad for me and felt guilty for my aunts who watched her die and were there and who loved her in a way that I did not.  I spent the hours with all of them and went home, got in bed, and expected mom to come immediately and talk to me.  She did not, and I was surprised and offended.  I patiently waited night after night, and the weeks went by.  Why did I think she would come? It wasn’t because I had seen ghosts, or believed in God, or even believed in ghosts per se.  My mother died without us talking about it at all, and we were very close, and it just seemed guaranteed that I deserved that opportunity.  She was unable to speak for the last six months of her life so we couldn’t speak on the phone.  That was a big adjustment since we used to talk every few days and I lived far away.  I still, nine years later, forget that I can’t phone her.  I’ve written about it, how all I want is to be able to call her on the phone, how ingrained is the idea to call your mother.  I thought the ghost appearance would be like a hologramic phone call.  This never happened and I never got to say goodbye.  Looking back, I regret it wholly that I did not move back home for those last few months.  If I had, then after it was all over, I would have gone back home, to San Francisco, and I would have stayed.  My life would be different now.  Like Darwin different. Instead, I stayed in San Francisco and then, missing her death, decided to move back home, to her home, to Utica, NY.  I lived in her house and slept in her bedroom and watched her TV for six months.  She didn’t visit me then, either.

I don’t reminisce about her with anyone.  It’s taken me years to understand why this is, and it is because my best memories with her were near the end, the last few years, when we were alone together.  When we were in love with each other, when she looked to me as her best friend, when she would be her private self and talk about her feelings.  When I really listened to her and felt bad for her for the many wrongs in her life, when I felt special that she thought of me this way. It wasn’t until the last few years that we found this stride. I felt so bad that I was only home for two weeks, every six months, for years, but I had to.  I felt guilty and sad everytime I left her and flew back to my own life.  I am so much more like her now than I ever dreamed I would be.  Always playing a role, always reserved, but not so it was obvious, always more of a listener, valuing privacy and image above all.

In all my memories of my mother with anyone else - my dad, my aunts, my friends, her co-workers, I am playing the part someone expects me to play.  No one knew her like I did, and no one realizes they didn’t know her like I did, and there is the problem.  The empty void, for me, is twofold.  For all these reasons, I cannot believe she did not come.  Is death really that final and instantaneous?  Movies and television, as well as religion have promised otherwise.  I was thinking you got your one phone call from jail.  Maybe she did and she visited someone else?  The truth is, I did have a dream with her just twice.  The second was very nice but weird, no conversation. I woke up crying.  The first was clear and realistic, enough to be like an actual visit.  She was in her pink robe we buried her in and we were walking home up the hill.  All she said to me was, “I miss you less and less”.  I choose to discount this as real, because she wasn’t nice and it wasn’t reassuring. 

Mom, come to me in a dream talk to me.  It doesn’t have to be weepy and we don’t have to talk about how dead you are or how I didn’t say goodbye.  We can talk about anything, like I can tell you how many things you were right about and you can gloat all you want.  Maybe you’ve been visiting Dana or Ann or spying on famous people.  Maybe you finally flew over London, maybe you found a penny in the street.  I don’t give a fuck, just come back.  I have your sewing basket.

anniversary

The moment I took this photo I knew I was moving to NYC in April, 2006.

SNL

Twenty, even ten years ago, I balked at the bands who played on SNL - knowing that 'regular America' might like these bands, but if they were on SNL then they were too normal and mainstream for me.

Now, SNL and karaoke nights with younger, mainstream friends are my only source for new music.  I am actually going to put together an SNL playlist of bands I have heard on there, since not only do I hate these bands less, but I am actually grateful for the exposure opportunity and, sadly, coming to terms with being someone home on Saturday night at 11:30pm.

Getting old doesn't suck, it's the surprises at each fun house mirror turn that get me and make me feel 1 year older at every turn,

happy new year.

hi

there is a commercial on TV with antelopes wearing military night goggles.

Jon just cleaned the bathroom with too much clorox.

Too thirsty to nap and too tired to do anything exciting.

There's a research paper lurking in the shadows.

My 6-year old niece is now....six! I can't stop the aging.

American football.

plastic utensils: the dividing line

PLASTIC UTENSILS: THE DIVING LINE

I am eating my lunch, my free lunch that cost the seniors $2 with plastic utensils.  I wondered at the nurse slicing the roast chicken breast on the bone so expertly with plastic fork and knife.  She has to - it is her job to feed the elderly woman holding the baby doll, whose mind and motor skills must be gone.  I push my plate away instinctually. Quicker than I could articulate, I had already made a decision.  A lunch carved with plastic fork and knife was dispensable. That's when I thought about need.

At the senior center you stand in line to get your meal, a long line.  Some of the folks there have come just for the meal.  You know because they get their tickets an hour before lunch and just sit and wait.  Some all alone but others are with friends.  Many are there enjoying the activities.  What a giant space it is, too.  What has NY changed about me? Thinking in terms of real estate. I cannot turn it off.  Every event challenges me with wonder on how much the space costs to rent.  Activities galore, this is no lifeless senior center.  Exercise bikes, people playing dominoes. Organized tai chi class and bingo games.  One man was even giving barber haircuts complete with protective gown and electric shaver!

A voyeur, enjoying myself, no one asks what I am doing there.  Clearly not the age group and not someone's daughter.  I am left alone to read and then get lunch with the deaf woman who is helping prepare and serve.  The meal is free to me and is what you would expect dished out onto a cafeteria tray.  The plate is thankfully ceramic, not styrofoam, but the utensils are plastic.  I sip the too sweet apple juice and pick at my slice of what I call bodega bread.  Yesterday, a woman barrels over, announcing she will take whatever we don't want- including the salt and pepper packets, butter pat, and eaten but unfinished entree.  I offer my deaf friend the yogurt and fruit, realizing in a dumb flash that she will actually eat these later, that this is real food to everyone there.  A guilty memory of elementary school elitism comes over me.  The thrill of throwing away food, the exposed waste, that you can buy something better to eat.  Something your 1^st generation parents would never have been able to do.

Today, the woman who asked for my leftovers offered me a pair of pants.  As if this was not out of the ordinary. "What size are you?"  I told her a 2, and she shook her head and said that was no size she ever heard.  She proceeded to show me elastic-waisted, poly-cotton blend of cheap, lifeless navy blue slacks that my mother would have worn.  "I can’t return them!" she scolded. "I bought them on a sale."

She did not bother me for leftover packets of salt and pepper today but I sat and ate with my deaf friend, who was still wearing the hairnet.  Signing to her challenges to me because she is truly monolingual, which means she understands only ASL in pure form, not a Creole of English- ordered grammar and modern words many interpreters expect are easily understood.  I read a few business letters to her, thinking before I translate.  Thinking about how closely what we can learn is limited to what we experience and know.  Like love.  Like humanity.

I have written about interpreting for jobs where I must interclass, and it humbles and fascinates me anew each time.  She needs this training and would probably stand in line to get it.  I need work.  For sure fifty other interpreters would stand in line for this 8-hour job that is mine for today.  We all need the same things really, but at a certain level I guess you could say the line is more in your mind than literal.  I try to look impressed with the chicken I struggle to slice with plastic.  I could be eating 1,000 different lunches in a hundred different spots today because I have money, a command of the language, and time.  Instead, I fit conversation into bite-sized pieces in her language while she picks the bone clean.

nothing will ever be silent again

Sharing unchangeable news with others has always seemed pointless to me.  What cannot be changed is not a conversation, it is an announcement.  I don't want to make a piece of writing out of this.  So I will just say it.  Tinnitus has won.  I just cannot really believe it.  I now have tinnitus in both ears, which, frankly, is more than I expected to suffer.  In the truly absurd manner in which humans silently bargain with fate or the higher power, believing there is a negotiation (implying a percentage of power) upon where we will accept x if we don't have to lose y or will accept x as long as it doesn't become 2x, I also thought the proverbial We had a deal.

What bullshit is that. Yep, when I got the first scare in Dec 2006 that the tinnitus I was experiencing for a few days was not going away, was staying, and did stay, I learned to ignore and therefore live with it.  I told myself it was no big deal, at least it wasn't both ears.  Since then, the ringtone (ha! but what else would you call it?) has remained consistent, making it easy to truly ignore.  I wrote about this in 2006 when it happened and I likened tinnitus to an ex-boyfriend staying on your couch for a few days (when I thought it would go away).  I made peace, but had another scare last year when, for some reason, being in Iceland caused it to change to a helicopter thwacking.  Seriously! It began upon arrival and subsided upon returning to NY.  I attribute this maddening change to the magnetic fields.  The thwack does visit, but thankfully, rarely and briefly. Occasionally there have been temporary blasts of another ring, a different pitched ring, in the good ear and the damaged one.  Always during a quiet moment, transient, like a passing car.  Sometimes tho, that car would stop at a red light, alarming me with the extended stay.  Sometimes twice or three times during one day.  And so, without fanfare, did the sound pull into the parking lot of my right ear, the other ear, and stay.  This was yesterday, Friday, September 14, during class, super quiet, about 11 am.

Well.  There it is.  I didn't notice that the sound stayed, maybe it went and came back, until I went to bed, and it was waiting in the quiet.  I couldn't believe it; couldn't believe my ears.  (Let me have my puns, I am in grief, and instead of denial, I am going with jokes.)  Two different pitches, a fucking harmony, in stereo, in both ears, on.  It's loud.  It's loud in here, inside my head, where the sound is.  An hour went by.  I said to myself, nothing will ever be silent again.

The silence of living with my deaf boyfriend, who is deaf, is also no longer silent.  Go figure that.

Tell me this isn't fucked up.  The first tinnitus struck while stubbornly pushing a live band recording.  I played music. I went to loud shows.  I got permanent tinnitus. I gave it up.  We had a deal.  I thought.  I bought ear plugs, I wore them more and more as loud sounds, and then medium sounds, gave me pain.  Ear plus in the subway.  Ear plugs listening to someone speak into a microphone.  Seems unfair, seems excessive - one ear, not both - deal.

Guess there was no deal.  I met a real live Beethoven in 2005 - never forgot him, a man doing a one-man show/musical about himself.  He was a musical composer, and suffered tinnitus which in a few short years grew to be so deafening, he became officially deaf.  He could no longer hear conversational speech and was learning sign language to adapt to his new life.

I already know sign language.  I am an interpreter. I interpret for a living.  Another way to look at that is, I hear and talk for a living.  Hearing is half the equation.  Yes, it's cool that I can sign and understand sign.  However, I am never going to be deaf, because even if I go deaf, I can hear the fucking tinnitus having a field day between the sheets.

The concilation is, no one can hear it, so Jon isn't missing out on something by being Deaf.  Also, right now how I feel, 24-hours into it, is I will take stereo multi-pitch ringing to the horrific helicopter thwacking I suffered in Iceland.  I was actually dizzy and nauseous. The drag is, it is hard for him as a deaf person, to relate.  He doesn't know what ringing of any kind sounds like, nor does he know the difference between what sounds you would hear in your ears and what sounds you would not.  He is what I like to call Superdeaf.  He has never been amplified in his entire life so he has no mental sounds, either.

There is no cure for tinnitus.  I know the first one was caused by feedback from a microphone or guitar amp - it was a direct trauma. But I thought I took it in stride.  Muffled all loud sounds.  Gracefully accepted that I would never play in a band again.  Ignored the permanent ring, didn't complain.  We had a deal!  Now, I am not so sure.  I'm minding my own business sitting in (ironically) a speech science class about sound waves, so timely you would think I am making this up, and right on cue, a sine wave (a pure tone) that science isn't sure if tinnitus is actual measurable sound or a kind of mental audiological phantom limb kind of swims into my ear.  Happened countless times before.  Why did this one stay?  Will it get worse?  Louder? Meaner? Will they both?

Like most things I think and feel, I guess I will keep it to myself.  You know, when I had foot surgery 3 months ago, I got so sick of people seeing my booted, bandaged foot and asking what happened what happened?  Even total strangers wanted in on the incident.  Visibility is a drag.  Invisibility I now understand is worse, because I don't want to have this conversation.
Because a conversation about what I cannot change is an announcement, and announcements are not my style.  Thank you, blog technology.

PS I can legally marry you now

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Dad's Businesses and Uncle Nun

I come from a large, let's say ethnic family.  My father's side 9; my mother's side 5.  I had more aunts and uncles than my friends had combined in total.  You wanna talk about cousins, forget it.  And second cousins, wouldn't even know them if they walked down the street.

As I said in an earlier story, all the men in the family have a wide stance on what constitutes income and who wants to know?  Meet Uncle Nun.  I didn't know he had a first name, or that Nun wasn't a first name, till I saw it on his mass card when he passed away.  The man lived in a worn out wife beater, and I never saw him standing up.  He was retired since the day I was born.  A lot of my family went out on government disability when it was easier to claim.  Nun was a man of few words.  All I remember him saying in my whole life is "whattya want?" and "it ain't hot". Mostly he was watching the game, a game, on TV.  That's called being a bookie.  People run bets through you for all kinds of sports and you pay out a win or collect a loss. Cash.  It's a full-time job.  There are a lot of sporting events out there.

We went to Nun's to visit my Aunt Avita, not really to chat with Nun.  If we did, it was to buy something that fell off the truck.  No one ever taught the meaning of this directly to me, I think I just picked it up naturally, the way kids do.  Everyone we knew bought stuff that fell off the truck, even my mom, who was generally against gambling and alternative employment.  Schmucks paid full price.  He specialized in small small items that were easily boosted and transported, rarely missed.  Batteries, razor blades, small appliances.  I never asked how the items were procured, I guess none of us cared.  Aunt Avita got her own business going for many years, in the late 80s, of trips to NY to buy up as many hot purses as she could stuff in large trash bags and haul on a greyhound bus and bring them back to our small town, far away, to re-sell.  That was a great gig.  All those women were hooked and she had no shortage of repeat customers who wanted to look like they shopped in NYC.

The secret to getting ahead in America is cash business.  No one had white collar work or college degrees, but everyone had a 1st generation American dose of entreprenuralism.  In an earlier story I talk about my dad's poker games where we had steady income not dependent on his winnings, but a cut for just housing and feeding the players.  I mention booking there and in more detail here.  My dad never went in for that - too much drama, too illegal.  You had to have muscle in case someone didn't pay up, and you had to give up your life for the endless phone calls placing bets and keeping track of who won what.  But many of my uncles had this trade.  My dad had clean businesses.  The poker game was technically illegal, but like, parking ticket illegal.  My dad grew up in stores.  His dad had a small corner store.  His brothers had small corner stores.  My dad outdid everyone by combining ready-to-eat food with dry good products - what we now see all over NY as bodegas and deli's, but which was nonexistent in his time.  My dad invented the submarine sandwich in our area.  It literally did not exist.  Not that he called it a sub.  He said to himself, 'hey, I sell bread, I sell lettuce, onions, tomatoes, and cold cut meat and cheese that I slice and sell by the pound anyway.  Why don't I use all these to make sandwiches and sell them for a huge profit?'  And it worked.  In another business, not at the same time, he owned a diner. He bought all the supplies, he got there at 5am, he cooked everything, it was a full menu for breakfast and lunch.  He hired 2 waitresses, then would call his sister or mother on super busy days to come help out.  I worked summers.  The nice thing about that place was he closed up by 3pm and on weekends and holidays, so he had time with his family.  The secret to all his businesses was that he was there - he owned, ran, managed.  When he got tired of it, he sold it and got something new.  He never had someone run a place for him, therefore he never could have more than one business.

I personally learned a lot in the 2 summers I worked there, part-time.  I learned about life, life lessons other kids might have learned going to summer camp or 4H or something.  My father was fast and it was impressive, he had 10 different egg orders going on the grill at the same time, just food everywhere. He always cleaned immediately.  I met lesbians for the first time, where they were labeled and it was explained to me.  I saw how a smile got you a nice tip. I also saw how men looked at me, at 13 and 14, when I would walk in through Uncle Nun's Uncle's bar to the diner.  I barely knew what it meant to be a woman.  I was a young girl turning dirty old man heads, but I didn't realize the sex in it.  I felt pride in coming to work and helping out.  Also though, some shady shit was going down that I didn't realize.  One of the waitresses, Angie, was especially sweet to me.  I remember her bringing me back a Mickey Mouse t-shirt, a sexy half shirt really, from Disneyworld.  One night, she asked my dad if she could take me out to dinner, just us.  Looking back, I wonder why he let me go.  My mom must have been crushed.  Because, my dad was having an affair with her.  Of course I didn't know that, I was just excited for the attention.  I had no idea my dad was sleeping with the waitress.  I think the money and power went to his head.  I didn't out about this until many years later, but this was the start of the great demise between my parents.  Also, someone was stealing cash from the register, which I also didn't know was the reason he quit and sold the diner.

 

This second diner was his last business.  After this came the poker games, and then finally ending in working for a company where he had to punch in and out with a time card.  This was hard on him.  Meanwhile, all these years, my mom was neutrally working for the bank, getting a paycheck and benefits and never begrudging not being her own boss.

 

I find myself somewhere in between.

poker in my home - an interview

I know this reads like fiction.  This is 100% nonfiction.  Only the names have changed.  Though, I really hate that.  I love original names. 

My father has been an entrepreneur all his life.  Only a few times in his adult working life did he work for someone.  I include gambling as a category for entrepreneurial income.  If you want to be open-minded, I grew up in a family where the concept of working for yourself included a long list of colorful, tax-free options.  I thought this was all normal until I went away to college and or started to see movies with folks who were not rooting for the mafia.  One of my favorite stories I like to tell is how our house was a part-time poker room for two years. Makes me proud of my dad.  He found an old envelope he used to keep track of his nightly cut and his own profit and loss on games he played. 

“Dad, tell me about how you got the poker game going at the house?”

I had a good deal going till my brothers took the game from me.

Yeah but, how did you actually get it started?  How did you get players to come to our house?

It was the right place and right time.  You had guys ready to play, who would drive down from Saratoga Springs, the guys from Syracuse would come at the drop of a hat, all you had to do was call them. 

Yeah because this was before the (local) casino, so there was nowhere to play.  Were there lots of home games?  Where’d ya get the players from?

This was before the casino.  That’s why I said right place right time.  Frank called and invited me to a game in the valley.  Game started at 11pm.  This place was gross, in a skuzzy part of town, it wasn’t clean, maybe they would order a pizza once in a while, they didn’t offer anything.  I went once, twice, then I told Frank don’t ask me to play no more.

There weren’t other games?

There were other games but not with the big money stakes people wanted.  Your Uncle Eli had a game for years, but all they would play is Hi-Lo, maybe 3 and 3. 

No money in that?

No, I don’t wanna go out and give someone a cut for Hi-Lo and 3 and 3.

So, I’m asking ya, how did you get the game? You just said, ‘hey, I’m havin’ a game, come over?’

Yeah well that game in the valley was on Fridays, so your Uncle Frank says ‘hey Lonnie, why don’t you do a game on Mondays’?  He knows a lot of people, so, that’s it. 

This was when Texas Hold’ Em was in its infancy.  We’d play Hold ‘Em, 7 card stud, 5 card stud –

You mean, the game got invented, or came to the area?

No, came to the area.  No one in the area was playin’ Texas Hold Em.  You ever listen to Doyle talk about the history of Hold Em?  Been around since about the 1920s.

No, I remember you showing me how to play poker. I remember the games.  I remember you didn’t call it Hold ‘Em, you called it The Board.  I remember you showing me The Board, and The Cross, right?

Yeah, we did it like a cross, too.  You know how in Hold EM its 5 down, two in your hand?  We also did a game with 3 down and 3 in your hand.  That game builds a really good pot.

You know we lived on that money for 2 years.  That’s when I was unemployed, that game was my job.  Your mother hated it.  That was after the Charlotte, I sold that in ’86, so that was ’86-’88.  Then when they took the game from me, I had nothin’, that’s when I had to go back to work for Gillette.

No, I know that.  Just, I’m askin’ you, tell me how you Got the Game Started.  It was that easy?

Yeah well, you had Billy Dodge, you had the guys from Syracuse, you had Dr. Chegin, Bshada, you had reputable guys looking for a clean game in a clean place.  I had that.  Remember, you could park, come in through the garage right to the basement, didn’t have to go through the house.  You could smoke outside, we didn’t smoke in the game, so you had private entrance and exit.  Had a weekly game, remember all the cooking I would do for the game?  Sometimes I would grill steaks out back.  No one had a better spread than me.  I didn’t take nothin’ extra for the food and drinks, all that came with the cut.  Everyone took a cut, but at least with my game, you got something nice for that cut.  Had that nice poker table, sometimes we had 2 tables going.  I never held seats.  That’s how that shit started with Joey Zeifoun, he’d call and say “Lonnie, I come 1 hour, you hold seat”, I’d tell him “I don’t hold seats”.  What a pain in the ass he was.  But I don’t like that, why I gotta leave a seat open, that ruins it for the other players.  You’re there at start time or you’re on the waiting list.

I remember the huge, round poker table with the green felt top!  You made that?

No, Billy Dodge made it.  He owed me 1,000.  Your brother and me drove over to his garage and he gave me the table.  That’s all the money I ever got out of him, too.  You know how much money I lost total in all those games?  1,000.  You know how much your uncle Eli lost?  Serves him right.  Joey Zeifoun owed him 2,500.  He split to the Old Country and never paid him back.  Guess how much Bshada owed him?  Eight thousand dollars!

Eight thousand dollars?  No way! Eli lent that kind of money?

That’s why they took the game away from me!  Frank owed him 20 grand.  It was his idea, corrupted Eli to cook up the situation to take the game over from me.  He went partners with Eli to move the game and split the cut, then Frank would give Eli’s cut, to pay him back that way.  Then they had the nerve to ask me to go in as a 3-way partner.  Now why would I partner 3-ways on a game that was already mine.  My own brothers!  Then they moved over to a freekin’ motel. 

They played in a motel?

Yeah, they played at the Ramada Inn.  They’d wreck that room week after week.  From my game with all the food I’d cook to a motel room.  After that, I got on a losing streak and I said, ‘that’s it’, and I quit playin’ poker for a long time.  I didn’t talk to Eli or Frank for years.  Then Frank had to split and leave town when the cops were after him.  He probably never paid Eli back all that money he owed him from booking.  I drove to Eli’s house about 6 months after this happened and I asked him, “why did you take the game away from me?  You got your own money from the store, from the bookin’, from the hot stuff on the side.  This is my only source of income.  I didn’t do nothing to you, you got plenty of money.  Why did you take the game away from me?”  Know what he said?  “I needed to collect on that money Frank owed me to leave for my children”.  Burned me up for years.  I couldn’t talk to them, I only reconciled because I knew it was killing your Grandmother.

Wow.  No, I know all that.  That sucks.  I just wanted to know more about the mechanics of running a game.  It’s pretty impressive when you think about it!  You were having a game twice a week weren’t you?  Didn’t the cops ever come by?

Twice a week.  Nope, not once.  Remember how they would park 4 in the driveway, I painted a big cross to make parking spaces, then they would park all the way down the hill?  I would deal the last cards at 2am, so everyone would be gone before 3am, so it was never too late.  Nope, no trouble with the cops, because it was a good neighborhood, and they were nice cards parked there.  We had a few doctors playing our game, like Dr. Chegin.  You know I used to keep 25-30 thousand dollars, cash, in my dresser drawer to bank roll the games?  Guys would run out of money, ‘Lon, can you spot me a couple grand?’  Always came the next day, knock on the door, here’s the money.  Or call me up, tell me come down to the store, like Berkowicz, walk with him back to the meat locker, he’d open it up and count out cash right there.  Never had a problem.

Wow!  No, I didn’t know that.  All on the honor system?

Well, sure!  Like I said, these were high stakes games with reputable guys who wanted action and were gonna keep coming to games.  Never had to ask twice, they always paid back the next day.  Just that once with Billy Dodge. 

You were playing a lot of poker back then too right?  I see here you got records for days in a row.

Yeah well, you had to reciprocate.  I had to go to other games to look good.

Always amazed me you could deal and play in the same game.  You can’t do that in a casino.  How was this acceptable?

Well everyone did it.  Course, guys were nuts about certain things like who sat next to who, and I always had to have brand new decks for every game.  After a while, some of them started complaining about all 3 of us brothers playing in the same game.  Jealous lot, that’s what happens when you’re a sore loser.  You know when you’re on a losing streak, you should just cool it and sit out for a few weeks.

You had a good deal goin’ for a while.

That was all money under the table and I got my action in, too, in my own house.  Then they took it out from under me for no reason.  After they moved the game, those guys weren’t happy.  They begged me to take the game back but I said no.  Took me a long time to forgive them.

Well, that’s the story.  I’ve heard this story told many times, emphasizing different aspects of the experience depending on his point at the time, such as what jerks his brothers were, how family should never go into business together, how much he loved cooking and hosting, how we lived on poker money for 2 years, or speculating on what the neighbors thought were doing late into the night twice a week.

What I took away from it this time was surprisingly about their husband-wife relationship and how I see a parallel to my own.  My father had a lot of endeavors that my mother was not a part of at all.  You can’t tell a man what to do or how to spend his money.  Mom was home alone a lot during the poker years, but the personality and employment differences were always there.  In my relationship, Jon and I have independent lives, separate friends and activities and separate money and ideas.  I never realized how my parents’ might have indirectly influenced me as a model until I asked for the poker story again.

Pete's Mini ZIne Fest 2012

It's time for the fourth Pete's Mini Zine Fest, the fest-in-a-bar. Our celebration of the duplicated arts promises a good time and a relaxing atmosphere, and is a great opportunity to really get to know our wonderful, talented tablers. Nurse a beer; read some zines. Feel free to share this invite to others! Our current attendee list, to be updated as more info comes in. Aaannnnddd we are SOLD OUT. Here is the final list of tablers: Andria Alefhi – We’ll Never Have Paris http://neverhaveparis.blogspot.com/ Darryl Ayo – Little Garden http://www.letsgoayo.com/ Elvis Bakaitis – Homos in Herstory Aida Binhas – Bon Nui Dreamland http://bonnui.tumblr.com/ C. M. Butzer – Rabid Rabbit Comic Anthology http://www.rabidrabbit.org/ Colin – Slice Harvester www.sliceharvester.com Marguerite Dabaie – The Hookah Girl http://www.mdabaie.com/ Christopher Michael Duffy – Dirty Parts http://www.duffydrawings.com/ Jenna Freedman – Lower East Side Librarian http://www.lowereastsidelibrarian.info/ Abigail Geraldine - In These Shells http://www.silentinfinite.com/ Cat Gilbert – The 22 Magazine www.the22magazine.com Jenny Gonzalez-Blitz – Living in La La Land http://jennydevildoll.wordpress.com/ Dre Grigoropol – Dee's Dream www.dretime.org Alisa Harris – Urban Nomad http://www.alisaharris.com/ Katie Haegele – The La-La Theory http://www.thelalatheory.com/ Aaron Howard – Oilcan Press http://oilcanpress.blogspot.com/ Gus Iversen – www.iloanbooks.com Jemibook – Lolita http://www.jemibook.com/ John Jennison – Crisis of Infinite Cells http://www.dogoodercomics.com/ Mark Lerer – The Little General https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.388804413514.167350.654568514&type=3 Sara Lindo – Wall Street Cat http://www.thelindo.com/ L. Nichols – Jumbly Junkery http://www.dirtbetweenmytoes.com/ Morgan Pielli – Indestructible Universe Quarterly http://www.morganwritesabook.com/ Bill Roundy – Bar Scrawl http://www.billroundy.com/ Steve Seck – Life is Good http://www.secktacular.com/ Our flier this year was made by the awesome Darryl Ayo.

Ambulance went down my street, E 5th, just as I was turning the key in the lock on the front door so I couldn't jam my fingers in my ears. Ambulances are always going up 1st ave, down 2nd ave more popular. The east village seems to be the hot spot for sirens. Monday night at Dallas BBQ with Dori, we counted 4 siren varieties (fire, police, ambulance) in the span of 90 minutes.

On Monday evening, my biggest concern was packing the clocks in pizza boxes, painting my toe nails to celebrate the paranormal summer weather, calling my Aunt, and celebrating having finished the big project for 620 not as the very last minute. On Sunday, my biggest concern was the project and securing pizza boxes for clock delivery.

 Last night, Wednesday? I barely know what day it is. The last three days have been a literal, non-stop blur. I haven't had time to eat. My phone died yesterday and after turning it on and off and removing the battery about 50x over the course of a few hours, I accepted it. But I didn't have time to deal with ordering a new one. I was up until 1:37am having started studying for a midterm I realize I am ill prepared for, and writing a paper that was due yesterday. I was the only one in class that didn't have the assigned paper done. I thought it was due at the end of the semester. I hadn't checked the syllabus. A lot of classes don't exactly go weekly by the syllabus. Another student did ask me if I had finished my paper, and I actually (can't believe it, in retrospect) said I think the professor doesn't care about it. I then sat in said class, not comprehending the whole lecture because my mind was on the paper. I also didn't prepare for the class because I had not looked at neuroanatomy for 2 weeks since it has been spring break. I forgot that graduate students don't really take a spring break. He then handed out midterm grades, and I got the lowest grade in class.

I am fallible. I also feel like, hey, I could quit at any time. I don't have to do this program. I reflect when the going gets tough, I kind of review the road ahead of me, my age, my career thus far, what I want to be doing with my time. The longer I spend in school the more opportunities where I fall off the balance beam between student and professor, in the same department, which is sticky.

Yesterday I also forgot to go to an interpreting assignment that I accepted a month ago.

Today I was within a foot of being hit by a bus because I literally did not look to my left when crossing the street, in a hurry to get into the shade, because I forgot to apply sunscreen this morning. Sun on my face in this condition, being a recent rosecea flare-up is the equivalent of a heart attack.

 Last week Wednesday instead of being up until 1:37am trying to write a paper on electroencephalogram (which I started 24 hours ago and barely know what it means) I was in pajamas and on the couch with my aunt and dad, watching Wheel of Fortune, free on-demand movies, and being in bed by 11pm.

 My day today: woke up at 8:35am. Got 6.5 hours of sleep. Decided whether to go to Mogador for a sit down breakfast (ha, a dream! in present condition) or work on either: ordering a new phone, my neuro paper, email student who may fail my class I did all three. I left the house late and did not get breakfast. I also did not complete the phone order.
Went to a job at 10:30am. Got lucky and client did not come. Used the time to order new phone, as life is on hold with broken phone. Picked up lunch and went to teach class. Ate lunch while walking. Taught class from 12:30-2pm. Tried to find neuro professor to see if I was on right track with paper. He did not have time to discuss. Already late to 3pm job, and it was much farther away than I thought. Walking, starving, towards job, I used last 2 dollars to go 2 blocks in a cab. Job called me to see if I was coming but my phone is dead.
 Cannot eat after job either because I have no money in wallet.
Walk directly to train and train gets stuck in tunnel 15 minutes at Brooklyn Bridge. Late to class and needing food I can eat with an ATM card, I pick up a burger and eat it in the 5:30pm class that I get to at 6:05pm. I listen to students complain about the problems they are having in their lives this week while I try not to think about mine. Get home at 9pm. Try to decide where the controls and decisions in my life. Try to decide why I am in these situations where I am not prepared.

Situations where I am over worked. Why am I taking on this graduate program? Do I even want to? Don't even have time to have an opinion.

I close the window in the living room that Jon opened. He thinks it's fresh air. I think it stinks.

 Since I last checked email (no phone) at 2:10pm, I have 33 new emails.

Fewer Mannequins vol 1 perzine

I just made my first cut-n-paste perzine, now at age 40, 5 years after starting the computer printed and print shop collated run We'll Never Have Paris. It is called Fewer Mannequins. I am excited to have joined the zine world in a whole new way. It is for sale for only $2, or trade. email: neverhaveparis@gmail.com I can't have another email address in my life, so this will have to do. Vol 2 is ready to go in a new months. God, why did I wait this long to do this?

New issue announcement on New Year's Day

We'll Never Have Paris wishes everyone a happy new year Will be announcing the theme for WNHP9 very soon, on New Year's Day. Nonfiction memoir, as always. Issue will be out in the summer to pair with the Best of WNHP. neverhaveparis.blogspot.com

when your mom is first to go

Dear Mom,
I don't write to you that often because you're dead. I thought I would start a relationship with 1-800-FAKE-MOM, but she's well, fictitious for one, and it feels stupid to write to myself and pretend there is someone out there. IF there really was a 1-800 number, it is possible I could have tried to get used to it, the methodone treatment for smack as it were, if there was a phone number with hotline mothers to choose from and someone were the right match in accent, affect and attitude. Had the right laugh.

I can't lie and pretend we had a golden relationship, but we were very close. There were things I wanted to tell you, the truth about people, the real answers to your questions that I knew would bum you out, so I kept these to myself. But I remember thinking to myself many times, in the last few years we were together, that once you were gone, I would want to silently drop out and withdraw from family life. Stop calling anyone, stop visiting anyone, like the end of a performance run. No call backs, just goodbye. I knew it wasn't possible to pull off.

The holidays. You kept Christmas alive with your decorations starting before Thanksgiving and ending in late February. We chided you, Dad and Ron. The aunts only did it for you, too. No one else would have even put a tree up (also November-February), let alone lots of wrapped presents as though we were children. Holidays were at our house. The first Christmas after you were gone, we did it at your house, for you. For us, too, but it was a painful mockery of the real thing. Playing a game without the rules. The second year was at Ron's apartment. That was even more painful, because it was the penultimate of holding it at your house - holding it at the new seat of the family's house. The forced action, defying gravity of inclination. The shitty presents. Shitty because they were wrong. This was what I feared most, which sounds like it should be the least of my worries, right? Material goods. However, observe the rationale: presents say 'I know you'. I know Dad and Ron don't know me, don't ask don't tell. Presents are the truth or dare of showing what you know.

I got a paper shredder. It was hard not to cry. The year after that, I spent Christmas Eve in an empty bathtub in the dark, staring at a single Christmas card from The Aunts and a candle while Jon watched COPS on TV. We weren't invited anywhere, and I waited in the tub for Jon to notice and like, come love me. He never did, and eventually I climbed out and stared into a new kind of space for the first time.

I picked on you a lot mom, which was stupid, stupid, stupid. Everyone did. But you got me. It took you right up until the end, but you got me. I knew you were the missing link, the only link. As usual, I am not saying what I want to really say, which I suppose is what family is all about, at least, in this family.

teachable moments

We were laughing so loud that someone popped their head in my classroom door.
"Are you the professor?"
"Yes", I replied.
"It's a little loud."
"Go ahead", I said grandly, "shut the door!"
Gaily even. Then I got quiet. My students and I looked at each other. One of them snickered.

"Fuck, there's a class next door?" I looked at the partition between my room and the next, noticing it for the first time all semester. "Jesus, we are pretty loud."

My students weren't ready to quiet down just yet and lose face. "They're pretty loud sometimes, too." With a class of only 4, it's hard to stay on task and take it seriously, but we do. I had just modeled how to set up telling a brief story based on hypothetical question and answer and everyone had taken a turn retelling Ruth's job interview story in ASL. We work hard, then we play hard. Mine is the class where they can let it all hang out, where teacher and students are equals. So it's pin drop quiet while we are using sign language until the conversation burst, then I'm asking Rachelle if she's high on vicodent because she is repeatedly and absentmindedly jabbing at her eyeball while Beth is talking about how badly she needs a new job.

I tried to go back to the conversation, but the 10-second interruption put me in my place and made me self-conscious. I'm the professor of a college class, and not a community college. Why did I boldly inform her to shut the door instead of apologizing, saying sorry, I'll keep it down.

"Why didn't I tell her I'm a sub?" I asked the class and myself out loud. "Are you the professor?" "No, I'm a sub." They laughed. I said, "Let's find another room for next week. H building has tons of empty rooms. I don't wanna get in trouble."

"For what?" Kara asked, "For having too much fun? This is the only class I don't hate." Normally this would make me feel good but in my paranoia I felt worse. I know ASL is the only fun class they have and I love teaching it.

This class fell into my lap. The job being a sub for one semester seemed lucky enough, and then it turned into a permanent gig. They even created a class, ASL 2, for me to teach, when the ASL 1 teacher returned from maternity leave. Students love me once they get to ASL 2. The classes are tiny so there is time to get to know each other and joke around. I make fun of them, I make fun of myself. This class is the most intimate and mature - we've talked about all going out for dinner. Beth asked if she could make extra money cleaning my apt when I mentioned wanting to get a house cleaner - I said I don't know, something tells me that's a line I shouldn't cross. I invited Rachelle to go to a roller derby show with me. I would hang out with all of them, but I would be most myself with Rachelle. Melissa works in the financial department so I've seen her when I've had questions. Kara is the quietest, I don't know her as well. She's really good at ASL, and she get's right in there with the rest of them when it's rap time. When I say Sharon's name, everyone immediately says, "I see Florida!" It happened in class one day and it would be hard to explain now, but it was another moment when we all laughed so hard, including me, that someone probably would have put their head in the door and said, "keep it down".

"I don't want to get in trouble", I said again, showing for the first time my vulnerable side, stepping out of my leadership role as teacher and adult role model. This one sentences says more than it seems. Yes, I joke with them, I speak plainly to them, I let them hand homework in late, I swear and let them swear. But I have a line - I am still their professor. When they complain of being tired and overworked, I don't join in. I want them to feel they are getting me at my best, that I am ready to be there. They are paying for this class, and no one skips ASL 2 without an emergency reason. I get their respect because I know my shit, and I don't assign busy work, and I believe in them as students learning this language.

"You weren't rude, it's not like you said, hey you got a problem, bitch, cuz we can throw this down right now!" Melissa said. More laughter. "Yeah", said Rachelle, "Four on one, that's a fight she's gonna lose!"

Moments like this I wonder how it would be perceived if my department chair decided to do an unannounced observation. I have never been observed in the two years I have taught there. I would like to be, I want them to see how awesome I am in action. You can be an unconventional, laid back teacher. Though perhaps today would not be the best example, talking about vicodent and throwing a bitch down.

I love my class.

revitalization

My failed year in publishing a book has surprisingly lead to me publishing a book. While I am excited to be publishing a book, I did experience one calendar year's worth of book support failure. My friend, who encouraged me to publish a collection of my stories, to which I asked for cover art work in exchange, never produced any cover art. The book started, and ended, with him. In between were months of doing nothing, attempts at having an editor somehow mold it into a book, realize I had never truly edited any of the work myself, second attempt at having an editor mold it into something, asking the would-be publisher to mold it, then asking pretty much anyone at all to do something to in some way, give me a green light to publish this book.

I realized tonight, while at a reading by an acquaintance, Paul, who blew me out of the water completely, that I should stick to where my writing belongs, in the half-assed world of zines. I label this lovingly, because this is where I belong. I tried to fly higher, and I was shot down. However, it makes total sense that I could take the stories I had wanted to do in a book, with length being the only real book thing about the endeavor, and I could print separate zines by subject matter. I could send them off separately, or, I could package them together, like a book, but printed separately, making the whole thing cute, I could go nuts with different colored paper and the whole thing.

The zine component removes the pressure of real writing, whatever that really means, that I don't quite have, not in a consistent way, and the pressure of marketing, consistent variables with which one writes a book, and allows me to do what I have always done well, which is to say fuck you and do it myself.

I can do this during the month-long winter break. it's perfect. exciting.

diary entry at 40 and 4

I haven't written in a while. So, what's up with me?

I'm 40 and 4 months now. Wow. And time is flying by at an unprecedented pace since I started grad school. Friends, family and acquanitences have been asking me about it, as I have told more people I am a student. This is complicated, like everything I do is.

I had the idea when I realized I could put my LIU teaching credits to use and start a free education. I figured I could get into the program because I was adjunct staff there. I chose Speech Language Pathology because my undergrad is in that, and I don't need to complete any pre-reqs. I chose it because I truly enjoyed that subject matter as an undergrad, before the deaf obsession blew me off course. And the reason I am taking a program at all is because I see the writing on the wall for my interpreting career as I age. It's not a good career for people in their late 50s and beyond, unless you're in that upper 1% of interpreters respected for their experience in years. Running all over, competition, physical exertion, no pay raises, and just plain aesthetic choice between old and young.

the thing is, I have a fall back plan, which is teaching. While I was considering applying, I learned that it was easy as pie to renew my expired Oregon State teaching credential. Send money and new fingerprints. So, I could go back to teaching, in Oregon, and in a few years, I may be ready to do that. But, I don't truly want to teach. Maybe re-firing my academic side would stimulate me to take the teaching path since I already have the degree.

that is where I am now. I kind of felt I would not complete the Masters in SLP, but that a year of the program would kind of force me to come to terms with teaching again. Or else, do ALL the work needed to get a SLP Masters.

What I realized all too quickly is, I miss my unbridled free time. I don't want to work at half-time, and take another 2.5-3.5 years to graduate this program (and then pass like 3 standardized tests, too).

This semester is kicking my ass. When I started, my biggest fear was feeling awkward being around students in their 20s, or feeling super out of date with current practice and vocabulary. It was also giving my free time away, but this to a lesser extent because, I told myself, I kind of need this big thing to focus on. I had tons of free time as a freelance interpreter. I had a hard time filling my time up with people to entertain me. So, I decided it was time for this commitment. I tried to live it up in the summer and ensuing weeks, counting down my free weeks and days. I tried to tie up the bigger projects like my book (which I discarded), the Best OF WNHP collection, preparing for the 3rd Pete's MZF, making extra clocks, and getting in some bike rides.

I was doing fine until I took off a week to go on a cruise (which was super cool, a cruise of interpreters and workshops, knocking off needed CEUs, meeting new people, spending time in the sun and at the beach, and time with Jon, Dori and Rhea) and missed a week of classes (because I also had to babysit for 3 days). After just one week away, after just 4 weeks of school, I started asking myself what I was doing this for? I want to take off anytime! I want to go out any night of the week! Homework sucks! SO, to experiment with loosening the reign, I skipped all my work the following week. It didn't feel good. But the hard work doesn't feel good, or healing in some kind of protestent way either. And, if it weren't just hard work, but it's shitty teachers, too. I spent last night coming through a book, and even googling some concepts, because the teacher doesn't teach anything clearly and I am literally shooting blanks in the dark, knowing I have big projects coming up and trying so hard to know WHAT exactly they ARE.

I came close to ending it after this semester, but now, I want to stick with my original goal and complete one year. It makes a difference tho, to take classes knowing the possible end is within reach at any minute. Pull the cord. No one would take this kind of work for fun. But a goal is a goal, and I have credits to use.

Oh, and, I fought hard to teach two classes this semester, so I could get more credits. Fuck! Teaching ASL 1 and 2 sucks! I would probably hate my life less right now if I weren't teaching 2 motherfucking classes, two nights straight, too.

As for the lack of free time, I still wonder if I would come to appreciate it in a new way, a new organized and relaxed way, when I have it again.

In other news, Microcosm is happily going to take on distributing the Best OF collection. I need to fill out paperwork, pay for the printing and shipping, and probably will just break even with my costs. Still, it's progress, and makes a nice end goal from my time with WNHP. Perhaps with that, new writers, good writers, and artists, will send me submissions and there will be a number 9, and 10... Or not. It could end here. I could ride this for another year or two. It won't even go out till August 2012.

My brother is still a dick. My nieces are cute. My dad is getting old quickly and no one notices but me. And my mom is gone eight years now. Jon continues to me a love-hate relationship. I cycle around closer to knowing I will never leave him and love another, but then, there will be a new way to piss me off.

I went in on a pop-up store with 9 other New New Etsy Team members. Of course, I haven't had a sale yet. I wonder if it is possible (and of course it is, and it won't even be private, because they will all notice) if I could sell nothing in the whole ten weeks. Why not? Seems totally likely.

On that positive note, I did enjoy my spicy bloody mary (Square One cucumber vodka, McClure's bloody mary mix. Fair vodka is still numero uno) and now I am out of time.

Up early. I didn't finish my paper or the paperwork for Microcosm. Great.

PS there's a bag of Clementines on the counter. Absurdedly small.

I haven't' opened a pleasure book or magazine in 6 weeks.

OWS-WTC-911-USA

OWS:
I have finally gone to Occupy Wall Street. And to the 9/11 Memorial. And by the way, they are a block away from each other.

I have a lot of mixed thoughts and feelings right now. Everything is coated in irony and seeping into my own biases and personal experiences - I'm just going to ramble.

I live here in NYC and I hadn't been to OWS. I first heard about it via the Bluestockings list serve. Bluestockings being a politically active radical punk group of people, hearing about a protest on Wall St. didn't catch my attention. I also have never been a news watcher, never ever. Also shit happens in NYC everyday. When I heard about Michael Moore coming, Radiohead possibly playing a live show, I started to take notice. The fact that protestors were arrested and framed by the NYPD, even this did not require a response. Going up against the concept of Wall St. and big money, corporate greed, whatever, but in this vague 'you suck' kind of way just seemed dumb. And complicated.

It's complicated. I have been starting to feel guilty that I hadn't gone to see it myself. I over think a lot of things in life. It's who I am. Who cares if I go? Does going equal support? Why wouldn't I support it? What would support look like? What would commitment look like?

I can't stand to be involved in anything I cannot affect. I can't bear to be in any kind of group. I am the original punk. I don't join book clubs, I don't join committees, I can't work in a group. I hate group discussion. I hate voting. I'm for action. I can think of what would make that action happen, but if I can't force the hand, then I bail.

I feel about protests the way I feel about being agnostic. I want to feel it, but I don't because some kind of reality gets in my way. Christians want to hold hands. It makes me want to retch. Bands want you to clap along. I can't even stand group claps. I think of every Earth Day celebration. I remember my first protest. The one and only time I held a sign and marched around a block. I felt hideous. I was mortified to be involved in such a weak effort. I remember interpreting a protest against the annual APA Convention with a group of mental health patients, workers and supporters.

I tried one last time to believe in a protest cause. It was in 2005 or 2006 with Code Pink. I lived in DC and heard about their plan to stage a hunger strike on the White House grounds. I joined the parade and that ended in a staged 'last supper' on a pink table cloth. Speeches were made and people were encouraged to show support by fasting to whatever degree they felt comfortable with or joining full monty in the hunger strike. The cause was ending the war. This really made me think. I thought about it for a little bit, could a hunger strike bring down the war? Is this something I could do? If I knew for sure it would effect the necessary change, I guess I could go through with it. But, I didn't. I didn't do shit. But Cindy Sheehan did. But the war did not end.

It seemed to me that if a person could do a hunger strike and with that media attention, could not achieve a result, then everything else was fucked.

WTC:

We know 9/11 happened. No one is gonna forget it. I'm not anti-memorial, but I don't think it is my patriotic duty to touch the ground. I have mixed feelings about the people who need to go and see it. I definitely have strong feelings against taking a photo of yourself and friends in front of it. So when Jon and his friends said they were going to the 9/11 Memorial and did I want to come, I thought about the irony that I would visit a stone cold memorial to history when history was being made with live people in Zucotti Park right fucking now. So I decided to go to both. And you know what, people were taking photos of their friends and families and life goes on whether I act like like the judgement police or not. And really, the reflecting ponds (I think they are called?) are beautifully done, the winning touch being the black hole square. That hit home and reminded me why I hate memorials. It's because I hate the absurdity of trying to stop what has happened. Don't tell me that's not what is at the core.

Compensation.

That's the word that went through my mind when I entered and security asked to see our tickets at seven different checkpoints in the way in. Yes, seven checkpoints. For WHAT? NY trying to make up for the loss. Cops and security and NYPD camera bubbles and reflecting pools and America. Where is the memorial to America? It's across the street and it's called Occupy Wall Street.

Compensation. There's a brand new fancy hotel on the corner to the Memorial, the W Hotel. The American mentality is and has always been to get a refund, isn't it?

When I went to the Vietnam Memorial I was 23 years old. I went with the goal of reading every name. I wanted to show respect and not just pass by quickly. I remember seeing the movie about the making of the memorial, and the tag line, "It's got to have all the names." So I took it seriously that the wall was about the names. After reading 2 or 3 walls, I started walking, passing section after section. I cried for my innocence. I realized then that I didn't know shit about anything, and that it wasn't about the names. It was about the length of the wall. And not until much later did I realize that it wasn't even about that. It was about compensation.

9/11:

I was living in California. I first heard about the plan attacks in another language. Not hearing it in English, but seeing it in ASL. Ed Copra and another teacher and I had all just gotten out of our cars at about the same time, and Ed signed that a plane had hit the WTC. As I said before, I never listen to the news ever, so I had gotten up and gone all the way to work without knowing this. Since it was west coast time, hours had already gone by. I know a few other people who were living elsewhere when they found out. This is all I have to say on my experience with learning the news. I wonder though, what kind of person I would have been. Would I have helped? Would I have helped survivors in some way? Or would I have just split?

USA:

Survivor Guilt. We are all, this is my theory, %99 of us, living with Survivor Guilt. This is how I am going to connect my experience going from the 9/11 WTC Memorial to Occupy Wall St. As I left the info center, the last words I heard going out were from a video saying 'survivor guilt'. America has it all, comparatively. We know it. So, when we walk down the street, and see a homeless guy asking for change, we look away. Are we all greedy assholes? Are we judgmental? I think we don't know to do with our discomfort.

Maybe I am wrong and it is the complete opposite. If people felt guilty about their status they would be stepping over each other trying to give til it hurts. To individuals and mass charities. What do we do with guilt? We deny it and pass the buck.

And that is America, I guess. Then again, Americans like to help each other out. And as a government, we kind of do that, too. But now I am thinking about Occupy Wall Street again and I wonder, fuck, this is surprisingly successful! Over 950 satellite movements in 26 countries, I think. Then I think about everything I have just written and how it applies to me. Could I have faith? Is there a clear goal? Do I have some kind of guilt preventing me from participating? Is compensation owed to the people? Are the OWS people the kind of people who "haven't seen the Vietnam Memorial", so to speak, or are they totally clear in their task?

Do I feel activated? Yeah, I guess I do! But there is so much wrong with America. I mean, it's fascinating that OWS doesn't appear to have a concrete goal which was part of the reason I blew it off. It makes total sense though now that I think about it because it is too complicated to deal with. I guess a sit-in is the only way to issue the 'fuck you'. I guess I could get behind that. But I am not a joiner, and going there didn't make me want to join. I do want to take the time though to care about this, which is progress.

the underground railroad

Listening to The Waterboys’ album, ‘A Pagan Place’ for the first time in Dana's car requires a description of me, Dana, the Waterboys, Amy Abdoo, my family, and the underground railroad.

Me and my best friend Dana were seniors in high school in 1988-89. I had discovered The Waterboys that fall by reading my brother's Rolling Stone magazine and reading a review of the 1988 album, ‘Fisherman's Blues’. I not only didn’t have a car, I still didn’t know how to drive. My parent’s didn’t think it was that important and sensed, correctly, that I was too flighty to pay attention and drive. I didn’t push the issue terribly hard because deep down, I never expected access to a car. Even though they taught my brother to drive at 16 and he used my mother’s car to get to work, I had gotten used to separate but unequal treatment as a daughter in a rather ethnically traditional family. Dana got her license and a car the day she turned 16. I would go anywhere just to kill time with her, like to visit her grandmother and get an oil change. Sometimes we would go for a scenic drive up Route 12 past the cornfields to the cool town one over and listen to music and talk about our problems.

We were alike on the basic levels – taking school seriously and studying; morals; being real and not fake teenagers – we were good girls and didn’t drink, use drugs or have sex. Same with my other two best high school friends. But we didn’t have music in common, or fashion or how we identified ourselves. I didn't want to wear mall clothing, the make-up and clothing stifling, foreign. Weekends I was content to stay home. The places I would want to have gone didn’t exist for me yet, not in Utica, NY. Dana wanted to go dancing. I didn’t want to drive to the next town over late Saturday night, hoping to sneak into a dance club. It was repulsive to me. This is later high school, junior and senior years. The real confusion for us all, isn’t it, is junior high school. I didn’t have any identity or role models in 7th and 8th grade. I can say that mostly who I am now started with Amy Abdoo in 9th grade.

Amy Abdoo, like me, came from a pretty conservative family. Our families weren't close friends, more of an annual get together. Kids change a lot in-between junior high school years. Amy was one year older than me. The summer of 1985, I was going into 9th grade and she into 10th grade. So in the space of one year, Amy had gone from being a nondescript but enjoyable nerd to a secret blooming hippie flower. She had met a boy in her high school, China, who turned her on to beat literature, hippies, music and drugs. She had to keep her longings to herself, and in fact, once she was 'out' about her hair-dying self, and her parents felt like they had lost control of her, that was the end for me also and I was forbidden to see her. Because, why would I want to be friends with her if her parents had lost control of her, is how my parents saw it. She could rub off on me and that would not be allowed under any circumstances. This fortunately came after I had a few opportunities to hang out with her and learn all about this alternative world to mall clothing and format radio.

What did she say that enticed me at that family gathering when she told me about her new discoveries? Did she use the word freedom? Did she promise me some kind of mental or physical liberation? Was I looking for liberation? I don't remember. I can remember initial distrust that must have given way to curiosity. But, also confidence that I could handle what seemed to be controversial information and choices. Reading and re-reading this, I realize that I appear purposefully vague, like I am leaving out the real details. What was controversial? What was alternative? What was the freedom from? What did I learn? It’s hard to say now, because I have been who I am for 25 years and I have existed in Blue State pockets of America. I’ve cushioned myself with like-minded people and only have to endure the mass population when I’m at work or when I’m not in my circle. So if this makes sense to you, then I don’t have to explain the big WHAT that I was unconsciously looking for.

Up until 9th grade, I don’t think I was or was seen as markedly weird. To other kids, I was pretty neutral. I wasn’t popular on any level, but I wasn’t labeled negatively either.  At least, I don’t think so. Inside though, I struggled with wanting some depth; as much as a 13 and 14-year old had depth. Probably I was afflicted by the same disease everyone at that age has, but I think I had it worse. I was looking for extra meaning in song lyrics. I wrote in my diary. My friends weren’t like that.

I think Amy Abdoo enticed me with word games and IQ tests. Mostly though, music was the common ground. Utica's format radio station WOUR played only classic rock. My older brother's musical interests rubbed off on me. Since whatever Ron did was acceptable, and the only thing we really had in common, I got schooled on Pink Floyd, The Police, Genesis, Rush, 70s and 80s rock, hard rock, glam rock. I never listened to what my girlfriends liked, such as Duran Duran, Madonna and Michael Jackson. Amy and I found common ground in radio music that I knew, but she taught me about other bands of those eras that I had never heard before.

I had never asked to hang out with Amy before. We’d only ever gotten together as part of a family thing, and that was infrequent and dismissible. Now I was making plans, suspicious to my super over-involved family. We kept our meetings in secret.

I asked my friend Dana to go with me to meet Amy and China downtown. It was an innocent gathering but I was also nervous of my parents finding out. We didn’t do any drugs. All we did was meet in the downtown library and discuss books and check some out. Went to a thrift store. It was completely innocent. But it was different. It was deviant.

The drugs were always on my parents' minds. They were fearful and old world. My friends and activities had to be approved. Their number one fear was that I would, that one of us in the family, that a Catholic Arab would fall into the wrong crowd. Sex, alcohol, drugs, even just deviance of any kind was strictly prohibited.

Another time I begged Dana to take me to meet Amy's cool adult friends at someone's house up north. These were her college-age punk drummer boyfriend and some others I have forgotten, including the guy named China, who I was totally in love with. I begged Dana to take me because she had a car, but I also knew she would be uncomfortable with these people.  The weight of bringing an outsider was crushing.

I was finding Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg, the Velvet Underground, Pink Floyd, Genesis with Peter Gabriel. The more access I had to the external voices, the more I had access to my unknown, internal developing self. I began to write poetry. As I started to dress in thrift store clothing, basketball sneakers and tie-dyes, my parents grew fearful and suspicious. Their power and morals had to be absolute. Eventually my parents did not allow us to be in contact and it got to the point where my brother listened in on my phone calls. By that time, I didn't need them so much. Those get-togethers and phone calls were enough to start me on the way.

My parents let me dress the way I wanted to when they accepted that I was still a good girl and wasn't interested in sex, drugs and parties. This was not without serious struggle. You can’t believe it but this is how strict my parents were. I forgot this until this third read-thru that they were ready to send me to boarding school to force me to dress in uniform, so threatened were they by my hippie clothing!  I really wasn't interested in all those things because they had successfully scared the shit out of me.  They had no idea how effective they were, because they were so vigilant they weren't paying attention that I chose an escape that I thought worked for everyone, a win-win.  A mental, spiritual, musical escape.  But my clothing drew attention, it was too much for them. 

I wrote poetry. I was sad a lot with the world. I listened to U2 and psychedlic rock but kept my thoughts about discontent and the human condition to myself. I knew even at 16, at 17, that I was uncomfortable with cultural disconnect; liking what I liked and not wanting to explain it, to make it OK for you.

I had discovered The Waterboys that fall by reading my brother's Rolling Stone magazine and reading a review of the 1988 album, ' Fisherman's Blues'. I listened to ‘A Pagan Place’ again and again my senior year in high school. I listened to ‘Fisherman's Blues’ which was their most current album, and I bought tapes for all the bands that they referenced - many other Irish musical artists like The Pogues and Sinead O'Connor. I ordered the remaining albums The Waterboys made.

That’s why I felt so awkward bringing Dana with me to the library to meet Amy and going up north to meet Amy’s friends. I feel this way still today. I feel torn, like I’m an ambassador between the Avant Guard and the Normals. In the car with Dana, I excitedly popped ‘A Pagan Place’ into her tape deck. The opening track, “Church Not Made with Hands” burst open with a horn section. I immediately felt embarrassed. This was a 1984 post-punk Irish band, with a horn section! Dana listened to bands like Soul to Soul and Madonna, Whitney Housten and Tracy Chapman. I can call this the single definitive minute where I realized I started my own life. It was like I was on the transatlantic cruise liner, waving my white hankerchief to the people on the pier, off to a new life. I was thrilled because I had discovered this band all on my own. No one had introduced me to The Waterboys. My pride was countered by embarrassment for what I heard because I knew Dana would think it was strange and I didn't want my moment ruined. I had her pop it out so I could listen to it later at home.

I hadn't taken going to college seriously since I didn't think my parents would pay for it or allow me to actually go away. Even the fall of my senior year, I only casually applied to two state schools. I don't remember how everything fell into place, but they had a change of heart and did permit me to go, took responsibility for payment, and I was college bound. I was getting out. The Underground Railroad was close at hand. My last night at home, I listened to The Waterboys' album, 'This is the Sea’ on my Sony Walkman. I had written in my journal about my excitement and fears for starting college but really, I wasn't afraid at all. I laid in the dark long after my parents had gone to sleep and had to play the last track again. I wanted that refrain driven into my ears like a hydraulic hammer to a nail. The build on this song is incredible still after twenty-two years. It brings tear to my eyes to remember that I predicted it would be a kind of anthem; that it would be foretelling, that it would be all mine.

ride share zine reading (edited)

This is the story about my Craigslist rideshare. 

Part one.

Last summer I planned trips to Portland and San Francisco to attend their annual Zine Fests.  They were one week apart.  I wanted to drive from Portland to San Francisco via the coastal highway.  This was double the length of a direct drive down I-5 South, but a fantastic drive, the main highlights being the southern Oregon coast at Bandon and the Redwoods National Forest.  The original plan had not been to drive, but to take the Green Tortoise Bus.  In 1997 I once took the Green Tortoise from San Diego all the way to Portland which covered this route.  It was cool even if it was too hippie for me, it would be cheap, social, and scenic. 

When I learned that Green Tortoise discontinued this trip, I thought I could post on Craig’s List to find a ride, again - not just a ride to SF, but a scenic coastal highway ride.  To be safe, I could advertise two separate posts: ‘ride wanted’ and ‘offering ride’. 

Meet Ilya.  Ilya phoned me in response to my ad 36 hours before the trip.  By now, I had managed to get 2 riders at the final hour who would do a partial trip. A girl whose name I have forgotten and a guy named CJ.  I had turned into a mini bus myself.  Drop CJ off in Arcata, pick the girl up in Bandon.  I had a rental car reserved, and everything was set.  But along comes Ilya.  He calls me on Saturday night, and at first I can’t understand him through the Ukrainian accent, but he seemed to be telling me he was taking the very same trip as me, leaving the same day, and had a car already so I didn’t need to rent a car.  And sure, the others could come.  All four of us, it could be an adventure!  What good fortune.  He didn’t sound crazy over the phone, and I assumed the other travelers would be thrilled to save the money.  In truth, I felt conflicted.  Doing the drive alone with car rental, gas and hotel was prohibitively expensive.  Having other riders and being in control of the car and schedule myself was the best plan.  But it seemed stupid to pay for a rental when here was a guy going my way and ready to share his wheels.  So I said yes.

Me, Ilya and CJ left Portland in his big, fat grandpa car like a Lincoln Continental or something.  He bought the car to use while exploring the USA for three months.  We started the drive late, at 1pm, and barely an hour into it, both guys got excited about a billboard for hamburgers at the next exit.  They pulled over, and then couldn’t find the place.  Once they found it, they took their time eating and chatting.  Then getting gas.  Then talking about the gas.  It was nearly 3pm and we had barely started our journey.  I re-calculated the arrival time to Bandon, where the girl was already waiting for us. 

We didn’t reach the Bandon area until almost 7pm.  The girl had been waiting for hours.  I felt responsible and awkward.  The sun was beginning to set.  I sat in the back and began to chat with her, apologizing that we were so late, even though it wasn’t my fault since I wasn’t driving.  I was in such a hurry, pressing to leave since Ilya did everything so slowly that when we pulled out of the pick up spot, I realized that we had missed the turn-off for the town of Bandon.  I had expected to drive right into it; I could picture the winding road opening onto the coast on my right hand side, and the Bandon Star hostel.  I had thought of nothing but this moment all day, and somehow we had missed it.  I cried out, what happened to Bandon?  But no one knew what I was talking about.  We had missed the turnoff and it was on the way to dusk. 

Now I was pissed.  The little bit of southern Oregon I saw was through thick fog, which only brought the night on quicker.  The whole point of this road trip for me was not a cheap ride in a car.  I could afford the flight, I could even afford my own car if I had to.  It was to see Bandon and the Redwoods in the shining daylight.  It was now dark and we were hours away from the Redwoods.  Somehow, we just kept stopping the car.  Since southern OR had come and gone, all I had left to look forward to was the Redwoods, so I lobbied hard to get a hotel before the CA border so we could actually SEE the trees instead of driving through them in the dark. 

We spent a night at the Curly Redwood Motel.  Naturally the next day we didn’t hit the road until 10am, and that was only with me barking to get ready and go.  I had been the pit boss since the trip started, barking to go, go, go.  We missed the only place I had wanted to stop because no one else was paying attention.  At this point I was over the pleasantries, and was trying to salvage my vacation.  This whole fucking thing, all four of us strangers, were brought together by me.  I felt responsible. 

We started our drive and entered CA and it was sunny and looking good.  It was of course, late, and we were behind schedule.  Ilya stopped the car a few more times in the first hour of driving.  Ilya just turned out to be weird.  Weird in an indescribable way.   He would just see something like, a turnout, and just pull over. Or, see something that might be good to look at and come to a lurching halt.  In the back seat, we were getting carsick.

And then, the turning point came.  We passed a mid-40s Hispanic woman hitchhiking and then our car pulled over.  We didn’t know why we had pulled over, and then the girl asked me, ‘are we picking up that woman?’  I would like to point out that the car was full, with 4 people.  Also, Ilya didn’t ask anyone.  He simply pulled over. 

 “Are you picking up that woman?” I asked.

 He replied, “Yes, I always pick up hitchhikers”. 

“Ilya, the car is full!” 

“Well, you can move over.” 

Me and the girl make eyes.  She pulls a jackknife from her backpack for safety.  The back door opens, and mutely, the woman gets into the back seat with us.  The alcohol smell fills the car.  She is pickled.  The girl and I make eyes at  each other.  WTF?

No words have been shared, mind you.  To Ilya, this was the most natural thing in the world, to silently pull your giant, used American car filled with paying strangers over and pick up a hitchhiker, making it now 5 freaks in one vehicle.

I had, by now, mentally checked out.  This was, the last straw. Or so I thought, until the woman nearly barfing on us trapped in the back seat raised it to a new level.  Within minutes of getting settled, this woman, reeking of alcohol as I mentioned, pulls a homemade sandwich from her bag.  This, I took as a promising sign that she understood human needs for food.  Because otherwise, she was totally loopy.  Unable to ask or answer questions, her sandwich didn’t look half bad.  A few bites in, she passed out.  This cycled for a few minutes of take a bite/pass out, until she began to gurgle.  Always on the ready to avoid a vomit scene (this is my only phobia), I had already predicted this could happen.  So, it only took a few emitted gurgles before I demanded, “Pull the car over, NOW!”

This was, indeed, the last straw.  It was like I was the only thinking person in the vehicle.

Ilya asked, “Is it an emergency?”

 “Yes!” I replied, “It’s an emergency.  She’s going to puke.  Pull over now”.

He pulled over, and I jumped out of the car.  I was in control from here on out.  To the woman: You have to go.  To Ilya: I am driving.  Get out. 

Ilya had no idea what the problem was.  He hadn’t noticed she was drunk, and he apologized for the situation.  He wasn’t a bad guy, but he was totally clueless, slow, and unable to command this trip.  The other two riders, the girl and CJ, were visibly shaken.

Me, I put the pedal to the metal.  We were now flying thru the Redwoods.  We weren’t going to stop anymore.  Hours behind schedule, the coastal dream was over.  I just wanted to get to the Bay Area.

Part two.

I had already invited Ilya to a reading on Friday night at a Mission area bookstore. 

He just was so clueless to my new opinion of him, even though I got ruder as the trip went on.  By the time we got to the Bay Area I wanted to be done with him forever, but here he was giving me a ride way out of his way unnecessarily to my friend’s place in the South Bay.  When he asked to meet up in SF at my reading, I agreed that he should come to it.  I had hoped he would forget or become busy.  He didn’t.

I declined to meet him early for dinner and texted I would meet at the bookstore.  When I arrived at rock star timing, he was there already.  He had come one hour earlier.  I introduced him to my friend.  He didn’t make any conversation at all.  During the pregnant pause I noticed for the first time how one eye was larger than the other.  He was a bit of an odd one.

I sat in the back, but not next to him.  The host introduced himself and pointed to the readers.  I waved.  The first reader started.  I would be second.  Her story did not resonate with me, nor did her style.  She read about indie rock shows in the 90s and the kinds of people that would go and places they would take place.  Her voice was like, ya know, totally rocking because she was insecure and like, annoying for my age.  She kept breaking her role as storyteller to ask the audience, “You know what I’m talkin’ about, right?” 

“No.  I don’t know what you are talking about”, blurted out in a Ukrainian accent, countered her question.  Everyone stopped and looked at Ilya.  He was actually heckling the reader.  “You keep asking ‘do you know what I am talking about’ but no, some of us do not know.  You should understand that some of us are not from this country.”  The reader was speechless and you could hear a pin drop. Until she came back with, “Dude, what is your problem?  Who is this guy?”

“I am from Ukraine and I do not share your experiences.  It is OK but I am sharing with you that you are asking asking asking if we know but NO, I do not know!”

I slink down in my seat.  Does anyone know he came in with me?  I feel bad for him.  His response is innocent and totally appropriate in his part of the world.  Why did he have to say it out loud?  Couldn’t he have just thought it to himself or saved it for afterwards?  I’m up next, and I don’t want everyone hating me.  I stare straight ahead like in school when you didn’t want to get called on.

She tried to go back to her reading, but couldn’t.  “I can’t finish reading now, this guy just blew my mood.  I can’t do this.  This guy has to go.”

“You want me to get rid of him?” the host asks.  Oh Christ, I think, as I stare straighter and think positive thoughts of disassociation.

“Yeah, I can’t finish this now.  He ruined it.”  The crowd boos and makes reassuring comments that it will be OK.  She will rise again.

The host asks Ilya to leave.  He has actually been kicked out of a bookstore zine reading for poor behavior.  They go outside, and I’m frozen with fear that he will say something to me like, but I will miss your reading.  I make eye contact with him, and then follow them outside.  I apologize to the host, and I apologize to Ilya that he has been kicked out of a crummy zine reading.  Oblivious as he was when inviting a drunk homeless person to vomit in his car, he asked me if we would meet up later. 

“Maybe,” I lied.