tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-42144086808953508552024-03-13T03:23:34.513-05:00Buttered Noodlestasty real-life storiesJPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09520199529674713619noreply@blogger.comBlogger159125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4214408680895350855.post-82369048573453021942012-12-03T21:52:00.003-06:002012-12-03T21:52:54.917-06:00Well hello there...Hi, it's been a while... I think it may be time to wrap up Buttered Noodles and start something new. For a long time I've thought I should probably have a website, though I haven't quite figured out what to do about it. Meanwhile, <a href="http://thatsallshewrotechicago.com/">That's All She Wrote</a> is about to have our 3rd show on December 9, and that blog gets updated way more frequently than this one does. When I know what's coming next, I'll post about it. Thanks for reading!<br />
<br />
XO<br />
<br />JPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09520199529674713619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4214408680895350855.post-40338506757869714172012-08-27T22:52:00.002-05:002012-08-27T22:59:48.791-05:00That's All She WroteSo, my friend <a href="http://angelicaisajinx.blogspot.com/">Angela</a> and I have been plotting and planning to start our own live lit/storytelling series called That's All She Wrote, it has a <a href="http://thatsallshewrotechicago.com/">website</a> and everything. Over the past couple years I've read my work at numerous live lit venues in Chicago, but I'm nervous about running my own series in a way that makes me think terrible, negative thoughts. This is probably going to be a boring post, but it's mostly to make me feel better during those moments when I think I can't possibly do this, which is most of the time.<br />
<br />
I haven't really blogged a lot about the readings I do, I'm not sure why. It's the only thing I feel really, truly proud of these days what with my career being so far down the toilet I'm pretty sure it's being processed at the water reclamation district. So here's a big impressive list of all the venues, with hyperlinks embedded so you can click through to them and be thoroughly impressed. Maybe someday I'll get around to writing a "performance" resume, or something like that. Until then, here's a big old list:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.storyclubchicago.com/index.html">Story Club</a> - where I got up and read my own work in front of people in late 2010, for the first time since college. I purposely picked a 300 word piece that only took me a minute to read because I was nervous about reading in front of people. I've since read there countless times, and was made a Featured Reader along with superstar <a href="http://www.jojostein.com/Site/Home_please.html">Johanna Stein</a> in early 2011 (March, I think.)<br />
<br />
<a href="http://storylabchicago.com/">Story Lab</a> - where storytelling superstar <a href="http://www.scottwhitehair.com/">Scott Whitehair</a> included me in the debut show (along with Ms. Angela of That's All She Wrote) in January 2011. It was a ridiculously good time, and made me want to do as much storytelling as possible.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://essayfiesta.com/">Essay Fiesta</a> - where the musical and comedic Keith Ecker and Alyson Lyon meet monthly in a local bookstore, get people to read, and raise money for the Chicago chapter of <a href="http://826chi.org/">826</a>.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.thismuchistruechicago.com/">This Much Is True</a> - one of the funnest storytelling shows in town, and I had an unbelievably fun time reading the story about visiting my high school boyfriend's farm. It was one of the best nights of my life. <br />
<br />
<a href="http://tuesdayfunk.org/">Tuesday Funk </a>- an offbeat series that combines nonfiction and fiction of all stripes.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://2ndstory.com/">2nd Story</a> - which, all told, took about 3 years for me to get to perform in. They did get my story <a href="http://2ndstory.com/2012/03/my-boyfriend/">podcasted</a> though, which is fancy.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://wneptheater.org/2012/06/get-ready-for-an-epic-contest/">SKALD</a> - an annual storytelling contest run by Don Hall of WNEP Theater and WBEZ, and hosted by Steve Edwards, which is very fancy.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://getmortified.com/live/">Mortified!</a> - one of the funnest shows around, in which participants read from journal entries and other ephemera that was written prior to turning 21. <br />
<br />
<a href="http://themoth.org/events">The Moth</a> - at Martyr's, where I won the February 2011 slam with my urinary tract infection story, and at the Haymarket, where I did not win, but it was still fun.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://chicagoist.com/2011/07/27/moth_storytellers_spin_their_way_to.php">The 2nd Chicago Moth GrandSLAM</a> - hosted by Peter Sagal of <a href="http://www.npr.org/programs/wait-wait-dont-tell-me/">Wait Wait Don't Tell Me</a>, which is extra fancy with a side of smart.<br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_15840628"><br /></a>
<a href="http://thepapermacheteshow.com/">The Paper Machete</a> - a weekly live magazine where writers and comics read pieces related to the week's news, and I talked about the murder rate in Chicago in the summer. It was a real mood lifter.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.realtalkavenue.com/">Real Talk Live</a> - a show that's really about poetry, but I snuck in anyway and read at the open mic. Nobody said anything about it. Also, I was lured by the wordtastic wiles of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoZvDQIZc3E">Roger Bonair-Agard</a>, who I had just seen perform at This Much Is True, and really REALLY wanted to see him perform again, and maybe even get the chance to speak to him, and he was handing out flyers to RTL, so...<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/165165053612975/">Stories from the Bottom of the Glass</a> - a one-time show put together by the aforementioned Dana Norris, where I went serious and told the story titled "Me and Luke."<br />
<br />
<a href="http://massmouth.ning.com/">Massmouth</a> - Boston's answer to The Moth (although I think the Moth is opening in Boston pretty soon, if not already) I went to a show in Jamaica Plain because I was visiting family, competed in a Massmouth storyslam, and got the second worst score. I told the same story 2 nights later at the Moth in Chicago.... and won. Draw your own conclusions.<br />
<br />
So that's like... 14 different venues that I've performed in since the fall of 2010. Some of them (4 of them) I've performed at more than once. I say this to make myself feel like I can actually make my own show work, and that even if it doesn't work for some reason, it will all turn out okay in the end.<br />
<br />
And, AND.... this Thursday I'm CROSSING STATE LINES to tell stories at the <a href="https://www.acorntheater.com/">Acorn Theater </a>for a show called <a href="https://www.acorntheater.com/content/?page_id=139&regevent_action=register&event_id=146">Adult Education</a>. So by the time we launch That's All She Wrote, I will have performed at 15 different venues.<br />
<br />
So.... so that's my version of talking to myself in the mirror before the big show, or the big sell, or the big presentation, or the big boxing match, or whatever it is that people need to talk to themselves in front of the mirror for.<br />
<br />
Wish me luck.<br />
<br />
<br />JPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09520199529674713619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4214408680895350855.post-74383884341989229922012-07-25T22:10:00.002-05:002012-07-25T22:13:44.121-05:00Day 2<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">There’s
a poster up in my supervisor’s cubicle that reads “what am I doing here?” For a
second I thought maybe it was some kind of office humor, but then read the
smaller print – it’s about church, and god - the bigger “here” in “what am I
doing here?” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">I
started this temp job yesterday. Before I was allowed to walk past the
reception desk I had to read ten pages regarding nondisclosure of information, appropriate working behavior, and signed three different papers
saying I wouldn’t give away company secrets. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">The
office looks brand new, it’s on the 17<sup>th</sup> floor of a high-rise
downtown, and it takes two elevators to get there from the ground floor. The furniture is mod 60’s style, and reminds
me a little of Mad Men after they move into their new offices. There is a huge flat
screen TV installed at reception, and three more on the walls of a circular
break room area that looks like Diane Keaton’s house in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sleeper.</i> All of the TVs are muted, not even with subtitles to read,
just silent home and garden shows and CNN stories, all day long. The kitchen area has an enormous silver double
door refrigerator, and there’s free coffee – some in big containers, some in
those little pod things that make you one cup at a time in different flavors. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">It
is a remarkably quiet office. The only sounds I hear from my cubicle are of
people typing, filling their cups with water and coffee in the corner behind
me, and talking on the phone. It’s like being on a spaceship, a really quiet
spaceship, like the one in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">2001: A Space
Odyssey.</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">There
was nothing in my cubicle when I arrived except for a brand new ergonomically
designed chair and a computer. I asked the receptionist for a stapler,
and some staples to go with it. She
unlocked a clean, brightly lit, organized supply closet, handed me a stapler, reached
into a box of staples, and removed one thin row. When I asked for thumbtacks
the next day she opened the same supply closet, pointed to an open container of
thumbtacks and said “be very, very careful,” in a voice generally reserved for
three year-olds. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">This
is an end-of-the-line job for me. I’ve interviewed for so many jobs I’ve
stopped counting. At one point this spring I was up for six different positions
at once; none of them were offered to me. This is the third temp agency I’ve
signed up with, and the first that has found me work, so I accepted the
assignment when it was offered to me. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">At
home, the letters Y E S are strung across the kitchen wall. They are old movie
house marquee letters. Each one is dark red, 12 inches high, weather-beaten, with
a groove on the side that hangs onto the marquee. With so much rejection, it’s
nice to see YES sometimes. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">My
husband asked me how my first day on the assignment went. “Okay,” I replied, “I almost cried a couple
times.” I can’t help it - I know I’m not the only one going through this right
now, and I know it could be worse, but sometimes it’s hard to get excited about
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">it could be worse</i>. It feels
ridiculous that I can’t pay my half of the mortgage, or that I haven’t paid one
cent of our credit card for months. This stage of my life was supposed to be
over decades ago, and as humiliating as it is to be doing temp work, it makes
me feel better to have an income – a tiny income, but at least something to
defray the cost of my existence. “The office is really, really quiet,” I
continued, “it’s circular like a spaceship so it’s hard to find my cube, but I
guess that’s better than rows and rows of cubicles. The person I’m replacing
has the same last name as me so everyone thinks we’re related. I met her. There
was a cake thing for her in the afternoon - she got promoted. She said she’s
worked there for 8 years, and to consider this a way to get a full time
position because they’re looking to replace her, and that it’s a good place to
work, so… that’s nice.” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Today
was my second day, it was better than the first. I can find my cubicle, and I
have an ID badge so I don’t have to sign in at the security desk every time I
walk in and out of the building. When I came home the red marquee letters were strewn
across the kitchen floor, one of the screws holding up the wire they were resting
on had come loose from the wall. They lay
scattered around a pile of cat puke that I had discovered that morning and
covered with a paper towel because I didn’t have time to clean it up before
leaving the house. Later, one of the cats took a crap on the bathmat. My
husband cleaned up the crap, and I cleaned the puke and put the letters back on
the kitchen wall, hanging them on thumbtacks instead of wire. They’re off
center and misaligned, but it’s nice to see YES sometimes, even if it’s a
little off-kilter.</span></div>JPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09520199529674713619noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4214408680895350855.post-88106504022712000202012-07-06T00:21:00.001-05:002012-07-06T00:33:17.169-05:00Rhinestone<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">So it’s come to this:
I’m preparing to interview for a temp job; when I used to do temp work, not
that long ago, I met with someone from a temp agency, and was placed at
assignments sight unseen. Now, more than
three years after getting laid off and looking for work, I’m submitting to the
possibility of being rejected for temporary work. My contact at the agency
sends me a humiliating email telling me what to do: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Please wear a suit</i>, it says, as if I’m new to this, as if I’m a
high school senior going on her first interview, as if I’ve never seen the
inside of an office before. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">The definition of
insanity, in a quote attributed to Albert Einstein, is doing the same thing
over and over and expecting different results. I’ve been doing the same thing
since June of 2009; I look at job postings, send a cover letter and resume to
ones that look promising, go on interviews, sometimes get called back for a
second interview, sometimes make it to the final two candidates, and never get offered
the job.</span><br />
<br />
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">I sleep poorly the
night before; I wake up tired, bleary, and depressed. I go through the morning ablutions of any
regular working woman, and make my way to the brown line at 7:30am. As the
train makes its way toward the loop, it gets crowded. It’s been so long since
I’ve had a regular commute that it’s strange to see all the working stiffs on
the train engaged in behavior that has become alien to me: people from around
the city have gotten up early, showered, fixed their hair, put on a suit –
maybe a tie, and gotten on the train where they sit or stand in a mute,
deadened state, interacting only with their iPhones, iPads, and the odd
newspaper. They get off downtown, walk into air-conditioned buildings and spend
the day pretending that they don’t know any curse words. I get off at Adams and Wabash and join the
streams of people walking down the stairs moving urgently towards their
destination. It looks like a carefully choreographed piece of performance art,
or a salmon spawn. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">I find the building,
and make my way to the security desk, where I get a temporary ID and pass
through the corral that separates the public from a bank of elevators, and make
my way to the 14<sup>th</sup> floor.
Halfway through the second interview (there will be three in total) I’ve
heard enough to I know I won’t get this job. As it turns out, I’ve been
interviewing for a personal assistant position, but the description was for a
development assistant position, and in retrospect it’s clear that I’ve answered
some key questions incorrectly. I make my descent to the first floor and call the
agency, as per my emailed instructions.
“Do you think you’d accept if they offered you the job?” they ask. “Yes, I would,” I say, even though I know
this won’t happen.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">I go to Einstein’s
Bagels to get coffee and something to eat, and as I walk in the door the theme
to “Sanford and Son” plays on the audio system, like some kind of cosmic
commentary on my life. I order a bagel and a small coffee, and the woman at the
register recommends that I get the bagel and medium coffee combo because it’s
cheaper. It saves me about a dollar and
a half, and it makes me feel protected somehow that this woman I’ve never met
is looking after my financial well-being.
I sit at a table and pull out my Hallmark thank you notes from my purse,
the cheapest kind available, $4 for a pack of 10, and my book of stamps. I’ve been on roughly 30 in-person interviews
and 10 phone interviews since I was laid off in 2009, and I like to think that
my contribution to the greeting card industry and the US Postal Service has
made a dent in the economic viability of both entities. I used to pore over
every word in a thank you note and keep a copy of the text for future
reference; now it comes out like so many prepackaged Hallmark messages: “Dear [name],
thank you for taking the time to meet with me today regarding the open [job]
position. I enjoyed our conversation,
and hope to have the opportunity to discuss this opportunity further. Sincerely…”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">I’m downtown so rarely
these days, and it’s usually for some humiliating interview, so I make sure to
build in other, more practical reasons to be there so it doesn’t feel like a
total waste of train fare and effort when I ultimately get rejected, and I’d
noticed a couple days earlier that one of the rhinestones in my eyeglasses had
fallen out. They’re LaFont frames; an
extravagant purchase, they are by far the most expensive thing that I wear,
excluding my engagement ring. It took me
a year to convince myself to buy them. They sit perfectly on the bridge of my
nose, making my face appear neither too large nor too small, they are
feather light, and I’ve owned them for about four years. My last trip downtown
was for a farewell lunch for a former coworker who’s relocating to San
Francisco, and I sat silent as my former colleagues caught up on their work
lives. Dan talked about his upcoming job change, and spoke in disparaging terms
about his current supervisor, who didn’t make a counteroffer when he told her
that he’d been offered a job elsewhere, securing his opinion of her and of his
current workplace. It was like listening
to aliens talk about alien things dressed in alien clothes; I had nothing to
add to the conversation. My built-in practical reason for being downtown that
day was to visit the optician who’d filled the prescription for me. He couldn’t help with my missing rhinestone,
but gave me the business card of someone who works in the Jewelers Building at
5 South Wabash, and recommended that I try there. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Thank you notes
written, coffee and bagel consumed, I got up and made my way to South
Wabash. I rode the ancient, creaking elevator
in the Jewelers Building to the eleventh floor and walked into the wrong studio
– an expensive looking, brightly lit establishment that specialized in
watches. They weren’t sure they could
help me, and I’d have to leave the eyeglasses with them if I wanted their
expertise. I thanked them and left with my
eyeglasses in hand. As I approached the
elevator again I saw the place listed on the business card – Danny & Debbie
Jewelers, it was tucked behind the elevator bank in a moldering two room studio
with a view of an alley. In the back
room, a man in his late 50s or early 60s who must have been Danny worked on a
piece of jewelry, in the front room dusty display cases that were mostly empty
housed a few pairs of silver earrings, and a plate with the Aztec sun calendar hung
on one wall. I explained to a dark-haired
woman who must have been Debbie what I needed, and she went to a shelf stacked
with boxes of rhinestones. She pulled
one down and Danny joined her in poring over them. They spoke to each other in Spanish, and I
tried to understand them. Debbie referred to Danny as “Papa,” and I heard him
use the word “chiquita,” which I’ve only heard in reference to bananas. I made a mental note to look it up. “Esta, papa,” she said, holding a tiny purple
rhinestone in a pair of tweezers. Danny affixed the rhinestone into my eyeglass
frames, told me not to wear them for a few hours, and retreated into the back
room. I packed the eyeglasses into my
bag, and pulled my wallet out, but Debbie made no move to write up an invoice
or ask for payment. “What do I owe you?”
I asked. “Oh, like, a dollar,” she
said. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">On the train ride home
I reflected on the events of the morning: for less than half of what it cost
for me to ride the train downtown for my useless interview, two people worked
earnestly to replace a tiny rhinestone that only I knew was missing. A few days
later I would get a phone call from the temp agency, which I would let go to
voicemail. I played it back, and missed
the first few seconds because I was fumbling for the speakerphone button. “…great news” the voice on the message said,
but the intonation was flat. I rewound
to the beginning and heard the phrase in its entirety: “Unfortunately I’m not
calling with great news…” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">I’ve been unsuccessfully
trying to find a job for three years, but it only took a minute for Danny and
Debbie to find a rhinestone for me. The
color isn’t an exact match, but only I know which rhinestone it is. I like the fact that it doesn’t match
perfectly; it reminds me of the small dignities that still exist in the world.</span></div>JPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09520199529674713619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4214408680895350855.post-26181952167985711992012-06-23T17:46:00.000-05:002012-06-23T19:46:16.838-05:00The Weather ReportI performed at <a href="http://thepapermachete.org/">The Paper Machete</a> for the first time this afternoon, it was fun - and very different from my usual stuff. For once I read about something other than me, which was kind of refreshing. I hope to do more Paper Machete readings, and I hope you enjoy the following piece.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">The Weather Report</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Memorial
Day weekend kicked off the unofficial beginning of summer in Chicago with a
long list of outdoor activities: street closures due to construction caused
headaches for motorists; the beaches officially opened, allowing Chicago area
E. Coli enthusiasts to bathe in fetid waters from Belmont Harbor to Oak Street
Beach and beyond; and farmers markets around the city opened for the season.
The official start of summer happened this week with the arrival of the summer
solstice on June 20, which is a day earlier than usual because 2012 is a leap
year. Also early this year: the annual summer
shooting sprees. Type the words “shooting” and “Chicago” into any search engine
and you’ll find news items and blog posts regarding recent gun violence. Ten
people died from shotgun wounds in Chicago over Memorial Day Weekend alone, 8
died and over 40 were injured in gun related violence the weekend of June 8-10.
With the unseasonably warm winter we just had, the seemingly weather-induced
violence began as early as March. In a <a href="http://www.npr.org/2012/05/16/152852264/experts-stumped-by-chicagos-soaring-homicide-rate">recent NPR piece</a>, <span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">Dr. </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Jens Ludwig, head of the
University of Chicago's crime lab, said higher temperatures bring more people
outdoors, which seems to lead to more crime.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">DR. JENS LUDWIG: And we know that when
there are more people out and about there are just more opportunities for
crime. And so, I think the thing that everybody is talking about - mild, wet
winter weather - might actually be a contributing factor to this thing that we're
seeing.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Chicago
has long been known for its violence; before the advent of Michael Jordan, the
usual trope heard in foreign cities by visiting Windy City residents was
“Chicago, bang bang,” thanks to Public Enemy #1, Al Capone; a figure who left Chicago
with a mixed legacy. I can’t think of
another American city that clings to its felonious past with as much pride and
enterprise; if you log onto </span><a href="http://www.gangstertour.com/"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">www.gangstertour.com</span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> you can make
reservations for something called Untouchable Tours, which is described on their
homepage, appropriately enough, in bullet points.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt;">EXPERIENCE</span></b><b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;">...</span></b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Chicago as it was
during the 1920s and 30s!</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt;">SEE</span></b><b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;">...</span></b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;">the old gangster hot
spots and hit spots!</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt;">HEAR</span></b><b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;">...</span></b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;">historically accurate
accounts of the exploits of Capone, Moran, Dillinger and the rest a da boys!</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt;">FEEL</span></b><b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;">...</span></b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;">the excitement of
jazz-age Chicago during the era of Prohibition!</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt;">ENJOY</span></b><b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;">...</span></b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;">a journey into the
past as we cruise the city in search of the old hoodlum haunts, brothels,
gambling dens and sites of gangland shootouts! </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">I
don’t think weather had much to do with 1920’s gangland Chicago, there were
other factors: prohibition high on the list. So what is it about warmer weather
that seems to make us more violent? We hole up all winter long, ordering pizza and
watching cable TV so we won’t have to go outside, we only leave the cocoon of
our homes to walk our dogs and dig our cars out from under twenty inches of
snow. We long for the day that we can open the windows and walk around the
house in our underwear. We imagine that warmer temperatures mean going outside
and socializing more, and when summer actually arrives, socializing more can
mean anything from barbequing in the backyard, to watching movies in the park,
to a drive-by shooting. Does the heat
literally make our blood boil? </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">In
a recent piece in <a href="http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/news.aspx?id=199907&print=1">Medill Reports</a>, Arthur Lurigio, a professor of social
psychology and crime expert at Loyola University in Chicago, suggested that the
culprit is not the temperature so much as it is people leaving their homes. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
“People who commit crimes are just
as susceptible to the weather as law abiding citizens are… more people spend
time outside when the weather is nice, which can facilitate everything from
pickpocketing to gang violence. And with 83 percent of homicides in 2011 having
been committed outside, it’s no surprise that monthly crime rates would be
higher when the weather is more temperate.”</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">This
could lead one to conclude that it’s not the heat, and it’s not the humidity,
its contact with other people that increases the probability of violence. Perhaps
Chicago should consider changing its motto, “<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Chicago">I Will</a>,” to be more specific. “I Will Be 83% More Likely To Kill You
Outdoors,” or: “If The Mercury Rises Above 90 degrees, I Will Be More Likely To
Shoot You.” If that’s too wordy, we
could always get literary and go with the famous Jean-Paul Sartre line from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">No Exit</i>, “Hell Is Other People,” which
would make a great travel poster, and would confuse and irritate tourists, figuratively
killing two birds with one stone.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">The
recent spike in violence has not gone unnoticed and earlier this week I
received an email from my Alderman, Richard F. Mell, which included the
following item:</span><br />
</div>
<pre>4) This Saturday, June 23, from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. there </pre>
<pre>will be a gun turn-in drive at 23 locations throughout the city.</pre>
<pre>The closest collection site to our ward is the Uptown Baptist </pre>
<pre>Church on 1011 W. Wilson. For more facts and all locations, click on:
<a href="http://33rdward.org/Gun.pdf" target="_blank">http://33rdward.org/Gun.pdf</a></pre>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">There’s an embedded link in the email that takes the reader
to a pdf document listing ten frequently asked questions regarding the gun
turn-in, typed in all caps, which is generally considered “yelling” on the Internet,
which I guess is appropriate: </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">1.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">WILL ANYONE ASK HOW OR WHERE I GOT
THE GUN? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Answer: No</span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: 45.8pt 91.6pt 137.4pt 183.2pt 229.0pt 274.8pt 320.6pt 366.4pt 412.2pt 458.0pt 503.8pt 549.6pt 595.4pt 641.2pt 687.0pt 732.8pt; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">2.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">WHERE CAN I USE THE PREPAID VISA
DEBIT CARD? (part of the gun turn-in incentive is debit cards in exchange for
firearms)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">A: anywhere that accepts Visa debit
cards.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">3.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">HOW MANY GUNS CAN I TURN IN? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">A: every gun turned in will be
accepted, and each gun will be exchanged for a prepaid debit card.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">4.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">WHAT HAPPENS TO GUNS AFTER I TURN
THEM IN? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">A: all guns turned in will be
destroyed.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">5.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">CAN I TURN IN A BB, REPLICA OR AIR GUN?
</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">A: yes, BB guns turned in will be
exchanged for a $10 debit card; toy guns will not. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">6.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">DO I HAVE TO GIVE MY NAME TO VISA IN
ORDER TO USE THE CARD?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">A: no.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">7.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">WHAT IF I CAN’T MAKE IT BETWEEN
10:00AM AND 4:00PM SATURDAY, JUNE 23, 2012? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">(For instance, what if I’m reading a
piece at the Paper Machete?) A: you can always dial 911 or turn in your gun to
a police station; however, only guns turned in on June 23 will be exchanged for
a prepaid debit card.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">8.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">WILL I GET ANY MONEY FOR MY BULLETS,
MAGAZINES OR HOLSTERS? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">A: no, however, you may turn them
in.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">9.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">CAN I TURN IN PART OF A GUN OR GUN
PARTS FOR A PREPAID VISA DEBIT CARD? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">A: no, but feel free to turn them
in.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">10.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">HOW DO I GET ADDITIONAL INFORMATION?
</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">A: call the CAPS Implementation
Office at 312-745-5900.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Perhaps you marked the solstice this week by going to one of
the museums that stayed open late – the MCA or the Peggy Notebaert; maybe you
got up extra early for the Sunrise Yoga Cruise with Shoreline Sightseeing; perhaps
you were lucky enough to catch JC Brooks and the Uptown Sound at the Pritzker
Pavilion; or maybe you got your Pagan on, erected a scale model of Stonehenge
in your backyard, and got stoned. However you chose to mark the advent of
summer in Chicago, approach this hottest of seasons with caution: buy a new
thing of sunscreen, chances are the old one in your medicine cabinet has
expired; the same goes for bug dope.
Splurge on a big floppy hat for added sun protection and a pair of
fashionable UV blocking sunglasses. If
you’re a beachgoer, buy a pair of flip flops or water shoes so your feet won’t
get all burnt up on hot sand and cut up on broken glass. And most importantly – no matter how high the
mercury rises keep a cool head, turn in your guns to your local police station,
and consider spending more time indoors. It might be the best decision you make
this season.</span></div>JPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09520199529674713619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4214408680895350855.post-42459315593164517322012-05-23T23:24:00.003-05:002012-05-23T23:34:23.070-05:00Little JP - for TW and MA<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZyKK8qLmSTw/T7233sEZhVI/AAAAAAAAARc/hwf8v-HEF8o/s1600/littlejess.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZyKK8qLmSTw/T7233sEZhVI/AAAAAAAAARc/hwf8v-HEF8o/s320/littlejess.jpg" width="216" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">I am eleven, perhaps twelve years old but I look
younger. On the back porch of the house on 1<sup>st</sup> Street, balancing
precariously on the edge of the railing above the 20 foot drop to the backyard
of our 100 year-old brownstone, I hold a Siamese kitten in one hand, and the
wand from a bottle of bubbles in the other.
Slightly out of focus, the photo looks older than it actually is. It is the early 80’s, but my friend Shelley
tells me it looks “quintessentially 70’s” due to the frizz in my hair and the
earth tones in my clothing. Straight
hair had come back into style full force by then, and I’d given up battling my
mane. My mother and sister both had tame
hair, and as an even younger child, I’d tried to brush my hair straight, which
only exacerbated the problem. I am so focused on the task at hand that I do not
acknowledge the camera, no doubt being held by my mother. I’m wearing pink plastic eyeglasses, they are
the second pair I owned – I was first fitted for glasses at age 10. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">The
overalls were a staple of my wardrobe; I owned two pairs – one blue and one
rusty orange, and wore them constantly. Newly transplanted to Brooklyn from an
unincorporated town outside of Geneva, Switzerland, where our closest neighbors
were dairy farmers, I was inexperienced with city life, or the idea that
clothes might be an important indicator of personality. Tracy McTeague
nicknamed me “Fannie Farmer” because of those overalls, and the name
stuck. My mother took me clothes
shopping every fall before the school year began, and it would be several
months before she bought me anything new to wear.</span><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Everything
about Brooklyn was foreign: the noise, the dirt, even the climate -- that first
summer I developed heat rash on my neck and under my arms from the humidity,
and when I started fourth grade that fall, was ostracized by my more culturally
adept peers. I had never gone to public
school, and was overwhelmed by the mad crush of unruly kids, the endless lines
that had to be stood in – to go to recess, to return from recess, to go to
music class; the assigned tables in the lunchroom; and the perpetual wrath of
the overworked, underpaid teachers who didn’t have the time or energy to take
note of any new students. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">I
hadn’t grown up watching American television, or any television for that
matter, and didn’t understand the cultural references that my peers took for
granted. I was fascinated by cartoons
and watched programs considered too young for me: Scooby Doo; Batman &
Robin; Woody Woodpecker. The teacher led a discussion of the made-for-TV movie <i><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VG2aJyIFrA">The Day After</a></i> in class the day after it aired, and I was the only student who
hadn’t watched it. When the teacher asked
why, I replied “I didn’t know it was on,” prompting riotous laughter. “How
could you have not known it was on?” My classmates asked. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">My
sister, six years my senior, went to a private high school and took the B67 bus
to Pearl Street every day. I went to
P.S. 321 because it was across the street from our house, on the corner of 1<sup>st</sup>
Street and 7<sup>th</sup> Avenue. My mother worked full time, and stayed at
work late into the night on a regular basis; my father stayed behind in
Switzerland, and our contact dropped to the occasional letters he typed on
crinkly, light weight airmail stationary, and two visits per year. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">I
became responsible for myself; I cooked Stouffer’s frozen and Bird’s Eye
boil-in-bag meals, and became more connected to the cats in our house than to
any human. We bred our female Siamese
cat with a male who belonged to one of my mother’s coworkers, and within weeks
there was a litter of four tiny, blind, pink kittens – two males and two
females. They were my constant
companions, following me up and down the three floors of our house, playing
with my shoelaces, bits of string, and each other. We found homes for three of
them, and kept one. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">This
photo used to make me sad because it symbolizes everything that was lost when
we moved back to Brooklyn: family life as it had once existed; the pastoral
landscape of rural Switzerland and the sense of safety that it afforded; the
easygoing attitudes of my teachers and classmates at the International School
where my quirkiness was noted, but accepted.
Looking at it now I can appreciate it for the strengths it symbolizes:
my self-reliance; my unruly, tomboyish ways; my lifelong bond with cats; and
the inward-focused intensity that grew with being transplanted to a foreign
place. I can’t say that I would do it all the same way if some magical being
offered me the chance to do it over, but it made me who I am – my strengths and
weaknesses, my dark sense of humor, my lifelong attachment to cats, my
traveler’s spirit, and my constant inner dialogue. It taught me to never feel alone, even when I
am the sole human in the frame.</span></div>JPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09520199529674713619noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4214408680895350855.post-88681302528062847072012-05-19T01:05:00.001-05:002012-05-20T00:33:47.332-05:00Me and Luke<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">If
there’s one bar I’ve always wanted to drink in, it’s the Mos Eisley Cantina on
Tatooine, from the first <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Star Wars</i>. As a child I was fascinated by the curious
assortment of aliens who patronized the establishment: the creature that looks
like a crocodile in a red beret sipping from something that resembles a Molotov
cocktail; the bug-eyed instrumentalists; the mousy creature asking the
bartender for another. Obi Wan Kenobe
saves Luke’s ass in that bar, establishing his role as protector and mentor.
Although Mos Eisley is clearly dangerous, it also serves all kinds, and I get
the feeling I might like it there.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">On
Easter Sunday of 2000, my sister and I split a list of phone numbers and sat in
our respective homes, she in Boston and me in Chicago, faced with the task of
calling relatives and family friends with unpleasant news. I couldn’t get
anyone on the phone –most people were traveling, and cell phones were still a
novelty. I left messages. I’d been at my boyfriend’s parents when I got the news
myself. There had been indications that this might happen. I’d had a bad feeling
the night before, while attending a concert at the Old Town School of Folk
Music. I don’t remember who was playing, but a blanket of despair came over me
during the performance and froze me in place. A thought had crept in on the fog outside and lodged itself in my brain:<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> what would it take for her to attempt suicide? </i>She was miserable, disheveled, her body
suffering from decades of alcohol abuse. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d
seen her wear anything besides sweatpants -- this from a woman who had a
personal shopper at Rodier on trendy Newbury Street in Boston, and updated her
wardrobe annually - at great expense. When my sister called the next day, I already knew what she
was going to say.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">I
have a tremor in my right hand, it manifests when I try to raise something to
my face: a glass of water; a utensil; a tube of lipstick. My husband noticed it
before I did, and made me see a neurologist. “Have you ever noticed,” the doctor asked,
“that the shaking subsides after a glass or two of wine?” “Um….no,” I replied. “The alcohol helps to calm the nerves,” he
explained. I’m fairly certain that’s the
only time alcohol will be prescribed to me. It turned out to be hereditary-- my
mother’s hands shake but I always thought it was from drinking (although I’m
sure that doesn’t help.) My grandfather’s hands shook, but I thought it was
from age. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">It
makes me self-conscious, and I do a lot with my left hand to hide it. I mouse with the left on computers, I lift
beverages with the left (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">what would
people think if they saw me lift a pint to my face with a shaky hand</i>?) It’s
a constant reminder of where I come from, of the shaky woman who birthed me. It
reminds me of the scene in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Empire
Strikes Back</i> when, in a fight for Luke’s soul, Darth Vader cuts off Luke’s
hand with a light saber and says, between mechanical breaths: “Luke, I am your
father.” Luke tries in vain to deny his parentage, but it’s no use; “Search
your feelings,” Vader says, “you know this to be true.” In a later scene, Luke
has been fitted with a prosthetic covered in a black glove. You can buy plastic
action figures of Luke that have a pink left hand and a black right hand. It is a symbol of Luke’s connection to the
Dark Side, and to the fact that he cannot escape his lineage. Like him, I have in my right hand a constant
reminder of where I come from, of the dark forces in my heritage.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">It
wasn’t until her suicide attempt that I began going to ACOA – Adult Children of
Alcoholics, in a post-war building on the north side that smells like
cigarettes and plastic chairs. The first time I read the list of ACOA traits was
like reading a high school detention report; revelatory, and disturbing. Listed
before me were all the traits that I had believed were part of my personality,
but as it turned out were just symptoms of growing up in a diseased household: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">We guess at what normal is; We judge
ourselves harshly</i>; and, the most damning one for me to read -- <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">It is easier for us to give in to others
than to stand up for ourselves</i>. At night she’d come up the stairs in a
drunken rage to yell at me, and I’d cower in a corner of my bedroom, silent,
waiting for the moment she’d slam the door behind her so hard that objects flew
from the walls. In the morning we’d both behave as if nothing had happened. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Thinking
about it makes me tired.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">In
my apartment, after leaving messages letting people know that mom was in the
hospital and we didn’t know what was going to happen, I manically cleaned to
distract myself. I took breaks when the phone rang and spoke to mom’s friends –
some in tears, some curt and businesslike. I hadn’t heard from any of them in years. None
of them knew what to say to me. In fact, I haven’t heard from any of them
since, except to decline invitations to my wedding the following year. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“Well,
at least it’s out in the open now,” Irene said after I’d told her this was the
culmination of a lifetime of drinking and depression. Her words fell like fresh
cat turds on my newly mopped kitchen floor. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">At
least now? Was she kidding me?</i> My mother had driven drunk to Irene’s
country house in Vermont, and gotten pulled over after sideswiping an 18 wheeler
and spent the night in jail. I’d had to
make a phone call to Irene that night too. At Irene’s home in Chevy Chase Maryland,
at another Easter, my mother had tripped down the stairs to the bathroom and thrown
up in Irene’s toilet. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">A
few nights after speaking to Irene I had a dream that my boyfriend and I were
looking for a new apartment and were considering renting a coach house from
Irene. The space was great, the rent was
reasonable, but there was a problem – there was a woolly mammoth that charged
the front door at random intervals. I
knew what it meant – there was an elephant in the room, and not just any
elephant – a prehistoric one, because this issue was fucking ancient, and
nobody wanted to deal with it, not even our prospective landlord.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">I
had just started a new job a couple months prior, and when I told my boss what
had happened he asked if I wanted to fly to Boston. I did.
Nobody knew how bad it was. If these were her final days, I wanted to be
by her side, limited as she was in her parenting. I got a half-price ticket on
United Airlines citing emergency circumstances (it still cost me over
$600). When I got to the hospital a
curtain had been pulled around her bed, and a social worker was asking her
questions. I struggled with the ethics
of listening in on a conversation that I wasn’t meant to hear, and in the end
my curiosity won out – the questions were important, and as her daughter, I
wanted answers. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“What
did you take?” The disembodied voice of the social worker asked.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“Half
a bottle of Tylenol, and half a bottle of Advil.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“Did
you realize that this could kill you?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“No.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“Knowing
now that it could kill you, do you think you would have done it anyway?” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">There
was a pause of maybe fifteen seconds, and then: “Yes, I think I would have.” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Having completed her interview, the social worker pulled back the curtain, and
my mother saw me sitting in a chair by the door.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“My
God,” she said, blinking behind her glasses.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“Hi
mom,” I said.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">She
behaved as though this was something that had happened <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">to</i> her, rather than something she’d done to herself. The details
were nauseating; she’d taken the pills just before meeting a friend who was in
town with her 8 year-old daughter. They
went to dinner and mom began to act strangely. Her friend asked what was wrong,
and she confessed to what she’d done. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">In
the hospital, she’d been prescribed what looked like a fast food shake to
combat the effects of the pills. She
aimed it toward me, the plastic straw pointing at my face and playfully said: “Would
you like a sip?” “No, thanks,” I said, and she laughed, as if it were some kind
of inside joke. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">She
reveled in the attention of her visitors, regaling them with tales of what had
happened: “I felt a strange feeling in my stomach…” she’d begin, as if this
were an adventure gone wrong, as if there were a different reason for us to be
here.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">I
slept like a rock that week in my sister’s apartment; sleep is my go-to habit
when faced with stress. I can sleep
through anything – I once slept through an earthquake.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">There
were conversations: with doctors, psychiatrists, aunts, family friends. The pills had damaged her liver, no one knew
how much. It was possible that she’d have to be on medication for the rest of
her life. “It upsets us because it makes us think about our own drinking,” one
family friend said, “was this a real suicide attempt or just a cry for help?”
asked another. Suddenly I was the expert, fielding questions I couldn’t
possibly know the answers to, soothing the fears of people coming out of the
woodwork. “It must be so hard knowing
she’s in the hospital,” they said, misunderstanding the most basic tenant of
the child raised in an alcoholic home: the time I least worry about my mother
is when she’s in the hospital. “I’ll
keep you posted,” I said. “Posted” was implicit for bad news – funereal
news. I’d brought a black dress with me
just in case.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">We
cleaned her house – me, my sister, and my two aunts. There were piles of unread
New York Times and New Yorkers clogging the place up and giving it the feel of
a recycling center. Her ageing cat that
I’d grown up with, who was now missing an eye and required a special low-ash
diet for his urinary tract health did his best to distract me. My aunt Jean
talked about her own struggles with alcohol; she hadn’t touched the stuff in
years. My aunt Donna filled the empty
spaces with conversation. She offered to cook for us, to give us wake-up calls
in the morning, and I welcomed it.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">At
the end of the week we met with the doctor, there was no permanent damage – she
wouldn’t have to take medication, and there were no complications to her
already compromised liver. The cosmic unfairness
of it hit me hard – she had cheated death, or at the very least, cheated
permanent damage. Meanwhile, much
younger people in my life would be culled too soon: Lisa, who died at 25 of a congenital heart defect, leaving behind a toddler; Brad, who died of cancer
before his 30<sup>th</sup> birthday; Dara, who died a few months ago at age 40.
Death, like violence, is random – you
can minimize your chances, but you can’t eliminate them. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">ACOA
was useful up to a point – about a year and a half into my tenure a couple
showed up who weren’t actually Adult Children of Alcoholics, but insisted on
attending meetings. “My name is Judy,”
one of them said, “and I’m an Adult Child of a Child Abuser…” Being a room full
of ACOAs, none of us was able to stand up for ourselves and tell them that
while their problems were real and terrible, the help they needed was not in
this room. It would have been funny if it hadn’t been so pathetic. One by one
the core group of people I had come to depend on began dropping out. The last
time I went, Judy was running the meeting. I haven’t been back since.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Luke
Skywalker and I have more in common than I first realized; we were both born
with one foot in Dark Side and the other in The Force. We are both survivors – children without real
parents, cobbling together our own families from the Wookiees, droids, and
occasional Ewoks that we come across over the course of our lives. We are human
children from another planet, and do not know Earth customs first hand. Like Luke, I cannot control where I came
from, but I can try to steer myself towards the future of my choosing. If I
could, I’d buy him a drink at the Mos Eisley Cantina. We could talk about Leia’s
attraction to bad boys like Han Solo, I could ask if Lando Calrissian likes to drink
Colt 45, and what the real reason is behind Yoda’s syntax. He could ask me about life on
Earth, what it’s like to use a toilet (I never once saw a bathroom in Star Wars,)
and we could compare right hands. I think we’d have a good time.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>JPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09520199529674713619noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4214408680895350855.post-16875834581162199632012-04-04T01:46:00.006-05:002012-04-04T01:57:32.319-05:00Oh Hai!I've been away from the blog for a while... here's a snapshot of what's happened in the past 3 months: I quit my job at the end of December, was accepted into a certificate program for creative writing at the University of Chicago, and have continued to write for Gapers Block and Chicago Theater Beat. In February I got to read for 2nd Story, and my piece was podcasted (here's the link: <a href="http://2ndstory.com/whatis/videos.php">2nd Story</a> go to the story titled "My Boyfriend"). I've continued to read at live literature/storytelling venues, and have a bunch of ideas on the back burner of what to do next, but haven't completed any of them yet. And I'm looking for a job, again, but at least this time it's on my own terms. <br />
<br />
Earlier tonight I read at <a href="http://www.tuesdayfunk.org/">Tuesday Funk</a>, the text of what I read is below. I hope to start posting again regularly, it's been quite a while.<br />
<br />
Thanks for reading,<br />
<br />
J.H.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><u>Fear of Commitment</u></div><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Although we had been together for five years, and I had no plans to date anyone else, when my boyfriend and I got engaged to be married, I totally freaked out. I didn’t have the greatest model of marriage from my parents, and I was afraid that this spelled the end of fun, and the beginning of bitter, angry bullshit. We lived in an old apartment with a toilet that constantly needed to have the handle jiggled to make it stop running, and I was distracted by the sound of it when we sat down to have a serious discussion. “I’m scared that getting married will mean the end of fun,” I said, and cavalier as hell, he said: “The fun never stops with me, baby.” “The toilet’s running,” I said, and to prove to me how much fun he could be in the domestic realm, he stood up, walked towards the bathroom and said “come here you.” </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Unlike the toilet, I could actually run away. As it happened, my friend Joanie introduced me to her friend Jeff at around this time, and he seemed really intriguing – he was a writer, he was young, he lived in London, which seemed very exotic, and we began an email correspondence, sending each other flirtatious, well crafted messages that seemed harmless until Joanie and I decided to fly to London to visit him. As soon as I saw Jeff at baggage claim I realized that I wasn’t attracted to him, I was attracted to the persona I had constructed in my mind using minimal email conversations and a long ago memory of a boy I went to summer camp with who was really punk rock and whose name was Arrow – which is the coolest name ever. Jeff looked like a sock monkey, we could barely hold a conversation in person, and I was stuck with him for the next several days. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">The three of us decided to make a side trip to Amsterdam; Jeff said he knew his way around, so we bought cheap tickets and made the trip over, and it quickly became apparent that Jeff didn’t really know his way around at all. He’d been once, for a weekend, and just wanted to impress us with his knowledge of the continent. We booked a crappy hotel room that had three cots in it, and was down the hall from a communal toilet that was always warm with the body heat of whoever had just used it, and couldn’t handle more than three sheets of toilet paper at a time. There was a shower in the same room with the toilet, but Joanie and I reduced our hygienic rituals to rinsing our armpits in the sink in our room while Jeff waited for us outside. Joanie and I slept on top of our cots, fully clothed, even covered our pillows with t-shirts because those cots looked like they were crawling with VD, or at the very least, scabies, but Jeff had no problem stripping down to his boxers and getting in the covers of the bed to prove that he wasn’t afraid of getting VD from his cot. He said: “This is the nicest hotel I’ve stayed at in Amsterdam,” which didn’t make me feel any better about the situation.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Joanie and I knew nothing about Amsterdam, except that it was rife with marijuana, so we went to a coffee shop – the kind where you can buy marijuana legally, where we were presented with a menu – it looked just like any menu, detailing all the different kinds of weed we could order. We didn’t know the difference, we’re from Chicago. At the very bottom of the list was the cheapest item on the menu: a pre-rolled joint. This was perfect because none of us were exactly experts in the art of rolling, so we ordered the thing, lit up, and began passing it around. It wasn’t until my third toke that I remembered that weed in Amsterdam is much more powerful than the skunk weed I was somewhat familiar with in Chicago, and that I probably shouldn’t smoke it the same way - with deep intakes of breath, and holding it in as long as possible before exhaling. By the time I remembered this it was too late - I was higher than I’d ever been in my life - we all were. It had taken us two minutes to get there, and now we had to figure out what to do with the rest of the evening. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">We decided to go for a walk, and Jeff led the way. I experienced everything as if I were remembering something that had happened a long time ago, and not experiencing something in the moment, and it took me a long time to respond to stimulus. I felt like I was half asleep on my couch, watching bad TV. We walked past a street corner where someone had fallen, or been knocked down, and was bleeding and I thought: “I wonder if we should find a cop?” And a few minutes later, when I was able to process my next thought, it was this: I hadn’t seen any cops since we’d arrived in Amsterdam, and as far as I could tell, there was no reason to have any because pretty much everything was legal. I’m sure there are many cultural legacies of Holland in general, and of Amsterdam in particular, but our decisions had led us to explore what is essentially a theme park of vice: prostitution is legal, marijuana is legal, there are sex shows everywhere, it’s like Times Square in the 70’s, minus the weaponry and the Son of Sam. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">My motor skills had slowed considerably, and I found myself walking several feet behind Jeff and Joanie as Jeff led us through winding cobblestone streets, and through the red light district, where women stood behind glass panels at street level, tapping at the glass to get our attention – I guess it looked like we were some kind of threesome looking for a situation, and the sound of all those women tapping at the glass was overwhelming to my auditory sensibilities, it sounded like rain falling on a tin roof, it got louder and louder, and that’s when the paranoia kicked in. In my mind Jeff and Joanie hated me, and were walking ahead of me because they were trying to get rid of me. I was never going to make it back home again; I was going to end up standing behind a wall tapping on the glass at passersby, never to see Chicago or my fiancé ever again. I tried to psych myself out of that idea but it was a really persistent thought, and every time I managed to snap myself out of I became panicked with the ever-increasing distance between myself and my two cohorts, and the cycle began again. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Finally we stopped at a felafel place where the three of us stared mutely at a short order cook who dumped frozen felafel into boiling oil; we stared at his every move like it was the most fascinating thing any of us had ever seen. We were the only ones in the restaurant, and after feeling the weight of our zombie-like attention on him for several minutes, the short order cook looked at us and said: “you’re pretty quiet.” To which we said nothing.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">I slowly began to come down from my high, and I was pretty sure that Joanie didn’t hate me, but I was still suspicious of Jeff. I waited for Jeff to use the bathroom before I leaned over to Joanie, mustered up what was left of my cognitive powers and said: “Joanie, I thought you haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaated me.” Several seconds passed before Joanie responded. “I don’t hate you,” she said, “I love you.” That was about all could express to each other, but it was enough. I’m not sure how Jeff remembers that trip, or Joanie, or the felafel guy, but I remember it as the time I flew 4,000 miles away from home, and smoked the strongest pot in the world with a man who looked like a sock monkey before realizing that the man I wanted to be with was waiting for me in an apartment in Chicago with a runny toilet, and that if he would still have me, I should get married to him while I still had the chance. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">I did eventually make it home, and I did get married. I didn’t smoke pot again for six years.</span></div>JPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09520199529674713619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4214408680895350855.post-71255635223717952572011-12-20T17:40:00.005-06:002011-12-20T20:32:30.544-06:00Hanukkah, Thanksgiving, and the lazy Susan<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">My husband saw it before I did. It was Thanksgiving, and we’d made the drive from our house on the northwest side of Chicago to the western suburb of LaGrange to spend the holiday with my in-laws. “Mom, why is there a swastika on the kitchen table?” he asked. I looked to where he was pointing, and saw a wooden lazy Susan that looked like it was handmade, was an antique, and was sectioned off into quadrants with spindles of wood coming from the center, each one finishing in a right angle that, while useful as a kitchen storage unit, gave it a rather unfortunate appearance. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“What swastika?” my mother-in-law asked, incredulous. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“This one right here!” my husband said, his voice rising. She looked at him, unblinking. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“The lazy Susan,” I finally said, “it looks like a swastika.” She walked over to the table and leaned her diminutive frame over the object in question. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“Oh,” she said, “well now that you point it out I see it, but I never would have otherwise.” I stood a fair distance from the lazy Susan, eyeing it from the kitchen counter, as if getting too close to it might be dangerous. Seeing the look on my face she said, “Oh, she doesn’t like it, I can tell.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“It’s,” I began, and lost whatever it was that I’d begun to say. “I mean, it’s funny because…” and I lost my words again, resorting to sticking my hands out at my sides, palms up. “I mean, I wouldn’t go promoting it...”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“Where did you get this thing?” my husband asked.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“At a garage sale.” What I really wanted to know was whose clever idea was it to make a lazy Susan in the shape of a symbol of tyrannical power, and more importantly, what else was up for grabs at that garage sale?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">I have a long and complicated history with Judaism, which goes a little something like this: my maiden name is Cohen, I wasn’t raised religiously, and by most traditions I wouldn’t be considered Jewish because my mother isn’t – she was raised Christian Scientist, and didn’t meet a Jewish person until she went to college on the east coast, and then married one. She divorced one too, but it still counts.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">For most of my life people have not only assumed that I am Jewish, but have regarded me through that lens to explain certain behaviors - an appreciation for good pickles and matzoh ball soup for instance, and a tendency to avoid overt Christianity and the south. Over the years I’ve had various reactions to this, ranging from guilt that I don’t know more about Judaism, to anger that people would have the gall to assume anything about me based on my name. I once hung up on a teenage boy who called to ask for my financial support of a Jewish organization because it bothered me that I’d ended up on a list of prospects simply because of my name, and I was irrevocably peeved when a former boss of mine asked, on Ash Wednesday, “so when is your holiday?” My high school chorus teacher was an African-American woman who taught us negro spirituals. Halfway through "</span><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_59D0uNnqc0&feature=related"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">I've been 'buked and I've been scorned</span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">" she looked up from her seat on the piano bench with a smirk on her face. She turned her attention back to playing the piano, and when she looked at me again was smiling broadly. Finally she stopped playing completely and burst out laughing. "I'm sorry," she said between breaths, "but you have never looked more Jewish to me than you do right now." <br />
<br />
By the same token, it feels wrong to have my Jewishness denied. The first winter I spent in Chicago I was surprised that the office buildings downtown don't display menorahs side by side with Christmas trees the way they do in New York, and was shocked when a coworker asked me if Cohen was a Catholic name. <br />
<br />
Years ago I felt the need to learn more about “my” religion, (although I never felt that way about Christian Science), and kept renewing the same book on Judaism from the Bezazian branch of the Chicago Public Library before finally returning it, unread. A Quaker friend of mine once gave me a menorah that had belonged to his deceased partner, and I asked a Jewish colleague to phonetically spell out the prayer that accompanies the lighting of the Hanukkah candles. For one holiday season I observed the candle lighting tradition, and now the menorah decorates the top of our television, less a religious item than a household decoration.<br />
<br />
One less letter and my name would have been Chen - would people have expected me to speak fluent Mandarin Chinese and make Peking Duck on the weekends? The worst offense was when people told me that I <i>looked</i> Jewish - for those of you who’ve never met her; I look exactly like my Scotch-Irish shikse mother. How on earth can a person look Jewish anyway? I mean, I know what people were trying to get at - I wear glasses, I have curly hair that goes frizzy in the humidity, and I listen to NPR. Nonetheless, these indicators would amount to nothing if it weren’t for the name Cohen, and ever since I took my husband’s name nobody has assumed that there’s anything Semitic about me. <br />
<br />
Now that I don’t carry the name Cohen, I feel a little nostalgic for it whenever I see it in print, and I enjoy being called Cohen by people who knew me before I was married. My husband's name is Palmer, which carries no such religious weight, although it should - the first Palmers made a pilgrimage to the holy land and returned with palm leaves as proof of their journey.<br />
<br />
A couple years ago I accidentally learned that my father’s family had lost six of nine children in the holocaust. I overheard my father tell this to someone else, which is pretty much how I’ve learned everything about my family, not much got passed on to my generation from either side. Knowledge, while highly valued in my family – going to college was pretty much a given for me, and both sets of my grandparents had access to higher education, is treated like something one should already have, not something to be sought out or shared. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Compounding the problem is the fact that my father is a high functioning autistic, and he doesn’t react well to confrontation. When I overheard him casually answer “yes,” to the question: “did you family lose anyone in the shoah?” Anger rose up from my stomach, through my esophagus and into the back of my throat, anger that I’d gone my whole life without knowing this crucial information, and I compressed it into small, pinched statements like: “that’s the first I’ve ever heard of this, dad.” “Oh?” he asked. “Do you have a family tree somewhere with the names?” I asked. “Oh no,” he answered, with a wave of a hand, “I had one once, years ago, but I threw it away.” The person my father was talking to said:“that’s criminal,” and I was glad to have a witness. “Why did you throw it away?” I asked, gripping the stem of my wine glass as if the only thing keeping me from committing patricide was that my hands were full. “Well, that’s not so nice,” he said - the same reaction he gives when anything upsets the flow of his daily life; like when the trains are running late, or he gets overcharged at the supermarket. “Not nice?” I wanted to say, “You know what's not nice is? Not nice is letting your dead, persecuted relatives be forgotten. Does the phrase ‘never forget’ mean anything to you? People purposely pass on this information to their children. Good job, dad.” What I actually said was: “It doesn’t matter if it’s not nice, it’s important.” </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">That night I woke alone in the dark, my subconscious wouldn’t let me sleep, or maybe it was the spirits of my murdered relatives. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Since then I’ve gotten some information from my dad’s side of the family, a photocopy of a handwritten family tree, with the words: “died, Hitler era”, next to those who didn’t survive. I’ve had conversations with my second cousin Emilie, who grew up knowing some of our relatives who had numbers tattooed on their forearms. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">From our email exchanges and phone conversations, it seems like Emilie and I have a lot in common: we both love to travel, have interests in the arts, and don’t have children. When I went to Senegal a couple years ago she connected me with a friend of hers who lives there, and we’ve brought up the idea of visiting Lithuania, where our ancestors are from. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">I’ve attended Friday night services once or twice, and while I kind of feel like a giant poser, when someone wishes me “Shabbat shalom,” it’s nice. I’ve also become – not obsessed, but very interested in holocaust documentaries. I generally watch them by myself when my husband is out, which sounds dark and depressing, but I just can’t imagine snuggling up with a bowl of popcorn to watch footage of Soviet prisoners being let do their deaths on the eastern front, and interviews with octogenarian survivors describing acts of vengeance and resistance with a ferocity that I have never heard in anyone’s voice. I add the films to our Netflix instant cue, where my husband sees them, and reads the titles aloud before scrolling right past them: “<a href="http://firstrunfeatures.com/mengeledvd.html"><i>Forgiving Dr. Mengele</i></a>...” “You don’t have to watch that,” I’ll say, “That’s a special movie, just for me.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">I’m amazed at the stories of individual acts of defiance; the group of prisoners who broke into an SS locker room, changed into guards uniforms, and stole a vehicle. When they drove to the prison gate, and the guard manning it didn’t lift it, one of the prisoners shouted “what is this, how long do we have to wait?” The gate was lifted, and they drove right out of Auschwitz. Then there was the band of prisoners who hoodwinked a bunch of SS guards into meeting them, alone, in a workshop under the premise of having a pair of boots for them to try on, and killed them one by one with an axe. They were able to do so because they knew that since the guards were German they would keep their appointments, and would show up on time, which sounds almost like a joke. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">I was dumbfounded by the film <i><a href="http://www.pbs.org/pov/inheritance/">Inheritance</a></i> which follows Monica Hertwig as she tries to sift through what it means to be the daughter of Amon Goth, who was portrayed by Ralph Fiennes in <i>Schindler’s List</i>. It wasn’t until she saw that film that she was confronted with what her father had really done, and in a blind, ignorant rage sent an angry letter to Steven Spielberg accusing him of spreading lies. I watched all four plus hours of <a href="http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19720919/REVIEWS/209190301/1023"><i>The Sorrow and the Pity</i></a>, whose subject is the French Vichy government collaboration with the Nazis, and all six episodes of a TV series called: <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0446610/">Auschwitz: the Nazis and the “final solution</a></i>,” hosted by Linda Ellerbee, to name a few. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">I’m not sure what I hope to gain from this inundation of documentary material, sometimes I wonder if, in all the footage I’ve watched, I’ve seen my relatives stepping off cattle cars for selection, or witnessed images of their emaciated bodies. Sometimes I think I can guess with pretty close accuracy at what must have happened to them, but that’s not the same as knowing.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Absorbing all this visual information has done something to me, given more weight to my center of gravity, made me aware of how easily and loosely the word “Nazi” gets used to describe the most inane displays of stubbornness, and as a stand-in for curse words, and it’s made me even less tolerant of the phrase “everything happens for a reason.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Driving home from Thanksgiving, my husband and I discussed the lazy Susan. “I know she didn’t see it, but what if that had been my first Thanksgiving with your parents?” I asked. “Well, at least it was a lazy Swastika.” I considered what it would be like to be blind to the unintentionally swastika shaped objects in the world. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Tomorrow is the first night of Hanukkah, and maybe I’ll dig out the candles I bought for the menorah last year but never used, and maybe I won’t. On Sunday, my husband and I will make the same drive out to LaGrange that we made at Thanksgiving, and despite the fact that none of us believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ, we will celebrate his birth by sharing food and exchanging gifts. I just hope the lazy Susan is gone by the time we get there.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div>JPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09520199529674713619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4214408680895350855.post-38238748100151208282011-09-28T20:48:00.007-05:002011-09-29T20:50:32.588-05:00Wednesday afternoon (for chjackson)<span id="internal-source-marker_0.6338778671067454" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s Wednesday afternoon, and I’m busy pretending to look at office supplies online as a cover for the conversation I’m having with my husband via text message. My Smartphone sits in my lap, and I sit in my cube, which isn’t even a real cube - it’s a computer monitor on a shelf underneath a row of cabinets with a divider along the right side to keep me from socializing too much with my coworkers. I’ve threatened to bore a hole into the divider with power tools and fashion a window out of clear sheet protectors and double sided tape, or failing that, paste a photo of my face on the other side of the wall so that it looks like I’m hanging out with my coworkers even when I’m on my side of what sometimes feels like a <a href="http://www.google.com/imgres?q=rodeo+chute&hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&hs=dX8&sa=X&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&biw=1134&bih=693&tbm=isch&prmd=imvns&tbnid=_hgd3C3ckHdfbM:&imgrefurl=http://calpolynews.calpoly.edu/news_releases/2006/May/rodeo_photos.html&docid=Pb-3A7J50bXocM&w=500&h=335&ei=3B-FTpbcMPHUiAL0vqDJDA&zoom=1&iact=rc&dur=463&page=2&tbnh=146&tbnw=193&start=12&ndsp=15&ved=1t:429,r:3,s:12&tx=98&ty=90">rodeo bucking chute</a>. </span><span id="internal-source-marker_0.6338778671067454" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br />
<br />
<span id="internal-source-marker_0.6338778671067454" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">On the left of my computer monitor is a color printer, which jerks to life when someone sends a job to it, and hiccups its way through the four colors of the printing rainbow: yellow, cyan, magenta, and black. If I’m feeling gracious, I pick up the printed sheets from the output tray and hand them to whoever sent the job over, if not, it’s owner walks behind me and reaches into the narrow space between my body and the printer, their arm appearing in my peripheral vision like a sun spot. I steal a glance at my phone to catch up on the latest communiqué from my husband. “My hand feels weird,” I write to him. “too much mousing or something different” he replies. “I mouse with the left, and this is my right. Must be all the handjobs I give you in my sleep,” I write back, and then quake with silent laughter at my own joke. A couple minutes pass with no response. “Is this thing on?” I type. “laughter, applause.” comes the answer, with a laughing, yellow-faced emoticon at the end.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I leave my desk to take advantage of the birthday cake in the break room, a sheet cake that makes an appearance on the last Wednesday of the month, with an 8 ½ x 11 sheet of paper taped onto the cake box that reads “Happy Birthday September Staff!”, which is almost as personal as: “It Is Your Birthday.” I cut off a piece with the plastic spatula that’s been brought into service, and plop the heaping pile of sugar onto a snack sized Styrofoam plate. The frosting is so sweet it makes me cough as if I’d accidentally walked through a dust cloud.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">If you’d told me a year ago, or even six months ago, that this is how I would spend my time at work, I’d have been incredulous. I’ve been looking for a job for almost two and a half years now. I know, I have a job doing administrative work in a gym, but I mean a real job, one that I go to on purpose in the morning, and not just because I need the insurance and it makes me look like a better candidate if I have a current place of employment listed on my resume. I’ve had some promising leads, some near brushes with success, but like Charlie Brown winding up to kick the football out from under Lucy’s fingertips, I land on my cartoon ass every single time.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">One of the directors thanks me profusely for entering codes into the database, which is pretty much like thanking me for having descended from apes. He tries to be gracious, but it comes off condescending. “Hey thanks so much for getting all those codes in so quickly, you’re a rock star,” he says, breezing past me. He uses the term “rock star” to fabricate a sense of camaraderie into our exchange, a sense of “we’re all in this together”, but what it sounds like is “thanks for using about as much brain power as Koko the gorilla.”</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Meanwhile, I’ve been telling stories. It gives me something to be proud of, something to be good at, something to hone. I’ve told stories in front of audiences as small as twenty, and as large as seven hundred. I’ve told funny stories, and really sad ones. It keeps my brain alive. To make myself feel better at work, I post fliers and postcards for the readings that I appear at, and when the ape-loving director sees one, he says “Well I just have to say, I am impressed.” Impressed in the way that it’s impressive to watch Koko sign for a banana? Impressed in the way that it’s impressive that Koko knows how to use a keyboard? He is eight years younger than me and takes an aw shucks, you young ‘uns approach to our interactions, talking about the old days before he was married, when he used to be a performer himself, just like me. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">My colleague C is getting married soon, and someone asks where she’s going on her honeymoon. “We’re going to Mexico, and we’re going to swim with dolphins,” she says. I mishear the word “dolphins” for “Daschunds”, and I tell her so. Together we fabricate a scenario where she swims with a pod of the tiny dogs, and has a very spiritual experience. “You don’t have to fly to Mexico to do that,” I tell her, “just get a whole herd of them into Lake Michigan with you, people will come from miles around to be part of it, you could start your own small business.” Taking on the persona of a Daschund swimming participant, I say “It was amazing, they’re so beautiful. They’re so smart; they knew I was pregnant before I did!” </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">C speaks in a secret code that’s not very hard to crack when she thinks she’s saying something dirty. While relating the plotline of a Sex & The City episode, she tells me that the characters were “doozin’ it”, and refers to the female genitalia as “cucini”. I look the word up to confirm a suspicion – it’s a conjugation of the Italian word “cucinare”, which means “to cook,” specifically: the present tense, second person singular. I inform her of this, and add that if she ever goes to Italy, and the need to describe her genitals arises, she might have to use a different word. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Initially I wrote C off as too young and way too perky to be anything but a pain in my ageing, bitter ass, but as we spent time together in the confines of the workplace I grew to understand that beneath that Noxzema-fresh exterior and can-do spirit is a girl just as dark and funny as any I’ve met. When I bought a new hairdryer she said “that’s better than using the ones in the locker room, there are ladies who dry their pubic hair with those.” I registered surprise. “You’ve never noticed that?” she asked. “I try to notice as little as possible in the locker room,” I explained, my mind reeling with countless images of sagging naked breasts and bent over asses, women of all ages and shapes in various states of undress. I have noticed that sometimes they sit naked on the benches, and I haven’t sat on one since, but I’ve never noticed anybody blow-drying their pubes. “Do you see them sometimes styling it?” I ask, “do people use product? Is anybody feathering their pubic hair into a Farrah Fawcett ‘do?”</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I can’t see into the future; I have no idea how many of my Wednesday afternoons will be spent this way. When I do move on, I imagine that it will be a little bit like leaving prison. I haven’t had to wear civilian clothes or deal with rush hour crowds for over two years now. I go downtown so rarely that I get spooked by the wide streets and tall buildings, overwhelmed by the crowds of people surging past me. The blue line sounds so loud to me now that I plug my eardrums like a tourist when it rolls into the station, and I am genuinely shocked when confronted with the dichotomy of shoppers on Michigan Avenue and the homeless people who wander the same street in the hopes of a handout. Sometimes I think that in the time since I lost my job I’ve become feral, other times I feel like I’ve become the person I was meant to be.</span>JPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09520199529674713619noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4214408680895350855.post-47423403484907488602011-09-26T22:36:00.000-05:002011-09-26T22:36:00.345-05:00Addendum to 20 Milligrams<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VJfgb36YZJY/ToFEhZVuhmI/AAAAAAAAARY/DNuRCV9vnCo/s1600/20mg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VJfgb36YZJY/ToFEhZVuhmI/AAAAAAAAARY/DNuRCV9vnCo/s1600/20mg.jpg" /></a></div>I saw this on a signpost on the corner of Chicago & Milwaukee avenues yesterday. JPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09520199529674713619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4214408680895350855.post-23921459254404090622011-09-17T23:40:00.001-05:002011-09-17T23:41:10.605-05:0020 Milligrams<div class="MsoNormal">I defaced my work ID card this week; I cut out a glossy photo of a brown egg from a Clinique ad that I found in a magazine in the break room, and pasted it onto my ID so that it covers my bemused 1.5” face but leaves my hair and shoulders as they were. Glancing at it, you’d never notice the complete absence of features. The day I posed for that picture I’d already submitted to a urine test and a background check (which as far as I know never came in, eventually they put me on payroll despite the fact that I could have a rap sheet as long as a gorilla’s arm). By the time I submitted to the ID photo, I was pretty sure this job was going to be a joke, something I’d do for the next six to twelve weeks until one of the other jobs that I was interviewing for – real jobs, came through. I thought it would be something I would omit from my resume. It would be nice to have a buffer between me and unemployment, it would give me a better chance at getting a real job, and at the time that I accepted it there was talk of ending unemployment benefits for people who had reached the one year mark, which was getting precariously close. I was tired of the effort of looking for a job, the constant self-promotion, the interviews, the rejections, the dusting myself off and starting again. Psychologically, I didn’t want to cross the one year mark. I’d done well with taking advantage of my free time and pursuing travel, volunteering, working odd jobs, and pursuing writing opportunities, and hadn’t spent a lot of time feeling down about my situation but I didn’t want to celebrate another unemployed birthday, another unemployed anniversary, another unemployed marker of any kind.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">None of the other jobs I interviewed for were offered to me, and time passed. I took advantage of the lax dress code and proximity of my workplace to my home, sometimes rolling out of bed and literally wearing what I’d slept in to work. More time passed, and as it became clear that I would have to do something to mark the time (as if I were doing time, which in a way I am – clocking in and out, counting hours, minutes even), I decided to take advantage of what there was. I signed up for a physical fitness course, and then a fitness challenge. 9 months later I had lost 20 pounds and dropped 2 dress sizes. I’d made some friends too, and made strides in my writing, connecting with the storytelling circuit in Chicago and making regular appearances at different venues. It wasn’t all bad, part of what allowed me to do all that writing was that my job wasn’t taking much out of me.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">It had its costs; I wasn’t feeling good about myself. 6 months into the job, I called the EAP line (employee assistance program, a confidential service that gets promoted on the company website as a resource for when things are getting grim) and they literally put me on hold, which made me think of that old Rodney Dangerfield chestnut that he rolled out during his “I don’t get no respect” era. When I finally spoke to someone, they asked me if it was an emergency. It wasn’t. They apologized for asking to call me back, but they were short staffed, or maybe the last seven people who called were all about to jump off the same bridge together, and it was taking up all their manpower to handle it. I told them they could call me back, but I couldn’t take the call when they did. I don’t have any privacy at work, and had snuck outside to place the call out to them. Then one morning I woke up crying, and couldn’t stop. The irony of the situation wasn’t lost on me – I’d managed to keep my spirits up the entire time I’d been out of work, and the reality of what kind of job I’d had to accept is what finally did me in. I called the EAP line again, and the woman on the other end of the line had to tell me to calm down because she couldn’t understand what I was saying. She connected me with a therapist in my neighborhood, and in short order I had a prescription for Prozac in my hands.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Here’s the thing about depression: it’s boring. It’s something I’ve lived with for a long time, probably forever, and prescription medication is a wonderful, life-changing thing, and without it I’d probably live in a halfway house or worse by now, but talking about depression is just, well, depressing. I was depressed for fourteen years before I was treated for it the first time, in my early 20s. The fact that I went fourteen years without anyone noticing is remarkable, but not surprising, considering my family. I had moments during those years, months even, when I was able to rise above it, but I lost a lot too, things I’ll never get back: time, opportunities, and relationships. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The first time it was prescribed to me, Prozac was a wonder drug. Everyone was on it, or talking about it, or knew people who were taking it. I’d read enough to know that mine was far from the worst case; in high school I read <a href="http://www.sylviaplath.de/plath/belljar.html">The Bell Jar</a>, and resonated with it deeply, and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Yellow_Wallpaper">The Yellow Wallpaper</a>. In college I read <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Girl-Interrupted-Susanna-Kaysen/dp/0679746048">Girl, Interrupted</a> (I went to a reading by the author and got my book signed by her), and still later I watched the film <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099040/">An Angel at my Table</a>, and was so awestruck that I read the book by the same name, all 434 pages of it, and then went on to read <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Faces-Water-Janet-Frame/dp/0807609579/ref=pd_sim_b1">Faces in the Water</a>, by the same author, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_Frame">Janet Frame</a>. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">All these stories had a similar theme; they were about young women, generally raised in the middle-class, generally from educated families, who were crippled by depression and had to be treated for it, sometimes with dramatic remedies like shock-treatment. I became the resident expert on depression in my family, which is funny in retrospect (sort of), because one by one all the women in my family were diagnosed with and treated for depression. Suddenly I was a trailblazer; my female relatives came to me for advice on medication, to discuss side effects, and to soundboard. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Prozac was expensive in those days, and I didn’t have any money. I slowly weaned myself off it and began pursuing other methods – I started taking St. John’s Wort, I installed full-spectrum light bulbs in my apartment, I bought a SADD lamp for the long Chicago winters. For the most part, it worked. There was the occasional party that I’d flake out on at the last minute because I just couldn’t peel myself off the couch, the odd get-together that I’d mysteriously be absent from, or sleep through, but for the most part I was functional. When things got serious with the man who became my husband I was up front about my history with depression, figuring if it was going to be a deal breaker it was better to find out early on. Apart from a short stint in my early 30s when I was dealing with some crap with my dad, I was able to get along without medication until recently. Here’s the thing about me and medication: deep down, I feel like I shouldn’t be on it. I feel like its fine for everyone else in the world to be medicated, but I should be strong enough to do without it. It’s stupid, I know. I don’t judge anyone else for taking happy pills, but I judge myself. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Prozac is pretty much the same now as it was the first time I took it, only now it’s cheap as hell. A 90 day supply of Fluoxetine, the generic for Prozac, costs me less than $8. It used to cost me almost $3 per pill. With prices like that, who the hell wouldn’t want a little help? I was recently turned down for a job that I was pretty sure was going to be offered to me; a job that, unlike the countless others I’ve interviewed for in the 2+ years since I was laid off, I actually wanted. It hurt, and I’m trying to figure out what to do next. I have my pills, and I have my husband, and I have my writing, and I have my 20 pounds lighter, stronger body. I know I’m blessed, but sometimes, as my friend Bridget once said: “it’s hard to wake up in the morning to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">it could be worse</i>.” So here’s to today, and here’s to tomorrow, here’s to hoping for better things, and here’s to the 20 milligrams of magic that keep the whole thing going.</div>JPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09520199529674713619noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4214408680895350855.post-34388681829832558612011-08-03T21:48:00.001-05:002011-08-03T21:49:29.586-05:00The GrandSLAMMan, was that fun! I got to meet <a href="http://www.petersagal.com/">Peter Sagal</a>, who hosted the event, a bunch of Moth people, and the 9 other featured storytellers. I told my story in front of a sold out crowd at the Park West, where something like 700 people hung on my every word. 14 of my friends and family came out to see me, and hooted and hollered for me when I got called onstage. I even got to use a green room, which I haven't done since high school.<br />
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It was magic.<br />
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I'm tired and spaced out now, and a little sad that it's over. Below is my story, the theme of the night was "identity crisis". Enjoy. YouTube clips to follow.<br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 12pt;">I woke with an urgent need to urinate.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 12pt;">I slipped out from my date’s bed, and tiptoed out to the open door of the bathroom, where I heard the familiar sound of a leaky faucet; a thin, but persistent stream of water falling from an old tap into an equally old basin. Like all nearsighted people, I squinted just to make sure I was standing in the right place. I stood fully in the open doorway, and squinted again, a little harder this time. I then took a couple steps into the bathroom, and although I was fairly certain of my powers of deduction, squinted a third time for good measure</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 12pt;">That’s when I saw the figure of a man standing in front of the toilet, staring at me as if I were a naked, near-sighted apparition come to haunt him. The sound of falling water, I realized too late, was in fact the sound of a man taking a wiz. Although I'd been standing fully naked for a good thirty seconds, I instinctively covered my breasts with one hand, my privates with the other, and struck a pose like that of Botticelli’s "The Birth of Venus". I ran back into the bedroom, still as full of urine as when I left, and jumped under the covers. "What's going on?" my date asked sleepily. "I had to pee, and I went into the bathroom and your roommate was in there, and he saw me naked, and now I still have to pee, but I'm not going back in there," I said. He was remarkably unfazed by this turn of events and easily fell back asleep. Somehow I was able to do the same, despite the orb of urine in my bladder.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 12pt;">I began spending a lot of time in the apartment where I’d been a myopic flasher, and although I did learn my lesson – I never went anywhere in that apartment without my glasses ever again, I felt awkward around the roommate, Randy. At least once a day I would remember that Randy had seen me not just naked, but naked, bent over, and squinting. It was a hard image to shake, and it made me shy around him. I’ve never been good with speaking up; I’ve never sent dish back in a restaurant, even if it’s not the one I ordered, I spent the fifth grade being best friends with a girl I didn’t like because I couldn’t bring myself to tell her the truth, and I once allowed a teacher to call me by the wrong name for an entire semester rather than correct her. This got weird at parent teacher conference day, but at least I didn’t have to be the one to let her know. There was no way I was bringing up the naked incident. The fact that Randy was gay didn’t make me feel better about my indiscretion – if he’d been straight, maybe I could have convinced myself that I’d given him a free show, but I had inflicted full frontal, squinty nudity on a man who wanted none of it. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 12pt;">As our friendship developed, so did my nagging sense that the naked incident was going to become my tell tale heart – I wasn’t going to be able to relax and be myself around Randy until we had openly acknowledged that this had happened. While it turned out that we had quite a bit in common: we both had cats named “Whiskers” when we were kids; the state of Indiana was a cause for anxiety to both of us; and we were both slightly lactose intolerant but refused to give up dairy; he never once mentioned the incident. Had I really scarred him that badly? </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 12pt;">I was trying to get better at speaking up, and I made it my mission to clear the air with Randy; after all, if I couldn’t confront this, how was I ever going to be able to send back food at restaurants, or tell people my name, or whether or not I liked them? We made a date to go to the Chicago Historical Society, and went to lunch at a diner afterwards. This was, I decided, the moment. “So, Randy,” I began, twirling a French fry in a puddle of ketchup on my plate, “do you remember the time when, um, I stayed over a long time ago…” I searched his face for some sign – some light of recognition, some indication that he knew where I was going with this. Nothing. “And it was the middle of the night, and I had to pee…” I searched his face again. Still nothing, this guy had a serious poker face. “And I was… naked?” I finally said. Randy’s brow furrowed, he leaned back, and cocked his head slightly to the left. Finally, the memory of it crawled out from deep in the files of his mind, manifesting itself first in the release of his eyebrows, then in the slackening of his jaw, and we made eye contact. I held my breath.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 12pt;">“That wasn’t me,” he said, “That was my ex-boyfriend, Ron.” </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 12pt;">A wave of emotions cascaded over me: relief, embarrassment, confusion. I knew I had bad eyesight, but what was especially perplexing was that Randy was white, and his ex-boyfriend, Ron, was black. There’s something beautifully universal and post-racial about that - maybe the key to world peace is universal myopia. There’s also something really disturbing about it. This whole time I’d been shy around Randy because I thought he had seen me naked, when in fact it had been a completely different person. What did this say about me? How many other situations had I misjudged in my life? My ability to interpret my surroundings had been cast into doubt. I wasn’t sure I could be relied on to make judgments on situations like who was at fault in a car accident, or even tell the difference between a parked car and a dumpster. What I took away from it is this: in my eyes, you are all equally beautiful, and equally blurry; and for God’s sake, never call on me for eyewitness testimony, and if I’m ever accidentally naked in front of you, don’t hesitate to bring it up in conversation, because chances are I didn’t know that it was you. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div>JPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09520199529674713619noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4214408680895350855.post-24933772807246024502011-07-31T17:15:00.000-05:002011-07-31T17:15:50.076-05:00Ladies Rock Camp, and other stuffI've been writing a lot for Gapers Block lately, and I don't generally cross-post, but this was a really fun time. I went to Ladies Rock Camp last weekend, a fundraiser for Girls Rock, a camp for girls that has chapters all over the country. It was really fun to write this piece, so I'm posting a link here: <a href="http://gapersblock.com/transmission/2011/07/29/the_ladies_rock_experience/">The Ladies Rock Experience</a><br />
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I'm also getting geared up for Tuesday's <a href="http://themoth.org/events?month=8">Moth GrandSLAM</a>. I have a story, but I'm starting to feel unsure about it. I have a feeling I won't be thinking about much else between now and Tuesday night. Eep.JPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09520199529674713619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4214408680895350855.post-28444834026523444282011-07-10T10:55:00.003-05:002011-07-10T11:01:16.178-05:00Getting ready for the GrandSLAM, and other thingsSome really exciting stuff has been happening lately with my writing, as well as some really stressful stuff with work. Between them, the highs in my life are getting higher, and the lows are getting lower. It's making me feel a little bipolar.<br />
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A few weeks ago I sent Kristin and Mark (my boyfriend and his wife) copies of the stories I'd written about them, because I figured they were out there on the Internet and they were going to get wind of them eventually, and it was better if I was up front about it. I was a little nervous - not very, about how they would react. There's nothing bad about them in it, but you never know.<br />
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"Best case scenario," I said to my husband, "she passes it on to her publisher."<br />
"As opposed to: she never wants to see or speak to you again?" he asked. <br />
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As it turned out, their reaction couldn't have been more positive; Kristin friended me on facebook, sent a link to my blog post to her editor, and tweeted a link to the story out to her twitter followers. Over two hundred people read my story entitled "Don't Stop Believin'" over the course of the next 48 hours. By comparison, I generally get between 0-7 visitors a day.<br />
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It was an incredible high, and then I had to return to work - where my very performance has been called into question. I saw my doctor about a skin problem I was having recently, and while I was there she checked my blood pressure: 140/100, pre-hypertension levels. All these highs and lows are taking their toll on me.<br />
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And then I got the news that I'll be performing in next month's <a href="http://themoth.org/">Moth GrandSLAM</a> at the Park West. This is by far the most exciting thing that's ever happened to me with my writing. I'll be on stage with other Moth StorySLAM winners, competing for the title of GrandSLAM winner, at a venue that will be hosted by NPR's <a href="http://www.npr.org/people/2101115/peter-sagal">Peter Sagal</a> of Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me. The theme of the evening is "Identity Crisis," which is both fantastic and completely flummoxing to me. I'm constantly in a state of identity crisis, and choosing one story is going to be hard. Here's the material I have to work with: am I Jewish/not Jewish? American/foreign? New Yorker/Midwesterner? Tattooed/not tattooed? Employed/unemployed? And for about 4 years of my life, when I first moved to Chicago, I was America's biggest fag hag, what does this say about my sexual identity? <br />
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I've been procrastinating, and it's not good. This thing keeps getting bigger - people have been asking for tickets, and when I consider the size of the Park West, it makes my heart palpitate. I've never spoken in front of that many people before. I need to be prepared - I can't get onstage with Peter Sagal and wing it. Below is my first attempt at an identity crisis story. I like it, but I don't think it's GrandSLAM winning material. It would be a shame to scrap it though, so I'm posting it here. Enjoy.<br />
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Summer 1993<br />
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<div class="MsoNormal">I’m standing on the corner of Belmont and Clark, dressed in four inch platform shoes, a dress, a platinum blonde wig, false eyelashes, and copious makeup. Accompanying me are two drag queens – one who goes by the name of Patty Melt; she easily clears seven feet with hair and heels, the other is named Jane Doe, whose back story is that she woke up in a ditch with amnesia, and hasn’t been identified.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">By day Patty works at the customer service desk at Whole Foods, Jane is a bartender at a club called Foxy’s, where we are headed. It’s a warm night, and I begin sweating under my wig. This isn’t a sensation I’m used to, and I resist the urge to remove it. Jane and Patty have helped me with my hair, makeup, and outfit, and between the three of us we’d spent an entire workday getting ready to go out, I don’t want to ruin it before we’ve even reached our destination. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Jane wears a long, luscious auburn wig, a baby blue dress that falls mid-thigh, and an artificial flower in her hair. Patty wears a blonde wig styled into a flip, and a skirt suit*. Both of them have enhanced their cleavage with bags of birdseed.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">As we stand on the corner waiting for the light to change, a car full of young men slows down, and then stops. Loud music thumps through the body of the vehicle and into the night, the bass turned up so loud I can feel it in my chest. The man riding shotgun to the driver rolls down his window, increasing the decibel count that spills out into the street, leans his head out of the window, and yells: “Fags!” </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">He can’t possibly be talking to me, I think. Clearly I am different than my two friends here - even with help of platform shoes I barely clear 5 feet 9 inches. Patty and Jane tower over me, we could be featured in the Sesame Street anthem: “one of these things is not like the others”. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I make eye contact with the name caller, stunned, a little frightened, and for some reason I silently implore him to look closer - look into my eyes, can’t he tell that I’m a real girl? He meets my gaze, leans further out of the window, and says: “Fags!” There’s no question about it this time; I, a biological woman, have just been called a fag.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I’m in female drag, sure, but I’m not impersonating a woman, I’m impersonating a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">different </i>woman – one who wears false eyelashes and platform shoes, one who spends hours fixing her hair before leaving the apartment, and in less time than it takes to cross a street, a perfect stranger has turned me into a drag queen, one who possibly goes by the name Victor Victoria.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">This is not the first time that my identity has been called into question. I’ve been called a dyke, a fag, white trash (which is hilarious because I grew up speaking French). People have variously assumed that I speak fluent Spanish, that I’m Native American, and on at least three separate occasions someone has assumed that I’m pregnant. This is how it works: if I wear red lipstick, people think I’m Hispanic; if I grow my hair long people think I’m Native American; and if I wear overalls people think I’m pregnant. This would be fantastic if I were an actress, I could include in my head shots: “I can play anything from a very short drag queen to an expectant mother with equal conviction.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">But the first time I remember my identity being questioned was when I was six years old. I’d asked my mother to give my hair bangs, and just as she was about to, she was distracted by a phone call. Impatient, I decided to take things into my own hands. I stood on a step stool in front of the bathroom mirror, lifted a pair of scissors to my head, and cut my hair from ear to ear, resulting not so much in bangs as in a mullet. Satisfied with my handiwork, I presented myself to my mother, who was still talking on the phone. I did not get the reaction I expected, and ended up with a very short, very androgynous haircut. Compounding the situation was the fact that I was a messy kid; I bathed only when forced to, never wore dresses, played with messy, dirty boys, and wouldn't play dolls with my girl friends - only stuffed animals.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
My friend Annie, who wore only clean, feminine clothing, and always had bows in her hair, convinced a boy in our class who was developmentally delayed that I was a boy too; with my short hair I no longer had any recognizable female sex characteristics. We went into the boy's bathroom together where he pulled down his pants, showed me his hairless member, and said "see?" The deal was I was supposed to show him mine too, but somehow I was able to get out of revealing myself. I may have simply left the bathroom before anything could be asked of me, but I distinctly remember leaving <i>with</i> him; we entered that bathroom as two boys, comrades, fellow penis owners, and as far as that kid knew, that's the way we exited. I never revealed myself to the man who called me a fag either. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
*I can't remember exactly what Patty Melt was wearing - if you're reading this Patty, feel free to correct me.</div>JPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09520199529674713619noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4214408680895350855.post-60916979007350388322011-06-29T04:50:00.002-05:002011-06-29T04:52:27.127-05:00Insomnia, part III - this is getting to be a habitThere was one semester of college where I couldn't sleep. I had recently moved to Chicago, I lived in a studio apartment with the best cat ever and about eight hundred roaches, and I really didn't know anybody. I had transferred schools halfway through college and everybody seemed to already know each other. I went to Columbia College when it was still a commuter school, there were no dorms or campus housing of any kind, so it was hard to break into the social scene. I couldn't sleep at night, and instead I stayed up late watching reruns of St. Elsewhere on my giant, 1984 color TV that had no remote, so if I wanted to change the channel I had to get up from a reclining position on my futon and change it my damn self. They aired St. Elsewhere at 2 or 3 in the morning, and ran 2 or 3 episodes in a row, in sequence, so I'd follow along and feel nostalgic for Boston, where the series is set, and isn't that far from the school I had transferred from. Sometimes even that didn't work, so after the last episode of St. Elsewhere had wrapped up I would go for walks along Broadway, Clark Street, Halsted. My husband tells me that his first clear memory of me is when he and his roommate were walking home from a late night out and ran into me at 4am. I was friends with his roommate, who asked me what I was doing out. "I can't sleep," I explained. I remember that my husband - well, the man who would many years later become my husband, leaned in and hugged me when I said that. I didn't expect it, and was uncomfortable. <br />
<br />
At some point in the early morning it would seem ridiculous to try to go to sleep, so I'd plan on staying up all day, going downtown for class, and sleeping when I got home. Invariably, I would fall asleep at around 6am, sleep right through class, and wake up at some point in the afternoon. It was a cycle I couldn't snap out of, and I got terrible grades as a result. I even failed a class for not handing in my final report.<br />
<br />
In retrospect, I know what was keeping me up at night - I was trying to run away from myself, but it wasn't working. At around that time I read Sylvia Plath's <i>The Bell Jar</i>, and there's a line in it that I'll paraphrase, or maybe the Internet will find it for me (bless you Internet - first web site that popped up in a Google search had it!):<br />
<div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">[W]herever I sat - on the deck of a ship or at a street café in Paris or Bangkok - I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air. ~Sylvia Plath, <i>The Bell Jar</i>, Chapter 15</div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: inherit;">I'd left Boston thinking that I would be happier somewhere else, but the truth was I was simply unhappy, Chicago wasn't going to change that. I'd been running from my own head, reinventing my life in an attempt to change who I was. </div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: inherit;">The week my husband and I got back from Montreal, I couldn't sleep 3 nights out of the first 4 that we were back. I know why I'm not sleeping, I'm just not sure what to do about it. </div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: inherit;">As it turns out, it shows that I'm not really invested in my job. My boss had a talk with me my first day back - a kind of pre-annual review (dear God, have I really been there for a year?!) and told me that concerns had been raised about my performance. I couldn't lie to her - it has been hard for me. I never thought I'd be working there, would never have even applied for the job if it weren't for my circumstances, and throughout my unemployed year I was able to distract myself from my job loss by immersing myself in other things - travel, volunteering, writing. It wasn't until I accepted a job that was not just a step backwards but a whole staircase of steps backwards that I felt the enormity of what I had lost. I'd done the best I could with the situation at hand - got to know my colleagues, lost 20 pounds, grew triceps where no triceps were before; but the truth is, I never meant to be there, certainly not this long.</div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: inherit;">I actually really appreciated my boss calling me out on my performance, for a long time it felt like I could do a great job or a crappy job and nobody would know the difference. It feels like we've crossed a divide, and become more honest with each other; it feels better to go to work... sort of. Sort of. </div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: inherit;">What kept me up at night in 1992 and 1993 was my brain working in overdrive, trying to figure out my life, and I guess it's not that different from what's keeping me up now. For some reason I'm unable to follow through on my own instincts - search out new opportunities, pursue them, find more meaningful work. I'm just so tired of looking, and so tired of interviewing, and so tired of rejection, but the alternative is insomnia, and it's really not doing much for me. </div>JPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09520199529674713619noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4214408680895350855.post-61469668873922700602011-06-15T08:09:00.002-05:002011-06-15T08:11:01.827-05:00Don't Stop Believin'<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX198482803" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;"><div class="Paragraph SCX198482803" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">As my husband and I approached </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">the</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> farm</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">, the Canadian classic rock station in the rented car began playing</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> the 1981 monster jam</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">“</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">Don’t Stop </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">Believin</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">’</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">”</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">recorded</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> by Journey </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">at the very zenith of Steve Perry’s tight jeans</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> and white sneakers period</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">. My husband and I were </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">visiting</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> Montreal, celebrating 10 year</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">s of marriage</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">, and I had convinced him to drive south of the border for an afternoon </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">so I could see</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> my high school boyfriend for the first time in fifteen years. I’d been referring to him simply as “my boyfriend”, ever since I found out where he lived thanks to the book that his wife wrote about their first year running an organic farm</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> together</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">. It had been quite a mental journey</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">,</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> I’d become a kind of time traveler with</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">in my own life. </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> I hadn’t thought about him in years but suddenly I couldn’t stop visiting my own past</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">. Despite the fact that I’m not a small town girl – I grew up in Brooklyn, and my boyfriend wasn’t born and raised in south Detroit – he grew up in </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">the megalopolis of New </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">Paltz</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">, </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">and neither of us ever took a midnight train </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">going </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">anywhere, </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">it </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">felt</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> significant</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> that Don’t Stop </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">Believin</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">’ was playing on the radio moments before our reunion. </span><span class="EOP SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div></div><div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX198482803" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;"><div class="Paragraph SCX198482803" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br />
</div></div><div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX198482803" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;"><div class="Paragraph SCX198482803" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">My husband is heavily tattooed and I look </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">fairly Semitic</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> so people seem to have this idea that in our relationship I’m the one who civilized him but that’s an illusion. </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">I was the one who freaked out when we got engaged and flew to Amsterdam with my friend Joanie and got really stoned. </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">On our wedding day I realized only after I’d </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">gotten</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> my hair and makeup done, and after I’d gotten dressed that it had been a while since I’d shaved my armpits. My dress had short sleeves, and I noticed there was about a quarter to half an inch of growth that was visible when I lifted my arms. “Is this a big deal, I mean, is this okay?”</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> I asked. “No, it’s not okay, it’s terrible!” He said. “Well, I’m already dressed and I can’t pull </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">my clothes</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> over my head w</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">ithout ruining my hair,” I said</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">. “</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">Fine, </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">I’l</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">l shave you,” he said. We stood in front of the bathroom sink, my </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">husband d</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">ressed in a 3 piece suit, </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">me in my wedding dress, and I watched our reflections in the bathroom mirror as he </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">lathered up my armpits and shaved them – not for me so much, but so that he wouldn’t have to face the humiliation of showing up to his own wedding with a </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">hirsute </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">bride. </span><span class="EOP SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div></div><div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX198482803" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;"><div class="Paragraph SCX198482803" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br />
</div></div><div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX198482803" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;"><div class="Paragraph SCX198482803" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">This wouldn’t be the last time he had to deal with my </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">depilatory issues</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">. A</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> couple months ago I explained to my friend Lois that I’d discovered that since I don’t grow much hair on the back of my legs that I thought I could get away with just shaving the front, but my husband didn’t share </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">in </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">this opinion. “I’m beginning to think,” </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">she</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> said, “that you’re very lucky to have him.” </span><span class="EOP SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div></div><div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX198482803" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;"><div class="Paragraph SCX198482803" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br />
</div></div><div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX198482803" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;"><div class="Paragraph SCX198482803" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">I’d gotten in touch with my boyfriend a couple months earlier, we’d spoken on the phone only once – our schedules are very different, he gets up </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">at 4 and goes to </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">bed</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">at </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">9, and in planning our trip to Montreal I noticed that on the map, at least, it didn’t look very far from his farm in upstate New York. He doesn’t have modern conveniences like email or a </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">facebook</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> account, so I left a message on what I’m sure is probably an actual answering machine saying that we were going to be in</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> Quebec and was it a long drive? </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> I really didn’t know if it was a big deal to cross the border or how long it </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">would take </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">to get</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> there. He call</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">ed back the same day and said “We</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">’d love to see you, Montreal is about a 90 minute drive, I’ve got the dates penciled in on our calendar, let me know.” It was only then that I approached my husband about making this side trip. </span><span class="EOP SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div></div><div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX198482803" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;"><div class="Paragraph SCX198482803" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br />
</div></div><div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX198482803" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;"><div class="Paragraph SCX198482803" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">I chose my word</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">s carefu</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">lly. “Here’s the thing,” I began</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">,</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">“</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">when we visited L.A.</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> a few years ago</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">, we saw not one but two of your exes, and when I first moved back to Chicago and we started dating, it seemed like every girl you were friends </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">with </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">had slept with you</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> at some point. I didn’t </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">have a lot of boyfriends, and this is as close as </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">I’ll ever get to his farm</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">, you have to give me this one.” </span><span class="EOP SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div></div><div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX198482803" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;"><div class="Paragraph SCX198482803" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br />
</div></div><div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX198482803" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;"><div class="Paragraph SCX198482803" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">“It’s not him</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> that I have a problem with</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">,”</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> my husband</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">said, “I get freaked out by farm</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">s.” I knew this to be true</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">, having dragged him to my childhood summer camp </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">in the wilds of Vermont </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">a couple times, wher</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">e he tolerated the </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">wilderness that I so cherished and that I credit for making up a good part of my character. It was the first time he’d ever been away from electricity and indoor plumbing, and I had to give him his props – he stepped out of his comfort zone and actually ma</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">naged to enjoy himself</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">. </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">In the end w</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">e agr</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">eed</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> to make a day trip out of my boyfriend’s farm</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">.</span><span class="EOP SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div></div><div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX198482803" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;"><div class="Paragraph SCX198482803" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br />
</div></div><div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX198482803" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;"><div class="Paragraph SCX198482803" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">And then a strange thing started happening, I had stress dreams about the visit. In one, I was visiting my boyfriend, and his wife met me and was perfectly friendly, but he didn’t want to talk to me, he just sort of stood there and looked away from me, and wouldn’t make eye contact, and they put me up in this dilapidated outbuilding that was full of cats and cat litter and cat shit, and then his wife asked me if I’d like to meet with her to talk about writing, because she’s writer. When I told my husband he said “first of all, I think it’s hilarious that you didn’t recognize that the dilapidated house full of cats and cat shit is </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">our</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> house, and secondly, I think you’re more interested in talking to her than you are in talking to him.” He’s a fucking genius. </span><span class="EOP SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div></div><div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX198482803" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;"><div class="Paragraph SCX198482803" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br />
</div></div><div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX198482803" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;"><div class="Paragraph SCX198482803" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">Then I had a dream that convinced me that my subconscious is an egomaniac, I dreamt that my b</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">oyfriend called </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">and told me not to visit him, because he was still in love with me, and it would be </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">just </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">too difficult for him to see me. </span><span class="EOP SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div></div><div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX198482803" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;"><div class="Paragraph SCX198482803" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br />
</div></div><div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX198482803" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;"><div class="Paragraph SCX198482803" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">Throughout this whole process </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">I’d been referring to him as “my boyfriend</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">,</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">”</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> to the point where everyone</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> else was too, even my husband. W</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">hen we discussed our travel plans, </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">he </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">began sentences with phrases like “so when we get to your boyfriend’s farm…” and I was a little worried that I wouldn’t be able to introduce him any other way, it’s just how I know him, and what I’d been calling him. I don’t think my husband would have a problem with it, but it probably wasn’t a great idea to do that in front of his wife, who I’d never met, and </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">maybe</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> my boyfriend would think it was </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">a little</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> weird</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">.</span><span class="EOP SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div></div><div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX198482803" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;"><div class="Paragraph SCX198482803" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br />
</div></div><div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX198482803" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;"><div class="Paragraph SCX198482803" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">He</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> recognized me through the car window, we were probably the only visitors he was expecting that day, so it was</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">n’t too hard to guess who we were</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">. </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> He walked to my side of the car, looking pretty much as he always has – tall, lanky, a little more rugged from years spent working the land</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">, </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">dres</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">sed in a straw hat, a </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">button down shi</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">rt</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">, and jeans. </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">“I’m so glad you’re here,</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">” he said, “</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">everyone’s been asking me ‘when is your girlfriend getting here?’”</span><span class="EOP SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div></div><div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX198482803" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;"><div class="Paragraph SCX198482803" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br />
</div></div><div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX198482803" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;"><div class="Paragraph SCX198482803" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">He was having lunch outside with his crew, a small group of awesomely filthy men who looked to be </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">somewhere </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">in their twenties. There were visible dirt lines on their calves where their pant legs ended, with everything below caked in various shades of farm dirt. They asked my husband about tattoos, and asked me what their boss was like in high school. Feeling suddenly shy, all I could come up with was: “well, he wasn’t a farmer.” </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">A nine month old baby girl crawled at my boyfriend’s feet. Somehow she’d managed to get a piece of </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">old, dried up </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">chicken shit in her </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">mouth. “Oh man, that is the worst thing I’ve ever smelled coming out of a baby’s mouth,” he said, removing the offending fecal matter. </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">Turning to my husband, he said: “So I hear that you’re a real nature boy and that you can’t wait to roll up your sleeves and dig in.” </span><span class="EOP SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div></div><div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX198482803" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;"><div class="Paragraph SCX198482803" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">“If you want to know word for w</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">ord what he said to me,” I asked</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">, </span><span class="EOP SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div></div><div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX198482803" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;"><div class="Paragraph SCX198482803" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">“</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">Yes</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">, I do.” He answered.</span><span class="EOP SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div></div><div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX198482803" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;"><div class="Paragraph SCX198482803" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">“He said: I will go to the farm with you,</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> but I do not want to be involved to any part of the cir</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">cle of life; I do not want to see anything get inseminated, I do not want to see anything get born, </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">I</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> do not want to see anything get killed. I will hang out on the porch, I will sip mint tea, and I will pet the dog.”</span><span class="EOP SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div></div><div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX198482803" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;"><div class="Paragraph SCX198482803" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br />
</div></div><div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX198482803" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;"><div class="Paragraph SCX198482803" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">“Alright,” my boyfriend said, “no sex and no death, I th</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">ink we can handle that.” H</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">e took us on a tour of the farm, stopping to pick stalks of asparagus for us to snack on, </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">wal</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">king us through as much shade as possible, </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">and making sure our water bottle was refilled regularly in the 90 degree heat. </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">Despite </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">himself</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">, my husband became fascinated with the enterprise, asking specific questions </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">about</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> things like mobile chicken coops that were moved daily to provide natura</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">l fertilizer to the fields, </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">draft horses that pulled equipment that was made in the </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">19</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">30’s by Amish farmers</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">, and disease vectors</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">. “Well, we’re coming up on some pregnant pigs,” my boyfriend said, “but that’s sex, so I don’t know if you want to see that.” </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">My husband said that would be okay, and we watched the impressively sized sows enjoying the shade. One of them turned her hind quarters toward us and started rubbing her rump up against the side of a corrugated metal structure. “I think I’m going to start doing that,” I said. “What</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">?” my boyfriend asked. “Rub </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">my butt up against stuff when it itches.”</span><span class="EOP SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div></div><div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX198482803" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;"><div class="Paragraph SCX198482803" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">“We’ve got dairy cows too,” my boyfriend said, “have you ever milked a cow?” he asked, directing his question to my husband. “He has,” I offered, “and he was surprised that it was warm.” </span><span class="EOP SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div></div><div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX198482803" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;"><div class="Paragraph SCX198482803" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br />
</div></div><div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX198482803" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;"><div class="Paragraph SCX198482803" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">After the </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">tour we met up with my boyfriend’s wife and their three year-old </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">daughter </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">in front of the farmhouse. The three year-old was </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">dressed in pink striped pants and a pink top, and </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">was </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">riding a pony that was tethered to a rope and being guided by her mother. “Do you have any idea how many little girls would love t</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">o have a pony?” I asked her</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">. “No, she really doesn’t”, her mother answered. To her husband she said</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">:</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> “we were inside and she was </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">upstairs </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">screaming and screaming, I went to see what was happening and it turned out her fingers were stuck in her tiara.” “That happens to me all the time,” I said.</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> We were joined by the family dog, </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">who</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> leaned against me and looked deeply</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> into my eyes until I started pe</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">tting him, a pullet that had gotten loose from the pen next to the farmhouse, and the nine month-old, who began busily stuffing her mouth with grass. “Don’t worry about it,” her mother said when I went to take the greenery from the child’s mouth, “it will come out one way or another.” For a moment it seemed as if every life form possible was crowded together on that small patch of lawn, and I began to get an idea of how busy life must be for my boyfriend and his family, who, with a hired staff of five, manage to provide 20</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">0 people with 60% of their daily</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> calories.</span><span class="EOP SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div></div><div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX198482803" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;"><div class="Paragraph SCX198482803" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br />
</div></div><div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX198482803" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;"><div class="Paragraph SCX198482803" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">We were </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">invited to stay for dinner, and t</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">he food was am</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">azing, </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">having all come from right outside the door. We started with cold asparagus soup and moved on to </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">green </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">salad and </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">baked </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">chicken. “Mommy,” the three year-old asked</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> sweetly</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">, “was this chicken slaughtered this year?” “No honey,</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">”</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> came the answer</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">, </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">“</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">this chicken was slaughtered last year, </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">it</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> came from the freezer.” </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">I silently compared the moment to a story my mother in-law </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">tells</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> of her own daughter sitting down to dinner and asking “Mommy, why is it called chicken?” and getting really upset when </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">she got an answer. As it turns</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> out, </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">my boyfriend’s th</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">r</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">ee year-old daughter who loves </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">the color pink and wears</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> tiaras around the house</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> really enjoys watching animals get slaughtered, and plays a game called “slaughter” with her friends, where the ground rule is you can only pretend to kill animals, so t</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">hey play with it the family dog, or whatever barnyard animals happen to be nearby.</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span class="EOP SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div></div><div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX198482803" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;"><div class="Paragraph SCX198482803" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br />
</div></div><div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX198482803" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;"><div class="Paragraph SCX198482803" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">We’d brought Canadian beer and pastry with us, which we shared at the end of the meal. We were invited to stay the night, I was on the fence. There would be literally nothing to do once our hosts went to b</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">ed at 9, and they</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> get</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> up at 4</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">, which didn’t sound great. When the subject of our wedding anniversary, which was the following day, came up, my boyfriend said “we’re planting leeks tomorrow, what better way to celebrate ten years of marriage than by planting ten thousand leeks? Also, there’s going to be a steer slaughter tomorrow – but that’s death, so you probably don’t want to see that.” It seemed like a good moment to end the visit – we’d enjoyed each other’s company, but seeing everybody again at 4am, all bleary-eyed and irritable didn’t seem too appealing.</span><span class="EOP SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div></div><div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX198482803" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;"><div class="Paragraph SCX198482803" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br />
</div></div><div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX198482803" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;"><div class="Paragraph SCX198482803" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">My boyfriend packed us a bag of asparagus, lettuce, and homemade br</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">ead, and walked us to our car, where my high school boyfriend and my husband of ten years shook hands, momentarily fusing my past and my future.</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> “It was so great to see you,” my boyfriend said, and leaned in for a hug that was short enough not to get weird and uncomfortable, but long enough to acknowledge our history. </span><span class="EOP SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div></div><div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX198482803" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;"><div class="Paragraph SCX198482803" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">On the drive back to Canada</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">, my husband was quiet for a few minutes. “I’d like to go back sometime,” he</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> finally said. </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">“Yeah?”</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> I asked.</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> “</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">Yeah</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">, maybe stay at an inn or a B&B in town for a couple days and uh, you know, work.” </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">“On the farm?”</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> I asked. “Yeah, I think that would be really cool.” If I hadn’t been buckled into my seat, I would have fallen right out of it.</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span class="EOP SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div></div><div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX198482803" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;"><div class="Paragraph SCX198482803" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br />
</div></div><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">We crossed the border </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">back </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">into Canada, </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">where</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> my civilized husband and I </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">returned to our </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">well-appointed B&B, where three course morning meals were delivered to our room every morning by handsome men, and complimentary slippers were provided at the front door. The experience left me feeling not so much nostalgic as </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">much as it felt like I’d time travelled, and was now back in the present, all</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> grown up</span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">. </span><span class="TextRun SCX198482803" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> But mostly it got that infernal Journey song stuck in my head, so if anyone knows of an antidote – please, let me know. Unless that antidote is “Oh Sherrie,” that’s ten times worse.</span>JPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09520199529674713619noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4214408680895350855.post-35992899241873830842011-04-06T06:08:00.002-05:002011-06-17T23:17:49.060-05:00Insomnia, redux<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-39l6bTrAgMM/TZxJSSdixqI/AAAAAAAAARU/opJdI5Kxk60/s1600/rose.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-39l6bTrAgMM/TZxJSSdixqI/AAAAAAAAARU/opJdI5Kxk60/s1600/rose.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">the painting that my high school boyfriend gave me for my 18th birthday. Not a great photo, but I should really be asleep right now.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>Once again, I can't sleep. It's 5:30, but I've been tossing and turning for much longer. Last night I read at <a href="http://www.tuesdayfunk.org/2011/03/tuesday-funk-33-april-5th.html">Tuesday Funk,</a> a monthly reading series at the Hopleaf. I'd been on the bill for some time, and had planned on reading the story I titled "my boyfriend" and have posted elsewhere in<a href="http://buttered-noodles.blogspot.com/2010/12/another-night-at-story-club-my.html"> these pages</a>. (Wow, that's the first time I've linked back to my own blog, how very self-referential of me).<br />
<br />
But that's not what's keeping me up. A while back I actually went and bought my boyfriend's wife's book, <a href="http://www.kristinkimball.com/">The Dirty Life</a>, and as it turns out, it's a pretty good read. Besides being an interesting story, it made me feel better - made me realize it was simply the pull of the past that was making me feel so nostalgic and whatnot, and it was nice to know that my boyfriend was doing well. I genuinely wished him and his wife well. So when I saw that his wi<span style="font-family: inherit;">fe had</span> a facebook fan page for the book, I hit "like", and posted the following comment back on February 6th:<br />
<br />
<h6 class="uiStreamMessage" data-ft="{"type":"msg"}"><span class="messageBody"><span style="font-size: small; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Hello Kristin,</span><br style="font-family: inherit;" /><br style="font-family: inherit;" /><span style="font-family: inherit;">A couple months ago my NPR feed on facebook had a writeup about your book, and within the first three lines I recognized Mark from the description. I knew him in high school, lost track of him years ago, and although I've reconnected with many old friends through the magic of facebook, no matter what I did I couldn't fin</span></span><span class="text_exposed_show"><span style="font-size: small; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">d him (doesn't help that he changed his name and has no Internet presence). I've been reading articles about your farm and your book, and heard your interview with Melissa Block. What an amazing story, and what a remarkable adventure you've undertaken. Please give my regards to Mark, and all the best with your farm, your book, and your family.</span><br style="font-family: inherit;" /><br style="font-family: inherit;" /><span style="font-family: inherit;">JP</span></span></span></span></h6>At the time, there weren't an inordinate amount of fans on the page, less than 300, and it flummoxed me that while she had responded to some other, less intriguing comments, she never bothered to respond to mine. I thought about it, and realized that it was a bit ridiculous to wait around and feel insulted by a perceived facebook slight, when she wasn't even really the person I wanted to get in touch with. My boyfriend is so off the grid that I'm not sure he has a flush toilet, much less a facebook account, so I took it upon myself to write the following note and drop it in the mail on March 7th: <br />
<br />
<br />
Dear Mark,<br />
<br />
Back in November, I had the strange experience of reading my NPR updates on facebook, and coming across a story about a journalist from New York who'd gone to western Pennsylvania to interview a farmer... and something told me right then that the farmer in question was you, even before I'd read two paragraphs. I bought Kristin's book, and read it inside of a week. What an incredible story, I'm really amazed at what you've done at Essex Farms. I've tried looking you up from time to time, and now I know why I never got very far - I was looking for MG in Pennsylvania, and now you're MK in upstate New York. I left a note on the facebook fan page for The Dirty Life, but I gather Kristin doesn't have much time to mess around on facebook, as she doesn't leave a lot of comments on people's posts. I figured I should write you an actual note, since posting a comment on the facebook fan page of your wife's book is a pretty disconnected way of trying to say hello, and I'm pretty sure the last time I saw you I'd never surfed the Internet in my life much less tried to reconnect with old friends on it. (If memory serves me, the last time we saw each other was in 1996, when I was living in Boston.)<br />
<br />
I feel like I know so much about your life, but it's strange because I know it all from reading your wife's book. I don't have any books for you to read about me, but I'll sum it up in a couple sentences: I'm still in Chicago, have been married for almost 10 years now, and I'm still a writer. I had a job writing human interest stories and grant proposals for an international humanitarian aid organization, but I lost it almost 2 years ago in the bad economy. I was unemployed for a year, and used the time to travel, volunteer, and write. Now I work doing administrative stuff, and it's not bad, if not my dream job. I get to Plymouth, Vermont about once a year in late August, which I'm guessing is a busy season on the farm, but I'd love to stop by and say hello.<br />
<br />
It's so good to know you're out there, doing your thing,<br />
<br />
All my best, <br />
<br />
<br />
JP (I included my phone number, which I won't do here, just in case the government or aliens are reading this)<br />
<br />
And then.... nothing. I started to get irritated, I'd actually bothered to reach out across the years and make contact, and for whatever reason neither my boyfriend nor his wife deemed it necessary to respond.<br />
<br />
Then, yesterday morning, as I was getting ready to walk out the door, the phone rang. I looked at the caller ID, it said simply "New York call" from area code 518. I don't know anyone with that area code, so I let it go to voicemail... and then I thought maybe I should check and see if there was a message.<br />
<br />
I'm nerdy enough to copy and paste the note I left on The Dirty Life's wall, and I'm nerdy enough to have kept a copy of the text of the note that I sent my boyfriend, but there's something a little creepy about transcribing phone messages from old boyfriends word for word on my blog, so I'll paraphrase:<br />
<br />
"J, I got a great letter from you, thank you so much. It's been sitting on my desk for a month, and since I hadn't replied to it I figured I'd just call. I can't wait to hear your voice and hear all your news."<br />
<br />
I walked into the bedroom where my husband was still asleep. He opened his eyes half an inch and I said "my boyfriend just called me!" <br />
<br />
It was a trip; I haven't heard his voice since 1996, and he sounded exactly the same. I went to work in a daze, and called back that evening. I got his voicemail, and left a message that went something like this:<br />
<br />
"Hi Mark, this is J calling you back. You're probably asleep, or just not in your office. Thanks so much for calling, I'm sorry I missed it. It's so crazy to hear your voice on my voicemail, I'm pretty sure the last time I heard your voice or saw you was fifteen years ago. I guess I'll try calling during the day, or - here's my cell phone number, I have my cell phone with me most of the time. Hope to talk to you soon, and I hope everything is going well out there."<br />
<br />
Last night, as I left work and walked to the bus stop to catch the #92 to the Hopleaf, I noticed I had a message from area code 518 from a couple minutes earlier. It was Mark again. I called back, and he picked up the phone.<br />
<br />
"Mark?" I said.<br />
"Yes?"<br />
"This is J,"<br />
"Get out of town!"<br />
<br />
We spoke for the entire bus ride, and continued our conversation as I stood outside the Hopleaf waiting for my husband. And that, dear readers, is how I came to have a conversation with my high school boyfriend, who I haven't spoken to in 15 years, minutes before reading a story about him to a live audience. (I didn't tell him that last part).<br />
<br />
No wonder I can't sleep.JPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09520199529674713619noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4214408680895350855.post-46926265912509467432011-03-18T23:23:00.004-05:002011-03-18T23:53:12.370-05:00Mortified!Tonight I had the distinct honor of reading at <a href="http://www.getmortified.com/live/">Mortified Chicago</a>, a reading series in which willing participants get onstage and read ephemera from their youth. It was fantastic/horrible, and really funny, and great to hear everyone's horrible/ fabulous stories. Here's mine:<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><i>My name is J.P. - in 1988 I was 16 going on 17 yrs old -- I was in my junior year at a boarding school in Poughkeepsie, New York, I’d transferred out of regular high school after the 9<sup>th</sup> grade because I was getting really terrible grades. In April of that year, I met a boy named Mick, who lived in Brooklyn, where I lived when I wasn’t at boarding school during the week. On our first date we saw the Spike Lee film “School Daze,” and once, when we were talking on the phone, he played Pink Floyd’s “Wish you were here” to me on the guitar, it was very tortured and romantic.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">April 30th, 1988.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I have never lived so much in one weekend. I have never laughed so much, I’ve never talked so much, maybe I’ve cried as much but not like this. Like this it’s like a shooting star came by and left a silver dust in my eyes.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I know I am bleeding, but I am a woman, and a woman is most a woman when she bleeds. I was bleeding when it started too. (<i>Aside - for the men in the audience, this means we dated for approximately 28 days</i>)</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And where did all those lights come from? Did god put them there? What’s so scary about the cornfield anyway? </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I must confess, I have no shame. It’s true; it’s shameful how much shame I don’t keep inside. It was I that insisted on knowing all about Mick’s wet dreams.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">June 20, 1988</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Mick is everywhere. I ran into him five times yesterday and once today. Can't he stay in his own neighborhood? Every time I see him he's on 7th avenue. Why? I mean, it would be one thing if I was on Eastern Parkway when I saw him, but all 7 times I've seen him in the past 3 days it's been right here on 7th avenue. Twice I saw him right across the street. What's he trying to prove? Okay, maybe I'm getting a little carried away. But you know he's probably saying to all his friends "I wish she'd stop following me." That boy is too much. I'm wondering if he's part of what's been going on with the phones lately. Playing with fire. I just don't get it.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">June 24, 1988</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The cigarette ashes on my windowsill look like bird shit. Somebody calls your fucking name. FUCK YOU you're everywhere. Yeah, don't think I didn't see you duck into Lisa Polanski (<i>a clothing store</i>) what were you doing, trying on women's clothes? Jesus, you really piss me off sometimes. "Hey everybody, its Mick the dick." "Have you ever been Micked over?"</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">June 28, 1988</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I'm having a dilemma - Mick has my earring with him and I'm not sure I want it back. He's kind of scummy - but at the same time he's my friend. He's going after Melissa Wolf, and he's already gotten Robin. I feel like I'm just another slave of his harem. I mean, how much would it prove if I got my earring back? </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">This is really ill - he's going for both Melissas (<i>there were two of them</i>) and Robin. Somebody has to castrate him quick. Some of us have more control over our hormones than others.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>I then wrote the following letter to Mick, but I didn’t just send it to Mick, I read it to him. To his face.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">June 28, 1988</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">As you may or may not have noticed, I've been bitchy to you on and off. And it's because, well, I'm getting offended at some of your behavior. And by this, yes, I mean your "going from woman to woman like the honey bee goes from flower to flower". It's really hard for me to watch you because I know I would never let anyone treat me that way, but it's very hard for me to separate me from them. I mean, I know that I wasn't treated like that but I feel like I'm just like another girl and it makes me feel so cheap. And I know I can't ask you to stop, but as a friend I'm asking you to please stop and think about what you're doing because even if you think that what you're doing isn't affecting anyone, you're wrong. It's affecting me, and it's affecting the general atmosphere of things, and it's affecting other people. And it's turning me into a dissing machine. I feel like I have to be rude to you to maintain that I'm not one of them. And being rude doesn't really help anything, it just makes things unpleasant. So if you could just stop and think about what you're doing, or something, I'd really appreciate it.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">July 21, 1988</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Why don't I just start dating Claus Von Bulow?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>So I kept on obsessing about Mick – and I continued to be a terrible student, and ended up having to go to summer school. And over the course of the summer I read "Catcher in the Rye". And it really made an impression on me – I even quoted it on my senior yearbook page with the line “I always pick a gorgeous time to fall over a suitcase or something.” I wrote this journal entry mere hours after finishing the book, entirely in the voice of Holden Caulfield.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">August 9, 1988</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">So I’m sitting here reading this book about some kid who lives in New York City and goes to boarding school and totally fucked up his junior year, among other things. And I’m sitting there saying “Jesus this book is about me.” I mean it really was. And then I got really depressed like I do sometimes when I think too much about what’s gonna happen to me later on and stuff, so I took my cigarettes and went for a walk.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Now I’m not a smoker, it’s just that I smoke. Believe me there’s a difference. A smoker will buy a pack of cigarettes every day. I’ll buy a pack of cigarettes and stash them away in a drawer for three months before I touch them. This particular pack was almost finished, I bought it in June. I never smoke them in public though, for a couple of reasons. First of all, I’d ruin my priceless angel image that I seem to build for myself whether I like it or not, and everybody’d think I was a smoker, which I’m not, like I said I just smoke. The second and most important reason I don’t smoke in public is that this particular pack of cigarettes I had, they’re really just about the most retarded cigarettes you’ve ever seen in your life. Capris. I got them cause I wanted to see how thin they were. Jesus, if you’re going to smoke a cigarette, smoke a real cigarette, not one of these fancy thin Capri bullshits. It’s embarrassing if people just see them in my drawer, you know, who the hell smokes Capris? </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">So anyway, I grabbed my jacket and my cigarettes and went for a walk. I couldn’t believe how late it was. It was 3:30 when I looked at the lounge clock, and there were still people sitting around the lounge.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Hi Jess,” my roommate said.</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Hi,” I had to say something, even though I really didn’t feel like it.</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Are you going to see CSN?” Rajiv asked me. (<i>That stands for Crosby, Stills and Nash</i>.) </div><div class="MsoNormal">“Yeah,” I said.</div><div class="MsoNormal">“You got a ticket?”</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Yeah, kind of,”</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Did you charge it?”</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Yeah.”</div><div class="MsoNormal">“You think you could charge me one?”</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Well, Allison charged it for me,”</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Oh.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I left the lounge and walked outside. I couldn’t help it but all of a sudden I started to cry, and I don’t cry too easy. At least not here. It’s like I have to put up my defense and all, I know that sounds awful, but you have to do that around here. I’m not saying it’s a bad place or anything, but still I wouldn’t want to walk around the halls crying.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">So I go outside and I’m crying and I light one of my goddamn capris. I figure as long as I’ve got them I might as well smoke them. It’d be a waste to throw em out, even if they are retarded.<br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">So I take in a huge breath of smoke and exhale. Things got a little dizzier soon, cause I have a very low resistance to cigarettes. I could take two drags off a cigarette and you’d think I was fucking drunk, I swear. I start walking crooked and shit, it’s a riot. It’s also another reason I don’t smoke in public.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">So I’m walking along, just letting the tears come out and smoking a goddamn Capri cigarette, and there’s nobody out on account of its 3:30 in the morning. I was a little scared, I’ll admit that, but I needed to get out.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">So I’m thinking to myself "my God this book is about me." And it really made me depressed because it really was, and it really made me think about stuff.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">So I’m thinking and all of a sudden I start thinking about Mick. Now Mick is this jerk I used to run around with for a while, and whenever I’m in trouble I seem to think about him. And I was thinking about all the crazy things he did. Like one time when we had to dress up formal. Now you’ve gotta understand, Mick is always dressed up, so when we had to dress up formal, I thought “Jesus, how’s he gonna get any more dressed up?” Well you know what he did? He showed up in red polka dotted (boxer) shorts. It killed me.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Or the time I was wearing my Amnesty shirt with the dancer on it and he said “Why’s you’re goddamn pizza bleeding?” And I guess the dancer did look a little like a pizza, but I’d never noticed it. That killed me too.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">So I kept thinking and I thought how absolutely pathetic I am sometimes. I mean, he was just a kid right? So why do I think about him every time I’m in trouble? I don’t know. I never understand men.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">So then I sit down and I’m not crying anymore, and I’m on my second cigarette. And I think to myself “Jess, you know you’re probably just overreacting.” I’m good at that, it’s my specialty. I always get overemotional when I’ve stayed up too late or something, I’m like a little kid that way, it’s pathetic. So I’m thinking that I should probably just go to bed and sleep it off. So I go back and it’s 4 already, so I head for bed. And all of a sudden I’m so tired I couldn’t do anything if you paid me to.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Really, so I don’t even bother washing my face or anything, I just take my lenses out. I don’t even bother cleaning them, and I take my shorts and my socks off and I get into bed. I’ve never slept so hard in my goddamn life I swear.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">You never know what a good piece of reading can do to you. It’s kinda dangerous sometimes. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div>JPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09520199529674713619noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4214408680895350855.post-34811173688278687512011-03-09T05:34:00.001-06:002011-03-09T05:36:39.152-06:00Insomnia<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-6W0RI6lfo9Y/TXdkMifIe1I/AAAAAAAAARQ/ZNSJQgT8Kgw/s1600/jp+at+massmouth.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-6W0RI6lfo9Y/TXdkMifIe1I/AAAAAAAAARQ/ZNSJQgT8Kgw/s320/jp+at+massmouth.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><small></small><br />
<br />
<center><small>at Massmouth last month in Boston, where I was judged harshly for going off topic. Photo by Paula H.S. Junn.</small></center><center><small> </small></center><br />
I've kind of been burning the candle at both ends, if working in a gym and making appearances at local storytelling venues can be considered burning the candle at both ends. I'm a featured reader this Thursday at <a href="http://www.storyclubchicago.com/">Story Club</a>, and I couldn't sleep because I was thinking about what to read. Meanwhile, I've been ignoring this blog. I thought I'd stop in and say "hi", and post this goofy picture of me telling my UTI story to a Boston audience. While the judges at Massmouth gave me a bad score, the audience responded really well. At the intermission - when all the women lined up for the ladies room, I got more than one "you were robbed, I don't know why the judges did what they did!" Which was hilarious, considering it was coming from women who were waiting in line to pee Even from my seat on the stage (it was standing room only, and people were encouraged to sit onstage if there weren't any actual seats left), I got a couple of mouthed "you were great!"s from women sitting in the front row right after my bad score was unceremoniously written in black marker on a sheet of paper on the back wall. Hooray for the ladies at Massmouth! Boo for the judges! Ha! <br />
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Okay, more soon I promise, hope you all slept well.JPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09520199529674713619noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4214408680895350855.post-2052158071730749692011-02-22T23:20:00.001-06:002011-02-22T23:20:46.305-06:00I won The Moth Storyslam!!!I took my pee story to the Moth tonight at Martyrs for the "Love Hurts" theme and won!!!! I practiced it on Sunday in Boston, where I was visiting family, at a local storytelling series called <a href="http://massmouth.ning.com/">Massmouth</a>. The theme was "The Beast," and I was pretty severely penalized for going off topic, I came in second to last. I was hoping the judges would include my UTI story under the rubric of "the beast within," but they were far more literal with the theme than I'd anticipated. When it was over, I realized I could have changed a couple lines to include phrases like "microscopic beasts," but it was too late. No matter though, I flew home to Chicago this afternoon, got home at 5:45, left the house at 6:15 so I could make it to the Moth, and won!!!! I'm stunned and giddy.JPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09520199529674713619noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4214408680895350855.post-57022857146822829392011-02-11T07:50:00.000-06:002011-02-11T07:50:17.241-06:00Urine, A Love StoryYou may recognize this one, it's one I dusted off and made some improvements to, and brought with me to last night's Story Club. Dana Norris, the woman who runs Story Club, told me I should tighten it up, get it down to 5 minutes, and bring it to the Moth later this month where the theme is "love hurts". I haven't gone to the Moth since it first came to Chicago and was jam packed, and put my name in the hat but never got called up on stage. The Moth is a little more intimidating that your usual reading: you only get 5 minutes, you're not allowed to bring notes onstage with you, you get judged by a panel and somebody wins, and you have to put your name in a hat and don't know until they call your name if you're getting a chance to read. I've been told that the Moth has slowed down since it's Chicago inaugural, and isn't quite as packed or competitive as it used to be, and have been meaning to check it out. I'll have to spend the next couple weeks working on this, and maybe I'll get a chance to do the Moth. Here, for your reading pleasure, is my pseudo-Valentine's day story:<br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;">Urine, A Love Story</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">My sister called me from Boston to ask me about the man I’d just started seeing, and during the course of our conversation I happened to mention the strange sensation I felt when I peed. A UTI veteran, (that’s <i>urinary tract infection</i> for those of you not in the know), she told me to go to the closest health food store and buy a bottle of Lakewood 100% cranberry juice - not cranberry juice cocktail, but 100% cranberry juice. No added water, no sugar, tart enough to turn my mouth inside out and sour enough to give me a stomach ache. She said that should help. We continued talking and when I described the strange pressure I felt on urinating she said “oh girl, if you’re feeling pressure when you pee, it’s too late for cranberry juice. You get off the phone and you go to the doctor. Now!”<br />
<br />
I was taken aback by the tone in her voice, it was one she reserved for delivering really, really bad news, like when someone died or something valuable caught on fire. I was scared; really scared. The next time I peed it felt like someone was stabbing me in the urethra with a barbecue skewer, and when I looked into the toilet bowl it wasn’t yellow - it was red.<br />
<br />
I considered my options: the closest emergency room was a block away, but I couldn't walk a block, it hurt too much. Everything hurt too much; there wasn't a position I could stand, sit or lie down in that didn't hurt. I needed someone to drive me. My roommate had a car but she was stoned, and didn't seem terribly alarmed by my situation. The only other person I knew who had a car was the guy I had just started seeing. I calmed down as much as I could before dialing his number. I don't think he even said "hello" before I burst in with “I’m bleeding, I have to get to a doctor, NOW!”<br />
“Where are you bleeding from?” he asked. I hesitated, we had only been seeing each other for a couple weeks, he had just gotten out of a long term relationship and wasn’t ready to commit to anything serious, but I really liked him and was trying so hard not to like him too much, and this was way too intimate a conversation to be having with him at this stage in our relationship but my urethra was on fire and I couldn't think of a pretty, alluring way to say it: “When I pee,” I blurted, “blood comes out when I pee!”<br />
<br />
He drove me to Thorek hospital on Montrose and Broadway, a place I’d heard vague rumors about, but had never actually seen the inside of.<span> </span>I walked up to the receptionist and said “I think I have a urinary tract infection, when I pee blood comes out!” She told me to take a seat and fill out some paperwork. I remained standing, not that it helped stop the pain.<br />
<br />
At the time I was a heavy watcher of the NBC series <i>ER</i>, and I imagined that I’d be waiting for hours as people with shotgun and stab wounds were wheeled in on stretchers, surrounded by fast talking medics, maybe <a href="http://static.tvfanatic.com/images/gallery/dr-john-carter.jpg">Dr. John Carter</a> himself would be pumping furiously on their chests in an effort to save their lives, but the reality was much different - I was the only one in the ER that night, their biggest emergency was that blood was coming out of my pee hole.<br />
<br />
I was seen by a doctor, and had to produce a sample. I never truly appreciated just what a wonderful thing it is to urinate without pain, what a wonderful, magical thing it is to pull down my pants, sit on a toilet, and let the urine flow while my mind wanders until that simple act of voiding made me do the silent scream - have you ever done the silent scream? I sat on the ER toilet with a plastic cup between my legs, eyes squinched closed and mouth wide open, silently screaming as a tiny river of red daggers stabbed their way out of me.<br />
<br />
This was not how I’d imagined things would progress with my new man.<br />
<br />
The doctor examined my bloody discharge, and wrote a prescription. My boyfriend - I mean the guy I was seeing, drove me to a 24 hour pharmacy to get the prescription filled, and took me back home. Back in the apartment my roommate was stoned and watching loud TV, and barely acknowledged my presence. She kept the TV on all night, turning it off somewhere around 6 a.m. At 6:30 my alarm went off. I had a temp job to get to, and I needed the money more than I needed the sleep. I took a shower, clothed myself, and in a haze made my way to an office building near Union Station. I looked like hell, but nobody seemed to notice. It was a fairly quiet day, and I passed the time drinking huge quantities of water and visiting the ladies room, where I slammed the sides of the stall with my hands and silently screamed every single time.<br />
<br />
After an eternity of watching the clock, 5pm blessedly arrived. I made the trek back to my apartment, opened the door, and found my roommate on the couch in the same position she’d been in the night before, stoned and reclining on the sofa, watching loud TV next to the guy I was seeing. I barely said a word to either of them, closing myself into my bedroom and curling up onto the twin futon mattress on the floor. I heard a soft knock; it was the guy I was seeing. He entered the room quietly, removed his shoes, climbed under the sheets, put his arm around me, and stayed there until I fell asleep.<span> </span>Neither of us could think much beyond the next morning, and if we could have seen into the future, we would have seen other apartments, roommates, and emergencies, some better and some worse than the ones we were in the thick of at that moment, but if either of us knew that we were destined, five years later, to become married, neither of us showed it.<span> </span>I can’t say that that was the moment when I knew I’d be with him for the rest of my life, but something had changed.<span> </span>Not long afterward, a friend of his told me that he’d stopped referring to me as “the girl I’m seeing,” and replaced that ungainly phrase with the more elegant “my girlfriend.”<span> </span>I stopped trying not to like him so much, and waited to see what would happen next.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br />
Now if you'll excuse me, I think I have to find the restroom.</div>JPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09520199529674713619noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4214408680895350855.post-19347872334729740322011-01-19T23:21:00.003-06:002011-01-19T23:24:20.030-06:00The Glamorous Life - read tonight at Story Lab Chicago<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">I read this tonight at a brand new reading series called <a href="http://storylabchicago.com/">Story Lab Chicago</a>, and I had a fantastic time. I've never gotten a reaction like that from an audience, and there was a little piece of me that never wanted to leave the Black Rock. I ordered another beer and hung around for a while, enjoying the moment. Tomorrow is just another day, but tonight was a blast, thanks! </span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">The Glamorous Life</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">By nine a.m., at work, I’ve seen seventeen naked bodies, most of them belonging to ageing Korean women who spend the early morning in the pool doing water aerobics, and seem to have a cultural penchant for spending time together in the buff. They drape towels over the chairs near a row of sinks in the women’s locker room, where they sit in the altogether, blow drying their hair in front of the mirrors and speaking in their native tongue in energetic staccato bursts. I can’t say that seeing people naked has ever been a workplace hazard for me. I consider which is weirder: the possibility that my coworkers might see me naked some day, or that I might see them naked someday. My boss is a very fit, very socially awkward woman who reminds me of Jane Lynch's character on Glee, only she's not nearly as funny, nor as hot. I don't think I want to see her naked. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">One of my first assignments at this job was to man a table outside the gym and hand out apples to people who had walked a mile for an event called the Apple Walk. I’m no monument to justice; I distributed fruit regardless of whether people actually walked a mile. I used to write human interest stories about women who gained economic stability raising guinea pigs in Peru, and grant proposals for girls’ education projects in Tanzania, among other things, for an international humanitarian aid organization. Then I lost my job in the bad economy, and took advantage of the time off by traveling and volunteering while I looked for work. I accepted a job doing administrative work in a gym because it was the only job that was offered to me after an entire year of submitting resumes, going on interviews, and collecting rejections. After a while I began to expect rejection, and it was bad for my head; if nothing else, this job would give me a break from it. I tell myself it’s what I’m doing for now, to get by, to get off unemployment, and for the health insurance. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">It’s been eight months though, which is apparently long enough for Stoil Stoilov, the tiny Russian man who maintains the gym equipment, to wink at me when we cross paths. Loosely translated, his name means Stoil of Stoil. In addition to maintaining equipment, Stoil is a bodybuilder, and has all his blue jeans taken in to fit his muscular, froglike physique. He has them split down the center seam, the waist pulled in a couple inches, and then sewn back together. He doesn’t bother to have the back pockets moved though, so the final product creates the visual effect of the back pockets coming together at an angle and disappearing into his ass crack. I think he does this on purpose to direct attention to his ass, which is small and very tight. Most of our interactions revolve around the spreadsheets that I create so he can keep track of his maintenance schedule; he seems to be just as impressed by my computer skills as I am with his ability to lift heavy things. He once told me, his chest swelling with pride, or maybe it was just muscle mass: “I’m like St. Peter; I have the keys to everything.” </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">My working life is filled with small indignities: eating cafeteria food, getting paid by the hour, wrestling with a time clock that only counts ten times an hour – so if I clock in at 9:03, I don’t start getting paid until 9:06. This is somewhat mitigated by the fact that I have a ten minute commute, I don’t have to get dressed up for work – or even shower, and my ass has gotten 6% smaller. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Sometimes I even have fun – my best friend at work is a 67 year-old woman named Lois, who was a dancer before she started working here. We go to the cafeteria together to buy our institutional lunches, she lets me practice reading my stories out loud to her, and she keeps me updated on her husband who’s almost ten years younger than she is which is just scandalous. She’s in charge of the arthritis program, and heads an annual event called National Senior Health and Fitness day, where she patrols baskets of snacks and goody bags in the lobby to make sure that only old people are getting free stuff, and that nobody gets seconds.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">One of my coworkers is an enormous wall of a man named Fred, who wears t-shirts with the sides cut out so everyone can see the dragon tattoo that runs down his side, and to show off his defined musculature. My interactions with him were limited to times when I couldn’t reach something and was too lazy to go find a step stool. That changed the day he came to work wearing a ladies’ holiday sweater with an appliquéd teddy bear on it. It had a very feminine, delicately scalloped neckline, and he wore it with a black turtleneck underneath, which for some reason made it even funnier. He walked into my work area dressed like that and said “hey has anyone looked at Caitlin’s stocking?” I knew immediately what he was referring to – for the holidays, every staff member has a miniature stocking with their name written in bubble paint. It was my job to make stockings for staff that didn't already have one this year, and the rest came from a plastic storage bin, and were presumably made by my predecessor. Caitlin’s stocking had a candle rendered in glue and glitter, but it looked like something else. I looked my enormous, sweater-wearing coworker in the eye and said “I think you and I are on the same wavelength here.” At this he started laughing, which I took as a cue to continue. “It’s um… it looks there’s a cock and balls on Caitlin’s stocking.” “Yeah I showed it to her,” he said, and in a pitch-perfect imitation of Caitlin’s voice, dramatically reenacted the moment: “why what’s on it? Oh my god!” He told all of Caitlin’s clients about it, and for weeks, people came up to her and said: “I saw your stocking.” </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">So, I can put Stoil, Lois, and Fred in the good column when I make my list of pros and cons of this job; I've had worse. There was the job working for a hulk of a boss at an ad sales company who asked me, on Ash Wednesday, when “my holiday” was – meaning… you know, Passover, only he didn’t want to come right out and say it. He was gigantic, six foot five, easily three hundred pounds; he liked to bully people to get his way, and had breath that smelled like rotting cabbage. My male coworkers said he’d recognize their shoes in the men’s room stalls, and start talking to them about clients while they were taking a crap. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Then there was the woman at a realtor’s association who used an entire sheet of legal paper to write the sentence: “I’m having an emergency,” and left the note in my cubicle – which was located ten feet from her office. “What kind of emergency,” I asked. “I tried to make coffee,” she said, “and water went everywhere. I don’t know what I should do.” Later I discovered that she never read her emails, never even opened her Outlook program, because, she said, it was “too overwhelming.” Once, while we were meeting, her phone rang and she let it go to voicemail. Afterwards she looked at the blinking phone message indicator with bewilderment. “I didn’t even hear the phone ring, did you?” She asked. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">And I once had a short-lived job assisting a training program for nurses who work in senior care. At the first and only training that I took part in, I refused to participate in an exercise that involved taking an adult diaper into the bathroom, running the absorbent center under a faucet, pulling down my pants, affixing the damp diaper to my body, and wearing it under my clothes for the rest of the afternoon as part of a sensitivity training. There are some things that you don’t have to experience firsthand in order to know that they suck. It seemed more like a sorority hazing than sensitivity training to me, and if pressed, I was prepared to tell the instructor that my previous job was at an organization that worked to eliminate child abuse, but nobody ever held a lit cigar to my arm as part of a sensitivity training. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">At the gym, there are TVs around the facility that play a loop of music videos, and lately Sheila E.’s “<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeJLZi0uyJw">The Glamorous Life</a>” has been in heavy rotation. It’s been a while since I’ve heard that song, and I’d like to take a moment to share some of the lyrics:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 5pt 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">She wears a long fur coat of mink<br />
Even in the summer time<br />
Everybody knows from the coy little wink<br />
The girl's got a lot on her mind</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 5pt 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">She's got big thoughts, big dreams<br />
And a big brown Mercedes sedan<br />
What I think this girl<br />
She really wants<br />
Is to be in love with a man</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 5pt 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">She wants to lead the Glamorous Life<br />
She don't need a man's touch<br />
She wants to lead the Glamorous Life<br />
Without love<br />
It ain't much, it ain't much</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 5pt 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 5pt 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">I’m not quite sure if Shelia is saying that money is all you need, or that love is all you need, but sometimes I like to pretend that I’m the girl in the song that everybody knows from the coy little wink has lot on her mind. I’m not really all that interested in a big brown Mercedes sedan, but I’m down with big thoughts and big dreams. And I may run the risk of seeing my boss naked someday, but for now, anyway, this is about as glamorous as it gets. Until further notice, I’ll be at the gym, hanging out with Stoil, Lois, and Fred. </span></div>JPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09520199529674713619noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4214408680895350855.post-67190561254864514662011-01-11T18:29:00.000-06:002011-01-11T18:29:23.171-06:00You guys are SO cutting edge!Because you've been reading me since forever, and now I'm in this thing next week: <a href="http://storylabchicago.com/">Story Lab Chicago</a>. I'll post my story after I've read it next Wednesday. Tee hee!JPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09520199529674713619noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4214408680895350855.post-47872457858450162112011-01-07T14:52:00.005-06:002011-01-07T16:54:48.489-06:00Good Deed of the DayI read this last night at Story Club, enjoy.<br />
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<br />
<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243192994" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;"><div class="Paragraph SCX243192994" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; height: auto; margin-right: 3px; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: auto;"><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">Good deed of the day</span><span class="EOP SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div><div class="Paragraph SCX243192994" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; height: auto; margin-right: 3px; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: auto;"><br />
</div></div><div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243192994" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;"><div class="Paragraph SCX243192994" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">This morning at work, Fred walked in on a woman while she was sitting on the toilet. She </span><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">had a</span><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> physical therapy</span><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">appointment</span><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">, and was using the restroom tucked in the no-man’s land between</span><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> the physical </span><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">therapy offices and the break ro</span><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">om they share</span><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">with</span><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> program staff</span><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> at the gym</span><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">.</span><span class="EOP SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"></span><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> Fred walked into the break room </span><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">where I sat with Caitlin </span><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">and said: </span></div></div><div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243192994" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;"><div class="Paragraph SCX243192994" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br />
</div><div class="Paragraph SCX243192994" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">“</span><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">hey, </span><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">there’s somebody in the bathroom,” as casually as if he were </span><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">announcing</span><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> there was an extra can of soda in the fridge.</span><span class="EOP SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div><div class="Paragraph SCX243192994" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br />
</div></div><div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243192994" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;"><div class="Paragraph SCX243192994" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">“Really?”</span><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> I asked, because I hadn’t heard any commotion. “If it had been me, you all would have known about it right away.”</span><span class="EOP SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div><div class="Paragraph SCX243192994" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br />
</div></div><div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243192994" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;"><div class="Paragraph SCX243192994" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">“Yeah Fred,” Caitlin </span><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">said</span><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">, “</span><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">how</span><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> long were you in there?</span><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">”</span><span class="EOP SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div><div class="Paragraph SCX243192994" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br />
</div></div><div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243192994" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;"><div class="Paragraph SCX243192994" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">“I just washed my hands,”</span><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> he replied</span><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">. Caitlin and I exchanged glances.</span><span class="EOP SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div><div class="Paragraph SCX243192994" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br />
</div></div><div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243192994" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;"><div class="Paragraph SCX243192994" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">“After</span><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> you walked in on her?” I asked, “</span><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">and</span><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> she was okay with that?”</span><span class="EOP SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div><div class="Paragraph SCX243192994" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br />
</div></div><div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243192994" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;"><div class="Paragraph SCX243192994" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">“Well yeah, I mean, I alrea</span><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">dy saw her sitting there,” he said, “she just said “</span><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">go</span><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> ahead.”</span><br />
<span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span class="EOP SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div></div><div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243192994" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;"><div class="Paragraph SCX243192994" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">I considered which was weirder – the fact that Fred went ahead and washed his hands in a restroom that was clearly occupied, or that a physical therapy patient allowed a strange ma</span><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">n to </span><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">wash his hands while she sat on the pot</span><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> next to him</span><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">. Getting walked in on while using a public toilet is one of my top five fears in life; it’s right up there with slipping on black ice and accidentally leaving the house with the iron plugged in. Whenever I have to use a public bathroom, which is often, </span><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">because I work in a gym</span><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">, I double check to make sure the </span><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">door is locked, and sometimes </span><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">keep a hand or a foot extended towards the door, just in case.</span><span class="EOP SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div><div class="Paragraph SCX243192994" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br />
</div></div><div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243192994" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;"><div class="Paragraph SCX243192994" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">“So</span><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">,” I said, “</span><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">you figured, what had already been seen could not be unseen</span><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">, so why not just go ahead and do what you went in for</span><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">?” </span><span class="EOP SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div><div class="Paragraph SCX243192994" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br />
</div></div><div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243192994" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;"><div class="Paragraph SCX243192994" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">“Well what</span><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> else was I supposed to do?” Fred</span><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> asked</span><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">, “I wanted to wash my hands before I ate</span><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">.</span><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">”</span><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> Caitlin and I exchanged glances again.</span><span class="EOP SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div><div class="Paragraph SCX243192994" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br />
</div></div><div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243192994" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;"><div class="Paragraph SCX243192994" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">“Use the sink in the break room,” Caitlin suggested. Fred turned to face the counter where a sink lived next to a dish drain, right next door to a microwave and a 10 cup coffeemaker.</span><span class="EOP SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div><div class="Paragraph SCX243192994" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br />
</div></div><div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243192994" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;"><div class="Paragraph SCX243192994" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">“Oh, yeah” he said.</span><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> Then he launched into a story about a woman who accidentally plugged up her new boyfriend’s toilet while he was out of the apartment. According to Fred, the toilet began to overflow, but the woman couldn’t find a plunger anywhere. In desperation, she found a plastic bag and used it to remove the blockage, tied it shut, left the apartment, and only after the door had locked shut behind her realized that she’d left the plastic bag on the kitchen counter and had no way of getting back inside to </span><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">dispose of</span><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> it. Fred ended the story with: “she never saw him again.”</span><span class="EOP SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div><div class="Paragraph SCX243192994" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br />
</div></div><div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243192994" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;"><div class="Paragraph SCX243192994" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">I felt like I’d heard this story before, like maybe it was an <a href="http://www.snopes.com/embarrass/feminine/leftbag.asp">urban legend</a>, or something I’d hear</span><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">d at a party</span><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">, when my attentions turned to the woman who was now trapped in the bathroom between physical therapy and the break room. The walls were paper thin, and I was certain that she could hear our entire conversation from her throne of humiliation. </span><span class="EOP SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div><div class="Paragraph SCX243192994" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br />
</div></div><div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243192994" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;"><div class="Paragraph SCX243192994" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Segoe UI',Tahoma,Verdana,'Sans-Serif'; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">“She’s still in there,” I whispered, “she’s probably going to stay in there all day until she’s sure nobody is left here.” There are two doors to the b</span><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">reak room, one on either end. I</span><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> closed the </span><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">one</span><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> closest to the bathroom, so that the victim of Fred’s hand washing habits could at least exit the </span><span class="TextRun SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;">room with a modicum of dignity, and disappear into the relative anonymity of the physical therapy office. I consider it my good deed of the day.</span><span class="EOP SCX243192994" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div></div>JPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09520199529674713619noreply@blogger.com2