I 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 Massmouth.  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.

Urine, A Love Story

You 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:

Urine, A Love Story

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 urinary tract infection 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!”

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.

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!”
“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!”

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.  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.

At the time I was a heavy watcher of the NBC series ER, 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 Dr. John Carter 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.

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.

This was not how I’d imagined things would progress with my new man.

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.

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.  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.  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.  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.”  I stopped trying not to like him so much, and waited to see what would happen next.

Now if you'll excuse me, I think I have to find the restroom.

The Glamorous Life - read tonight at Story Lab Chicago

I read this tonight at a brand new reading series called Story Lab Chicago, 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!

The Glamorous Life

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.  

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.  

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.”  

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.  

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.

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.”  

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.  

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.  

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.  

At the gym, there are TVs around the facility that play a loop of music videos, and lately Sheila E.’s “The Glamorous Life” 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:

She wears a long fur coat of mink
Even in the summer time
Everybody knows from the coy little wink
The girl's got a lot on her mind

She's got big thoughts, big dreams
And a big brown Mercedes sedan
What I think this girl
She really wants
Is to be in love with a man

She wants to lead the Glamorous Life
She don't need a man's touch
She wants to lead the Glamorous Life
Without love
It ain't much, it ain't much

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.

You guys are SO cutting edge!

Because you've been reading me since forever, and now I'm in this thing next week: Story Lab Chicago.  I'll post my story after I've read it next Wednesday.  Tee hee!

Good Deed of the Day

I read this last night at Story Club, enjoy.

Good deed of the day 

This morning at work, Fred walked in on a woman while she was sitting on the toilet. She had a physical therapy appointment, and was using the restroom tucked in the no-man’s land between the physical therapy offices and the break room they share with program staff at the gym.  Fred walked into the break room where I sat with Caitlin and said: 

“hey, there’s somebody in the bathroom,” as casually as if he were announcing there was an extra can of soda in the fridge. 

“Really?”  I asked, because I hadn’t heard any commotion.  “If it had been me, you all would have known about it right away.” 

“Yeah Fred,” Caitlin said, “how long were you in there?” 

“I just washed my hands,” he replied.  Caitlin and I exchanged glances. 

“After you walked in on her?” I asked, “and she was okay with that?” 

“Well yeah, I mean, I already saw her sitting there,” he said, “she just said “go ahead.”
  

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 man to wash his hands while she sat on the pot next to him.  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, because I work in a gym, I double check to make sure the door is locked, and sometimes keep a hand or a foot extended towards the door, just in case. 

“So,” I said, “you figured, what had already been seen could not be unseen, so why not just go ahead and do what you went in for?”  

“Well what else was I supposed to do?”  Fred asked, “I wanted to wash my hands before I ate.”  Caitlin and I exchanged glances again. 

“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. 

“Oh, yeah” he said. 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 dispose of it.  Fred ended the story with: “she never saw him again.” 

I felt like I’d heard this story before, like maybe it was an urban legend, or something I’d heard at a party, 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.  

“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 break room, one on either end.  I closed the one closest to the bathroom, so that the victim of Fred’s hand washing habits could at least exit the 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.

Another night at Story Club - My Boyfriend

I read this last night, I hope you enjoy it.

My Boyfriend

As a prelude to making out, my boyfriend removes the retainer from his mouth and sets it down on the bench next to him.  God, that’s sexy!  Later, in an act of undying devotion, I return to the soccer field where we’d been making out to retrieve it.  Its dark out, but the light of my love leads me to it.  I spot the small pink dome resting on the bench.  I pick the thing up; it’s like touching the inside of a plastic smile.  I carefully put it in my pocket, and walk back to my dorm room. 

This is something of a second chance high school - a boarding school, and some kids are here on purpose, but a lot of us ended up here either because we dropped out or were expelled from other schools, or couldn’t get into college with the grades we had.  There are a number of 19 year-old seniors, and at least one kid who came here from military school, and still wakes up every morning at 5am.

My boyfriend is a day student; he gets dropped off in the morning, and picked up in the evening.  For my birthday, he paints a rose on a canvas that he stretched himself, not a rose in bloom, but one that’s still closed in on itself, attached to a long, thorny stem.  Our union was unlikely.  I happened to mention in confidence to my roommate Alexia that I thought he was cute, she went and told him, and the next thing I knew he was sitting across from me in the dining hall, where I refused to speak to him.  For a week I blatantly ignored him as we crossed paths on the tiny campus, but he persisted in seeking me out.  “Why won’t you date him?” Alexia asked.  It’s the principal of the thing that bothered me; I told her something in confidence and then she went and shared it.  I vowed to never tell Alexia anything again, ever.   Besides, I had a strict policy to only like boys who didn’t like me.  My sophomore year there was Andrew; he was really sweet, tolerated my attentions with stoicism, and was totally uninterested.  He signed my yearbook with: “I’m sorry that not everything turned out the way you wanted.” After Andrew graduated I moved on to Sam, who was on the cross country team with me, and actively disliked me, but this only stoked the flames of my desire.  I didn’t like being pursued, and I wasn’t very graceful about rejecting my suitors.  The year before, I had flat out refused to date a very nice boy named Fred who had transferred in his senior year.  Without a hint of nuance or sugarcoating, I said: “I can’t go out with you.” 

So it should come as no surprise that after a week of stonewalling this boy who Alexia told my secret to, I literally dare him to date me.  To my shock and surprise, he takes me up on it.  To save face, I have to transform my hostility into feelings of endearment and affection.  As it turns out, this is surprisingly easy to do, and I soon fall completely and totally in love.  I can’t imagine life without him; he’s all I think about. 

After I graduate high school, I ditch my plan to work at the summer camp where I’d spent seven summers, and take a job doing office work at an agency that sends people out onto street corners to distribute fliers, just so that I can continue to see my boyfriend on weekends.

Some weekends he takes the train into the city, and some weekends I make the reverse commute.  At my boyfriend’s house, I sit at the table with his family, and am included in family functions and outings. My boyfriend’s parents take me into their home every other weekend, put me up in the rec room, and treat me like I am one of their own.  His little sister adores me, and on Saturdays if my boyfriend is working, I hang out with her.   At my house, I do things on my own; I cook frozen or boil-in-bag dinners, which I eat by myself.  My sister, six years my senior, has long since moved out on her own, my father lives in another country, and my mother is never around. 

At the end of the summer, I go away to college in another state, and we break up, the distance is much for him. I am devastated; as far as I’m concerned, he is my one great love, and I will never meet another boy like him.  It’s  not too much distance, however, for me to keep in touch with his family.  I send his mother letters from college, and she writes back. She documents the goings on of the household, tells me when her pet bird dies, and when my boyfriend’s little sister starts high school.  I send her black and white prints that I develop in the college darkroom, and when I move to Chicago and discover The Reader I clip the Life In Hell cartoons and mail them to his little sister.  Over time the correspondence slows, but it never quite stops.  I see my boyfriend from time to time, not often, the summer after my freshman year of college I go to his eighteenth birthday party, once when I spend the summer back east we go with a group of friends to hear a singer perform at a coffeehouse.  He goes to college and majors in agricultural science, and gets really into organic farming.  The last time I saw him, he was working on a CSA in Pennsylvania.  He told me about a woman he thought he was in love with, and I told him about the man who would eventually become my husband.  

The last time I spoke to his mother was right after I’d gotten married and bought a house.  There was something different in her voice, after I’d updated her on my life, she said: “wow, you just really are one of those people who stay in touch.”   She’d been going through some papers, and found all the letters I’d sent her over the years.  She said she was going to mail them back to me.  “Why would you want to do that?” I asked.  “Oh, you know, this way you get to read them and see who you were back then.” In my experience, sending back all the letters someone has ever sent to you is something you do when you break up with them, is that what she was doing?  My boyfriend’s mother was breaking up with me!  I reluctantly gave her my address, and hoped that she would forget about it.  A few days later I received a package from her.  I opened it, read one line, and stopped.  It was embarrassing; the only good thing about having it was that nobody else could read it now.  I stuffed the envelope in a drawer and never looked at it again.

A couple weeks ago, as I sat in my cubicle at my recession job – the one I got after I was laid off from my real job, I was surfing facebook when I came across an NPR story about a New York journalist who’d traveled to Pennsylvania to interview a young farmer at a CSA, fell in love with him, married him, started an organic farm with him on the New York/Vermont border, and had written a memoir about their first year running the farm.  I didn’t need to read the rest of the story to figure out that the young farmer she was speaking of was my boyfriend.  Like the magic that had led me to his missing retainer, I just knew.  Something happened to me as I sat in my cubicle, a small explosion that started at the base of my neck, and radiated out and down through my extremities.

By the time I got home to my loving husband, I could no longer form coherent sentences.  

“That bitch stole my boyfriend!” I blurted. 

“Oh, and what am I?” he asked, after I’d managed to explain myself.  

“Yeah yeah, you’re great, I love you, whatever, the point is… that bitch stole my boyfriend!” 

“You would not want to be a farmer’s wife,” he argued.

I offered as counterpoint: “You don’t know!”

In the weeks since, I’ve read every interview of my boyfriend’s wife that I could get my hands on, listened to audio tracks of her on NPR, and watched videos of her speaking.  I even tracked down a couple photos of my boyfriend online to confirm what I already knew.  And because my brain is a jukebox of songs that were recorded between 1980-1990, Prince’s “when u were mine” got stuck in my head, even though the lyrics in no way describe our relationship.

My illogical burst of proprietary feelings for my boyfriend seems to have subsided, and I’ve come to recognize that the attachment I felt was really more to his family.  I doubt that I will see him or his family anytime soon.  It would probably be weird anyway.   If he was to walk into this room right now, all I would really want to say to him would be: Thanks.  Thanks for putting up with all my crap.  Thanks for breaking through my ridiculous, self-defeating barriers.  Thanks for having such a cool family (except for that one time when your mom broke up with me, that was whack.)  Thanks for growing up to be a good man who does good things in the world.  But mostly, thanks for taking out your retainer - not every guy would do that. 

Stop me if you've heard this one before...

I went to Story Club last night, and I'm glad I did.  I'm feeling a little more like myself today, and a little less like my own cautionary tale.  I read a story that's a compilation of a few blog posts I published right here about a year ago, and put together back in August for an audition with 2nd Story.  I was really excited to audition, I've submitted to them a couple times but never got that far.  In the end I didn't get selected for the 2nd Story reading series.  They were super nice in their rejection, told me to try again, yadda yadda.  I consoled myself with the old adage that you're not a real writer until you get your first rejection.

Since I had the piece ready to go, and had spent so much time working on it, I figured it would be a shame not to read it somewhere, so I brought it to Story Club last night and read it during the open mic portion of the show.  You've probably already read this, or some version of it, but here it is:

Cab Driver

Nothing good ever happens in an empty taxi cab idling with one door wide open.  I scanned the area – I was the only person on the block.  I considered my options – was I safer in the cab, or on the street?  Should I open the trunk, take my backpack and run for my life?  Should I abandon the backpack and run for my life?  If I’d taken that grim facebook quiz that tells you the hour and means of your own demise, would the result have been:  bludgeoned to death by a Portuguese cab driver, 1am, November 9th, 2009? 

 

This journey began almost 24 hours earlier; well, actually it started six months earlier, when I was laid off from my job.  Between sending out resumes, interviewing, and getting rejected, I began checking off items on a mental list of things I’d always wanted to do but never had time for.  Things like being a volunteer tutor, doing a mini-triathlon, and traveling abroad with Habitat for Humanity to build a house for someone who had less than I did. With my severance package and unemployment benefits, I was still earning more than the average Portuguese worker (Wikipedia confirmed it). 

The day after I was laid off, I was sent to meet with a job loss counselor who looked like Al Delvecchio from “Happy Days”.  “Do you think you’ll become depressed?” he asked, as casually as if he were asking if I take coffee with milk, “are you the kind of person who becomes depressed in situations like this?” 

Determined not to be the kind of person who becomes depressed in situations like this, here I was.  I’d turned this trip into three week long, three country extravaganza, starting in France where I connected with family, then on to Spain, where I stayed with a high school friend I hadn’t seen in years; Portugal was the last stop on my excellent unemployed adventure.  

I got a cab at the Campanhã train station, and handed the driver a piece of paper with an address on it.  As he read it I asked “Braga?” the name of the town I was overdue to arrive in.  There had been a small catastrophe at the Barcelona airport and I’d missed my flight to Porto, where Habitat was expecting me, and had to fly into Lisbon, take a train north to Campanhã, and take a cab from there.  I hadn’t brought a phone with me, thinking it would be just one more thing I could lose.  I waited in a long line to check in, only to discover that the airline wouldn’t accept passengers who check in less than an hour before takeoff.  I called my husband from a payphone, and when I heard his voice come through the line was full on sobbing. 

"What's wrong?" he asked, not having heard the two messages I'd left while he was still asleep.  "Everything!" I said.  I became a phone booth spectacle, a grown woman crying in the Barcelona airport, cursing and sputtering, tears shooting out of my eyes and running down the inside of my glasses and down my cheeks.  “They don't care,” I said, “they don't just put you on the next flight, they make you pay.  I'm so tired of nobody giving a shit!"  Then I jotted down a phone number my husband found in an email from Habitat.

I dialed the international operator again and gave him my debit card.  There was a pause, and the man connecting my call said: "There's a block on this card."  "I just used it to make a call," I said, and, attempting to impress upon him the gravity of the situation, "I'm having an emergency."  "I'll try again," he said, and came back a few seconds later with "It won't go through, do you have another card?"

I did have another card; it was in a sleeve, sewn to the bottom of my Rick Steves backpack, underneath all my clothes, toiletries and electronics.  "Can you hold on for just a minute?" I asked, and let the phone go slack and hang from its metal cord.  I hoped the operator could hear me as I unzipped my carefully packed bag and dumped its contents onto the floor - exposing my secret stash of money and backup credit card for anyone who happened to be watching. Finally I heard the voice of Habitat Portugal on the line. 

With urgency in my voice and snot in my nasal cavity I explained my situation to a man named João.  He told me to go to Oriente station when I landed, and to call him with my train information.  I said something noncommittal like "okay".  

I found a restroom and checked out my reflection, my eyes were red and puffy; I looked stoned.  I ran water over my face and headed for my gate. As I boarded the plane Johnny Nash's “I Can See Clearly Now” played over the PA system, and I really, really hoped that was the case. 

The cab driver talked incessantly. I assumed he was talking on a phone until I heard a whistle, looked up and saw he was making eye contact with me in the rearview mirror.  His hairline started about an inch above his eyebrows, like Phil Leotardo, captain of the Lupertazzi family on “The Sopranos”.  He said something that sounded like: “Capeesh?”  I shook my head: no, I don't understand. He spoke again, ending his sentence with the word português? "No," I said, "I don't speak Portuguese." This agitated him.  I speak French très bien, and Spanish un poquito, but as it turns out, Portuguese is not some kind of linguistic buy two get one free deal.  I opened my notebook and pointed to João's phone number. “I know someone who can speak to you; can I use your phone?" I asked, pointing to it. “Si”, he replied. 

João is going to hate me, I thought as I dialed his number for the fourth time; we hadn't even met and already I was causing him grief. "I'm in a taxi and the driver doesn't understand," I said.  The driver was in the middle of a soliloquy, and it took some effort to get his attention.  "Excuse me," I said, thrusting the phone into his personal space, "excuse me, could you please take the phone, there's someone who can talk to you." He continued on his rant, unabated. "Excuse me, excuse me," I said, touching his shoulder and repeating the same phrase as if this would make him understand English, despite the fact that I persisted in not understanding Portuguese.  Finally we made eye contact, "there's someone on the phone for you."   "OK?" I asked when he disconnected, figuring that this of all words would translate. "OK, OK," he said, as we drove past a highway sign that read: Braga 44km.

 

We continued this way for some time, the driver talking a Portuguese blue streak, and making eye contact in the rear-view mirror. He pointed to his temple with an index finger and said "cray zee, craaaaay zeeeeee!" He rubbed his index finger against his thumb, making the international sign for expensive and said "reesh, reeeeesh!"  "I know," I said, "I don't usually take cabs from Portuguese train stations in the middle of the night, but there was a last minute change in my itinerary." I listened to the car radio and realized a cover of Johnny Nash's “I Can See Clearly Now” was being sung by a female vocalist.

We got off the highway and began circling; I'm not from here, the driver seemed to be saying, I don't usually take passengers this far out of my way. We drove up a dead-end street, and then turned around. We circled the area, the driver speaking in a tone that sounded more desperate and anxious than before.

 I’d been watching the number on the fare box grow steadily higher, and didn't have enough cash to pay it. The driver slowed near an ATM, and I sounded out the words printed on it: "Kai-ksah out-oh-mah-ticah," I said, pointing.  "Si, si," he said. I left the car door open to indicate my intention of returning, and hoped that the hold on my debit card had been lifted. I withdrew 200 Euros, and walked back outside where the car was still running, the door I'd opened was ajar, but the driver was nowhere to be seen.

Nothing good ever happens in empty taxi cabs left idling with a door wide open.  What was I thinking traveling by myself to a country I knew nothing about, where I couldn’t speak or read the language?  Sure, if I’d stayed home I’d probably be a little bored and maybe depressed, but at least bored to death is just an expression.

I got in the cab, and closed the door. In a moment, two men approached; the driver and a tall man dressed in a dark suit and hat. The tall man made wide gestures with his arms, and the driver nodded emphatically.  The tall man walked away and the driver returned to the car. "OK?" I almost whispered.  "OK, OK," he said, and put the car back in gear. 

We drove around a corner and down a street that had signs for a hospital. The driver spoke to me in low tones, but the only word I understood was hospital.  He pulled over and repeated himself, ending his sentence with capeesh? I shook my head. He maintained eye contact in the rear-view mirror: capeesh, capeesh? I kept shaking my head.  "It doesn't matter how many times you say it to me in Portuguese," I said, "I don’t understand." Finally something clicked. "Oh," I said, "the guy from Habitat is going to meet me here?" I asked, pointing to the curb.  "Si, si," the driver said. "So I should get out here?" I said.  "Si, si!" 

Shortly a man in jeans and a button down shirt appeared on the sidewalk.  I wasn’t sure it was João, I wasn’t even sure I was in Braga.  He had dark hair and brown eyes, and bore a passing resemblance to former Bulls forward Toni Kukoč.  I rolled down my window: “João?”  I asked. “Jessica?” he replied.  In that moment, as João took my backpack from the trunk and I paid the driver the reesh, cray zee sum of 70 Euros, I could see my future again; someday I would have another job, and traveling instead of staying home and catching up on Judge Judy would turn out to be the best decision I could have made. Like Johnny Nash kept saying, I could see clearly now.  Language was no longer an impediment to seeing the world but the verbal equivalent of those stereoscopic paintings that were really popular about fifteen years ago – once I learned to relax my eyes, I could see the image in front of me; and if I relaxed my ears enough, maybe I could learn a few words of Portuguese.