The worst flight I ever took was mercifully short.
Usually when people talk about their “worst flights”, there is some catastrophe. Somebody puking in the seat next to them. Somebody getting into a brawl. A kid screaming at the top of his lungs all the way from London Heathrow to LA. Or being crammed in for a seven hour flight after being stranded in Saskatoon for fourteen hours.
But my worst flight was short. It wasn’t short because it crashed, malfunctioned or had a medical emergency. It wasn’t short because it was one of those weird “connection flights” like San Jose to San Francisco (17 minutes), or Hartford to Albany (22 minutes). It wasn’t THAT short.
It should have been one of those easily forgotten flights. One major airport to another. About 90 minutes. In a 737 or an A-320: those ubiquitous planes with three seats on each side, a single aisle and two bathrooms up the back. With the perfunctory service of some kind of dry snack and a miserly beverage. A flight you SHOULD forget about before you are even out of baggage claim.
This flight went from Cleveland Ohio to Newark, NJ. Mundane, forgettable but for a few factors. I had just come off one of the worst auditions of my life, but I remembered none of it. Literally nothing. I remember the lead up, and the aftermath: that feeling in my gut that I had bombed it egregiously. It sat there in the diametric center of my torso: a calcified growth with barnacles, a dull ache with a barbs and points.
Auditions themselves are not easily forgotten. You generally remember things about them on a sensory, cerebral and metaphysical level. You remember the mangy, moldy smell of Shetler studios on 8th Avenue: the rickety elevator, the grimy feel of the place. You remember the uncomfortableness of Nola Studios on 54th Street; the hard benches, the nervous bodies in them and the harsh fluorescent lights. Or Ripley Grier Studios: The place you feel guilty if you had a bad audition, because it is actually NICE. A little too nice, so you can’t blame the space.
Perhaps you got to do your audition in another odd place: A theatre at Temple University in Philly, A black box theatre in Boston, or at the Liederkranz Foundation on the Upper East Side: an ornately classical looking place, here you expect naked cherubs to fly around the room and bat their wings if you have a GOOD audition. Or the devil to be summoned up at a bad audition, where he’d chase you around with his pitchfork and drag you to the guts of the underworld for defiling Liederkranz.
You remember the actual audition, too. How you did, how you sounded, how you felt. What the audition panel was like. Were they benevolent old people, half-smiling benignly from the other side of the room, like at Liederkranz. Or was it a long panel table, with six people scribbling notes and not really looking at you (typical). Perhaps it was a bare, stripped down little room with two old geezers scowling at you from a pair of metal folding chairs and nothing else in the room other than a piano.
This was in Rochester, NY. The old men sat, with their arms folded, saying nothing, but it WAS a successful audition. I remember auditions where the audition panel was cheerful, receptive and encouraging. I remember auditions where the panel was dour, brusque and dismissive. And I remember auditions where they gave you NOTHING.
A big pet peeve of mine is when people are playing games on their laptop computers: You are pouring out your best asset and they’re across the table playing Tetris. In one case, one of the panel didn’t have the decency to turn off the sound. I remember the dissonance in sound with the Puccini aria I was singing against the vaguely middle eastern, minor key chime of Tetris. I bombed that audition because I was so pissed off.
A secondary pet peeve is when they are eating, even with the understanding that audition panels have to eat, too, and have to hear a number of people. However, when you walk into an audition studio, and the panel looks like a tableau of The Last Supper, all lined up on a long table, you feel a little slighted. I remembered that. This was at Shetler Studios.
It LOOKED like their last supper, too! The table was littered with take out containers, pizza boxes, wadded napkins and Buffalo wing chicken bones. One of the audition panel members was chomping on a Quiznos sub. Another other was slurping on some soup. The studio smelled like a cross between a Buffalo Wild Wings and a and a Dunkin Donuts. A vaguely sweet but umamic smell, that compounded with the mangy smell of Shetler Studios.
Point being you and I REMEMBER the auditions we have, but this audition I had in Cleveland: Nothing. Dead space. A blank with nothing but my imagination to fill and the only thing I remember was it was BAD.
I should not have flown out to Cleveland. I should not have done this audition. The cost of getting there ate into my limited finances. I was in a bad place. Facets of my life felt as though they were imploding around me. Things that should have been well in my control were spinning out of control, and worst of all: doubt in my artistic ability and talent had wormed its way into my psyche and was starting to become a self fulfilling prophecy.
Imposter Syndrome had not yet been discussed in the mainstream, but I felt at the other end of the spectrum: I feared that the cumulative result of the Dunning Kruger Effect was sending all my incompetent and unskilled chickens home to roost, and were shitting on my head on their way there. My personal relationships suffered.
Overnight my girlfriend saw me go from being intense and hyper, but affable and quick to laugh, to being nervy, moody, restless and dissolute. The alcohol in our apartment disappeared faster and I had trouble sleeping. I dreaded performing and auditions, and I could not get out artistically what I wanted to. It was like my ability had dried up, everything I had worked for had decided it no longer wanted me, and my identity was up for grabs by anybody to do with as they saw fit.
Three days before I flew out to Cleveland I had been in a Master Class, and I almost had a panic attack. I hyperventilated on stage. The master told me to sing facing the wall, so I didn’t get freaked out by all the faces, but it didn’t work. Performance anxiety was always thing for me, but out of nowhere it came to wallop me in the chest and tell me how much I sucked on the way out. My hands shook for the two days between the master class and the trip to Cleveland. I was too much stuck in my head, and I needed to get out, but this seemed to drive me further inward: to this place where every attribute I took pride in was mercilessly assaulted.
Cleveland in December is depressing. It is gray, with long stretches or road extending out to the endless suburbs. The downtown is has lots of concrete and it is cold, with wind and snow whipping all around. I had stayed the night in a concrete hotel out by the Cleveland Clinic, which felt on the edge of town.
One of the main drags is Euclid Avenue and it stretches for an eternity out of Cleveland into cold, flat, snowy Ohio. At some point there is a light rail system that runs out to the airport: little one or two car “trains”, and somehow I got onto one of those to terminate at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport.
And on the train, watching frigid, flat, monochromatically gray Cleveland roll by I tried to remember the auditions. The details, the panel, the point at which I realized I had tanked. I tried to remember the attributes of the space, but I couldn’t. Nothing. Somehow my psyche had blacked out the memory totally, and that was a first. So I catatonically stared out the window at the swirling snow and hoped it wouldn’t ground the flights. I needed to get out of there.
In about a week, I would get a letter. This letter would be rejecting me, based on the audition. Generally with this type of audition there are two pre-formatted letters of rejection. One thanks you for your time, appreciates your presentation, wishes you luck and encourages you to audition again, if perhaps, they have a spot for you. You want the gig, so you are disappointed, but you are appreciative of the encouragement, even if it just a pre-formatted letter.
The other letter was reserved for another type of audition. This letter wanted you to know, on on uncertain terms you had wasted their time, insulted their intelligence, and were out of your league. The letter would not be snide or nasty, but it WOULD be terse and barely tactful. It usually, in not so many words, invited you to NEVER submit your material to them again. In fact, should you have the audacity to do so, even after several cycles of reincarnation working your way up from being a dung beetle to whatever voice you were to audition: they would still make sure you never auditioned for them again.
This type of letter was known in the field as a PFO. That name was very appropriate. It stood for “Please Fuck Off”. Polite, but you were strongly encouraged to fuck off. I was going to get a PFO. I knew I was going to get a PFO, and that time between the auditon and that shoe to drop added to that mountain of stress, but I still remember nothing about the audition.
There is nothing really special about Cleveland Hopkins International Airport. It’s pretty big, but not huge. It has all the things you see in an airport: check in desks, kiosks, signs pointing you to TSA, moving walkways, escalators. To be frank, it’s not a bad airport. But it is as forgettable as the flight should have been, and the audition should NOT have been.
I needed to get home. The worsening snow concerned me, in that I could not stomach another night in Cleveland, especially under these circumstances. I had booked the flight later in the day, just in case there was a call back, or a delay. But my audition was early, and if there was any silver lining to this, it was short. So I had hours before my flight, and wanted to get out of town.
My flight was going to be to John F Kennedy Airport in New York City. I would have a long ride on the A Train back to the apartment to ruminate and torture myself, but at least I’d be doing it in a city I knew and on the final leg of the tourney that would terminate at my vaguely grimy apartment on 207th Street and Broadway, where the bathroom tiles were constantly falling off the wall into the tub. And my poor girlfriend was hopeful that I had resolved whatever dark mass was in my head, which I had not. But at least I could do it at home.
I did not want to wait five hours for it, and did not want to risk spending a night on the airport floor due to grounded planes. I had flown out on a little regional plane: the ones you have to duck if you are very tall, and have a single narrow aisle and flimsy, uncomfortable seats. That flight we had been tossed around the clouds like a paper dart, but landed safely in Cleveland. The impending flight was the mirror image of that. Same type of plane, same airport.
I wanted an earlier flight. I approached the check in desk with my flight information and asked for an earlier flight. The gate agent punched some keys.
“We have a 2:55 flight to Stewart.”
“Where’s Stewart?”
“That’s in Newburgh, New York”.
I did a quick mental calculation of how I could get back to our apartment from Newburgh.
“No, that won’t work. Do you have anything else?”
“We have a 3:05 to Allentown”
“No, no, that’s not going to work either. Do you have anything else?” I was getting a little irritated, but I knew it wasn’t the agent’s fault, and I was aware this was my problem, not hers.
“Well, we do have a flight to Newark. That’s a 3:15. Would Newark work?”
Yes, Newark would work. I’d just take short train ride to Penn Station and get the A Train from there. That would be fine.
“Newark is fine,” I said
“We only have middle seats available. Is that ok?”
“That’s fine” I said. I hate middle states, but this was getting me out of town three or four hours earlier than I had originally booked, so I am not going to complain.
“It starts boarding at 2:55”
She handed me my updated boarding pass. In 2004, you still needed a paper boarding pass.
I shakily approached TSA. I don’t believe they made you take off your shoes yet, and found the gate. This, also, went mercifully smoothly.
The first thing I needed was a drink. I needed to come down and I couldn’t. I hadn’t been able to come down for about a month due to the impending implosion of everything in my life. I approached a ubiquitous bar and got a double Johnny Walker Red neat.
I had wanted something better, but I was poor. And that drink ate into my wallet like a pirhana that only ate money. You want a drink in an airport, you will pay for it. And even that was a bad idea. My stress level didn’t diminish, but my mental faculty did. Instead of sharp barnacles scraping up my guts, now it was just a nondescript thud with no real aim. Repetitive, but pointless.
I was by the gate, so out of the corner of my eye, I saw the crowd form close to the gate; boarding would’t be too far away and I was relieved. However, the crowd seemed very “black and white”. The attire seemed to lack color, and where had I seen this before? Heavy wool overcoats. A couple had hats made out of fur. Thick, wool dresses. Wigs. Peyot curls. Hasidic Jews.
A ton of them. They didn’t exactly charter the plane, but there were a large number of them. And their number seemed to increase. It is strange seeing Hasidics outside of New York City. It is not uncommon to see them in the part of the city known as the “Diamond District”, where many of them work as jewelers. And there is a pocket in Brooklyn where many of them reside. They’re an insular group that seem to travel in packs, but it was odd seeing them in Cleveland, of all places, especially that many of them. But as their number increased by the gate, it became obvious they had the lions share of the plane. I wondered if they were on a different flight, but no, they were congregating around the gate for the flight to Newark.
The Johnny Walker Red done, and thudding around in my stomach I approached the gate as boarding was soon to commence. The Hasidics seemed to have a lot of carry on luggage, a lot of it in odd, irregular shapes. Strange, lumpy bags. Odd looking cases.
“We will shortly begin boarding Continental Flight XXX with service to Newark, New Jersey” The boarding began, and all the Hasidics, me and the other Non Hasidics went to the gate. I showed my boarding pass and headed down the jet bridge surrounded by black and white, wool, and an odd ambient smell I could not identify, a sort of organic vapor.
Entering the plane, I turned right and walked through first class, where the Hasidic to Non Hasidic ratio was 1:1: About half the wide seats had Hasidics in them. And into the main cabin, where they were all sitting like goalpoasts: One in each window seat, one in each aisle seat, with the middle seat empty. It appeared they had tried to have the men on one side of the plane, and the women across the aisle on the other, but some of the men had spilled into the women’s side. I found my seat halfway down the plane; it was between two large Hasidic men.
The man in the aisle seat looked at me in confusion, and then annoyance, when he realized the middle seat was mine. I realized they had hoped to have the whole row to themselves, and they didn’t try to hide their irritation. I looked down the plane and each row was like that: one person in the window seat, one person in the aisle seat, and the odd “non Hasidic” were scattered in the middle seats.
I seated myself in the middle seat between these two guys. They didn’t acknowledge me, except to convey their irritation they didn’t get the whole row. I was sitting there between them, but they acted like I wasn’t there. Conversing across me in a language I didn’t understand, gesticulating into my space. I offered to trade, so they could sit together and not interact across me, but they waved off my offer in annoyance and continued to act as though I wasn’t sitting right there in the middle seat.
They conversed, passed reading material across me, passed a snack across me, conversed across me as though I simply didn’t exist. The remaining Hasidics continued to board, carrying an unnaturally large amount of irregularly shaped luggage; opening the overhead bins, stuffing them full and slamming them shut.
And although the guys in my row were seated, the remaining Hasidics simply wouldn’t sit down. The flight needed to push off from the gate, but they mingled around the plane, clogging up the narrow aisle. Eventually, the flight pushed away from the gate; the Hasidics very temporarily in their seats. The flight attendant was demonstrating the safety protocols but they were ignoring her and talking. And then some started getting up, pushing right past her to access the bathroom, or one of the other Hasidics in First Class, or simply to talk to somebody else in economy. A general announcement was made, requesting everybody to return to their seats, which the Hasidics ignored.
The plane continued down the tarmac, the Cleveland Hopkins International Airport terminal building fading away in the gray. But the Hasidics would not sit down. A second announcement was made, pleading for everybody to sit down, which was ignored again. Up to this point the Hasidics in my row had ignored me, acting as though I wasn’t there. They were pissed I was in “their” row and wanted me to know it.
The man in the window seat abruptly gestured at me, the first acknowledgement I existed at all. I realized he just wanted me to get up so HE could move about the cabin. I obliged. Both he and the guy in the aisle seat went down the aisle and for about a minute I had the whole row to myself. I had hoped they had found somewhere else to sit.
However, thirty seconds in, there was yet another pleading over the PA from the flight attendant for everyone to sit down, which went ignored. The plane ground to a dead stop, and the PA system clicked on again. This time it was the captain, stating that until everybody was back in their seat, the plane would not move, and this would cause a delay.
The plane sat on the tarmac, while the Hasidics ignored the captain and continued to mingle, clogging up the aisle. The plane sat some more and the captain came over the PA again, stating that because he could not move the plane due to the failure to sit down, we had lost our place in the flight queue, and we were going to be delayed. Further, he threw down the ultimatum that unless everybody was seated within the minute, he was going to return the plane to the gate and eject everybody who was not sitting down.
The Hasidics grudgingly sat down. The two men in my row glared at me and gestured at me to get out of my seat so the guy in the window seat could sit down. I stood up, returned the glare and sat in the middle seat, where the guy in the aisle seat sat down and raised the armrest. I glared at him again and slammed it back down. The the other Hasidic in the window seat raised the armrest and I slammed it back down. Then they BOTH raised the armrests in synchronicity, and I took both hands and slammed both the armrests back down, hard. It hit the guys leg and he gave me another look of death. I gave back to him with interest and held both the armrests down. They made an attempt to get them back up, but those armrests were staying down.
It had gotten dark. The plane lumbered in the direction of runway to get on the back of a long line of jets, everything from little regional jets, to long haul wide body jets, going to places like Amsterdam. But it was a long line, and we were on the tail end of it. Every now and then we would inch forward. The captain used this time to get on the PA and announce that because of the failure of “passengers” to sit down we were going to be delayed.
But, finally, after an eternity of moving and stopping and moving and stopping, “Crew, prepare for takeoff” was announced and soon we were in the air. The Hasidic in the window seat had the shade down, so I could not see the lights of Cleveland receding into darkness. I was relieved to be in the air, and relieved I’d be in Newark in about an hour and fifteen minutes.
Once airborne, the Hasidics took to the aisle again, despite pleas to sit down and stay seated. The service cart moved slowly down the aisle, thwarted by the people in the aisle, attempting to shove past the cart. The Hasidic in the window seat gestured crudely for me to get up again, and I squeezed into the aisle so both of them could head down towards first class. A few minutes later, they returned, gestured me out of my seat again, and sat back down.
The service cart approached and I lowered my tray. The Hasidic in the aisle seat didn’t like that and slammed it back up. I forcefully lowered it again. Neither of these guys and had spoken to me, not one word: just glares and percussive gestures. The cart came and I got some Diet Coke and a sawdusty biscuit. However, I could not bring the cup to my lips, because the Hasidics were gesturing and conversing across my space, interfering with my having my beverage.
But soon, the PA clicked on again, and the captain cooly stated we were beginning our descent into Newark. And soon, “Crew, prepare for landing” as the plane began dropping in altitude. The Hasidics were again pleaded back into their seats, and did so grudgingly. And soon, the plane bumped down onto the runway at Newark, and I was relieved to be on the ground! We rolled slowly towards the terminal building and before we were stopped, the Hasidics got up and started grabbing their lumpy bags, opening the overhead bins and shoving their way to the exit, even if the jet bridge hadn’t yet been hooked up and the door had yet to open.
The Hasidic in the window seat aggressively gestured me out of my seat, and shoved past me towards the exit with the other one, but I don’t think the door had even opened. I sat in the row by myself, enjoying the somewhat solitude, and waited for everybody to leave the plane, then I followed one of the last people out. The cabin was a mess. Debris on the floor and the seats, the bins gaping open. Out the plane, through the jet bridge and into Terminal C at Newark, with the duct tape on the carpet and it’s vaguely mangy odor, not unlike that of Shetler Studio.
I walked through the door of our apartment about 90 minutes later, only a few minutes earlier than had I taken the original flight on which I had been booked. In the days between the audition and when I got the PFO, I licked my wounds and drank heavily. The PFO said exactly what I thought it was going to say. So I obligingly and politely fucked off from that company until it folded a little over ten years later.
I have not been to Cleveland since. Many years later, I have been THROUGH Cleveland on the train at about 5 AM. I woke up to go to the bathroom and noticed we were stopped. On the way back from the bathroom, I asked a conductor where we were and he said Cleveland. I returned to the compartment, shut the door and went back to bed. I was asleep before we were out of Cleveland. Since neither the audition or the flight is Cleveland’s fault, I really should return to Cleveland to cleanse my palate. I have done that with other places I have had bad memories in: returned to make new memories to supplant the old, and the new memories prevailed. Cleveland should be given that courtesy.
When my sister called it a lemon, I thought she was referring to its color. It was, in fact, yellow. Or, perhaps she was referring to it’s shape. If you squinted your eyes and used your imagination it sort of approximated the profile of a lemon. Although its shade of yellow was more like that of a banana, and its rust spots sort of resembled the spots on a banana that had been sitting out too long. Its shade wasn’t even a good approximation of a banana, though. It was more of a dull, flat, mustard yellow, with rusty accents. The interior was a faded, shopworn brownish vinyl.
It was hard to say what age, exactly it was. It was a “parts car”: cobbled together with auto parts from the early 1970s, and it was “mostly” an Austin Allegro. When it was purchased, it was made clear that although the car had passed the MOT test in late 1985 (UK’s safety and emissions test for vehicles) it would NOT pass the 1986 MOT test. The car was a standard stick shift, with only 4 gears, and did not have seat belts in the cramped back seat.
When, a month earlier, the airplane door opened at Belfast International Airport (locally called Aldergrove Airport) two days before Christmas in 1985, and the damp, smokey, petey smell of Antrim wafted into the plane, I think a car was the last thing on my dad’s mind. We dragged our sleep-deprived selves down the steps they had wheeled to the plane, across the apron, and into the modest terminal building. I believe my dad thought we might be able to make it for eight months in Belfast without our own car.
After all, Ireland is an island about the size of the state of Indiana. And in the northeast corner, Northern Ireland is carved out of that: an area about the size of the state of Connecticut. For such a small country, Northern Ireland has a good transportation network. We were to live in Belfast, with a bus system throughout the city. There was also a regional bus network that served the rest of Northern Ireland; called Ulsterbus. Colloquially, these buses were called “red buses” and “blue buses”, respectively. Additionally, the more populous and urban of Northern Ireland’s six counties: County Antrim (which included Belfast and environs), County Down and County (London)Derry were very well railroaded, with the regional Northern Ireland Railways. And the three more rural counties: County Fermanagh, County Tyrone and County Armagh, were served by the “blue buses”. Moreover, we had a network of family close by who could give us rides, and we could rent a car on occasion.
A car was an added expense. My dad had taken a semester’s sabbatical from his job as a professor at a community college, but only at half pay. Our family of five: both my parents, my older sister, my younger brother and myself were to stay in my grandmother’s cramped, dark terraced house in North Belfast on the Shore Road; a relatively busy artery into downtown Belfast, which was only about a mile and a half away. The house was at the foot of “Seaview Hill”: directly opposite a road called “Premier Drive” that had a steep incline, which, at the top of the hill, led to a maze-like network of narrow streets filled with identical red brick terrace houses, punctuated only by chimneys on the roofs. Practically next door to us was a stadium for semi professional football (soccer), whose team was called the Belfast Crusaders. A sabbatical requires you to make productive use of your half paid semester; you can’t just vegetate, so my dad established some kind of affiliation with Queens University on the other side of the city of Belfast, where he would go most days. However, money was finite, and I think the expense of a car was to be avoided, if possible.
This was the block I lived on. The house I lived in is the one farthest right with the peaked roof. To the extreme right is the stadium where the Crusaders played. Photo taken 2019
Moreover, a car was a liability, especially in Belfast in 1986. Although the political climate of of the city, indeed Northern Ireland, had become somewhat less volatile in the mid 1980s than it was in the 1970s, there was still unrest. Things still got blown up. People still got killed. There was property damage, a lot of it motivated by political discord. We had travelled light for our eight months in Belfast: bringing very few things other than those deemed necessary. It was not unheard of for a person to leave a car unattended for too long in downtown Belfast to return and find a steaming pile of foam where their car had been. The bomb squad had done a controlled detonation out of an abundance of caution. While I doubted we’d ever be in a situation that would result in a foamed down and exploded car, or the actions of the Belfast bomb squad, having unnecessary property to deal with was not taken lightly.
We made it work for about a month. We visited my relatives in nearby Newtonabbey: a sprawling suburb north of Belfast, where my aunt, uncle and four cousins lived in a semi detached house, a short bus ride away. We made use of Belfast’s “red buses” to get us around the city. We used the “Blue Buses” to visit Donaghadee. Donaghadee was a small fishing village in County Down where my grandmother owned a small cottage as a vacation house, and where my other aunt and uncle: a physiotherapist and an anesthesiologist respectively, also had a house. Among those relatives, we were generally able to get a ride, within the immediate environs of Belfast.
I, at age ten, was in school most of the week, my dad was doing his work at Queens University on the other side of town, so most of our travel as a family was done on the weekends. Blissfully unaware, or rather, under-aware of the political unrest in Belfast, I eagerly explored my new surroundings in my spare time. Owing to the fact it was January, it was damp, cold and got dark early. It wasn’t frigid, or snowy like the northeastern United States, but it was a dampness you could feel through your coat. A wet sort of cold that numbed your fingers and seeped into your shoes no matter how you managed to stay out of puddles. Nonetheless, I explored every neighborhood I could walk to, much to the worry and consternation of my grandmother.
Belfast is not very big. It is about the size of Rochester, NY or Worcester, Massachusetts. In 1986 it was damp, grim and sooty. But I was intrigued by attributes of the city that seemed unique to Belfast: the coarsely ground black asphalt of the sidewalks, bisected every few feet with gutters. The smell of coal smoke, and the oil from the fish and chip shops (called “chippies”) that every neighborhood seemed to have. The huge, yellow, gantry cranes of the Harland and Wolff shipyard that loomed over the city, nicknamed Samson and Goliath, with H&W inscripted across the top. The nettles that would sprout up out of any patch of green, even in January. Even the vehicles traveling on the left side of the road fascinated me. The affable, even friendly demeanor and dialect of the people, that somehow belied the unrest was intriguing. I traversed through neighborhoods with narrow streets and identical brick row houses with end gables that sported artwork with vaguely threatening and disturbing imagery. I traversed up hills to where the rooflines of houses cut sawteeth into the smoky, gray sky. On foot, I made it to the other side of Belfast out to the crooked “Old Albert” clock, and to the River Lagan and the Botanical Garden.
This is the view atop Seaview Hill. In the background you can see the cranes of the Harland & Wolff shipyard. The Crusader’s stadium is directly below. Photo taken 2019.
Another perspective atop a hill in Belfast. The Harland & Wolff gantry cranes dominate the city’s profile. Directly below the crane is the Titanic Museum, built in 2012. Photo taken 2019.
This is a typical Belfast neighborhood. My wife is in the picture. Photo taken 2019.
Entering the shopping district of Downtown Belfast involved a checkpoint. On foot, it was perfunctory; they had retired the procedure of patting down everybody who entered with a metal detector wand in a prefab shack. As long as you didn’t look as though you presented an immediate threat (as a ten year old kid like me would not) they let you pass into the downtown without interception. However entering on the bus, it involved an officer inspecting that bus, with a mirror on a stick to look under every seat to ensure somebody hadn’t planted a bomb there. The double decker bus used to be standard in Belfast, but owing to the unrest, a bus with unattended areas like the upper deck was not often used, so the few double decker buses that remained were mothballed in favor of buses whose interior could be more closely monitored.
This is downtown Belfast in 2019, nowhere near as grim as it was in 1986. In slight background is the Old Albert Clock, which stands at an angle.
An example of gable art, some of which is somewhat disturbing and evocative of the discord. Photo taken 2019
The double deckers buses have returned to Belfast some time ago. In 1986 you rarely saw them; having an unmonitored area of the bus could spell potential problems. Photo taken 2019.
After school, and on my free time, I explored as much of the city as I could until it got dark. I had made some friends who showed me certain areas, but I was also a solitary kid who enjoyed my own company much of the time, and was making sense of the new world I was in. Although the political climate had improved from the mid 1970s, the Anglo Irish agreement had been signed a few months earlier, and had caused some renewed unrest.
Every surface, from lamp posts to the damp, coarse concrete wall of the Crusader’s stadium, sported flyers that said, in large capital letters: “ULSTER SAYS NO!”. In areas outside of Belfast, the objection to the Anglo Irish agreement was more localized to the town, with flyers stating “ANTRIM SAYS NO!”, ”BALLYCLAIRE SAYS NO!” and “WHITEABBEY SAYS NO!”. And in downtown Belfast, the City Hall displayed a large banner over the portico, proclaiming in blood red capital letters: “BELFAST SAYS NO!”
I don’t know what ultimately motivated my dad to get the car. About a month into our stay, a protest march was organized down the Shore Road in the direction of downtown Belfast. This was, of course in reaction to the Anglo Irish Agreement. In the interests of safety, schools were closed that afternoon. Also, in the interests of safety, and to my dismay, we were directed to stay inside my grandmothers small, dark house with the curtains drawn, so as not to convey any support for the march. Nonetheless, I watched with fascination between the curtains.
The march was led by Ian Paisley, and consisted of his followers, who organized a symbolic “burial of democracy”, where bagpipes played a funeral dirge, and a casket draped with a British Union Jack flag was paraded down the road. Other groups joined the march, including paramilitary groups and local neighborhood “Orange Bands” playing flutes and drums, and with names like “Pride of the Shore” and “Pride of the Shankill”. My grandmother insisted the curtains of her already dark house stayed closed because she “didn’t want a brick through the window”. Being ten, and only there about a month, I did not regard the somewhat rowdy and ragtag “parade” with fear, rather with interest. As they made their way down the Shore Road in the direction of City Hall, they passed without incident, nonetheless there was the everpresent possibility that it could have gotten ugly at any time. But I did not know that.
The very next day, my dad bought the car, and my sister called it a lemon. I think it was a realization that we were still car dependent, despite transportation options in Northern Ireland. I think he also realized that if were going to have any real mobility in Northern Ireland, indeed Ireland, we were going to need a car, despite the liability. And in the event things DID get ugly and affected the transportation in the area, we still had wheels.
II: THE SYMPTOMS
I did not like this car. The car was rusty, old, beat up and smelled funny. Moreover, it was cramped. Being the solitary kid I was, I looked for any opportunity for personal space and to assert my autonomy, and this car seemed only to undermine it further. It seemed that since I had arrived, opportunities for solitude seemed few and far between.
We were shoehorned into my grandmother’s dark, drafty house, where space was in short supply. My brother, my sister and I slept in the master bedroom; the only room in the house that got any serious light. My brother and I were on a bunk bed; my sister on a single bed across the room. My poor grandmother had been ousted out of her master bedroom and instead occupied a small room at the other end of the house. It was a wretched, tiny, cold, dark room with all the ambience of a prison cell; only big enough for a single bed and perhaps a dresser. A single window looked out onto a dark, rough alleyway. The master bedroom, where my grandmother should have rightfully been, had big, wood wardrobe closets full of my dead grandfather’s suits and intricate patterned wallpaper that made the otherwise bright room feel smaller and darker. It had heavy, dark furniture taking up the rest of the space. There was this standing feeling of guilt of having ousted my poor grandmother, who should have been in that room, in her double bed, with her dead husband’s suits hanging in the wardrobe closet. All of this was stifling. And to be squashed into this smelly little car with the four other people I was sharing the house with seemed to take away what little solitary time and space I had.
I understood, on some level this car presented an opportunity to go places we would not have otherwise gone. I also understood it only needed to last until August of 1986. I understood the car filled both purposes. However, my aunt and uncle in Donaghadee had two shiny blue Volvo sedans, kept impeccably clean, smelled nice, and ran like a dream; which threw the condition of this car into sharp relief. I knew that the next trip to Donaghadee would be in this beater, not as a passenger in one of their nice clean Volvos. Further, I had learned to navigate the bus network in Belfast, and though it had it’s limits, even the bus was more respectful of personal space than this car!
I understood the utility of and need for the car. But riding it it was not a pleasant experience. It ran roughly. Again, it was short on space. It was rusty and smelled bad. The vinyl had a sticky feel to it, and the heat did not work all that well, so the car was often cold and damp. Moreover, my dad was not used to driving on the left side of the road. When my aunt or uncle drove their Volvos it seemed effortless, and when riding it you forgot you were on the “wrong” side of the road. The car felt like it belonged there. When my dad drove the “lemon”, you never forgot for one minute you were on the left side of the road. In spite of my dad’s safe driving, there was something about it that seemed unsafe. It wasn’t just because this car, and it’s poor shape made you feel exposed. I theorize it was because I had seen my dad so often driving on the RIGHT side of the road (with the driver seat on the LEFT) back home in the US, this just seemed out of whack, inverted. My dad was driving the wrong car, in the wrong seat, on the wrong side of the road. The car was a piece of shit and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.
Ireland, indeed, Northern Ireland has a lot to explore, and though I hated RIDING in the car, I did enjoy most of our destinations. Owing to Northern Ireland’s small size, you could be in the Republic of Ireland in less than an hour, with no shortage of abandoned monasteries of stone: several hundreds of years old, old forts, and other stone ruins. There were winding roads, flanked by rough stone walls, so narrow it didn’t really matter WHAT side my dad was supposed to be on. There were green fields full of sheep, whitewashed cottages, some with thatched roofs and rusty, corrugated aluminum barns with curved roofs.
We explored the rural areas of Northern Ireland: County Armagh, into the reaches of County Down County Fermanagh, where it was not uncommon to see a head of cattle blocking the road. My brother seemed to be going through a phase where he was always getting carsick: either from the ever winding roads so ubiquitous to Ireland, or from doing something stupid like rolling down the hills at Navan Fort, Staigue Stone Fort, or the green parcel of land in front of Newgrange, a ritual burial tomb over five thousand years old.
My brother’s constant puking in the car irritated me. Not only did it happen at inopportune times, and create a mess, but from the first puke, the car retained the smell. There was no way to get rid of it. The car already had a funk to it, the car wasn’t gong to lose the smell of my brother’s serial puking. It simply compounded with the other unidentified, yet also unpleasant smells.
Nonetheless the car hung in. It shook, rattled, wobbled and stunk. It made all manner of noises, ran roughly, and my dad behind the wheel never let me forget we were driving on the left side of the narrow roads, where cars would whoosh past, their draft shaking our lemon of a car to its core and threatening to strip loose parts from it. The gears shifted roughly, the clutch sounded like it was going to die, and the shocks were terrible. I was embarrassed when the lemon pulled up against much nicer cars. Every twist and turn threatened to make my brother puke yet another time. But the car hung in.
Though you could see the patience of both my parents frayed, in April we managed a trip deep the Republic, to a town called Tralee about sixty miles southwest of Limerick, just before the Dingle Peninsula. The name of the peninsula evoked sophomoric laughter and juvenile innuendo from my brother and me. We rented a small “caravan” for a week: an RV trailer whose interior was perpetually freezing cold, where we explored the south coast of Ireland, and more medieval stone ruins. April in Ireland, although more comfortable than January, is still cold and wet. That trip down to County Kerry, the Dingle Peninsula and our caravan in Tralee was the last trip that car would make without a major problem.
III: THE DECLINE
Although Northern Ireland is only about the size of Connecticut, going up the Antrim coast is an excursion best saved for later in the spring, owing the high winds, and mercurial (often rainy and blustery) weather. Our day trip up the North Coast waited until early May, but on that trip it became very apparent that The Lemon’s days were numbered. We had started on the Motorway; the M-5 but the car was simply incapable of maintaining even the minimum speed needed for motorway driving. Anytime an attempt to increase speed was made, the car would shudder and fliver all over the lane. My dad finally gave up and we ended up taking the Shore Road up the coast, at a speed that would kindly be called leisurely, however the condition of the car negated any sense of leisure that could be felt riding in it.
The first stop was the Giant’s Causeway, where the car barely made it into the parking lot as it was overheating. We walked down the damp, slippery path, through a weather condition that was something between a mist and a light rain, but nonetheless succeeded in getting us soaked. The Giants Causeway is a natural stone formation of hexagonally tiled rocks of different levels. This was caused millions of years ago through some kind of volcanic effect. Although it is one of the most impressive natural formations in Northern Ireland, perhaps all of Ireland, (It was featured on the cover of Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy Album), I had seen my fill of rocks. Ireland has no shortage of rock formations, both natural and man made: some inscribed and some untouched. I had seen plenty of rocks, and even a formation like the Giant’s Causeway failed to impress me.
The nearby Carrick a Rede Rope Bridge impressed me more, in a terrifying sort of way. Today, the rope bridge is a major tourist attraction and has been netted in for safety. In 1986, though it was a well known attraction in Northern Ireland, it was not yet on the map. It was a simple, narrow suspension foot bridge between the mainland and a small, rocky island. It was suspended over a gorge, more than 100 feet above the Irish Sea, where the black water smashed and frothed irately against sharp rocks. The bridge itself consisted of two narrow planks of wood, two ropes to hold onto, vertical rope struts every seven feet or so, and plenty of space to fall through and be dashed on the rocks or gobbled up by the sea below. In addition, that wet misty rain and high winds created slippery conditions. Only two people were supposed to be on the bridge at a time, so we waited for the gusts to subside, and made it across in groups of two, gripping the ropes tightly and praying the wind didn’t start back up. To return to the mainland we had to repeat the trip, fully cognizant of the space where gravity rushed through and seemed as though it was its sole purpose in life to suck us into the angry sea.
This is a 2012 photo of the Carick a Rede Rope Bridge. Since about 2000 it has been “netted in“, making falling from it nearly impossible. Moreover, as you can see from the photo, it can safely accommodate more than two people, as was not the case in 1986. It has also become a much more frequented place since then.
On the way back to the car, my mother: always full of local lore, told us a tale about a man who made a drunken bet: that he could ride a unicycle across the rope bridge. He won that bet, but stated afterwards he could never have done it sober. Although there are no official reports of any fatalities from falling from the bridge, I never believed it for one minute. The bridge did become more popular in later years and close to 2000, netting was installed around it that made falling from the bridge close to impossible. This was a sharp contrast to previous years where a slip, a sneeze, or a wrong step would send you on a long ride down to a wet and rocky death.
But the car. The car was not doing well. When my dad put the key in the ignition, I held my breath, wondering if it would even start. It did, but after a few attempts, and a lot of indecisive shaking. We barely made it to the third destination: The Causeway Safari Park. And here the problems with the car manifested themselves fully.
When one thinks of a safari, perhaps the last place that comes to mind is Northern Ireland, much less the North Coast of Northern Ireland. However, not far from the Giants Causeway and the Carick A Rede Rope Bridge is yet another attraction. The Causeway Safari Park was a privately owned animal preserve, where one could drive their car through a compound, as though on a safari. The compound itself was surrounded by a low fence: quite a low fence for an animal compound. You would pay a fee, and enter the compound in your car through a swinging double “airlock” gate: operated manually by a couple of nonchalant teenagers.
I do not know where or how the owners of the park acquired their animals, or what, if any, official agency regulated it, or what, if any, official recognition it had. But as you approached the compound there were warnings to keep the doors and windows of your vehicle closed. This is because the primary animals contained in the compound were lions. Up ahead, there was another sign: one that warned us to lock the car as well. This was because in addition to lions, they had added baboons to the mix, and baboons had opposable thumbs, fully capable of opening car doors.
Nothing in this car worked well. Not one thing. Not the engine, not the transmission, not the window cranks. And if the locks or even doors malfunctioned, it would be no surprise. Nonetheless, we approached the swinging gate, where the teenager lackadaisically swung the first one open, closed it, then rode on the second gate as it opened, changed it’s direction and rode it closed. And my parents, my siblings, The Lemon, and myself were enclosed in a compound surrounded by hungry looking lions and baboons that looked entirely too interested in the car. My mother checked the locks of the car and admonished nobody to mess with them. Unfortunately, my mother’s warnings often gave my brother ideas, and I could see temptation getting the better of him as his hand approached the lock, and my mother smacked it away in the nick of time. He tried it a couple more times, with the same result, but you could tell he was waiting for opportunity.
It turned out the lions weren’t all that interested in us. They lolled in a semi recline, and looked on in boredom, somewhat resembling aristocratic Romans after a feast. The baboons, however, like my brother, were looking for opportunity. I did not have much faith in any component of the car, but I hoped the locks, or at least the door would hold out.
You were only supposed to go about 10 miles an hour on the path, but honestly, that was all the car was capable of doing anyway. The Lemon lurched, shuddered and threatened to stall, as a large lion with a mane lumbered over to watch, as though he was stalking pray. And then one of the baboons stood in front of the car, where my dad inched forward, but the baboon refused to budge. Two more baboons approached the car and slapped the window, and two more started trying the doors. My dad honked the horn, and that was successful in getting the first baboon from blocking our path. But as our car shuddered forward, each inch it moved was an ongoing threat to stall, more baboons swarmed the car: rattling the door handles, slapping the chassis, trying to grab the radio antenna for the radio that didn’t even work. And still more baboons were watching and egging on the baboons tactically involved in the attempted hijack, and enjoying every minute of the show immensely.
We made it to the double airlock exit gate, where another lackadaisical teenager fended off the baboons before swinging open the first gate, chasing out a baboon that made it into the airlock, and let us out. My brother asked if we could go through again, but the car answered that question in the form of overheating.
It became obvious at that point that the car was in a race against time: We were due to return to the United States in August, but it was doubtful the car would even make it those three months. The car barely made it back to Belfast: shuddering, overheating and making terminal noises all the way home. The car was incapable of going more than 40 miles an hour, and could only sustain that for about fifteen minutes before overheating. And every time the car started up, there was a new noise, a new malfunction, and whatever ad hoc, makeshift repair could be done to get it another 20 miles. The car’s days were numbered. But it stubbornly refused to die.
IV: THE DEMISE
In early June, school let out and I couldn’t have been happier about that. I was fed up with pretty much every aspect of school, from the cold, drafty, damp musty smelling building to the drab school uniform: the stiff grey trousers, the blue school tie and the scratchy gray pullover sweater. Most of the teachers were glad to be rid of me as well. I had a bad attitude and my demeanor did not sit well either; it was taken as disrespectful, which, in all likelihood, it was.
The weather had improved as well: from the pervasive, clammy cold that penetrated your clothes and numbed your extremities to a pleasant mildness that allowed you to go without a jacket on most days. The football field in front of the school sported a bright verdant hue, and the smell of cut grass hung in the air, along with the damp, coaly smell that was characteristically Belfast. To be sure, the weather in Ireland tends to be temperamental, and although it rained often, you could expect it to stop soon, if temporarily, only to begin again.
With school ended, and only a couple of months before our return to the United States, I could explore Belfast with fewer time constraints, in agreeable weather. In the past few months I had gotten to know the city very well, but there was always more to be discovered. In addition, each neighborhood had already begun work on it’s “bony”: a huge bonfire to be ignited on midnight, July 12, in celebration of a volatile and politically charged holiday. Anything and everything was used in construction of these bonfires: Old tires, old mattresses, scrap wood and any other pieces of garbage you could think of: furniture, car parts. Anything to add height or girth, in that these bonfires were to be conical in shape and rising twenty, thirty, forty feet. It seemed you couldn’t walk more than a few blocks before you’d see one of these enormous heaps of varied junk, ever growing and ever rising in the few weeks that preceded July 12.
I had grown, too. I had turned eleven in March, and had shot up two or three inches. My voice squeaked and croaked alternately, and hair sprouted out all over. Though I was still decidedly American, I had adopted much of the local vernacular and could almost blend in, but for my accent which gave me away. All that said, I was looking forward to my return to the United States. The brick terraced house we lived in had become even more stifling, and I felt as though I had single handedly worn out our welcome.
However before we returned to the United States once and for all, my dad had planned a trip. We were to take a ferry to Scotland, traverse down the length of Britain to Portsmouth, where we would board another ferry to take us to Le Havre, France. From Le Havre, we were to visit various points in France, including Paris, where we would stay in a series of large, furnished tents wired with electricity, complete with cooking equipment and dishes. This outfit was called “Eurocamp”, and there were Eurocamp ground at different places in France as well as the rest of the European continent. When our trip to France was concluded, we’d board another ferry at Calais, for a crossing back to Dover, England. From there we’d spend about a week in London before our return by ferry back to Northern Ireland. This would be about two weeks. This was a lot of ground to cover. With the lemon.
I looked forward to the trip, but I was extremely skeptical we would be accomplishing this with the lemon. Since our trip to the North Coast, the lemon had been in steady decline, unable to go more than thirty or forty miles an hour and unable to go more than twenty or thirty miles without a malfunction. Yet somehow, it still was in the land of the living, but with a very tenuous grip. With all the ground we were going to cover between Britain and France, I was pretty sure there was no way we’d be able to do it with the lemon. I was also concerned about the fact the car was equipped for left side driving, but had to be driven on the right side in France. I wasn’t overly confident in my dad’s ability to pull that off. My dad was optimistic. I, however, was not.
On the day of the trip, the car wobbled and sputtered its way to the ferry slip in Larne: a distance of about twenty miles north of Belfast. Amazingly, other than the car constantly threatening to overheat or befall some other misfortune, it made it onto the car deck of the ferry without incident, where the crossing gave it a two hour rest.
Even more amazingly, from when we docked in Cairnryan, Scotland, to our first stop in Stratford upon Avon, where we spent the first night, the lemon made it. It was a slow, agonizing ride, to be sure, where the car overheated constantly. Somehow the steering column had managed to get twisted, and we had to stop many times along the way, but we made it three quarters of the way down the length of Britain! For the past few months, this car had been perpetually at deaths door, and inching closer, and yet it refused to cross to the other side.
The next day we were to continue the trip down to Portsmouth, with a stop at Stonehenge, before we would continue on to get the ferry that evening. There wasn’t a tremendous amount of distance to cover; about 120 miles and we had all day to do it. I was sure the lemon would find a way to make it take all day, perhaps to the point where we would miss the ferry.
Under normal circumstances, with a car in a good state of repair, it would take maybe an hour an a half to get from Stratford upon Avon to Stonehenge, but the lemon made sure it took five hours. The maximum speed the lemon could go was fast diminishing, and the time/distance between overheating or whatever malfunction affected the car was becoming shorter with each mishap. The lemon barely made it into the parking lot of Stonehenge, with smoke coming from under the hood. The car could not drive in a straight line and the maximum speed was 25 miles an hour, if that.
I was frustrated with the constant stopping and malfunctioning of the car. I was concerned about missing the ferry. I knew that if we made it to the continent, the trip would continue, but if the car died before we got it onto the ferry, there was a good chance my dad would make the executive decision to cut the trip short. And I was just intrinsically irritated at all the stopping and starting, waiting for the car to cool down, or figuring out whatever jury rigged repair would get it another ten miles.
I was not impressed with Stonehenge. The past few months in Ireland I spent a lot of time looking at old rocks, arranged much more creatively than this. We had seen abandoned monasteries, passage graves, ritual tombs and rocks with Celtic inscriptions. We had seen the Fahan Beehive Huts in County Kerry, a much more creative arrangements of old rocks. The rocks at Stonehenge were larger and older, but to my mind, they were simply big rocks put on top of each other. In a circle. Big deal.
But at the same moment, an old, beat up, dented gray van pulled up into the parking lot. The van looked to be older then our lemon, but seemed to run exponentially better; there was no smoke pouring from the hood and it could drive a straight line. The van was covered in bumper stickers, and where there no bumper sticker were rust spots. The double doors flew open and out jumped three scruffy looking characters, two of them with guitar cases, as beat up as the van. You could practically see the flies buzzing around their shoulder length hair and unkempt beards. Three bedraggled looking women in prairie skirts and long unkempt hair followed and they all ran towards the rock formation. The first one attempted to scale the low fence that surrounded the formation. A couple of park rangers ran towards them and attempted to shoo them away. There was some minor altercation and the rangers succeeded in chasing the characters back into the van and it sped off, back onto the road, and I watched in envy how well that beat up van seemed to run.
My mother surmised they were hippies, and they wanted to play guitar among the rocks. My dad theorized that given the reaction of the park rangers, the hippies were a familiar nuisance the rangers were well used to. I wondered why they didn’t just let the hippies play guitar among the old rocks; what were they going to do? Though crudely arranged, the rocks looked pretty indestructible, and a few hippies weren’t going to do any harm.
The lemon had stopped smoking, but we still had about fifty miles to Portsmouth Harbor. We got back in, the car started with much effort. Barely had we left the parking lot of Stonehenge before the car crapped out again. And at this point, no amount of waiting, no amount of jury rigging could get the car to start. My dad walked back onto the Stonehenge premises to call for a tow, and we waited on the side of the road for an eternity.
Miraculously, at the small country garage where the lemon got towed, the mechanic was able to create a makeshift repair where it marginally operable, but he warned my dad it was a very, very temporary solution that could fail at any time. It took us almost three hours to make it to the harbor at Portsmouth, where the end of the orange ferry had been lifted to receive the waiting cars like a big, ravenous mouth. And a few minutes later the enfeebled car was laboriously and grudgingly climbing the ramps in the belly of the ship to its spot on the parking deck.
Our ferry cabin wasn’t up to much: four narrow bunks on the opposite walls and some extra cushions to be arranged on the floor to accommodate the fifth person. There was a small, oblong porthole at the end where we could see another ship in the harbor: the Herald of the Free Enterprise, which, six months later, would capsize in one of the biggest maritime tragedies since the Titanic. I however, was relieved. We would make it to France, but I was pretty sure the lemon was not going to go much farther.
It was not a comfortable nights sleep, either. The bed was hard, the blankets were scratchy and outside was a full moon that shone directly and with obnoxious brightness into the porthole, reflected over the water. My dad snored like a chainsaw from the bottom bunk across the cabin. My mother also snored, more like a handheld electric saw and even my sister snored, though she hotly denied it when I mentioned it. I did not sleep well enough to snore.
As the sun rose, I could see us approaching the Le Havre, with it’s tall narrow buildings with the double folding shutters on the windows. I was charmed by the new type of architecture, but I wondered how much of it we were going to get to see. The lemon seemed hell bent on sabotaging our trip. Not long after that, we docked and an announcement was made to return to our cars on the parking deck. The lemon did not look capable of moving another inch.
V: THE EXPIRATION
It was pure gravity that got the lemon off the ship. It rolled down the ramp, off the ship, barely off the grounds of the harbor, onto a road of paving stones and died. My dad managed to push it to the side of the road, and look for a garage in the somewhat seedy area around the Port of Le Havre. He had a functional, but rudimentary use of the French language, and was able to convey his needs to a nearby mechanic. The mechanic opened the hood, looked briefly at the engine, and shook his head.
The lemon was dead. And no amount of waiting, or ad hoc repair or any other human or supernatural force was going to revive it. Le citron était mort.
Nobody could say the handwriting wasn’t on the wall, but I knew our itinerary was going to change drastically. How, I was not sure. We were in the port area of Le Havre, with a somewhat rough feel to it. We were without a functioning car. Not far away I could see the the train station with it’s large train shed, and wondered if that was going to play a role.
Although I thought my dad had been blissfully unaware or unconcerned with the lemon’s inevitable demise, I learned he had an ace up his sleeve in the form of “trip insurance”. And after a few phone calls, we found ourselves in a car rental place, where I could hear the car rental agent on the phone with the insurance agent in the UK, doing her best to speak English, but pronouncing the word “the” like “ze”.
Soon, we found ourselves outside by our new wheels: a brand new Peugeot. It was navy blue, and it was shiny. The interior was roomy and had a new smell to it, in sharp contrast to the sour, pukey smell the lemon acquired, retained and compounded. I gave my brother a hard look: a visual warning not to roll down any hills or do anything else that would cause him to puke. Best of all, the car had a steering wheel on the left side, and my dad comfortably got behind the wheel and drove on the right side of the road. The Autoroute: the A-131 was straight, it was two hours to our first stop: the Eurocamp in a town called Maissons-Lafitte, outside Paris on the banks of the Seine. The car ran smoothly and quietly. It didn’t shake, groan, fliver or threaten to die. It was devoid of odd smells, odd sounds, and parts that threatened to shake themselves loose. I luxuriated in the extra space, and gazed out the window at the French countryside, at least that which could be seen from from the Autoroute. Nothing could go wrong.
Of course, because the lemon had chosen to conclude its life in Le Havre, it altered the itinerary a little. For some reason, the travel insurance company had insisted the lemon be returned to British soil. So at the conclusion of our time in France, instead of crossing to Dover from Calais, we were to return to Le Havre. We were then to put all our bags in the boot of the defunct lemon, get back in the lemon, get towed onto the ferry, and towed back off the ferry at Portsmouth. I failed to see the logic of that; it sounded utterly ridiculous. Moreover, I was hoping we could wash our hands of the lemon once and for all and leave it to rot on the streets of Le Havre. There was nothing more it could do for us, and I didn’t want to see it again. I did not want to return to the lemon and have it say, from the grave, “Hello, old friends! You’re not rid of me yet!”
A small part of me was worried they’d find a way to revive it, but barely. And after a week in this beautiful blue Peugeot, we’d be back in this beater of a car, grinding and smoking and threatening death every ten minutes. The lemon was dead, and I wanted it to stay dead. I did not want to get towed in it into the ferry. I wanted nothing more to do with it.
Strange how our thoughts can sometimes become a reality. A week later saw us back by the port of Le Havre to retrieve the lemon. Only trouble was, it was nowhere to be found. We were not familiar with Le Havre, but we were in the area the car was last seen. There was no way anybody could have driven it away. There was nothing, nothing on that car anybody could have wanted, either on the continent or in the UK. And yet, the lemon had mysteriously vanished. I was amazed. I wondered if I had channeled my wish never to see the lemon again, and my wish had somehow materialized. But no, junkers don’t just vaporize, much as though we would like them to, and at that point my sister gestured down to the end of a dead end alley.
It certainly had the profile of the lemon: had the shape that I had thought was the reason my sister called it a lemon. But that was the only way it resembled its former self. It had been completely torched. The windows were gone, and parts had been either burned off or stripped, although I could not imagine a single component of that car that was worth so much as a stick of gum. That car was not going on the ferry. It was not going to be towed onto the ferry. It was not going on the ferry on a flatbed. The car had no wheels. It was going nowhere.
VI: THE AFTERMATH
Because of the speed and efficiency of the Peugeot we had just returned, we had plenty of time until the ferry left back to Portsmouth. My dad phoned the insurance company to inquire what to do now. They needed a police report. The next few hours were spent sitting on a wooden bench in a police station while my dad tried, in his rudimentary, but functional French, to get the police to let him file a report.
Initially, the police brushed him off. As we saw from the wood bench in the police station, Le Havre had it’s own things to deal with, and they didn’t need a family of hapless Americans and their burned out junker of a car adding to their workload. We saw belligerent drunks being hauled in, protesting in French. We saw prostitutes being booked, we saw lines of people reporting various criminal activity I could only guess because I didn’t speak French. The most interesting thing we saw was an irate man, dripping wet, wearing nothing but a pair of skivvies. My mother guessed he had gone in the harbor for a swim and somebody had stolen his clothes. I don’t know what he was saying, but I bet his maman would have washed his mouth out with soap.
The police grudgingly took the police report, and my mother managed to purchase some twine. She tied the various luggage items to our backpacks, and late that evening we passed through customs, up the gangplank, and into the hull of the ferry. Without the lemon. As I had wished, the lemon was left to rot on the streets of Le Havre.
If I had a bad nights sleep on the ferry on the way to Le Havre, I had not yet begun to have a bad nights sleep. Because we had to change our itinerary on short notice, there were no cabins left to book. There were reclining seats you could also get, but those were booked too. Our only option was the large, common area which was uncomfortable by design. It had stiff, barely upholstered seats, at an angle that was probably invented in Toledo to coerce heretics to confess. My sister and I eventually gave up and stretched out on the hard, carpeted floor, where we shivered until a Chinese lady appeared out of nowhere and dropped a large blue quilt over us, and I drifted in and out of an uncomfortable semi slumber.
Back on UK soil in Portsmouth, I was exhausted. We still had to get to London, and once aboard the train, I fell into a deep sleep and didn’t wake up until we pulled into Waterloo Station in London. As part of his sabbatical, my dad had an immersive program he was participating in, and it would be residential for the duration, but only for him. My mother, my sister, my brother and I were dropped off at a rooming house close to the Kings Cross Tube station. Austere was the best description of it. The room had stark white walls, and painted metal bedsteads: two single beds with metal headboards, and a metal bunk bed, also with the metal headboards. A large, double hung window was across the room and there was a porcelain sink on the wall. Down the hall, with its threadbare carpet, was a bathroom with a tub and a hastily scrawled sign directing you to make sure the curtain stayed in the tub. Otherwise you’d get water on the floor and you would be charged money for that. They did lay on breakfast, in the form of toast and jam, and tea. I climbed up to the top bunk, stretched out and fell into another deep sleep and didn’t wake until it was dark and my mother and sister were snoring in duet like a pair of electric saws on the single beds below.
You could tell my mother was on her last nerve, nonetheless we did all the things you do when you visit London: Tower Bridge, Tower of London, Hyde Park, Regents Park Zoo. Because we did not have a car at our disposal, (not that a car, especially the lemon would have been anything but a liability bordering on an albatross), we used the London Underground: the Tube to get around. We had to be conservative with money, so many of our meals were consumed at small, out of the way places, often with a large shank of “doner” rotating slowly on a vertical spit in the front window. There was one such place close to our rooming house, and for those five days, I watched, in a combination of fascination and disgust, as employees would chip pieces off it, and it’s girth slowly diminishing. And yet it was always there, rotating slowly in the window, 24 hours a day. When my brother got restless, he found new and interesting ways to irritate my mother, who was on a shorter and shorter fuse as time progressed, and I genuinely worried she was going to blow a gasket.
As my dad’s conference neared its conclusion, as did our trip, he booked us all a bus on the last day that would travel through the night up the length of Britain to the ferry slip in Cairnryan. We would board the ferry, return to Larne, and travel the last twenty or so miles back to Belfast on a connecting bus. The bus made one stop in the dead of night in Manchester before continuing on to Cairnryan and we boarded the ferry in the early morning rain.
On the connecting bus we picked up at the ferry slip in Larne, as we approached North Belfast I noticed the yet-to-be-lit bonfires every few intersections had grown considerably since we had left, just two short weeks before. As the bus made its route down the Shore Road, my dad convinced the driver to stop the bus and let us off right across from our address. We went through the door of the house, with it’s darkness and musty smell I had to now reacquaint myself to. I was sure my grandmother enjoyed and appreciated the two weeks without us, but now it was less than a month before our return to the United States.
VII: THE FINAL BUSINESS EPILOGUE
As July 12 approached, the bonfires grew even more. Had the lemon survived the trip and died upon our return to Belfast, I am certain it would have been added to one of the bonfires. Rumor had it the bonfire on the Limestone Road was the tallest, at fifty feet, but others argued the one on the Shankill Road held that record. People in anticipation of the holiday became more belligerent, louder and drunker. The news reported an uptick in violence and destruction, as was typical this time of year.
And as every year, when the bonfires were finally lit, some created fire hazards and even house fires. The paint on nearby windowsills blistered, and some front windows cracked in the heat. The fires burned and smoldered for weeks afterwards, and you could see them from certain vantage points such as Seaview Hill, or even the Cave Hill, off the Antrim Road. The air was thick with smoke and certain days, you could barely see the huge yellow Harland and Wolff gantry cranes; they only came through as a hazy yellow approximation.
Sometime between the 12th of July and our return to the United States, my dad was sent a check from the insurance company for the book value of the lemon. I can’t imagine it was a lot, but I viewed it as a sort of compensation for the trouble it had caused us. The lemon had done it’s job in getting us around Ireland, through Britain and into France. It hadn’t done it very well. It had done it neither efficiently nor graciously, but it had done it’s job. But now its remains were Le Havre’s problem.
But, like the lemon, Le Havre did not accept that problem graciously. Two years after our return to the United States, somehow the Le Havre parking enforcement tracked my dad down at our address in Upstate New York and sent a summons for the illegally parked and disposed of lemon.
To this day, I don’t know whether my dad conscientiously paid that summons or tore it up. I would have torn it up.
When Anna, in her affluent suburb of West Berlin, learned she would be going to New York as an exchange student, I am not sure what she was picturing. Did she have visions of herself gliding gracefully around Rockefeller Center’s rink on a pair of skates? Strolling through Central Park in the fall? Taking in the art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art? The opera at the Metropolitan Opera House? Was she visualizing the apartment in a tony Upper East Side neighborhood that would be home for her time as an exchanged student with her well-heeled exchange family? Or perhaps she thought of school itself: the day school she would be attending with her classmates: other affluent high school students.
I can all but guarantee she was not expecting to be air dropped into our small, dissolute city in Upstate New York, where the first snow would turn to a grayish-brown slurry in three days time. Where the plywood sheets bowed out of window frames of yet-to-be demolished buildings in the moisture. Where the crust of salt and road grime on the cars and pickups camouflaged the rust spots and Bondo patches. And the chapel bell tower of the medium security prison stuck out of the grimy snow and scrubby trees like an inverted rail spike on the city approach. Where, in the chaotic high school, our faces looked green and sickly under the fluorescent lights and the rinsed out green paint throughout all the corridors. Where it only seemed to accentuate our collective acne. A few weeks ago the school cafeteria had served Spaghettios on its standard Melmac plates, on the green plastic trays. The school retained the smell for weeks afterwards; a weak, acidic odor pervading the hallways: vaguely of tomatoes, vaguely of something else. It held its own in competition or tandem with that of the body odor of a thousand stinky high school kids, the cheap deodorant some of them used to mask it, and some other vaguely indecipherable, yet nonetheless funky stench: perhaps despair, apathy, existential dread.
As the Berlin Wall was starting to come down, and the divide between East Berlin and West Berlin was slowly dissolving into simply Berlin, Anna materialized in the viridian of the hallways, under the acne-highlighting fluorescent lights and amid those smells that ranged from Spaghettios to existential dread. The cold, shopworn city may have been a good two hour train ride from the lights of Manhattan, but in swept Anna. And my heart skipped a beat.
I was every bit the trope of the scrawny, acne ridden, socially inept fourteen year old. I walked with bad posture and a strange arrhythmic gait. My stringy, oily hair was too long and pulled back into a “quasi-mullet” in a bad attempt to look like one of the guys from Motley Crüe. My sense of humor was irritating and unfunny, and it seemed as though I never missed an opportunity to put my foot in my mouth, whether I wanted that opportunity or not. I laughed with an uneuphonious bray. Once, when I offered a joke to an older student I was told, point blank, “Please, no, Bobby! Your jokes aren’t funny!”
I wasn’t a particularly happy kid, either. I was well aware of my mediocrity (if I even satisfied that metric): socially, aesthetically, academically and athletically. I wasn’t sure exactly what could be DONE about it: “stop being awkward and weird” does not give too many helpful specifics. All I knew is that I had not yet found an identity I was comfortable with, and what I cobbled together for presentation’s sake was woefully south of satisfactory. I wasn’t a very good student, either. I struggled, especially with math and science. I was on the Cross Country team, but I wasn’t a particularly fast runner. I was in the school chorus, but I didn’t really click with the “chorus kids”, and I didn’t enjoy it very much. I was bony, zitty, bemulleted, lacked confidence and was easy pray for bullies, of which there were more than enough, and those bullies emboldened other bullies out of the woodwork.
My sister was four years older than me and had graduated high school this past year. She had been part of the organization that facilitated the exchanged student program. My mother had been backpacking in Europe in the 1960s and had enjoyed interacting with people of many cultures, and encouraged my sister to participate in the program. Though our family had never hosted exchanged students, I was well aware of the program and all its activities, the occasional pot luck dinner, and the various ceremonies where we would welcome exchanged students. I, too had joined the organization, at the default encouragement of my mother, but really only had a passing interest. As I was half assing other items in my life, I was half assing my participation in this group as well. Nobody seemed to notice or care. It was just another aspect of school and life I didn’t enjoy but endured. Until Anna.
I do not remember where the other exchanged students came from, what they were like, what they looked like or what grade in school they were. But shortly into the year, Anna from Germany materialized in our high school. Very little in my life had meaning at the time, but my participation in this organization suddenly had renewed meaning. Because I was smitten with Anna.
Anna was seventeen years old, and stood a head taller than most of the other girls in the school, and a good portion of the boys, including me. Her stance was statuesque, and she moved with graceful purpose; and yet, serenity. She had perfect, porcelain like skin, green eyes and straight, shoulder length red hair, every hair purposefully styled and put in place without flaw. Her grasp of the English language was impeccable, and her voice only betrayed a slight German accent, devoid of the percussive, consonant quality some associate with the dialect. She spoke with a sort of gentle lilt, and I could have listened to it all day.
I admired from afar. I was aware of my social ineptitude, and in a rare moment of wisdom, I adhered to the old proverb “Better to remain silent and thought a fool than open your mouth and remove all doubt”. I knew that if I approached or attempted an interaction with Anna, I would botch it egregiously. Moreover, I had no idea what to say to her and what to talk about. At the ceremony where we welcomed new exchanged students, and the potluck dinner afterward, I did manage to greet her with a modicum of poise, was impressed with myself I didn’t mess up the opportunity. Some girls would curl their lip in a sneer, no matter how benign or banal the interaction, but not Anna. Anna was gracious and genuine and I was rendered weak in the knees.
Of course, I had no idea what to do with this. I was well aware, on some level, where I was was operating, versus Anna. Perhaps if I did push ups, taught myself to walk differently, ran faster, learned how to have a cooler sense of humor I might evolve into something that might interest Anna. Perhaps if I got rid of my zits. I had a plastic bottle of “Oxy 10” that seemed to do little except give me dry skin, chapped lips and an orange hair line and eyebrows. My mother was convinced that “Brewers yeast” would cure my zits, so she gave me that, in these tan, vile tasting tablets. Both the yeast and the oxy left my acne amazingly intact, perhaps even with renewed resilience, as an immune system after a fever, back stronger, redder and angrier than ever. Maybe I could use the weight room behind the boys locker room where the football team pumped iron. Maybe I could somehow learn to just stop being such a twerp. But how?
As I lay on my bed in my cluttered room, I strategized. I was aware of a good portion of my flaws and shortcomings, and I knew there was perhaps a whole other lexicon of shortcomings that escaped my perception; my perception skills also being lacking. The iniquities I knew: I was too zitty, too scrawny, walked funny, not cool enough, and presented as witless, irritating and obnoxious, no matter how I tried to do the opposite. Knowing these flaws and knowing how to correct them are two different things. I always felt my self awareness was constantly playing catch up: perpetually a day late and a dollar short.
And all I wanted in this world was to win the heart of Anna. I: who had never won anything of substance in my life. With that thought, the word “LOSER” flashed on and off in my mind like a big neon sign. Flashing above me, brighter than anything you’d see in Times Square or even Vegas. Loser! Loser! Loser! On and off in bright neon pink! In the sky, for all my friends, enemies, tormentors….the whole town….. hell, the whole WORLD, to see and laugh! Laugh at my lack of realism, my lack of humility, my yawning chasm of lack stacked up against my desire for the heart of Anna. And finally, when the amusement from my lack wore off, they’d smirk and laugh mirthlessly at my utter presumption. Who does this loser think he is?
I dropped to a less cluttered part of the floor and attempted ten poorly executed push-ups: technically useless, yet nonetheless grueling, even for ten. I started at the end of my fourteen foot foot room and monitored my stance as I walked the length: attempting a tall carriage and measured steps against the planks of the wood floor, yet not an over affected swagger, but that is hard to do that without a second pair of objective eyes. I practiced affectation of speech: saying out loud things that cooler kids might say in the way they might say them: “Hey Anna…. Everything cool?”. “Hey man….” Cool as a cucumber, but not affectedly so. It is not easy to be a one man show in the confines of your room trying to teach yourself to “be cool”. I knew it would be a long time before I would do it organically without looking utterly ridiculous.
Outside, the gusts of wind slapped wet, brown leaves against my window and the skeletal branches scratched the siding of the house, but I practiced my presentation in my room. There was my my boom box and my Radio Shack turntable and stack of cassette tapes and vinyl: Whitesnake, Motley Crue, Richard Marx and Pink Floyd’s Delicate Sound of Thunder album. The poster of Metallica, of Depeche Mode and, one of a seductive Madonna and one of a scantily clad Samantha Fox, which my mother never failed to announce at every opportunity that she found it “Oh-fensive”. Madonna and Samantha Fox were nothing to me. All I thought of was Anna.
My mother noticed I wasn’t putting on any weight. She theorized it was because I was running on the cross county team and burning off all my “growth”. It wasn’t that; it just seemed like every day there was something new to put me off my appetite: be it the fear of looking inadequate in front of Anna, being reminded in other numerous ways of my ineptitude, or some other experience in my day that just was not conducive to having an appetite. I was never hungry when I wanted to be, and when I was hungry, there was just not an opportunity to eat. And there was this negative space in both my body and my psyche that I knew food was not going to fill anyway.
Come Thanksgiving the school closed for the remainder of the week, and at the small dinner my mother had prepared with only immediate family around the table, she asked me what I was thankful for. In truth, I was thankful for very little. Ninth grade was proving to be a depressing, demoralizing slog. But there was that glimmer of hope that I may one day get my act together, and one day win Anna’s heart. Was it possible? Technically. Was it likely? No. But it was enough to give me a glimmer of hope, as anemic and meager as that glimmer might be. And for that I was thankful. Of course, I could not give voice to this at the Thanksgiving table. Not with my smirking brother, or my authoritarian mother, who expected gratitude, “noses to the grindstone” and “doing as you’re told”. I gave my standard answer, one that fulfilled the obligation but barely: “I am thankful I am not a turkey”, which always evoked a weak and perfunctory laugh from the rest of my family.
ANNA IN ALBANY II
In early December, a field trip was organized for the exchanged students and the student organization. We were going to Albany to skate on the rink at the Empire State Plaza: a huge, monolithic, concrete complex that dominated the physical profile of the city. I forget what other activities were planned, but skating was definitely the highlight. I, of course, welcomed any excuse to get out of town, and with the extreme likelihood that Anna would be on that trip, I readily signed up for it.
That Saturday, mid morning I sat in the school bus with it’s green interior, not unlike that of the high school. I often wondered if there was a conspiracy at play to make sure the color that dominated our lives was that sickly, phlegmatic hue. That perhaps sight of the shade would make us more compliant, or would break our spirits down to weary obedience. The sky outside was white, and a chance of snow threatened to cancel the trip. The bus idled, puffing exhaust into the parking lot in huge, white vaporous clouds as we waited for stragglers.
I had the green double seat to myself, and I noticed that Anna was nowhere on the bus. My emotional fulcrum moved every second between mild disappointment and mild relief: I did not feel any more prepared for an interaction with Anna than I had doing ineffective push ups in my bedroom. I had watched the interactions of students I deemed “cooler” than me, but were I to try to replicate the demeanor, I knew I would appear not only inauthentic, but also pathetically contrived. I was aware of this. I had nothing scripted, no plan in place to keep my head and my wits about me. So it would be just as well if Anna was not there. The less opportunity for me to look like a fool in front of her, the better.
The bus driver pulled the lever to shut the door and put the bus in gear, and it inched out of the parking lot. I wrestled with the bittersweet concoction of disappointment and relief. But the bus slowed to a stop, the door opened, and up the steps came Anna, out of breath and flustered, yet, in her classic form, apologetic for her lateness.
She was impeccably dressed for winter; her hat and her boots complemented her coat; that level of coordination even among the more style conscious students was rare, and certainly alien for me. And, although there were quite a few empty seats, she made her way halfway down the aisle. Before I knew it, she was sitting right next to me, and greeted me in her usual soft spoken Germanic lilt. And I didn’t know what to do.
To my credit, I didn’t botch it. I was so blindsided that she had simply sat next to me, I didn’t know what to say. I had resigned myself to a solitary ride, where I would watch the skeletal trees, and the grey interstate highway and fall into whatever reverie I would. I had resigned myself to the idea Anna was not going to be on the trip, so I was completely unprepared for her presence, let alone proximity. But, as always, she was gracious and I responded in kind.
She made small conversation, but I was rendered so speechless, it was difficult to hold my own. Every response to what she said seemed foolish coming out of my mouth, so I nodded, smiled, affirmed, and even made eye contact….. until I realized it and overthought it.
“I’ve never been to Albany before!” Anna offered.
“That’s ok,” I responded, “A lot of people haven’t”
“Is it nice?” She asked
I wisely checked the impulse to blurt out,“It sucks, but it’s better than this dump!” And instead opted for the more tactful,”Yeah, it’s pretty nice.”
She then confessed she had never been ice skating.
“Never?” I repeated
That amazed me. I did not know much about Germany or German culture, but I always thought of the Alps, and snow, and cold things, and I assumed skating would be universally be part of the culture. It just seemed so tied into chalets, and snow, and downhill skiing, it just didn’t seem like one of those things Anna would be unfamiliar with. But again, I was rationing and filtering my comments. Anna might have exuded warmth and affability, but I was aware of my propensity to unwittingly say the worst possible thing, how unforgiving a position I was in, and how easily it could go south.
“Never!” She confirmed,”But we try new things, yes?”
“Yes!” I agreed.
I may have walked with a goofy gait, overpronated and held myself at a strange stance. But I had good balance. I knew how to skate. I wasn’t fantastic at it, but I could move forward and backwards on a pair of skates, with the confidence I would not fall. I could easily move in circuits around the ice rink at the Empire State Plaza. And I could do it with a decent rate of speed.
“I’ve been skating lots of times!” I offered.
Lots of times might have been a stretch but certainly more than a few times every winter.
“Is it easy?” She asked
“Yeah, it’s pretty easy once you learn”
“Will you help me?”
it was almost like those words hung in suspended animation at a delay, before I comprehended them, which made my heart, again, skip a beat.
Anna, I would do anything for you! I would walk barefoot on hot coals for you!
But all I squeaked was “Yeah! Sure!”
The thirty or so minutes on the bus with Anna flew by. Soon, we were on the network of concrete highways and ramps that fronted the City of Albany, and connected straight into the belly of the Empire State Plaza’s underground parking decks, where we disembarked into the garage, heavy with diesel fumes, with Anna by my side.
To say it was pure bliss, pure heaven would have been an understatement. I was still in awe of my good fortune, but also aware of the fragility of the situation. By sheer odds, I knew would say something so idiotic, witless and boorish it would repel Anna. Or, one of the kids much cooler than me would poach Anna away, she’d ditch me, and I’d be left alone to contemplate my loserdom. I also knew on some level that if I relaxed and simply tried to enjoy the experience, I might actually organically make a good impression without trying too hard. It certainly seemed like she was enjoying my company, and that blew my mind more than a little.
As I helped Anna tighten her rental skates, I learned that European shoe sizes were different than that of the US and there had to be some mental calculation to get the right size. I helped her up from the bench and we traversed the rubberized floor to the actual rink. Anna held onto my arm as I demonstrated gliding my right foot forward on the ice, then my left. I watched in satisfaction at the other kids from my school stumbling, slipping and falling all over the ice, desperately grabbing the barriers in any futile attempt to stay upright. But not me, and not Anna. Soon I had Anna gliding around the ice rink in a counter clockwise motion, in long graceful strides as she held onto my arm. When she did fall, she laughed and picked herself back up, always reaching for my arm. And I was over the moon.
It started getting dark early, but the skating rink had been decorated in anticipation of the upcoming holidays; strings of lights over the rink and falling snowflakes projected onto the grim concrete towers. In the center of the rink, there were some people who really could figure skate, executing complex moves and turns, at a dizzying speed. But Anna and I glided the perimeter in our own halo of light, and I gave not one damn what the rest of the world was doing.
She had taken off her hat, and the snow that had threatened to cancel our trip finally made it’s presence felt, leaving flakes on her red hair and coat. “Check this out, Anna!” I had gotten a little more bold.
I turned around so I was facing Anna, took both her hands and skated in reverse, pulling her along, as I reveled in her laughter. As luck would have it, I lost my balance for the first time that day, and both of us tumbled to the ice, and Anna fell on top of me, and for a second I felt the weight of her body on me.
She laughed again as I helped her up, but another student from the organization approached us to let us know it would soon be time to get back on the bus and head back home. I didn’t want this day to end, but I knew also that the longer the day progressed, the more chance I’d have to ruin the whole thing. Anna and I headed to the benches, removed our skates and made our way down to the bus with the rest of the kids.
The temperature outside had dropped, but the heater blasted warmth in the bus. Anna was flushed from the skating and soon we were leaving the city limits of Albany in the darkened bus, where snow swirled around the windows like a meteor shower in the blackness and the snow plows had already begun to scrape the road and flash their orange lights. I looked over and noticed Anna had dozed off, breathing rhythmically in her usual placid manner. I was glad to be near her, I was glad she enjoyed herself and I was glad she was relaxed and content. I was also glad she was asleep so I could mentally process this whole thing and not run the risk of putting my foot in my mouth.
As the bus pulled into the high school parking lot, I gently prodded Anna awake, and we walked towards the darkness outside where it had now begun to sleet. I faced Anna, not sure what to do, but the smile I got, the squeeze of the hands and her telling me how much fun she had was good enough for me at the moment. Then she departed towards one of the cars in the lot, and was gone. And for the first time in months, I went to bed that night feeling as though that negative space in me that had been growing like the ozone hole was perhaps starting to fill. It was still there, surely, but not the ever growing and always perceivable vacuum that it had been earlier. Nature always abhors a vacuum, but perhaps it abhors a partial vacuum even more. A full and complete void is more manageable than a partial one. We tend to get greedy.
I could have left well enough alone. I could have regarded the field trip as a wonderful experience, but a “one and done”. I could have been thankful Anna gave me the time of day and didn’t curl her lip and sneer at me. But something in me wanted to fly closer to the sun, much closer than would have been wise. Fortune sometimes favors the brave, but fortune rarely favors the foolish. And of the qualities I lacked, foolishness was not one of them.
ANNA AND BEETHOVEN III
The high school was a noisy, tumultuous place, complete with a lot of pushing and shoving, the constant slamming of metal locker doors and vaguely threatening announcements over the PA system. A persistent, pervasive odor that bordered on a stench of what the cafeteria had served recently: a somewhat umamic, yet indecipherable vapor. Plenty of unimaginative and low brow insults shouted between students. Accusing someone of “being on welfare” was a favorite, along with “Retard!”. But “Faggot!” served as an all purpose insult and was always uttered with vehemence. Generally, when insulted, either verbally or with a shove, kick or punch, it was an invitation/ultimatum to retaliate. If one failed to retaliate, not only did that mean the student acquiesced to the insult, the harassment would escalate until retaliation had no choice but to occur. This would result in counter-retaliation: often in the form of an ambush and beat-down at a later time, and often with more than one aggressor.
Anna, however, seemed to float above all the chaos: all the slamming, pushing and shoving, the calls of “Faggot! Faggot!”, and whatever other malicious form of aggression that was directed between students. She moved serenely above it all, as though she didn’t hear it, or rather, knew she was not of that world. Because she was not of that world.
I did not have that luxury. I WAS of that world whether I wanted to be or not. And when accosted, physically or with words, I was expected to retaliate, or incur increasing malice, sometimes in the form of a sucker punch coming from around a corner, or a violent beat-down with three aggressors, who would take advantage of the opportunity to kick my ass. I preferred to avoid the whole thing. I did not relish having “Faggot!” barked in my face, and I didn’t enjoy fending off whatever other mean spirited aggression was floating around the halls that day.
Some of the “chorus kids” often congregated in the chorus room during free periods. I was not a “chorus kid” and I didn’t really click with them, but nobody seemed to give a damn if I minded my business in the chorus room. Generally the students who swung their fists, or invited physical confrontations and deployed low-brow insults did not often visit the chorus room. I wonder if they were aware it existed.
That said, the chorus room wasn’t any nicer than the rest of the school. Like many high schools built in the early 1970s, by the late 1980s or early 90s, it was starting to show its age. And like many buildings of that era, it wasn’t particularly well built. Unlike the green of the hallways, the chorus room had cinder block walls painted canary yellow, perforated with oblong holes drilled into the blocks, ostensibly to absorb sound. Pretty much every hole within reach had been plugged up with wadded up gum, wrappers, cigarette butts, paper, pencil shavings, and anything else a student saw fit to stuff in there.
The room was tiered: beat-up, mismatched chairs on three tiers down to the piano, which sat below ground level. Whenever there was any kind of precipitation outside, the room had a tendency to flood. It wasn’t uncommon to see the piano: a dilapidated Hamilton piano of blonde wood, sitting on its wheels in half an inch of stagnant water. The piano itself was covered in graffiti, both topically and carved in, and even the keys could not escape the vandalism.
On a typical free period I would be in the chorus room, there would be no class or rehearsal. The odd student would be practicing the repertoire from chorus rehearsals, or singing the latest top 40, or simply hanging out. Of the kids who sang, the quality ranged from pretty good to barely endurable. It didn’t seem like any student was a piano virtuoso, but every now and then one would walk down the tiers to the piano and pick out tune or noodle around on the keyboard, whether or not there was flooding. The music teachers would often be in the music office, which sat between the chorus and the band room and had glass windows into both. Either that or they would be puttering around, organizing choral sheet music, or some such activity. It was a reasonably quiet, or at least non-chaotic place to exist and nobody minded me being there. After all, I WAS in chorus.
On one such day shortly before Christmas break, there was a substitute. That was not uncommon; it seemed the closer to a holiday or school break we were, the more often we would see substitutes in place of regular teachers. He was sitting in the music office; I could see him through the glass windows, slouching in the chair of the regular chorus teacher with his feet on the desk. I knew him vaguely. He was a couple of years older than my sister, and had gone to school with her before he graduated. I think he had recently completed two years at the community college, and because the substitute pay was only about $50 a day, as long as you had an associates degree or a certain number of college credits, you could be a substitute teacher.
His name was Duane Van Gogh, but he pronounced it “Van Goff”. I didn’t know him that well, but I didn’t care for him. He was pudgy, truculent and had a pair of beady, distrustful eyes. I did, however, know his younger brother, because he was in my grade. His brothers name was Vincent Van Gogh (he also pronounced it “Van Goff”), and went by Vinny. Vinny was a diminutive version of his older brother: also pudgy and truculent. Once an art teacher made a wisecrack about a severed ear, to which “Vinny” predictably responded to with a snarl of “Faggot!” Vinny and Duane were not all that different: Duane was just a bigger piece of shit.
On this day, as was typical, some students were noodling around on the piano. Somebody banged out “Heart and Soul”, another picked out a greatly simplified rendition of “Für Elise”. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw somebody enter the chorus room. I looked up and none other than was Anna standing right by the entrance. I had never seen her in here before. She was not in chorus, and to the best of my knowledge, she didn’t play an instrument in the band. She was just standing there, taking it in, and I, exercising restraint, waved at her from 30 feet away, which was a safe enough distance.
She stepped down the three tiers the piano, stepping gingerly through the half inch of water, sat down on the bench and with perfect posture, executed a flawless rendition of the Adagio Cantabile from Beethoven’s Pathetique Sonata. I did not think for one minute that I would run out of reasons to admire her, but I sat there floored. The two or three other students who were in there got ready to applaud, but at that moment the door of the music office burst open and out blustered Duane “Van Goff”, his face contorted with rage.
“What the hell? Who was thumping on that piano? Was it you?” He jabbed his finger at Anna.
Anna looked bewildered, but didn’t say anything.
“Keep your goddamn hands off the piano! Jesus Christ. What does this place look like, a damn piano bar?”
Anna still hadn’t said anything.
“Yeah, you!” He jabbed his finger at Anna again, “Get the hell away from that piano! I don’t want to hear it again!”
A switch in me flipped on. I was only about five feet away, and I turned around to face him.
“What the hell is your problem, asshole?” I asked, “She was just playing the piano, which was more than your dumbass could do“
“What did you say to me?” He demanded.
“I said go to hell, and take your fat ass with you!”
I though he was going to hit me. He looked like he wanted to. And for Anna, I would have gladly taken it. His beady eyes squished into slits in a beet red face. “Go to Room 34! Now!” He roared.
I don’t know if he saw but I flipped him the bird on the way out.
Room 34 was the assistant principal’s office. Generally if you were summoned or sent to Room 34 it was for a disciplinary reason. Every day, the PA system ominously announced a laundry list of students who were to “Report to Room 34”. Of all the reasons to get sent to Room 34, defending Anna was a damn good one, and I didn’t mind in the least. I would have taken a bullet for Anna. Happily.
“Why are you here?” The secretary demanded sourly. She had bleached blonde hair coiffed into layers, a fuzzy black cashmere sweater, and a perpetually irritated look on her face.
“I was giving the substitute a hard time” I responded.
“Well, you look very pleased with yourself!” She huffed
I guess I hadn’t wiped the grin off my face. Telling off “Van Goff” on Anna’s behalf had brought me a lot of satisfaction! Whatever punishment I was going to incur would be well worth it.
“Sit down, be quiet” the secretary said in annoyance.
That stunt got me four detentions, and I knew I would hear about it when the disciplinary referral arrived in the mail at home. My mother was thoroughly fed up with my moodiness, poor academic performance, behavior and failure to put on weight. Because of my perpetually poor judgment, I was no stranger to detention. However, all four of these detentions and whatever grief I would incur from my mother would be worth it.
The way detention worked was they would get a copy of your class schedule, and you would report to the detention room during your study halls and lunch periods. While there, you were not allowed to work on your homework or read books. It’s raison d’etre was strictly punitive and only existed to waste your time in the most boring and unproductive way imaginable: sitting there staring at the wall. If you even closed your eyes for longer than a blink, the monitor in there would yell at you, because apparently, sleeping, too, was considered a productive use of your time, and that was verboten. I was pretty sure that if they had a way to intercept, freeze or forbid brain activity, they would do that too just to stick it to you. I was pretty good at drifting off into a daydream or reverie, though, and as long as I kept my eyes open, they couldn’t do a damn thing about that. I had a pretty good imagination, and was also buoyed by why I was there; I felt it a most noble reason.
The room was a windowless little green room on the 2nd floor of the school and usually had between five and ten fellow miscreants in there. Because it was so late in December, three of my detentions were served on the last days of school before break, one would have to be served when I returned in January. I didn’t see Anna again between the chorus room incident and Christmas break. Again, I didn’t mind in the least.
Over Christmas break, the thought came to me I had to either shit or get off the pot with regard to Anna, and I knew that involved putting my neck out. Like just about everything, I had no strategy, no way to implement it and no idea of the end game. Being fourteen, it wasn’t like I had a car to take her anywhere. It wasn’t like I had a lot of, or really any, money of significance to do anything. And it wasn’t like she had any good reason to be my “girlfriend” even if the status was merely symbolic. The smart thing to do was to realize I was fourteen and had a long way to go with just about every facet of my existence. And realize that Anna was seventeen: a cultured, intelligent woman of a world much more sophisticated than anything I could even imagine at the time. And to put this fool’s errand right out of my head, for my own good. But fourteen year old boys don’t usually have a reputation for smart decisions, especially if it is their own good at stake. And I was not the glorious exception to that statement. Not by a long shot. If stupidity was an art, there would be a whole wing at the Louvre dedicated to the decisions of fourteen year old boys. And I don’t doubt for one minute it would include a likeness of me.
ANNA’S CARNATION IV
Upon my return in January, I still had one detention to serve. So instead of my study hall in the afternoon, I went to the second floor to the little green room, sat at a desk and stared at the wall for forty five minutes. If my eyes drifted closed the hand of the monitor would slam on the desk, threatening another detention if I didn’t stay awake. And on the way back down to my last class of the day I noticed a poster on one of the bulletin boards and it caught my eye.
One of the student groups: a group called Students Against Drunk Driving, with SADD as their acronym was having a fundraiser. I appreciated the acronym SADD: yes, drunk driving was a sad thing; the fact that it killed people and all, and I always appreciated anything that could answer to a pun. I did note that most of the students in the organization were not old enough to legally drive, and most of those that were didn’t have a car. I also noted that none of them were of legal drinking age, so I theorized the problem they were against (drunk driving) was somewhat abstract in their current incarnation. I also knew there was a sister organization called Mothers Against Drunk Driving, whose acronym: MADD, I also appreciated. MADD is exactly what my mother would be if she found out I had been driving drunk. Given her temper, I think she’d be a little more than mad, in fact, if her reaction to my four detentions for telling off “Van Goff” was any indication. Fortunately, I had never been drunk, and had never been behind the wheel of a car, let alone both.
But SADD was having a fundraiser. They were selling carnations for $2 a piece. You could have it delivered to a student, or you could pick up yourself and give it to the student. And I had an idea. I was going to buy a carnation and give it to Anna. And I was going to finally tell her of the crush I had and ask her to be my girlfriend.
I hadn’t decided exactly HOW I was going to do it, though. Would I include a note with the carnation? Would I write down a script and memorize it? Would I just mysteriously give her the carnation and wait for her to follow up? Would I give it to her and say, mysteriously, “I’d like you to have this”? Or was I just going to wing it and see what happened? The fundraiser was the next day, so it wasn’t like I had a lot of time to think about it. I didn’t sleep well at all that night.
The next day I put on a pair of clean Lee jeans, a T-shirt that hadn’t faded in the wash yet, a dab of Avon cologne, and made sure I had the $2 for the carnation. I considered buying more than one carnation: maybe two or three, but that might be overkill and scare her off. At school, I scrutinized the poster to make sure I had the time and room number correct as the place to pick up the carnation. And I waited restlessly for the day to end, rehearsing my technique in my head and vacillating among three or four possible tactics. In the end, I just decided to wing it.
At the end of the day I went to the correct classroom, where, true to the poster, the carnations were there in a 10 gallon pickle bucket full of water. I selected a peach one that looked like it would be hardy and not wither anytime soon. It had a nice long, healthy stem and and nice full bloom. I paid my $2, and with my heart thumping, ventured out in the hall to find Anna.
I walked the hallway, with the carnation bouncing jauntily on its springy stem in rhythm with my odd gait. I couldn’t find Anna anywhere. Wouldn’t it be just my luck if she was home sick today? I also worried I would get cold feet, or get tongue tied, or some asshole like Vinny (who now had an axe to grind with me) would snatch it out of my hand and stomp it into the floor, just for spite. But Anna was nowhere to be found.
I knew the seniors had their lockers on the second floor, and that is where Anna’s locker would be, so I climbed the stairs. And as I exited the stairwell, I got a glimpse of the red hair that was Annas’s as she disappeared around a corner. I went to catch up with her, and saw her dash down another flight of stairs. I wondered what her hurry was. I realized I better get this carnation to her if she was in that much of a hurry, or I might miss my chance.
At the bottom of the stairs, I caught another glimpse of her just before she ran into the open maw of the girls room on the first floor. “Well,” I reasoned, “When you gotta go, you gotta go!”
But, unperceptive as I was, a thought crept into my head. A nagging, terrible thought. An awful, humiliating thought. One that crushed me, one that reamed me out to the core. One that took that negative space in me and tore it to be so big it now occupied my whole body.
I bet she’s hiding from me.
I bet she saw me with that carnation, knew I was going to give it to her, and ran and hid from me so I wouldn’t. And that thought just wrecked me.
Worse, I knew that in a second, I had gone from the brave soul putting his neck out for love, to the creep with the flower following Anna around the school to such an extent she felt compelled to hide in the bathroom. From me.
I was crushed, heartbroken, embarrassed. I could feel my face turning red, and it’s a good thing I hadn’t eaten recently because it would have ended up on the floor. And here I was standing fifty feet from the open doorway of the girls room with a flower in my hand. I had to get out of here. I had to get that flower out of my hand. I quickly walked down the hall in the opposite direction. The end of the day announcements had stopped and the school had all but emptied out.
In one of the classrooms, a custodian was already cleaning it, and right outside the door was a gray garbage bin on wheels. The stem of the carnation was slightly longer than the diameter of the garbage can, so I bent the carnation in half, and buried it deep in the garbage can under a bunch of papers and half a tuna sandwich. And I left the building via the nearest exit feeling nauseous and ashamed.
EPILOGUE: ANNA GONE V
If you want an uplifting ending, where I grew into something that would interest Anna, or I overcame my feelings of inadequacy, or Anna and I developed a wonderful friendship, or there was a valuable lesson that I capitalized on, or really anything positive……. If you want a resolution tied up in a neat little bow, you have picked the wrong story to read. I spent the rest of the year hiding from Anna.
I was so mortified, I did not want to ever see Anna again, and I didn’t want her to ever see me again. And I made that happen. I quit the organization with the exchanged students. It wasn’t like I announced from the roof of the school “I quit this organization!” or even told the teacher in charge, or anybody. I simply stopped showing up. Stopped showing up at the after school meetings, stopped going to the ceremonies and the pot luck dinners and the other functions. Nobody noticed or gave a shit.
I altered my routes in the corridors to make sure we would never cross paths, even if it meant taking an unnaturally circuitous route, even if it meant going outside instead of using the corridor. Because of this, I was late for class a lot. I incurred quite a few detentions for my lateness, and by extension, the wrath of my mother for this. At that point, I was such a lump of unhappiness (and not just because of Anna), it didn’t even register. I wasn’t able to care.
I hung around in the chorus room for awhile, because I had bugger all else to go, until I learned Anna was going there occasionally to play the piano, and realized that spot wasn’t even safe. At one point, I became aware Anna was coming down the hall, and I had to use a fire exit to avoid her. It wasn’t alarmed, but I was caught, and incurred a few more detentions for using a fire exit. Again, I was beyond caring at that point.
I was, however, successful in never seeing Anna again. I disappeared myself from her, and I disappeared her from myself. I made sure of that. It made my world a lot smaller, and my navigable routes in the hall a lot more limited, but I don’t think I was prepared to deal with the embarrassment of seeing her again, or having her see me again.
At some point towards the end of the year, as the demolition of the Berlin Wall was more or less complete, I learned that Anna had returned to Berlin, a week prior. I was relieved that it allowed me more freedom of movement in the high school, that I no longer had to avoid crossing paths with Anna, and I could be in the chorus room without the risk that Anna would materialize and play the piano. I consoled myself that if Anna and I had developed a relationship or even a friendship, I would have had to say goodbye by now, and it would have been that much harder.
9th grade was more or less complete, and I felt as though I had accomplished zero. I had not grown as a person, and if there was any light at the end of the tunnel, I probably wasn’t even astute enough to face the right way to find it, and what lay ahead was a long road of disappointment, low as I had learned to keep my expectations.
“Doing the Voices” is often an integral part of telling a story. It has to include the inflection, tone and dialect. If it is a funny story, sometimes “the voices” will be done in a quasi-slapstick routine of the caricature versus the “straight man”.
In a less funny recounting of an event, sometimes “the voices” will creep in there reflexively. Certainly not as exaggerated as with the funny stories, but it is impossible not to have the inflections and emotions and tone.
In undergrad, I took a couple of philosophy classes. Most of my gen-eds had been completed before I arrived (I spent my last two years of high school at community college), so almost all my classes were in the music school, but I still had a couple of gen eds I needed to take, so I took a couple of philosophy classes, which I really enjoyed.
In the philosophy class was a girl; we’ll call her “Beth”. She was in a wheelchair, but not just any wheel chair. It was a fully powered wheelchair. The seat could raise and lower. It has heavy duty “all terrain” wheels (which, in light of the winters we got up there, were probably necessary). Tubes all over the place, including a tracheotomy tube. In 1994, these type of wheelchairs weren’t all that common, and to very naive me: I don’t think I had ever seen one like this.
At the beginning of class, Beth would roll in on her fully powered wheelchair. It didn’t go very fast and made a sort of electrical hum. It barely fit through the door. Most of the university campus had been built in the late 1960s and 1970s, but this philosophy class was in a building built in the early 1950s but designed to look like an older building: a sort of hybrid between Colonial and Federal style building. Red brick, with a cupola on the roof, white trim, Palladian windows and ivy growing up the side of the walls. It smelled like floor wax and books inside, had ceramic tile wainscoting, terrazzo floors, oak doors. The classrooms had oak desks, and oak lecterns. It was exactly what you would think if you thought “collegiate building”. And, like buildings of that era and style, it wasn’t terribly accessible. Tight corners, narrow, steep stairways, high up water fountains. Moreover, the class was on the 3rd floor. I don’t think they could have found a less accessible classroom on campus for Beth if they had tried (fortunately, the building did have a freight elevator). Nonetheless, Beth would roll in, every day, and sit in the first row. A couple of students would see her roll through the door and move a couple of desks out of the way.
In addition to my student job at the Lehman Dining Hall, which I hated with a searing passion, I was always looking for other work: other ways I could make some money, which I always seemed woefully short of. I’d scan the “student work” boards for different gigs, and every now and then I’d find something. It was a cumbersome process. Since it was at a state university, payroll had to be done through the state of NY, and sometimes the check would come months after the job was done.
In scanning the board, I noticed there was a position for a “reader”. This was a person who would read textbooks to a student who, for whatever reason, could not physically read the material themselves. Preference in the job was always given to a student actually enrolled in the class to be read. Lo and behold, there was a reader position available for the philosophy class I was taking.
I went to the Students with Disabilities office (or whatever it was called at the time), applied for the position, and was given it immediately. I was given a micro cassette recorder, some batteries and a number of micro cassettes. All I was required to do was to read aloud all the books that were assigned reading for that philosophy class. And I would be reading for Beth. For this, SUNY would pay me $250.
The philosophy course was taught by one Dr. C: a tall skinny guy in his mid 40s, who dressed all in black, and when he wasn’t in class he’d be outside smoking to make his lungs as black as his attire, even as the weather turned arctic. He assigned a large number of books for reading in their entirety: Plato’s Republic, Plato’s Last Days of Socrates, Soren Kierkegaard’s “Fear and Trembling” et al. There was also a textbook, where reading was assigned.
I appreciated that this job kept me on top of my reading, and by reading aloud the text, it helped me learn the material. By virtue of the job, I also got the reading assignments a day early, so it kept me ahead of the curve. When a reading was assigned, at some point in the day I would go to the study lounge at the end of the hallway in my dorm: I lived on the 4th floor, and I’d seat myself on one of the semi-comfortable couches facing the window. I’d look out over the snow (or whatever the harsh, mercurial weather was doing at the time), the roofs of other brick buildings on campus. I’d crack open the book, boot up the cassette recorder and begin reading.
Because I was a voice major at the music school, I put a lot of emphasis in clarity of voice. I read clearly and at a moderate pace, but never robotically. The next day of class, I’d wait for Beth to roll in, greet her and place the micro cassette on the tray attached to her complicated wheelchair. She had very limited, if any use of her hands. Despite her tracheotomy tube, she could speak a little and would thank me in a labored guttural voice.
One day, as I was seated in my usual place in the study lounge, reading aloud from the textbook, a couple of students entered noisily and started horsing around. I reflexively turned around and snapped in annoyance,“Hey! Get out of here!” .
When they left, I said, “Sorry about that” and resumed my reading into the micro-cassette recorder.
I completely forgot about it until a few days later when I handed Beth another micro-cassette and she said,”That was funny!”
“What was funny?” I asked
“Hey! Get out of here!”
“Oh. Yeah, sorry about that. Couple of idiots making noise.” I explained.
Next book to be read was Plato’s Republic. By that point, I had developed a routine. I’d fill my water bottle, or make myself a cup of “international foods cappuccino”, or sometimes soup in the dorm microwave, then head down the hallway with the book, and the micro cassette recorder. I’d open the book, press “record” and announce “The Republic” by Plato. Book One”. And then begin reading.
Plato’s Republic is, essentially, a dialogue between Socrates and various people with names like Glaucon, Polymarchus, Cephalus and Thrasymarchus. Among other things, they get into a discussion of what constitutes a just man and a just society, and then going about building that society. Each person Socrates converses with has a unique perspective and personality, and with this information, this just man and society is hypothetically attempted to be created.
I read aloud with relish, remembering each of the characters in the book, noting their unique perspectives and philosophies, and in my mind I had given each of them a personality and even an appearance. I continued reading as the white sky turned dark gray, and the lights on the campus roads came on and dorm room windows lit up.
The next class, I handed the micro-cassette to Beth, and sat down to take the class. Later that day, as usual, I went to the study lounge at the end of the hall, shut the door, sat down on my usual couch facing the window and began reading.
“The Republic, by Plato”. I announced into the cassette recorder. “Book Two”.
In Book Two the discussion continues, yet we are introduced to another character: Adeimantus. Again, I brought myself back to ancient Athens and read Book Two of Plato’s Republic with the same relish. As I got caught up in the discussion, I felt as though I was a fly on the wall, as all these long dead Greek characters were trying to build this theoretical perfect and just man and society, using hypothetical arguments taken to their ridiculous extreme.
In philosophy class the next day, I waited for Beth to roll in and placed the new micro-cassette tape on her tray.
“Thank you. I liked that” she said in her labored manner.
“Liked what?” I asked, feeling a little guilty I was getting her to speak unnecessarily. It seemed really effortful for her, what with the tracheotomy tube.
“I liked how you did the voices” she said, ”It was cool!”
“Oh,” I said, but I had no idea what she meant.
Later in the day was a repeat of the other reading assignments. Same study lounge, same couch, same routine. I pressed “Record” and announced “The Republic, by Plato. Book Three” Book Three discusses education and it is among the same characters, and different hypothetical situations and philosophical dilemmas. I felt like I had gotten to know each character and each question, comment and rebuttal seemed predictable, but nonetheless interesting. Each one had his own unique voice on any matter, and at that point I paused.
And I realized the voices I had given each character had reflected themselves in my narration, and that is what Beth had meant by the fact I had “done the voices”. I wasn’t that they had literal “voices” it was that the unique perspective and personality of each character had unconsciously and reflexively crept into my inflection as I read. Knowing this, I wondered if being conscious of it would change it. I knew better than to assign an over exaggerated, cartoonish voice to each character; that would not only be insulting to Beth, but make a mockery of the material and the class. It would ruin the reading. I was not being paid to offer a goofy narration of course material. Still, I knew I wanted to retain the authenticity and hoped I could, even if I was now conscious of it.
The only way to find out was to bring myself back to Athens, Greece. Back into the dialogue among Socrates and his friends and hope for the best. And I continued to read Book Three aloud as I had done before; immersed in the content of the book.
And it worked. Every time I placed a micro-cassette on Beth’s tray, I would get a smile of approval, or a word of appreciation, or some other gesture she had enjoyed my last reading. Book IV, V, VII, VIII, IX fell away as I read; soon I was reading Book X and Plato’s Republic was complete.
Following the Trial of Socrates, It was time to read “The Apology” in which Socrates faces a death sentence for corrupting the youth, and is in the position of having to defend his life. There were new characters to be acquainted with, but in contrast with the characters in The Republic, who were allies, the characters in “The Apology” all wanted Socrates dead.
As I had before, I seated myself on the couch, opened the book, booted up the micro-cassette recorder and announced “The Apology. By Plato. Part One. The Defense of Socrates” and began reading. As the dialogue unfolded, the characters fell into their places and their own specific voices.
Throughout the semester the class continued, Beth predictably rolled precisely through the door of the classroom with very little room on either side of her wheelchair. As it was the spring semester, the weather grew warmer, and the snow gave way to slush, then a sort of muddy rain. The class was finished with Plato, but had now began “Fear and Trembling” by Soren Kierkegaard.
I recognized it to be a dour, gloomy tome with plenty of religious references, and moralistic fear mongering. As the early April rain slapped against the window and over the sodden campus, I seated myself on the couch, opened the book, booted up the cassette recorder and intoned gloomily,”Fear and Trembling. By Soren Kierkegaard. Preface. Not merely in the realm of commerce but in the world of ideas as well our age is organizing a regular clearance sale. Everything is to be had at such a bargain that it is questionable whether in the end there is anybody who will want to bid………”
Soon I placed the last micro-cassette on Beth’s tray. The reading was concluded and and the weather was almost agreeable. The large oak-framed windows of the classroom were opened, which infused the musty classroom with a slight blossomy smell. Exams were imminent, and soon the maintenance staff would begin the task of setting up little wooden folding chairs in the academic quad for the 1994 commencement (as a first year student, this was inconsequential).
Beth seemed appreciative and asked me if I would be taking the next class, the following year. I hadn’t really thought about it, but I still had one gen-ed to complete. If not the next philosophy class, what? I had really enjoyed this one.
“I think so,” I answered.
“Will you read for me again?” She asked
“Sure” I answered.
At the conclusion of the class, Beth rolled out the door and down the hall. At some point later in the day, I went to the Students with Disabilities office to return the micro-cassette recorder, and sign the paperwork so I could get paid.
“So how did it go?” The facilitator asked.
“It went well, I think” I answered.
“Beth seemed to think so, too,” he continued,”If you are taking the next class next year, Beth would like you to read for her again. Would you be up for that?”
“I guess so, yeah” I said.
“Good” he said, ”Make sure you are registered, come here before classes begin, and pick up the cassette recorder and some tapes. Nice job”
In a little over a week, I cleaned out my dorm room and left campus for the summer. A few weeks later, a check in the amount of $250 arrived at my parent’s house. And in late August, it was time to go back up to college and register for classes. The demands of the music school in my second year filled my schedule and I had learned it was much more demanding than the first year. I registered for the lone and last gen-ed class I would need to take: the 2nd philosophy class. I purchased the books, then went to the Students with Disabilities office to get my micro-cassette recorder and fill out paperwork to serve as a reader for Beth.
The philosophy class was in the same building, on the third floor, and in a classroom as stuffy and inaccessible as the one the previous year. Dr. C., Skinny and clad in black, and reeking of cigarette smoke strode in and shuffled paper behind the oak lectern. And with a whir, in rolled Beth. Beth looked tired, but happy to see me and I held up the cassette and micro-cassette recorder and waved.
This semester followed a similar format as the previous one with assigned reading, except in this class we read books by Hume, Descartes, Locke and Rousseau. I lived in the same residence hall, in the same room on the 4th floor, in fact. So I picked up where I left off: I moved the couch in the study lounge to face the window (somebody had moved it across the room over the summer), sat down, opened the respective book, booted up the cassette recorder, announced the book, author and chapter and begun reading.
As before, I learned the character’s unique voice and read with inflection and clarity. I became much better at reading in character, (but never caricature), and it worked well with my work as a second year voice major: how I was expected to sing with conviction and in character. The demands of the music school were more and my free time was less. The early fall weather deteriorated into late fall, as the trees went from bright colors to brown, to skeletal. The scent of the campus went from fallen leaves, to frost, and finally to impending snow and the woodsmoke from fireplaces.
Descartes, Hume, Locke, Rousseau were all read into the cassette tape and turned over to Beth, who always showed effortful appreciation, and always seemed to enjoy my interpretation of the reading. We were on the home stretch of the first semester of my second year. The first snow had fallen, and we knew we would not see the ground until late March or April of the following year.
The music school placed even more demands on my time, in a push to complete everything for the semester: juries, recitals, levels, concerts, exams. And soon, as last semester, I put the final cassette tape on Beth’s tray. “You were great”, Beth said laboriously.
“Well thank you!” I said, “So were you”. I am not sure what exactly that was supposed to convey, but I knew there would be no more reading for Beth. She moved her hand ever so lightly and I realized this was an offering of some type of handshake, so I cautiously and lightly shook her hand, afraid of knocking something out of place.
This was my last gen-ed until I graduated. The remaining time at college would be spent in the music school, in study of my major, in the four brick interconnected buildings across campus. I had enjoyed and had grown a lot in those two philosophy classes, but my gen ed requirements were complete. At the conclusion of the class, I waved to Beth, as she rolled down the hall towards the freight elevator, and I headed in the opposite direction to the “Students with Disabilities Office” to return the microcassette recorder.
I never saw Beth again. A few weeks into the following semester, as I began to run out of money, the check for $250 arrived in my mailbox, just in the nick of time. There was a feeling of unease around campus as Governor Mario Cuomo had been voted out of office and was replaced by a new governor: A republican by the name of George Pataki, who vowed to cut SUNY and raise tuition.
I was immersed in my studies in the music school, where my schedule got even tighter and the work even more demanding. I rarely left the complex of the four, grim buildings. Sometimes, as I’d venture back to my dorm in the waning light of the snow packed campus, I’d see a figure that looked like it might have been Beth in her complex wheelchair, but as it approached, it belonged to someone else. It was unlikely our paths would cross again, even incidentally. I assumed Beth had continued with her studies in the academic quad of the campus, a very separate place from the music school, and was taking different classes with different readers. I wondered if the other readers did the voices. I wondered if she enjoyed them.
Many years ago I was a music teacher in an elementary school in Connecticut. Just a year.
The day before school started, I was shown my classroom. It was a nice classroom, but there wasn’t much in the way of supplies. It was essentially, a classroom with almost nothing in it. I hunted down some music books, and some music charts, and some other things to set up my classroom.
But the one thing it was missing was a piano. No piano in the music room. I had a guitar, so I could accompany on that, but I certainly would have preferred a piano, so I made a mental note to request one.
First day of school came, and went pretty well. Little kids: kindergarteners, who I taught songs using my guitar. Pretty much every grade.
As I was passing through another wing of the elementary school, I heard some faint piano notes being played. Not somebody who knew how to play the piano, just a couple of keys being played. Upon closer examination, it sounded like it was coming from the boys bathroom.
Nah, that can’t be right.
But when I passed the bathroom door again, I could hear piano keys being played. Again, not the piano actually being played, just a few keys being played, and resonating in the bathroom.
At that moment, I saw one of the custodians walking down the hall. I was a new teacher, and didn’t want to ask a question that would make him think I was crazy, but I swallowed my embarrassment and asked him, “Is there a piano in that bathroom?”
He didn’t look at me like I was crazy. He just said “Yeah.” Like it was the most normal thing in the world. Like where else would you put a piano?
So I said, “Oh. What’s a piano doing in the bathroom?”
Of course, my mind was concocting all kinds of crazy scenarios. Maybe there was a kid who was a musical genius and could only play after he peed. Maybe the school psychologist had this idea that kids peed better to music, so somebody would come in and play the piano. My mind was trying out every non-plausible scenario of why there would be a piano in the bathroom.
The custodian said, “We didn’t have anywhere else to store it.”
So I said, “Oh. Well could I have it in my classroom?”
The custodian said, “Well, you’d have to ask the principal.”
So I found the principal. She was a nice lady. Taught for a good long time, very good principal.
“I understand there is a piano in the bathroom.”
She said, “Yes. We don’t have anywhere else to store it, I’m afraid.”
“Well, could I have it in my classroom?”
She asked “Why would you want that in your room?”
“Well, I’m the music teacher…..”
She looked like the idea had never occurred to her. “Oh. The last music teacher didn’t want a piano.”
I learned later this was because the last music teacher didn’t do much in the way of teaching music. Not in any depth. For her purposes, compact discs sufficed.
“It would be really helpful,” I clarified, “I have my guitar here, but I could do a lot more with a piano.”
“I’ll talk to the custodian then, and try to get it up to your classroom soon.”
She kept her word, and by the beginning of the following week, the piano was in my classroom. It was still in tune; it was one of those blonde wood Hamilton pianos that could take a beating and stay in tune. It was on some robust wheels. They even found a metal stool for me from somewhere.
The first group of kids came into my room. They looked incredulous.
“Why is The Bathroom Piano in your room???”
“Well,” I answered, “It’s the Music Room Piano now!”
“But it was always in the bathroom!” one of the kids said.
“How many other bathrooms have a piano?” I asked, “Does your bathroom at home have a piano?”
“No, but I wish it did!” one kid said.
“Why?”
“So I could play piano in there!” the kid answered.
“Well, I think it looks a lot better in here!” I answered and continued the lesson.
But all the kids were incredulous. The Bathroom Piano was now in the music room! What gives??? Throughout the day, every kid noticed The Bathroom Piano was in my classroom, and seemed completely amazed by it.
My standard answer was “It’s not the Bathroom Piano, it’s The Music Room Piano!”
One kid asked “What will I do in the bathroom now?” (I don’t know…. what you normally do in the bathroom, maybe?)
One fifth grader asked “How do you know somebody didn’t pee on it?”
I asked “Why would anybody pee on the piano?”
“Because they felt like it.”
“Did YOU pee on the piano?” I asked
“NO!!” the kid protested.
“So why do you think anyone else would?”
I didn’t like the look on that kid’s face. You can bet after that class, I wiped the keyboard down with disinfectant!
Even the other teachers!
“Oh, I see you have The Bathroom Piano in your room!”
“Oh, I’m glad the Bathroom Piano is in your room now. IT was such a waste to have it in the bathroom!” (no shit).
“Oh The Bathroom Piano is in your room! That’s good. It was only a matter of time before a kid peed on it. Or worse. If they hadn’t already!” (Pleeeeeeease stop saying that! Does a piano look like a urinal???) You have no idea how many teachers voiced this concern. And how paranoid it ended up making me about the tendencies of students who attended that school.
Even in other contexts: “The piano in the auditorium is out of tune. Maybe we could use the Bathroom Piano.”
To hear everybody talk, It was like the piano belonged to the bathroom, and I, as the music teacher, had kidnapped it and was holding it hostage.
Some kids MISSED the piano in the bathroom!
For the rest of the damn year. Teachers, kids, paraprofessionals, even some parents referred to my piano as The Bathroom Piano.
I couldn’t very well get on the PA system and announce,”Could we PLEASE stop calling it The Bathroom Piano! It’s the Music Room Piano now!!” but I was on an unsuccessful, one man campaign to rebrand the piano as The Music Room piano, Mr. P’s Piano, or just “The Piano”. At which I spectacularly failed. It’s old title stuck like glue.
One teacher, sensing my irritation, attempted humor,”You can take the piano out of the bathroom, but you’ll never take the bathroom out of the piano!”
The next year I decided I wanted to finish my masters degree, but was offered an artist residency in NYC, so that was my last year teaching in public schools.
So I never found out if the piano ever got rid of it’s unfortunate moniker. Or if the next music teacher in that position was left to figure out why the piano in their classroom was called “The Bathroom Piano”
Maybe they were successful in fully rebranding the piano as The Music Room Piano! Pianos have elegance and gravitas (even those ugly blonde Hamiltons), and being called The Bathroom Piano really undermines that elegance!
And now, Live at Carnegie Hall, Vladimir Horowitz will play Franz Liszt’s Sonata in B Minor, on the much venerated Bathroom Piano!
But the guy across the table had, because he checked the “yes” box.
I checked the “no” box.
“If yes, please explain in the space below (answering yes will not necessarily bar you from employment)”
In the space below I wrote: “I have never been convicted of a felony”
The guy across the table wrote. And wrote some more. He filled the space below and when he ran out, continued to write in whatever available space was on the job application form.
I couldn’t read what he wrote, because I could not read his scrawl upside down, and, truth be known, it didn’t look as though it would be all that legible right side up.
I didn’t want him to catch me trying to read his explanation, but I surreptitiously studied him. He was somewhat disappointing. He was certainly bigger than me, but given my mealy frame, that wasn’t hard. Other than that, he didn’t look particularly menacing, or imposing. He wasn’t ripped in muscle from years of pumping iron in the prison weight yard. He didn’t have gang tattoos, or an unkempt beard, or a Hells Angels bandana on his head, or scars from being shanked. He was about forty. He looked kind of flabby and kind of weary. He looked ordinary.
I wonder what he did. I wonder if he burned somebody’s house down. Maybe he killed somebody. Maybe he pulled off a bank heist, but spent all the money. Or maybe he had been a mob boss, but was now reduced to applying for a part time job at the cold storage place, and competing for it with the scrawny sixteen year old across the table that was me. But I hadn’t been convicted of a felony.
The guy continued to explain his felony on the sheet of paper and I completed the application, which didn’t take too long considering my history of sporadic, patchy, irrelevant and under-the table work experience. Soon there was nothing to do but look around the room, with its chipped Formica tables, the stained suspension ceiling with the florescent lights, the scuffed linoleum tiles and lack of windows. At the far end was a flickering Coke machine whose sounds rotated among humming, roaring and threatening to die with a shudder. Next to it was an understocked snack vending machine, where through the glass one could see a few shopworn looking candy bars, a dilapidated bag of Fritos, a smeary looking honey bun, and a bag of Rold Gold pretzels that was hanging on by a thread. Apparently the machine hadn’t let go of the purchase, and the original buyer had decided it wasn’t worth buying a second bag of pretzels in order to get the first. There was also a coffee dispenser, where one could buy a miserly paper cup of horrible coffee for thirty five cents.
It was the third day of September, the year was 1991, and just yesterday it was decided that instead of completing my junior and senior year in my unruly mid-sized high school, I would be attending community college. It happened so fast. One day I was dreading the misery of my upcoming high school year, my mediocrity that hovered like the Sword of Damocles ever so slightly above abject failure, and the apathy, yet desperation that came with it. The next day I was registered for English 101 and a host of other lower division college classes. The first of which would be in two days.
On some level I knew it was a good thing, but the sudden change in trajectory was overwhelming, to say the least. I was still digesting it. And it didn’t alter the fact I needed an after school job, although with my college schedule all over the place it would be anybody’s guess WHEN I would be working. It felt strangely discombobulating to be thrust from the structure of the high school schedule to the odd and arbitrary patchwork of time blocks of a college schedule and part time job.
Owing to the local politics and nepotism that was rife in this small, gritty city in Upstate New York, the typical places a sixteen year old could find employment: the fast food joints, the mom and pop stores, the supermarkets and even the hospital were “all sewn up”. My family had come to town in the late 1970s, and we were still outsiders lacking the connections to hook a kid up with a job.
I had even applied, with no success, to an establishment with an especially large turnover, owing to the tyrannical lunatic of an owner who would, on average, fire an entire staff on a bi-weekly basis in a hissy fit.
“There is no “I” in team! There absolutely is a “U” in FAILURE!!!” he’d scream in a psychotic rage, as he’d hurl pickles at any unfortunate employee who happened to be in the line of fire. “How DARE you duck when I throw things at you???”
I had a friend who worked for him for about a week, “Yeah, he’s kind of an asshole, especially when he’s sober.” My friend had walked off the job after the guy had dumped half gallon of cooking oil on his head. “You’re out of your mind!” he stated when I told him I had applied for a job there.
“I need a job” I shrugged.
“You don’t need that one!”
Well, it didn’t matter. I applied a week ago and hadn’t heard back. Perhaps he hadn’t fired his entire staff in a tantrum yet. Perhaps he hadn’t yet pelted them with pickles on the way out or dumped (thankfully cold) oil on them. A psychotic wouldn’t even hire me.
But here I was applying for a job at the cold storage place. I pictured myself dodging forklifts in a grim, eternal winter, as I did God knows what. Until I saw the want ad in the local paper, I never gave this place a second glance. It was a blocky, windowless building, fronted by a row of truck bays. It sat on the corner of a state route and a short service road accurately named “Industrial Tract Road”, lined with prefab industrial buildings and that ended at the county jail: a squat, brown bricked building with narrow slit like windows and an ominous looking cyclone fence topped with rolls of razor wire. For what this job lacked in glamor, it was going to pay $5 per hour: that was 75 cents above the minimum wage in 1991. Assuming I got it.
The guy across the table had completed his application, complete with relevant work experience, and explanation for his felony, so we sat in the break room and waited, and waited some more. Soon the door opened, and a guy in a winter coat, with his glasses still fogged up entered and without saying a word took our applications. He looked over mine, then looked over the application of the guy with the felony.
“Why don’t we talk?” he suggested, and for a second I thought he was talking to me, but he was talking to the other guy.
He looked apologetically at me, “I’ll call you if we have anything else,” which I could already translate as a hard no.
The felony guy followed him into a small office, and I walked out the front door to the car, defeated.
Another job I didn’t get.
“So, how’d it go?” my dad asked without looking up.
“Terrible. It was a choice between me and some guy with a felony record. They picked the guy with the felony record. He’ll probably steal the forklift or rob somebody in the parking lot.”
“That’s not fair,” my dad retorted,” That guy needs the job more than you do! Last thing he needs is some sixteen year old jerk making assumptions about him.”
“Well, I need the job, too. And I haven’t committed a felony.”
“Yet,” my dad said.
“Gee, thanks so much”
“And you don’t need the job,” my dad added, ”You want the job.”
No, I needed the job. I had expenses. I had to put gas in the car I was driving: a red 87 Volkswagen GTI. I had at least somewhat of a social life, half assed and meager as it was and hopefully in my upcoming semester of college that would improve. And I had a girlfriend: an academically conscientious girl who lived far enough away to run up a phone bill. With a head of thick blonde hair. Who spoke in a husky contralto, and had a strange affinity for The Police, and an intense hatred of Dr. Pepper. Without a job, and the income that came with it, what, exactly was I going to be able to do with that situation? Without that vital component, I foresaw my world as small, monotonous, unautonomous, and monastic.
I rifled through the two newspapers we had delivered to the house: The Albany Times Union, and the local paper, and I found the want ads. Always the same old shit. The jobs that were already filled, or not even a consideration for me. The usual array of pyramid schemes, get-rich-quick schemes, any of the other unoriginal scams posing as jobs. No, I was not going to be a goddamn Avon lady. The same depressing lack of paydirt. Nobody wanted to hire a 16 year old college kid. They’d hire a convicted felon first. But today’s want ad section, in addition to the same ads I had memorized, had one new ad that popped out at me.
It was for work at a goat farm, at least twenty miles away. They needed somebody, but gave no specifics of what they needed, or what the job would entail, on the ad. I gave them a call, and that day, I had an interview lined up, and was given directions on how to get out there. That afternoon.
It was far. It was practically on the Massachusetts border, where I drove on the state route in fifth gear, ready to dodge or brake for the potential woodchuck or skunk or squirrel that would dart out in front of the car. As per the directions, close to Massachusetts, I veered off onto a narrow county route, as cinders pinged the undercarriage of the car. A mile and a half or so later, I turned off onto another, even narrower dirt road, where weeds flanked the road close enough to brush against the car, and clouds of dust kicked up behind me.
Less then a half hour later, I was retracing my steps back home: on the dusty dirt road, the coarsly ground county route and, and finally the state route. I had gotten the job. Like the job at the cold storage place, it paid $5 per hour. It worked well with my class schedule, and I was to begin tomorrow. By the odometer, it was twenty-two miles. But I had a job. And it was $5 per hour.
“So what is it you’ll be doing?” my dad asked when I got home.
“Well, I have to feed the goats.” I answered.
“And that’s all?” my dad asked, “How many goats?”
“Six hundred”
My dad whistled, ”That’s a lot of goats. But all you have to do it feed them, right?”
“Well, I also have to open some gates, and herd them into where they will be getting milked. They’re going to show me all that stuff tomorrow.”
“So you’ll be herding goats!” my dad cackled, ”That makes you a goatherd!”
“Mmm hmm….”
And he burst into a ridiculous falsetto yodel, “High on a hill was a lonely goatherd! Lay ee odl lay ee odl lay hee hoo…”
“Haw haw” and I went off to my room with my dad still yodeling after me.
Later in the day, I called my girlfriend, “Hey, I got a job!”
“Where?” she asked
“I’ll be working at a goat farm!”
There was a pause.
“A goat farm….?” She repeated, ”Like the kind that have horns?”
“I guess they have horns. I haven’t met them yet”
She didn’t sound too impressed. Her voice always took on a flat quality when she wasn’t impressed with something, and this was one such moment.
“Yeah, I have to feed them and I have to herd them to get milked.” I explained.
“So you’re going to be a goatherd,” she said in that same, flat quality and I didn’t know what to make of it.
I had hoped she’d regard my industry and work ethic with a little more admiration.
But at least she didn’t yodel down the phone at me.
II TEMPEST
A little over a week later, I had established the beginning of a routine. I was enjoying my classes that were devoid of the usual high school bullshit. I had made a few new friends, and I even looked forward to gym class: a class I had passionately loathed in high school. It was a class called “Outdoor Activities” which involved walking on the nature trails and rowing boats in the pond of the state park that abutted the campus. My grades, thus far, were good. I liked my professors, and the pace of the campus seemed to jibe well with me. I found the lack of structure a little unsettling, but I supposed I’d get used to that.
Moreover, I had been cast in a play: Our Town. It was by Thornton Wilder, and depicted life in a small town in New England, almost a hundred years ago. I was amazed to learn that not only were we not going to have a set, or use any props, we weren’t supposed to use sets or props. All we were supposed to use was plain wooden chairs. But since we couldn’t procure those, we’d make do with the molded blue plastic chairs the college had all over the place. I was cast as “Simon Stimpson”: the alcoholic church organist, a role I thought would be a lot of fun.
The play had a student director: A short, rotund girl in her fourth semester, who constantly sounded like she had a stuffed up nose, which gave her speech a smug quality. She claimed she was “so serious about theatre, she had the theatre masks tattooed on her body” but she wouldn’t say exactly where, which allowed my filthy, gutterbound little imagination to go to town.
Only her boyfriend knew the answer to that. Maybe. His name was Wayne, but he had given himself the name “Tempest”, and made it known this was his preferred form of address. He had somehow installed himself as the “Assistant Student Director”. I doubted that title had any official meaning, but that did not deter him from throwing the weight he thought he had around, as “The Student Director’s Boyfriend”
“Tempest” was about twenty six, had frosted hair pulled back into a mullet, and a uniform stubble about his face he accomplished with a “Miami Device”: a sort of electric razor designed to do a bad job. He seemed to have a never ending supply of sunglasses, which he wore indoors: some had louvers instead of lenses, some had palm trees superimposed on the mirror lenses, one had “Wild” printed on one lens, and “Thing” on the other.
He drove a turquoise Geo Tracker, with hot pink racing stripes on the chassis that dissolved into a palm tree. It seemed like he was affecting the aesthetic of a surfer or something, which I thought was odd, considering he was from Hunter, NY, a small town in the Catskill Mountains, about as far from the Pacific Coast as you could get. Everything he said seemed to end in “Man” or “Dude”, in this weird affected timbre. I didn’t know what to make of him. It didn’t seem like he actually went to class or DID anything. Most of the older students brushed him off in irritation. But he would introduce himself, “I’m Tempest, man. The Assistant Student Director.”
Aside from that, often I’d run into people I knew from my high school who had graduated and wondered what I was doing there, being two years younger than them and all. It was well known I was sixteen, and I was sometimes referred to as “the kid”. Every now and then, I’d be asked, ”What are you, some kind of crazy genius?”
I was really uncomfortable with that trope. By circumstances, dumb luck and some convoluted arrangements I had ended up here, but it certainly wasn’t because I was a “Crazy genius” or anything remotely like that. Though I was holding my own at the college level, my past academic record would not indicate even being academically gifted, let alone a genius. I didn’t want people thinking too hard about that, or uncovering what a royal fuck-up I had been in previous years. Moreover, I was pretty sure “crazy geniuses” would be attending institutions much more vaunted than this community college with its modest campus of low slung buildings.
III THEM WITH THE CLOVEN HOOVES
If my time on the college campus was agreeable, my job at the goat farm was not. A week and a half in, I hated it. I liked the goats; they were nice, intelligent creatures, but this was a job, not a petting zoo. And it was a four hour sweaty, smelly slog. I’d come home exhausted, thirsty, stinking and itchy from the hay that stuck to my sweat. I’d come home to every family member commenting on how much I stunk, my brother and dad yodeling at me about being a goatherd (it had worn thin a long time ago). I’d jump in the shower, and toss my work clothes into the washer, where despite being laundered every day, as was necessary, they retained the odor of goat farm.
Every day, after classes or play rehearsal, or music practice, I’d put on my old smelly jeans, with rips in the knees, an old T-shirt, and a pair of old army boots. I’d get into the Volkswagen and drive the twenty-two miles out to the ass end of nowhere to the goat farm. By the end of the week, the car was caked in dust. My brother had written “Wash Me” in the dust on the window.
If I had the time, first thing I would do when I parked the car in the dusty parking lot was head on over to a small pen, where the “kids” were. They’d be prancing around and bleating, and I would climb over the low fence. They’d be excited to see me, and would immediately begin chewing on the rip in my jeans, and I’d pet them for awhile. In the capacity of my job, I had nothing to do with them; they had been weaned, but not for long and they were fed by someone else, sometimes with a bottle. Nonetheless, they were cute and playful, and it was fun to spend a little time with them.
My boss was stocky, grizzled woman who chain smoked to the point of spitting brown in the dirt. A few bristly hairs grew out of her chin, and her voice was raspy and baritonal. She didn’t seem to have much affection for the kids, and regarded my few minutes with them with impatience, but since I was off the clock, there wasn’t much she could do about it.
In a few minutes, I would punch in and begin my duties. Once I casually asked my boss, “So when the baby goats get bigger, what happens?”
She said, “Well, we put the females in with Fleetwood!”
Fleetwood, I learned, was the lone male goat on the farm. The stud.
“What do you do with the males?” I asked
“We sell them for leather!” She answered with entirely too much relish, “While they’re still young, their pelt is nice and soft, but you have to let them grow big enough so that when they skin ‘em, there’s enough leather. Ever hear of kid gloves? Handbags, jackets, boots….” And then she cackled, as though she was pre-emptively getting off on my discomfort with the answer. And then spat a gleaming, tan lugey onto the ground.
It wasn’t the answer I wanted to hear, at all, but there was work to be done. I would take a rusty wheelbarrow to a short silo, push a button and that would deposit a quantity of goat feed into it. I’d grab a large scoop and head into one of the barns.
This would be a good time to describe the complex: It was essentially three long, low buildings (called barns) that radiated out from a central “hub”. The hub is where the goats were milked. It was a large, brightly lit space with white cinderblock walls and a red quarry tile floor. It was immaculately clean. When the goats weren’t in there, it smelled like bleach. On the perimeter, through glass windows was a small office, and through another set of glass windows was a huge, stainless steel tank, where one could hear agitators and refrigeration equipment whirring constantly.
It had holding pens for the goats, and a system of railings that looked like nothing so much as the system of railings used in theme parks to keep long lines for rides in order. To direct the goats in a particular direction, it had gates that could be moved and shunted. And in the very center of the space was a huge, round stainless steel contraption that looked like an enormous steel Trivial Pursuit game piece, but open at the perimeter.
The goats would be herded into the pen, moved down the maze of railings, and inserted into one of the wedge shaped compartments of the contraption, and hooked up with milking equipment. It would rotate slowly, and at half a rotation the goat would be disengaged from the equipment, and deposited into another maze which would lead to another holding pen, and ultimately sent back to their respective barn. Thankfully, my job had nothing to do with the actual milking of the goats. My job was to simply feed the goats and get them into the hub.
Each of the barns had 200 goats, and were subdivided into four pens, with fifty goats in each pen. The two pens that were closest to the hub had an automatically controlled overhead door that would open directly to a holding pen in the hub. The two pens farthest from the hub were accessible by a central aisle that ran down the barn, with an overhead door that opened into the hub.
First thing to do was feed the goats. I’d enter through a door at the far end of one of the barns. The barn was a noisy, hot space that smelled strongly of goats, tinged with the smell of urine, hay and goat excrement. It would be a cacophony of bleating at various pitches, timbres and volumes, with overhead blade fans of industrial size but didn’t do much to move the air.
The goats were attuned to the sound of the door opening and the wheelbarrow rolling and would crowd to the feeding trough, bleating, kicking and butting each other out of the way. Any large space with animal feed has rats, so the first thing would be to bang the scoop on the side of the trough, and watch five or six rats make a hasty departure.
Then I would move down the aisle at warp speed, quickly dropping a scoop of feed fifty times to each pen. The wheelbarrow held enough feed for two pens worth: one hundred goats. I’d race the empty wheelbarrow back down the aisle, back out the door to the silo and repeat the process five more times, through each of the three barns.
At that point I had worked up a sweat, but apparently not enough for my boss, who was constantly clapping her hands in my face and barking at me to “speed things up!” I wondered what her actual function on the farm was, besides riding my ass. But now it was time for the goats to be milked.
My job was to simply get the goats into the hub to be milked, but getting one goat to do what you want it to do is not an easy task, let alone getting fifty at a time. I’d either open the overhead door to the hub, or send them up the aisle, depending on where the pen was. Then, I’d have to jump into the pen, where I would sink down ankle deep in hay and goat shit.
The goats would swarm around me, rub up against me, and chew on the ever growing rip in my jeans. I’d get behind them and call, “Come on come on come on! Let’s go goats! Come on come on! Hey, stop chewing on that! Let’s go!” as I’d waft them in the direction of the hub. But the goats wouldn’t go. They’d stall, they’d chew some more on my jeans, they’d stop to go to the bathroom, and generally be recalcitrant. It was a process. But eventually after the last goat was in the hub, I’d shut the overhead doors, shunt the gate in the right direction to end at the milking apparatus, and then head over to the next barn to prepare them to enter the hub. Repeat process twelve times. And return them to their pen, twelve times, with the same stubborn recalcitrance.
I should also mention that the goats were classified and housed according to where they were on their “milk cycle” and it was notated by the bar code and color of their ear tag, however, one incorrect move of a gate could mix two goats that were classified separately, which would beget a long process of separating out the goats into their respective pen. Luckily that never happened, but I was sure if it did, either that would be the end of my job there, or I would be tasked with the long process of sorting the stubborn goats well into the night, off the clock.
Another thing I was to watch out for was a the subtle difference between a goat stubbornly sitting down versus squatting. My boss warned me, “If a goat is squatting down, that means she is kidding!”
“Kidding?” I repeated, “What would they be kidding about? Like faking illness?”
She shot me a withering look, ”Giving birth!” she snarled contemptuously, ”If that happens, get me!”
IV FLEETWOOD
Then there was Fleetwood.
Let me tell you about Fleetwood.
Fleetwood lived in a pen abutting the hub with forty nine other goats. And his sole and only job on the farm was impregnating the other 599 goats there; a job he took very seriously. A job, for whatever reason, to which he viewed me an impediment.
You’d smell him before you’d see him: a pungent, uriney, mangy odor. He was a big, shaggy thing that glowered out of a pair of malevolent black eyes. He had a pair of sharp horns he aimed directly at me, as he snarled and snorted from his corner of the pen. It was very obvious about how he felt towards me, and I had no particular affection for him either.
If all I had to do was feed the goats, Fleetwood would be a non-issue, but no. When it was time to open the door to send the goats into the hub to get milked, my job was to prevent Fleetwood from following the other goats in, something it seemed was his sole mission in life to do. Male goats, of course, can’t be milked. I mean, I guess they could, but it would be a fruitless effort that would only result in a pissed off goat. Moreover, I was given to understand that if a male goat was present, the female goat would release a hormone, which would spoil their milk, and make it taste like the male. I wasn’t sure how that worked, but I was pretty sure nobody would want Fleetwood flavored goat milk. Not based on how he smelled.
Fleetwood didn’t like being “redirected” from following the goats into the hub. Fleetwood liked being able to get laid when he wanted, and he sure as hell didn’t want me jumping into the pen, grabbing him by his horns and moving him in the opposite direction he wanted to go. And in addition to being smelly and mean, he was also strong.
It took a lot of muscle, let alone coordination, to move the other goats in the hub, all while preventing Fleetwood from going there. He’d snarl and snort. He’s move his head, attempt to kick me. And when all else failed, he’d urinate on my boot in a high pressure, steaming, reeking arc. Once I let go of his horns, I had to get out of the pen fast, because he’d then attempt to gore me. The pen containing Fleetwood was the last to be milked. I dreaded it, and I loathed Fleetwood. And he loathed me right back.
But fortunately, after Fleetwood’s pen had been milked, there wasn’t much else to do, so I would drag my smelly, exhausted self out to the parking lot, get in the car and drive home. I’d respect the speed limit, but barely, considering that under New York State’s draconian speeding laws, new drivers who sped would have their license suspended. Once at home, showered, and having endured the wisecracks of my brother and dad, and even my mom sometimes, I’d have something to eat. I was still thirsty, but my dad bought beer by the case, which he’d keep a few in the fridge. Once he had retired to the living room, I’d grab a bottle from the fridge, and replace it with one from the case. The past few weeks, the beer distributer must have had a sale on Molson Golden, which was a hell of a lot better than the “Old Milwaukee” he had a seemingly endless supply of before.
I’d discreetly take the beer off to my room, hold the green bottle against my face, which was still hot from the work, before I’d open it to drink, and begin studying my coursework until 9 PM, when the “night rate” for long distance calls began, and then I’d call my girlfriend.
I attempted to tell her about my day: About English 101, and Outdoor Activities, and Our Town rehearsal. The different classes, and goings on, and personalities of the community college environment I was now in, but there was a disconnect. It seemed out of context, disjointed, out of whack. When I told her about my work day at the goat farm, there was a pause, where I waited for her commentary.
“I’m sure you must smell wonderful,” she said in that flat voice she reserved for things she was not impressed with.
As though the stink of the goat farm had worked its way through seventy five miles of phone cable and had offended the air of the neat little Cape Cod style house where she lived with her parents in Westchester County. I didn’t want her thinking of me smelling “wonderful”. I knew what it smelled like, I knew what Fleetwood smelled like, and I did not want that to even cross her mind. There was no room for it in her world, and I did not want it to be there, not even in her imagination. I resolved with my next paycheck to buy some Drakkar Noir, in its flat black oval bottle. That’s what I wanted her to imagine me smelling like. That would make me feel better.
She’d tell me about her day. About her college prep classes, band rehearsal, chorus rehearsal, and her youth group affiliated with her church. Her membership in the National Honor Society. She told me that Michael Dukakis would be visiting her high school because it was a Federal School of Excellence. It all sounded so idyllic, so orderly. The trajectory sounded so clear.
It threw my world into sharp relief, which was not idyllic, and anything but orderly, what with the seemingly piecemeal feel of my class schedule, my smelly and exhausting job. My house with the sloping, creaking floors and the bat problem. My brother and my dad yodeling about my job. My mother and my sister fighting like a pair of cats in a bag on my sister’s weekends home from the state college. My dad thumping on the door of my room and yelling that a phone bill was not a good use of my funds. And every fucking day, getting pissed on, shat on, kicked and almost gored by Fleetwood.
It felt chaotic, yet pedestrian, mundane, and uncertain. My identity was straddling a yawning chasm, and I wasn’t sure what was on each side, what side I wanted to be on, and where it would even lead. If my girlfriend’s trajectory was a straight line on a 45 degree angle in an upward direction, mine wasn’t even a trajectory; it looked like the jagged readout of a polygraph, where the subject was lying through their teeth and nobody knew which way to hold the paper to get an accurate reading.
V MULGERE HIRCUM
It was three weeks into September now, and Upstate New York stubbornly clung to the summer humidity, as thought it was as resistant to comply with the logical course of events as Fleetwood. While I was conceiving an exit strategy from the goat farm, the execution of it seemed unattainable. I had classmates who had jobs considerably less grueling, less messy, less smelly and closer to home. I had a friend who worked in the AV department of the college. I had another one who bagged groceries at a supermarket. I had to snag one of those: the goat farm was taking my sanity, and the more it took, the less was left. But how? Back to square 1?
The ripped jeans I wore to work at the goat farm were fast being chewed to pieces. When I started, they were simply jeans with rips in the knees. Now one leg was barely hanging on. The goats had gnawed through the stitching on the sides. I did not want to replace them; I did not want to destroy another pair of jeans. Nor did I want to simply cut the legs off entirely; if the goats didn’t have jeans to chew on, they might instead opt for my bare leg. The army boots had impacted goat shit in the waffling, and the legs of my jeans were flapping around like the fingers on a leper, just before they drop off.
And on Tuesday of the third week of September, I got my first B. For the small assignments I had been doing for my various classes, I had been maintaining straight As. Two weeks is not a long time to sustain a straight A average, but I viewed the B (not even a B+) as a foreshadowing of things to come; an exponential decline. And people would start questioning why I was even in college, whether I even belonged there. I’d be uncovered as a fraud and sent back to my chaotic high school, complete with the bells, the pushing and shoving, the sardonic teachers, and the everpresent possibility of an ass kicking right around the corner for no apparent reason. Was I burning out or was I simply not cut out for this?
My B paper in hand, as I walked down the corridor, I saw “Tempest” mincing towards me in his signature Aviator sunglasses.
“Hey man. We adjusted the rehearsal schedule. We’re gonna need you at 2 PM today”
“You know I have to work then. Can’t I come at the original time?”
“No, dude. We expect you at two.”
“I have to work,” I reiterated, “You are giving me only a day’s notice on this.”
“What can I say, man? This play’s a commitment. If you weren’t up for it…”
“The schedule worked fine before you changed it on me. I can’t make it. Give me more notice next time.”
“I’m not accepting that, man, I’m not accepting that. I’m expecting you there, dude. Make it work.”
And then he walked away.
Who the fuck was he, anyway? Did his girlfriend, the actual director, send him as a messenger boy because she was too chickenshit to tell people she was jerking them around on the schedule? I was tired of Wayne. “Tempest”. I didn’t know what his deal was, but he was a jackass.
Much as I disliked Wayne, it did give me pause. What if I just went to play rehearsal and just didn’t go to my job at the goat farm? I’d be fired to be sure, but I wanted out of that job anyway. Although given the nature of just about every human being I had met at the goat farm, collecting my final paycheck after that stunt might be an exercise in mulgere hircum: to milk a male goat. An impossible, unproductive task.
I did consider it. Play rehearsal, developing my character, with friends I had made, even if it involved having to endure “Tempest” every now and then was exponentially preferable to herding 599 goats and wrangling Fleetwood. Maybe I could call in sick. I had never malingered before, but it would be just my luck for a friend of a friend of someone at the goat farm to see me rehearsing in the small black box theatre, healthy as can be, and I’d be called out on my lies, fired, and likely not paid for the work I had already done. I couldn’t risk it.
At 2 PM I wearily got into my ripped jeans, nasty Tshirt, and shitty boots. I got into the car and drove out to the end of the earth, to the coarse county route, to the dirt road. Halfway down the dirt road, there was a blast of a horn, and barreling towards me was an 18 wheeler truck, with a glossy black cab and a shiny metal grill. The trucker blasted the horn again, in a long, menacing blare.
I was literally facing down the grill, not five feet from the hood of the car and we were at a standoff. I wasn’t sure what to do. The road was too narrow for the truck, barely wide enough for the Volkswagen. I couldn’t squeeze past the truck, I couldn’t turn around. I hadn’t been driving very long, and going half a mile in reverse seemed like a daunting task. Plus I was running late.
The truck blasted the horn again, and revved the engine, sending a plume of black smoke up the pipe. Then it started moving towards me in an attempt to run me off the road. I had no choice but to move to the right, into the weeds, and at that moment, I felt the tire of the car hit something sharp, there was a sort of pop, and a hiss and the car sank. The truck blazed past me, and I noticed the trailer was an animal carrier, and it was emblazoned with the name of a leather tannery.
The tire had been punctured; that much was obvious, and I was due at work in about three minutes. The goat farm was another three quarters of a mile down the road. I knew, on some level, how to change a tire, but I had never done it with this car. I opened the hatch, located the spare “donut” tire, the jack and the wrench. I wasn’t sure how long it would take to change the tire, and I was already late. I knew that after working, the last thing I would want to do would be to change the tire, but I decided to get the car off the road as best I could, leave it, and walk the rest of the way to the goat farm.
I walked into the parking lot twenty minutes late, with my boss with her hands on her hips. I was drenched in sweat, and the cloud of dust the truck had kicked up was still in my nose and lungs.
“Sorry I’m late,” I wheezed, “I got a flat tire back there, so I had to walk. That truck….”
she cut me off
“Excuses aren’t going to get the goats fed,” she growled, ”Get moving.”
“OK, let me punch in”.
And as I walked towards the hub, I noticed the pen with the kids was half empty. They were never coming back.
I began my duties, just as I had every day before. I got the wheelbarrow and the scoop as though they both weighed several tons, and there was several more tons on my back. I slogged to the barn. If it was my bosses job to ride my ass, today she did it with a vengeance. It was merciless. The barking, the hand clapping in front of my face, the kicking of the troughs. The criticizing, the threats (although getting fired at this point would be sweet relief).
If the goats were recalcitrant every day, today they were doubly so. Everything was a fight. Everything was like pulling teeth. The goats chewed forcefully on my jeans that I was amazed they were still hanging on. The smell of goat shit was eye watering. The rats no longer feared me, and I couldn’t get one second’s peace from my boss.
Then I got to Fleetwood’s pen.
Fleetwood, today, was dead set on following the goats into the hub. He was determined. No force in nature, certainly not a scrawny sixteen year old was going to thwart that effort. He was prepared to fight to the death.
I jumped into the pen. Fleetwood positioned his horns and charged me, but I got out of the way. Fleetwood snarled and snorted and breathed foul smelling vapor into the air. He moved towards me again, but this time, I grabbed him by the horns, and he did his usual trick of moving his head and attempting to kick me.
I moved to the overhead door, pushed the button, and as it opened, managed to waft the goats through it into the hub. Fleetwood attempted to follow them. He grunted, kicked, pissed and shat. I managed to get the door closed, as the last goat entered, but Fleetwood had decided this was war. I managed to get out of the pen before he poked two large holes in me, but his expression told me that if I entered that pen again, there would be blood.
I had to enter the pen again. I had to return the other goats to the pen and keep him out of the hub.
So ten minutes later, when I jumped into the pen, Fleetwood was ready for me. I moved towards the overhead door, to let the other goats in, and he charged me. I moved out of his way and grabbed his horns. As the goats filled the space, he moved his head with super goat strength. I couldn’t close the door, or let go of Fleetwood until all the goats were present in the pen.
Fleetwood growled, then landed a well placed kick to the shin. I winced in pain, and knew it was going to leave an ugly bruise. But I didn’t let go. Fleetwood then grabbed the leg of my jeans in his teeth and pulled. There was a ripping sound.
“Hey, let go!”
Fleetwood wasn’t letting go. And he landed another kick.
“HEY! LET! GO!”
With another jerk, a violent ripping noise, Fleetwood tore the leg of my jeans right off. He had it in his teeth, I still had him by the horns. He aimed his penis strategically and deployed a forceful stream of hot, stinking piss on my bare leg, landing a third violent kick as a parting gift.
Then he went off to the corner, with the jeans leg still in his teeth, snorting, snarling and flapping it up and down like a trophy. This was my cue to shut the overhead door and get the hell out of the pen. I was not going to try to retrieve my jeans leg, which was now a tattered denim rag. If Fleetwood wanted to keep it as a trophy, he could have it.
In a daze, I hobbled out to the parking lot with one leg on my jeans, but barely. I looked around for the car, but then I remembered it was half a mile down the dirt road with a flat tire that still had yet to be changed. Painfully, I dragged myself down the road to the car, which was sitting like a derelict, halfway in the weeds. I opened the hatch, hauled out the donut spare tire, the jack and the tire iron, moved the car onto the road and lay in the dirt to get the jack under the car.
I managed to get the tire off, but as I was going back to get the donut, I tripped over my feet and spilled the lugs into the weeds. It was another half hour, on my hands and knees in the waning light, but thankfully, thankfully, I located them all and managed to get the donut tire attached, and the flat tire into the trunk.
But at that moment, a beat up grey pickup truck came down the road at me and began honking impatiently. It was my boss behind the wheel. And she just leaned on the horn. I had no choice but to back the car down the half mile of dirt road with my boss honking impatiently.
I peeled out onto the county route and onto the state route, where I put the car in 5th gear and stepped on it to get home. Except there would be some time before I would be going home as I saw the red light flashing in my rear window. Wellp, there goes my license.
I pulled the car over to the shoulder, and after an eternity, with the red lights flashing in my mirror a police officer stepped out of the car and came towards me.
“License and registration, please”
I handed them over.
“How’re you doing this evening?”
I gulped. “OK”.
I wasn’t ok, but I wasn’t having that conversation with a cop.
“Where are you heading?” he asked
“Home.” I answered.
“Where’s home?” he inquired.
I gave him my address, although he had it on my license. He seemed satisfied with it.
“Where are you coming from?” he asked
“Work” I answered miserably.
“Where’s work?”
“The goat farm back there. Up the county route.”
“What is it you do there?” he asked. He seemed genuinely interested.
“I feed the goats. And I herd them to get milked.”
“You herd goats?” he asked, “That makes you a goatherd!” he chuckled. And I waited for him to start yodeling. What is the appropriate reaction if a cop who just pulled you over starts yodeling at you? Fortunately he didn’t.
“Do you know why I pulled you over?” he asked
“I don’t” I answered honestly.
“Do you know how fast you were going?” he asked
“Too fast?” I guessed
“Is your speedometer broken, or were you simply not paying attention?”
“I……”
“You were going 73 miles an hour. The speed limit here, and in the state of New York is 55. That’s 18 miles over the speed limit.”
“Wow”.
“Wow is right. Your license is only a few months old. Any moving violation during that probationary period results in a suspension”
I didn’t know what to say to that. He was right.
It was then he noticed the donut tire.
“What happened there?” he asked
“I got a flat on the way to work.”
“You know you are only supposed to go about 30 miles an hour on the spare tire, right?”
“OK”
“You need to keep your speed down.” He continued.
“Yes”
He studied my license again. “Is your dad still teaching?”
“Yes” I answered.
“I had him for one of my classes. Tell him I said hi. Keep your speed down”
He handed my license back, and as he sauntered back to his car, I didn’t have the presence of mind to ask him his name. But I could hear him whistling “The Lonely Goatherd” on the way back to his car.
And I sat in the driver seat hyperventilating and waiting for my pulse to return to its rightful pace. But the police car still sat there with its lights flashing and it was obvious it wasn’t going anywhere till I got back out there on the road. So I reluctantly got back out onto the road and drove home at a judicious 30 miles an hour.
As soon as I was in the door, my brother took a look at me; dusty from head to toe, with one leg of my jeans ripped off.
“What happened to YOU?” he asked
“Fuck you” I snarled.
“Hey mom!” my brother called “Look at Robert’s jeans!”
“Did one of the goats eat the leg of your jeans?” my mother asked.
“Never mind that,” I sighed, ”Let me just get a shower.”
As the warm water spilled over me, with varying degrees of pressure (that was another thing; the shower head needed to be fixed), I wondered how it had come to this. Why couldn’t I have a normal job like every other kid. Why couldn’t I have a normal class schedule like every other kid my age? Why couldn’t I have a normal, peaceful house, with a brother who knew how to shut his mouth when it would behoove him? Why couldn’t I just have a normal, streamlined existence like everybody else? Why did my life have to be invaded by smelly goats and assholes like Wayne? Why did a day at work have to include the sadness that came with the knowledge that baby goats had been skinned? I cursed in the steam as I let the hot water run over the bruises on my shins, until my mother thumped on the door and told me I had been in there long enough; I was going to run the hot water out.
I threw the jeans in the garbage in the basement; they were useless now and went upstairs to get some food, but physically hungry as I was, every piece seemed to stick in my throat. When my parents retired to the living room, I opened the fridge, and found we were back to the Old Milwaukee beer, in its brown bottle. As usual, I snuck it to my room, sipped it as I tried to study my work, but my mind couldn’t focus. All I wanted was to talk to my girlfriend, so I waited impatiently until 9.
That didn’t go well, either. I was already in such a state, and was impervious to reason. Nobody could talk me down, not my girlfriend, not anybody, although that is a lot to put on a teenage girl with her own set of responsibilities. As I got more and more and more worked up, I invented imaginary slights against me, and eventually the conversation devolved into a frustrating, circular, exhausting litany, where I deployed all my negativity on her. The call ended, and I went to bed exhausted, ashamed, upset and unable to sleep.
VI THE GOAT THAT DIED FOR YOUR SINS
I did manage to drift off into a fitful, uncomfortable semi-slumber at about 4 AM, only to be woken by my alarm: a box with a read digital display that bleated not unlike a goat. In a fog, I made my morning ablutions and headed off the class, and as I saw the car, caked in dust and with its donut spare tire, I felt like 40 miles of bad road. I was exhausted and nervous. I was embarrassed by the conversation I had with my girlfriend. I dreaded my day of classes and dreaded even more my slog of hell at the goat farm.
First class was English 101, and I immediately got one of my papers back, but through the back of the sheet, I could see it was marked up by red pen. I was going to flunk out. I knew it. I couldn’t even make it in community college. The professor was a scholarly guy with a red beard, glasses and a dry sense of humor, who chain smoked outside the north entrance of the main building. He set the paper, face down on my desk, and with dread I slowly flipped it over.
It was an A. The comment at the top of the page stated “This was an excellent read!”
in the margins he had scribbled witty comments, asked thought provoking questions, and occasionally made a wry joke. He complimented my writing style, offered a few suggestions and reminded me to take the side tracks off the paper next time. As I left the classroom he looked over at me.
“Really nice job. You might consider majoring in writing.”
I had some time to kill, so I sat on one of the wood benches outside the student center as the bands around my chest loosened, and I took the first few breaths that felt natural in close to 24 hours. I had one class until play rehearsal, and soon I was seated in the black box theatre, awaiting instruction. Our Town was coming together nicely, and I enjoyed the company of my cast mates.
But for some reason, in the air, there was a faint odor of goat. I knew that smell, I had been smelling it for hours at a time. It wasn’t me. It couldn’t be. I kept my work clothes separate, I conscientiously showered after every day at work. But there it was; this kind of faint, musky, goaty smell. It was not as pungent as Fleetwood, and I am pretty sure there was no place in the cast of Our Town for a goat. I didn’t see a goat wandering around the campus. I didn’t see a goat anywhere near the arts building, or the black box theatre. Was I losing my mind?
And then I saw him.
His back was turned. But there he was.
Fucking Wayne. Fucking “Tempest”.
In a pair of skin tight jeans. And a tan leather jacket with fringes on the sleeves. The leather looked soft and supple, and I recognized it immediately as goat leather. Goat leather has a distinctive odor as well as a distinctive look. To complete the ensemble, he was also wearing a pair of fringed ankle boots, also of goat leather. And his signature sunglasses from his rotating collection, despite the darkness of the black box.
Wayne was standing not five yards away from me, dressed in the pelts of baby goats.
I had to do a double take. I had to do a triple take. How many goats, I wonder? How many baby goats died so a complete and utter asswipe like Wayne could wear them on his back and his feet? To complement his idiotic mullet and asinine shades? What an absolute prick! And here I was, in the same room with him.
Wayne slowly turned around and saw me.
“Hey, man”.
I said nothing. I was still processing it.
“Hey man, I didn’t appreciate you blew off rehearsal yesterday.”
“I had to work” I said through gritted teeth, “I told you that!”
“Yeah, well dude, a lot of people would quit their job for an opportunity like this. You need to shit or get off the pot.”
I stared at him.
“Yeah, man. It’s really disrespectful to the Assistant Student Director to just not show up for rehearsal”
I opened my mouth to say something, but somebody else in the theatre beat me to the punch.
“Shut up, Wayne!” came the voice.
Wayne turned around, “Who asked you, man? And my name is Tempest!”
“Fuck you!” I exploded, “Standing there in your stupid-ass goat jacket, and those goofy ass boots!”
“Hey dude, they were $600”
“You’re a total jackass, Wayne!” I continued.
“WHAT did you call me?” he asked
“You’re a jackass.” I repeated
“Hey man, I’m cooler than you’ll ever be.”
“Grow the fuck up, Wayne!” I raged
“It’s Tempest!” he whined.
“And get out of my sight with that goat pelt!”
He stepped towards me, ”You little punk. I ought to break your fucking neck.”
“Try it, douchebag.” I snarled, ”See what happens”
He stood there for a second, and I thought he was going to take a poke at me, but the door opened and in walked his girlfriend: the student director, the girl with the theatre masks tattooed on her body.
I thought this was the end of my being in the play; that I would be immediately kicked out for antagonizing her boyfriend: the “Assistant Student Director”.
But all she said was “Wayne, get out of here! I told you to leave me alone!”
“It’s Tempest,” he whined
“Get out of here!” she demanded.
He slunk towards the door and left, but as a final act of defiance, reopened the door and slammed it.
“Asshole” somebody said under their breath.
At rehearsal that day, I took everything I had accrued in the past 24 hours, and put it into my role, and I don’t think I was even able to replicate it on performance day. On the way out of rehearsal, the student director said to me, ”That was good stuff. You should consider a theatre major.”
VII FLEETWOOD REDUX
I was exhausted, and lurking in the next few hours was the goat farm and Fleetwood. I had to allow extra time to get there, on account of the donut tire on the car. I think this had to be my last day. I couldn’t do it anymore. I went home, searched in my dresser for a pair of jeans almost as dilapidated as the pair I had just discarded, and put them on with my other work clothes and began the now forty minute drive out to the goat farm.
When I pulled up in the dusty parking lot, my boss was standing there and holding something in her hand. It looked like a tattered piece of blue cloth, but upon closer examination, it was a piece of denim. It was torn and mangled and shredded beyond belief, but it was unmistakable a piece of denim. Like it had once been from a pair of jeans. I wonder whose jeans they had come from. Gee, I wonder.
As I exited the car, she held up the cloth. “What is this?” she demanded.
“Looks like a rag,” I answered.
“Did you give this to Fleetwood?”
“Did I give this to Fleetwood? No.” I answered
“Well, he sure as hell didn’t find it himself. This was found in his pen today. He has eaten some of it. Somebody gave it to him. You were the last one in his pen”
“I didn’t give it to him,” I repeated, “He tore it off of my jeans”
“Well, why did you let him? It’s your responsibili…… Never mind” she continued nastily. “You see that car?”
She gestured to a black BMW that was in the parking lot. I had never seen it before. It looked out of place among the farm vehicles, the beat up pick up trucks, and even my red Volkswagen. It had been shiny, but it had a light coat of dust on it from having driven up the dirt road.
“Yes, I see the car.”
“That car belongs to the owner of the farm,” she said, ”He’s here today,”
“OK”
Her baritonal voice dropped to a low, guttural, menacing basso, “I’m going to be watching you. You better not mess up.”
I got a glimpse of the owner throughout the day: in the barns, in the hub, puttering around the office. He was a pretty normal looking guy in jeans and a plaid shirt.
If my boss had been tyrannical yesterday, she was positively Atilla the Hun today. She stepped it up another notch, with the barking, roaring, bellowing, hand clapping and snarling. She was on my tail like flies to dung. Since I had worked there, I had never seen her do a lick of actual work, short of following me around and cracking the whip.
The owner walked around, as if he was a guest in a museum that he was vaguely familiar with. He stopped here and there, to absentmindedly pet a goat, nod to me, lean over the railing and watch the goats getting milked.
But when I got to Fleetwood’s pen, he was in the process of cajoling Fleetwood over.
“Here Fleetwood! Here Fleetwood! Who’s the good boy? Is Fleetwood the good boy? Yes, he is! Fleetwood’s the good boy!”
Fleetwood was not a good boy. Fleetwood was a malicious, smelly, disgusting creature. Fleetwood had a pair of horns he wanted nothing more than to gore me with. Fleetwood kicked me to leave bruises that had turned green in the past twenty four hours. Fleetwood pissed on my bare leg. Fleetwood ripped the leg of my jeans off, and I got the blame for it. Fleetwood was not a good boy.
But the owner continued blandishments in a cringeworthy, falsetto motherese, replete with rhetorical questions as to whether he was a good boy. “Yes, Fleetwood’s a good boy! Yes, Fleetwood’s a good boy!”
Fleetwood lumbered over and breathed a foul smelling vapor in his face, turned around and took a shit.
“Did Fleetwood just go potty? Yes he did! Yes he did!”
Fleetwood retreated back to his corner, stopping on the way to shag one of the other goats.
I still had to get Fleetwood’s pen milked, and get those goats into the hub, so a short time later, I entered the pen and pressed the button to open the overhead door into the hub. Fleetwood, as usual, stormed towards me with his horns aimed. As usual, I sidestepped, and grabbed the horns. And as usual, Fleetwood, fought me tooth and hoof. Literally. Nasty bruise # 4.
Out of my peripheral vision, however, I caught sight of one of the goats in the adjacent pen in an unusual posture. Not sitting down, exactly. Squatting. And when a goat is squatting, she is kidding. She’s giving birth. And I remembered what I had been told.
I still had Fleetwood by the horns, but I yelled “HEY!” to whoever was there. Nobody was in the barn except the 151 goats, including the goat that was kidding. “HEY!” I yelled again.
I had to let go of Fleetwood, and I ran into the hub.
“Hey!” I called above the din of the machinery and the goats, “One of the goats is kidding!”
“Kidding?” the owner repeated, “Kidding about what?”
“Giving birth!” I explained, “We gotta get somebody!”
I saw my boss in the hub
“Hey, hey hey!” I called her over
She came over with a murderous look on her face. “Why are you in here? Why are you not doing your job!”
“One of the goats is kidding!” I answered, ”In there!”
She ran towards the door towards the barn; the owner followed.
“Right there!” I pointed to the goat.
I believe they whisked the birthing goat out of the pen, but the owner had lost interest at this point. When I looked at Fleetwood’s pen, it was empty, and it took a few seconds to register.
“Where’s Fleetwood?” I heard a voice behind me. It was the owner.
We both looked through the doorway into the hub, that was still yawning open.
Fleetwood was in the hub, mounting goats in a frenzied state. One right after the other. Fleetwood, the horny bastard, was going to town. In the hub. Where the goats were milked. The owner and I watched, in stunned silence for about twenty seconds, as Fleetwood continued to burn off every ounce of sexual steam he had. I believe all forty nine goats were shagged by Fleetwood in the hub in a space of about ten minutes.
A beat passed. Two.
Finally, the owner spoke.
“Whose job is it to prevent Fleetwood from entering the milking area?”
“Mine,” I said confidently.
“Not anymore it isn’t”.
“OK”.
I walked through the doorway to the hub, into the cacophony of bleating, the goats being led down the maze of railings, the flattened goat shit on the red quarry tile floor. The roar of the machinery, and Fleetwood fucking every goat in there. I crossed the room to the small office where the time clock was, opened the door. One of the goats tried to follow me in.
“Hey, get out of here”
I located my time card and punched out. I was about to leave, but the owner threw open the door and yelled “You just destroyed $7000 worth of goat milk!”
I looked at him calmly.
“So I did.”
The door from the milking hub to the office was open, but I went out the other door to the lobby.
The last thing I saw there was a swarm of goats entering the office, surrounding the owner, licking his hands, chewing on his pants. Bleating, shitting and butting heads. And Fleetwood was close behind them.
As a courtesy to him, I shut the door behind me. I thought he might like to spend some time with his goats. And Fleetwood, since Fleetwood was such a good boy.
I went to the car, and before I went home I stopped off at the car wash, and watched the muddy water sluice off the car. As routine, I went home, showered and got something to eat.
“How was work?” my dad asked.
“I got fired” I answered.
“Eh, it was too far anyway. You’ll get another job”
“Famous last words,” I retorted, “I destroyed $7,000 worth of goat milk”
“How’d you manage THAT?” my dad asked
“I don’t think you would believe me” I answered.
And when I called my girlfriend that night, and told her I got fired, I didn’t tell her why, because I don’t think she would have believed me either. She didn’t seem to hold my firing against me, though. I patched things up from our previous conversation, and I went to sleep that night secure and contented. Everything was going to be fine.
IIX LOOSE ENDS, THE END
You probably want to know if I got paid for that week, after having destroyed $7000 worth of goat milk, and the answer is yes I did. I wasn’t sure: much as I never wanted to see that God forsaken goat farm for the rest of my days, I was prepared to show up there and get my pay, if it was necessary. While I wasn’t prepared to show up there with a tire iron to extract my pay, I was not going to countenance being stiffed for my work.
Turns out it wasn’t necessary. A week later, a check in the mail arrived, counted to the last hour, in the amount of everything they owed me. I had secured another job, too. I was bagging groceries in a supermarket alongside a friend I had met in my “Outdoor Activities” phys ed class at the college. He clued me into the fact they had a position, and they hired me on the spot. At $5 an hour.
The day I got the final check from the goat farm, I went out for pizza with my friends, two from college, two from high school and we had a blast. That Saturday, I went down to see my girlfriend, and had a blast.
My first semester of community college resulted in a GPA of 3.5
My mother shakes me awake and I ask sleepily, “What state are we in?”
“California,” she answers.
I look around the dark coach car, and out the window. It is dark, except for the lights in the distance. I hear and feel the rails and wheels grind under the train. The shadows of bodies shift in seats, those asleep breathing rhythmically.
It is late July of 1984 and I am nine years old. I am between third and fourth grade. My sister is thirteen, and my brother is five. We are all an even four years apart; our birthdays are all within three months of each other.
I had spent the past two nights in this coach car. The air conditioner has been on, and it has been a cold couple of nights, in that I have been wearing summer clothes. I have gone three days without a shower, but I am not yet old enough to stink. I am also small enough to lie across two seats, and the space has existed for me to do so.
The coach has orange and brown accents; the upholstery is in the classic “southwest print” pattern.
“Come,” My mother leads my brother and my sister along with my dad to the “Lounge Café” car, which is also accented in brown and orange, but has swivel chairs and love seats facing windows taller than me, as well as those that curve around to the ceiling. She hands me a plastic camping cup with granola and milk. To save money, she has brought along a large coffee can full of granola, and I assume she bought the milk at the café downstairs. This has been our breakfast the past three mornings. Our lunch and dinners have been consumed in the dining car, also appointed in the brown and orange southwest motif, where my younger brother and I had enjoyed either “The Whistle Stop”: a burger, or “The Gandy Dancer”: pasta. Those were the two choices from the children’s menu. My sister, at thirteen had insisted on ordering off the adults menu.
The sun begins to rise as I eat my granola and stare across the semi darkness as the suburbs of Los Angeles continue to take form and the light increases.
Palm trees: I had never seen them before. I had thought of them as green and tropical, but from the train they seemed brown and scrubby.
Numerous level crossings, where the gates flashed below us. Graffiti on walls. Low buildings. A man about forty flipped the train the bird.
“Mom, a guy stuck his middle finger up!” I offered.
“Well, he was rude!” my mother answered.
We had begun our trip in the pouring rain in Hudson, NY, onto a train that was two hours late, coming into Hudson at around 11 PM after a series of false alarms by freight trains passing through. When the train finally arrived people, wanting to get out of the rain, rushed towards it. However, because Hudson’s platform is short and curved, and the sleeper cars were towards the front of the train (including a slumbercoach car with staggered windows), the conductor harshly admonished “Sleeper people only!”
We were not “Sleeper People,” so we had to wait until they moved the train down the platform for the rest of us to board. On board, my mother offered us leftover pizza, from when we had gone out for pizza earlier that evening. We happily devoured it. It wasn’t too long before we reached Albany Rensselaer, and I had been taking in my new surroundings: an Amfleet II coach that was only a couple of years old, in the classic 1980s brown.
I could see the five towers of the Empire Plaza in Albany, all lit up out the train window and reflecting across the river. My brother had already become restless and had begun to misbehave. However, at that moment, the train went into reverse to join with the segment of the Lakeshore Limited that came from Boston.
“Why are we going backwards?” I asked
“Because Michael (my little brother) has been bad, so I told them to turn the train around and take us home!” my mother answered.
And my brother started to cry. I couldn’t believe it! My mother had tried many times, without success, to scare him into behaving with threats and stories that had worked with me, when I was his age, but always left him laughing skeptically. But he believed this threat!
I forgot how she got out of that yarn, but soon she instructed my brother and I to take our toothbrushes, go to the bathroom at the end of the car, brush our teeth and prepare for sleep.
At 6 AM, I was woken in Erie, PA.
Apparently, somebody had called a bomb threat into the train, and we had to evacuate into the dilapidated Erie, PA, Union Station, while they cleared the threat. I had only recently learned of the threat of nuclear attack from the USSR, and in my limited understanding of the cold war, I believed, at any time, the USSR would incite President Regan to nuke them, to which they would retaliate, and blow us off the map.
It was a recurring nightmare, and any time the PA system would click on in my elementary school, my heart would leap to my throat, as I anticipated the principal announcing “Everybody proceed in an orderly manner to the fallout shelter in the basement!” in the same nonchalant manner as he would announce an assembly featuring our questionable school band. If we survived the performance of the school band marginally, we certainly would not survive a nuclear cruise missile attack on Hudson, NY, fallout shelter or not!
And in the decrepit concourse of Erie, PA’s Union Station, after hearing the word “bomb” all I could think of was “Well, this is a bad way to end a perfectly good vacation!” as I waited for the Soviet nuke to take us all out, and kill us all in Erie.
In an hour, we were back on the train, and our arrival into Chicago delayed further, alive and well, and not having succumbed to a nuclear salvo on Erie, PA.
My mother had insisted we keep a journal about our trip across the country. My sister’s journal, in her loopy hand writing and odd idioms was hard to read, let alone comprehend. I wrote in a perfunctory, begrudged manner, under sufferance, when coerced by my mother (“Time to write in your journal!”)
My brother, who could not write legibly or cohesively yet, simply dictated his rambling account of the day with relish, which my mother transcribed, in her choppy, semi-legible, lefty’s handwriting.
Because my dad was a professor at a community college and had the summers off, this allowed us to take a trip close to a month long, taking advantage of Amtrak’s “See America” pass.
And soon, we had pulled into Los Angeles Union Station, and stepped out into the baking heat of July in LA. Down the ramp into the hybrid of Mission and Art Deco style that is Union Station.
It was early, and well before the time we could check into our motel: The Ha’ Penny Inn, in Anaheim, CA. But my dad had rented a car: a maroon Oldsmobile that looked and smelled new: a far cry from the 1979 Plymouth Volare we had back at home, with its simulated wood sides, crank windows and odd smells from when my brother gotten car sick.
This car was shiny, and new, and had air conditioning. It had only two doors, so my dad would have to tip the front seat forward, so my brother, sister and I could pile into the back seat in our usual hierarchal order (my brother, age five, got the middle seat). I felt like a rich person in a fancy car.
And Vroom! After a brief exploration of Olivera Street, my dad decided to drive us into Hollywood.
“Very famous people live here!” my mother explained, ”So you see, none of the mail boxes have names on them!”
“How would the mailman know whose mailbox it is?” I asked
“Well, the mailman knows whose mailbox is whose!” My mother answered
“Do you think we might see Michael Jackson out getting his mail?” I asked
“Keep your eyes peeled!” my dad answered
We didn’t see Michael Jackson, or anybody else.
And soon we were onto the freeway!
“It’s free.” My dad explained, “Because there are no tolls! Not like the New York Thruway, or the Mass Turnpike!”
“Is that why it’s so crowded?” I asked
I had never seen so many cars, all bumper to bumper. Digital signs on overhead booms spanning the highway, flashing wait times, temperature and smog ratio of the air. Billboards all over the place, including the mechanized Coppertone billboard with the dog chewing on the kid’s swimsuit, up and down.
And soon, we were at the Ha’ Penny Inn in Anaheim, where until I lay down on one of the double beds, I hadn’t realized how tired I was. And soon, my brother next to me, my parents on the other bed, and my sister on a rollaway at the foot of our bed were sound asleep until early evening, where my parents woke me up, and drove us to the Pacific Coast, where they bought us Tostadas (Tacos you can eat like a salad! Wow!) and I watched the huge waves in awe.
“Wow, those waves are like leap frogs!” I said
“Those are no leap frogs!” my brother corrected, “Those are leap elephants!”
Those few hours in LA had already blown my mind. The next day would be Disneyland, the day after that would be Universal Studios, where I wanted to ride Eliot’s bike with E.T in the basket, because people said I bared an uncanny likeness to Eliot.
And then two days before the Summer Olympics in LA were to begin, we would board the Coast Starlight to Oakland to visit with relatives in the Bay Area for the balance of the trip.
A couple of weeks later, we would board the California Zephyr, to connect to the Lakeshore limited to take us back East, where the summers were still humid, our house smelled musty (it always did when we returned from vacation), our cat seemed confused at our absence, and the carpet and seat belt webbing in our car had grown mold.
II: January, 2017 4:30 AM:
“Sweetheart, I think it’s time to get up”, my wife Mary says in the darkness.
“mmm ok” I mumble as I attempt to bring myself into the land of awake.
The upper berth, although very small, very narrow, and with very little clearance between it and the ceiling, was actually quite comfortable, but I hadn’t slept that well.
Fresh Air Stop in Tucson
Just after a fresh air stop in Tucson, AZ, where we had requested our sleeper car attendant to switch our roomette into the night configuration, the attendant made an announcement: “Ladies and gentlemen, here is how tomorrow is going to work. We are scheduled to arrive into LA at about 5:30 AM, so just after Pomona, I am going to start knocking on doors and waking people up. That’s about an hour before we hit LA”
I had hoped the two time zones we had passed through would lessen the effect of such an early wake up, but the prospect of being woken out of my sleep earlier than I was used to kept me awake. We had teetotaled dinner the night before, so we wouldn’t wake up early, tired and hungover, but still it was a rough wakeup.
Teetotaling dinner. No booze for either of us.
In the darkness, I felt around for the safety strap hook in the ceiling, unhooked it, and rolled out of bed, feeling around with my foot for the carpeted step, and once placed, began to carefully climb down.
“OK, I’m turning on the light now,” Mary says, and seconds later, the roomette is flooded in a bright glare.
“Ooooww” I shied my eyes.
I begin to slowly and sleepily dress, as I distantly hear the sleeper car attendant tap gently on roomette doors “LA in an hour” he says loudly enough to be heard, softly enough not to be strident.
Soon Mary goes out and walks the few steps to the urn at the top of the stairs where the attendant already has brewed hot coffee for us, and hands me a cup.
“Thanks, babe”.
Our attendant is good. I had taken care of his gratuity the previous night in Tucson, so I wouldn’t, in my sleep deprived fog, forget to do it.
Out in the narrow hallway I see feet protrude from the blue curtains of the roomette doors as people put their shoes on.
We had boarded in Dallas after vising with Mary’s family, and had begun the two night train trip on the Texas Eagle/Sunset Limited complete with the set-out at San Antonio, where our sleeping car was hooked onto the Sunset Limited on to Los Angeles in the dead of night. It felt like nothing so much a backwards and forwards motion, with the occasional bump, before I drifted off into sleep.
Our room on the Texas Eagle, night configuration.
I had woken up the next morning, still in Texas, with the scrubby looking desert racing by outside. Overnight, the consist of the train had completely changed, our car having been hooked onto another train.
The barren desert continued to speed past for the better part of the day. The border to Mexico was pointed out in the distance to me, as was a couple of border police cars.
West Texas Desert
The new conductor that had gotten on in San Antonio made an announcement, and went down the laundry list of things that would “Shorten your trip” (to wit: get you kicked off the train), which included opening any door or window, smoking, using “non family language” or consuming alcohol in public areas that was not purchased at the café.
I looked out at the desert and immediately issued the dictum that effective immediately, the consumption of the wine we had brought on board with us would be restricted our roomette. I did not want our trip shortened. I pictured our bones and a wine bottle found in the desert, thirty years later. Moments later, the conductor appeared in the sightseer lounge where we were sitting. He had a veteran look about him that conveyed that he would have no problem “shortening the trip” of anyone there, including the young man on his cell phone, that, amazingly had reception in the desert. His language was decidedly “un-family”, and his side of the conversation sounded vaguely drug related.
The conductor stopped by the young man “Family language, sir! If you wish to remain on this train”
The young man shot him an irritated look, but lowered his voice.
Soon there was a fresh air stop in a town in Texas called Alpine, that looked about as Alpine as could be expected in Western Texas. I learned later it was a favorite place to kick out passengers who engaged in unruly behavior. I wondered how many passengers had our conductor shortened the trip of in Alpine. There didn’t appear to be much there.
Mary in Alpine, TX. And, effective immediately, the wine we brough on board will only be consumed in our roomette!
Then through Texas into where just past El Paso, we could literally look over the fence into a gritty little town in Mexico, that hugged the train tracks. My iPhone flashed “Welcome Abroad” although I was still on US soil, by about thirty feet.
Looking over the border, just past El Paso.
And after the stop in Tucson, it was through the night to Los Angeles, where, in the semi-quiet of the sleeper car, people were dressing, and getting ready to leave the train, as the train rocked slightly, slowed, and finally came to a stop.
“Welcome to Los Angeles,” Our sleeping car attendant announced, as Mary and I descended the narrow stairs, and grabbed our rolling suitcase off the rack. The attendant wished us well and handed us each a small bag with a tub of yogurt, a granola bar and a bottle of water.
And we were deposited on the platform in the darkness, as rain pelted the roof of the platform.
“Well, welcome to LA!” Mary said cheerfully. She is a much better morning person that me.
Welcome to LA at 5:30 AM. Mary is in a better mood about it than I!
“At five freaking thirty AM!” I grumbled good naturedly as we ventured down the ramp into one of my favorite train stations, although I was too groggy to fully enjoy it. I am not a morning person, and I am definitely not a sleep deprivation person.
“So what are we going to do now?” Mary asked
“Well, I think we’ll get our bags, then head up to the lounge, wait for it to get light, while I figure it out. Maybe it’ll stop raining”
After a couple of cups of the coffee in the first class lounge, morning did begin to make it’s presence felt, in a murky, gray, half-light, but my suggestion that it would stop raining was wishful thinking. It was still pouring.
Our Air BnB was in Long Beach. It was a charming 4th floor studio apartment right downtown, steps from the Blue Line, but we could not check in until 4 PM. And unless I could negotiate an early check in (which I hoped) we had some time to kill. I would have preferred nice weather in which to explore the downtown in the immediate vicinity of the station.
“It’s raining so hard we can’t go very far, but maybe we could find a place to get breakfast.” I suggested. I wasn’t in the mood for the yogurt and granola bar. I’d just put them in the fridge in the little kitchen of our studio apartment.
As we stepped out the main entrance of Union Station with our two suitcases, I realized how hard it was raining. It was just before 8 AM, but a building immediately to the left of the station had large glass windows, where I could see people at tables enjoying a substantial looking breakfast.
We found out the building was the Waterworks department for Los Angeles County, and this was the staff café. But non-employees of the department could eat there, if they showed their ID. The breakfast looked delicious, and it appeared you could get omeletes and breakfast burritos.
The breakfast did not disappoint, and I glanced up at the TV screens high up. The news was covering the inauguration ceremony of Donald Trump, which would be later in the day. I had to remind myself it was three hours later in Washington DC. At 9 AM, I texted my AirBnB host and asked if an early check in was possible. I had asked earlier but hadn’t gotten a definite answer.
Soon I got a text message from our host that, yes, we could come at 11 AM, and soon we boarded the red line to the blue line that would take us to Long Beach. We walked the few blocks, located the building, climbed the stairs to our studio apartment, our home for the next four nights.
it was a wonderful little space, complete with four poster bed, kitchenette and beautifully tiled bathroom, overlooking Linden Street in downtown Long beach. Mary & I immediately lay on the bed, enjoying the ability to lie down side by side for the first time in two days. Soon we were asleep for the next two hours and when we woke up, the rain had stopped.
Our great little Air BnB!
I took a shower in the charming little bathroom, then we decided to make our way to the beach and look out over the Pacific. Later in the evening would be a visit and dinner with friends from college, and former colleagues who had moved out west. The next day would be a boat ride out to Catalina Island, then two more days to enjoy in Southern California, more friends to see before our flight out of LAX and back home to New York City. As much as we enjoyed the train, we really didn’t have the time available for another three day train ride back home.
Over the moon about seeing old friends and colleagues!
Before we returned to our studio, in preparation of our friend’s arrival, we stopped by the CVS to pick up some wine. In California, unlike New York, you can buy wine in CVS. And it is good wine.
III: January 30, 2020, 7:00 AM (proposed)
The sunrise will peek between the curtains of our roomette, and Mary and I will wake up leisurely, at about the same time. I will still be on the top bunk.
Though I would like the extra space the bottom bunk affords, and I am an inch and a half taller than Mary, and outweigh her by forty pounds, I appreciate that she has taken to train travel. I want her to enjoy it as much as I do, and it appears that she does. Me taking one for the team by squeezing myself into the upper bunk is a small price to pay. She always seemed lukewarm about the idea “trying out” the upper bunk anytime I suggested it. So I am content to sleep in that bunk, which feels like nothing so much as the inside of an MRI. I have mastered the learning curve of stepping onto the carpeted steps, and rolling into and out of bed, and I don’t want to make things difficult for my wife, by adding an extra thing.
I am aware we are about an hour outside of Los Angeles, and we are refreshed, each having gotten a good nights sleep.
“Ready to get up, babe?” I ask
She answers by opening the curtains, so the morning light comes in fully, and it is not raining. I climb down from the upper berth, and she sits upright. I sit on the bottom berth and we kiss.
“It’s kind of lonely up there!” Tonight we’ll get to sleep side by side, after two nights in bunk beds.
I slip on a pair of slippers. “I’ll be back in about ten minutes” I will say as I unlock and slide the door of the roomette open, head down the narrow corridor and down the stairs. I open my small rolling suitcase on the rack, take out some clean clothes and head to the small shower which is available.
And after a nice hot shower, I climb the stairs back to our roomette and prepare for our upcoming day in Los Angeles. Mary is already dressed and ready to go. I look out the window at the outskirts of Los Angeles, and the familiar dusty, scrubby look of it. According to my phone, the day is sunny and the weather is mild, perfect for a day to explore Los Angeles before we check into our Air Bnb.
After we had returned from our trip in 2017, I began considering replicating the route I had taken with my parents and my siblings in 1984, more than thirty years before. We would board at Penn Station, and take the Lakeshore Limited to Chicago, then we would continue the trip with the Southwest Chief, formerly called the “Southwest Limited” when I went as a 9 year old.
And, no, we wouldn’t bring granola in a can, or sleep in a coach seat, or endure my younger brother’s misbehavior. He is now forty, with three children of his own, one of which is going off to college. It would just be Mary and me, in a roomette, and all meals consumed in the diner. With a few bottles of wine to sip while we watched the world go by.
After our overnight ride on the Lakeshore Limited, where the “flexible dinner” and “flexible breakfast” would not be as awful as everybody said, we would detrain in Chicago. We would spend the night in a hotel we knew well, get some Chicago pizza, buy some wine for the remainder of our trip, and get a good night’s sleep. In the morning, we would rearrange our luggage to place things for our use aboard the train in the small suitcase, and the rest to go into the large suitcase in the baggage car.
Then at noon, off to Union Station, to check our bag and enjoy the much vaunted Metropolitan Lounge.
Our two days aboard the Southwest Chief would go quickly, but at a slow, relaxed pace, with no pressure. To sip wine, eat delicious food with friends we had not yet met, and fall into a slumber in our roomette each night. To watch the Midwest dissolve into the Southwest and finally Los Angleles. To move in that diagonal trajectory between the two worlds of the Northeast to the Pacific Coast. To enjoy each other’s company and that of all those around us. To relish the travel; moving from point A to Point B with no pressure.
The train will slow and come to a halt. Welcome to Los Angeles.
Mary and I will leave the train energized and rested. We will know that we can leave/check our luggage so we can explore Los Angeles for the day, unencumbered. We learned that from the last time. There is a good place for brunch.
A colleague told me about it. He was the manager of it for some years, and it is in Hollywood. It is called Off Vine, and it is right off the Red Line. I haven’t told Mary about it yet. I want to surprise her.
We head out there, and enjoy a delicious brunch. It is as good as I have been told. At some point we return to Union Station, pick up our bags, and board the red line to the blue line and head to Long Beach.
The place we will be staying is the exact place we stayed in 2017. The place has been renovated. Instead of a key, you now use a code to punch in. Other than that it is the exact same unit as we had stayed in 2017. That brings me happiness.
More colleagues and friend have moved to the west coast, and later that evening we will have a joyful reunion. We will have dinner, drink wine, catch up on things. We will laugh at jokes we shared and enjoy seeing each other.
But first Mary and I will walk along the Pacific Coast, and buy some wine for our friends.
And at the end of the day, Mary and I will retire to the queen size bed, happy to have the night in a bed together as opposed to bunk beds; the only drawback of a roomette!
The next days will be Catalina Island, the Pacific Coast and all the reasons to come west.
And, like in 2017, we will have to return via plane, out of LAX, because we simply do not have the time for another three days on Amtrak, much as we would dearly love to have it.
That, or an approximation of that, is how I hope it goes down!
A popular 1980s school cliché was the assignment of “parenting an egg” as a project. In some schools it was a 5 pound sack of flour. If there was any debate whether it was to be an egg, versus a five pound sack of flour, that debate was settled the minute I darkened the door of my middle school: “Have a klutz like Pagnani walking around with a sack of flour for two weeks? No way!” So it was to be an egg. A hard boiled one at that. The school needed a yolky, runny mess almost as much as they needed mysterious white powder dusting the halls.
I was in middle school in the heart of the 80s, so I was saddled with this project. This was done, for whatever reason, in home-ec class, which was still a thing in 1987. Our home-ec teacher was this lady called Mrs. R., and she scared the crap out of me. Somewhere along the line, it was somehow decided in the universe that any transgression I would do during school hours would flip an invisible switch. And that invisible switch would cause Mrs. R. to materialize out of the ether in in time to catch me. Her methods of interrogation would put the CIA to shame. Who needs waterboarding when you have Mrs. R?
How it worked was this: We were each given a hard boiled egg to “parent”. We would do this for two weeks, and we would keep a “log”, detailing the “child’s” growth and our “parenting” technique. As 7th graders.
On the day the “egg parenting” was to begin, Mrs. R. would pass out the eggs. She’d sign the bottom of them with her neat, precise signature, so the egg could not be covertly replaced if broken. We were instructed to have an appropriate “bed” for our egg ready. Just a container, really.
Some of the kids really put effort into preparing the “bed. Some kids (or their mothers) sewed tiny cushions for their intricately decorated boxes. One girl had dollhouse furniture, and had created a nursery in a box, complete with a miniture crib, just big enough for the egg. Most of the kids created a comfortable looking “bed” for their egg. Except me.
I brought a peanut can with ripped up newspaper for padding.
Mrs. R. commented on the austerity of my egg’s “bed”: along the lines of “Really, Robert, you couldn’t have put more thought into your new baby’s “bed”?”
“I want it to be tough” I shrugged.
“Not an it. He or she!” Mrs. R. corrected.
OK, I guess by default, my egg was a “he”
You see, in addition to being a recalcitrant and mediocre student, I had a hard time getting into this project. Forming an emotional bond with an egg simply was not in the cards. It was an egg, for god’s sake. It was food! I might have had somewhat of an imagination, but it didn’t extend to this particular project. I don’t think I could have half assed it more if my life depended on it. As you will see.
Next came the naming. What were we going to name our “baby”? Some “Alyssas” floated around, a “Jennifer”, one boy named his egg “Madonna”, three girls got into a fight over which one was going to name their egg “Corey”, and one girl named her egg after a boy in the class she had a crush on, which made him blush.
Me? I didn’t have a name picked out. Gave it no thought.
“Robert! What are you going to name your baby?”
“I dunno,” I shrugged, “Eggo?”
“I’d really like to see more thought and effort!”
“Ok. Eggbert?”
“Fine”, Mrs. R. sighed in exasperation.
So, the rules were this:
We had to keep a log on the day to day activities of our parenting, and our “child”. Every day, we would present our eggs for inspection, for Mrs. R. to make sure it was still intact. If the egg was damaged, she would assign it a disability or illness, and we would have to write in the log of the accommodations and treatments made for it. If the egg was seriously damaged, she would pronounce it dead, and we would have to write in the log of the funeral arrangements we had made.
Mrs R. asked if anybody had any questions. I put my hand up.
“Yes, Robert?” she sighed
“Can we keep it in the fridge?” I asked.
“Would you put a baby in the fridge? And it’s a he or she, not an it!”
At the end of class, Eggbert began his two week stint with the worlds worst, most apathetic, most inattentive “egg parent”. That would be me.
Home-ec was late in the day and I didn’t have any after school activities that day, so Eggbert and his peanut can got stuffed into my backpack, and went onto the noisy, bumpy, smelly school bus with me, full of noisy, bumpy, smelly middle school kids, of whom I was no exception.
When I got home, I showed my mother the egg.
“I have to parent it for two weeks,” I explained.
“Why?” my mother asked
“Because we have to,” I answered.
“It’s an egg,” she observed.
“See, Mrs. R. signed it, so we couldn’t swap it out if we busted it”
My mother, who was a nurse, and a midwife, and had birthed three kids didn’t seem impressed. She suggested I put it in the fridge.
“I can’t” I explained, “Mrs. R said that you wouldn’t put a baby in the fridge”
“But it’s not a baby. It’s an egg!” she insisted.
“What if somebody eats it?” I asked
“What if somebody does? It’s food!”
“Well, that means I would fail my project” I responded.
When my dad came home and learned of the project, he said, “So you are “yolked” with this for two weeks!”
“Haw haw.”
FIRSR LOG ENTRY: Eggbert stayed in bed. My mother wanted to put Eggbert in the fridge, but I wouldn’t let her.
Next day, in home ec, we presented our eggs for inspection. One kid had already managed to break her egg, but had sneakily replaced the egg and forged the signature. The only problem is she had boasted about it earlier in the day, and it had somehow gotten back to Mrs. R.
“It’s a pretty good forgery,” Mrs. R. observed, “If you had kept your mouth shut, I might have been fooled.”
And then failed her for the project.
Most of the other kids had decorated their eggs. Some fashioned hair out of yarn, some swaddled their eggs in home made “blankets”, some kids stuck googly eyes on them.
My egg…. was bald as a boiled egg. And it resembled an egg. Because it was an egg. No clothes, because eggs don’t wear clothes. My egg sat naked and faceless in its peanut can on the wadded newspaper.
“Your child is very expressionless.” Mrs. R observed.
“He’s stoic,” I explained. I had a pretty good vocabulary even back in 7thgrade.
“He would have to be with you as his parent.” She could give pretty good burns.
She pointed out the other, well decorated, well clothed eggs. “Everybody else has given their egg an appearance. Except you!”
“OK.” I said. I took a ballpoint pen, drew two little pinpoint eyes on the egg, and created a ridiculous disproportionate, single line grin.
“Such an effort!” she clapped a slow, sardonic clap.
Next came the sharing of the logs. Each student would read how they parented their “baby”, and describe their parenting skills, challenges and activities. They shared stories of baby clothes, Christenings, well baby doctor visits, and scheduled feedings. One girl set an alarm every two hours to get up and feed her egg. A Jewish kid mentioned his egg had a Bris.
“How the heck do you circumcise an egg???” I asked, without raising my hand.
“Robert!” Mrs. R warned
I pictured how my mother would lop off the top of a hard boiled egg. She did it with a butter knife, with a quick “scalping” motion.
When it was my turn, I read my log entry: “Eggbert stayed in bed. My mother wanted to put Eggbert in the fridge, but I wouldn’t let her.”
“I don’t think you could put less effort into this project if you tried.” Mrs. R noted in disgust.
A couple of days in, teachers were complaining. Turns out they didn’t like the kids bringing the eggs to class. Created a distraction. They were instructing us to put the eggs in our lockers.
The next class, Mrs R. stated “Going forward, we will refer to the “locker” as the “daycare.”
That was fine by me. My egg spent a lot of time in the daycare. The entire school day, in fact. Except home ec, where we had to present our eggs. In fact sometimes it spent the night in daycare too, if I couldn’t be bothered bringing it home.
The other kids in the class, in their logs, wrote stories about finding the perfect child care provider, and described their child’s activities in the daycare, as reported third-hand by an imaginary doting child care provider who, apparently, lived in the dented, brown, sixty year old lockers (aka “daycares’) that lined the hallway of the middle school.
My log entry: “Eggbert spent the day in the daycare”.
“Your child spends a lot of time in day care. Perhaps you should take more of a role in your child’s care!” You had to applaud Mrs. R’s effort in nudging me to take more of an interest in the project, futile as it was.
Then, a minor snafu happened. I got into trouble. I forget what it was; most likely a scuffle with another student, and I was to spend two days in the “SOS Room”. The “SOS Room” was the name given to the in school suspension room at our middle school. It was a bleak, grey little room in the basement of the school, behind the stairs, where the offending student would report at the beginning of the day, and be released at the dismissal of the day. You didn’t attend classes; you just sat in the room. Hence the name “S.O.S” which stood for “Students off Schedule”. By extension, this meant no home-ec.
Did that get me off the hook? Has a bear stopped shitting in the woods? Has the Pope converted to Buddhism? Has wood become unincinerable?
Ha ha. No.
In fact Mrs. R. found out about my impending “SOS Room” stay before home-ec class because of course she did.
“Robert, I understand you will be going to SOS for two days. We will say that you will be going to jail. Your child will need to be taken care of while you are in jail.”
“OK,” I said, ”Well, I have the “daycare”. I’ll just put it in “daycare”.
“He, not it,” she corrected, “And you can’t leave a child in daycare for two days. You can’t bring a child to jail, either. So you will need to find a responsible person to care for your child. And I will expect you will record it in your log.”
When I got home that day, I had to tell my mother about my upcoming stint in SOS. It would be the next two days. Middle School justice was swift. I had to tell her, too. Better she get it from me than from the carbon copy of the disciplinary referral that would come in the mail within the next couple of days.
She was irritated, but not necessarily surprised. By seventh grade, I had plenty of experience with the SOS room, so by that point, the periodical SOS stay was de rigeur. I mentioned the home ec situation with the egg, and stated that I would be keeping the egg home for those two days and took the liberty of appointing my mother as the child care provider.
“It’s polite to ask a person before you tell them they will be caring for your child for two days.” my mother stated.
“It’s just an egg,” I reminded her.
“So why is it not in the fridge?” she asked
“Just don’t eat it, ok”
“It’s been out in the air for six days! I’m not going to eat it!”
I wasn’t convinced.
LOG ENTRY: I am going to jail for two days. My mother will be taking care of Eggbert. I hope she doesn’t eat him.
So I set Eggbert in his peanut can on the desk in my room, and off I went to school to begin my two days in “jail”.
SOS (aka “jail”) was uneventful, and it was a nice respite from the regular classes. I always had the foresight to borrow library books, so I could read after my work was done. It was peaceful, and it was quiet. And I got out of home ec for two days. And did not think once about the egg.
At some point in my second day of SOS, my mother was returning something to my room, and bumped up against the desk. And knocked the peanut can onto the floor. And cracked my egg.
When I returned home, I noticed the peanut can had been hastily put back on the desk, but was not in its original location, so I opened it. And found my egg had been thoroughly cracked. Not just cracked: Irredeemably smashed.
“Mom, did you knock over my egg?” I inquired
“Yes, by accident” she answered, “It was on the edge of your desk. It was very precarious”
“Well you broke my egg!” I then explained that if the egg was cracked, I would be assigned a disability for the egg, or if it was really mangled, I would have to make “funeral arrangements”. It was pretty mangled.
My mother asked to look at the egg. “That’s a dead egg,” she stated
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“Yes”, my mother confirmed with finality, “Dead as a doornail. You’ll have to bury it before it stinks up the place”
We had a compost pile, so I “buried” Eggbert in the compost pile.
My dad thought the death of Eggbert was hilarious.
LOG ENTRY: While I was in jail, my mother killed Eggbert but she didn’t eat him. So I buried him in the compost pile before he stunk up the place. RIP Eggbert.
The next day, I reported to home-ec without my egg.
“Where is your baby?” Mrs. R demanded.
“Well, while I was in SOS, my mother knocked it over. So it’s a dead egg. I buried it in the compost pile”
“I make that call, not you!” Mrs. R. said sternly, ”You were supposed to report here with your child, and I would make a decision as to the next step!”
“My mother told me to bury it. She said it would stink up the place.”
Mrs. R. disgustedly read my log entries. “The compost pile? Really? Such a dignified burial.”
“Well, it’ll decompose. Create nice fertile soil. It’ll be completely decayed by summer.”
“God help that poor child,” Mrs. R sighed, as she gave me a generous D+ for my efforts, or lack thereof.
At that point the project ended for me, but most of the other students managed to keep their eggs alive for the duration of the project, being doting parents, and raising healthy, well adjusted eggs. At the conclusion of the project, Mrs. R gave out As, and Bs, and collected the eggs from the kids. One girl looked as though she was going to burst into tears. Mrs. R. may or may not have spared us the visual of unceremoniously tossing the eggs into the garbage, if for no other reason then to preserve the feelings of the sensitive girl who had gotten overly attached to her egg.
Down the hall, however, in the science wing, we had a science teacher who had a boa constrictor. And a litter of white rats was born. Baby white rats are cute. But those white rats had a function, and the function involved the boa constrictor. And students put 2+2 together.
The litter of rats was more than the boa constrictor would be able to eat, and within two weeks, adopting a rat became something of a fad. The school administration became aware of this, and issued the dictum that if you “adopted” a rat, you were to take it home and not bring it back to school. Under no circumstances was that rat to accompany you to class, or it would be turned over the science teacher to be fed to the boa. For a short time, one girl used to attend class with her rat peeking out of the breast pocket of her jeans jacket (I wondered what would happen when the rat “went”, which was a regular occurrence for rats), and that was immediately forbidden. The school did not want the rats getting out and breeding. The school did not want to deal with a white rat infestation.
I did a damn sight better of a job with the rat (who I named Ernie) than that egg! Ernie lived to a ripe old age and grew to be almost a foot long, not counting the tail! And I did not keep a log.
One of the days Mary & I were in Florida, the hot tub at the gated community was out of commission. Had yellow “caution” tape around it, and the water was murky. People speculated that somehow it had been contaminated. Fortunately, the next day the tape was gone and the water was clear. Apparently, the “contamination” was dealt with.
Got me thinking that the word “contaminate” covers a very broad spectrum. Everything from a little kid peeing in the pool, to a full blown nuclear meltdown of Chernobyl scope.
I am proud to say, never in my life have I ever “contaminated” any body of water. Never peed in a pool, lake, ocean or even a tub.
Mary told me when she was a little kid sometimes she would pee in the ocean. Her grandmother told her that if she did that, she would poison all the fish. So she stopped peeing in the ocean, but she felt guilty for all the times she had; all the fish she had “poisoned”.
When we would swim in the lake when I was a little kid my mother would always caution me to close my mouth when I swam: “Two naughty boys might have done a wee-wee in the lake.”
Not sure why it had to be TWO naughty boys. ONE naughty boy would have driven the point home.
It conjured up the mental image of two nasty looking twerps, their penises out, gleefully urinating in the lake, laughing about it, even. I didn’t want to be like those kids, making the water nasty: CONTAMINATING it. I felt bad for any kid whose mother forgot to tell to shut his mouth while he swam.
My step-grandmother and grandfather in Quincy, MA had an above-ground pool. It was a round, 16 foot pool at the top of their driveway. My grandfather owned a garage, so there was always plenty of tubes to float on, and one of the highlights of the visit was getting to swim in the pool with my other relatives: aunts, uncles, second-cousins, and the odd friend informally adopted into the family as a relative. My Grandma casually mentioned that they had added a substance to the pool that if anybody peed in it, it would cause a reaction and turn the water around them purple. Moreover, she said it was standard for any swimming pool. I believed everything she said, but I was happy that not one family member had ever peed in THAT pool, as evidenced by the crystal clear water, devoid of any purple.
I have never contaminated a body of water. That’s not to say I wasn’t SUSPECTED of contaminating a pool in a much more egregious manner than simply peeing in it. For this, we have to go back to 1986 Belfast.
For the first half of 1986, my dad took sabatical from his position as a professor at a community college, and we went to Belfast, Northern Ireland, for about 7 months. We stayed in my widowed grandmother’s house.
I was ten, in the fifth grade, and it was midpoint in the school year, so I was enrolled in the neighborhood elementary school, in the equivalent of fifth grade (known as P-7 there).
So I was essentially air-dropped, in the middle of the school year, into one of the school’s two P-7 (5th grade) classes. Having my accent, regional expressions, coming from New York (albeit upstate NY) and being substantially taller than the majority of my classmates, I was somewhat of a curiosity among the other kids. It was much more of a culture shock than I thought it would be.
The teacher of the other P-7 class (the one I wasn’t in) was a younger woman; we’ll call her Miss B. Not only did she teach P-7, she was also tasked with teaching the gym classes. She was every bit a gym teacher, too. Athletic, brusque, and exuded a “don’t mess with me” demeanor.
I don’t want to say she had it out for me, exactly, but I didn’t get off on a very good foot with her. She viewed me as recalcitrant, ill mannered, and malevolent (and for two out of the three, she might have been right). My accent, vernacular and demeanor didn’t jibe well with her. Moreover, since I was taller than most of the other kids my age, I think she suspected I was a couple of years older than I was. That I was either there to bully the kids (who were my age, but shorter), or because I lacked the intelligence to be promoted to the next grade level.
She didn’t appreciate me materializing in her school, in the last half of the year, of the last year of elementary school. Soccer was the sport of choice, and I have been historically bad at that, so that didn’t count in my favor either. To be fair, the attitude I often had didn’t help. But from the getgo, I was well aware she viewed me with suspicion, if not outright hostility. If some egregious deed was done where it was unclear who the culprit was, I wouldn’t be exactly blamed for it, but she would certainly give me a little more scrutiny until cleared. In short, she viewed me as a troublemaker; a bad influence. I wasn’t, but lets just say I could have navigated the new landscape a little better.
As part of our physical education class, for a period of time, we were taken to the local swimming pool. We were loaded into one of the two school vans with bench seating around the perimeter, but as many kids as they could fit in there and driven the half mile or so to the Grove Swimming Pool Complex.
I should mention, it was a beautiful facility. It was a big white building at the junction where the Shore Road splits into the York Road and North Queen Street, heading into Downtown Belfast. It was built in the late 1950s, had two swimming pools: one Olympic size swimming pool with high dives, and one 25 yard pool on the other side of the building. It also had a gym upstairs, a room full of snooker tables and another area where you could rent a bathtub. When it was built, not all houses in North Belfast had full bathrooms with tubs. Here, you could use one of the tubs for your weekly bath. For that reason, the Grove Swimming Pool Complex was informally referred to as “The Grove Baths”, or even “The Baths.” The facility was kept immaculately clean. Unfortunately, it was demolished about six years ago.
So. Back in the school, Miss B was teaching a unit on health and I was horsing around in class. She observed this horseplay, and angrily ordered me out into the hall (teachers could do that back then). She then stepped out into the hall to reprimand me. Remember, she was not well disposed to me, and I was disrupting her class, so she really let me have it. I was further given to understand that I was to report for an hour of detention at the conclusion of the school day.
Later in the day, for our gym class we were to go to “The Baths” to swim laps in the pool. As I was swimming, I came to the surface and what did I observe floating past me but what appeared to be a well formed turd. In the pool. Just floating there, about five feet away.
It took a minute to register, and I wondered if it actually was what it appeared to be, so I splashed some water at it. A couple of pieces flaked off. It was exactly what it looked like. So I immediately found the nearest ladder and climbed out of the pool.
“Why are you out of the water, Robert?” Miss B snapped
“MIss B, Look at that!” I pointed at the turd, floating serenely in the blue water.
“Did YOU do that?” she demanded angrily
“No way!” I answered, “Ewww!”
The whistle went into her mouth and she blew an ear piercing blast.
“Everybody out of the pool!”
She lined us all up agains the low wall that separated the pool deck from the spectator stands.
“Now who did THAT?” She jabbed her finger at the turd.
“Did You?” she pointed at the first kid. She went down the line “Did you? Did you? Did you? Did you?”
All the kids emphatically answered in the negative.
Meanwhile one of the pool attendants had taken what appeared to be an oversized soup ladle and fished out the turd.
“Who was it?” she demanded again, “I am going to find out who did this! There is going to be a full investigation.”
She kept giving me the fish eye, and I couldn’t help but think she suspected I did it. Strongly.
She then promised swift, harsh and draconian punishment to the offending student once she found out who it was.
This, of course, ended the swimming session for the day. In the locker room, all the boys, myself included found it hilarious. Who would do that? How would they get away with it? How would Miss B find out who did it? What kind of investigation was she going to do?
One of the kids suggested she would make every student take a shit, and the one who couldn’t was the one who did it. Another kid said they were analyzing the turd, and were going to require stool samples from the class. Another said they were going to analyze the turd against what they had served in the school “dinner hall” that day, and narrow it down to the kids who had vs hadn’t eaten the school dinner. Somebody else suggested that she could tell simply by who looked the most “guilty”. Some other kid made up a song about it. On the spot. Which evoked uproarious laughter.
We emerged from the locker room laughing hysterically, which was in stark contrast to Miss B’s ire. She was furious, and rightfully so She ordered us back into the school vans, and we returned to the school.
Back in the classroom, she conferred with our classroom teacher, who was aghast. It bothered me that she seemed to look in my general direction a little too often. Perhaps she though I wanted to stick it to her for reprimanding me earlier, as though my mind was developed and depraved enough to exact revenge in that manner.
“This is an absolute disgrace!” our teacher thundered, “We will find out who did this! Whoever did this has dishonored our school!”
“If anybody decides to confess,” Miss B added, “His punishment will not be as severe as when we find out!”
Later in the day, the principal of the school came to the classroom, and again lectured the class about how this had disgraced and dishonored the school, and how there would be a “full investigation”. She kept referring to it as “the incident”
One student who hadn’t gone to the pool for some reason or another kept asking “What incident was that?” to no avail. During a short recess we told him, to which he also laughed hysterically. Later in the day, we were all given to understand that any student who “laughed about the incident” would be “severely punished”. That was a threat they used a lot: “severely punished”. Left a lot to the imagination, and instilled a Toledo-esque sense of dread.
At 3 PM, as ordered, I reported to Miss B’s classroom for my after-school detention, for my horseplay in health class.
“Why are you here, Robert?” she demanded
“You told me to come after school for the thing in health class”
“No, you don’t have to.” she answered
“Oh”, I turned around to leave, but before I was out the door she said,
“Robert!”
I turned around.
“Do you have anything else to tell me?”
“No!” I said emphatically
“Are you sure,” she asked,”Because if I find out….”
“No!” I cut her off.
I did not like how I could feel her eyes on the back of my neck as I walked down the hall and down the stairs.
When I got home, I told my mother and my grandmother with relish what had happened at “the baths”.
“Do they know who did it?” my mother asked
“No,” I answered
“Why the dirty baste (beast)! “My grandmother stated, “Must have been a boy, because a girl wouldn’t do a thing like that!”
I concurred, less because of character, and more because of the logistics of the one piece swimsuits the girls were required to wear.
Not surprisingly, we never found out who did it. The principal brought up “the incident” a few times. We were careful to laugh about it out of earshot of the principal or teachers, lest we be “punished severely”. A few kids swore they wouldn’t swim in the pool again until it was drained and disinfected. The pool was not drained, and those students continued to swim in the pool the following week and every week after that.
And I am convinced Miss B firmly believes I was responsible for the turd. For the rest of the year I would get the fish eye, especially when we swam in the pool. When she organized the field trip to the Armagh Planetarium, I was issued a few admonitions that bordered on threats of a general nature, as though she was worried I would poop on the inside of the dome.
In retrospect, it sucked being seen as “the bad kid.” Being the primary suspect in “the incident” sucked even worse. I’d never been “the bad kid”in any situation before, and having a general air of suspicion around me for a specific disgusting act really sucked.
Miss B. is about twenty years my senior, and must be nearing retirement about now, if she is still teaching. And I firmly believe to this day that in her mind I am “That Nasty Kid from New York who Fouled the Pool”
I might have been nasty, I might have been from the state of New York, but I did not foul the pool.
Something that is sadly pervasive in this society is the acceptance of the paradigm that as one’s wealth INCREASES, one’s responsibility to society DECREASES.
We see it all over. Tax cuts to wealthy people. People getting away with atrocious (and often illegal) things, or escaping with little more than a slap on the wrist, simply because they’re wealthy. Either they use their wealth to buy their way out of the problem, or the fact that they are wealthy ipso facto gets them a pass.
You can’t argue that in this society, the LESS wealth/privilege a person has, the HARDER society is on them. And the more wealth a person has, the more permissive it is. It pervades our politics, in many cases, it pervades our religion, our academia, and how we look at the the world.
And this is why we have people who vote against their interests, even when they are out of whack with the moral high ground:
They look at this paradigm, and think that one day they might be wealthy and free from society’s expectations of them. That one day, they won’t have a responsibility to society. They’ll be able to behave as they please, as destructively as they please, and be able to buy their way out of consequence.
And why shouldn’t they? They see examples of it every day. They know that if they tried to do even a mere fraction of what many wealthy/privileged people openly do, society would take it out on their hide, either socially, or judicially. They’d be a pariah, or they’d be rotting away in prison. And because they have had the burden of supporting the paradigm, they just want to be the beneficiary of it, messed up as it is. They view the pursuit of wealth, by ANY means necessary as perfectly acceptable, and a means to freedom; not just economic, but also from the expectations of society. And they’re not wrong.
And here’s what’s the most fucked up about that paradigm:
It is the view that building society up, contributing to society, fulfilling your responsibility towards a progressive, orderly, prosperous and socially responsible society is a BURDEN, not a privilege. They derive no joy in constructively taking part in society. And why should they? The only thing in it for them is the small potential that they may be part of that small group with little to no responsibility to society. So they will simultaneously support and subvert this paradigm to that end.
What we’re missing here is:
Fulfilling your responsibility to society (socially, legally, economically) should not be viewed as a burden. It should be viewed as taking part in a bigger project to benefit everybody, including one’s self. But it shouldn’t be optional, either. As one’s wealth and privilege INCREASES, so should one’s responsibility to society. And that shouldn’t be optional, either. But this society has completely taken intrinsic motivation out of the equation. And being 100% extrinsically motivated is not sustainable.
Many of those with a lot of wealth and privilege HATE that idea. They’re enjoying their vacation from their responsibility. They LIKE letting people with less stand in for them and do the work. They LIKE holding themselves up as phony incentives so people with less will work harder on their behalf. Of course they do.
It’s a pretty sweet deal: Get out of paying your taxes, jet around the world, snort coke without consequence, commit crimes now and then and get the kid glove treatment. And get to have the rest of society supporting your ass with their blessing?
That’s not going to change until people get smart to that. In 18th Century France, they stopped it by lopping off some heads. I don’t think we have to resort to anything that extreme, but our first step is acknowledging this paradigm. That’s going to be a hard sell. A lot of people don’t want to acknowledge this because it is a mirror that doesn’t give a very flattering reflection of us as a society. But you can’t do too much honest and critical thinking before you end up distilling it down to that unpleasant reality.
It is that painting in the attic that Dorian Gray had.
Down The Rabbit Hole With Rob 