short stories

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Double in Tinder

Double in Tinder

John had a chance to go to Washington DC for a conference on Shakespeare, so he took it; he lived in Kentucky, and he didn’t get out much. His older brother, Robert Clement Stone III, lived in D.C, and he could stay with Robert while he attended the conference. His car was running well and, leaving Kentucky early in the morning, he arrived in D.C at about 8 in the evening on a Monday. His brother texted him that he was at a Georgetown sports bar, and gave him directions. It was early fall, and the weather was pleasant, but the roads were confusing and traffic was terrible. By the time John got to the sports bar he was rattled by the traffic and relieved to be able to get out of his car.

He found Robert and his friends at a large table in the back of the sports bar. It was a large place with many televisions and lots of noise; plenty of people filled almost every table. Most of the people in the bar were facing televisions that had the Redskins on them, but John and his friends were near a television that had the news on it; no telling whether this was deliberate. A first glance, it seemed like very few people in the place were watching any of the televisions, even though it was the Redskins.

Robert had four friends, Mark, Terry, Kirk, and Franco, who were at the table. John was sitting between Terry and Mark. Across the table his brother Robert made sure he would receive chips and salsa, and a drink. Terry and Mark ordered doubles, but it wasn’t clear what they were doubling, or whether it actually made them drunk.  The waiter, a tall guy, would come by, and they’d say, “Another double!” and this went on most of the evening. There was evidence that most of them had eaten if they had wanted to.

All four, it seemed, and Robert too, were obsessed with using social media to find and pick up women. Tinder was their favorite app; they sat and scrolled as they talked, and to John it seemed like following Tinder, or whatever they were doing, was a constant habit, whereas it was conversation, or interest in their environment, that would come and go. For minutes at a time they would be on their phones, scrolling, reading carefully, texting, seeing what was happening. Perhaps they wanted something to happen tonight.  John asked Terry and he showed him Tinder, and how he would swipe it, to look at woman after woman who was available, he said. “You can see how this could be addictive,” he added. Swiping right was approving them; swiping left made them disappear from your life. On the other side of him, Mark, more serious, swiped left more often, but looked at them more carefully first.

The news on the television above them showed refugees coming into Europe from the war-torn countries. They were interviewing people in France about taking in the migrants. Occasionally, between bites of dinner or drinks, John would hear what they said or read the captions at the bottom of the screen. Some people stated openly, based on the closed-captions, that it was good, that they would welcome migrants; others said it would be bad, and they were opposed. The Eiffel Tower was in the background; they had positioned the camera to catch it so it was very clearly Paris.

The footage from Paris reminded John of a time he had visited Paris briefly, and, in the four days he was there, met a woman who he’d become very close to. She lived there in Paris; her name was Marie. Both Marie and John had made extraordinary effort to cross cultures and get to know each other, but it wasn’t easy; there were a lot of differences between cultures. They’d become quite close in those four days; they’d spent much of their free time together, and she’d shown him a few of the sights. But when his time came to go, he’d gone, back to the U.S. Perhaps it was better that he’d left; he’d miss her forever, but it probably wouldn’t have worked. Maybe she’d visit Kentucky someday? That was highly doubtful. He was an English graduate student, unable to show her the good time she deserved, or even be as good a host to her as she had been to him.

Back in the sports bar, the friends were talking about their various sexual conquests. Somehow, based on what they said, they’d meet these women, text with them for a while, and go to bed with them, with very little in the way of dating, getting to know each other, the traditional kinds of things. His brother Robert seemed to be just as adept at it as the others. The city seemed to be full of women who were willing to do this; they’d make a profile; they’d answer texts; they’d see what was interesting, they’d swipe their phones as often as the guys at this table would. They’d see what came up, and pretty soon, they’d be in bed with one of these guys. John was somewhat amazed. Life wasn’t really like this in Kentucky; he’d just broken up with a long-term girlfriend, one whom he’d met after going to France, and he wasn’t really out on the singles market anyway. These guys, Robert’s friends, were on a full-scale hunt, based on what he heard them say. They were active participants.

From across the table, Franco, obviously a weight-lifter, explained it to him a little: “I’m busy,” he said. “I work all day, I go to the gym, I have the career thing going, I don’t have time to set up a domestic situation. If I were married or had a steady girl, it would take up too much time and energy; my career would suffer. This way, I look attractive to them. I have money and a car. They give it a try, and so do I. It’s just that I’m less likely to fall for them, I have no motive to settle down.”

Another guy, Kirk, was into being rough, and he described it a little; it was a little unsettling, because John could tell, through the stories, that the women were not necessarily into rough. But it seemed that Kirk didn’t care about this. He’d text them, and get into bed with them, and he barely knew them. How did he know whether they liked it that way? The only way to find out was to do it. If they didn’t like it, he wouldn’t do it again; he’d find someone else. He seemed to be taking out his anger on a string of strangers. Actually knowing them was never really part of the bargain.

It occurred to John that they seemed to live in a world where they met women in bed first, and then found out a little more about them little by little. This unsettled him a little, and worse, it reminded him of Shakespearean England, a world he now studied, but a world just different enough that he hadn’t quite known what to think of it at first.  Also unsettling was that here in the bar, there didn’t seem to be any other women around them at all; the waiter was a man, and there were no women even at the nearby tables. This lent an air of locker-room brag to what they said, as if, who would even know if they were telling the truth?

At one point he got up to use the bathroom, and walked through the bar. Again he noticed that the Redskins were on, throughout the bar, and not a single person seemed to care anywhere. What kind of town is this, he wondered.  This was the local team. It was Monday night, and they’d be on in front of the world; didn’t people follow their own local team, even a little? Apparently they didn’t.  Staggering a little with exhaustion, he returned to his table. Mark, who was sitting next to him, was a historian of Washington D.C. itself, and happened to know a lot about the French influence in its building and development. Perhaps he had been provoked by the news of Paris above him. He was saying something about the Frenchman who had designed the road patterns. John could see blaming the French for the trouble he had with the roads coming in. Across the table, Robert, who had made sure that John had a dinner coming, cast a rueful look, as if, who cares about the French? Two other friends, similarly, had taken the opportunity of a break in conversation to swipe their phones. More right swipes, a few left swipes.  

Terry seemed to be explaining to Kirk about how he had ghosted some woman that he’d been seeing. This apparently meant simply cutting her off, not answering texts, removing permission to call or view, pretending like someone doesn’t exist – this was what you did if you had no use for someone, or if their being there, on your phone, bothered you. Just cut the connection. Remove permission for them to view your profile. People were describing situations where they’d ghosted various women.

Suddenly, John was jolted out of his thoughts when he happened to see Marie on the television right above him. She was explaining, in French and in partly broken English, how the Parisian people would do the best they could with the situation they had at hand, namely the migrants. She seemed, at that moment, incredibly innocent, and sweet. John’s jaw dropped. He couldn’t believe that it was Marie, but it was, unmistakably. And within minutes, she was gone; the news moved on to another person.

John stared at the television for a while, hoping to catch another glimpse of her, but she was gone without a trace. The television moved on to more comments about the migrant situation, and about Europe in general, and its ability to stay together under the circumstances. John noticed that among his brother’s friends and the people in their area, Europe had no more popularity than even the Redskins. People were self-absorbed. The friends had their Tinder; they’d look at their phones in between times that they’d talk to each other. The waiter would come; they’d order something, then look at their phones as their friends ordered.  No sense talking to the waiter, for example, about what was happening in D.C.; what was happening was directly on their phones. The other people in the restaurant were the same way, except that, from what John could figure, they were more political than John’s friends; it was, after all, a government town. Politics was everywhere. Everything was political. Franco, at one point, said, “Get used to it. It’s political if you order chips and salsa. It’s political if you don’t. This is D.C.”

Mark, who had been expounding about the French, now told another story. He had apparently been ghosted by a woman he’d slept with. She told him she was pregnant first, then totally cut him off. He admitted to being a little worried. He couldn’t remember clearly how well-protected their sex had been; for all he knew, it was possible that she really was pregnant. But Kirk jumped in and said that was common practice, and it was rare that it was true. They were pretty sure women just did that, and, yes, it was an act of hostility, but that’s what you get.  They tried to make Mark feel better. Robert said it had happened to him as well; he still didn’t know how it turned out. The general conclusion at the table was that women, if they had no use for you, would rather leave you with something to worry about, than simply leave you.

But John wasn’t so sure, and he studied his brother a little. For all his bravado, he might not have been sure either. Did they only do this to certain guys, and if so, which ones? There was no telling; it was a new world they were living in. On television, they were now interviewing a migrant; between worlds, life ravaged by war, unable to enter one country, not welcome in the previous one, and with kids in tow, they, also, appeared to John to be in a world he could barely understand. His head spun as he watched.

Robert, in any case, was being a good host; he ordered whatever John wanted; he made sure John had a good dinner and a few beers. He was serious about his role as big brother, and kept asking John if he was ok. John was. He was dazed, tired from the long drive, and overstimulated by the heavy traffic, but, once he had dinner and a couple of beers in him, he was ready to face the world. They would go to his brother’s small apartment, and he would lay out some blankets on the couch, and fall sound asleep, knowing he would be going to that Shakespeare conference, first thing in the morning. From one world to another he would go; fortunately, he thought, there were no children, yet, to share this story with.

At the Gate

At the Gate

At the gate, Gate 13, they still hadn’t changed the sign that said where the next flight was going. It was going to Lubbock, and so was Ronald. He sat facing the sign, rather than looking out the window at the wide Texas sky, because he was getting nervous, and he wanted to see when they changed the sign. The flight was only about a half hour late, and the attendants kept assuring everyone that it would take off as soon as possible. And the flight to Lubbock was leaving out of this gate, as soon as they could board it. But the seconds, the minutes were becoming longer and longer. He could almost no longer bear it.

To his left, a television went on about the presidential race; there were way too many candidates, at this point, and he could barely focus. Occasionally this particular news channel would switch to a bombing or some violence somewhere else in the world. Ronald wasn’t used to television, and its constant blather irritated him as well. Off in the corner of the gate area, a poor mother was trying to control three young children; the youngest, a boy maybe two, was pawing away at a garbage can, while his older sister, about four, argued with her mother about the way she had changed the daughter’s hair. The third child, also a sister, was a bit older, maybe fourteen, and cast a disparaging look at everyone, but didn’t do much about the little boy. The boy’s hand was now reaching into the garbage can, leaning it over, while he climbed on a nearby seat. He was about two or three, very active, perhaps more than the mother could handle. The mother, in her thirties, very pretty but completely exhausted, kept calling the boy and telling him to return, but to no avail. He seemed determined, in his own way; if anything, he was determined to find out what was in that garbage can.

Ronald was a wind energy consultant. His specialty was knowing how various kinds of winds interacted with the various blades of the modern wind generator. He’d gone to Canada to help with a project on the high plains of Saskatchewan, but something had bothered him on the return trip: a man who, for whatever reason, had been allowed to leave Canada, but not allowed to enter the U.S. The man, a good-looking young fellow of indiscriminate national origin, had somehow convinced the Canadian authorities to let him try to enter the U.S., but he didn’t have a backup plan for what to do if rejected, and basically, Canada didn’t want him, once he was rejected. His luck had run out. He was stranded in that nowhere land between customs agents, arguing for what seemed to be an eternity, and it seemed like forever even to Ronald, who at that point was just standing in line. Ronald wasn’t sure how such things worked; what if the guy couldn’t go anywhere else?

Now, at the gate, another young man sat picked a seat next to Ronald and sat down, and started talking to Ronald about various topics: the flight, the delay, the weather.s He was pleasant, well-dressed, about twenty five or so, and had a few lines of worry on his face. As often happens, the conversation somehow drifted to the topic of eternal salvation, and the loving power of this young man’s savior. Ronald noticed at the same time both how likely it was for this to happen, and how thoroughly incapable he was of diverting the topic, or even just shutting it down. He was bored; he was being friendly; it just seemed like a normal conversation at first. Now he was considering bringing up the truth – that he really didn’t believe in heaven, at least not the heaven of everything being good, everyone happy. If there was a heaven, then what was this, purgatory?

Now people got off another flight, coming into the airport, which was in Dallas, and this was a good sign; the flight to Lubbock would be departing soon, probably with that very plane. The flight attendants arrived with their luggage and talked with the man at the ticket counter. Ronald was relieved. Progress was being made. The sign still hadn’t changed, but there was every indication that there would truly be a flight to Lubbock, and Ronald would get home.

The boy had now fallen into the garbage can, head first. It was the kind of garbage can where the hole in the top was smaller than the can itself, so that once he was in it, he couldn’t get out very easily, even when it was tipped over or sideways. His mother had seen it, at the last minute, but she had been unable to prevent it, because it happened quickly. Her anguished shouts upset the boy, and one could hear him crying and shouting out inside the garbage can, though because it was metallic there was an echo and it just raised the general noise and confusion, without solving the problem. The problem, really, was that he had two legs and two arms, and he wouldn’t be still enough for them to remove him, legs first, and they couldn’t seem to take the top off of the can in order to make the process easier. She had help now, as some bystanders saw the problem and came over to help, including someone from the airline. The boy kicked furiously, inside the can, hoping that would make a difference; it made the situation worse. Ronald considered helping, being naturally good at keeping his composure and taking apart things such as garbage cans, but he didn’t; screaming kids made him uncomfortable, especially anywhere near airplanes and confined spaces, and he didn’t want to be any closer to them than he was already.

The young man sitting next to him, dressed up, intent on discussing the joys of heaven, was similarly aloof from the situation with the boy. Ronald again almost blurted out his disagreement with the concept of heaven; he was, after all, a scientist; but instead he asked the young man about the particulars of his flight. He was coming back from Africa, he said, where he was on a mission. But it was more than a mission; he was training African missionaries, so that Africa could have more African missionaries, and they would be more thorough and efficient in covering the world with missionaries.  Ronald, hungry all of a sudden, excused himself and stepped out into the hallway where there was a McDonald’s.

In the hallway of the gate, there was a steady stream of travelers, with suitcases and packs, traveling either way, either toward the lower-numbered gates, toward the SkyTrain, or perhaps toward the bathrooms or the flight information boards. One person with the silver star of the Dallas football team on his dark blue shirt, struggled with a few extra bags. Ronald longed to be back in his office, where he studied computer models of wind flow and the behavior of certain kinds of wind-generation systems in response to variations in the flow. He couldn’t even begin to discuss it with the average airport traveler, so he kept it to himself. But occasionally, lost in a sea of humanity, especially people moving in a hallway such as this, or many people going the same direction in all different speeds, he’d think about his research.

At the McDonald’s, the big question, of course, was whether he could actually get something quickly enough to eat it before, at the gate, they would be boarding. He had now run out of time, and knew that he had to be back at the gate in minutes, perhaps ten or twelve.  At McDonald’s there were three separate lines, each with three or four people, but some man was complaining loudly that he had been given a hamburger with cheese, when he had explicitly said no cheese. McDonald’s workers were scrambling to accommodate him, trying not to lose track of their other orders.

The memory of the guy who was stranded at customs led Ronald to try getting something to eat, no matter how bad or how quickly eaten, and he almost stepped in line. But in the end, he chose against the food; it would be easier, and healthier, to simply wait, and not take the chance of missing a flight. When he got back to the gate, people were lining up. The pressure on the boy to hold still and let himself be removed from the garbage can was intense; finally, they had figured it out, and he got out, bubble gum in his hair. He was telling the airline attendant about the kinds of garbage he had experienced in there, in the darkness, as the grownups around him tried to make him presentable for the flight.

To the side, another airline steward was counseling the older sister of that boy, the one who had cast such disparaging looks at everyone when Ronald had first seen her. This girl, who was about thirteen, had apparently exploded in a rage against her mother, just as Ronald had stepped out of the gate and gone down the hallway. Her face was red, and she was shaking. She was at an age, apparently, when everything around her was faulty, nothing was as it should be. She couldn’t really describe how she had become so angry and exploded, or even how she was feeling now. They tried to restore her composure as well, so that the family could board the plane.

The young man who had sat next to Ronald, the missionary, had now realized that he had lost his cell phone, on some connecting flight; after a good amount of frantic searching, and even asking Ronald if he’d seen it (he hadn’t), he was now alerting the airline attendants to the problem. But it was pretty clear to Ronald, as he watched this, that the airline attendants had better things to do. The young missionary, apparently missing his wife and children, who had given up on Africa and returned to Texas earlier, was now in a panic; he was going to have to go without that phone for a few days, and that was quite a hardship, in the modern era, even if you were a missionary. Ronald noticed that they had changed the sign, and lined up to board the plane, grateful that he was moving on to the next step.

(8-15)

Minding One's P's and Q's

Minding One’s P’s and Q’s

Gilfredo walked up the stairs of his office building slowly, thinking that he hadn’t been in his own office as much recently as he used to; he’d been staying at home, drinking more and more, doing scholarly activities less and less. He blamed this on a young graduate student, Maya, who had chosen to make his life hell, presumably as punishment for his amorous affection being removed; she was, after all, a terrible poet, and she had gained a hundred pounds since the time he’d been seeing her, maybe a couple of years ago. He caught his breath, climbing the steps; the office building was at the same time very familiar, and also just a little tense.

He was an Argentine poet and a full professor; he knew all the Argentine poets he had grown up with, but he specialized in a Cuban poet, and could talk for hours about the beauty of the Spanish language when it was bound up in the enchantment of poetry. Sometimes in the rhythm of his own steps he would hear the words of the poets, or the beauty of the language, but this was in better times. Now his steps sounded more like a nails sealing his own coffin. He intentionally recalled great Spanish poetry, trying to reverse the downward spiral of his thoughts; it wasn’t working. Each step seemed like a thorn in his side, rather than a beautiful syllable of a beautiful language.

Expounding on the beauty and grace of the Spanish language: this was how he met Marcelline, a woman in his own building, a French teacher who had recently been studying logic as part of semantics and thus as part of language. He had enchanted her by telling her about how, in his generation, they studied logic along with Latin, and he’d told her about a Latin teacher who had been one of his inspirations. Here in the US, it was similar; back in the old days, namely the turn of the previous century, in certain schools, logic was one of the hardest subjects students would take, and they would refer to it as “p’s and q’s” as in “minding one’s p’s and q’s” – which was, in essence, hitting the books.  He’d had a logic teacher who had been a monster, abusive and cruel, but he’d survived, and he was proud of it. He’d studied the great Spanish poets, and studied in England. With Marcelline, he’d gone on to tell her about the Argentine poets, and, of course, his own favorite Cuban poet, and he was, at this moment, climbing the stairs in hopes of maintaining an amorous relationship with Marcelline, who had implied she would be in her office at this hour, after class.

He could, of course, take the elevator, but the elevator made him feel old, and he was only 56. It was almost twenty years ago, he thought, thinking in years, that his first wife had left him. She, too, was Argentine; she was disappointed that they hadn’t had a child by then; but most of all, she simply wanted to go home. She wasn’t happy in the USA, and she’d let him know that. He’d been quite stubborn about it; he was successful here; he’d become a professor; he’d impressed everyone, and his career, basically, was here. The sadness of that breakup had haunted him.

At first, he had enjoyed his freedom, seeing woman after woman, many of them in this building, which was like a little Europe. He courted Portuguese teachers, Italian teachers, even a German professor. He had wild nights on the town with beautiful, well-educated young women.  

Everyone seemed to tolerate it; he was, after all, a tenured professor. But this young poet, Maya, had basically ruined it all, in his view. She had come along at a time of weakness for him, and somehow he didn’t see what an unhappy person she was, not to mention the fact that she was a bad poet. At a reading one time she was reading her poetry, and he was admiring her figure, when all of a sudden he caught himself listening to the words, and having to admit that, yes, it was pretty bad. What was he doing? What had he stooped to? What had gone wrong?

The other day, someone had asked him why windows in the building could never open. They were sealed shut, and that was no doubt because a central-air system meant that an open window would mean that the building would be air conditioning a very hot outdoor patio, or trying to heat a very cold winter day. But what it had meant, in the long run, was that every single person in the building had become accustomed to being cut off from the outdoors, operating, if they were lucky, with a window to look out of, but not a window to breathe out of, or yell out of. The building was a fortress, sealed off from the invading world, closed off except at the front and back doors. He thought of this, sometimes, as he compared it to Europe, say, or even to the USA. Places become insular, he thought, as do the people in them, cut off from reality, unable to feel something obvious in the air.

Marcelline had given him hope again, though even Marcelline looked at him sometimes as if she’d been through a few relationships herself, and wasn’t going to be so quick to trust him. The hallway that he now walked down was full of signs that said “No means No!”, and he looked at them, thinking of their discussion of logic. You’d think that, in a building where everyone taught various languages, “No” would be the most basic word, the first one, one that you wouldn’t have to argue about. Didn’t it translate as “No” in Portuguese, French, or German?

He knew that in fact these signs were part of a campaign, in which women, particularly professional women on campus, were enraged by a fraternity whose members had allowed themselves to be photographed publically with a sign that said “No means Yes” – it was more complicated than that, but it was blatantly disrespectful to women, and the women on campus had responded with these signs. It all made sense, in context, of course, if one understood the campus and what was happening on it. But from a purely logical point of view, it was somewhat absurd, and it reminded him of that logic teacher so many decades ago.

Of course, he couldn’t bring this up with Marcelline; she had a similar sign on her office as well. It would simply make her mad; there was always the possibility that she would think he “didn’t get it” or “didn’t take it seriously.” On the contrary, he thought, he took it too seriously. He read it for what it was. He remembered his education in logic, every hour of it, and it came boiling to the surface at moments like this.

The case with Maya was slow in working its way through the system; it was unresolved. Maya had complained to the highest authorities, saying that he was using his sexual involvement with her, and the personal fallout from the breakup, against her in her pursuit of a PhD. His view was the opposite, that if anything, his involvement had helped her, had taken her much further than she deserved, and his lack of support now was simply forcing her to get the PhD. on her own, without his help. He didn’t feel like he was preventing her from doing anything. And he felt like everyone – chair, ombudsman, provost – was colluding to make his life miserable.

Perhaps Marcelline could change his mood, and make him feel worthy again. But, alas, there was a note on Marcelline’s office door, addressed to him, and basically telling him she was busy for the evening, and was sorry to back out of whatever engagement he had planned. Now in fact, as he went over exactly what he did have planned, and how much of this he had actually communicated successfully with her, he was sorry to admit that it was all very vague, and he was sure she knew what he had truly intended, and had simply rejected that. Perhaps she had done her homework, or had heard through the grapevine about the situation with Maya; or, perhaps she was truly busy, and would be glad to make other arrangements later. There was no way of knowing whether this was a temporary or permanent setback.

In this picture, of course, things were very rarely direct, and Gilfredo had long ago become used to this way of operating; he’d even mastered it. But now he felt like he was a victim of it, in that he didn’t know where he stood. The “No means No!” signs seemed to mock him, as he stood there, in the hallway. Things had, in fact, come to this, and it wasn’t pretty. He was entirely alone, up there in that hallway, and badly needed another drink.

8-10-15

Rite of Passage

Rite of Passage

The little boy had chicken pox, and Jordan realized, as he saw how truly miserable the kid was, that it had never occurred to the kid that he wouldn’t always be the cutest thing on earth. He was only about three; he hadn’t looked in the mirror all that much, but he’d looked in it today, and that’s when he saw them, the little red spots all over his face that made all the grownups in his world gasp in horror and turn away, or tell him what a poor child he was.

Chicken pox isn’t so bad if you’re three; it’s mostly bad if you fail to get it, and get it later as a full-blown adult. That’s the way these things are; almost everyone gets it when they’re three. The little guy had dozens of friends, in his daycare and in his playgroup, and whenever he was with them he was completely with them, in their faces, being moved from one friend to the other. This little strain of chicken pox probably took all of five minutes to spread to the whole daycare, and another five, later that week, to hit every kid in the playgroup. Then the reports came in; so-and-so had chicken pox, so-and-so wouldn’t be coming to the playgroup this week. It was a kind of recurring pattern.

The kid was actually Jordan’s brother. Jordan was 20; he’d just come back from college, but he’d just wrecked his car, when he was almost home. His girlfriend had dumped him, apparently, before he’d left, but he found out accidentally, and then, somewhat upset, had been coming home in a hurry. His parents, busy with a sick 3-year-old and a couple of other siblings, had barely noticed his arrival, though they did promise him his favorite dinner, spaghetti, as soon as they could provide it. He had a knot in his stomach, and he felt like it was caused by having two homes, one at college, where things had fallen apart rapidly, and one here, where it was home, of course, but his poor brother was so miserable, and it didn’t really feel like home anymore. He wanted to go out for a drive, but his car was wrecked and was in the shop. He kept checking his phone, hoping somehow for a text from his ex-girlfriend, but, even if she texted, what good would that do? What could she say that would make any difference whatsoever? Perhaps he could text someone in town that he knew.

It was raining at his parents’ house. Finally he reached his girlfriend from high school, Rachel, and she was due to come over in about half an hour; maybe they’d do something together. They’d broken up when he went to college, and his feelings for her were gone; they’d gone separate ways. But she was still a friend, and would cheer him up, he hoped. She was going to a university on the other side of the state, but was home at the moment too. She’d come home to find out that not only had she lost her room, but she’d lost her whole house; her parents had split up, gone separate ways, neither having a room for her anymore. Ordinarily she’d go visit her grandmother, but grandmother was in the hospital, not expected to live into the next month. The grandmother had a house, and even a room, but being there or staying there was next to impossible. When Rachel came over, she was a nervous wreck, and was considering driving back to the university that very day, texting friends at the university and elsewhere almost constantly, in her nervousness. At least at the university she had a place to stay.

Jordan tried to get Rachel to take him out for a drive, even though it was raining, and he promised her he’d give her some gas money or take her for coffee. His little brother’s wailing and whining were bothering him. She didn’t want to go; she appreciated a safe haven, a house that wasn’t hers, or wasn’t full of her mom’s bitterness for her dad, or her dad’s anger. They went back behind the shed and smoked a cigarette, a kind of teenage ritual that they’d performed many times in high school. The rain dripped off the roof of the shed and threatened to put out the little nub of a cigarette as they were smoking it. Rachel pointed out that they were lucky they were in college; she had a friend who was already a mother, another who was in jail; one old acquaintance from high school had been killed in a car wreck.  While they were there, checking their phones, Rachel let him in on two more personal dramas. The first involved her own little sister, about thirteen, who had flown to New York to spend a week with her uncle’s family. But the uncle had been delayed on his way to the airport by a missed connection, and left her stranded in the airport. The sister kept texting Rachel and Rachel would text back furiously, encouraging her and telling her that the uncle would be there as soon as possible. Second, she found out, reading her messages, that her dad had been fined for some business infraction; this would likely cost him his business and he’d have to get another job. Jordan, checking his own messages, found out that a friend of his back in college had a mom who had fallen, and would need months of rehab; that friend would have to drop out, go to school somewhere else or perhaps not at all, and rearrange his life accordingly.

At one point the rain let up a little, but they were both busy texting people, and didn’t really see it. They described the dramas that were playing out on their phones to each other. And then, when everything seemed so bleak, the sun came out above them; it was still raining a little, so there was a rainbow, clear as day, out over the creek, behind some neighbors’ houses. Jordan was using his fingers to crush what was left of his cigarette.

Finally Rachel agreed to let Jordan take her out for coffee, and they went into the house to get his keys. Jordan’s brother was still whining; chicken pox made him miserable. It was more the idea of it that made him miserable than the disease itself. He was no longer a baby, and was going to have to lie around and whine until he got better, because everyone was busy. They’d put a movie on and hoped he’d just sit there watching it. Jordan stopped to talk to him for a minute, but he didn’t want to linger, because the kid would delay him, and hang on to him, and he was really eager to get out of the place. Also, he wasn’t quite sure if he’d ever had chicken pox, so he was a little hesitant to get too close to the kid. He told his brother about the rainbow, but they looked out the window, and it seemed to be gone. The brother got mad at him, and complained that all the good stuff in life, all that Jordan had promised, was all a cruel hoax. Jordan licked his lips, hoping the kid wouldn’t smell the cigarette, knowing his brother was watching him carefully. Basically, he agreed with the kid. It was a tough world, and you just had to get used to it.

(7-2015)

I Call Shotgun

I Call Shotgun

Melinda noticed two things about the courthouse as she entered and took a seat for her brother’s trial, touching a scar on her hip unconsciously, as she often did. First, the blinds were pulled down on the windows, so you couldn’t see out of any of them; this reminded her of the house where she grew up, and where her grandfather insisted that they live without the benefit of natural light. Second, there was a family, already seated, to Melinda’s right, and it consisted of a young mother with her two children, a girl and a boy; the girl was older, and was trying to contain the boy, who kept climbing over the seats or being restless.

She felt a sickness at the bottom of her stomach as she tuned in to her brother’s trial; he was guilty, probably, and she knew it; he would be sent to jail, and there wasn’t much anyone could do for him at this point. She also knew that once they took him off to jail, she would probably not see him very much; after all, she had several children herself, and the prison was across the state. She looked hard at him, trying to give him hope; at the same time, in her mind, she was reliving their wretched childhood.

The stern judge, a bald older man with a gavel and too many clothes on, reminded her of their grandfather, also a stern old man, who disapproved of virtually everything, and who would yell at them from his chair at the front of the house. Their early life had been one of confinement; they weren’t allowed to play, or go here, or go there, because he liked his alcohol and didn’t want to have to follow them, or go out into the world after them. The world had seemed bright, and green, and full, while their house was small, dark, confined, and oppressive.  Melinda, in spite of this, had managed to get married and make a decent life for herself; she worked at a restaurant nights, and still managed to get her kids off to school mornings. She even had enough friends that she could find one to watch her youngest child while she came for this part of the trial.

Her brother Marcus had not been so lucky. Marcus was about the same size as Melinda, and strangers would point out how much they looked alike. Marcus, though, had clearly made some bad choices. His friend Joey had got him involved in a robbery of a convenience store, which he had told her about later, and yes, Marcus said, somebody had gotten hurt in the process. As it turned out, a young man had been shot, and later died, and it was a good guess that it was either his sister, or his wife and family, over there on the other side of the courtroom. The trial, she knew, was to spell out how it happened, to what degree Marcus was responsible, and what the punishment was, but Melinda could barely listen to that part. When Joey had come out to testify, she had planned to stare him down, because, the best she could figure, he had turned state’s evidence, and was helping the prosecution put Marcus away. How could a guy betray his best friend like that? To her, it was Joey’s fault; he had talked Marcus into involvement; he had made the arrangements. Marcus alone wouldn’t have done something like that.

 When Joey came out to testify, though, she could see how a guy like him could turn state’s evidence. He looked like death, hopeless, with a choice of telling his story the way they wanted, or nothing. She looked hard at him, trying to catch his eye, but she realized that staring him down would do no good at all. He knew what he was doing to his best friend, and he had done it anyway. He clearly didn’t feel like he had much in the way of choice.

Over on the other side of the courtroom, the girl continued to try to control the boy, usually unsuccessful. The boy looked at everything and continued to try to reach anything that held the slightest interest. He looked at Melinda occasionally, but wasn’t generally interested. The girl perfected the art of yelling at him while still whispering. The mother, or the woman who appeared to be mother, paid close attention to the trial.

Melinda, touching her scar again, suddenly had a memory of what had happened in their small house, one day when, as usual, she was with only her brother and her grandfather. When the grandfather said that they were going somewhere, anywhere, whoever called out “I call shotgun!” first would get the front seat of the car; this was highly valued as the back smelled of rotten clothes and alcohol. The battles for shotgun were legendary, but eventually they decided that they couldn’t even call it until they got out the door; at that point, there would be vigorous battles to get out the front door first. But the front door had a jagged metal piece in it, and one time, Marcus and Melinda hit the threshold at the same moment, and her hip was cut by the jagged metal. The cut was deep and painful, but healed adequately and she didn’t need stitches. The scar was still there, though, and Melinda could still feel it, under her pants; she could still feel that pain, even today.  At the time, Marcus had gotten into a lot of trouble for it, as if he had injured her purposely, but he hadn’t. It was just because they had gotten there at the same time, and were both using all their force to get through the doorway.

The fan in the courthouse was going around very slowly, too slowly to change the air, or keep her from feeling completely stifled and frustrated. The tragedy of Marcus’ situation was that he had already started to clean up, and get his life back on track, when they came after him for what had happened at the convenience store. He was couple of years into having a job, and was trying to get back on an honest path, but the same couldn’t be said for Joey. And when Joey went down, they really wanted to get to the bottom of this convenience store thing, so they laid into him. She felt the weight of the system, the inevitability of Marcus’ doom. She looked at Marcus again, his head down, realizing that Joey’s testimony would put him away for years.

The testimony about the gun, late in the afternoon, dragged on for hours, it seemed. The prosecution asked incisive questions that were intended to pin the blame squarely on Marcus, and did, although it could have been any gun, could have come from anywhere. Did it matter? It was late in the day, and Melinda couldn’t bear it anymore. She squirmed in her seat. Somewhere deep in her memory she could hear her grandfather admitting that his stern approach hadn’t worked too well with their father, who had killed himself and their mother in a car crash, but it was all he knew, and he could only do what he knew.

The situation with the little boy had reached a climax, and the mother was now involved, telling him what he could and couldn’t do, and how he was to behave. But something she said to him made his eyes open wide, and turn to stare at Melinda. Later she guessed that she had simply told him that Melinda was Marcus’ sister. The boy stared now at Melinda, as if she were totally responsible for everything that had happened. It was a cruel, hard stare, and it melted Melinda; she couldn’t bear it anymore.

 She took a last look at Marcus, nodded at him as she got up to leave, and walked out of the courtroom, never to come back. It was almost as if she was walking away from her entire early life, the memory, the pain, the confinement, the whole thing. She needed some fresh air.

5-2-2015

poetry reading

e pluribus haiku 2015

Suspended

The plane was stalled; it was sitting there on the tarmac, engines running, air circulating, fortunately. I had a window seat, so I'd been gazing out the window at luggage cars coming and going, and now I could see a group of police cars, flashing lights, and other emergency-type vehicles converged on a plane nearby, maybe two planes down the tarmac from ours. This always made me think of my family, although my family was back at home, while I was on this plane, going to a conference. My family couldn’t be in those emergency vehicles. Somebody's family was, but it wasn't mine.

Behind me, a Vietnamese lady was talking to a lawyer; they didn’t know each other before they got on the plane. She was young, and pretty with perfect English, yet still clearly Vietnamese. She did research on legal custody disputes left over from Operation Babylift, which involved the removal of Vietnamese orphans from Vietnam right at the end of the war. What happened, the best I can figure from eavesdropping, was that mothers gave up their babies as helicopters were leaving Vietnam, very dramatically; they didn’t know if they’d ever see these babies again; in some cases they signed away their rights, and in others, they didn’t. Years later, when they had the means, they came looking to be reunited with their children. The lawyer on the plane tended to side with the adoptive families, and their rights, not so much because he was an adoption lawyer, but just because he saw both sides of everything, and he could see the pain, and the legal violation, involved in taking on a young child as your own, and then having the mother come back around looking for him.

Did I say we were just standing here on the tarmac? Yes, according to the pilot, it was because of a generator for the right engine, a maintenance issue, which they would deal with as soon as possible. Who knew what was happening nearby? But there were the police, and a few other sets of flashing lights. Now the plane between us in our stalled-out plane, and the one with the emergency, was backing up, and the view was blocked. But there was a fire truck over there, red and blue lights flashing, and the police, and a few other kinds of emergency trucks. It was a gathering of important people.

Kinship is an odd thing, said the lawyer, and he seemed to be getting at the idea that an adoptive family can create it out of thin air, and have it, and this can be extremely important and worth fighting for. And if they had a good lawyer, of course that lawyer was going to attack the mother. That was his job. He had to jab and find weaknesses in her position, which was that the child was hers all along, and only taken from her by the vagaries of fate and war. “Why did you give up the child?” he would ask. “You knew that child would now be brought up by somebody else!” For a while they discussed the pressure of the situation: the helicopters waiting, the certainty of a bad fate for children who were half American, or whose parents were on the wrong side of the war, anyone who was left behind. Those circumstances, it seemed, were public knowledge; even the lawyer knew them, and he hadn’t come anywhere close to any of these cases. The woman looked at him with a kind of alienation. To her, kinship was biological; what the adoptive families had was conjured up, created, illusory, and couldn't even be compared. Much as she checked, and most Americans agreed with the lawyer, i'd say she was getting disappointed.

It was a large plane, with a large center aisle, though I had a window seat. I should mention that though I was eavesdropping, I think they knew it; they talked as if I were listening, and I nodded every once in a while. Next to me was a woman who was also going to a conference, but hers was more about storytelling, or oral tradition, or some such thing, though she was reading stories on a small computer with headphones on. Going up the middle aisle, every four or five seats or so, there was a television above the seats, mounted on the frame of the airplane, and these televisions had a continuous loop of famous and gorgeous world tourist sites. There was crashing waves on a wide beach, a mountain scene, sunset over the ocean, a wide landscape of desert canyons, a mountain scape of a Himalaya Range, and then back to the beginning, same sights as we already saw not five minutes ago. It made me mad, because it made me feel stuck, suspended. I’d be absolutely claustrophobic if it weren’t for the window.

Word came again from the cabin: they were almost done checking this generator and dealing with it. The woman next to me had now fallen asleep. Most of us, as far as I could tell, felt that if the airline was going to have a generator problem, they should go ahead and find it now. Go right ahead and check, I felt like saying. Whatever you do, it’ll probably be better than the alternative.

The woman and the man behind me were now talking about a particular case, a case that the woman had researched, one in which a young girl was involved. This young girl was the last of three siblings, and the desperate mother had come after her as her last hope, having lost the older brothers in similar tragic circumstances. The mother had never signed away custody of the daughter. The woman behind me described a meeting, set up by the legal authorities, in which the mother was allowed to meet the daughter, but the meeting was highly controlled, and the adoptive parents, as well as the lawyer, were right on the site, to help the young girl interpret everything the mother tried to communicate. There were transcripts of everything that had happened, and the woman had studied them closely. Just bringing gifts to the daughter didn’t seem to make it any easier for the mother; although they had a birth bond, it was hard for the young girl to understand the mother's idea that that bond should be more important than everything else she had experienced up to that point.

The lawyer took sides here, and objected to her idea that the birth bond was an overarching concern. It wasn't more important, he said. When the judge tries to figure out what’s best for the child, how can it be best to start all over?

The televisions in the cabin now switched to the safety message, because our plane was about to take off. Most of the cabin had to be quiet as the television marched through all the things one was supposed to do in an emergency. On some flights I tune this out altogether, as I cannot imagine anything going wrong, and don't even want to try to imagine it. But on this flight, remember that I’d just been watching at least a half-dozen emergency vehicles fussing around the underbelly of some enormous jumbo jet, and I was ready to contemplate all the various possibilities. When I listened to these safety messages, I always listened for what we call, in our household, the stewardess rule, which put simply, is that one should put one's own oxygen mask on before trying to help others. When I come home from an outing with a few very starving kids, and everyone is about to keel over from starvation, I sometimes feed myself in the process of feeding them, and I use the stewardess rule as justification. Make sure you can survive before you reach out to save others. My wife, however, considers this just selfishness, but what does she know about how close I am to keeling over? And, if I can't function myself, there's absolutely no sense talking about fixing food for anyone!

The very nature of airports, to me, was that I was suspended, away from my family; the household was functioning without me. Ordinarily I took family life for granted; I couldn't imagine not having a family, or being torn from my family as a child, or being forced to choose. But something told me that the situation the woman described was very personal; that, perhaps, she had been the girl in the story. She was unable to reconcile what had happened, and so, years later, here she was, still studying it. I got this idea from the fact that she seemed to be getting upset, right there in front of us, as if the lawyer had said something that struck her to the bone. He hadn't, as far as I could tell, but he too recognized this sensitivity, and backed off a little, as the plane took off, and this gave her a little time to recover.

Once the plane got above the clouds there was a surprise waiting for us: It was very sunny up there. There was a huge blue sky. The clouds, which were below us now, made a huge soft white blanket, and, from the window where I was sitting, it looked like the Arctic, really, miles and miles of nothing but white with a huge blue sky.

It seemed like there wasn't much left to say; she had expressed what she'd found through her research, which was that the mother would stop at nothing to be reunited with her child, yet she had found this massive wall of legal procedures, meant to prevent that, and protect the adoptive family. We, of the western culture, couldn't fathom how that appeared to the mother, how cruel and heartless that was. The mother was shattered, once again, losing her daughter as she had lost everything else, once again a war victim.

The woman, drained from relating the tale, and having gotten us to understand the mother's pain, now fell asleep. She too was going to a conference, to talk about her findings; the lawyer was going yet somewhere else. We were all suspended up there, high in the air, as the flight attendants brought their cart, and served drinks from it, and skipped the poor woman, who was now sound asleep.

3-28-2015

Tradition

Dae let his woman companion, Eun Mi, talk him into telling the story of how he changed airlines and got a new job. They were at the udong (noodle) restaurant in Narita airport, Tokyo, and it was a pleasant day; they had time, though the sun was setting outside a nearby window. It was a busy udong restaurant, and Dae constantly scanned for people he knew in the airlines business. Sometimes he thought he’d find the pilot of that Malaysian plane, for example, who he swore he knew, but he never did; that guy had disappeared anyway, with his entire plane.

The airport, he felt, was where cultures came together. You had the traditional, beautiful, restrictive Asian cultures, and all the people leaving them. You had the udong restaurant itself, so much healthier than, say, McDonalds. You had the sense of being at the edge of the culture, with planes taking off and up out of it every minute. When you flew up out of Narita, you could always see the Japanese islands sparkling in the sun below, but they were islands: contained, trapped, restrictive.

But here, Eun Mi was eager to hear about why he took a new job, so he told her. Eun Mi was quite beautiful; her Asian features were set off by the afternoon light and she took a lively interest in him and in things that had happened to him.

He had been chief steward on an international flight about a month ago, and there were all kinds of people on it, Americans, Europeans, Koreans, Japanese. Everyone had their own ideas, even though they knew they were in international air space. The wealthy woman in seat 11 felt like everyone should know who she was, daughter of the owner of the airline. The flight attendant, a young woman who was under Dae’s supervision, didn’t know who the wealthy woman was, and didn’t seem to care. The flight attendant gave her nuts in a bag like she gave everyone else; she handed her the bag. She didn’t use two hands or a deferential way to hand her the bag. She just gave her the nuts.

Dae heard about this later; at the time it happened, he was in the front of the plane dealing with a businessman. But the wealthy lady, daughter of the owner of the airline, was now enraged and insisting that she be served nuts on a plate, not in a bag. And she had also mentioned something about getting the flight attendant fired. She was demanding to speak to important people, even though the plane was about to take off. Dae just wanted to hide. He knew he was the next in line; soon she would be coming after him.

When she did, he defended the flight attendant. On impulse, he defended the flight attendant. He knew that he could force the flight attendant to make a deep bow of apology and serve her nuts on a plate, but he didn’t. The plane was about to take off, and the pressure was on for them to get everyone in their seats. Though the take-off was delayed, people still had to be in their seats for safety reasons. Dae decided that everyone should just receive a bag of nuts, and be grateful. If the wealthy heiress didn’t like it, she could complain later. He knew he could lose his job for this; after all, her father was the owner of the airline. But at that moment, he didn’t care. He didn’t feel like forcing everyone to bow deferentially to this monstrous woman.

Eun Mi listened intently to this story, but reacted somewhat opposite of what Dae would expect. Although he had painted the heiress as monstrous, she sympathized somewhat with the heiress, as she was, after all, defending tradition, and the right to be respected and received in a deferential way. She was also upholding the idea that this airline would maintain the deferential Asian traditions in spite of relentless modernization. And she was suspicious of the flight attendant, possibly because, in the story, Dae was defending her, taking her side, and Eun Mi was perhaps jealous. Dae couldn’t quite figure out why Eun Mi would react the way she did, but he kept telling the story.

So the heiress was complaining bitterly to Dae, while still another flight attendant was going through the safety instructions with the passengers. Tie the life preserver on, and put the oxygen mask on your face, this kind of stuff. Once the plane started going, it was all over, everyone had to just sit down, be quiet, and live through the flight, which in this case was only going to Tokyo. The woman was quite intense about it, though. Heads would roll, she would make sure of that. Now she wanted the Dae fired as well; she made that clear, and told him he was fired. She would be treated with more respect on this airline. If she wanted her nuts on a plate, she would get them.

Dae spoke for a while with the pilot. Outside, an intense monsoon rain started on the tarmac. This was probably much more dramatic for passengers who don’t fly regularly, than those who do. Dae, for example, had seen rains like this many times, and knew the pilot could fly in them perfectly well. This would not be an issue. The woman continued to harp at him, and he was near her seat; he now wanted to sit down as the plane was slowly moving into position to take off. It would be a huge ordeal to thwart the takeoff, and do as she demanded: go back, and fire the flight attendant and Dae, and start the flight over. But that’s what she demanded, and now she was working on the pilot.

The pilot talked Dae into taking the flight attendant to her seat, bowing, and offering an apology. They did, but it was quick, and she interpreted it as insincere, which it was. They were thinking about the next step, which was taking off. She, the wealthy woman, was thinking that the entire reputation of her airline came down to this quick, shallow apology. She became even more infuriated and this time went straight to the pilot’s cabin. They didn’t stop her.

The plane was delayed on the tarmac while the pilot dealt with her, and they could hear her insistent voice over the engine noises. Finally, the pilot relented, and the plane turned around, and went back to the gate, where the pilot, Dae, the flight attendant, the woman and a few other people got out of the plane and went up into the gate. If I’m going to get fired, thought Dae, let her do it in the gate, in front of everyone. In the gate, she was again the daughter of the owner; everyone there knew her much better. But Dae knew some of them too; as an airline employee he had worked with all of them at one time or another. Someone assured Dae that it wasn’t over yet. In fact, right as Dae waited, to see what would come next, the woman was now arrested, on the grounds that it was illegal to stop a plane that was already on its way on the tarmac. Dae was surprised at this; he certainly hadn’t demanded her arrest. Dae kept his head down. The heiress screamed and complained loudly at the police. But the police, three young men, stuck to their orders. People who disrupted a plane in its takeoff mode were endangering hundreds of airline passengers, and were to be arrested. It was that simple. They put her in handcuffs and took her away; she shouted her protest at every step.

At the trial she was contrite, wearing prison garb, and she actually had to serve time, in spite of her family’s money and influence. Somebody somewhere was quite strict about people disrupting a plane’s takeoff procedure, and there wasn’t much room in the law to slap her wrist and let her go. Dae, by this time, had gotten a job at another airline; he didn’t want to keep dealing with her or her father, who would ultimately get him back in some way or another. At the trial, however, he learned that the father also had resigned his post, in shame.

Dae let it be known that he didn’t call in the police. He was not a vengeful person, and never wanted to see another’s life ruined. He and the pilot may have known that the police would get involved. He and the pilot may have known that turning around the plane would make everyone a little late, and wouldn’t truly endanger anyone, but would attract the attention of the police. He and the pilot may have known, also, that the pilot really was not too put out by the rainy weather, or the reversal, or the driving back to the gate.

Eun-Mi’s jaw was set in an unbelieving position, but Dae really didn’t know much more about what happened to the wealthy woman or her father, or how it could be that the owner’s daughter could end up in jail, and the father disgraced, over a bag of nuts. It was one of the bigger scandals to rock the airline world, but Dae tried to keep it quiet, generally, and he was grateful that he was still working anywhere at all. Eun-Mi was so taken aback that she was quiet for almost a minute. And right in that minute, Dae saw the flight attendant whom he had defended. He called her over and introduced her to Eun-Mi. Eun-Mi flushed and became embarrassed. Dae could sense that Eun-Mi was embarrassed, if only because she had just spoken of the woman, albeit without any idea that she would ever meet her. Now, here she was, in front of them, at the udong restaurant.

She was embarrassed to see him, and said she believed she had been responsible for his losing his job. No, he told her, he’d changed jobs of his own accord; the  wealthy woman, having been arrested, had not been able to ensure that he’d get fired first.

The flight attendant, young and pretty, with a western air about her, had quit that day as well, she said. But it had nothing to do with the incident; it was because she had recently married the pilot. On the day that had happened, she said, the pilot had proposed to her. She had no strong memory of what had happened at all, being euphoric from the proposal, and would have gladly bowed a hundred times if he had asked her. But she had appreciated the way he had defended her. And now she too became embarrassed, and bowed several times to Eun-Mi. She was pregnant, she said. She would meet the pilot here in Narita, and he would be waiting for her. The pilot, too, wanted as little attention possible drawn to his own situation. 

Eun-Mi used her chopsticks to play with her last noodle until it disintegrated. The woman, still embarrassed, made a quick bow and went on her way.

3-9-2015

See Some ID

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See Some ID

Vern was an engineering student, without a penchant for drama, really, except that he lived for Halloween; he always had, and this year was like the rest. His life was boring, full of studying, but he relished the opportunity to get a good costume, go out, and be someone besides himself for a change. This year he’d met a policeman and got the opportunity to borrow a pretty good uniform and hat. The holster wasn’t hard to find, and he even found a gun that was pretty obviously fake to anyone who knew guns. A corner of it shone out from the holster when he wore it, though. He thought it was a great costume, and he worked hard on making the shoes a shiny black. The final thing was that he’d let his hair grow long and let his beard grow out beforehand, but then, on that night, he got a straight buzz-cut and shaved clean and unrecognizable. He had two parties to go to, one given by some engineering buddies, and another by a fraternity associated with his roommate.

Halloween in Minneapolis is always cold, and dark, and often snowing or sleeting. On this night it was clear but there was a cold frost on the grass that made it slippery and shone in the streetlights. Vern was also aware of the stud in his nose; he’d had to decide whether to remove it, try to cover it, or leave it there, a sure sign that he wasn’t truly a policeman. In the end he decided to do nothing about it. It too shone in the light; Vern was always aware of which way it would shine, and who would notice it. What he didn’t know was how many people would be tipped off that it was a costume. Real policemen don’t have nose studs, do they?

He was walking, and noticed that people had a strong reaction to him right from the start. In fact he hadn’t thought out the consequences of what he was doing very carefully, but he did enjoy making people jump, and watching people behave differently after they saw him. You would think the stud would tip them off, but they seemed to be operating more on first impressions; maybe they saw the uniform more clearly from a distance, and the stud only upon getting closer to him. There was a minor commotion as he entered the party in the first house. It was a typical student off-campus party, with lots of people, lots of noise, and rowdiness, but everyone looked at Vern as if waiting for him to tell them to keep it down, or demand a keg permit. Vern had actually thought of some of the things a policeman should say, and was almost ready to try it, but it occurred to him that he knew very few of these people; although a friend had invited him, that friend didn’t seem to be anywhere around.

The person who owned the house came up to him directly and treated him as if he were an officer; he asked if everything was ok, and Vern soon realized that this guy figured out that this was a costume. But then a woman approached him; he recognized her as Karen, from her Chemistry class. She was slightly shorter than Vern, and had long, pretty, light-colored hair, and lively eyes. But she had an off-white dress with blood on it, and smudged makeup on her face, as if she’d been crying or wiping it off. The blood seemed pretty obviously part of the costume; it wasn’t fresh, but the costume was no longer clear; perhaps she’d been a vampire? She looked like she’d been roughed up a little, and when she looked away from him her eyes were no longer twinkling, but rather glancing nervously around the house.

When she got him alone she told him she really needed to get out of this place, and she would appreciate it if he’d walk her down the street. He said that the other party he was going to was down the street, so sure, he’d take her down there whenever she was ready. She was ready. She had her purse, a little hat and a jacket that were all part of her costume, and she got ready quickly; Vern had already put down a glass of wine, but he set it down, and got ready himself. He was vaguely aware that the party was not all friendly; some people were speaking rather harshly in a nearby room. Vern and Karen said goodbye to the host and walked out the door together.

The frost shone again in the streetlights as they walked down the street; they had a little less than a mile to go to get to the other party. Karen told him she’d just broken up with her boyfriend; he was back at that party. They’d gone together for about a year.

“Why did you do it tonight?” he asked her.

“Don’t know, it was time, I guess,” she said. He got a strange feeling, being with her, and he wanted to act like a cop again. On the one hand, Halloween was his opportunity to not be himself. On the other, upon meeting a new, interesting, available woman, the proper thing to do was to be oneself. It was a dilemma.

But she didn’t mind the drama angle of it a bit. A drunken kid, a student, was walking toward them, slipping a little on the frosty sidewalk, and as he got closer she stopped in horror, pointed at him, and said to Vern, “Officer, that’s the man who did it, I’m sure of it!”

The poor student looked at him in horror. Vern got a stern look on his face and grabbed the drunk kid by the arm.

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to see some ID,” he said.

The kid blubbered a bit, and searched around in his pants. Then, suddenly, he took a big wide swing at Vern, trying to punch him in the jaw. But he was very drunk, and when Vern ducked the punch, he ended up falling face first into a frosty lawn, not hurt very badly. Vern pushed his shoulders into the grass; Karen looked on.

“Assault of a police officer, resisting arrest, being a dumb idiot,” he said. “You’re guilty. But you know what? Tonight’s your lucky night, because I’m not going to arrest you. I’ve got better things to do.” He gave the guy a small push and they went on their way.

At the second party a similar commotion started the minute he got there. Unbeknownst to him, people were flushing drugs down the toilet just out of his sight, and apparently this had happened in the previous house as well. No wonder they were getting angry! He still didn’t know this, and it somehow hadn’t occurred to him that something like this would happen.

Once again Karen approached a young man and said, to Vern, “That’s the man who did it! I’m sure of it!” This time he was a young guy with an earring, well-dressed, standing against a wall.

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to see some ID,” said Vern again, at a loss for words. He was slow on the uptake this time, not as confident in his identity as a cop.

And sure enough, this time the guy just hauled off and hit him in the jaw. The guy was quick; he didn’t give Vern a chance to duck. And when he was down, on the floor, he hit him again, and then left.

Several people took their licks at Vern; it was a sudden, unexpected opportunity to release aggression toward the image of the police, or the aggressive reaction to the feeling that someone in a police uniform could bring to a party. Vern ended up being dragged to someone’s car and taken to the emergency room, though he hadn’t broken any bones. Karen stuck with him, and maintained, in the emergency room, that he was her friend. The hospital nurses cleaned up his cuts and bruises and put him in a room to sleep it off; when he woke up, it was already afternoon of the following day. He was no longer wearing  a uniform of any kind. Karen was in the chair by his bed, sleeping, but with a cup of hospital coffee in her hand. She still had that off-white dress with blood on it, though now she’d cleaned off the make-up. She was pretty in the afternoon light, but she looked worried, perhaps thinking of that ex-boyfriend.

She denied that he would have hurt Vern; he was back at that other party, and clearly, to her, wasn’t part of the group that had just hauled off and hurt Vern. He, too, had a cheesy costume, she said, apologizing for her own. Vern, she said, had the best costume, he won the prize. But what good did it do? If he was lucky, some insurance company would pay the bill, but she had to go, because she had a Physics assignment due in an hour and a half, and of course they had that Chemistry quiz in the morning. Vern had a headache, and rolled over and slept another hour and a half, before finally stumbling out of the place at about dinnertime. He’d lost an entire day. And he’d lost the desire to ever wear another costume, of any kind.

Foul Strike

I was watching my son’s little league game one night, on the bleachers behind home plate, when I saw an old friend, Roger, and went over and sat with him. I knew him from some social experience somewhere in town, and his kid, in this game, was on the other team. He didn’t seem to mind that I supported my son once in a while by saying, “Go Dragons!” and he also would occasionally call out to his own son, who was on the Pirates. The Dragons were all decked out in green, with green caps; the Pirates were in black and yellow, so it was a pretty sight, with all those 9-year-olds running around playing baseball.

I was happy to find out that he agreed with me about one thing, that we should let the kids enjoy the game of baseball as much as possible, without real interference.

The world of parents is divided into those who agree with that statement, and the rest, and most of the fathers tend to be in the second category; they take baseball way too seriously. They tell their kids what to do; they yell at them. They yell at the umps. They shout about perceived unfairness.

Do they really think their kid is going all the way to the pros? Or that one bad call can ruin their kid’s life? It could be hardwired into them to care intensely about fairness in an umpire’s calls, but in some cases the umpires are kids, fifteen or sixteen, or they tend to make mistakes, sometimes several in a row. It doesn’t really help the kids to see their parents accuse the ump of being blind or being an idiot. Just let them play the game.

In this particular game the ump was an older guy with a big white mustache that you could see every time he took of his mask. He called strikes with a kind of song, which is what happens when you do it for many years, and he was unruffled by criticism, or he didn’t show it. There was this one Dragon parent, Roy, sitting down front, giving him a hard time, saying things like “You call that a strike?” or whatever, and the ump would barely look at him. Roy kept it up, too. He’d also criticize his own kid, Jason, who was a friend of my kid’s, and who was the pitcher for the Dragons for much of the game. Nothing Jason did was good enough for Roy. Roy took it personally that the Dragons were losing, though they were only losing by a couple of runs.

I don’t ride the ump, and I’ve come to leave my kid alone, except to say “Go Dragons!” every once in a while. Of course my own situation is colored by the fact that the more I’m involved with the game, or with how my kid is doing, the worse he seems to do, until it seems like opening my mouth is just about the worst thing that can happen to him, or to the team. It’s almost like, to get me to shut up, they tend to play worse the more I yell. Do the other parents experience this? I’m not sure. But I remember clearly, from both soccer and baseball, that even screaming generic, pro-Dragons messages didn’t ever translate into actual better play on the field; this was how I’d come to back off a little to begin with.

I told Roger about one season my kid was on a team that was coached by two highly competitive people, a lawyer and his assistant, and they were constantly harping at the poor umpires until you could see the umpires lose their patience. That whole season was like that, except for one night, when it rained right before the game and lots of parents of one team failed to show up; because it was an automatic win for the other team, they redistributed kids and just played a game that no longer counted. This game was the best of the season, because parents and coaches alike backed off and let the players work out what was fair, and what was foul. That was the night I realized that what I wanted was for the kids to play ball and have fun, and I could only have that by leaving them alone. It was hard to change my ways; I was one of the worst of the yellers. But I was trying.

Roger agreed with most of this, though he pointed out that, in our town at least, football was even worse. It was my claim that soccer was generally better than baseball in this regard, because the parents didn’t know the rules, or couldn’t see clearly enough to truly interfere with the refs. But he told a story about how a local coach was so hard on the ref, that she finally had to call the police and have him escorted off the field. I remembered hearing about an incident like that, I told him, and tried to recall what I did hear; maybe it was from our babysitter, Rachel, who spent whole summers being a ref at the park, and then coming over to our house to babysit our boys. Rachel had mentioned an incident, maybe two months ago, when she had to call the police and have a coach escorted off the field. It had upset her. She was fifteen, and here was this grown man, the coach, mercilessly badgering her and not backing down even when she told him very directly that she’d kick him out if he didn’t. She’d come over to our house shaking and upset, and we had to calm her down with tea and cookies.

That wasn’t the end of the story, according to Roger. The coach had stayed in the parking lot, because he was so mad and because he was unable to let go of the idea that the ref had, according to him, made some unfair call. Also, he was coach of the team, so he was finding it difficult, perhaps, to just walk away, even after he was escorted off the grounds by the police. But he’d made such a disturbance, there in the parking lot, that eventually the police called for backup to help him get on his way. And this time, a policeman arrived that had known him in high school, and didn’t like him, so they were a bit rough in arresting him and putting him into the car. His belligerence was just disrespectful enough, that that was all the excuse they needed, so they gave him a hard push into the police cruiser. I don’t want to make the police sound unnecessarily rough here, but it’s a small town, so the fact that this one guy knew the coach already was the issue that made people talk about it. Was he unnecessarily rough with him because of something that had happened in high school? The coach ended up breaking his nose in the incident, but worse, was asked not to coach the following year.

We were sitting there, directly behind the ump, and we could see that the ump in this league had a kind of wide strike zone; anything anywhere near the plate was a strike. They had a problem with kids just waiting for four balls, and taking the walk, and this happened often enough that the umps became generous in order to call more strikes. I never question the umps, though, and I wouldn’t even be slick enough to warn our kids about what was going on; I just try not to interfere in any way.  The question, of course, was whether this ump was calling more strikes for the Dragons than for the Pirates, which was Roy’s point, but I didn’t believe so; I know you can barely get through these games before some parent like Roy would say that the treatment was unequal. I sat up there in the bleachers getting steadily more aggravated by Roy’s badgering. I didn’t believe Roy was listening in to Roger’s story; he seemed to be intently watching every strike. Now, in a baseball story, you might expect the game to be close, or to rely on some disputed call, or to hinge on some outrageous umpire’s twisted view of reality. But that’s not going to happen here; it was a beautiful spring night; the ump was doing a good job, the best I could figure, and Roy was badgering him anyway. It didn’t help or hurt the Dragons. The Dragons were a couple of runs behind and staying that way.

I continued talking to Roger about the soccer incident, because I was trying to recall Rachel’s side of the story. I remembered her saying that there was a call that could be called controversial; it went against the son of the coach in question, a young kid who had a Mustang and made a lot of noise in the high school parking lot. She tried to be impartial, she said, but she called what she saw, and she felt like he was guilty. When the kid’s father started badgering her, she thought of giving in and changing the call, but instead the father and the son together made her even madder, and she refused to change the call, instead telling them to behave themselves or else. And from there it went downhill. When she’d told the story she’d had her doubts about her own calls and whether they were purely objective. But at that point she hadn’t even heard about the broken nose; it wasn’t part of her story. You’d think, in a town this small, that story would have got around like lightning, as it did with us adults. But she’s fifteen, and they live in an entirely different world. She cares about justice and fairness, and all that, but nobody tells her what just happened in the parking lot, if you know what I mean, or fills her in on what adults do to each other. It was possible she never even knew what happened to that coach, but I hope she didn’t feel guilty about it. As a ref, you call what you call. You don’t want people’s badgering to change your mind.

Now in the baseball game we were watching, as I was saying, there was no bottom-of-the-ninth moment, no tie game, no nail-biting tension.  This was fine with me, since I’m always afraid my kid will strike out, or let down the team, or do something he shouldn’t. Not to worry. The Dragons were still down by three, late in the game, and Roy was harping at the umpire steadily as he’d been, all game. Then, suddenly, though, a Pirates kid hit a foul ball, behind him, and it headed straight for Roy, who was standing behind the backstop. The ball smashed against the fence as Roy backed off, shocked; his fingers, which had been clutching the fence, almost got crushed by the ball. The ball fell to the ground on the other side of the fence as Roy backed off a little, and the ump called out, “Foul strike!” with his song. At that moment I noticed that the ump, mask off, white mustache and all, was actually smiling at Roy with a smile that said, basically, serves you right, I hope you learn your lesson for getting too close. And Roy did back off a little after that.

Roy came over and talked to us for a few minutes, as the game was ending; he’d apparently heard a little of the story of the coach, and knew more about some bad turn of events that happened to the coach in the short time he was being detained. But Roy never related the two events; he may have heard us talking about how parents and coaches should just back off, but it hadn’t occurred to him to do that himself. People like Roy and that coach take every play seriously, and have very strong feelings of injustice. Who knows what’ll happen with his poor kid.

2-2015