Grumble magazine

It all started with a portable CD player.

It was the Eighties.

That probably goes without saying.

It’s hard to believe that there was a time when the idea of putting a CD in some sort of device and then actually walking around while the music was playing was a big deal, but it was, and let me tell you, when I was sixteen, everyone wanted one of those things.  Young men were so desperate to have the option of actually selecting the track they were listening to while walking down the hall, that they did desperate, often bizarre things. Generic Mike  (yes, that was his name) bought CDs out the wazoo, without any way to play them, hoping that his mother would take pity on him and by him a player.  My best friend Justin got a job at the local grocery store to support his music-related lust. I mean, seriously, the boy wore a gray jersey every day and developed film. It was mortifying. But we were young, and we were boys, and we needed to have the option of walking around the hallways of high school with our own personal soundtrack playing in our heads. We all needed portable CD players, and nobody had one.

No one except Greg.

How he got one, I’m not really sure. I could hazard a guess, but I have a feeling that Greg would probably leave that detail in the past. Anyway, it doesn’t matter.  The point was that he had one, and none of the rest of us did. The thing was, and this is not an insignificant detail: when you own a portable CD player, you had to actually go out and buy CDs.   No one would invent a CD burner for another ten years. If you had a CD player, you actually had to go out and buy them, and since Greg had just gotten a CD player, he didn’t have any.  The question was, where to begin?

I’m not sure what the selection process was exactly, but what I can tell you, what I remember with distinct clarity, is that the first CD Greg ever came to school with was the 1987 Rush album “Hold Your Fire”.  For those of you aren’t familiar with Rush, they are either a seminal seventies progressive rock band, or a close second to the works of Yoko Ono, depending on your point of view. “Hold Your Fire” had come out the previous year, and Greg had heard Rush before, so what the hell.  I’ve been told by those that would know that it was one of the Canadian rock trio’s best.  Greg listened to every day for a year, or maybe it was a month, or possibly a week.  After that, he bought another Rush CD, and a third, and then a fourth. You get the idea.

Another funny thing about the Eighties: there was no Internet back then. The standard resource of thoroughly useless knowledge was the American teenager. Greg was that teenager. He became obsessed overnight. He went and read absolutely everything he could find about Rush. He bought a bass, just like Geddy Lee. He studied their lyric sheets like they were the Torah. He talked about Rush incessantly and converted all of our friends. And of course, he went and discovered absolutely every Rush album ever made, quickly acquiring them all on CD. He bought every one, except a little LP called “Rush Through Time”.

What had happened to “Rush Through Time”, Greg didn’t know. It had never been released on CD and was long since out of print. We had never heard of a record going out of print, so it was very mysterious.  Greg had heard a story that it was some sort of concept album about time travel. He was very impressed by this.

Somewhere in here Greg was relating to me one of his Rush inspired dreams when the subject of my opinion of Rush came up. Greg asked me in a casual sort of way which Rush album was my favorite, suspecting, I think, that I would casually name drop “Power Windows” or “Fly By Night” and then move on.

“I don’t like Rush,” I said, somewhat casually. Truth be told, I had never even heard Rush. I’m not sure that I ever have to this day, beyond a snippet or two on the radio. I hadn’t heard them, but I had been listening to Greg talk about them for weeks, and I was sick of them already. This shocked Greg. It didn’t compute.  He wasn’t going to take this lying down.

With the help of my friends, Greg quickly went about the business of trying to get me to accept Alex Lifeson as my personal savior, and they leaned on me hard. I wouldn’t have it. I’d had a girlfriend who was born again, and if she couldn’t get me to accept God in the form of Jesus, I wasn’t going to accept it in the form of a prog-rock band.  You can trust me when I say she had much larger breasts than Greg did. It wasn’t happening. I kept insisting I hated them, although in truth I probably couldn’t have picked out a Rush song if my life depended on it. Tension increased on both sides, and lines were drawn.

I was the first one to escalate the incident, which I did by forming a non-Rush rock band. All of our mutual friends joined, everyone except Greg, whose bass guitar sat in his room collecting dust. Instead, we recruited a kid from a neighboring town who was just as big a Rush fan as Greg was.

Greg retaliated by organizing our gang to go see Rush on tour. Everyone went except me. I was told by absolutely everyone that the concert was awesome. It was a cold winter night, and my buddy Justin reported that from the outside on every single window you could read the word “Rush” written backwards in the steam created by the heat of the roaring crowd. Even Generic Mike went, which was strange, because by that point he had moved on to industrial music. Greg talked about the concert talked for two days. By Wednesday, I knew the order that all the songs were played in, including the drum solo, even though I couldn’t have recognized any of the songs if my life depended on it.

As the war of extended power trio instrumentals escalated, my non-Rush band began playing a series of atrocious covers at parties around town. The age of alternative rock was upon us and we had decided to go with it. Unfortunately, just as I could see the dawn coming through the Power Windows, the Rush-loving members of my non-Rush band got hold of me. There was a meeting, and I was informed that if I did not acknowledge the lyrical genius of Neil Peart, then I was out.

I didn’t know what to do, so I stalled for time. “I really just don’t know Rush,” I admitted. It was the truth, but it sounded like a lie. “Let me just listen to them, O.K.?” This seemed to satisfy them, at least for the moment. I could see myself rehearsing an off-key rendition of “Tom Sawyer” in a matter of days. I prepared for the worst, when, incredibly, at the last hour I was saved. Incredibly enough, I was saved by Greg, and “Rush Through Time”.

Somewhere in an unimportant study hall, Greg began talking to the kid behind him. He began rifling through his standard Rush speech, underlying the necessity of etching Geddy Lee’s enormous honker onto some sort of Canadian equivalent of Mount Rushmore.  The young man was apparently interested. He seemed to think that maybe his older brother had a few Rush albums, and maybe he would give them a listen. Greg welcomed him into the Brotherhood of the 2112, and told him the story of the great lost Rush album, “Rush Through Time”. I wasn’t there, but I’d like to think that Greg took a moment to point out what a clever play on words the title was. What I do know, what I can remember beyond any doubt, is that somehow Greg made an impression on him. I know this, because I remember what the nameless young man said when he came back to school the next day.

“I have that album,” he told Greg casually. “You know, ‘Rush Through Time’. I have it.”

That day at lunch, Greg had achieved the calm and vigor that Moses would have had if he had finally seen the promised land and God told him that he could actually go into Israel after all and everything would be OK.  “All this time I’d been looking,” he said calmly, “and the answer had been behind him in study hall.” The young man would be returning with the album the next day, and at last Greg’s collection would be complete. That day at the lunch table he wielded a smile that could have run for Congress.

At last the record arrived, and I’d like to think that Greg, at last, took the record in his hands. His quest was complete. That was when he flipped the record over.

In researching this little portion of my past I went on the Internet and found a web page that mentioned “Rush Through Time”. The cover was a picture of three men with long hair playing onstage under badly-focused lights. The page I read supplied the following quote about the LP from drummer Neil Peart:

“Released by the German company entirely without our knowledge or consent (not that they need it), and certainly contains nothing of any interest – not even the cover, and certainly not that title. We wouldn’t do that. Have you noticed that everyone puns with our name except us?”

Oddly enough, it had never occurred to any of us that “Rush Through Time” was a compellation album. It was a “Best of”, a “Greatest Hits”, and nothing more. Why none of us realized this I will never know. We didn’t have the Internet then; we couldn’t look these things up. As Greg pointed out, “I could have made my own version of it, many times over, in better fidelity, using my portable CD player.”

I have to report that no one laughed harder at this little incident then Greg. I never had to learn to play “Tom Sawyer”, which was probably for the best. Greg still bought “Rush Through Time” off of the kid from study hall, and Rush released a live album from the tour that he saw. “A Show of Hands” featured the drum solo that I heard so much about and debuted on the Billboard charts at number one, vindicating Greg’s opinion in the eyes of the masses.

Still, none of us were all that surprised when we saw Greg the following week. The next Monday, Greg came to school dressed all in black. He’d spent the weekend with a pretty Goth girl we knew, and he’d shaved half his head. He had Bauhaus in his portable CD player.

 
David McLain is the author of The Life of a Thief, available from All Things That Matter Press.

I was brushing my teeth, and didn’t hear the phone ring over the rush of the water. I did hear my husband’s voice, but I thought he was talking to the cats. When I came into the bedroom, I was somewhat surprised to see him on the phone, seeing as it was 11:30 at night. Only somewhat surprised, though—he has family two time zones away who occasionally call us at odd hours.

And then it became clear he was not talking to his family. “Yeah, I bet,” he said sarcastically. “No, I don’t think so. I don’t believe you for a minute, I do not give you permission to come here tomorrow—got that?—and I’m not an American citizen, so I couldn’t accept it anyway.” He leaned over and slammed the receiver down (one of the few advantages to landline phones).

“What was that?” I asked.

Richard rolled his eyes. “Some scam artist. We were randomly selected in some lottery somewhere, and we’ve won a prize, and he wants to come over and deliver it tomorrow. Uh-huh.”

The phone rang again.

Richard made no move to pick it up, apparently wanting it to go to the machine. Which was probably the right way to handle it. I don’t know quite what got into me.

I plucked the receiver off the stand and said “Yes?” in an unfriendly manner.

“Mrs. Soapsuds?” said a male voice, speaking in an accent so thick I could hardly make out the words.

“Yes?” I said.

“Mrs. Soapsuds, I was just speaking with your husband. Mrs. Soapsuds, you have been selected as the winner in a drawing in Las Vegas, Nevada…”

“Yeah, right,” I said.

“… it is the truth, Mrs. Soapsuds. I must come to your house tomorrow to deliver…”

“If anyone comes to this house tomorrow, I will call the police,” I said.

“So will I,” the voice said.

“Excuse me?”

“I too will call the police. I will bring the police too.” With this left-hand turn into the Twilight Zone, I stopped feeling angry and threatened, and just felt amused. I decided to have some fun. “It is very important that I deliver you your package. This is no scam. It is my job. I must at least tell you the details of what you have won…”

“Okay,” I said, getting out a pen and settling in, “tell me some details. And I’ll check them out on the internet and see if you’re telling the truth. What’s your name?”

“My name?”

“Yes, your name.”

“My name, it is John Washington.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. I wrote it down. “Where are you calling from, John Washington?”

“Las Vegas. Las Vegas in Nevada.”

“What company do you work for in Nevada, John Washington?”

“I work for UPS Delivery Service. In Florida.”

“Now you’re telling me you’re calling from Florida?”

“No, company headquarters is in Florida.” (It isn’t, in case you’re wondering. I checked.)

“And is it the customary practice of UPS in Florida to conduct business at nearly midnight?”

“No, no, I am calling you because it is very important that you have won this prize. I am sorry to be disturbing you and your husband and interrupting your time this evening, but—”

I interrupted him. “What number are you calling from?”

“856,” he said. (Which isn’t a Nevada number, in case you’re wondering. I checked.) “XXX. YYY.”

I waited. “Is there another number on the end of that, John Washington, or do Nevada numbers only have nine digits?”

“856-XXX-YYY-zero.”

“Had to think hard to come up with that, didn’t you, John Washington?” I slid the piece of paper over to Richard, who got out his cell phone and dialed it. “You’re not very good at making all this up, John Wash—”

He interrupted me. “Listen. Listen, I need to ask you questions. May I ask you questions?”

That startled me into almost a laugh. “No, you can’t ask me questions—you called my phone! Twice! I’ll ask the questions. Who sent me the package?”

That time I didn’t quite understand him. “My brother in Pasadena?” I repeated.

“No, the government of Pasadena. Listen—”

“To which address will you be delivering this package tomorrow? What’s the address on the package, John Washington?”

Again, I didn’t completely understand him, but I got the part of the sentence where he said his colleague would look it up. “Now I ask questions. I have to ask questions or I am not doing my job. You talk too much. You let me ask you questions now.”

In the background, I could hear Richard apologizing for waking some guy in New Jersey.

“Okay,” I said, wanting to keep John Washington on the phone a moment or two longer. “Ask me a question. And then I’ll decide if I want to answer it.”

“Are you an American citizen?”

“Are you?”

Silence.

“Where were you born, John Washington?”

A pause. “Where was I born? Brooklyn. I was born in Brooklyn.”

“Uh-huh,” I said.

“Listen to me, this is very important. Are you an American citizen?”

“I’ll tell you that when you tell me where you’re going to deliver the package tomorrow.”

“We are looking it up now.”

“That’s a real slow internet connection, isn’t it, John Washington?”

“I am nearby. I am staying in Holiday Inn in your town.”

“A Holiday Inn in my town? What town is that?” He didn’t answer. “What’s the weather like in my town right now, John Washington? What does it look like outside the Holiday Inn you’re staying at? And I thought you were calling from Nevada?”

Richard closed his phone with a click. “This is the number of an old man in New Jersey,” he told me gleefully.

“Did you hear that, John Washington?” I asked the phone. “We just called the number you gave us, and it wasn’t your number at all. So I guess you don’t work for UPS, do you? I guess that means you’re a liar, doesn’t it, John Washington? You’re a liar and a scam artist. And I bet you have a really tiny dick, don’t you? You do have a really tiny little dick. Because if you were a real man, you’d have a real job, instead of trying to make money calling people in the middle of the night.”

“Listen, bitch—” he began.

“‘Listen, bitch?’” I repeated, grinning. “Richard, he just called me a bitch! I must have made him angry! Did I make oo angwy?” I crooned into the phone. “Is oo all angwy now? You’re not used to being talked to that way, are you? You and your teeny-weeny widdle dick.”

Richard was at this point laughing so hard I thought he was going to sprain something. On the phone, John Washington said something so incoherently furious I couldn’t follow it. When invited to repeat himself, he gave me to understand that he would shut my filthy mouth for me.

“A threat!” I said, delighted. “Oh, that’s fantastic. Well done.” At this point, we belatedly realized it would be a good plan to record this, so Richard hurried downstairs to see if he could make the answering machine do it. I tried to get our caller to repeat himself. “Let’s go through this again, John Washington. You say you work for UPS and you’re calling me from Las Vegas, Nevada?” No answer. “Oh, come on, John Washington. Aren’t you there any more? You didn’t just let me win, did you, John Washington?”

“I think you won, babe,” Richard called up the stairs. “I think he hung up.” He came back to the bedroom and stood looking down at me. “You have the biggest shit-eating grin on your face,” he observed.

I primly replaced the receiver. “I don’t remember the last time I had that much fun,” I said. “I hope he calls back.”

He didn’t. (Because I won.) So I didn’t get the opportunity to tell him how much I had enjoyed his call. Hence this article.  If you’re reading, John Washington, I want you to know I appreciated the entertainment… and you should look into some other line of work, because you’re not smart enough to be a phone phisher.

Twitter user “rybla” started off innocently enough. Excited about having bought tickets to see musician Mike Doughty, he quoted “Screenwriter’s Blues”, a song from Doughty’s previous band, Soul Coughing, saying he was going to a venue to see Doughty’s name “five feet long and luminous”.

He probably wasn’t expecting Doughty to reply, or certainly not to reply with, “I hate that song.” And soon thereafter, a loud request: “Soul Coughing fans: please DROP IT. I am NOT THAT GUY ANYMORE. If you must cling to it, please DON’T BOTHER ME WITH SOUL COUGHING SHIT.”

It’s hard to blame rybla for his enthusiasm, and he was, after all, tweeting his enthusiasm for seeing Mike Doughty’s show, not carrying a torch for a vanished band. But equally, it’s hard to blame artists like Doughty if they’re touchy about living under the shadow of an artistic past.

Soul Coughing was a widely-acclaimed and popular alternative band from the mid-90s, their music an eclectic mix of rock, hip-hop, jazz, and avant-garde. They made a splash with songs like “Super Bon Bon”, and got a lot of modern-rock airplay, but split acrimoniously in 2000. Frontman Mike Doughty promptly took up his solo career, but his solo music shifted to a stripped-down, singer-songerwriter vein. The new material also found both critical and commercial success, and for good reason — but fans coming to his new songs and expecting “Soul Coughing 2.0″ were often disappointed.

Doughty is far from the only artist, in whatever medium, to have his or her older, popular material loom large over the current work. When the Kinks played my hometown in 1989, they plowed through “You Really Got Me” at a hyperspeed tempo, seemingly eager to get that obligatory chestnut out of the way — and that was twenty years ago; one can only imagine Ray Davies’ opinion of the tune now. When a group like the Rolling Stones says, “Here’s a track off the new album,” it’s a signal to the crowd that they’re about to be bored for the next three and a half minutes. It makes one understand why J.D. Salinger retreated from the public eye and stopped publishing. In the Barenaked Ladies tune “Box Set”, the protagonist, a faded pop star, laments:

But now it seems all that people want
is what I used to be
and every time I try to do something new
all they want is 1973

For too many of Mike Doughty’s fans, all they want is 1996. Fans are drawn to an artist because of a certain style; when that style evolves, fans don’t always follow. The Byrds got famous for their folk-rock sound; when they veered country, the fans dropped away. U2 are one of the few bands whose audience has stayed strong despite changes in style, and even then, their electropop stylings on Zooropa and Pop led to weaker album sales; when someone describes “the U2 sound”, they mean the anthemic crackle of the Unforgettable Fire days, not “Beautiful Day”. Doughty’s current output is thoughtful and catchy, but the Soul Coughing material may well remain his “signature style” in the popular eye. Like it or not — and clearly he doesn’t — the Soul Coughing tunes loom five feet long and luminous.

Any artist with such a past has to come to terms with it, one way or another. For some, like the Kinks, it’s to bite one’s tongue and plow on. For others, like Cat Stevens, it’s a wholesale rejection. For many, it’s somewhere in between; even Doughty still plays a Soul Coughing tune or two nowadays. The recent Twitter exchange, however, shows that to wrestle with one’s body of creative work can be easier than it looks. While Doughty’s solo material has done well and he regularly plays midsize theaters and similar venues, his current work still doesn’t have the recognition and sales that his Soul Coughing material did; this undoubtedly contributes to his discomfort with his past. There may also be a deeper motive behind his lashing out; during his Soul Coughing days, Doughty was a drug addict, and that may color his opinion of his musical output during that time. Nowadays, hooked on nothing but coffee, he clearly doesn’t look upon the late 90s with happy memories.

Perhaps it was too much coffee that made him forget that the immediacy of the Internet doesn’t always work in one’s favor, and that it can be all too easy to click “Send”. Criticizing a fan is never smart, especially if that fan is lauding your older material and not saying it’s better than your current output. As of right now, “rybla” seems to have deleted or renamed his Twitter account, so we can only see Doughty’s half of the conclusion of their conversation: “I apologize”.

And the next day, remorse: “I have a most acute emotional hangover.”

In the fall semester of 1989, a year so far back that its details have become hazy, a young man, almost the exact same age as myself, sat in an English class staring at me with a mix of bewilderment and disbelief. “Moses,” as I’ll call him, had spent the better part of five minutes explaining to me that he had rented a bus to attend a Billy Joel concert, and he was hoping that I would buy a seat on it and go to the show with him. I am using the words “explaining” and “asking” somewhat charitably. In truth, he had been running under the assumption that I was already on board with this plan and would be perfectly willing to go on this little excursion with him. I had been telling him that there was no way I was going to go. To a more objective eye, it wasn’t difficult to see why. On the day in question, and I recall this quite vividly, I was covered from head to toe in black, including black nail polish and black Velvet Underground T-shirt that was lovingly silk-screened with the original S-and-M themed paperback that the band took their name from.

I’ve got a lot of fond memories of that shirt.

We had been friends once; maybe we still were. I can recall vividly seeing “Stand By Me” in the theater with him, shortly after my buddy Joey had celebrated our forthcoming entrance to high school by swallowing his father’s gun. The event had left quite an impact on me, and we had been fairly close for the years after that.
We played chess together (which he was better at), performed in plays together, and spent time at each others’ houses before eventually growing apart, for reasons I can’t recall for the life of me. The incident with the concert was one of several altercations between the two of us that occurred during our senior year, and reflected a growing rift between us, one which I don’t think either one of us had dwelled on before then. The concert represented, for Moses, I think, his semi-annual attempt to run with the absurdly normal high school Alpha Dogs, just as my VU t-shirt embodied a defiant shout that I didn’t care if the whole world thought I was a freak. I remember having to explain that I liked other kinds of music, and that yes, the Velvet Underground was a band. He didn’t really seemed to believe this. It was a little like talking to the parents in some absurdly over-simplistic teenage movie. I was surprised that he didn’t use the phrase “kids today.”

After that there was an a cappella choir that I refused to join, and a blow-up involving a scene from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern that I had forgotten to memorize. By the end of the year I had been treated to a constant stream of reports from mutual friends that he absolutely hated me. When we headed in separate directions, I wasn’t particularly hurt or surprised that I didn’t hear from him the following year. In fact, I didn’t hear for nineteen years. It was only this Monday that he finally broke our decades-old silence.

I think it would be fair to admit that in the nineteen years since I’d seen Moses, the world had absolutely beaten me. My current career as the most over-educated factory worker is frankly embarrassing, and my writing career capsized in the wake of the responsibilities of parenthood. It is often difficult to talk to old friends these days, as questions like “What are you doing?” can be difficult to answer. This does not have any particular baring on Moses’s email, but it gave me reason to reflect when I read he had to say.

It turns out that Moses Sussman is now a self-help guru.

His initial letter, written with all the artificial warmth and friendliness of a Mitt Romney speech, contained absolutely no inquiry into how I was, how I was doing, what I had done with the past two decades, or if in fact I was still alive. What it discussed, and at great length, was a book which Mr. Sussman had just written. The book was a self-help manual, which for the sake of anonymity I’ll call “You Are The Hero!” Moses was hoping that I would buy it. Specifically, he was hoping I would by it on August 4th from Amazon.com. He also asked if I could get a few of my friends to buy it too. He said that he was asking more or less everybody he had ever met in his entire life to buy the book on the same day, so that the combined force of our sales would move it to the top of the Amazon and New York Times best-seller lists. He also added that he was planning the whole event as a fundraiser for a children’s hospital in Miami. He would, depending on how well the book sold, be donating anywhere from 25% to 100% of the royalties to the hospital. If it did moderately well, it would be twenty-five percent. If it made the best-seller list, he would give it all away. The letter then showed me several quotes from people who liked the book and assured me that I would find it “fun” and “profound.” There was also a Facebook group that I could join for “fans” of the book and a website I could look at, if I so desired.

On the surface, this sounds fairly innocuous, but I was more than a little offended by this letter, for several reasons.

In the first place, as a writer, the idea of “buying” your way onto the New York Times best-seller list strikes me as cheating. The point of the list is to reflect what people are actually interested in. It’s not a test of how willing your friends and family are to help you out. Furthermore, Moses’s book was being published by what appeared to be a vanity press. As such, it probably isn’t eligible for the New York Times list. Saying he would donate 100% of his royalties to a good cause if he ended up on the New York Times list was promising something couldn’t deliver on.

In the second place, as a fundraiser, this particular campaign wasn’t effective. Twenty-five percent of the royalties of a book (which was, by far the likeliest scenario) would be approximately 2% of the overall cost, less if I ended up paying for shipping and handling. The real point in referring to it as a fundraiser, I think, was to make it sound like buying the book is a worthwhile thing to do. In fact, I have received a few other messages from old friends, encouraging me to “help raise money for cancer.” Most of these also referred to it as “fun” and “profound” which suggested they were written by Moses himself.

In the third place I haven’t heard from this man for twenty years, and sending me a piece of spam after that long is crass. This is someone who really didn’t like me, and in his own way had made that clear. Why in God’s name should I be buying his book now?

And in the fourth place, it‘s a self-help book. I would like to think, as a lover of books, that I am open to reading almost any kind of material that has been printed on paper, but so help me God, I think I would rather die. In my house the phrase “Tuesdays With Morrie” is considered obscene. Not only that, but it seems to me that the idea of getting your friends to buy your way onto the Best-Seller List seems somewhat hypocritical in light of the overall theme of those sorts of books. Isn’t the point of those things usually that you can do anything you want if you set your mind to it? It didn’t really seem to gel.

I did a little digging on what had happened to my old friend. He appeared to be the founder of his own business, and had previously written another self-help book, one that was so badly titled it almost seemed like a parody. His credentials for this career seemed to involve a Bachelor’s Degree from Brandeis University, but not much else. As far as I could tell, he seemed to be working some sort of lecture circuit, the sort of place where the title “Best-Selling Author” would probably have a nice ring to it. I couldn’t say how much money he was making doing this, but he was living in a section of Long Island I probably couldn’t afford.

One of the advantages to failure, one of the distinct few, is that you can tell more or less everyone you’ve ever met to go screw. Poverty does not encourage a lot of calls from old friends. I sent my old friend a response, outlining all my objections. His answer surprised me: he agreed with most of what I said. He acknowledged that his letter was impersonal, and apologized. He recalled that we had a falling out and expressed regret about that. He also admitted that only a small percentage of the cost would go to the hospital. He said that he was aware that he would probably not make the New York Times list, but added that he didn’t care. It was just a carrot to get people to buy the book, which he still wanted me to do. He didn’t think there was anything wrong with the idea of having people buy the book just so he could get on the list. He added that he knew several people who had simply bought several thousand copies of their own book to get on the list and he thought that this was better. In short, everybody cheats, so why shouldn’t he? This led me to conclude that there was another thing about this whole business I didn’t like — it would probably work. Don’t get me wrong; I doubt that his book will end up on the best-seller list. In fact, I doubt that was ever really the point. It will however, succeed in stroking Moses’ ego. I finished writing a book this year. There are precisely eleven copies in existence. Every time one of those copies gets read, I get a kick out of it. I can imagine it would be no less so if I sold one thousand. I must admit that if one thousand people all bought Moses’ on the same day, it might, say, make it onto Amazon’s list of best-sellers in the “self-help” section, which would probably give him enough excuse to add the phrase “best-selling author” to the front of his name when he’s out talking to businessmen in Alabama or old ladies on Long Island or where ever it is that self-help gurus go to. It makes me wonder: is he right? When you write a book, does it really matter why people buy it? Is there a difference between success and commerce?

I walked through my local Barnes and Noble with my kids the other day, and the answer seemed to be no. Walking around the children‘s department, it looked more like a toy store. Half the books aimed at my son’s age seem to be tied in to a Pixar movie. The heavily promoted books in young adult literature seem to largely consist of washed-down versions of more successful books like Twilight and the Harry Potter novels. The adults section is better, but only marginally so. The nonfiction section of the New York Times best-seller list is filled with topical biographies and political treaties that are destined to come and go in a heartbeat. I don’t think any of these books were published on their merits, nor is their success a reflection of their worth. I buy my kid Cars books because he likes the movie, and the latest generation of Wizard and Vampire novels are published for the sake of putting a story in between a familiar-looking cover. The quickly-written Michael Jackson biography that ran up and down the nonfiction charts last week, well, that probably wasn’t up there for its insightfulness. I would bet that all of these volumes are destined for the remainder bin, equally on their way to being forgotten. Does it really matter that Moses Sussman doesn’t have any real strategy for selling books beyond getting his old roommates and friends to them? Why shouldn’t he get a piece of the action?

I can’t help but wonder if maybe the communists had it right. I can’t believe the communists would let a novelization of an animated Star Wars movie qualify as a book. They didn’t have any sense of humor about that sort of thing. Tolstoy would have been at the front of the store, instead of printed in a caricature on the side of the plastic bags that middle-class Americans use to carry home their copies of US Weekly. I wonder if anyone had ever put a Tolstoy novel into the Tolstoy bag. I suppose it’s possible.

Last night I told my wife this story. “Was this guy rich?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I admitted. “He was rich. His father was one of the richest people in town. Their house was enormous.”

Megan nodded. “It seems like a rich guy thing to do.”

I thought about the eleven copies of my book. I thought about the way I felt the first time someone told me they finished it, and that they liked it. It was my wife’s best friend; she’d finished it in something like three days. I took it to be a good sign.

This story ends quietly, without any fanfare. I didn’t buy the book. I won’t be buying the Sunday New York Times, so I can avoid the list. I just want to avoid the whole situation. In the last email I sent him, I reminded Moses of the story of the bus trip to Billy Joel. “I had forgotten about that,” he said. “There was a blizzard. Everybody except one person canceled. I don‘t even remember who it was.”

Best laid plans, I guess. Best laid plans.

“Bean curd.”  “Wheat gluten.” “Mycoprotein.”  The biggest obstacle that meat substitutes face may be their names; they sound like something scraped off of a shoe, or from a sci-fi B-movie.  That’s a shame, since when it comes to taste and texture, they’ve come a long ways.  What they need is a good food euphemism, just as how we call it “veal” instead of “baby cow”.

Meatlessness, as any vegetarian activist will tell you, has its advantages.  I’m an omnivore but I cook with them all the time, for a number of reasons, and not just because my wife doesn’t eat meat or poultry.  They’re lower in fat and other bad-for-you ingredients; you’re never going to get salmonella or trichinosis from an undercooked grain of wheat; raising animals for food uses a lot more natural resources than growing produce.

Still, they face an uphill battle to win over the hearts, minds and taste buds of the American consumer.  A notable episode of Everybody Loves Raymond featured Ray’s mother cooking up a tofu turkey for Thanksgiving.  Does Tofurky taste like a real turkey?  I haven’t had it, but I’m going to wager probably not.  However, judging by the reactions of the characters on the show, you’d have thought they were eating something made of insulating caulk and sewer waste.

Why this bad reputation?  Some of it is undoubtedly simple ignorance or prejudice, but some it may be the legacy of meatless products from years past.  My first experience with a soy burger was in the late 80s, when visiting my friend Dave, then a vegetarian.  The patty was indeed disc-shaped and brown, but that’s about where its resemblance to a “hamburger” ended, since the thing tasted nothing at all like ground beef, nor indeed like anything you’d want to eat.  In the two decades since, the food companies have figured out that what consumers want is not so much a patty that tastes like beef, but a patty that can be eaten on a bun with lettuce and tomato and that tastes good.  Gardenburgers are now popular and common enough that you can get them on your sandwich at Subway, and for good reason: they’re good.  Do they taste like beef?  Nope.  Not even close.  But you don’t care.

Meanwhile, other meat substitutes have made equal strides, be that following Gardenburger’s route, or in simulating the real thing. They’ve been taking vegetables, and using them to fool your mouth and your taste buds. “Fooling it with what?”, you may ask.

Talk about meat substitutes, and many minds leap to “tofu”.  And hey, tofu’s fine, but it’s not the best gateway drug for the carnivore near you; its popularity as a meat substitute stems from being the easiest meat subtitute you could make before the era of modern food science.  Tofu’s spongy nature means it absorbs flavors well, so when diced up small, as in Chinese food, it tastes like the sauce it’s sitting in, while giving you the taste of the protein that you’d expect from the “missing” meat.  But its innate taste is bland, making it really lousy when you’re trying to simulate a big slap of meat, like a burger.  Worse, its texture is somewhere between spongy, mushy and crumbly, which is nothing at all like that of meat.  When diced up small and fried (again, as in Chinese cooking), it toughens up and becomes convincingly meat-like, but served in a big hunk, it doesn’t give your teeth anything to gnaw on.

For that, you want wheat gluten.  Don’t worry about the spooky scientific-sounding name; the gluten is just the part of the wheat grain that gives bread its spongy, chewy texture, and you don’t need any weird modern process to extract it – you just add water to wheat flour and strain it appropriately.  Like tofu, wheat gluten (sometimes called “wheatmeat” or by its Japanese name, “seitan”) has a bland taste faintly reminiscent of (surprise) bread.  It’s often lower in protein than tofu, making it a weaker option nutritionally, but when cooked, it gets a rubbery, chewy texture like a cooked chicken breast.

So which to use, soy or wheat?  For many manufacturers of fake meats, the answer is “both”.  The right blend of the two gives you the protein of one and the chewiness of the other.  What about taste?  With neither soybeans nor wheat gluten tasting much like anything, that can be trickier.  Picking the right meatless dish, then, becomes critical.  There are several good brands of “crumbles”, which you use like ground beef in, say, chili.  These are convincing enough that a friend made a chili with one and said nothing to her husband, who didn’t notice.  Admittedly, their low-fat nature means they don’t have as many of the tasty oils you may want in your crumbled ground beef; for some folks that low-fat angle is a positive, but I throw in a tablespoon or so of oil when I’m browning the “beef” to cover for this.  You’re not going to get the gristly nature of ground beef, though, so think of the vegetarian version as being ground lean beef, and work from there.

Sausages, hot dogs, and the like make the switch to meatlessness quite well.  That’s because your basic wurst is crappy meat, filler, and spices; swap out the right vegetables for the former and you lose little in the process, because it’s the spices you’re tasting anyway.  As with the “crumble”, the meatless wursts won’t be as greasy, so slather on a little canola if that bothers you.  However, I’ve found that once I cover a Morningstar Farms bratwurst in grilled onions and peppers, I don’t need to bother.

Quorn is a more recent member of the meatless brigade, popular in Europe and now more heavily marketed in the States.  Quorn is made from mycoprotein – that is, protein derived from fungus.  If that sounds gross at first, remember that mushrooms, blue cheese, and yeast are all tasty parts of your diet.  Here’s the biggest surprise: Quorn tastes nothing at all like fungus.  Quorn looks nothing at all like fungus.  Quorn doesn’t even have the texture of, say, a mushroom.  There’s some serious food-science voodoo at work here, but I don’t mind, because it’s darned convincing.  The Quorn chicken “cutlets” really look and taste like chicken, have the right texture (admittedly on the soft side, more like a fast-food cutlet than one from your butcher), and even have the stringy striations you expect from real meat.  I’m pretty convinced that were I to cut it into strips, so that you wouldn’t notice the softness of the “chicken”, I could serve it to guests without anyone catching wise.

Whether you have a vegetarian coming over for the cookout, are trying to eat better, or are perhaps a little troubled by the meat industry, try giving one of these products a spot on your grill this summer. Will it convince you 100%? Maybe not, but I think you’ll find it’s a lot better than you’d imagined, and certainly a lot better than the Raymond writers feared. Cows, chickens and pigs will thank you, and if we’ve learned anything from Babe and Charlotte’s Web, that’s never a bad thing.

After eighteen years of butchering the ambulatory process, the Marine Corps taught me the proper way to walk.  Apparently, my natural gait was an erroneous mess.  No more complicated, thought-provoking predicaments.  Instead, I learned to listen to the cadence, then lean back and strut.

In the rank and file of eighty other boot camp recruits, each of us clean-shaven and dressed in the uniform of the day, I was invisible and outside of myself.  I chose a path of ambiguity, and merged into the middle of pack where my mistakes went largely unnoticed which, in turn, allowed me to totally tune out.  My body marched around in circles on the black macadam parade deck for eight hours under the hot September sun, but my mind ran wild.

The drill instructors told us that we would be eaten by alligators should any of us dare an escape.  In my head, I was out there, far out into the swamps that surrounded Parris Island, into the cat-tails and reeds, where the sand fleas breed and the cottonmouth is king.  The alligators would let me pass.  Drenched in sweat and driving with the cadence, I stomped across the water’s surface to freedom.

Into the fourth week, I had thoroughly convinced myself that I was indeed wholly transparent, and even came to believe that the suppers were tasty.  One evening, after a meal of meatloaf and mashed potatoes, I languidly walked out of the chow hall.  Tall and nourished, I stood with my hands at my hips and reveled in the splendor of the sunset—a rich crimson with high azure clouds tinged at the tips with purple.  “Red sky at night,” I mused until a drill instructor interrupted me.

What are you doing, son?!?  Cover your head.  Now, now, now!  Stand at attention!”

I obediently locked my body and tried to remove the cap from the hip pocket of my trousers, but the drill instructor lacked patience and empathy.

“Stop.  Stop!  Right now.  Where on earth do you think you are?  You must have lost your dad-gummed mind, son!  Where is your platoon?  Who do you belong to!?!”

When I meekly informed him that his platoon was my platoon, that I, in fact, belonged to him, I believe he lost his mind.  He came within an inch of my face and informed me that I must be mistaken, because I was the largest pile of human excrement he had ever seen, and he was certain to have remembered meeting the likes of me.  When I corrected him, that we had indeed crossed paths, he theorized that I must have caused my mother great dystocia; me being the greatest turd ever recorded, and my mother knowing she had the option to have aborted me.  He then promised not to separate my skull from my body and bathe in my blood, if I hurried up and rejoined the platoon.  However, this was all contingent upon my promise to march behind the ranks, alone and out of step with my hand atop my head for all to see.

For the next couple of weeks, Sergeant Smith made it a point to get to know me better, and I, in turn, stayed focused and well within my cranial faculties.  He became quite fond of me, and my name rolled easily off his tongue when the opportunity arose.  At his suggestion, I assumed the role of garbage man, the G.I. recruit, the one to call upon when the trash filled to the brim.  He was determined to teach me the Marine Corps way.

A select few of our platoon, the fuck-ups, myself included, were to begin working on the kitchen detail at the mess hall, but arrived hours early with nothing to be done and no one to accept responsibility for our lot.  So we sat around awaiting orders, the drill instructor and his recruits sitting at a cluster of tables in silence, saying nothing, sitting stock still and staring off into the distance.  He sat at an adjacent table a little way off.  At first he was rigid, straight, a pillar of grit.  However, as each minute passed, he began to slouch, and before long he was bobbing his head while weaving in and out of consciousness.  He fought valiantly but lost in the end.  After nearly face-planting into the table top, he started up with a look of terror upon his face.  I was smiling when our eyes met, and he flashed me his teeth like a dog through a chain link fence.

Did I have him right where I wanted him?  In a sense, I suppose I did.  If I was truly the stool sample he thought me to be, then I would have high-tailed to the senior drill instructor and stated that I felt Sergeant Smith was a poor leader because falling asleep while on watch was, in certain circumstances, a sure way to get an entire platoon killed.  But we weren’t at war, and the greatest danger imposed by the situation was Smith flattening his own nose.  Snoozing was, indeed, a dereliction of duty, a reprehensible offense.  But I said nothing, because I knew the repercussions would be heavier than cannon fire.  He took a short nap and awoke refreshed; could I fault him for that?

Our eye contact meant an agreement; we each reached an accord to keep quiet.  He chose another of my fellows to persecute, but I remained on as the G.I. recruit.  I wouldn’t have given up that job for any other, because once out of sight, I was on my own.  No one watched me strolling with a slight whistle, clanging along with a metal garbage can over my shoulder, depositing refuse into the dumpster.  For a few minutes a day, I was invisible again and thoroughly out of step.

Boggle. It’s not just a fun game with lettered cubes, anymore!

If there is nothing clearly showing how the current health care system could possibly get more broken, it is this tiny – and mercifully minor – anecdote that could do it:

I received a doctor’s bill today. It was for my yearly exam and, surprise surprise, it was not being completely covered by my insurance company. Perhaps I am in the minority that I do not simply whip out a checkbook and pay whatever they say, because I question such things as why my insurance would not be covering a routine check-up. Scanning the codes and explanations made nearly no sense, so I resigned myself to The Call.

You know The Call – the one I’m talking about? The automated call whereby I have to keypad that I am, in fact, making this call, that I would like it in English, that I am a member of this fine insurance clientele with this long numeric and alphabetic code… No, really, this numeric and alphabetic code… THIS numeric and alphabetic code! I don’t care if you’re sorry and you don’t understand it, you @#$%^&?! machine! This is deifnitely my frickin’ code and so help me, I’ll press zero if you don’t transfer me to someone who can happily assist me right now!

(ahem)

So I finally got to speak to an agent who helpfully informed me that the portion not being covered was for an office visit on said date.

Blink?

“Of course there was an office visit… I was going for my yearly appointment,” I said. “At the doctor’s office.” (Thinking “Why wouldn’t this be covered…?”)

“No, the doctor billed for a separate office visit while you were there.”

“A separate office visit?” I said, trying to fathom what this was all about.

“It says you spoke about a separate subject.” The lady informed me. “It says, ‘incontinence.’” She added softly.

My brain went white as it clicked into place.

“Um… my doctor asked me if I noticed anything over the year, and I mentioned that I still pee while doing jumping jacks.” (It’s true. Not terribly unusual a thing after multiple pregnancies and intense physical training, but it’s awfully annoying and not very funny when it’s you and not a sitcom or SNL skit.) “He said that wasn’t normal and that I should call the other office.”

“Yes, and he billed you for it.”

Blink. Frown. “He charged me $110 for answering a question that he asked me?!”

“Seems that way.”

Believe it or not, for a moment, I was speechless.

“I’m sorry,” I began. “I don’t know what I can possibly say to that. That is unacceptable.”

The agent patiently repeated our entire conversation back to me as if that would clarify things.

“No, no,” I interrupted. “I get what’s happened, but it doesn’t make any sense. Because I answered a question during an exam, he charged me an extra fee to tell me to call back? That’s ludicrous.”

“Well, I agree,” she said confidentially. “But that’s what he did.”

“I see,” I said (even though I didn’t “see”). “Well, I’ll just have to call over there.”

Which I did.

The lady in the billing office listened to my tale and there was a blessedly audible pause before she said anything.

“I’m sure he didn’t think about deductibles,” she said gently. “He was just billing the insurance company.”

The greater ramifications of statements like these are not lost on me, or the fact that she was trying to make me feel better. I am fortunate that my husband and I are financially solvent, that we make money, have insurance and have good credit history. We are innocent in the various ways that this could be so terribly bad for people who are less fortunate than ourselves, or for our country as a whole that is supporting this sort of insanity in a system which banters about peoples’ money for no other reason than it can.

The doctor wasn’t billing me, no, no – he was just billing my insurance company, the giant monstrosity I have to bribe to never use from year to year. It wasn’t personal or anything; it’s between them. Right?

“Well, could you not do that?” I asked. “I mean, it may not seem like much, but $110 for answering a question hardly seems fair.”

She sounded understanding as she asked to put me on hold to speak to her supervisor. Then paused.

“Actually, let me call you back,” she said kindly. “I see that you’re calling from out-of-state. It should be within ten minutes.”

That was nice of her, I thought, as I hung up. She might think I was a poor, stay-at-home mom pinching pennies, but I appreciated the fact that this is, by and large, true.

She called back to say that her supervisor would be emailing a request to the doctor to remove that charge and she’d call me back within the week. She gave me her name. I thanked her and told her to have a nice day.

Oddly enough, I felt choked up at the end of the conversation. Unsettled. Either with frustration or mourning the very broken system that might be a minor inconvenience to me, but undoubtedly a major weight dragging down the necks and backs of thousands if not millions of other people just like me…

…and I just could have written a check.

It is a moment’s perspective that can boggle the mind.

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I am trying to find myself in a mirror.

I lost myself when I was eighteen or nineteen. Maybe my body was changing so much that I the effort of connecting the butterfly with the caterpillar exhausted me. Maybe I thought the metamorphosis had grown to a halt and had turned away from the mirror. Maybe, as a twentysomething I had turned the gaze inwards and got caught up in the growth of my mind instead. I tried catching that perfect sardonic grin, training one eyebrow to rise, Spock-like, while the other remained stationary: the credentials and the currency of a perfect conversation over a house wine or a pot of draught. Yet my gaze didn’t travel down and I realise now that has meant the loss of a knowledge I once valued like a storyteller – knowledge I can now savour only with the distant fascination of an archaeologist. As a I child, I had understood the extension and retraction of scrapes, scabs, and sores like an hot-rod racer understands the construction of roads and the reclaiming of concrete by weeds. I would study the advancement of pumpkin vines across my father’s garden, having extended inches from the twig or rock with which I had marked their progress the previous day, and as an adolescent, the growth of hair above my lips captivated me in the same way. I approached learning to shave with the same pride as a viticulturist when pruning a vine for the first time, and while I would keep that face clear as often as I could bother to shave, I had a shield I could raise around my face at will.

Now I cannot remember how I gained a scar running along the side of my arm.

I return to my residents glistening in the late afternoon light, exhilarated from my run through suburbia, and shower in the grace of the setting sun.

It is several years since I came to metropolitan Melbourne from regional Victoria, leaving behind friends, family, and mirror. All enacted their own scrutinising yet it is the mirror’s judgements I preferred. Though I have travelled between a dozen residences, none has possessed a mirror such as my family’s. Therefore, as I return to this mirror and enact my dance for its amusement, I find myself strangely disconcerted by the synchronicity between reflection and action. I possess my torso, limbs and head – yes. Yet the movements that they conduct seem to remain another’s. Playmates – whose motions echo your own, counter your moves, shadow your sprints, retaliate to your slams, and meet you in the air halfway when you pounce – I lacked, and am probably the less for it, since maybe their movements might have taught me my mechanical limits and how to redefine those limits. Would friendships, maintained from school to adulthood have provided an essential reflection to my own growth? Yet what happens if the friendship breaks? What are the dangers of looking for yourself in a being often no less fragile than a plain of melted sand?

As a clean-skinned, seven year old, fresh from a swimming class at the local pool, I stole glances in the change rooms at the vintage genitals of the men. How – I had screamed out in my mind – could the object between my legs, no more intimidating, powerful, or useful than a water pistol, grow to the dimensions of that? In front of the crotches of men, members swung like sausages, gracefully armoured by veiny exteriors, sometimes with a foreskin helmet, and always with a pubic hair from which their penises extended like a swan’s long, muscular neck from the proud plumage of its torso.

…while so many people warned me about “growth spurt”, none warned me about the mental expansion that requiring daily markings against a metaphoric wall to keep track. Perhaps if someone had told me that all things – even genitalia – appear smaller when you grow up, that the penis would take care of itself, I would not have held those Men in such awe. Now, however, gathering my thoughts into stories, and watching the adventure of my mind unfold, I pay only a functionary attention to my unclothed body and assume the same casual, indifferent expressions of those men I had watched dry off. If before I had found fascination in the progressive growth of my facial hair, the dance of my thoughts took up all my attention, by the swinging of my emotions, by the trampoline heart that my chest struggles to contain. With great relief, I have entered a world where juggling ideas was valued over juggling girlfriends. Yet while so many people warned me about “growth spurt”, none warned me about the mental expansion that requiring daily markings against a metaphoric wall to keep track; and when I do study my groin while showering or bathing, the words of a self-check or STD-brochures are loud in my mind’s ear – Bumps or rashes? Clear – now for conditioner.

My body has become a tool I am starting to feel competent using. Its grip matches my mind, my expectations, and my hopes – and when that light (and similar light) catches me, my body makes poetry. Yet, I do not analyse that poetry – and so, it is only in moments of Zen-like contentment that I, ironically, catch a glimpse of myself.

I note in passing the foliage in the back of my legs, the phasing from grey hairs to blond hairs, like sands in a tropical river.

I feel the hardness of my thighs, and am slow to connect my sporadic jogging with such density beneath my fingers.

While chasing my sideburns past my ears with my shaver I discover a hiding mole.

An ascending snail-trail bridges the gap between pubic hair and navel over years, darkening several shades and encircling its prey. A year after spending every second day amongst various systems of weights, pullies and devices I find my arms tangled in bands of muscle.

I recall previous pauses seasons apart when I have tried to find this strange person belonging to this name and these memories – when I have tried to make him somehow belong to, or better yet to take ownership of, this body.

Bathing in winter, I find my rippling silhouette share my surprise at my aquarium body. With the joy of a nine-year-old drinking his first root beer float, I discover the sensuality of bubbles dissolving against my skin like a slow embrace through snow-jackets. I turn my arms around in the candle light before fascinated eyes. That private space above the tub becomes the dish under a microscope and my kneecaps and wrists suffer my scrutiny before being lost to the luxury of the waters.

Spring pollen brings me back to my carnal weakness of races and of tall grass.

Pauses spent on a hillside beneath summer’s stars.

In autumn, my image haunts me as I take to the streets on my bike or on foot – caught in a shop front, slipping across the windows of a car. It is a ghost resistant to capture or exorcism. It mocks every opportunity to fix it in a mirror or a camera. (Maybe this is what makes me break off every exploration of my reflection when it has barely begun – the knowledge, as I straighten the tie before an interview, or pat my scalp after a haircut, of how numerous my images and self-images are.)

I tuck in my shirt; I roll my sleeves – instantly the reflection that smiles back at me practicing confidence is a different one.

My bathroom sink retains the fragments of a beard never allowed to realise itself and shed skin covers my pillow.

I look for the “me” in the reflection of the boy or man that stares back offering only what I give it. I try to guess the trend of the protrusions of jaw, and shoulder, and ankle. I see my brothers in that trend – but only after seeing my father; our mother’s apparent femininity is all that tempers his spirit in them. The wary certainty that one day I will find the image of a dead man staring back at me beyond a few anomalous features through that looking glass drives my desire to solidify my self-image.

One brother suggested that my refusal to return to our parental home was because I was afraid of finding our father. Yet his mysticism baffled me because I feared that I would not find him and as long, perhaps, as I did not open that front door he would continue to reside there, both alive and dead for eternity like Schrödinger’s cat. My father’s optimistic smile haunts my dreams, his calm counselling weighs on every decision that I make, and the three sons that survive him embody his legacy.

When I finally return however, feeling like a pilgrim stepping into a temple, I turn the handle to the front door to find the tabernacle empty, my deity absent, and the offerings within his shrine untouched. My father must indeed be in heaven, for these four walls have failed to contain him and his memory. I walk down the side of the house and find Dad’s fernery guttered, and ask the spirit of the place whether he would have wanted this. The spirit of the place is silent – it is loyal is to its new owner and renovator, while I am but a passing pilgrim without the strength to plant his incense in the sand.

I know now where I will meet my maker. He will not come to me like a thief in the night but as a sleeper: an assassin or saboteur who slumbers in my cells. He will be a genetic time bomb waiting for my thirty-eighth birthday: the age of my father when I can first recall him. The sleeper will awake and I will stare in the mirror and find my father’s eyes looking back – questioning me, offering me hope, admonishing me, and absolving me at once.

(I wrote one for Jeremy. It seems only fair to write one for Edward, too.)

I started drafting this article in my head while watching Ian McKellen’s Richard III one evening last winter. I hadn’t seen it before, and I enjoyed it quite a lot – fine piece of filmmaking, an interpretation that I thought worked, and I’ll watch Ian McKellen do just about anything. Ian McKellen rocks.

But it’s not Ian I want to talk about – not today, anyway. Watching Richard III made me realize that I wanted to talk about someone else.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Edward Hardwicke.

If you like movies that have a large cast of mostly British actors, you’ve probably seen him – but you likely wouldn’t recognize him again. He’s not particularly striking in appearance: aside from his deep rich voice, there’s nothing much out of the ordinary about him. And he’s that type of actor who disappears into the character he is playing. Watching him is not like watching Ian McKellen play Richard, or Cate Blanchett play Elizabeth. You aren’t watching Edward the way you watch Ian and Cate, wondering what they’ll do with the role. He’s just the character, and you sort of forget that there’s a role and an actor involved.

He’s had a quite respectable career. Look him up on IMDB, and you’ll find he’s done something most years since 1965. Not many starring roles, but a bunch of interesting supporting characters. His role in Richard III provides a good example – he is Lord Stanley, the chief supporter of Henry Tudor, a good soldier who maintains his support because it’s the right thing to do for England, damn it, even after Richard takes his son hostage.

He’s been in a bunch of BBC mysteries – the baronet at whose house the murder occurs, a judge, a witness, the client with the case. In an odd juxtaposition, he’s also been in several religious miniseries – playing (among others) Isaac, Zachariah, and Judas. He’s done a bunch of minor Dickens characters, he played Horace Holly in a production of She about ten years ago, and he was the voice of Lara Croft’s father in some animated something recently. He played Sam’s grandfather in Love, Actually, although any lines he may have had wound up on the cutting room floor. In Elizabeth, he’s Lord Arundel, who gives the imprisoned princess his cloak – a kindness she does not forget. He later winds up on the losing side of a rebellion against her, but his motivations are more interesting than those of the other rebels – religious conviction rather than personal gain. And of all the rebels, he alone goes to his arrest and execution with dignity, after quietly kissing his children goodnight.

He blends into the background, into the scenery, into the universe.You wouldn’t remember him doing any of this – you wouldn’t realize it was the same actor, unless you clued into the voice. He blends into the background, into the scenery, into the universe. While you’re watching the star to see what she or he does with the leading role, Hardwicke just is Lord Arundel, Sir Henry Angkatell, Horace Holly, Lord Stanley, and Zachariah.

And for eight years, he was an incomparable Dr. Watson to Jeremy Brett’s incomparable Sherlock Holmes. He gave some interviews during that time, some of which are preserved on the DVD collection. In them, he is mostly asked what it’s like to work with Jeremy. He doesn’t seem to mind.

I got to talking about heroes and companions with a friend a while back (first conversation we ever had, actually, so that would qualify as the start of the friendship – ain’t the Internet grand?), and he said the point I was making reminded him of a piece of music by John Adams, “Slow Ride in a Fast Machine.”

Toward the end there’s a beautiful part in the soli trumpets. It sounds like flying. Meanwhile, there’s a boring ol’ woodblock just going click, click, click, click, and two keyboards cycling through same monotonous three or four notes over and over and over again. It sounds pretty boring, but here’s the thing: the melody wouldn’t sound like anything at all without the underlying repetitive stuff. I love playing it. It’s the solid ground that allows the melody to lift off.

Yes. Yes, it is. Character actors like Hardwicke hold down the fabric of the universe – whatever universe we’re visiting at the moment – so the lead actor has something to show his interpretation against. Over the last forty years, Hardwicke has held down the fabric of many universes. Which is a pretty respectable way to spend a career, really. Here’s to the common man.

As a pizza delivery guy, I make my living from tips. The trick is to not only get the tips, but get tips as large as possible, and so, like any other kind of sales job, you have to use a little psychology. You have to focus on making the customer like you, and never think about the money. Just be nice, and figure out what’s important to them, then use that to your advantage.

Different tactics work for different people. For many women, you can flirt with them and watch your tip inflate. That works best for those in their 30s and 40s, because they’re losing their looks and so appreciate the effort. Women in their 20s still have plenty of attention and so don’t care about it from the Pizza Guy, while those in their 50s have already given up the fight.

For the active redneck, you can show an interest in his new $18,000 truck – which is parked outside his $17,000 trailer – or perhaps in the fishing trip he just came home from, complete with the story of how he caught a three-foot catfish. For the couch potato, talk about the game. “Who’s winning? How’d the quarterback do?” And for the mothers out there, show an interest in their kids; really fawn over them. When the little girl hands you a $20 bill with her grubby paws, smile and say, “Oh, she’s so cute!” Then take the money and tell the beaming mother, “That’s so sweet.” It’s not really, but you let them keep their delusions until you get the cash.

There are always the chronic non-tippers, who never tip no matter what you do, or how nice you are. When you’ve delivered to them several times, and you know they’ll never tip, stop being nice; it only encourages them to call again.

Then there are those in the middle, those who would tip, and know they should, but for some reason won’t. Those are difficult customers, and that’s when psychological skill pays off.

I once delivered to a man who was about forty years old, unshaven, glassy-eyed. He came to the door with a stupid grin.

“How’s it going, man?” he asked, as a wave of marijuana smoke rolled past. I immediately recognized the smell, and I smiled. Dope smokers usually tip well. “What’s it gonna cost me?” he asked. He moved slow and laughed as to himself as he stood there, almost too high to know what he was doing. I told him the price, he paid me, and I handed him the pizzas. “Whoa, those’re warm, man.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, and began to dig into my bank bag. I owed him a little over three dollars. I handed him the bills, then scrounged in my bag for the change, when he waved at me.

“You can keep the rest, man,” he said. “I’d give you more, but this has got to last me ’til Monday. But hey, I’ll catch you next time around, alright?”

“Sure, no problem,” I said, already thinking about what to do. I didn’t want to walk away with a tip, but this seemed hopeless, until I remembered: Hey, he’s a dope smoker! So I smiled and said, “Hey man, I like that incense.”

The man looked over his shoulder, then back to me with that dumb grin. “Yeah, good stuff, huh?”

“Yeah,” I said, “weirdest smelling incense, though. You know, at first, I almost thought it was dope.” We both laughed at that, and as we did, I put out my hand, palm up, just like a bellboy.

Then the man, still glassy-eyed, looked down at my hand, then up again. I was afraid he might have lost the subtlety in the statement, so I added, “Of course, dope’s illegal, so I’m sure you’re not smoking that.” I left my hand out, and waited. Slowly, the man reached out and placed a single dollar on my palm. He leaned so far forward I thought he’d fall over, but he managed to stay up. I placed my thumb over the bill, then twitched my fingers in a motion meant to say, “More.”

“Aw, man, that’s all I got ’til Monday.”

I said nothing, and waited. Perhaps he hoped I’d say something, but I didn’t, and a second bill joined the first.

I snapped my fingers shut and smiled at the man, then put the money in my bag. “Thank you, sir, have a nice night.”

He looked at me for a long moment, then said, “Yeah, yeah, you son of a–” and he closed the door shut before I heard the rest.

But that was it. By simply being friendly, I encouraged a customer to not only tip me, but tip me more than he originally intended. As I said before, figure out what the customers want, what’s important to them, and use that to your advantage. It’s all about psychology.

Danny and I are manning the breakfast buffet at the resort on Christmas morning. The vibe in the lodge, an aging, rustic building with threadbare carpets and worn but comfortable chairs, has changed markedly. The easy-going, casual atmosphere created by dedicated skiers has become more serious with the arrival of people from America’s largest cities. Busy, fast-paced places like New York, Chicago, and L.A. In the New York Times Magazine or Sunset they see holiday advertisements for a small lodge with “old world charm nestled in the mountains of Utah only minutes from the airport.” Hooked by the proximity to the airport, they arrive with absolutely no idea of how rustic the place is. There’s no shopping, apart from the small store downstairs selling toothbrushes and emergency ski gear. The nearest fine dining is two hours away, by plane, in Boise. There’s zero entertainment, unless you can appreciate the theatrical value of an employee passing out in the sauna.

When a woman approaches the far end of the buffet line Danny looks at me and says, “Waddya think? New York or LA?” Danny, a middle-aged guy who heads the maintenance crew, is not particularly good at playing well with others. He’s especially disdainful of people whom he deems unreasonably needy.

I glance at the woman and turn back to Danny, who’s scraping at a tray of eggs as if he’s removing old insulation from a boiler.

“I don’t know,” I say. “The hair’s definitely LA but the coat looks awfully New York.” We both look at the woman, who’s eying a platter of rolls with suspicion. Her brown hair is fatally bleached and wafting from her head like disturbed spider webbing. A form-fitting coat with a thick, furry collar completes the scene. It suggests that a photo is imminent.

The woman reaches down, grabs a plate, and goes stiff. She looks over at us with surprise, her lips tightening under a taut face. She sighs and says, “These plates are cold.”

Danny and I exchange knowing glances.

The woman looks down at the plate and says, “There’s nothing worse than hot food on a cold plate.”

I scoot down the buffet and grab a plate, promising to heat it up in the kitchen and return quickly. I head back down the line toward Danny, who’s jabbing at a tray of greasy sausages. He jams the spatula a bit too hard, loosening a link and sending it over the edge of the tray onto the worn carpet. As I approach he looks at me and says, “Nothing worse? How about biting down on a file and having someone rip all your teeth out? I think that would definitely be worse.”

Christmas is a strange time in this casual alpine setting. A high-maintenance culture arrives, expecting the snap-to-it service common back home, but encounters a nonchalant tribe that is rarely in a hurry. That is, unless they’re heading out to the slopes after a big storm. It takes a while for guests to get used to the bohemian setting and its foreign pace. Arriving wound-up, they usually manage to slow down and relax, just in time to catch a flight home.

I lope into the kitchen and plop the plate into the microwave, setting the dial for two minutes to make sure it’s evenly heated, an aspect of plate warming etiquette that I suspect will matter. I power-down a quick cup of coffee, grab the plate, and return to the buffet line.

The woman has navigated her way through the culinary hazards lining our backwoods buffet and is now even with Danny. She’s in the process of quizzing him on the quiche when I arrive and hand her the plate, using a neatly folded napkin. She grabs the plate without comment and continues her inquiry: Are there egg yolks in the batter? Has the cook added salt?

Danny’s no fool. He has no idea what’s in the quiche, but he answers each question in the negative. He knows that no one asks if an ingredient is in food if they want that ingredient to be present. In an act of brotherhood and pain-sharing, I back up his responses.

The woman grudgingly accepts a quiche on her warm plate. She grabs her second plate, a freezing one filled with fruit, and heads to a table. As the woman walks away toward her table, Danny looks at me and says, “She has such beautiful blonde hair. I wonder why she dies the roots brown.”

Despite the fact that alcohol consumption seems to be on the rise, the wait staff is managing to hold on. Everyone is longing for the non-holiday days, when complaints about the level of service are negligible. The few needy people tend to be gracious, thanking everyone for special accommodations. Like the guy a few weeks ago who always insisted on having a table facing the door. Over beers in the bar, which he purchased for the crew, he revealed that at one time he had a contract on his life. The hit had been called off, but he wasn’t taking any chances. No one could blame him. He became one of our favorite guests.

The Coffee Guy walks into the restaurant in a bright neon, one-piece ski suit. He looks distracted. Despite his presence at one of the finest ski areas in the West, he doesn’t seem all that happy. All the servers know this guy, having endured his legendary mistrust. With each coffee refill the guy looks up at his waiter and says, “Are you sure this is decaf?” This usually follows a three-course meal infused with three episodes of serious questioning. When floor assignments are made for dinner, the staff prays to avoid his table. One waiter even paid another to avoid a repeat encounter with The Coffee Guy. Protection money of sorts.

When The Coffee Guy walks up to the buffet line Danny looks at me and says, “Jesus, I don’t need this right now.”

I tempted to extract some concession or money, but Danny took the heat on the last one. I look up at him and say, “Hey, why don’t you take a break. It’s slow and I can handle this no problem.”

Danny’s eyes go wide. He looks down at me, smiles hesitantly as if I’m screwing with him, and says, “Are you serious?”

I nod and say, “Yup.”

A good ski bum never leaves a comrade writhing on the holiday battlefield.

Danny glances at the guest and says, “You’re a god. I just don’t get wealthy people. So damn needy.”

Danny darts away just as The Coffee Guy shuffles up to end of the buffet. He’s holding a cold plate with a pile of steaming eggs. He stops in front of the two urns, which are marked “regular” and “decaf” by book-sized placards.

The Coffee Guy looks over at me, points to an urn, and says, “Are you sure this is decaf?”

From the edge of the kitchen I hear Danny laughing in disbelief.

I am a ninth-grade English teacher in a suburban American high school. There, now that I’ve confessed, I suppose you’ll start looking for me awkwardly sitting in a bland kitchen across from Chris Hansen, a Dateline cameraman, and an audio guy with a disgusted look on his face. It seems obvious to most that the only person who would take on such a job must be someone who really likes kids.I will protest just enough; I am not a pedophile or insane, and I do enjoy working with my students. What’s not to like? They know everything, are willing to help improve my intellect by pointing out my errors and misconceptions, and are there for me when I need eye-rolling or pouting lessons. And yes, they do sometimes even provide me with surprising, unlikely, and perfectly legal stimulation.

During one of my recent class periods, I found myself walking past the same spot near the door. I couldn’t quite figure out why. I normally roam the room while I am teaching or helping or just trying to keep roughly fifty kids from doing whatever it is they would rather be doing. On this particular day I was patrolling for cheaters during a vocabulary test. The room was blissfully silent save for the scratching of forty-seven pencils. I kept quickly looping back toward the front of the room and slowing town in one particular area, looking for shifting eyes, crumpled crib notes, and PSPs tucked under concealing jackets or bags. I listed for whispers, for the buzz of cell phones, for the tinny thumpzz-zz-thump of earbud hip-hop, and for the telltale drip-drip-drip of saliva from any student who managed to fall asleep with her eyes open while sitting up. Nope. Nothing. The room was firmly clenched in my adamantine grip (which we all know is stronger than iron, or even mithral, but can be cut by DuPont monofilament wire; or so some jackass DM I used to play with insisted.)

So why did I keep stalling in this one area? Then it came to me; I was focusing on the wrong senses. It was something I smelled, something faint and familiar and pleasant.

It was the smell of Grimsbury, a tiny neighborhood in Banbury inhabited mostly by immigrants from the Indian sub-continent. It was founded in the 19th century and is a collection of a few streets lined with narrow terraced and semi-detached houses made of brick We lived there for a few years in the late 1980s and I often walked down to the local shop to pick up a bag of anthracite or a box of jaffa cakes or a packet of crisps. Oddly enough, I relished going to the store and back, even under those normally damp, melancholy English skies. I loved hunching down the pavement, hands stuffed in warm pockets, listening to the steady slap of my boots on wet concrete, feeling the chill push of the air against my face, reveling in the comfortable warmth of my coat and, the best part of all, inhaling the invisible, spicy essence of Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh billowing out of skinny house-fronts with bright red, blue, green, and yellow doors.

And right now, in a corner of a cinder block educational cell painted the color of a cold war Russian fighter cockpit, 5,170 miles as the imagination flies from those same festive doors, I smelled it again. There, near the “Turn-In” and “Graded” trays, next to the dictionary cart, and under the watchful eye of a glistening whiteboard, drifted a spectral blend of cardamom, coriander, turmeric, and pepper cooked in oil.

I was determined to find this olfactory ghost. I approached but still couldn’t discern where it was coming from. The lunch lady doesn’t serve curries (there is some law against serving appetizing food in public schools), the smell wasn’t anywhere near the air vent, and I didn’t see any other obvious source. I tried to keep my sniffing surreptitious and widened my nostrils to drag in as many molecules as possible.

Then I remembered the name of the boy sitting at the end of the table closest to the door. His isn’t an Indian, or Bangladeshi, or Pakistani name, but the sound of it would blend well with Samarkand and all that name evokes. I realized at that moment that the fourteen-year-old boy sitting three feet from me and worrying over how to write a sentence using the word “suffice” was unknowingly carrying generations of culinary culture in the threads of his clothing. It was hard not to lean in and take in a good, long whiff of his jacket. He scribbled and scratched and I stood in a little closer and felt the spice tingle the fine capillaries and membranes of my nose and eyes. It pulled me back down Grimsbury’s winter streets and made me outwardly smile.

It also made me suddenly realize how weird and creepy it was for me to be sniffing students. I hope nobody saw me, especially Chris Hansen.

In five days, I’ll be casting my vote in one of the many Super Tuesday primaries. And I’m pissed about it.

No, it’s not that there are only two candidates left, when approximately four thousand nine hundred and sixty-two started out. I can deal with the attrition, even if it ruled out my favorite (though less electable) choice. It’s not even that negative ads make both options appear slightly nauseating to me, either.

What it is, is a visceral reaction to the demonizing of strong women. I don’t have a problem admitting that Hillary Clinton is not perfect. I don’t have a problem admitting that many of her actions have screamed “SLIMY POLITICIAN IN ACTION!” I don’t have a problem admitting that her husband has certainly added an innovative new element of both slime and negative politicking usually reserved for vice presidential candidates and PACs. I don’t have a problem admitting that her campaign, with and without Bill, has included false accusations against Barack Obama.

…if Hillary Clinton is elected as president, this achievement will be downplayed as a wife of a former president being elected – not as a woman being elected.I do have a problem with people who won’t admit those things about the other candidate, however. I have a problem when I see people react to an aggressive move by Clinton as pushy or manipulative and one by Obama as confident. I have a problem that Clinton is the only candidate who is referred to by her first name, whereas all other candidates get the respect of their last name. And don’t say it’s because we’d confuse her with her husband. The people who watch the long-winded debate reviews are not likely to think that Bill is the headliner . . . at least not officially. Which reminds me, I also have a problem that if Hillary Clinton is elected as president, this achievement will be downplayed as a wife of a former president being elected – not as a woman being elected.

I take it back. I’m not pissed. I’m sad. I’m the kind of sad that your mom used to make you cringe when you broke curfew three nights in a row: “I’m not mad. I’m disappointed.” I’m hugely disappointed in the attitudes that persist, even – perhaps especially – among women about women in power.

Do you know I recently got an e-mail from a friend about how much she hates Hillary Clinton? Sure, she’s a diehard Republican and thus highly unlikely to ever vote for anyone on the Democratic ticket, but “hate”? And what’s worse, two other friends in on the e-conversation chimed in that they agreed. Why? Because they bought into the media portrayal of her as callous, as calculating, as a cold, cold bitch.

And yet that same week, a Manhattan cabbie from Pakistan asked my sister if she supported Clinton. My sister said she was still evaluating the candidates and their stances on the issues, and the cabbie replied that he thought it was important – no, crucial – that American women stand up for her, especially since we are a (the?) reining world power yet tens of nations have gone ahead of us in the significant act of electing a female leader. But, outside of that cab, I hear almost nothing about the role of women as world leaders and the role of the United States within that world.

I hear cattiness. The same cattiness that branded Martha Stewart as an unsympathetic creature worthy of harsh judgment while the men around her escaped with lesser (or no) sentences and an understanding of their drive to succeed in a world where men bring home the bacon. (Martha was just supposed to fry it up and serve it around scallops in a beautifully appointed parlor.)

Is there any chance that Clinton can get a fair evaluation? If not, is it the fault of the media – or is it really the fault of us, the voters, who willingly buy into the utterly antiwoman presentation of Clinton as a bloodthirsty, unscrupulous politicker who is too mean to be fair and too female to be strong?

I’ve been thinking a lot today about being a woman. Why? Because I got my period.

It made me start thinking about how we, as American women, treat our periods. “What an inconvenience!” “Can I get that new drug where you only get it once every 6 months?” “I wish they’d just yank all that stuff out of me so I’d be done with it.” It’s a shame, really.

Many cultures have a lot of ritual around a woman’s monthly menstruation. In several cultures, from the Hebrews to Native Americans, women were separated while they bled. I’ve heard modern women talk about the sexism of that. I used to think that way too. Women aren’t “unclean” just because we menstruate, we protest. So much power lies in vocabulary. What if we changed “unclean” to “renewing” or “purifying”?

Let’s picture life this way. First, remember that women, who live in proximity to each other and have a friendship connection, begin to menstruate on the same schedule. Picture having a period without the convenience of tampons or pads. Picture a time when living was hard work, babies were crucial to survival, and each period meant that you weren’t pregnant.

Now picture a five-day vacation: a tent by the river with a warm fire in it; the women in the community you are closest to are with you; you talk about your hopes and dreams; you give each other back rubs; no one asks you to make dinner or clean up after them. Once your period is finished, you ritually bathe in the river and return to your life refreshed and renewed. Your husband is pretty excited because he hasn’t seen you in a week, and here you are all cleaned up, which is handy because you’re close to the time when you’ll be ready to conceive for the coming month.

That sounds like a nice set-up to me.

I don’t blame men for being wigged by women’s menstruation. After all, women bleed every month. Men who bleed are dying. It must have been very awe-inspiring to see women do that in ancient days. Men must have been just a little bit jealous of the monthly retreats, as well. “Hey, why am I stuck with the kids, and who’s making my supper?” “Well,” the holy people would answer, “the woman is off purifying herself, renewing herself, to prepare for potentially conceiving next month.” “I get it,” the man replies, “she’s unclean and needs to become clean.” Power in vocabulary.

The tragic thing is that somehow over the centuries, we began to believe the male vocabulary. We began to view the “journey to the red tent” not as a retreat but as a banishment. We began to hide our periods and our womanness. Now we’re disgusted by our bodies, how they feel, how they smell.

So I’ve come up with an idea. While the thought of a one-week vacation every month might be nice, it’s unrealistic, but the thought of monthly renewal is not. Some Jewish women still visit the mikvah, the ritual bath, after each period as a way of celebrating renewal. We can all embrace that concept. So here’s my proposal: Each month on the last day of your period, set aside some time in the evening. Cancel plans if you have to. Call a girlfriend or just spend some time alone. Think about the month that just past. Think about the month to come. Keep a journal that you just write in on this day each month. Concentrate on physical things as well as spiritual things. Listen to your body. Then take a long bath or shower. Pull out the nail brush and scrub your fingers and toes. Deep condition your hair. Exfoliate, buff, moisturize, powder. Put patchouli in the water. And then go to bed. Sleep uninterrupted, and don’t set the alarm for the next day. Allow yourself to sleep in – one day a month.

After you do this a few months, see how you feel about the approach of your period, you may even feel sorry for those poor girls on that drug who only get theirs once every six months.

When I was in high school, I had an American lit teacher who offered only one interpretation for everything we read in his class. Everysinglefreakingtext prompted him to say, “There is obvious homoerotic tension between the two main male characters.” And by the standards of modern American culture, he had a point. That is: if any of those stories had been written in post-1950 America, the actions of the two main male characters and the words they used to describe and speak to each other would indeed read as something between homoerotic and openly gay.

This means, of course, that every male friendship depicted in literature from, let’s say, Hamlet and Horatio on up, is actually, beneath its surface, a gay lover relationship fueled by both deep love and erotic desire.

Um. No.

In the last few years (since Lord of the Rings was released, mostly), I have felt myself caught in a timewarp, back in my junior year American lit class. The consensus of modern American scholarly and/or geek culture appears to be that there is only one interpretation for any male friend pairing, no matter the context or culture or time period in which it was written. Arthur and Lancelot. Hamlet and Horatio. Holmes and Watson. Earp and Holliday. Frodo and Sam. Homoerotic tension. All of ‘em. No other possible explanation. We’ve discovered the Inherent Truth in every piece of Western literature ever written.

Except, um, no, we haven’t. I sincerely doubt that Tolkien (for instance) intended to imply that Frodo and Sam were having hot hobbit sex offscreen. But when I bring up my objections, they are shrugged off.

“Hey, doesn’t Sam marry Rosie at the end?”

“Frodo doesn’t marry anyone, so Frodo obviously wants to marry Sam and can’t; and Sam is trapped by the conventions of his society and doesn’t dare break them.”

“Tolkien said he based the two of them on the experience of a soldier and his batman during World War I — an emotional relationship based on shared horror, rather than a physically erotic relationship that would have seemed deviant to a British Catholic of 1920-something. I doubt Tolkien meant it to be read as sexual.”

“It doesn’t matter what Tolkien said or what he intended. The homoeroticism is still there. It’s obvious.”

These conversations (with otherwise brilliant and insightful people) make me want to bash my head into a wall in frustration. I believe that, although there may be a good argument for individual readings of individual hero-companion pairings as homoerotic, there are also good counter-arguments in almost every case; and there certainly is not enough evidence to support a universal reading. To say it another way: “I beseech you in the name of all the love that ever was between us,” means something hugely different when it is spoken in an Arthurian tale written by Sir Thomas Malory in the twelfth century than when it is uttered in a movie like Brokeback Mountain. That’s not to say it’s impossible to have a Brokeback Mountain story masquerading as something else, but that it is not the obvious reading, the Occam’s razor reading. To say that a particular hero-companion friendship story is actually a homoerotic story in masquerade, you need to have a reason to think so — say, a pattern of behavior atypical for a hero-companion friendship story.

My contention is threefold: first, that the traditional hero-companion relationship has nothing to do with sex; second, that assuming that the perception of the reader is as important as the intention of the author is misleading as well as arrogant; and third, that the specific assumption of sexual undertones in relationships written to be non-sexual carries additional dangers. I will explain each point separately.

Firstly, in all of the pairings I mentioned above, it is important to note that the universes these characters inhabit are sharply divided into the world of men and the world of women. The things men do, women do not do. Women are separate, protected, childlike or on pedestals. A man can’t talk to a woman, not about anything that matters, not a deep level, in the same way a man can’t talk deeply to a child or a pet. The child, pet, or woman does not have the experience to comprehend the things the man needs to talk about. You can’t have an emotional partnership with one who needs protecting and/or “pedestalling. ” So the core emotional relationships — emotional partnerships — are formed with other men. Call them emotional marriages, if you like, but don’t think that makes them sexual. Sex is what you have with your wife (or a girl, after a battle), and you may feel lust or fondness for the woman who shares your bed. Sex is decoupled from the love of partners. The fact that nowadays we strive for emotional partnership and sexual satisfaction with one person, of our preferred gender, in a monogamous marriage, does not mean that the same social norms were in place in the old West, Victorian England, the Shire, or medieval Britain.

And the rest of the social norms of the old West, Victorian England, the Shire, and medieval Britain bear considering too. It must be noted as part of the analysis that all of these societies were hetero-normative (to state it very mildly indeed). Victorian England is perhaps the most obvious example: its laws against sodomy were clear-cut and unmistakable. Whereas female prostitution was one of those things that red-blooded young men partook of, and formerly-red-blooded old men shook an indulgent head at, male prostitution was grounds for imprisonment and serious levels of disgust. The kind of trust and respect that characterizes a hero-companion relationship makes it exceedingly unlikely that either party would degrade the friendship with something disgusting, shameful, illegal, and often presented as abuse of a power dynamic. Sex is what you do with women, for the relieving of lust or the procreation of children. Partnership is what you do with other men. Men who have sex with other men are deviants who are arrested and have their careers and lives ruined. (Oscar Wilde provides a famous example.) With all these facts as a given, is it really the Occam’s razor reading that Sherlock Holmes and John Watson spent all their varied adventures dying for a shag with each other? Is it not more likely that some other kind of love and some other kind of story is being described?

This is why, when my assertion is shrugged off with, “But you are assuming a hetero-normative society,” it is all I can do not to snap Damn right I am. Most hero-companion pairings (Arthur/Lancelot, Holmes/Watson, Hamlet/Horatio, Earp/Holliday, Frodo/Sam) were written in hetero-normative societies. “But you are assuming that the author’s intent matters,” is usually the second counter. The first time I heard that, it took me a moment to understand why my opponent thought that was a valid objection. Of course the author’s intent matters. In matters of personal pleasure reading, the reader is welcome to allow their perspective to dictate the meaning of the story. But in matters of scholarship, it is unspeakably arrogant to assert that the perspective of the modern reader sees more in the story than the perspective of the historical reader. That is, to determine what the author was saying — the truth of the text — the scholar needs to know what the reader for whom the author was writing would have seen.

If it amuses you to assume that a jumper is a girl’s dress, and to therefore picture Harry Potter in a girl’s dress, knock yourself out. But your interpretation is incorrect.

To take an obvious (and absurd) example, the word “jumper” means different things to the American and the British reader. To correctly read the text, it is useful for the scholar to familiarize himself with the meaning of the word from the perspective of the author, and the perspective of the reader for whom the author was writing. It is not true that the perception of the American reader is as valid as that of the British writer writing for a British reader. To be blunt — if it amuses you to assume that a jumper is a girl’s dress, and to therefore picture Harry Potter in a girl’s dress, knock yourself out. But your interpretation is incorrect. Rowling, Harry, and Rowling’s original readers interpret the word “jumper” as “sweater”, and if you’re in search of the truth of the text, so should you.

Similarly, it is of paramount importance to know whether the men holding hands are depicted as doing so by a Middle Eastern or a Western author. It is of paramount importance to understand what key words and phrases meant to those raised in the era when the words were written. (My favorite examples are “dear”, “monster”, and “demon”, all of which used to connote something hugely different than what they connote now.) It is the height of arrogance to impose one’s own cultural values when reading the stories of another culture. It is, at the very least, shoddy scholarship.

Finally, I contend that the specific reading of everysinglefreakingliteraryrelationship as sexual has some truly disturbing connotations. If every relationship can be read as sexual, then no relationship can be read as asexual. This opens the door for some tiresome hysteria. It means that every maternal figure in literature is open to the charges of emotional incest. Every paternal figure is open to charges of pedophilia. Every emotional connection between characters sexually coupled elsewhere opens the characters to charges of infidelity. It means that there is no love without sexual overtones. And it means that if you believe sexual overtones between certain types of couples (those married elsewhere, let us say, or those of the same gender, or those who represent a parent-figure and a child-figure) are immoral, then you cannot allow any emotional closeness of any kind between these types of couples, lest immoral feelings develop. Mothers must not be too nurturing of their sons. Or daughters. Men must not have emotional bonds with any human being other than their wives. No one is ever allowed to mentor another person of the same (or the different!) gender. Almighty God, what a cold world that would be.

It seems incomprehensible to modern America that any two people could share love without sexual desire, but that says a great deal more about post-1950s Americans, and our obsessions and repressions, than it does about any previous era of which we claim to be discovering the secrets. Perhaps we would do better to turn the eye inward and try to determine what it is about our culture that makes all love look like sex. And when we’re done with that, we might try to understand the story of the hero and the companion — which is a fine, deep, and moving story, in its many iterations, and which does have something share with us about love. Just not lust, homoerotic or otherwise.

It seemed harmless enough. A waitress brought over some coloring for my daughter as we were wrestling to get settled down into the restaurant to eat lunch. At the time, it was a welcome distraction; little did I know it was a subliminal invitation to corruption.

My daughter was eagerly coloring with her four crayons as I glanced over the menu. I remembered thinking whatever she was coloring in looked rather strange, like a fluffy grocery bag, but I didn’t think much more about it as I was hungry and the baby was pulling on my shirt. Once orders had been taken and the little one was happily banging a spoon against the table, I figured out what it was that she’d colored in.

“Isn’t it pretty?” my daughter asked eagerly.

“Very pretty,” I agreed. She’d scribbled over a picture of a bag with a tag that said “SALE” on it. Weird. It was apparently a matching game where you tried to figure out which ones were the same. Okay…no biggie. So what was niggling me?

The same picture of the bag was in the maze. The bag on SALE was in one corner, the high-heeled shoe was in the other. Was this showing how you walked to the sale? In heels? I guessed so… but there was something else…

Ah! The word search. What were the words my impressionable preschool daughter was asked to find? Here’s the list:

• Mall Queen
• Born to Shop
• Diva
• Party
• Shopper Sales
• Purchase

The word scramble wasn’t much better. Arguably, it was worse:

• Shop
• Hat
• Glasses
• Nail Polish
• Purse
• Phone

On the flipside of the color-in placemat were big pictures she could color in with ease. They had all the pictures that were drawn or written on the back as well as a few more details including flowers, “SALE” exclamations and a VIP Shopper credit card.

Now I admit I may be a little sensitive to this issue, considering I lecture about body image and girls’ self-esteem, and am perhaps more than a little like Sailor Mur in that I don’t have any desire to girlie up my daughter any more than she wants to be. (She loves pink, adores dressing up, and likes to make up stories about fairy princesses and animals. Fine.) However, I don’t need any help to start training my child to be a mallrat, shop-o-holic or lookist consumer, thankyouverymuch!

The gum-snapping, credit-card wielding spoiled princess is as reviled in this country as it is celebrated. While there are too many movies, books and stereotypes here to count, the image has its place, and well-done reverse-stereotyping is what made things like Legally Blonde or Buffy the Vampire Slayer funny. But for little kids, it’s a lot less funny, because they don’t get the joke. They think it’s real. In fact, there is now a line of dolls, toys, cartoons, clothing and accessories that’s aimed right at the heart of it: “Bratz.” To compete with classic Barbie pink-colored consumerism, Bratz kids are big-eyed, big-headed rich little Daddy’s Girls who have itty-bitty bodies and big, fat wallets stuffed with somebody else’s money. Terrific. Much improved, thank you.

90 percent of the toys and dolls surveyed for girls ages two to ten years emphasize beauty, shopping, and dating…

How many times have we heard about the sad fact that girls get to play with dollies and don’t play games that teach about math and science skills like boys? (This is a current focus of the Girl Scouts of America: Girls in Technology.) Take a look: the board and computer games aimed at girls are, by in large, about makeup, clothing, fashion, shopping and being a princess/fairy/mermaid who wins the game by finding happily-ever-after with a prince. Hoorah. The Renfrew Center, a national residential facility for girls and women with eating disorders, conducted a clinical survey that found “90 percent of the toys and dolls surveyed for girls ages two to ten years emphasize beauty, shopping, and dating… In one shopping mall game surveyed, the stores include a beauty salon, a bridal shop, a store with glamorous gowns and one for pretty ballerinas. In another game, the object is for the girls to buy the most items in the shortest amount of time.” It’s like Monopoly for the Mall of America. The few games aimed at girls that do not do this are often mysteries and puzzle-games, which are great, but also feature girls and women who more often resemble Carmen Sandiego (a.k.a. Brunette Barbie) than Dora the Explorer.

The Illinois Institute for Addiction Recovery even has a definition for rampant consumerism: “a pattern of chronic, repetitive purchasing that becomes difficult to stop and ultimately results in harmful consequences. It is defined as an impulse control disorder and has features similar to other addictive disorders without involving use of an intoxicating drug.” So it’s not like I just have to keep my kid off the classic drugs and alcohol – beyond drinking cough syrup, snorting pressurized air, whipping helium balloons or popping X at water-cooler raves – but now I have to worry about whether she’s compulsively purchasing things on 24-hour online catalogs? Great.

At age three-and-a-half, I’m just not ready for her to take on this kind of pressure.

My gasp of righteous indignation is something I’m certain my husband has grown very used to over time. I picked up the placemat and held it up to him.

“Okay,” I said, “so am I being over-sensitive about this?”

It took him a split-second. “No.” He took it in his hands, flipped it over, inspecting both sides, and he looked at our daughter. “You did a beautiful job, sweetheart!” he beamed at her, handing it back to me.

“Can I keep it?” I asked her enthusiastically.

“Yes!” she said.

“Thank you!” I gave her a hug and a kiss. I folded it up, tucked it into my bag, and instead of throwing it out, resolved to write about it. Which I just did.

Now it’s in the trash where it belongs.

Though the heat be outside the cold could be felt within.

Memories now taken away like a shooting spark from an electrical socket. My heart now laced with regret of never having appreciated the place. The chilled breeze gusting along my ankles makes my shorts, the last of my clothing, begin to flap across my knees, while ambulances and fire trucks gather, flashing crimson and azure outside of what used to be my front door.

A neighbor, whom my wife feuded with, looked her squarely in the face. His vision now glistening with watery drops, his eyes giving off sympathetic glances, his hand of steadying flesh reaches into his pocket, pulls out a twenty, and hands it over without a word.

A paramedic carries our felines, Satchel and Rye, over to my family. Their dingy fur wrapped in an ash-tainted blanket whose red, greens, and yellows were of a fading cloth. My sister, another adult of the household, took them gently in her arms and rubbed the side of her face with their paws.

The Fire Chief said to wait in one of the other houses for assistance. We weren’t sure what agency the Aid Workers would come from, but we hoped they were generous.

Once the charred remains of our house crumbled, we were given shelter at Sally’s place across the street. She would take care of us; her motherly instincts were fully charged so my kids would act like angels in her presence. My wife and I could also use some of her maternal gifts.

After two hours or four full episodes of Seinfeld or whatever we were watching on TV, an elderly lady, white hair, with a turquoise dress with little green turtles spread out across the various sections of the fabric, met with us. Accompanying her was a middle-age man, tanned, who carried a stocky build and wore jeans and a white T-shirt. I didn’t ask if they were mother and son, but the make of their facial cast seem to indicate my initial thought.

The patch on their bags, which held a Red Cross, told us which organization they were dispatched from. My wife, who could barely stand, invited them to sit at our neighbor’s table.

The paper work was filled out an hour later and we were given assorted bathroom supplies: a bar of soap, paste and toothbrush, towels, rags, mouthwash, razor and foam. The most important item however was food and hotel stubs. We thank them for their kindness and soon they left.

The drive from Sally’s was not very far, only about twenty miles. After we parked, I gave the stubs to the front desk manager and we entered the room of the filthy hotel. The space was not unlike most places we stayed while on vacation. We were exhausted but we didn’t want to sleep, nevertheless our fatigue won over our natural inclination to lay down and cry.

Sometimes I can still remember my dreams. I have a few mental pictures of my usual bedtime reflections. The one I had that night seemed to invoke previous deeds. It was a reemerging of a long memory, one in which my father-in-law placed a set of keys in my hand. I still recalled the rough texture of his clothing as I felt his embrace, his white teeth shining behind red lips, the tone in his voice when he said it was all mine.

As I lifted my wife off her feet, the milky, frosted dress now hanging over my hands, I knew my first task as a husband and soon-to-be father was complete when I carried her over the threshold and entered… our new home.

“If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster. ”
-Isaac Asimov, LIFE magazine (January 1984)

Over the weekend I walked and bicycled the length and breadth of Washington Heights, one of the northernmost neighborhoods on Manhattan, talking to people on the street. I’m new to New York, so I’m carrying a map and my notebook as I bike north. Juascal, a wiry black man in his 40′s wearing a beret and a salt-and-pepper beard, is just stretching out on a stoop’s metal railing as I approach. He grins when I ask him about the neighborhood. “You get all kinds around here: Dominicans, Mexicans, Ecuadorians, black folks … and your kind, too, of course,” indicating my northern European ancestry with a grin. “Everyone all blended in.” At this, he laughs and knits his fingers together in front of his chest.

A block north, I speak with two beat cops sitting in their cruiser. Don and Mike — both affable, white, and in their mid-twenties — work out of the 33rd Precinct. When I explain my interest in the neighborhood they chuckle and tell me that I’ll find some great stories here. “This is the drug capital of the world, man. They call it the ‘Home of the Haze.’” Both men started working for the police only two years ago, but they regale me with stories of how rough the neighborhood was in the ’80s. When I ask them how they see the district changing, they describe slow transition. “[Improving the neighborhood] is gonna take doormen on the buildings, which you’re not gonna see for years… and it’s gonna take bringing down the housing projects, which is also gonna be hard.” They shake their heads ruefully when I ask about community relations: “Only the senior citizens call us, or show up to community meetings. They’re the only ones with a voice.”

I walk north on St. Nicholas from West 160th Street, noting the architecture. For a non-native New Yorker, the population density in the rows of beautifully ornamented six-story brick buildings seems nearly beyond belief, although those southern blocks later feel positively sparse when compared to the four high-rise apartment buildings standing atop the Cross Bronx Expressway. Thirty stories of faded beige walls and balconies in rainbow hues made these buildings easy to use as landmarks.

«It’s a great place to live… as long as you’ve got a good, secure apartment.»

Continuing north and staying east of Broadway keeps me in the Dominican section of town. At the height of Sunday’s “Festival Dominicana” it seems every car is draped in blue, white, and red. The air fills with honking, whistles, car stereos, clicking dominoes, and in several places the blatting of hand-held air horns. I stop to speak (in Spanish) with Nelson, a Dominican street vendor selling at least 40 square feet of crisp Yankees’ hats in every color from blue to camouflage. Nelson tells me that he’s loved his 20 years living in the neighborhood. «It’s a great place to live,» he says, «as long as you’ve got a good, secure apartment.» I ask him about neighborhood troubles, and he considers for a moment before waving to the south. «Brooklyn,» he says. «Not here.»

Walking west, I approach New York-Presbyterian hospital. The narrow storefront eateries of the east side (with their ubiquitous plantains, roast chicken, and coconut water) give way to larger restaurants, sushi bars, and pubs. Blue scrubs become common street apparel. On foot, the hospital’s precise property lines are difficult to discern, and Jerry, a white man in his late fifties who I meet in a dog park just off Riverside Drive, cites this difficulty as one of his frustrations with the district. “Columbia keeps buying up property … they’re an octopus!” He also complains about not being able to find a good local restaurant, or “any restaurant which doesn’t serve Latin food.”

Continuing north along the Hudson River, I come to the area west of Broadway and north of 181st Street. When I ask about “Hudson Heights,” long-time residents Maddy and Jerry Post scoff. “It’s a made-up term which came in when realtors saw the place had gentrified,” Maddy tells me. “We moved into this building the same week Nixon resigned, and nobody called it anything but Washington Heights.” The area stands in sharp contrast to the areas south and east; a Starbucks, trendy fusion restaurants, and an older and more European racial mix on the sidewalks all leave an impression of relative affluence. Maddy credits the steep hill between the Heights and Broadway with deterring would-be criminals, and having walked up it, I can’t disagree.

I walk briefly through Fort Tryon Park before heading down the hill, through the yarmulke-dense area surrounding Yeshiva University, and finally up to the trees, rail yard, and playing fields, which mark the far northern tip of Manhattan. It hardly feels like the dense grid of 155th Street, and I add up the neighboring contrasts I’ve seen: plantains and sushi; affluence and drug corners; English and Spanish; Dominican flags and hospital blues.

I saw Rush (the band, not the pseudo-pundit) with my best friend at the Los Angeles Forum back in 1979. My friend drew the band’s trademark red star logo (sans naked man with gripping butt cheeks) on the left breast of a pair of heavy cotton hooded warm-up pullovers popular in those days with night time Huntington Beach-goers. I still have mine, and it fits if I try hard.

We scored our front-row, center tickets from the Ticketmaster booth next to Anaheim Stadium for a mere $80.00. Sure, it ate into our Asteroids and Defender budgets, but it was way worth it for such awesome seats, dude.

We rolled in, red stars prominently displayed, found our seats and were soon embracing a bra-less hottie (er, “fox,” to use era-correct parlance) with her own homemade T-shirt sporting the words, “Neil Peart: Achiving Balance.” We didn’t really care that she couldn’t spell “achieving” and were disappointed when ticket-checkers discovered she may have simply been jiggling and hugging her way to the front row with no more authorization than her breasts could muster. In our book, that was pretty substantial authorization. My friend and I both agreed she deserved to stay a little longer for her efforts.

After Geddy, Alex, and Neil played for us, I felt complete. I couldn’t aural direction-find for a week; my deafness was a battle-scar: “Sorry man, I can’t hear you very well, I had front-row seats to RUSH in LA last WEEKEND. FRONT-ROW.” Yes indeed, chicks dig eardrum scars.

I know, as sure as my 8:30 PM bedtime, that I need to see Geddy’s hipster goatee up close, count the hairs and wonder if “Just for Men” gets his business.

Sadly, I only went to one other Rush concert after that: Wembley Arena, London, 1982, crappy seats, no pre-show breasts, no 7-day aural disorientation. Since then, I’ve wanted to see Rush in concert and I missed their last gig when they came through town. In fact, I purposely missed it because I was a weak, tired, middle-aged old dude.

Lame, lame, lame.

Now I find that the mightiest epic-rock-power-trio ever to grace a Dungeons and Dragons gaming session is rolling back through town on their Snakes and Arrows tour. I know, as sure as my 8:30 PM bedtime, that I need to see Geddy’s hipster goatee up close, count the hairs and wonder if “Just for Men” gets his business. I need to (carefully) bang my head and play unabashed air guitar/drums/bass to whatever the hell the boys want to play. I need to wail along with Geddy, “Earthshine/a beacon in the night/I can raise my eyes to Earthshine” and watch Neil hammer tight and clean through another set.

Bring me up front, Ticketmaster, plant my ears in the 4KHz killzone.

Sure, for $740.00.

What! Is that the inflation-adjusted 80 bucks of my youth?

Adjusted for inflation, my 1979 tickets would run me $156.80 today. Not too bad; I could probably get the wife drunk and convince her that spending $627.00 for the whole family to get their eardrums pasted was a good deal. As long as I didn’t mention bra-less, half-educated hotties willing to snuggle for a seat, I’d probably be golden.

So what’s going on here? If we leave out the rather sad fact that I now automatically count admission to anything that costs money in sets of four and look for “family pack” discounts, something seems terribly wrong. Is there some sort of conspiracy to jack up the price so aging guys can’t live out their rather hum-drum rock and roll fantasies? I don’t think so. I think it’s simply supply and demand, “ram ‘em when you can” capitalism. I suppose I shouldn’t complain; the Police are coming, and ear-bleed tickets for their gig in my town are running $3,750.

It looks like I’ll have to buy cheap seats, pull on something sexy, and work my way to the front.

Now that I desire to be close to you

like two occupants sharing a twin bed

sensing the warmth of sweating shoulders,

hungering for your flesh like wild wolf

leaning over empty carcass,

you’re off searching unexplored cliffs

& climbing dangerous mountain tops,

capturing bumblebees in broken

beer bottles for biology class,

pleasing plants & parachuting from clouds

for fun.

In clouds you’re closer to life & nonsense,

a princess of absurdity, collector of dreams

& silent sounds.

In clouds you build your own fantasy, share it with

select celebrities.

But till this captive discovers a cure for caring,

a way of rescuing insatiable insanity,

or lives long enough to be patient in longing for you-

you must be vigilant,

for with time snow will surely

blanket over this warm desire.