My Black

"Well hello, Dramatic Spring in a Winter Consciousness."

It was the early nineties, and Mr. Munchweiler was calling the New Age health spa where I worked as a receptionist.

"Hello, Mr. Munchweiler," I said cordially.  I appreciated the fact that he remembered who I was, since few of the other patients did.  I would even have bet that he remembered my name, although he always addressed me as he just had on the telephone.  I didn't know exactly what he meant, and I enjoyed not asking him.

Munchweiler said he "did people's colors."  People paid him to tell them what colors to wear and what make-up to apply.  I didn't worry about make-up or the color of my clothes.  I just washed my face every morning with Ivory soap and put on something clean, baggy, and black.  Done.

Apparently, Munchweiler viewed me as a blight upon the fashion landscape.  I viewed him as a human petit-four.  He was very thin, with a sharp, homely face, but I had never seen anyone so meticulously groomed or dressed.  Looking at me upset him so much that one day, while sitting in the waiting room before his high colonic, he decided to do my colors for free.

He approached the desk.  He wore a $2,000 pair of designer wire-rimmed glasses, a robin's egg blue cashmere sweater over a cream dress shirt, perfectly tailored navy wool pants, and cordovan loafers.  He had no stray nose hairs, ear hairs, or blemishes of any kind.  His chin and cheeks were so smooth that he had probably shaved in the lobby men's room on the way up.  No comb-over for Munchweiler.  He must have powdered the top of his head to keep it from shining under the fluorescent lights.

The office soundtrack began playing Nat and Natalie Cole singing "Unforgettable" for the twentieth time that day.  My breathing got shallow.

"Darling," he said, "you are wasting your youth."

I could see where this was going.  I tried to head him off.

"Did you know," I said, "that Nat King Cole did not consent to sing this duet with his daughter?  He was already dead when she made it.  Don't you think that's creepy?"

Munchweiler was undeterred.

"What's creepy is a nice-looking twenty-five-year-old woman dressing like Lurch from the Addams Family.  No, listen to me."  He imperiously waved away any words that might escape my parting lips.  His fingernails were buffed and varnished with a healthy rose tint.

"Colors correspond to the seasons.  Everyone has her season.  Your season depends on your skin tone.  Winters wear black.  You are NOT a winter.  You are a Spring.  But you are not a Classic Spring."  He shook his head emphatically.

"You should NOT wear pastels.  They will drag you down.  You are a Dramatic Spring.  You should wear bright colors, but don't go into neons.  Those are for Summers.  Dark green should be the darkest color you ever wear.  Make it your black."

I looked at him.  He sighed, went back to his chair, and opened a People magazine with Heather Locklear on the cover.

"Everything I own is black," I said.

"So I surmised," he said, not looking up.

I said, "I don't have any money."

"Come on," he said.  "There are thrift stores."

Randi, the colonics girl, opened a door and said, "Ready for you, Mr. Munchweiler."

"And cut your hair," he murmured as he swept by, low enough so Randi couldn't hear.

The day before Munchweiler's next colonic was my day off. I got stoned and stood in front of my bathroom mirror with a pair of scissors.  While I cut my hair short, Billie Holiday sang beautifully, without any of her dead relatives.  I sang along on "And I find the very mention of you / Like the kicker in a julep or two."

The word "julep" gave me an idea.  I pulled on my combat boots and stuffed one ten- and one five-dollar bill in my jeans pocket.  My cat Tiny tried to follow me out, but since we lived on a busy street, I slammed the door in her face.  She yowled out the window.  Better pick up some kitty litter, also.

I walked two blocks to a thrift store.  It was still there in the window, a mint-green polyester dress, floor length, with a halter top.  The clerk was smoking a cigarette and reading the L.A. Times.  She did not look up when I came in.  She was wearing black, and I wondered if she was a Winter.

"How much is the dress in the window?"

"Seven bucks," she said.

"I would like to try it on."

She stalked over to the mannequin, pulled the dress over its head, and handed it to me.  Some ash from her cigarette fell on it.

Behind a fabric curtain, I pulled the dress over my head.  I looked in the mirror and saw that it was not baggy, to put it mildly.

"How do I look?" I asked the clerk.  "Be honest."

"Like Cher with anorexia and a bad haircut."  I noticed her tongue ring and smiled.

"Perfect."  I handed her my ten.

I stopped at the drug store and bought some cat litter.  In the dollar bin I also found some sparkly green eyeshadow, which I applied thickly the next morning after donning my combat boots and new dress.

That afternoon when Munchweiler came in, the Spring movement from Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons" was playing on its thirteenth rotation.  I hadn't planned it that way; I did not even know where the stereo was.

"Hello, Anne Frank," Munchweiler said, unsmiling, sporting a flawless camel's hair jacket.  "You're on the right track."  He sighed, sat down and opened his date book.

Katz was the owner of the health spa.  His parents bought it for him after he got an undergraduate arts degree at a university which has a banana slug as its mascot.  I saw him gliding toward me as I was walking toward Hoyt, my rusted 1971 Volvo.  Katz was tall and slender, with carefully tousled dark curls.  He was dressed in a dove grey silk tunic with dark blue silk pants.

"We're going to have to let you go," he said, looking deeply into my eyes with his usual faux-tender expression.

"Why is that?" I asked.

"It's just not working out," he said.

"Oh."  I wondered how I was going to pay my rent if I could not find another job in the next thirty days.

"I can see you're upset," Katz said, still gazing softly at me.  "Would you like a hug?"

"No," I said, "but you're supposed to have the last check ready when you fire someone."

"Oh," he said, shrugging.  "Well, come on into the office and I'll write you one."

I never saw Munchweiler again, but twenty years later, dark green is still my black.

Three Things I Like About Teaching

It's easy for me to complain about the difficulties of teaching, and heaven knows I spend a lot of time doing so.  "I complain, therefore I am" could be my motto.  Lately, however, I have noticed that my unceasing bitching has alienated all my loved ones except my dog, whose loyalty is unwavering because he listens only when a food can is being opened.  So today I am taking myself firmly in hand and admitting that teaching has its joys.

Here are three of them.

1.  I like children.  

I like their frankness.  I can count on them simply to tell me if they hate me, love me, like my new sneakers, think my breath stinks, or don't understand a word I'm saying.  I don't have to wonder what they are thinking and feeling.  I find this relaxing.

I enjoy eavesdropping on their conversations, which I often find simultaneously funny and thought-provoking.

My second-grade class had many luncheon meetings about their band, "Exploding Diaper."  First they developed a surprisingly streamlined band logo, then identified the need for an entertainment lawyer.  (I once worked for a man I would have recommended, but no one asked me.)  Next, two of them made a CD at home and shared the songs with others during play dates (after my unreasonable refusal to use lesson time for this purpose).

On a walk to the park, one of my students told a classmate, "When I grow up, I want to be a nation."
"Well, you'll still have to pay taxes," she informed him.
He asked, "Will I pay them to myself?"
"Hmm," she said, "that's a good question.  You'd better ask about that."

Child 1: "Mommy made daddy sleep on the couch last night because she said he stank like cigarettes and beer.  When daddy woke up he was yelling at mommy because she has a friend who is a boy."
Child 2 (furrowing brow): "That's weird."
Child 1 (nodding): "Yeah.  Wanna play Uno?"

(One child's response to a child who was trying to convert several of his classmates to Christianity):  "When you pull down your pants, God is pulling His pants down, too."  (This ended the conversation.)


2.  I like the fact that my work requires me to keep learning.


Children stop listening to me as soon as what I am teaching them stops having meaning for me.  They can spot a phony a mile away, and no child respects or responds to a phony.  So I do what I can to keep lessons interesting for myself.  If they are learning something new about a subject, I need to learn something new about it too.  The fact that we are working on different levels is irrelevant; we are all growing.  Who knows, maybe this will keep me from getting Altzheimer's.

As a child, I hated math because it was taught in a way I found simultaneously confusing and stultifying.  To keep from inflicting this experience on my students, I forced myself to look for ways to enjoy math.  I had too much math anxiety to focus on directions about how to do Sudoku puzzles, so I humbled myself and asked a friend to show me.  He did not laugh at me.  Now I get a kick out of Sudoku.

I read books about math to help me reconnect with the one time in school that I found math beautiful, junior year geometry, when the delightfully British Miss Bennett spoke to me of fractals and the music of the spheres.  I show the children hexagons in carrots and five-pointed stars in apples, and they stand with arms and legs akimbo to become five-pointed stars themselves.  The children keep me running with their fascination with basic mathematical patterns.  Look Miss Bleier, all the answers in the fives table end with zero or five!  I smile and try to access the feeling that this is occurring to me for the first time, which is different from being a phony.  I try to cultivate what the Buddha called "beginner's mind."

I make up stories in which all four basic math processes are gnomes, hunting for precious stones in the Numeral Mines. (I stole this idea from Allesandra Profumo, a sexy Gypsy and excellent mentoring teacher I worked with.)  There is Pierre Plus, a zaftig lad dressed in green, thinking of lunch, collecting his stones one by one; Melvin Minus, melancholy in blue, always crying when stones fall out of his bag; Tallulah Times, dressed like a rock star in a yellow pants-suit, so lucky that she finds equal piles of precious stones which she arranges on her special tables; and Dame Divide, devastating in a red silk cape, possessed of enough chutzpah to settle arguments over how stones should be portioned out.  We act out all the parts using dragon's tears (those shiny stones people put in flower vases).

One rest time I was reading one of Beverly Cleary's Ramona books to the children.  The main character, eight-year-old Ramona, expressed glee because her school was closed and she didn't have to go.  The children looked at one another, puzzled.  A girl raised her hand.  She asked me, "Why would anyone not want to go to school?"  The others looked at me expectantly, waiting for my answer.

A decade of frustrating faculty meetings and unreasonable parents' expectations melted away, and I felt like I'd won the Nobel Prize.

3.  I like supporting myself by helping the innocent.


It's great to get a paycheck for doing something I regard as unquestionably good, like teaching a group of children to read.  In my hour of darkness, as Gram Parsons sings, I wonder what good knowing how to read will do my students in a world where people sext instead of writing sonnets, a world in which dog fight organizers and the Kardashians set the cultural standard.  But the other 23 hours, I believe reading can help children save their own lives, the way it helped me save mine.

Some days I blow it.  I yell at a child.  I get a migraine from the incessant noise -- they are so freaking loud and they never, ever get tired.  My lesson falls flat.  I tell all the kids put their heads down so I can try to take one deep breath.  I set the timer for five minutes and say none of them can ask me for anything until the timer goes off, unless someone is bleeding or choking.  I see my doctor once more about getting some teacher's little helper, then don't fill the prescription again.

Through it all, I believe I'm keeping a light burning in a dark time, simply by being interested in who these children are, and in what they can do.  Each of them brought at least one gift only he or she can give.  I want to help them open their gifts.

So warts and all, there is a way in which every day I teach is a party, although much to the children's chagrin, we only have two class parties a year.  I won't try to explain this to them, however, because they will roll their eyes.  Third graders are excellent at that.

Letter to the Editor of "The Sun"

Dear Editor,

When I get a new copy of "The Sun"  I read the whole thing slowly over multiple subway rides, cups of coffee, and pedicures.  I have always cherished the fact that I can savor the entire issue without encountering ads.  I regard this as a gift rarer than hen's teeth.

However, after reading the letter from a reader encouraging "The Sun" to include "tasteful advertising such as one finds in 'Smithsonian'" in order to avoid fundraising drives, I feared I might be missing out.  I picked up the issue on top of my stack of "Smithsonians." Within were 40 advertisements. 

Nine of these were ads for tours and cruises.  I couldn't decide which was the most tasteful.  Was it the picture of the three white people in a boat on an African river gawking at an elephant on the adjacent bank, the woman dressed like Meryl Streep as Isak Dinesen in "Out of Africa?"  Or was it the one that exclaimed simply, "BOTSWANA!"? 

Three ads appeared from the same jewelry company which features the elegant "lab-created DiamondAura."

Three ads for limited edition coins, and three from a collector seeking unspecified "artifacts" followed.  (Hey, wanna come up and see my artifacts?)

Then came ads for hearing aids, shoes, shirts, pajamas, language programs, earrings, glue, puzzles, coffee pots, floor mats, car insurance, one charitable organization, and bow ties.

I was now drowning in culture.  What could save me?  Wait!  Ads for medication with names like a quartet of Greek goddesses -- Lovaza, Lipitor, Lyrica, and Celebrex.  Respectively, they preside over excess fat in the blood, high cholesterol, diabetic nerve pain, and arthritis.

Then I saw it -- the pinnacle of good taste.  I quote it verbatim,  in its entire perfection:

"Athena Pheromones (TM), Biologist's Formula.  Unscented fragrance additives for men and women.  Enjoy More Affection With Biologist's Pheromones.  Developed by Dr. Winnifred Cutler, co-discoverer of human pheromones in 1986.  'I am a physician and retired a couple years ago.  And I go with a woman in her 30's.  Let me say this:  10X works!  I could tell you more, but I had better not!' - Ted (M.D.), PA.  4-6/mo supply - 10:13 for women $98.50, 10X for men $99.50.  www.Athenainstitute.com, 610-827-2200."

After seeing for myself, I must join the throngs of deprived readers clamoring for "The Sun" to include advertisements.  And I go with a man in his fifties who feels the same way!

Sincerely,

Babka 

Manhattan, New York

Reaching Out

Vacation

Seaside Wilderness Beach, Ventura, California

After exhausting my supply of jokes about WC's Creamsicle-colored Speedo, accidentally shooting an eighteen-minute iPhone video of the inside of his tote bag, collecting an interesting array of animal teeth, and burning the tips of my ears to a crisp, it was time to pack up and go.

On the burnt turf by the restrooms, a couple had set out a blanket.  Why, I wondered, didn't they bring the blanket down to the beach?

They were speaking in angry tones, so I looked over at them.  One was an emaciated blond girl about eighteen wearing cut-offs and a tank top.  The other was a muscle-bound, thirty-ish man with a blond ponytail, wearing a mango bikini.  

He had a five-o'clock shadow and skin like fine Spanish leather.  The top of the bikini, tied in a dainty bow, held aloft his set of double D's.   A penis like linguica for four was stuffed into the teensy bottoms.

The girl shouted, "You're not my father!" 

That was clarifying.

WC and I mutually decided staring was counter-indicated, and continued on toward the showers.  Our ears, however, were perked.

"I am out of here!" the man shouted.  "See you later, everyone!  Goodbye!"

Everyone?

With this, he jumped into a ratty two-door and sped out of the lot.  The girl calmly dialed someone on a cell phone.  The wind carried away most of the conversation, and I was distracted by the fact that WC was naked under the outdoor shower.  Was he jealous of the linguica and acting out?  

I caught a few of the girl's words. "Yeah, he really over-reacted."

To what?  I was eager to know, but it seemed forward to ask.

I hustled WC into a pair of dry shorts, and we got in the car.  I asked him, "Do you think that was a Craigslist date gone wrong?" 

WC shrugged.  "I think most people are disasters in progress, and others are disasters waiting to happen."

That's why I call him my little ray of sunshine.

Trader Joe's Women's Restroom, Ventura, California

I walked in and noticed a young woman brushing her teeth with an electric toothbrush, a large glob of Crest on her face.  She was standing in the corner of the room farthest from the sink.  Both stalls were full.  

A Trader Joe employee walked in and rushed into one of the occupied stalls.  

The occupant called, "Don't open the door!  It doesn't lock."

The employee withdrew, saying, "Yes, it does."

I heard the occupant flush the toilet, then try to lock the door again from the inside.  

"No!  It doesn't lock!" she said.

"Yes it does," the employee said flatly.  "You have to tilt it."

The woman, who was about seventy, came out, glared at the employee, and washed her hands.

I figured the employee's bladder might have been about to explode, accounting for her behavior, so I waved her on ahead of me.  She locked the stall door.

"See," she said triumphantly to the occupant, who was drying her hands, "it locks."

The woman left silently.  The girl was still brushing her teeth in the corner, and still had not wiped the glob of Crest off her cheek.

The other occupant emerged, and I went into the stall.  I heard the employee flush and come out, then begin washing her hands.  

"Please don't brush your teeth in here," she said to the girl.  

"Why not?" 

"Because it makes people uncomfortable to come in here and see you brushing your teeth.  We even had one person shaving her legs in here."

"Well, I'm not shaving my legs.  And I don't know what YOUR dental hygiene is like, but I like to brush my teeth after I eat.  Are you the MANAGER or something?"

"Yes," said the employee, "I'm one of the managers."

"Well, I am going to write to your corporate HEADQUARTERS and ask them about it," said the girl.

"Okay," said the manager, in an icy tone that led me to believe she was going to her car to get a shotgun.

I flushed and went to the sink to wash.  The girl and I were alone.  The blob of Crest was still there.

She turned off the brush and looked thoughtfully at me.  "Does it make you uncomfortable if people brush their teeth in the bathroom?"

"I really don't have an opinion on it one way or the other," I said, hoping to escape before the shooting began.

"I mean, they're just TEETH, right?" she said,

I smiled in what I hoped was a soothing way.  "I don't know," I said, while swiftly exiting the bathroom.  

I couldn't see the manager, but looked around nervously for her while WC paid for our Thai chicken wraps, anticipating the sound of gunfire.   

WC covered me, and we made it to the car.

Point Lobos, California

With great inner effort, I overcame my lifelong anti-social tendencies for a few moments, offering my binoculars to a woman and man who had been hiking behind WC and me for about half an hour.

"Here," I said, smiling in what I hoped was a friendly and not scary way, "there are four cormorants nesting over on that rock.  Would you like to see them?"

She turned pale.  She ignored the binoculars, shared a meaningful look with the man, and stared at me as though I had just struck her.

Her voice trembled slightly as she said, "We've had some really bad experiences with cormorants."   The man nodded gravely.  

"We had jobs feeding marine mammals at a park on the East Coast," she said.  "Cormorants would dive down and stab our hands with their beaks, trying to get the herring."

They both held the backs of their hands under my nose.  There were dozens of small white scars.

The man said, "Their beaks are like razors."

She took the binoculars, looked through them briefly in the direction of the birds, shuddering slightly.  Then she handed them back to me.  She looked into my eyes with deep sadness, then walked on, so upset that she didn't even notice when her bare leg brushed against poison oak.

WC was trying to suppress laughter because he didn't want me to hit him.  I said, "This is what happens when I try to reach out."

Praying for Your Mother

Granada Hills, California, 1968.  I'm the tall one.

When I attended Granada Elementary, I often made a game of comparing my mom to the moms of my neighbors and classmates.  She was way better than Maurice's mom, who made us take off our shoes as soon as we came inside, immediately sequestering us in Maurice's immaculate room.

Maurice's mom seemed very tense because he liked to play dolls and dress-up.  To accommodate her peculiarity, I would go into his room and begin playing with the Chrissie Gro-Hair doll I brought.  Maurice would dutifully move his Hot Rods around their track.  His mother would stand watching us for a few minutes, look relieved, and then leave.  We would immediately switch toys until we heard her steps in the hallway.  That Maurice really knew his up-do's.

I found the switcheroo at Maurice's house unnecessary.  I asked my mom why his mom would act like that.  "She's afraid Maurice will grow up funny," my mom said, "but she should just relax.  It's a done deal."

I appreciated that my mom left me and my friends alone to play, intervening only when there appeared to be bloodshed.  I remember once when I was nine, my best friend Kelly and I were in the middle of a game of "Stripper."  In this game, we would turn up the Rolling Stone's "Miss You" on the radio, pretend the bed was a runway, and barrelhouse down it taking off our clothes.  When my mother came in to announce dinner, Kelly was naked and gyrating while I whooped and applauded.  My mother didn't miss a beat.  She smiled calmly, said, "Excuse me," and softly closed the door behind her.

Turning pale, Kelly asked, "Are we going to get in trouble?"

I said, "I don't think so."  Kelly looked doubtful.

My mother never mentioned the incident, nor did she tell Kelly's hotheaded mother Marlene, who liked to scream, "I'm going to wring your necks!" at Kelly and her little sister while sitting on the couch eating Hostess products.

Of course my mom was way better than Marlene.  Once I wrote of my dislike of Marlene in my locking journal.  My little sister Mary broke into the journal with a pair of scissors and read it aloud to her friend Joanie, who, unfortunately, was Kelly's little sister.  Joanie told Marlene all about me calling her mean and fat, and Marlene complained to my mom.

My mom grounded Mary for reading my journal.  The next day, hungering for further revenge, I executed Mary's favorite stuffed dog by hanging it with a frayed jumprope.  She saw Scruffy swinging from an orange tree when she came home from school.  Mom grounded me for that, which seemed reasonable to me.  It was worth it.

Even though she had trouble driving me anywhere without rear-ending someone, gave me a baloney on white bread and a box of raisins for lunch every school day for six years, and had to resign as my Brownie troop leader after an ugly incident involving stinging papier mache paste, the more I compared my mom to other moms, the better she fared.

She was way better than Ricky and Larry Joe's mom, who spanked them every time they got in trouble at school, creating a vicious circle in which the boys' behinds were too sore to sit properly in class, and therefore got into more trouble.  I recall how my mom handled Mrs. O'Brien, my Catholic kindergarten teacher at Granada.

Mrs. O'Brien decided to make her kindergartners into repentant Catholics or die trying.  We were born in sin, and this concerned her.  The separation of church and state, as it relates to public education, did not.  She wore a navy blue wool suit, even when it was a hundred degrees outside and Santa Ana winds howled through the San Fernando Valley.  Her black and pewter hair was forced into a permanent wave that made Shirley Temple's ringlets look sloppy. (I was a big fan of Shirley's at that time.)

Usually some poor twisted bronze or beaded animal lay impaled on a pin at her breast.  On one especially disturbing day, she stepped over me when I was lying on my nap mat, and I saw her underwear.  It was enormous.  Billowing.  Bleached a blinding white.

Mrs. O'Brien liked to tell us little stories at the end of each day.  One Monday afternoon she told us about a bunch of young children who had been killed in a plane crash the day before.  It was in the news, she said.  Our homework was to go home and pray for them.  We all nodded at her, went home, and forgot all about it.

Tuesday morning, Mrs. O'Brien parted her red lacquered lips to command, "Please raise your hand if you remembered to pray for all the little children who were killed in the plane crash."

All of us raised our hands.  She narrowed her eyes and smiled, causing the beige powder to crack slightly on her cheeks.

"You know," she said quietly, "little children who lie go straight to Hell."

I don't know how I made it through the rest of the day.  I stayed under my desk during recess, listening to the thundering footsteps of the sixth-graders around the kindergarten bungalow, thinking,  "I will never be that big."

That afternoon when I got home, I went straight to the bedroom I shared with Mary to prepare to go to Hell. I figured the Devil would be popping through the floor at any moment, ready to take me on an express ride.  I picked pom-poms off the edges of my floral bedspread while I waited.

My mother, who was Catholic herself and took me to church every Sunday, came in with a plate of burned cookies and saw me weeping silently in the center of the bed.  When I explained what was wrong, she threw the plate on the floor, breaking it.  The cookies rolled under the dresser.

"God damn it!" she screamed,  "this shit is why I didn't send you girls to Catholic school!"  She hugged me.  "Mrs. O'Brien doesn't know what she's talking about, honey.  Come with me."

Without putting on her bra or her shoes, and without taking the jumbo pink rollers out of her hair, she carried me out to the car.  We made it to school without hitting anyone, even though she was breathing funny.  She rolled down the window, smiled tightly, and said, "Wait here." She wasn't gone long.

The next day, Principal Suttle met me at the front gate and escorted me to the other kindergarten bungalow to meet my new teacher, Mrs. Romanek.  She wore a blonde platinum wig, favored Day-Glo polyester pants-suits, and often didn't seem to realize we children were in the room.

For years afterward, every time Mrs. O'Brien would see me on the playground, she would sidle up to me and whisper in my ear, "I'm praying for your mother."

Mom, I'm praying for you today too.  Thanks for everything.

Lansky's Old World Delicatessen

Today I went out walking on the Upper West Side, where I cannot afford to live.  The sun was shining for the first time in six months, cherry trees were blooming, and young blonde mothers rushing off to Whole Paycheck were smashing their thousand-dollar strollers into the backs of my deliciously exposed knees.  I was feeling good enough to risk lunch at a new restaurant.

Lansky's Old World Delicatessen had a sign out promising that it was authentic and Jewish.  Sounded good to me.  Eggs Benedict was featured on the menu.  Hmmm.  Eggs Benedict contains ham, ham is treyf, and treyf, the last time I checked, was not authentic and Jewish.  The willowy Celtic waitress wafted over to my table.  Not being kosher and feeling giddy, I ordered the treyf, with apologies to my ancestors.

Happily, I read an Easy Rawlins mystery by Walter Mosley while I waited, pausing occasionally to listen to the artful conversation of the probably gentile twenty-year-olds at the table next to mine:

He:  I don't usually get that drunk.  I've been getting drunk more lately, though.  Especially yesterday.  Yesterday I drank a lot.

She:  Yeah.


The waitress brought my food within a reasonable period of time, and set it down before me.  It looked delicious, with unclotted Hollandaise, well-poached eggs, and perfectly browned English muffin.  Then I tasted it and remembered, "Oh, yeah.  I'm a woman."  The food was cold as applause for a klezmer band at a Protestant wedding.

Sometimes when I eat out alone, I forget I'm a woman, and therefore bound to get inferior service.  I forget this because usually I eat with my fiance, White Chocolate.  I never get cold food when lunching with W.C.  I never get hassled on the street when I walk with him, I always get the correct change when he's in grocery lines with me, and cabs never splash my legs with water when driving by the two of us.  That is because White Chocolate is six-five and has a penis.  I am five-seven with a vagina, so all those things often happen to me when I am alone.  And I often get cold or ill-prepared food.

I caught the waitress' green eye and politely asked if my food could be re-heated.  She seemed untroubled, and returned with a plate of well-heated, good food.  For this favor I gave her a four-dollar tip, only to find out after leaving that she had taken her revenge for my request.

When asking for my check, I had asked for my breakfast bread and strawberry butter (again, not authentically Jewish) to be placed in a to-go bag.  She came back smiling with the bag.  Ten minutes after I left, I looked down at the paper bag and noticed a large, oily stain was causing it to break apart.  She had put the plastic container of strawberry butter in the bag uncovered.

I shook my head, muttering, "This would never happen to W.C."  I considered going back to complain and retract my tip, but then I heard music coming from Central Park.  Sounded like respectable blues guitar riffs.  I walked toward them, and found a sunny place on a bench.  I looked around at people.  A barefoot, five-year-old boy with purple jelly all over his mouth danced over the bench and put his big toe on my sweater.  His father said, "Careful, Cass!"  I smiled at Cass and said, "How ya doin'?"  He grinned and rushed shyly away.

I looked up and saw an Asian couple posing for a photographer in the middle of a busy walkway.  The music blared.  It sounded workmanlike close up, uninspired.  The folks playing it looked pasty and wore white t-shirts.

At that moment, a man pulling a shopping cart, wearing a rainbow clown suit and a gigantic platinum afro wig, danced rapidly down the walkway, backward.  Before I could holler, "Watch out!" he smashed into the tiny woman having her picture taken with her beloved.  The man hugged the woman and asked if she was okay, while the photographer screamed, "Watch it!" at the clown, who never stopped dancing backward, but raised his middle finger in reply.  Then he changed to the peace sign.  I was confused, and I could see I wasn't the only one.

I asked myself, "Would that have happened if her boyfriend were taller?"  I decided it probably would have, since the clown was rampaging backward, unable to discern anyone's gender or height.

Just then I noticed the musicians were playing Jesus music.  I have nothing against Jesus; I wish more of his followers would observe his teachings, and I am often humbled by them myself.  But I didn't feel like listening to mediocre rock songs about how he was going to make everything alright when I had just eaten treyf at a faux deli.  I moved on.

Soon I was in a good mood again.  Nothing beats hundreds of cherry trees blooming and robins singing after a six-month cold spell.  Not even being six-five with a penis.

Stuck on Luigi

            In Narcotics Anonymous, dating is not recommended for people who are in their first year off drugs.  There’s no rule against it; it’s simply understood that a person in her first year clean is unable to distinguish her ass from her elbow, and therefore might make poor dating choices. 

            I sidestepped this logical suggestion by marrying my alcoholic boyfriend, Luigi, a few weeks after I quit drugs.  Sure, I knew that before Luigi would give up booze, Rush Limbaugh would swallow another handful of OxyContin and finally confess his love for basketball star Dennis Rodman. 

“Dennis’ cocaine use is no problem for us,” he would say on his right-wing radio show.  “Too bad it doesn’t help him on the court like it does in the bedroom.” 

The two lovers would then legally marry in an intimate ceremony at the old Limbaugh homestead in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. Rush would blush prettily in a size twenty-six Vera Wang gown, while Dennis would sniff and wipe his ravaged nose.

I knew Luigi would never stop drinking, but it was a good fantasy, and I was in love.  I accepted my family’s mystification about my love for Luigi.  The way I saw it, they were misguided.  Clearly, all the things they hated about him were really his best qualities.  They unfairly judged his self-esteem as self-absorption. His dislike of small talk they wrongly saw as rudeness. His devotion to his guitar and dreams of greatness they misinterpreted as a refusal to grow up.

While I was earning my doctorate in opiates and hallucinogens, it did not enter my mind that my family might have a point.  All I knew was Luigi’s smile went straight to my clitoris, and when we were loaded, we got along like a house on fire.  (Our rented house actually did catch fire twice, but those were small, localized blazes.)  Love itself is a blind drug addict, so it never occurred to us that our hearts might someday stop beating as one if I stopped using. Along we stumbled on our merry way to the Justice of the Peace.

            After my many years of addiction, I was exhausted from its traditional gifts -- skin like elephant hide, an inability to hold down any food but plain M&Ms, and a tendency to sweat on mildewed mattresses while hallucinating conversations with my own rotting corpse.  I was exhausted enough actually to listen to some of the suggestions I heard from people in N.A.  That is why I had been clean for a year when Luigi left me.

            “I miss getting drunk with you,” he explained while climbing into his girlfriend’s grimy minivan, two Liquor Barn shopping bags in each hand. “You’re just no fun anymore.”

            He slammed the dented passenger door and Delight waved cheerfully to me as she drove off with my husband, weaving wildly in her traffic lane, her two young children giving me the finger out the back window.

            Sobbing, I drove to an N.A. meeting, which was now my coping strategy whenever I stepped in mental dog shit.  On the way, I called my friend Janice to ask her to meet me.  I drew my latest tragedy for her in broad strokes.

            As soon as I arrived in the dank Hollywood church basement, I threw myself into Janice’s ample, tattoo-covered arms.

            “Delight’s younger than I am,” I cried, “and she has bigger tits!”

Janice, off drugs for ten years, did not bother to feign surprise that my marriage had fallen apart.  She was not heartless, however.  She handed me an undrinkable cup of coffee and a fistful of goldfish crackers.

“Don’t worry, the booze will age her early,” she said in her gravelly voice, lighting a fresh cigarette from the butt of the one she’d been smoking.  “A couple of years from now she’ll be able to Velcro two sponges to her nipples and mop the floors with those tits.   She’ll change her name to Depressed.”

“I love you, Janice,” I said.

             She nodded sympathetically, exhaling smoke directly into my face.  “Kid, I feel the same way, but together we’d just be two hysterical bitches instead of one, with no cock anywhere in sight.  What fun would that be?”  She patted my cheek twice.  “Go get us some seats. I gotta pee before the meeting starts.”  She lumbered off toward the ladies room. 

            Janice and I went to a lot of meetings that year, and I managed to stay drug-free, even though Delight and I worked at the same high school.  I taught English and she taught Spanish. She and Luigi had met at a holiday faculty party soon after our wedding.  I’d caught her goosing him under the mistletoe, and when I’d confronted him about it, he’d asked in a hurt tone, “Is it MY fault she got too drunk at the party?”  Stupidly, I’d let the matter go and had pretended not to mind when they’d become “buddies”  who got together a couple of times a week to “jam on guitars.”

My current work situation was very distracting since there was no way to avoid Delight, and whenever I saw her, all I could do was think about how to kill her with whatever was handy.  I pictured drowning her in an un-flushed faculty toilet.  Pushing over those six-foot bookshelves not quite fastened to the wall as she sashayed by.  Heaving a boiling teakettle at her as she retrieved her Slim Fast from the refrigerator.  Once the principal was telling me something important and I couldn’t hear him.  I caught sight of Delight, and my ears rang loudly as I pictured bludgeoning her with a three-hole punch.

When I whined to Janice about the situation, she said, “Hold your head up, kid.  You’re not the one who’s behaving like an asshole, yet.  Don’t do anything stupid, okay?  I know that’s like asking the sun not to shine.”  She smiled at me brightly, having finished applying her prune-colored lipstick.

            “I know Luigi’s a cheater and a juicer,” I said, “but I miss him. I want him back.”

She waved this away as though waving away a fly.  “That’s because you’re only playing the good tapes over and over again in your mind.  You’re remembering the two times he went down on you, or the time he wrote you some cheesy three-chord song.  Play the bad tapes.  The next time you get starry-eyed remembering Luigi, make yourself think about how you had to hold back his hair extensions every morning while he rode the porcelain bus.  Then remember that’s Delight’s job now.” 

“Marry me,” I begged Janice.  “We’ll work it out.” 

She shook her head sadly.  “My heart belongs to a dead junkie, and I’m not even talking about Jimi Hendrix.” 

I knew she was talking about Sven, her husband, who had relapsed, overdosed and died nine months earlier. 

“Let’s go to Tommy’s and get some chili fries,” I said, “my treat.”

I can’t speak for Janice, but for me, fat and carbohydrates provided little solace.  Six months after Luigi left, I was still feeling lower than Barry White’s voice during a bout of bronchitis.  Nothing could make me feel worse, I thought, until I made the mistake of answering the phone.  My friend Kay-Kay from college, a pert little redhead around Delight’s age, wanted me to be a bridesmaid at her wedding.  She was marrying one of our former professors, an anti-social, penniless man roughly thirty years her senior.  Felicitations!  No way to refuse without putting her wee nose out of joint, so I agreed. 

The Pismo Beach ceremony was heart-warming, the groom managing to remain standing throughout.  Kay-Kay had failed to mention that my bridesmaid’s duties would include chaperoning her mother, Big Kay.  I figured mom had been nicknamed before her speed habit had reduced her to eighty-nine pounds.  She had a weekend pass from rehab for the occasion. Her resolve impressed me -- she was able to pull off a rough approximation of motherhood for two whole hours by chain smoking, swilling Monster energy drinks and squeezing my hand so hard that my arm fell asleep.  After the ceremony, the family packed Big Kay off in their limo and headed for the reception, leaving me temporarily deprived of her company.

 The Protestant shindig was conveniently located in a rural area with no marked roads. Eventually I was forced to urinate on a dirt path near my parked car, narrowly missing my lampshade gown.  Wiping with a service station receipt I found in my clutch purse, I gave myself a paper cut, and it wasn’t on my finger.  A full hour later I found the spanking new housing development where one of Kay-Kay’s many relatives had purchased a McMansion.  I walked through the open door and found the festivities in full swing.  Most of the guests appeared tipsy, and all bets were off regarding Big Kay. 

She was slurring as I walked in, glass raised high in a toast.  “Am I the only one who remembers that JOSH GROBAN ROADIE who busted Kay-Kay’s CHERRY?!”

I caught one of her flailing elbows in a death grip and hauled her toward the bathroom.  As we staggered by, I looked apologetically at Kay-Kay, who hissed, “Where WERE you?”  My chance at an invitation to her firstborn’s christening seemed diminished.

Show me a McMansion and I’ll show you a well-stocked medicine cabinet.  I rooted through this one and found Big Kay some Dilaudid.  The bottle winked at me seductively, but to temptation I did not yield.

 “Take this and shut your pie-hole,” I told Big Kay, “or I’ll put you in a cab.”  She nodded and meekly swallowed the pill.

“Thanks,” she said, giving my cheek a gin and treyf kiss.

“No, thank you,” I replied, wiping off her slobber.  “That’s more action than I’ve had in months.”

Big Kay went back to the party and promptly fell asleep on a sofa.  I hoped she’d wake up again, but not anytime soon.  Not in the mood to mingle, I went out to the yard and engaged the host’s two spunky German shepherds in a long game of fetch.

The day after returning home from the nuptials, I developed a raging case of poison oak.  It was spreading up my legs, heading north toward my paper cut.   My right arm looked leprous. 

“How could this have happened?” I asked Dr. Rosen.  “I was a Girl Scout!  I know what poison oak looks like --  ‘Three leaves on a tree, let me be.’  I peed by the side of the road, but I know I didn’t squat in poison oak.”

“Pet any strange animals lately?” she asked. 

Turns out that dogs can roll in poison oak with no trouble at all, then deliver the oil to anyone who pets them. 

“Do you mean to tell me,” I asked, a note of hysteria edging into my voice, “that people all over L.A. are getting gonorrhea from hot, unprotected sex, and I got poison oak from petting some friendly German shepherds?”

Dr. Rosen peeled off her gloves and tossed them in the hazardous waste bin.  “I’m sure a lot of the sex is less friendly than the dogs,” she said rationally.  “This is a bad case.  I’m going to have to give you a cortisone injection and steroid medication.”

Fortunately, I can blame what happened next on the ‘roids.  They removed all my inhibitions while fueling me with homicidal rage.  Where had they been all my life? 

One scorching June morning, I donned a long-sleeved shirt and pants to cover my blight, then drove to work.  I arrived early -- five a.m., in fact -- so that I could put up the dozen colorful posters I had stayed up all night making.  These read:  “DELIGHT BARRELLI IS AN INEBRIATED, HUSBAND-PURLOINING TROLLOP.  FOR A GOOD TIME, CALL:” (with her home phone number).  I reasoned that this would motivate even the laziest students to crack open a dictionary.  It was a vocabulary-building exercise. 

I believed Delight’s infamous behavior at several faculty holiday parties would make it difficult to say for sure who had put up the posters.  I had not foreseen that during recess, the trollop herself would accost me in the hallway with torn poster pieces clutched in her turquoise-tipped claws.

She ran toward me wailing, “I can’t believe you did this!”

I charged her, snarling, rolling up my sleeve and waving my infectious arm at her.  She turned and ran shrieking toward the principal’s office.  I chased her.  The ninth-graders observing this seemed entertained. 

“Dude,” I heard one of my remedial students say to another, “it’s just like Night of the Living Dead!”  I made a mental note to tell him he’d used a simile.

When called upon to explain my actions, I denied putting up the posters, but had to admit to ‘aggressively brandishing a scabrous appendage’ (as stated in the incident report).

“It’s the medication my doctor prescribed,” I said contritely, widening my eyes and trying to tear up a little.  “It seems to be clouding my judgment.”

I was sent home on a one-week medical leave.  I did not go home.  I did not go to an N.A. meeting.  I did not call Janice.  I was on a roll. 

I popped another ‘roid and drove to Delight’s house, knowing she wouldn’t be home because she was teaching eleventh-grade Spanish.  Probably her spawn would also be in school. 

I didn’t knock, preferring to stalk through the unlocked door bellowing, “WHERE ARE YOU, YOU SPINELESS, WHORING, WOP MUTHERFUCKER?!”  Said SWWM was sitting on the couch drinking Stoli and watching an MTV eighties marathon.  He was wearing a lacy pair of what I guessed were Delight’s panties.  Good to know that fetish was still alive and well. 

            “Jesus, Hannah,” he said, “what happened to your arm?”

            “Same thing that happened to my LEGS,” I said, dropping my pants. 

            He choked on his vodka and I leapt on him, locking him in a bear hug, rubbing his clammy skin with my weeping pustules.  He wriggled loose and ran screaming toward the shower.

            I shouted after him, “That’s nothing compared to what your new BITCH is going to spread all over your BALL SAC!”  I pulled on my pants and slammed out.

            I drove to Tommy’s and ate a large order of chili fries.  I was feeling a lot better.  I was just checking my wallet to see if I had enough cash to score some dope in Echo Park when my cell phone rang.

            I saw the call was from Janice.  I didn’t pick up, but I listened to her message.

            “Hey, kid.  I haven’t heard from you in a while, and I can feel you fucking up from here.  Go for it if you have to.  I understand.  No one could ever talk me out of anything.  Just remember I’m here for you when you’re trying to pull your filthy carcass out of the gutter again.  If you survive.”

            There was a pause.  I heard the tiny sizzle of her cigarette as she took a drag.

“Okay, I used to be Catholic and I can’t resist, so here comes the guilt.  Ready?  Please don’t make me go to another funeral this year.  I love you, Short Bus.”

            I thought about calling her back and telling her I hated her and that our engagement was off.  Then I had an epiphany!  I was an idiot.  I bought two more orders of fries and drove to Janice’s house.

            During the next week she monitored me closely, doling out my medication only as prescribed.  I called her Killjoy, but things were not completely bleak.  My limbs began healing, and her small house was quite comfortable except for the elaborate, wall-sized macramé hangings in every room.  I found them creepy.  She credited macramé with keeping her clean for the first year. 

            “But after I macramed a jock strap for Sven,” she said, “I knew I’d have to find the strength to quit.”

            She called one of her longtime friends, a man named Lloyd, and asked him to speak to Luigi on my behalf.  Lloyd was African-American, six-foot-six, and muscle-bound.  He looked like a taller Marvin Gaye, so I pictured him in white satin boxers, stretched out on a purple chaise lounge singing “Sexual Healing.” I had seen Gaye do this on his final tour, and I cherished the memory. 

Since quitting PCP, Lloyd was a gentle person, but Luigi didn’t have to know that.  In a single conversation, Lloyd was able to make him see the wisdom of forgiveness and of not prosecuting me.  Probably it helped that Luigi hadn’t caught the poison oak. 

            By week’s end, my arm, legs, and paper cut had healed, and my heart threatened to follow.  Lloyd asked me out, and I accepted.  For the first time it seemed that maybe I could do better than Luigi.  He picked me up and took me to Musso & Frank Grill on Hollywood Boulevard, once a preferred destination of my hero, Raymond Chandler.  Lloyd was so calm and sweet that it was hard to imagine him on angel dust, but a slight limp testified to his ill-fated attempt to fly across Topanga Canyon.

            “I blame “Purple Haze,” he said, smiling at me with gold-flecked Marvin eyes.  “’Excuse  me while I kiss the sky.’  Now I can see what a cliché that whole night was, but it seemed profound at the time.”

            “If anyone could have kissed the sky,” I blurted out, “you could have.”  He had a gorgeous mouth.

            Returning to work the next Monday, I heard that Delight had been fired for sneaking her own flask into the prom she was supposed to chaperone.  Apparently she had also goosed the seventeen-year-old homecoming king.  I was frankly, well, delighted, until one night she walked into my favorite N.A. meeting looking like Margot Kidder on a month-long bender.  Janice was right; Delight’s tits had already lost some helium.  I didn’t know she had a problem with drugs as well as booze, but it made sense.  She spotted me and narrowed her bloodshot eyes.

            “Shit,” I said to Janice, “there’s Delight.”

            Janice whacked me on the back, sending a half-chewed ‘Nilla Wafer flying out of my mouth. 

            “Go talk to her!” she ordered.  “Now is your chance to make amends.”

            There’s this asinine practice in N.A. of taking responsibility when you’ve wronged someone.  I sighed, not wanting to listen to Janice for the next hour if I declined.  I tried an excuse.

            “I would, but look what I’m wearing.”  It was my new “ASK ME ABOUT MY EXPLOSIVE DIARRHEA” t-shirt, a parting gift from the graduating class of 2002.

            Janice snorted.  “What’s the problem?  She already knows you’re an asshole.”

            I gave up and walked over to Delight. 

“Hey,” I said.

She eyed me warily.

“Don’t worry,” I said, “my skin’s cleared up.”  I forced my lips into a smile shape.  She turned to go.

“Listen,” I said, “I’m sorry about what I did to you at school, and about going to your house.  I hated you because you stole my husband, but I don’t hate you anymore.  I think maybe you did me a favor.”  To my surprise, I found I meant what I said – the doing me a favor part more than the sorry part, but still.

Delight looked like she was about to boot. Maybe it was me, or maybe she was still de-toxing.

“Do you want to sit down?” I asked.

“I guess I have to,” she said.  “These meetings are court-mandated.  But I’m not sitting anywhere near you.”  With that, she scuttled over to the other side of the room.

I told Janice what happened.

“Sure, she’s a little charmer,” said Janice, “almost as sweet as you were when you first came in here.”

Feeling this was out of bounds, I said,  “Don’t you have something to macramé?”

She rummaged through her massive purse, pretending not to hear me.  “Where is my lighter?”

Lloyd came over and sat next to me, squeezing my unblemished thigh with his big, warm hand.  “Nice shirt,” he said.

In my head, Tammi Terrell and Marvin’s smash hit, “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” began playing.  Of course, Lloyd had once swan-dived off a mountain that was plenty high enough, but I let that go.  I felt beautiful and sexy again, like a Semitic, thirty-ish version of Tammi.  I hoped I wouldn’t get a brain tumor and collapse onstage in Lloyd’s arms. 

Janice jostled my arm.  “What are you daydreaming about?”

I said, “You don’t want to know.”

“I’m sure that’s true,” she said.  “Hey, you’ve been clean almost two years, right?”

“Right.”

“Know what they say you can hear when you have two years clean?”

“No,” I said, filled with dread.

“You’ll hear a loud popping sound,” she said.  “That will be the sound your head makes as it finally falls out of your ass.” 

Lloyd laughed.  I decided not to hold that against him; I was off ‘roids, and his pheromones filled me with good will.  I raised my Styrofoam coffee cup to Janice. “Here’s hoping, Killjoy.  Here’s hoping.”