I was driving back from the Y, dreaming of the tempeh, lettuce, and tomato sandwich I was going to get for lunch at Field of Green's [it pains me to keep the apostrophe, but it's their spelling], when I noticed, in my rearview mirror, an enormous, sleek, red pick-up truck bouncing down Montrose towards me. It was lunchtime, and so the traffic was a bit heavy, and the truck stood out because of its color, size, and shiny newness. It stayed behind me for a couple of seconds, then pulled around so that it was in the lane next to me. As we waited for a light to change, the driver of the truck, a man, leaned over, waved, and motioned for me to roll down my window.
I wasn't sure. I've had some problems with men in trucks and other large vehicles that have ended badly. There was that time, right after 9.11, when a man from Whole Foods was sure it was me who threw a carton of raw eggs on his SUV, which had "Bomb His Ass and Take the Gas" and "I'll Be for Peace after We Get a Piece of Them" signs and American flags decorating its windows. That whole thing went on for fucking months, almost a full year. And how many times have I been riding my bike only to be nearly run down by some asshole driving a Hummer, speeding through the urban landscape like he's fleeing a scud-missle attack? H. and I were once almost killed by a man driving an SUV so large it couldn't fit around us in a supermarket parking lot and so the driver decided to teach us a lesson by nearly running us over and then coming to a screeching halt, getting out of the cab, and demanding to know which one of us touched his car while his terrified children watched from the tinted windows.
Feeling generous, I took the risk anyway, and rolled down my window. Maybe he needed directions to the vegan lunch place I was about to visit . . . I raised my eyebrows and tilted my head up.
"Yeah?"
"Hey!" he yelled, leaning way over, wild-eyed, frantically gesturing. The truck was so wide it could easily have fit four or five other people in the front. "I need your help!! I drove off this morning without any money and my truck really needs some gas!! I'm on empty!! Would you pull over so I can borrow some cash?? -- I just need a couple of bucks to make it home!!"
What!? I almost laughed out loud. "Um, no," I said, shaking my head and looking back at the traffic light, which was about to change to green.
But the guy was pissed. "FAGGOT!!!" he yelled, and gunned his motor and sped off down Montrose, swerving as fast he could in and out of the lanes.
Ouch. You'd think I'd be used to it by now since it's a word that I've been accosted with ever since I can remember. Still, it stings. Anyone whose ever been called a faggot knows this. Anyone who has ever been mean enough to use the term to describe someone else knows its easy power. I'd say, in the past five years, someone yells this at me about twice a year. It always catches me off guard, especially since it happens when I least expect it -- like today, or like the time I was unlocking my bike at the Half Price Books and a school bus rode past and a chorus of children screamed it at the top of their lungs from their windows, or the time I was walking down to one of my favorite watering holes and someone yelled it from a truck window, or the time I was camping with H. and someone yelled it at us as we were packing up our tent, or the time I was visiting friends in Austin and their crazy neighbor started to interrogate me about faggots, or . . . well, you get the drift. And, look, I know that this guy was -- clearly -- out of his mind. I know, I know . . . it was just the icing on the cake, really.
But, it makes you think about terror and terrorism, and anti-gay violence, injurious speech, and the cultural and emotional trauma that it takes so many of us so many years to get the fuck over; and you think about that big red truck and that man's frenzied truck-to-car begging for money so he could fuel it, and you think that maybe this is not some Mad Max future, but right now, right here.
What did this guy actually think was going to happen, anyway? That I was going to say, "O, you poor man! Yes, let's drive past the homeless vet begging for booze money on the median strip and the gaggle of street kids looking to stir up some trade and park safely in the Exxon station so I can get out of my car and meet you face to face, at which point, I am sure you will not stick a gun or knife in my face and rob me or, worse, shoot me or stab me. Yes, please, by all means, let's pull over -- the wax job on your truck clearly indicates that you need me to buy you some gas. In fact, let's use my credit card so you can fish the receipt out of the trash and steal my identity after I drive away."
I reminded myself that tailing this guy and trying to run him off the road was not a good idea. I took a deep breath and put my turn signal on. "It's gonna be alright," I said to myself, "It's gonna be tempeh, lettuce, and tomato. It's gonna be a little cup of vegan gumbo soup. It's gonna be a slice of lemon in your glass of water -- you'll love it," I promised myself, "you really will."
Monday, July 23, 2007
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
remember (what everyone else forgets)
I was sort of dreading the trip back east to the family reunion. The whole idea of reuniting with people who I felt I had nothing in common with seemed like a chore, an obligation. My strongest memories of this side of the family are the two-dozen or so cousins I would see once a year, those who would tease me for reading inside while everyone else was outside playing hockey. These are the guys who couldn't believe I knew nothing whatsoever about the big game that was playing on TV on Thanksgiving. I would just be patient and wait for it to be over. More recently, I would see these cousins at my sisters' weddings, and it was hard to explain the academic job search, how you could be a "doctor" and still have a hard time making ends meet, the problem of adjunct teaching at four different campuses, what I was writing about, not to mention the queer thing. It was easier to speak in vague generalities like, "Yeah, I like living in Houston" and "Teaching is going well" and then direct the conversation back to easier subjects like marriage and kids.
My older sister is the one who told me that my anxieties were largely a part of a family hangover, and that this is the side of the family who I should feel most connected to -- tall, goofy-looking, working class people with yellow teeth who are just as socially and physically awkward as I am. I didn't really believe it until H. and I showed up for the "day in the park" picnic. Throngs of cousins and their kids stood in what looked like uncomfortable half-circles, smiling in their baseball caps and sunglasses, waiting to figure out what was going to happen next. I thought to myself, if I can walk into a classroom of thirty complete strangers and act like I was born inside a university, then I can, surely, mix in with this group of blood relatives. And so I did. I plunged right in, tapping into that energy that makes me "go" when I'm teaching. I walked right up to somewhat familiar faces and re-introduced myself and H. I turned to give a hug to the next person and asked the kids if their teeth had been stolen or if they fell out on their own. I easily made my way from young to old as if I belonged to this family more than anyone else did.
It was, of course, exhausting, but it mixed things up just right, and before I knew it, the shy, quiet, high strung boy who felt radically alienated from everyone else was gone, and, for the first time, I had animated conversations with all sorts of people in my family, who seemed as relieved as I was that I had lost my fear of being the black sheep.
Alcohol is important to this side of the family, sometimes dangerously so. It was both interesting and a little unsettling to see what happened when the bar opened towards dinner. Certainly the bonds formed in the park over whiffle ball, kite-flying, and hoagie-eating became, in the evening, more lubricated with the addition of old-fashions, manhattans, side-cars, beers, wine, and lots and lots of cigarettes. At one point, late, I realized that half the family was trashed and telling wild stories at the top of their lungs and the other half was slumped over a half-empty drink, ready for bed. In the room where the bar was, a couple of poster boards had baby pictures of everyone in attendance ("Guess the Baby" was a game you could play), along with a couple of candid shots from over the years. One of the candids was an enormously embarrassing photograph of my cousins and me from the mid-1980s. In it, I am fourteen or fifteen. My hair is, like, shorn up the sides and off at a gigantic, bizarre pointy angle to the left side of my head. I am emaciated, with bad acne. A pair of round metal glasses sits on my nose. I'm wearing all black. And even though everyone else in the photo has bad mullets and big permed hair, clad in white jeans and day-glo t-shirts, I am the one who everyone sees as an index of 80s poor taste. The thing to do at this point in the reunion is to yell "Flock of Seagulls!" or "Devo!" and then use your hands to shape an imaginary new wave hairdo before collapsing in laughter. I do it, too, to make sure eveyone knows I am not shy, not the outsider. Then I catch the eye of my cousin T., who I have only met once, and we step out for a smoke.
I remember T. from when we were both eleven. She came to visit my family for about a week, during which time we spent an entire day floating in inner-tubes down the Delaware river. This is all I remember. She's my father's sister's daughter, adopted. We clumsily began a conversation remembering the tubing trip, and then went in circles, talking about her search for her biological parents and the hurt she felt when they were rude to her, telling her to go back to her adoptive parents. We talked about feeling like outsiders, like black sheep. As a teenager, I remember hearing that she was always in trouble, although I don't know exactly what that means, now. I have a cousin on the other side of my family who once accused me of the same thing -- "You were in a lot of trouble in high school, weren't you?" Trouble? It's not something you ever think you are in -- just the way your life goes, unlike regular teenagers' lives, yours will be trouble. We smiled about this, finishing cigarettes.
Then T. asked me what I knew about why her mother and my father were taken from our grandparents as kids. This is something that I always forget to remember -- when my father and his three older sisters were children, they were taken, by the state, from my grandparents. They were also separated from each other. The sisters were put in different foster homes, and my father was put in an orphanage. No one really knows why. One result was that T.'s mother was very badly abused. Eventually, my grandparents regained custody of their kids, and the reason why it happened was never, ever talked about. When my father has asked people from his parents' generation why this happened, he cannot get a straight answer because the response has always been, "Your mother always loved you kids and you better believe she fought tooth and nail to get you back." T.'s interesting observation of this is that, as terrible as the situation was, she believes that the trauma my aunt grew up with is what brought her to adopt her children, and that, had the abuse never taken place, my cousin T. might never have been my cousin.
I really enjoyed this conversation because it was a strange, intimate moment in which secrets were shared and a mystery emerged. It was a serious talk, and it also reminded me why this reunion was, in fact, of historical significance. I come from a family that came very close to being torn apart. My father and his sisters, who organized the reunion, are now the oldest members of the family. The outside conversation with T. shows that those who have always felt the most outside the family can, finally, come together and talk, and that, importantly, we are the ones who will remember what everyone else almost forgets.
My older sister is the one who told me that my anxieties were largely a part of a family hangover, and that this is the side of the family who I should feel most connected to -- tall, goofy-looking, working class people with yellow teeth who are just as socially and physically awkward as I am. I didn't really believe it until H. and I showed up for the "day in the park" picnic. Throngs of cousins and their kids stood in what looked like uncomfortable half-circles, smiling in their baseball caps and sunglasses, waiting to figure out what was going to happen next. I thought to myself, if I can walk into a classroom of thirty complete strangers and act like I was born inside a university, then I can, surely, mix in with this group of blood relatives. And so I did. I plunged right in, tapping into that energy that makes me "go" when I'm teaching. I walked right up to somewhat familiar faces and re-introduced myself and H. I turned to give a hug to the next person and asked the kids if their teeth had been stolen or if they fell out on their own. I easily made my way from young to old as if I belonged to this family more than anyone else did.
It was, of course, exhausting, but it mixed things up just right, and before I knew it, the shy, quiet, high strung boy who felt radically alienated from everyone else was gone, and, for the first time, I had animated conversations with all sorts of people in my family, who seemed as relieved as I was that I had lost my fear of being the black sheep.
Alcohol is important to this side of the family, sometimes dangerously so. It was both interesting and a little unsettling to see what happened when the bar opened towards dinner. Certainly the bonds formed in the park over whiffle ball, kite-flying, and hoagie-eating became, in the evening, more lubricated with the addition of old-fashions, manhattans, side-cars, beers, wine, and lots and lots of cigarettes. At one point, late, I realized that half the family was trashed and telling wild stories at the top of their lungs and the other half was slumped over a half-empty drink, ready for bed. In the room where the bar was, a couple of poster boards had baby pictures of everyone in attendance ("Guess the Baby" was a game you could play), along with a couple of candid shots from over the years. One of the candids was an enormously embarrassing photograph of my cousins and me from the mid-1980s. In it, I am fourteen or fifteen. My hair is, like, shorn up the sides and off at a gigantic, bizarre pointy angle to the left side of my head. I am emaciated, with bad acne. A pair of round metal glasses sits on my nose. I'm wearing all black. And even though everyone else in the photo has bad mullets and big permed hair, clad in white jeans and day-glo t-shirts, I am the one who everyone sees as an index of 80s poor taste. The thing to do at this point in the reunion is to yell "Flock of Seagulls!" or "Devo!" and then use your hands to shape an imaginary new wave hairdo before collapsing in laughter. I do it, too, to make sure eveyone knows I am not shy, not the outsider. Then I catch the eye of my cousin T., who I have only met once, and we step out for a smoke.
I remember T. from when we were both eleven. She came to visit my family for about a week, during which time we spent an entire day floating in inner-tubes down the Delaware river. This is all I remember. She's my father's sister's daughter, adopted. We clumsily began a conversation remembering the tubing trip, and then went in circles, talking about her search for her biological parents and the hurt she felt when they were rude to her, telling her to go back to her adoptive parents. We talked about feeling like outsiders, like black sheep. As a teenager, I remember hearing that she was always in trouble, although I don't know exactly what that means, now. I have a cousin on the other side of my family who once accused me of the same thing -- "You were in a lot of trouble in high school, weren't you?" Trouble? It's not something you ever think you are in -- just the way your life goes, unlike regular teenagers' lives, yours will be trouble. We smiled about this, finishing cigarettes.
Then T. asked me what I knew about why her mother and my father were taken from our grandparents as kids. This is something that I always forget to remember -- when my father and his three older sisters were children, they were taken, by the state, from my grandparents. They were also separated from each other. The sisters were put in different foster homes, and my father was put in an orphanage. No one really knows why. One result was that T.'s mother was very badly abused. Eventually, my grandparents regained custody of their kids, and the reason why it happened was never, ever talked about. When my father has asked people from his parents' generation why this happened, he cannot get a straight answer because the response has always been, "Your mother always loved you kids and you better believe she fought tooth and nail to get you back." T.'s interesting observation of this is that, as terrible as the situation was, she believes that the trauma my aunt grew up with is what brought her to adopt her children, and that, had the abuse never taken place, my cousin T. might never have been my cousin.
I really enjoyed this conversation because it was a strange, intimate moment in which secrets were shared and a mystery emerged. It was a serious talk, and it also reminded me why this reunion was, in fact, of historical significance. I come from a family that came very close to being torn apart. My father and his sisters, who organized the reunion, are now the oldest members of the family. The outside conversation with T. shows that those who have always felt the most outside the family can, finally, come together and talk, and that, importantly, we are the ones who will remember what everyone else almost forgets.
Monday, July 09, 2007
quick sketch
At the Bus Stop, in Capital Hill, Sunday night karaoke is sung by the neighborhood's most interesting people, including my old friend Seanna, who performed a killer cover of Sid Vicious' "My Way," and H's old friend GC, who tore it up with a rousing rendition of Modest Mouse's "Float On." The beer was nice and cold, and we drank until no one was left but us, and they threw us out. You should have seen H. do his cover of Gary Newman's "Cars" -- it brought down the house.
Saturday, July 07, 2007
feet out the window (stomach just above intestines)
The unwritten part of this travel is that I have some sort of virus, some bug, which, since about Tuesday, has had me sick -- at first almost unbearably so, frighteningly so, but now almost manageable. Almost, but not totally.
Upon our arrival at Kalaloch, in a nauseated panic, I made a call to my doctor's office. I was told that I needed to stop eating the normal foods that I eat and stick with dried toast, bananas, rice, and tea. That, and to get some rest. Real rest, not hike-for-several-hours-and-then-drive-for-a-few-more kind of rest. After posting my last entry at Port Townsend, I slept for pretty much the entire day and that whole night. I was exhausted and very sad. Today I feel okay, but I am sick of being sick, sick of herbal tea and plain white rice, sick of having to explain to wait staff -- no, no butter, just rice, just toast, no jelly, no jam, just dry, just sprite, no coffee, no cheese, water only, just the broth, do you have any bananas?, no, no cocktail, yes, I am sure I only want an apple . . . I keep thinking I've turned a corner, but not yet.
This morning, we said goodbye to H's cool cousins who live in this amazingly cute 1970s treehouse-looking home in the woods near Bellingham. We drove north to see them yesterday, and had a really chill afternoon and evening, taking in the fresh air, the view, and the trees, talking about politics, driving their biodiesel truck to the co-op for vegetables and cooking, and hanging out with the kids. We spent the night in a camper in their front yard and woke up to singing birds.
We landed in Seattle around noon. We've checked in to the Ace hotel in Belltown, where we've rented a tiny little room with a shared bath on the hallway. It's a pretty hip place, what with the hip-hop being piped into the bathrooms and the tattooed and crooked haircut crowd. We did some much-needed laundry in the basement. Everything is painted white and all the fixtures are clean stainless steel. I've got my bare feet hanging out the window onto 1st street as I type this, and I am trying to will health back into my body, to calm all of my internal organs down. H. is out at a barber shop down the block getting a haircut. We have plans to go see some live music tonight, perhaps meet up with some old friends, but I'm taking it about an hour at a time, which means that I might be just as content reading Don DeLillo's new book, Falling Man, which, so far, is pretty great.
I'll post some photos when I have a couple more minutes.
Upon our arrival at Kalaloch, in a nauseated panic, I made a call to my doctor's office. I was told that I needed to stop eating the normal foods that I eat and stick with dried toast, bananas, rice, and tea. That, and to get some rest. Real rest, not hike-for-several-hours-and-then-drive-for-a-few-more kind of rest. After posting my last entry at Port Townsend, I slept for pretty much the entire day and that whole night. I was exhausted and very sad. Today I feel okay, but I am sick of being sick, sick of herbal tea and plain white rice, sick of having to explain to wait staff -- no, no butter, just rice, just toast, no jelly, no jam, just dry, just sprite, no coffee, no cheese, water only, just the broth, do you have any bananas?, no, no cocktail, yes, I am sure I only want an apple . . . I keep thinking I've turned a corner, but not yet.
This morning, we said goodbye to H's cool cousins who live in this amazingly cute 1970s treehouse-looking home in the woods near Bellingham. We drove north to see them yesterday, and had a really chill afternoon and evening, taking in the fresh air, the view, and the trees, talking about politics, driving their biodiesel truck to the co-op for vegetables and cooking, and hanging out with the kids. We spent the night in a camper in their front yard and woke up to singing birds.
We landed in Seattle around noon. We've checked in to the Ace hotel in Belltown, where we've rented a tiny little room with a shared bath on the hallway. It's a pretty hip place, what with the hip-hop being piped into the bathrooms and the tattooed and crooked haircut crowd. We did some much-needed laundry in the basement. Everything is painted white and all the fixtures are clean stainless steel. I've got my bare feet hanging out the window onto 1st street as I type this, and I am trying to will health back into my body, to calm all of my internal organs down. H. is out at a barber shop down the block getting a haircut. We have plans to go see some live music tonight, perhaps meet up with some old friends, but I'm taking it about an hour at a time, which means that I might be just as content reading Don DeLillo's new book, Falling Man, which, so far, is pretty great.
I'll post some photos when I have a couple more minutes.
Thursday, July 05, 2007
notes on the nose (bald eagle)
It's really too bad you cannot take a photo of scents, because the strongest sense I have been exercizing the past couple of days has been through the nose. Seattle smells strongly of flowers, everywhere you turn. And while I love how jasmine and honeysuckle perfumes the street I live on, Seattle's flowers are an incredible variety of sweetness -- like wandering through a vaporised herbal tea. And after just one day in Seattle, we took a ferry and landed on the Olympic peninsula, which is not only stunning, at times unbelieveable, to see, but also home to a clear air filled with the fresh aroma of coniferous trees.
I think we've been really lucky with the weather, too. The days have been warm and sunny, bright and clear, so you can see gigantic snow-capped mountains on the horizon while you comb the beach for rocks. We've seen lots of deer (some as close as several feet away), butterflies, chipmunks, salmonberries, spittlebugs, a rabbit, seagulls, and little fish swimming in crystal clear waters. The ancient Hoh rainforest was a mesmerizing twisting, draping, and hanging of deep yellows, emerald greens, light golds, and pale oranges against the blue sky. We wandered a trail along the bluffs leading to Dungeoness Spit and ate a picnic lunch. Just as we were leaving the beach, we looked up and could not believe that we were seeing a magnificent bald eagle perched in the branches of a pine. Let's call it part of the national narrative that H. and I are trying piece together whenever we travel during the July 4th weekend.
Right now, we're on-line at a little cafe in Port Townsend, where I'm eating toast and drinking mint tea. We arrived in time yesterday evening to watch some fiddle-players at the Centrum in Fort Worden state park, which looks like this really interesting former-military base turned arts complex slash college campus. We returned to the park for fireworks last night (the temperature drops a bit in the evening, and the strong winds brings a little chill to the air, so folks were wrapped in blankets) and watched them burst over the water. We're staying in a hotel that used to be a brothel, where the different rooms are given women's names. It's got a claw-footed tub!
Tomorrow we're headed north to Bellingham to visit some relatives of H, then back to Seattle for a couple of days. The most important thing to do today is nothing, which I, for one, cannot wait to get to.
I think we've been really lucky with the weather, too. The days have been warm and sunny, bright and clear, so you can see gigantic snow-capped mountains on the horizon while you comb the beach for rocks. We've seen lots of deer (some as close as several feet away), butterflies, chipmunks, salmonberries, spittlebugs, a rabbit, seagulls, and little fish swimming in crystal clear waters. The ancient Hoh rainforest was a mesmerizing twisting, draping, and hanging of deep yellows, emerald greens, light golds, and pale oranges against the blue sky. We wandered a trail along the bluffs leading to Dungeoness Spit and ate a picnic lunch. Just as we were leaving the beach, we looked up and could not believe that we were seeing a magnificent bald eagle perched in the branches of a pine. Let's call it part of the national narrative that H. and I are trying piece together whenever we travel during the July 4th weekend.
Right now, we're on-line at a little cafe in Port Townsend, where I'm eating toast and drinking mint tea. We arrived in time yesterday evening to watch some fiddle-players at the Centrum in Fort Worden state park, which looks like this really interesting former-military base turned arts complex slash college campus. We returned to the park for fireworks last night (the temperature drops a bit in the evening, and the strong winds brings a little chill to the air, so folks were wrapped in blankets) and watched them burst over the water. We're staying in a hotel that used to be a brothel, where the different rooms are given women's names. It's got a claw-footed tub!
Tomorrow we're headed north to Bellingham to visit some relatives of H, then back to Seattle for a couple of days. The most important thing to do today is nothing, which I, for one, cannot wait to get to.
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