two thousand six hundred and four

Since January, I've been getting a bill from AT&T that says I owe them for long distance. These are little bills, not more than $8.00 accruing each month. The problem is that I don't have AT&T for long distance, I have Working Assets, that groovy company that gives you pints of Ben and Jerry's ice cream, donates money to great causes, and is linked to Sprint. When I moved in with H. a few years ago, I decided to get off the AT&T corporate teat once and for all, opting for Working Assets long distance, and SBC for wireless and land line.

Since January, I've been calling AT&T, trying to clear up the bill. This is difficult because my SBCglobal account is also now called AT&T, only, I've come to find out, this is different from "the old AT&T" or "legacy AT&T" which is the one that's billing me for the long distance I never ordered. To try to straighten out this mess, I called Working Assets, who told me to call SBC, who told me to call AT&T, who told me to call Legacy AT&T, who told me that my local provider is the one who switched me and that I had to call them. I call back SBC and an operator tells me that there is no record of this, but that she'll get to the bottom of it by doing a three-way [no giggling] call to the Legacy AT&T. This happens a couple of times with promises made on all sides that the account will be removed. But the bills still come, and the amount is increasing.

Then I get a call from Legacy AT&T telling me my name is being sent to a creditor, which really pisses me off. This past weekend, I spent about an hour and a half on the phone, mostly waiting and being transferred to various "associates" named (I wrote them all down) Kevin, Nikki, Judy, Clarence, and Heather, all of whom, ironically, sound like they are from south-east Asia. When I would ask for last names, I was told they were not allowed to provide me with last names, which makes me wonder if I was being helped by prison labor in the global south. Finally, I was transferred to "Tricia," who tells me in heavily-accented English that she even though she is a supervisor, she cannot help me. According to Tricia, the person I needed to speak with works in the "Slamming Resolution Center" and I will have to call back on Monday between 9am and 5pm and thank you for choosing AT&T. I hang up.

But, as things go with me lately, it doesn't stop there. As I'm getting off the phone, I hear the mail carrier posting letters in our box out front. After I hang up, I check the mail. There is only one envelope, and it is from AT&T. I open it and it says that I owe AT&T a past due amount of $2,604 on my long distance plan.

$2,604 is a lot of money. I immedately fly into a rage. I am irrational with anger. I am the world's victim. I shake my fist at the sky and grit my teeth, cursing god's cruel joke. I decide that not only have I been slammed (had my long distance switched without my authorization), but I have also had my identity stolen and someone, somewhere is having lengthy phone calls in my name.

Since today is Monday, I took off from the university early and called AT&T back and asked to speak with the Slamming Resolution Center. It took forever. I hung on the phone even though the recording told me it was going to be at least 30 minutes and that, since Monday was their busiest days, I should call back on Wednesday. I was mistrustful of the recording and held on. Finally, after about ten minutes of muzak and advertisements for all kinds of useless AT&T services and products, I managed to get "Blair," who told me the $2,604 bill was -- oops! -- a little typo, and that the bill was supposed to read $26.04 [I should have been able to figure this out on my own, but, like I said, I was through the roof with indignance and didn't bother to compare.]. After going around and around with Blair, who kept finding ways to put loopholes in my demand that he erase all charges and close the account, he finally does what I tell him to. I even got a confirmation number in case anything goes wrong.

But this is the point: if you get slammed by the heartless and soulless AT&T, you not only have to be tenacious and patient, you have to bully them just as hard as they are bullying you. The operators will try to talk you in circles. They will tell you that your local provider switched you even though you explain a million times that you've already heard that version of the story and it didn't do you any good to hang up and call your local provider. They will say things like "O, I see, well, I can remove two months of charges for you, okay? Let me go ahead and do that for you right now . . . " and you have to reply, "NO. You will remove ALL of the charges or you will transfer me to someone who will." They will say things like, "Ah, okay, our record now shows that you were the one who made the agreement with your local provider that we can now find to be in your long distance plan which, Mr. J_______, as you can plainly see, is why we have been able to reduce your charges by 5% for you today." And you HAVE to tell them that that makes no sense because they are expecting to bewilder you with nonsense so that you'll just give in and they can continue to profit off of your weariness.

That's that. I really don't want this to be a blog about getting the run around by the powers that be, but it is a very real and annoying -- potentially endless -- part of life, one that has the potential to overshadow the fact that you had your last day of classes today, and the gardeny perfumes of jasmine and honeysuckle this spring has been so lovely, following you everywhere you go in this city, and that you don't want to jinx the weather by saying out loud how glad you are that you can still keep all the windows open and sleep well in the cool evening air.

sometimes the answers come in the mail

"Hey you Lose your Driver License
at the 'Airport' Shone Shine Stand
We had you 'Page' at the Airport
that day. Sorry it take so long
to mail you DRIVES LIC
back to you.
P.S.
I found it behind the stand"

no command to smile this time (not again!)

I stuck it in my back pocket after picking up my boarding pass at the IAH airport, thinking that when I went through security, I'd be flashing it a couple of times anyway. I didn't even realize it was missing until I got in to New Orleans, hopped out of the shuttle, and needed to provide ID to get into my hotel room. Suddenly my hard-earned driver's license was nowhere to be found, making me very, very unhappy and filling me with a deep sense of dread.

Steady readers know about my year-long fiasco with TxDPS, and so I won't recount that hellish scenario again. But since I have really bad luck with driver's licenses, I assumed the worst: that I would not be able to get onto my return flight without it, that it would not be found, that there would be hours of waiting at the DPS to get a new one, that some crazy glitch in the system would delay the production of a new one . . . for these and other reasons, I was in no hurry to get back to the DPS. (Yeah, I checked and if you lose your license you cannot just "order a new one on-line." You have to go get one.)

While on the flight home (which I got on using my work ID), I also realized that I needed a license to present to the people at the D______ Unit I'll be taking my students to visit for a prison field trip this coming Friday. This morning, I remembered that JP commented on this blog about the one DPS you could go to in the city that, from what he knew, was almost always empty. I emailed him and got both sympathy and directions, and headed South right after work, at 3pm.

The miracle is this: I was there for about a total of fifteen minutes. I stood behind a couple of people in line and then boom! my photo was being taken and I was issued a temporary license and on my way home. I have no great hopes for its smoothe arrival on Hawthorne, but I am keeping my fingers crossed.

What's weird is that, even though the wait was short, the workers were very much the same as the ones I encountered at the place on South Gessner, who I figured were overworked and, for this reason, machine-like and unhappy. No one smiled or looked me in the eye. No one provided an explanation for what was going on. There were a lot of one-word commands that I had to ask to be repeated so I could understand.

I assumed, going in, that, since I just got a license, the replacement would be a digital copy of the old one, which is, surely, somewhere on file. This means that I figured that I wouldn't be getting my photo taken, but would just pay a fee and someone would place an order for a new copy. When I first arrived, I explained that I lost my license and needed a replacement. "Fill this out and come back when you're done." Anyone could quickly and easily just check the "no" boxes and scribble a fast signature on the form right there but, rather than point this out, I just circled around and got back in the four-person line. When I get back to the desk, about 45 seconds later, she points to another line of waiting motorists, "Line to your right." I wanted to say, "The line for what?" but, again, kept my mouth shut and got in it.

I stand in the short line and get called forward from behind a screen with a finger wave, "Next," the woman orders. "Hello," I smile, "I lost my license and I'd like to --". Before I can say, "get it replaced," she interrupts me by saying "Social security." "O, I'm sorry what? O, you need my social . . . ?" I am looking to find her eyes but she is staring at a computer screen. Her mouth is a straight line across. "Okay, sure," I say and recite three numbers before I realize she is not listening to me, so I stop and say, "O, wait a minute, so, do you want the number or the actual card?" Reply: "Card." Not looking at me. I put the card on the counter. She types in numbers and frowns deeply at the screen, reading my record, I guess. "Middle name," she says. I tell her. More tapping and scrolling and frowning. "Street you live on?" "Hawthorne," I say, trying to exactly mimic the robotic sound to her voice. She looks some more and then, satisfied, says "Ten dollars." I use the zombified voice again as I hand her cash, "Here. You. Go." She takes the money and says, dully, "Sign." "Yes," I drone, wanting to enjoy this little game, but my spirits are dampened by her joylessness, her profound alienation -- how much she must truly hate this job! Then, "Red light. Left thumb." Then, "Right thumb." Mm-hm. "Walk to the X." I move as robotically as I can over to what looks no different than the scuffmarks all over the floor except that it seems a little gummier from having once had black electrical tape on it in an "X" shape. No command to smile this time. I stare dumbly at the camera and the flash pops. The whole time, I wanted to ask, "But can't you just send a replacement license? Do I really need a brand new one?" But this just doesn't feel like the kind of place where you are allowed to ask questions, only take commands. She pulls a temporary license out and signs it and pushes it toward me: "Sign." "New license in the mail two- to six-weeks. Next." I mimic her a final time, trying to sound as bland and exhausted as she does, "Thank. You. So. Much." I push each word out of my mouth, and dodder over to the exit sign and leave. It's all I can do to not stick my arms out in front of me to impersonate a sleepwalking zombie.

The good news is that I now know the place to go get your license renewed or replaced that is the least crowded place, ever. (Thanks, JP!) Rather than publish it, lest the secret get out and it become overcrowded, just know that you can use me as a resource and I'll send you the directions, as long as you promise to do the robot thing with your voice, too.

inside

For those of you following in my footsteps, here's three shots I took of the inside that also made it onto the camera. The shots I took of the bathroom didn't come out, but you can see its folding door next to this little brown couch, pictured here with my Dickies backpack thrown on top. The little desk did not come in handy for writing, but you could, ostensibly, sit at it and gaze out the window at the teepee next door while your tamales microwave on high. I kept my laptop on my lap as I sat on the brown couch with my notes spread out around me.

Yes, it is dark in the teepee, although a little bit of sunlight comes in through tiny windows and, of course, the front door, if you keep it open. (I did find one mosquito and one brown recluse in the teepee.)

I say it is high time we claim Wharton as a writer's retreat -- a place for solitude and focus.

Dibs on Teepee 2!

yurts

I swore that since the camera shut down every time I tried to juice the little bit of energy out of the dying batteries that it meant there were no photos to be had of my motel experience a few weeks ago but, as you can plainly see, here's two I took the day I arrived.

My friend Cake claims these look nothing like teepees. "More like cupcakes. Or yurts," she says, but I think she's been listening to too much Laurie Anderson. If I had only taken a photo of the No Vacancy sign with it's Indian logo, you'd get a better feel for these teepees.

i really owe you one (new york city)

Sometimes, when I meet new people in Houston who ask me where I am from, originally, and I tell them that I was raised in New Jersey, there will be a lifting of the eyebrows and a smile followed by, "How lucky to be so close to New York! You must really miss the city!" It used to be that I would feel embarrassed explaining that I never took a bus or train into NYC as a teenager because it was, actually, a couple of hours away and, well, Philadelphia was so much closer -- a matter of minutes. For Texans, especially, a couple of hours drive to a city like New York might seem like nothing, but when you grow up in a tiny little mid-Atlantic state that believes it has a distinct "North" and "South" to it, these hours seem long, and the northern stretch to the city seems far.

This past week, I've been attending a conference in New York and, really, for the first time ever, I've been able to finally check out the city as I've always wanted -- no theater tickets, no shows or concerts, no big plans to have the ultimate city experience. Instead, I've been getting on the subway, getting off in random places, and walking in the bright, sunny Springtime weather: bookstores, coffee shops, bars, parks, vendors, trucks, benches, corners, E train downtown, L train to Brooklyn, Union Square, Christopher St., Avenue A, Chelsea, Nolita, Grand Central Station, Tompkins Square Park; finding a health food store with a juice bar, eating pineapple fried rice with tofu and sunflower seeds, bagels with veggie cream cheese and tomato slices, looking and not buying, late-night cab rides back to the hotel, the cityscape in the window as my nightlight.

I also have had the pleasure of reconnecting with two long-time friends from two very different periods of my life. My friend Gretchen (see post below) who I lived with in Syracuse, and my friend Jama, who I met in Houston (at the much-missed Toopee's Coffee on West Alabama) and worked with in the Queer Artist Collective in the mid-1990s.

It was with a wide sense of time that I got to play catch up with Jama in this unfamiliar city, remembering, as we drank margaritas one night and walked through Brooklyn the next, the mid-90s in a way that made the past seem unbelievable to me -- the intensity of being in Texas' only DIY queer peformance art troupe (ever? yes, ever!); who we were back then, and how pissed off, wounded, and unglued we all were; how we ever managed to get anything done (not to mention done well and with sold-out audiences each night) without any money but with a whole lot of over-inflated egos, dexterity, and ambition; in addition to what has become of us, the QuAC kids (as we were sometimes called); was difficult and astonishing for both of us. Seeing her smile lets me know that it is good to live through your twenties and come into a third decade of existence with a past that dazzles as much as it scares the living daylights out of you.

After our first night of seeing each other, with only a few dollars in my pocket, I got lost on the way back to my hotel. No matter which way I turned, it seemed, the subway I needed was nowhere to be found. It was late -- really late -- and I was really, really tired. The more I wandered, the more confused I became. Wasn't I just at this corner? Wait a minute -- is this Seventh Street or Seventh Avenue? In addition, my ATM card was not working. I was, as they say, shit out of luck. Feeling brave and desperate, I stepped out into the street and hailed a cab. When I got inside, I said, "Hi. I need to get to 53rd and 6th Ave. I only have four dollars in my pocket. Can you take me as far in that direction as possible?" I braced myself for a surly reply to get the hell out of the cab, but, miraculously, the driver said, "Don't worry about it." He raced me all the way to the hotel and smiled as he collected my measly cash. When I climbed out, I touched him on the shoulder and said "Thank you so much. I really owe you one." When I related this story of kindness to Jama's girlfriend, Joann, she said, "Chuck, that is what we call a true New York moment."

Cool.

feat. guest blogger, gretchen (new york city)

It's been wonderful to rediscover life with Chuck after having had to do without it for so long. For some reason, during the time we spent sharing space in the physical and metaphysical realms, there were a lot of towels involved. Tonight has involved far fewer towels, unless you count napkins, which Chuck enjoys torturing. Dinner at Angelica Kitchen was interrupted by the realization that he'd once again committed this small domestic abuse, wholly inappropriate in this whole food, vegetarian sanctuary. (Who knew it was the East Village cafeteria? Dining hall days came rushing back.) I took advantage of the opening to swipe a forkful of his marvy Roots of Spring pie. Mmmm, tofu cheese. So glad he had a fresh tube of Italian toothpaste from Ricky's, where fabulous Latino stock clerks spritzed us with Votive room spray, serenaded us with "Blow That Whistle" and ushered us to a wall of Tom's of Maine's finest -- unavailable in the Hilton-on-Sixth gift shop. (It's just past the doors where a rather lost Dee Snyder -- yes, that Twister Sister -- asked me for directions to Warner Center. Alas, I couldn't help him besides offering a sotto voce "thanks for the music.") Keeping to the Italian theme, we repaired to Bar Veloce to swap Ciaos and loaded glances with the loaded Fernet Branca fans next to us in this slip of a bar. Only the nutella panino was more delicious. But posturing wit aside, man, it feels good to laugh again.

no vacancy (at the teepee motel)

I think I saw a short article about this place in the Houston Chronicle a couple of weeks ago and, since then, I have had it in the back of my head as my Spring Break destination. It’s called the TeePee Motel, located off Hwy 59 South about an hour’s drive from Houston, and I’m the guest staying in Teepee Number 3.

I know I am going to hear a collective groan of disappointment when I reveal that my digital camera has dead batteries, so I have no photos to post of this weird slice of Tex-Americana. I know I should have checked before taking off but, you know, I was more focused on getting together the materials I needed to start writing a talk on jailhouses and universities that I’m supposed to be giving in New Orleans in less than a month. I figure holing up for twenty-four hours in an architectural anomaly will inspire me to think critically about my theorization of institutional space and the production of knowledge. So here I am.

When I first drive up to the TeePee Motel, I literally gasped. The photos on the web site don’t do the place justice. Ten identical, beige-colored, one-room “teepees,” built out of concrete and plaster, sit in a perfect line at a right angle off the highway, like a row of giant cupcakes. There is nothing else but a parking lot and some grass and puddles. And the highway. If I open the door of my teepee, there’s my parked car, that stretch of grass, some trees in the distance and, behind the trees, what looks like little houses or, more likely, trailers. Every so often, a rooster crows.

The teepees are daringly close to one another. I’ll say about five-feet apart. There is a little walkway leading from the parking lot to the teepee’s dark-brown door, which is centered in a recessed entrance. (I know my friend Cake will call me later to tell me my architectural vocabulary is impoverished. I’m trying the best I can!) There are three tiny windows in the teepee, two are on either side of the teepee, like little ears, and one is over the sink in the bathroom, directly across from the front door. The windows have dark brown awnings. The tops of the teepees come to a point, and have three little spikes, suggesting, I think, feathers. I am reminded of the igloo-shaped building that Julianne Moore moves into at the end of Todd Haynes’ Safe.

Inside, the room itself is not much: a bed, a little desk, a small fridge, a microwave, and a chocolate-brown couch. The ceiling is about nine feet. The trap door in the ceiling tells me there is an attic that comprises the architectural point of the teepee. A television juts out from high on the wall near the front door, reminding me, eerily, of a hospital room. There is a Gideon Bible on the desk, but I’ve placed it in the top drawer of the nightstand, where I think it is supposed to be.

Since I arrived around noon, I’ve been reading and writing. I’ve kept the door open for fresh air, although there is an air-conditioning unit and I opened one of the windows, too. The kindly woman at the front desk, who called me by my first name, asked me if I was a writer. When I told her I was, she let me know that there is a couple saying in TeePee Number 1 who both write children’s books, and that they’ve been staying there since their house burned down a few weeks ago. I have not met them yet, or any of the other inhabitants. When I asked, the same woman told me the teepees are almost always full, especially on weekends. Right now, the neon “No Vacancy” letters on the TeePee Motel highway sign are lit, which means, obviously, we’re at full capacity.

The families in Teepees 5 and 6 are friends. They’ve had their camping chairs out in front of their teepees and a cooler of beers and some wine going all afternoon. There are some kids throwing a Frisbee. There’s a man in Teepee 1 who is just sort of hanging out in the doorway. I smiled and waved at him earlier. I want to stress that sort of hanging out in the doorway is not at all a weird or creepy thing to do. It’s, like, the only thing you can do, unless you brought a chair with you. It’s a good way to get some air. (The teepee is a little stuffy, but it is also really humid today and, right now, the skies are dark with clouds threatening a thunderstorm.)

According to the website, the Teepee Motel was built in the 1950s, and survived for years before finally shutting down in the 1980s. You can see the disrepair of the teepees in photos posted from the late-1990s. Fortunately, some lucky and kind soul won the lottery and donated money to the motel to renovate the teepees, which is why I am able to, um, use them as a writing retreat.

Surely, there is something to be said about how the stereotype of the “Indian” gets perpetuated by this kind of hokey 1950s Americana, and how the historical specificity of various Texas tribes gets erased by a vacation-style teepee experience for white people. (I have not seen all the guests, but all the ones I have look white to me.) But there is also something -- what? campy? queer? about this place. It’s the kind of place you want to bring your friends from New Jersey to see. Teepee Number 2 (no lie!) was the setting for a scene in the 1995 cinematic remake of Lolita.

I plan to heat up some tamales I picked up from Whole Foods in the microwave later and, if I get enough writing done, watch the film Medium Cool (1968) on my laptop. I am hoping there will be a terrible storm later, and the sound of the rain on the teepee’s roof will lull me to sleep.

the only way to do it (if this is you)

If you wake up, disjointed, from a long night of spring break celebrations that went on way, way too long, you might spend several minutes composing imaginary apology emails to all of those who were witness to your caterwalling and booty-dancing in the wee hours of the morning; or, you might, in an apocalyptic mood that accompanies these kinds of mornings, decide that you are actually dying, and the current raggedness you feel is only the terrifying beginning of what will surely be a long and painful decline. If this is you, go ahead and get up and immediately call your partner, who has been happily busying himself at work unaware of your impending doom, and alert him to your condition. Notice that he is unsure of what, exactly, your problem is. Be grateful that he is a pro when it comes to your eccentricities. He will gently remind you that eating some food will help put you in the right frame of mind. You will hang up and force yourself to gather your wits about you only to discover that you tossed the last pair of contact lenses onto the bathroom floor before passing out the night before, and you will quickly call and then drive to the optometrist to pick up some new ones. On your way, the appeal of miso soup and steamed kale with rice will be so great that you will steer yourself in the direction of the vegan buffet out on Richmond, only to learn that, since today is Monday, and the chairs are all turned up on the tables, the restaurant is closed. Initially, you will be devastated by this unfortunate circumstance, and you will stand in disbelief in front of the restaurant for a couple of minutes, trying to will it to open right then and there with a fresh pot of miso soup ready for your ladeling. Fortuantely, in the last analysis, what seems like an upset will actually be serendipitous because the buffet at the vegetarian Indian food place on Kirby has that clear-brothed, very hot and spicy soup that cures any body that's trying to crash through its spring break like yours. You will notice the effects immediately and practically come to tears as you pay your bill, eternally thanking the cashier for his righteous existence. If this is you, go ahead and treat yourself to a cup of coffee at the fancy little cupcake place that's opened up down the block before you head home to call the plumber. The caffeine will be excellent, and you will drink it as you simultaneously watch the plumber fix the sink and type yourself a new blog entry.

in the tower of knowledge

An hour's worth of unfinished discussion about Hiroshima, the Cold War, Beat Poetry, and what I kept calling (borrowing from Lauren Berlant) a national fantasy of normalcy in the 1950s. Over and over, I repeat the line "Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb," from Ginsberg's poem "America." "What," I ask, "does it mean when you tell someone 'Go fuck yourself'?"

Hesitation, then a few answers: That person thinks he is better than you. That person has a bad ego problem. That person thinks he's great and isn't.

Right, I reply, but what does it mean, more specifically?

Silence. Smiles.

Next: "Let's try to visualize it. Can you picture it? I mean, what it might actually look like?" Suddenly I realize that I am skating on thin ice, but I cannot help it. I go ahead and try to rescue the moment, "Do you think it is possible that when Ginsberg writes the line 'Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb' that he wants to reader to wonder what is more obscene, the curse word "fuck" or the mass death caused by the U.S. in 1945 by using nuclear weapons on a civilian population?" This gets nods. "Is it possible that Ginsberg wants to show us that what is considered to be a crass vulgarity -- 'Go fuck yourself' -- might be considered highly poetic?" This gets nods. "Okay, then, write it down: Ginsberg teaches us that 'Go fuck yourself' is highly poetic, and that it is more obscene to bomb civilian populations than to utter the words "Go fuck yourself' in public."

I am looking forward to Spring Break.

poison pen

Hope to see you there!

not exactly crazy, just a little nervous

In the seventh grade, I went to see Cyndi Lauper perform during her She's So Unusual tour. My dad took me and a couple of friends to the Mann Music Center in Phildelphia for this, my first, concert. But rather than write about how incredibly, um, gay that is, or how fantastic the show was, I want to write about something else that happened that night -- I had, for the first time in my conscious memory, what I would later learn to call a panic attack.

This is what happened: We arrived at the show and took our seats in the balcony of this theatre, which was relatively small, but cool because it was outdoors. I was astounded at how high up we could be and still have a great view of the stage. When the concert started, the entire balcony stood in their seats and started jumping and dancing. Much to my great shock, the balcony itself began to move under us, not giving way, of course, but bouncing along with us, in much the same way that a diving board does. My father, who had no opinion of Lauper except that she was "weird," brought a walkman with him, kicked back in his seat, popped his favorite Pavarotti cassette in, and conked out. My friends were smiling and bouncing up and down like everyone else.

I, on the other hand, could feel nothing but sheer terror, so much so that I couldn't even speak. As I sat there, confronting my mortality, everyone else was having the time of their life. How come no one else felt such great alarm? What was wrong with me? Why couldn't I enjoy this, too? This added to the terror-effect: No one realizes we are going to die except for me.

I imagined the breaking away and terrible crash of the balcony, what it would feel like to fall, who would be trapped underneath of us. I was convinced that at any moment concert security would interrupt Lauper's show, announce that the balcony was about to collapse, and usher us to safety. About twenty minutes passed, and a thought entered my brain: Since no one is going to help us, since no one else seems to mind, and since I cannot do a thing about this terrible danger that we are all in, the only thing I can do is enjoy it. The anxiety lifted a little. If I am going to die, I thought, I don't want to die in abject terror, I want to be happy like every one else. I started to bounce along with the crowd. The balcony bounced right under me. Every once in a while, the terror returned, and I'd have to stop. My heart would be racing and I would not be able to breathe. It sucked the air right out of my lungs. Then I'd hear my voice in my head ask me the question: "Do you want to die terrified, or do you want to enjoy what little of this life is left?", and I'd ease myself back into the "fun".

This whole ordeal, of course, was in my head. I never said anything to anyone about it. Everyone else was hanging out, dancing, singing along and cheering for Lauper. I, meanwhile, was negotiating matters of life and death. It was a difficult evening, to say the least. Looking back, I wonder if the reason no one else was terrified was because, really, the movement of the balcony was something that I hallucinated.

But I identified this night, years later, as the first time I consciously remember feeling this way. The therapist I was talking to about it noticed that I had, in fact, employed a coping mechanism that night to deal with what was happening, that I was conscious of the panic and worked towards alleviating it the best way a twelve-year old knows how.

In graduate school, my panic attacks were so bad and so frequent that, as anyone who has them knows, I would not be able to leave my couch. I didn't even know what they were. They were a part of this thing that I grew to call my "nervousness." "Nervous" was a word I used for a long time to describe myself or how certain events or things made me feel. When it got to the point that I felt like the attacks were interfering with my life, I finally took steps to figure some things out. Very lucky for me, I learned how to manage the problem, finally, without medication.

But panic attacks can come when you least expect them. Yesterday, H. took off on a long, long bike ride. Almost as soon as he left, I started to spiral. I couldn't do anything. I was a wreck for about three hours, and when it finally lifted, I was totally drained. I slept. When I woke up, I felt better, and into the evening with friends, I kept thinking about what happened, what triggered it (as I learned to say), why now, etc. I thought back to that night in the balcony -- the terrible fear of a plunge into obliteration as the raucous carnival danced and bounced around me.

she's giving me way too many (dream)

Last night I dreamed that I was trapped in some asbestos-contaminated building's crawl space. But it wasn't just me -- there were others in there as well. A smooth concrete walkway was just to my left, and if I could get to it, I reasoned, there would be a less-likely chance that I would be inhaling the dust all around me. Suddenly, something shifted, and I was dragging myself through the dust to an opening, and I was out, covered in crumbling dirt. There were people (EMTs, police, fire fighters) waiting for me.

When I emerged, it was clear that I needed to be taken to the hospital right away. In the ambulance on the way to the emergency room, I was asked if I had swallowed any of the dust or gotten any in my mouth. The answer was yes. Lots.

In the emergency room, I rested on a cot, hooked to some tubes. Every once in a while a doctor came by and gave me a shot of morphine. She was a gruff doctor, uncommunicative, and her needle sticks were surprising and painful. She's giving me way too many, I thought. Soon enough the doctor told me that it took at least three times for the drug to kick in. As she injected me a third time, I felt a complete and total calm wash over me, and a profound nausea that kept me from going under completely.

As I nodded off in this sleepy dream-within-a-dream world, I was given a battery of tests to check the extent of poisoning. When I finally came to, I was told that, while I had a low toxicity level of asbestos, it was a good thing I showed up to the hospital because it turned out that I had to have a portion of my spine removed. In an x-ray, the doctor showed me where the top knot of my spine was freakishly huge and painfully jutting out of my back. The only option was surgery, I was told, and that would mean not only removing the vertebrae, but the surgeons would have to drill in through my skull, down past my brain, and pull the spinal knot up from there. Once the bone was removed, I was told, I would experience a pain-free life, since the overgrown top of my spinal column had been, for years, exerting an extreme pressure on the alignment of my entire skeleton that was causing me pain so severe, but so normal, that I could no longer detect it.

This dream was gone in an instant. I woke up this morning thinking about the work I had to prepare for today, and have been focused since. Just right now, as I was about to leave the office, the dream came up, vivid and baffling, in precise detail.

panic!

Yipes! The pepper plant has aphids (and, of course, some ants)! Ew!

Any suggestions for how to get rid of them without chemicals? The internet tells me to mail order ladybugs (a fine idea), but I would like to move on this.

earliest memory?

I'm trying to concentrate hard enough to have my earliest memory come forth. I can remember before kindergarten, and I remember pre-school with Mrs. Chimes. I remember living on Aqua Lane, before Kathy was born. But we lived in a little house in Northeast Philadelphia for two years before we moved to NJ, and I have no recollection of that.

Here's what I can remember from living on Aqua Lane:

I remember asking my mom who the devil was.

I remember having dreams about water coming through my bedroom window and washing me down the short flight of steps to the kitchen.

I remember listening to 45s on our children's record player, and thinking the song "Animal Crackers in My Soup" was eerie.

I remember when four of my cousins spent the night and we got up before it was light out and my youngest cousin, Mark, turned the radio on really loud and woke up my mom.

I remember Mary Anne and I would, every single morning, say goodbye to my Dad as he was going to work and we would yell out the door after him, "DON'T FORGET TO FEED THE MONSTERS!!!" (I do not know where we got that from. Sesame Street?)

I remember sitting around the kitchen table and my parents asking Mary Anne and me, with enormous enthusiasm, "Who wants to go trick-or-treating tonight?!?" and, instead of saying "Me! me!!", Mary Anne (who was in kindergarten) quietly raised her hand, and then so did I.

I remember sitting around the same table and my parents telling us that we were going to have another brother or sister soon and how exciting that was.

I remember running home from this kid P.J.'s sandbox [as if he owned it. We all called it "P.J.'s sandbox," even his older sister, Heidi] and, when I got to the front door, I was surprised that there was a giant pumpkin decoration on it. (That's the second memory from Hallowe'en that year. I must have just turned four that September.)

I remember an older girl in the neighborhood, Barbara Weiner, told me that Ronnie Ferro (a neighbor) poured a whole bottle of ketchup over his head and said "Bloody Mary" in the dark in the bathroom and she appeared to him in the mirror. (I mentioned this to her a couple of years ago when I saw her while visiting Delran and she looked at me like I was out of my mind and said she did not remember, which was disappointing for so many reason.)

I remember that I liked the pink crayon in our Crayola box because it was mottled from having rubbed up against all the other crayons but pure pink on the inside.

I remember my two favorite books: The Laughing Dragon (top favorite) and Stand Back, Said the Elephant, I'm Going to Sneeze!! (second only by a smidgen -- my dad would do all the voices of the different animals).

I bet I could keep going. I wish I could remember stuff from northeast Philly, but I don't think I can. I know there was a girl named Darah who lived on our street at that time, and I feel like I could picture her, but maybe that's because my parents always made fun of her parents because her parents were of the belief that they should never say "NO" to their child. And, one day, when Darah was over and doing something she shouldn't have been doing, my father yelled the word so loudly at her that she got scared, started to cry, and ran home. That was before we moved to New Jersey.

How about it? Do you have your earliest memory? What was it and how old were you?

pass the peppers (raw, please, and hot)

See this little orange pepper? It's the last one hanging from the Carribean Red Hot Pepper plant I purchased out at the Feed'n'Seed [?]with my friend, MaGreen, over the summer. Since the weather has been so chilly, I brought it indoors to hang out in the sunroom. At its most fertile, the plant was bearing seven full peppers at once. We've eaten all of them. Hank ate one or two raw, right off the stem, and they are incredibly hot (nearing the Habanero-level of heat), but when you cook one of them, seeds and all, into a pot of vegan chilli or just some black or pinto beans, it lends the food a hot smoky flavor, almost chipotle tasting. It's astonishingly good.

You know, I grew up eating baloney and ketchup sandwiches on white bread, with a side of spaghetii-o's. We shook oregano flakes and garlic salt on our frozen pizza, and it was "spices." I remember when I first moved to Texas, I was invited to a Sunday brunch with a bunch of graduate students at my friend Louise's apartment in the Heights. Salsa, for me, was a ketchup-y sauce that came in a Tostitos brand jar. More sugar and vinegar than anything else. But at Louise's brunch, one of the guests, a Texan, made pico de gallo with fresh jalapenos, seeds and all. I remember being so hungry, and probably a little hung over, and going for this chopped tomato and onion concoction with drool coming down my chin. When I bit into the first scoop, a blast of hot pepper burned my tongue and the roof of my mouth like nothing I had ever experienced before. Trying not to be a rude guest, I stepped outside. The fire was so intense, I thought I would hyperventilate. I began to cry from the pain. My panic escalated everything. Something horrible had happened, and I wasn't sure what it was, but it was now in my esophagus and headed for my belly. As I was having this physical breakdown, Louise, good hostess that she was, came outside and found me red-faced and in tears. When I explained what happened, she reached up and patted me on the back (she is a full two-feet shorter than I am) and said, "Oh, it'll be okay, darlin'. Think of it this way: You probably knocked out every cold you might have had coming for the next couple of months just with that one bite." And she went inside. Cold? What?

Since this time, I have become more acculturated to hot food, especially peppers. A few years ago, before my friend Cake's apartment burned down, she had a potluck with a few friends -- black beans, tortillas, guacamole, etc. etc. Cake had a dish of freshly sliced jalapenos in a dish, and I think it was our friend KP who popped one in her mouth after the meal was over, saying something cavalierly, like, "Mm! O yeah, this will suck all of the heavy metals right out of my system." Really? Heavy metals? Hank, Cake, KP and I went, watery-eyed, through several rounds of whole pepper eating, registering the heat and the intensity of the fire, the oiliness of the chili, the sweetness lingering after the heat, and the crispiness of the flesh itself. I pictured all of the lead or copper or whatever heavy metal I might be storing in my cells sizzling as it came into contact with the pepper's oils. Each successive pepper was not quite as hot as the last, but still something to remark on as a flavor outside the realm of the ordinary. It was a severe high, elevating us into a realm of strange calm and sheer experience that lasted for about an hour or two. I will never forget how serene and communal the intensity of the experience was, and how we struggled to describe all of it in words.

The transition between the two pepper experiences was a weird and shaky road, but now I feel like I can savor the differences between these shockingly hot fruits. And I am proud of this little plant in the back room, bearing its last little fruit like a miniature sack of healthful dynamite.

cheers!

o my humunculous

Two days ago, when the freeze was here in full blast, I went about cooking to keep warm. I concocted a recipe for a delicious pot of split pea soup (now totally devoured) that I began in the morning and cooked through to perfection into the evening. It was excellent. That night, I put on a pot of steel cut oats for breakfast the next morning. It takes about 30 minutes to cook oatmeal in its non-instant form, and when you grate fresh nutmeg and cinnamon into it, it fills the apartment with a sleepy, incredible aroma all night long. It'll be cool in the morning, so you just have to re-heat for a few minutes and then off you can go to the first day of school, bright and shiny.

So, in any case, I had these two green apples sitting in the fruit bowl, and I thought it would be a good idea to slice them up and add them to the boiling water to mix in with the oats. Isn't there an instant oatmeal flavoring called "green apples and cinnamon"? It sounded like something you'd see in a television commercial, where everyone is warm and protected from the early morning gloom. As I cut into the first apple with a recently-sharpened knife, my aim was not true, and I sliced right through the tip of my thumb, which didn't really hurt (at first) but produced a lot of blood. In fact, I bled all over the apple slices and they were stained a weird pinkish color but, you know what?, I added them to the oatmeal anyway, and then went and bandaged myself up. As for the blood-oatmeal, Hank and I both ate it the next morning and, since you couldn't tell, I didn't even bother to mention it. (Surprise!)

This morning, the thumb is pretty much healed, although still a little sore. The flap of skin has come off, and there is an incredible dent at the tip of the digit, where it used to round itself out into completion. It's weird for me to look at and, for this reason, I've been reciting the following (hilarious) poem in my head:

Cut (by Sylvia Plath, 1962)

What a thrill --
My thumb instead of an onion.
The top quite gone
Except for a sort of hinge

Of skin,
A flap like a hat,
Dead white.
Then that red plush.

Little pilgrim,
The Indian's axed your scalp.
Your turkey wattle
Carpet rolls

Straight from the heart.
I step on it,
Clutching my bottle
Of pink fizz.

A celebration, this is.
Out of a gap
A million soldiers run,
Redcoats, every one.

Whose side are they on?
O my
Humunculous, I am ill.
I have taken a pill to kill

The thin
papery feeling.
Saboteur,
Kamikaze man --

The stain on your
Gauze Ku Klux Klan
Babushka
Darkens and tarnishes and when

The balled
Pulp of your heart
Confronts its small
Mill of silence

How you jump --
Trepanned veteran,
Dirty girl,
Thumb stump.

f-f-f-f- . . . .

it's (almost) f-f-f-freezing in houston!

apparantly, we have a heat-pump system, and not a heating system, so there is no real "heat" in our apartment (took us two years to figure this out), but, instead, the system taps the outside air for any trace of heat, and sucks it into the vents. as a result, there is cool air blowing through the rooms.

it is very, very cold. pass the groovy quilt . . .

we brought the plants in, so please do not freak out if you are worried about the pepper or citranella plants, they have been brought inside, and are doing well.

are you wearing long underwear? i am not.

well-placed objects (and does it matter to memory?)

I got up early yesterday so I could accompany my friend Stephen to the airport with Melanie. Maybe it was that whole wheat bagel with veggie cream cheese, or maybe I got a good night sleep, or maybe I was desperately needing to re-establish some kind of order to my life (I feel like I've been traveling since before the holidays, even though I've been in Houston for the past week), but whatever the cause, when I got back home, I plunged myself into the project of deep-cleaning the apartment. Dust, sweep, wipe down, scrub, shake out, mini-vac, and organize. Not only that, but I also had enough energy left over to do several loads of laundry and take a trip to Target, Radio Shack, and Southland Hardware to pick up random domestic objects: new trashcan, floor lamp, hamper, radio, and some scrap wood and brackets to make a shelf for the wall in the sun room. Last night, as we watched Robert Bresson's _PickPocket_ (1959), a structuralist French film that seems to be less about theft than it is about doorways and the well-composed insides of apartments, I kept stealing glances around our place, liking its well-placed objects.

The visits of my life-long friend Stephen has an interesting effect on my sense of time and memory. While in his company, time gets re-routed to the deep past in sometimes totally surprising and often difficult ways, a never-ending maze of memories that do not emerge unless this friend is there to trigger them. What amazes me is how much is there, and I wonder how much we do not remember, if we could ever remember it all.

I found a photograph from highschool of Stephen standing in front of a class we took as seniors called A.P. Comparative Government and Politics. In the photograph, Stephen is giving an oral report on the cultural significance of teaching abroad and, as an intentional bad joke, he has written on the black board (which is actually green) "Teaching A Broad." He hunches over a little lectern, his right elbow resting on its top edge and bent so that he can press his hand to his downward-looking forehead. It is a self-conscious gesture of anxiety, as if he is being given a hard time for his sophomoric humor. He is dressed in the Catholic school uniform all the boys were made to wear (black polyester pants, black pleather shoes, your choice dress-shirt and tie), along with a pair of Buddy Holly-looking glasses. The only part missing is the burgundy blazor which we could take off if the teacher was cool enough to allow it. Stephen is not wearing his. The room itself is starkly institutional; we both forgot how sparse the rooms of the school were. In the upper-right hand corner, the black letters "EXIT 2" are stencilled in spray paint high on the cinder block wall. Neither Stephen nor I could remember what "EXIT 2" meant -- if it was some sort of fire emergency exit route, or a way of numbering and classifying the different doors and hallways in the building, and yet we lived under those exit signs for four years.

Interestingly, Stephen, at first, did not remember anything about giving this oral report, but I have long remembered it (the misfiring of the joke, the way we all laughed), and I wonder how much of it has to do with my possession of the photograph. Once he saw the photo, he remembered that he had chosen that topic because one of his favorite aunts had recently taught abroad, and he found her stories about it very interesting. (I am only now, as I write this, remembering that I don't think I gave an oral report for this class like Stephen did; or, if I did, I don't recall what it was about. I remember, instead, that I collaborated with a cool smart girl named Jen Laverty to argue for a radical position in a debate about the tactics of the IRA.) In addition, neither Stephen nor I, at first, could identify the other student caught in the frame of the photograph, a skinny-looking tannish guy with braces, who has twisted in his seat to the back of the classroom, cracking up. Within a few seconds I got it: that's Tom Rinkavage, someone neither of us ever knew very well, but how interesting that I could remember his name, possibly only because I was sitting next to Stephen at the time.

Does it matter to the clarity of these memories that I still consider this class to be one of the best I took in high school? That I remember how attractive the teacher's leftist politics were to me? That the teacher had long, brown hair that he wore in a ponytail and, when he took it out, it was actually an unflattering mullet? Does it make a difference that the man who taught us this class was, in March 1994, found strangled to death in a crawl space in his apartment several years later, and that the man who was arrested soon afterwards confessed, during the trial, to choking him to death during a sexual encounter they arranged for pay after they met at a pornographic bookstore? (See http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:erb2RfySruQJ:query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html%3Fres%3D9D02E4D9143CF932A15750C0A962958260+%22james+semptimphelter%22&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1 for the NYT report.) Does it matter that the case was all over the media, including the GLBT magazine The Advocate, which ran an article titled "Dial SM for Murder," and that friends of this teacher and members of the queer community in South Jersey wrote letters to the editor expressing their outrage at the sensationalization of the tragedy?

This morning, I'm lounging in a quilt in the sun room, drinking coffee and absorbing the sun coming in from the three huge windows. The room is bright, cozy with its red furniture standing out sharply against the quiet white walls and floor. In the weird corner of the room that sticks out for no reason at all, we have our six-foot-tall, skinny, green pencil cactus. This year, Hank purchased some red, glass Christmas ornaments and we hung a dozen of them from its branches. The result is a lovely holiday tree, simply trimmed. It is remarkable in the corner window, especially lit at night by a low-wattage lamp. Michael, our anthropologist friend, gave us the tree before he left town to do fieldwork in Chile. Thank you, Michael! The plant is healthy and looks great! (See Michael's blog here: http://frazer.rice.edu/~kriz/blog/)