sister

the surprising thing about ideas is that they find other homes besides yours

wind rattles new spring leaves outside the window from about three blocks away i can hear revving engines of westheimer's traffic men's voices from the bar call across the yards the sun has just set the dishes are washed and stacked on the draining board the apartment is tidy and a quiet glass of something to drink makes rings on the desk next to me why o why is starting something new so incredibly difficult?

six word memoir

your

plastic

eyes

gave

me

warmth.

I was tagged by the other mother.

I tag:

ma green

green daddy

bad texan

daily noise

outta my butt

The six word memoir rules are:

• write your own six word memoir.

• post it on your blog and include a visual illustration if you’d like.

• link to the person that tagged you in your post.

• tag five more blogs with links.

• leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play!

keywords (notes for the future)

domestic disruption
new buildings and public works
rogue and failed
airport as border
detention and delay
anti-lynching film
textual orientalizing
studio-backed film with Black themes
new talkies
desire for cinephilia
mumblecore
hand-held verite
world without adults
lo-fi
millenials
indiewood
niche audience
art cinema-lite
cinema of provocation
structured absence
cross-over film
gonzo v. amateur
queer caucus
authetification of female pleasure
aesthetic of disappearance
impossible addressee
surrogate's point of view
rhetoric of authentic sex
inability to communicate
freak status
indie-quirk
personal excess of identification
radically un-ironic

roobois

have you noticed how, in the rearview mirror, the little wrinkles under your eyes have become just a little deeper, and did you wonder, today, if the guy in his twenties, who called you and your partner up looking for a little guidance, might have noticed, and maybe that's what, in the end, made you seem more like you knew what you were talking about when it came to matters of being alive in this world, having lived the struggle to this point, having already been shaken to your very core by the unexpected meanness of the world, and having survived it, and come out feeling like you are doing just fine?

fine -- a fine afternoon walk to the teahouse leads to the meeting of this new young friend, you can call him your friend even though you never met him, and you sit outside, together with the one you love, and go from one question to the next, thinking and trying to say, like, how do you account for the decisions you've made, and why do, all of a sudden, decisions seem less like decisions and more like some sort of roll of the dice, some kind of cosmic kaleidoscope that set you turning and falling into strange but colorful patterns, suddenly there and seemingly together, and just as suddenly gone and rearranged? if he asks how do you know, when did you know, how did you decide, what was it like, what's it like now, you will pour the red roobois tea and sip and think it's such a wide, wide past to return to. you recall, in exact ways not, at first, the times and places and people but, more accurately, the unbelievable crisis of not knowing, when nothing made sense, and it all seemed terribly new and unavoidable, and you reach for an answer but you cannot quite grasp it. you listen with care.

how the story of not knowing must begin with trying to put into words what you do not know how to say, how weird this feels, how it makes you so sensitive and shy. when was the last time you felt this? what to compare it to? what the street smells like when new rain falls on hot asphalt. what leaves sound like when breezes blow at night. like sweeping the dust out of a corner -- you're not touching it with your hand, but you know something's working because your holding the other end of the broom. how to not be alone in the world when you start everything over. finding your way around the apartment at night with no lights on.

the sun starts to set. you smile and hug your new friend. he is red like roobois. you walk home with your beloved and think about the new wrinkles. you don't mind -- you like it. so much more to go. it's not even half-over.

in fifty words or less

how the day has passed: overcast and balmy, hammers and the boom of construction, with holler and echo. before me, an empty cup of green tea. the keyboard's lettered black squares huddle safely together -- snug chiclets, in a row, magically making paragraphs of light under my fingers.

fragments (in pairs)

storm and cold . pillows and quilts . jeans and sweatshirt . shops and windows . posters and tape . windshield and wiper . commerce and anxiety . crane and hook . bulldozer and nailgun . co-op and recipes . squash and parsnips . dreams and water . book and chair . sunlight and window . notes and coffee . sex and film . talk and manhattans . scent and memory . austin and time . email and facebook . clutter and desk . receipts and clipboards . depth and surface . frame and lighting . tacos and balloons . cap and scarf . mat and block . stretch and rest . ankle and sit-bone . ribcage and spine . steam and peppermint . towel and socks . rodent and drywall . empty and spacious . sirens and traffic . hollers and helicopters . calendar and ink . diamonds and cactus . moon and stars .

smile

what leads to tea and advil?

hours on the plane and more in the car which lulls me with the slush and hum and my mother's constant chatter and the heat running she swerves from one topic to the next and asks so many questions the city of brotherly love shines magnificently in the afternoon light and we cross a bridge and motel motel motel strip mall strip mall motel and then into the little town where i grew up all the same houses all the same there's ours my father in his sweat pants hugs me some of the furniture is different and then i drop my bag in the room where my grandfather lived and died

later at the local bar i meet with old friends the people on this earth i have known the longest outside of my family every one of them a study: the one who just moved into the city the one who became a cop the one with a secret she whispers to me at the bar the one whose grandmother who raised her just died the one who knows she is sexy and the one i haven't seen in fifteen years who looks exactly the same and tells me she is unemployed all have big smiles and we drink into the night remembering how it was mostly when we were teenagers and what ever happened to? on the way home i discover a pack of marlboro ultra lights in the hidey-hole in my mother's car and smoke about a half of just one

in the catholic church i notice everyone there is white and mention this to my father who specualtes that the church would be much stronger if after slavery the catholics had and my mind drifts because i don't really understand what he's talking about and so i'm nodding but really thinking that as long as i am here i should be paying attention and try to remember what it was about this place that held so much for me as a young person and then drove me away with such force as a teenager i like the dirge quality of some of the songs that suggest otherworldiness i like statues of the saints the stained glass windows the smell of incense i like how ritualized everything is i like when we all turn to each other and wish each other peace how we shake hands with strangers smile and say peace be with you

there are three children eight six and two that make me smile as soon as we get in the door after a long drive up into the hills in the northern part of the state my ears pop every couple of minutes as we pull in the last stretch of the ride there is snow on the ground and it is gorgeous the house is cozy with sad sounding geese honking and flying in V-shapes overhead [my older sister yells up to them you! are going! the wrong! way!] and the kids beckon me to discover new things they've received from santa there's lots of chasing shouting spinning running my beautiful beautiful sisters are there and it is such a relief to see them instantly i feel giddy and the wine is poured and i hug them and i laugh like i haven't laughed in a long time and we break out into song at the top of our lungs and dance like crazy people and tease each other mercilessly so that the children are quiet for a second and look at us like maybe we were once children too that night i read the little boy the youngest five bedtime stories and he is very cute and small with big eyes a toothy smile and a runny nose the cutest part is that he has made up a word for when he cannot think of the word that he wants and that word is "heh-heh" as in "uncle, you? heh-heh." which means please run a comb through the tangled mess that is my hair

the rockettes if you've never seen them are like watching a kaleidoscope of women's bodies that fall into impossible shapes and patterns only to realign themselves straight across the stage in dazzling costumes in NYC we take the subway and hold the gloved-hands of the children radio city music hall is tremendous and nostalgic the crowds outside are impossible we all pack tightly back onto the subway afterwards and my niece the eight-year-old reports seeing a man with six fingers on one hand back at my younger sister's tiny little manhattan apartment we all eat roasted red pepper soup and salad and the best pizza i have ever eaten the kids and my parents leave and i spend the night drinking wine and talking with my sister and her husband until i curl up under a warm blanket and fall asleep

the drive from NYC back to my hometown is cold and grey and the NJTP is clogged with traffic once again i doze in between conversations and when we arrive back home my parents take naps while i read and do laundry i miss my friends and i miss my partner more sharply than i thought i would and i start to come down with a cold and i think about the apartment all drafty and by itself plus i discover that benazir bhutto has been killed and we turn on the television and watch until we realize that CNN is more interested in talking about what this means for the security of the united states than in bringing us news from the people of pakistan

that evening i roast a butternut squash in the oven and mash it with salt and pepper and my father makes fresh pasta it feels peaceful he teaches me how to spoon just a little of the squash into the middle of the pasta squares and then press and cut to make ravioli it is blessedly methodical and time consuming my mother makes a salad and declares that everything is hereditary which makes me cringe she and my father drink a manhattan each then we open a bottle of wine my parents ask me if i ever listen to opera and i say no the voices from the speakers are gorgeous but so melodramatic and a bit too loud but my parents love it get almost teary-eyed they tell me: this is the part of the story when! and o! then this is the part when! and o! then this part here is when

i wake up the next morning to pack everything back into my bag and think about how i have not written in my diary or in this blog for a long time or if i have written it has only been sporadically and i think about how i have had so many things that i have wanted to write but that i am tired of the formula sick of how witty and anecdotal i tend to be that i rely on a set of conventions and as i hug my father goodbye and get into the car with my mother i think about maybe getting rid of the blog since the stories rise and fall in my mind faster than i can keep up with them and then my mother gets lost on the way to the airport which seems impossible but really it is true we are off the highway and zigzagging through philly's center city streets looking for an exit and my mother's voice is loud and very anxious and she questions how? how could this possibly be happening? and she thunks the palm of her hand on the steering wheel to emphasize how exasperated she is and says over and again o! and christ! and jeee-sus! and alll-right! the clock is ticking for me to make my flight and suddenly we are back on the highway and she is elated and reflective and analytical about how it happened and what the other possibilites might have been if she had or had not turned here or there or doubled-back or continued on or crossed-over or pulled-out-into or if only there had been a sign that was posted or an exit that should have been built or an on-ramp that should get constructed or a new road that could get public works funding i mean really now when you think about it it could be

i hug my mother goodbye and thank her for such a wonderful time together she gets teary-eyed and tells me how much she loves me and we smile and i head into the terminal and think about that word TERMINAL and i get a little shiver but the good news is that the airport is not as crowded as you'd think and i get through security and think about that word SECURITY and i wait for the boarding call and remember that on the last flight i was on i was seated next to an older gentleman who slowly ripped every page out of a magazine and folded them into little squares and stuck them neatly into the barf-bag thingy on the seat-back in front of him for the entire three-and-a-half hours and i hoped that it wouldn't be him again and it wasn't it was a blonde girl with a lot of make-up on who slept the whole time i was so happy to be back in houston when we touched ground but seem to have picked up a cold which i am now nursing with tea and advil.

there is no other troy (for me to burn)

In the dream, I was waiting downtown, outside of a hotel, checking each face that passed by for the one I wanted to see most. I was wearing my backpack and carrying a camera in the pocket of my sweatshirt. I was also holding an umbrella. In a short while, I saw who I was looking for -- a woman a little older than me. Quite short, with a neatly shaved head and large, soulful eyes. She was lingering outside the hotel doors as if she, too, were waiting for someone.

I was nervous, but I walked right up to Sinead O'Connor and said hello, introducing myself. She gave me a warm welcome by hugging me and asking me if I had been waiting for long. No, not long. "Listen," I said, getting right to the point, "I know we've only just met, but I've been wanting to talk to you about some things . . . " And I continued, a bit nervous, but feeling like this was the best way to approach her, since I didn't want to faun or gush, but ask her some direct questions that I knew she'd have answers to. She listened very carefully to my questions. I cannot recall the exact content of the questions, but I know the questions bore an enormous emotional weight for me, as if I'd been waiting my whole life to ask someone for an explanation. Sinead was so good. She told me that she could tell I was doing everything exactly right, that the questions were what mattered, for now, and to know that, just as I was struggling with what to do with problems unearthed by memory, so she was, too.

Things then shifted. Sinead was bored and said she wished she knew what there was to do in Houston, that she couldn't wait to leave because there was nothing, nothing, nothing happening here. I told her that it wasn't true, and then advised her, with growing excitement, to walk over to Allen's landing and check out how the bayous run together between the university and the jailhouse. I imagined that Sinead would find this contrast stunning, and that she could spend time reading the history of the landing that's been engraved on the walls there, perhaps see some people in kayaks or canoes paddling past. She could explore the grounds of the old, boarded up Sunset Coffee House, look at how massive the city seemed when you are dwarfed by its still-changing architectural history. Maybe she'd write a song about it.

Just as Sinead was agreeing to go for this walk, it started to rain. The streets filled with pedestrians carrying umbrellas and, in the rain and the crowd, I lost track of her. Had she gone back inside the hotel? Was she already on her way to Allen's landing? Shouldn't I find a way to invite her home to meet H. and have dinner with her? Also, didn't I need to at least get an autograph and a photo, to remember this unbelieveable meeting?

The sun finally came out. The streets cleared. I headed back to where the hotel was and went inside. I wandered a maze of floors and corridors, wondering how I would know which room was hers, and for how long I should look before heading back home.

The last thing I remember about the dream is that I did manage to find her, again. No, she hadn't forgotten that she should get to Allen's landing, but she'd be on her way out of town that evening. I tried to act casual about the whole thing. O yeah. Of course. No big deal. It's cool. Well, it was really great to see you, I said. Yeah, it was, she said, smiling, but a bit distracted. Goodbye, now.

Bye bye.

look what i can do (ribcage)

In the late-70s, I made an interesting discovery about my body.

Early one autumn, near the beginning of a new school year, I surprised myself by realizing that I could -- and you must visualize this, please -- hook the bottom tip of my left ribcage over the waistband of my corduroys, the same way a normal child might poke a thumb through a belt-loop or tuck one foot behind the other while standing around, waiting for his mom to pick him up from the bowling alley. It was a neat fit, and it was comfortable. Secure. Weirdly cozy, like a little way of saying hello to that unknown part of my body. And, because I have been who I am since at least this age, the act went from being a one-time discovery to being a fully-blown neurotic habit. From September of that year through May of the next, I graduated from simply hooking the tip of my rib over the waist of whatever pair of jeans or uniform pants I was wearing to going even further with my practice, thrusting my hip back to get at my waist from a better angle, and moving the lower ribcage all the way over the width of the pleather belts my mom bought for me that cinched in tight around my middle. I would hook the rib as far over the belt as I could, then push the belt, very gently, in, so that the boney cage, at the same time, was pushed out. And I did it over and over. I did it waiting for the bus. I did it during mass. I did it while taking a break from vocabulary homework. I did it while laughing like a lunatic at Scooby-Doo. And, like I said, this went on for months -- two whole seasons of my own brand of body modification.

Since I was as shy as I was skinny, I never told anyone. I never said to Stephen Hansbury, "Watch this!" Or, even to my sisters, "Look what I can do!" Not that it was a secret, but it was a private thing. It wasn't something to show off. It was my body-idea, and I'm pretty sure I had an inkling that other children were not doing this.

That said, when summer rolled around, and I was spending my days leaping through the sprinkler out front, my mother stopped me with a weird look on her face one afternoon: "Come over here." She trained a critical eye on my narrow chest with its newly formed lump protruding above and to the left of my stomach. I remember her gently poking at it, and then sending me on my way. A few days later, I was in the doctor's office, my mother nervously gritting her teeth as he poked at the lump and asked me a few questions. Does it hurt? No. Does it ever get red and puffy? No. I remember there being some conversation and confusion, and I felt an intense worry. The doctor asked me if I was doing anything, like pushing on my chest or pulling at it in any way. I reluctantly nodded yes. "Will you show me?" Barechested, I got up off the examining table and, for the very last time in my entire life, I thrust my right hip out, pulled my torso up so that my left ribcage jutted up and out, and, with real gusto, bore down and hooked my lower-rib cage over my belt, pushing it all the way out. It was quite a performance. I wish I had said, "Ta da!" and made jazz hands. My mother nearly fainted. The doctor told me that I needed to stop doing this. Right away.

I don't remember much after that visit. I mean, I don't remember struggling with trying to stop. I remember that the ribcage eventually returned to normal and, in the years since then, my mother has commented on it and concluded that the growing human body is a malleable and amazing thing. Really, there is no trace of it that I can see.

But, lately, I been wondering what would have happened if I hadn't stopped -- What might my body might have finally become? What kind of exceptional freak might I have been, and how much they would have charged to come see me, locked in my cage and eating lightbulbs?

brang? durn?

thirty-six

1. early morning voice overs
2. small wildflowers
3. the tea house
4. short walks that clarify
5. lion's pose
6. throat
7. thresholds
8. pink moons
9. window panes
10. films noir
11. soft foot touching
12. rattle and clink of dishes while reading
13. heirloom tomatoes from the co-op
14. peppers and herbs out back
15. my sisters' voices
16. students with grills
17. communal meals
18. everday mazes
19. letters in the mailbox
20. calendula
21. dreams of the dead
22. taking notes
23. stacks of books
24. small children's pointing fingers
25. the gaze inward
26. solitude's ease
27. brain stretching
28. muscle tickles
29. skin tags
30. endless leg bones
31. the edge of missing people
32. intrasubjectivity
33. soul showers
34. joining
35. towards and further
36. surprising halos

clever, clever

(To be read in Andy Rooney's voice:)

You know how, lately, you must secure an especially sensitive on-line account by choosing three questions to which you and only you knows the answer? And you think and think: "What will I always know the answer to?" And then you finally land on three very clever questions that you are sure will prevent any fraudist or theif from busting in and taking all you've got? It's the cleverness I want to disabuse you of, especially if you are a writer and being clever is your specialty.

(To be read in my voice:)

In 2004, I opened an account with ______, and came up with some very clever questions and answers. Typically enough, I never used the on-line account, opting for the old-fashioned way of dealing with my affairs -- through the postal system or on the phone. But recently, feeling even more 21st century than ever, I decided to go back and try to get into the account on-line, only I forgot the password. Inevitably, I could not get ______ to send me the password via email, so I called up and got an operator. The operator told me she could send me an email confirming my password if I could answer the three questions I posed to secure the account when I opened it. Simple enough, I thought. "Okay," I said, "Shoot." I nailed the answers to the first two questions, which I will not, of course, reveal to you on-line (buy me a beer and I'll tell you).

Then came the third question, which the operator introduced by saying, "Okay, and so, now, the last question is . . ." She paused, cleared her voice, and then she deadpanned, "Who is the worst student?"

I was not only stunned by this question, but I was also incredulous about its odd phrasing -- "WHAT? 'Who is the worst student?' What does that mean?" Not even, "Who is the worst student I've ever had?" or "What is the name of the student who did X?" but a brief, almost dull-witted articulation of extremes. I couldn't believe it. Remember, I am the author of this question and I presumed that I would always know the answer.

When I confessed that I was totally stumped, the operator, feeling sorry for me, said, "Well, you wrote the question in 2004, does that jog your memory at all?" "Hm, 2004 . . . 2004 . . . I'd have to look at a grade book," I replied. What was going on in 2004 that was so awful, and why was it that I could no longer access that memory after being triggered by a question designed for its immediate recall? At the same time, I think the question is also a bit green, because it supposes that, really, this student was the worst! ever! and none would ever match her or him in what I am sure was an astonishingly aggressive and endlessly dramatic approach to learning. The question betrays a Chuck who, in 2004, could not -- or would not -- separate the professional and the financial from the emotional. It's a Chuck who chose, finally, not a question at all but, instead, a mood -- one that has no answer, only endless questions attached to it.

And I wondered, at the same time, what other kinds of bizarre questions people ask themselves the answers for in order to access their digital hordings, and how many questions have answers that go unremembered, or that are based on moods. I wondered about mean-spirited questions, sort of like my own, or ones motivated by love, anger, jealousy, loss, broken-heartedness, or delusions of grandeur?

Even though I am hating closure these days, I'll tell you that, while I never figured out the answer to the question, and had to go through a whole rigamarole to get a new password, I feel like the more I think about it, the closer I come to understanding who this might have been and why I thought I'd never forget the answer. Sorry for the vagueness, but I'm still cautious about the limits of pseudonimity.

(To be read in someone else's voice:)

(I know this seems like a lame ploy to keep readers interested in a blog that hasn't been very active these days but, really, the beginning of the academic year along has me taxed in ways I didn't expect!)

bettin' on the bull in the heather

What's that Sonic Youth song? The one where Kim Gordon counts by tens?

And the bass booms along a low down dirty beat, keeping you rooted in the earth while her vocals go up into the creaking sky?

The urgency of Kim's message gets more and more heated, only to be tempered by a rat-a-tat on the drums and a shake-a-shake in your right ear.

I'm grooving on this right now, hard core, thinking back to a time when it was the early 90s and I am stuck living in a motel room whose only protection is a broken sliding glass door, and the sink overflows every night with the unflushed waste of other rooms' debris. The smell of cooking fish from the communal kitchen. Everyone's sick. 70s drapery and a bed bolted to the wall. It was cheap. A time when I was new to H/town, fresh from the northeast, thinking "Soon," and "How fast I'll be done here," and "My ideas are abstract and important."

Notice that Kathleen Hanna dances into the frame and sticks out her tongue. She punches Thurston in the face by accident while Kim curls up in a nightie in what looks like a little kid's bedding. Kim has understood something. She stares into the camera and, tacitly, asks the viewer why he's so interested in seeing some betting game gone so weird. Thurston gives a horse a banana.

You can dance to it and feel proud, but you shouldn't expect anyone to leave feeling any better.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=2T4BsnXmJaI

granny creeps

cone of uncertainty

Erin was easy. If I can just remember not to drive the car into any really deep puddles, I'll be fine. And now there's Dean [remember Dean? ah, boyfriends . . .], who was predicted to wreak havoc all over the Gulf region of the U.S., but more recent evaluations of what will happen next week is that it will head right into the Yucatan, and by that time it will be more of a depression than a hurricane.

The language of weather parallels the language of the psyche: depressions, storms, and floods. Scorchers. Weakening systems. The cone of uncertainty: I picture all treacherous doubts funneling into the top of my head and swirling around in my brain before being pumped to my heart, where they flutter and jump until a more predictable pattern emerges.

Fruit flies. Mosquitoes. Fire ants.

Today I purchased wood filler. The intent is to make the window in the shower look less like a rotting frame and more like -- like a window. Will this work? The window is beyond opening and closing, although we gave it a shot when we first moved in. "It will be nice," I thought, "to have an open window to air out the shower and keep down the mildew. Much nicer than the shower in the old apartment, with that broken gas heater installed in the tiles opposite the shower head." But opening the window requires a serious effort, and every time one of us did, more and more of the frame crumbled off, and more and more of the frame cracked. So this wood filler isn't going to fix anything. It'll just make it look better by filling the wood in where there isn't any. I'll need to use sandpaper.

This is a description of the coffee mug in front of me: a smiling, cross-eyed, grey elephant skips rope against a sea-foam green background, with these words written next to him: TTPbIT-CKOK, TTPbIT-CKOC TDE-TO PYXHYA TTOTOAOK

Yesterday I made pasta sauce using fresh sage from the sage plant Cake left us. Sagacious Cake's sage plant. It was delicious.

feels like

With the "feels like" temperature spiking at 115 degrees in the heart of the city, you've got to really steel yourself for the day's events. What happens when it is this hot? If film noir has taught us anything (which it has), it can only be trouble. Time to hole up, watch The Asphalt Jungle (dir. John Huston, 1950) and Strangers on a Train (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1951), and try to make it through the next week.

august already? (dream)

Where, I ask you, has the summer gone?

I had a dream last night that, with great excitement, I realized that I had bought a fishtank, a large, glowing cube of exotic-looking, fantastically-colored fish that I was keeping on top of my dresser in the bedroom. It was a spectacular sight, especially at night. When I went to feed the fish, I realized how tiny they were, and also realized that the towel I had forgotten that I was carrying was supposed to be placed inside the tank in order to increase the amount of nutrients in their food. Against all rules of logic, the towel, rather than soaking up all of the tank water as I feared, simply disintegrated and fed the fish, who were suddenly large and beautiful, swimming in terrifically complex geometric patterns.

Instead of being satisfied with these results, though, I recklessly went in search of another towel to add, hoping for even better results. I came back to the fish tank, which was still on the same dresser but now so high up I had to climb on the knobs on the dresser to help me reach the top. The whole structure was profoundly unsteady, but I was determined to add another towel. Once I got to the top and peered into the fishtank, I knew my plan might cause problems, but I figured it was too late now, and so I began to put the second towel into the tank. About half-way in, the problems started. The towel was getting very wet and heavy. I noticed that the fish in the tank were frighteningly big, shark-sized, with open mouths and sharp teeth. Much to my horror, I saw that one of the fish was battered and diseased, and that its eyes had been eaten out by the other fish. All of the fish bumped up against the side of the tank with astonishing force. I lost my grip on the dresser, and the whole thing tipped. I clutched the lip of the tank for support and grabbed at the heavy, water-logged towel, thinking it might anchor me.

We fell. Water and fish went everywhere. I scrambled to pick them up to put them back inside the tank, but I couldn't tell which onces were alive and which ones were dead. Some had become so small I couldn't tell if I was holding a fish or not. The room was also very dark, and I worried about stepping on the fish as well as getting bit by them. Their population, since the falling of the tank, had grown significantly. The floor of the bedroom was covered in several inches of water.

Then it dawned on me that I needed help. If the situation was going to improve, I would need to call someone. The realization stopped me in my tracks. Who? Who could I call for help?

(Thanks to Julie Doucet's My Most Secret Desire [Drawn and Quarterly, 2006] for the inspiration, I am sure.)

terror, gasoline, and the local

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."