Life: Scene 2, Take 1 Or 2
It's sad really only if you think it is, the image of a man standing in front of a pedestal sink, pushed up a little on the balls of his feet and leaning forward so that his penis, held lovingly in his hands, will clear the ceramic edge, him searching expectantly the flow of urine into a screened funnel for foreign treasure. Like panning for gold he picks through the paltry particles remaining on top of the fine mesh with a sliver of oak shaved from a scrap plank. "Is that a speck of dried blood?" he wonders aloud as he picks it out and sticks it to the side of a plastic specimen bottle. Hardly seems possible that it could be dried blood but it's dark and the doctor had said there was blood in his urine. He harkens back to his days as a junior hobo when in San Francisco a thorazine carrying Vietnam Vet was trying to school him on how to cheat the government out of assistance dollars. "The surest way to get disability dollars is to prick your finger and put a drop of blood in your urine specimen bottle." At the time he was just a middle class kid, dropped out from college, trying to travel on the cheap, and he had opted for the less deceitful and smaller payoff of the Mission District blood bank.
In the present he spies another minute specimen resting on top of the mesh and picking it out with the sharp oak point it appears gelatinous, with a fine thread of a tail and he wonders if it could be his unborn son. Can sperm be in your urine? It seemed plausible but as he had not had sex, or masturbated in...?...well, too long, it seemed not so likely. But what did he know about it? A screened funnel, a sliver of oak, and a specimen bottle does not a doctor make.
The first day he thought it was just food poisoning. The second day, with only two hours of severe pain, seemed an improvement and reaffirmed his food poisoning theory. The third day, with two separate pain sessions lasting multiple hours, he began to worry, and while not exactly hallucinating, his world view, small as it was inside the nearly finished 800 square foot renovated rental project, changed, and his vision became sharper and his sense of smell was registering every drop of mouse urine in the house. Later when he saw the mouse poke it's head up through a hole in the floor (holes a past renter had drilled to run extension cords or speaker wires), he threw a water bottle at it and then positioned a paint can over the hole. And cans of stain over three similar sized holes in other rooms. He made a mental note to plug the holes, as he should have done when he refinished the floors. On the fourth day, which started at 4 in the morning, for now his days were measured only by the onset of pain, he started to worry in earnest and began plotting out a trip to a doctor. By eight the pain had subsided enough that he thought he could drive without blacking out and crashing into a tobacco barn and he set off for the thirty mile drive south, the tobacco fields along the way showing mature crops with bottom leaves yellowing.
He signed in, and waited. There was a woman with a walker in the waiting room, who looked like Whitney Houston, and he wondered momentarily if she had indeed fallen this far. It made him sad to think so. After an hour the pain had come back and he prayed it would not come on full strength because he did not want to moan, or get on all fours, or lay on his back with legs up to his chest, or pace restlessly about the office, or perform any of the other unsuccessful pain management techniques he had tried over the last four days. He opted for an exaggeratedly upright posture with one fist clenched tightly on a rigid arm positioned slightly behind him on the seat. He kept his eyes averted and hoped the little Samoan boy with mother, father and grandmother in tow, would not engage him. The kid was all over the waiting room, pulling on pictures and rolling on the floor, generally seeming way too happy to be sick enough for a doctor's visit. The boy did start crying when his father carried him back to a doctor and the man unfairly took some pleasure in this.
His name was called after about an hour and he was elated but hoped his pants didn't fall down because he had unbuttoned them at some point in one of his attempts at relieving the pain. But it was just for temperature and blood pressure and basic questioning by nurses that he had been called back, and then he was sent out to the waiting room again. One of the questions was on the one to ten scale how would he rate the pain and misconstruing the meaning, thinking they meant relative to what he could conceive and not relative to what he had ever experienced, he said six. Over the next twenty minutes back in the waiting room he realized the more likely meaning of the question so when he eventually did see a doctor he said ten. Later, in the parking lot outside the pharmacist's office, while popping one non-narcotic and one narcotic pain killer, he remembered the time the top half of a faulty 24 foot extension ladder had broken free and slid in free fall to connect with his upright thumb, and amended the pain he felt now to a 9.5.
What the doctor had said was "welcome to the world of kidney stones."
...more recent posts
Life: Scene 1, Take 31
On the edge of the deep woods he bent forward at the waist and crushed with his palm the swollen mosquito feeding on his shinbone. Then he ran a dirty fingernail across the bone, etching a white line in his freckled, marginally tan skin. There was a bite on his right index finger as well, and one on his calf and one on the other shinbone and... the itching seemed to spread, he was after-all on the edge of the deep woods. From the recently cleaned kitchen window these woods looked so enticingly green and cool and inviting but up close the garbage still peeked out from under dry leaves and the bugs bit and the snakes alerted by his rake slowly slithered under twigs and leaves. The finely woven spider webs stretched across impossible distances, visible only when the sun hit them just so, and these he swiped away when they limited his progress, wondering to which part of his body the spider escaped while he picked the webbing from his eyelashes.
It was not wrong what some said, that he could have cleaned up this property in a day, surely he could have with more money and manpower and tow trucks and blow torches. And a burn pile four stories high. And a work ethic not so limited as was his by daydreaming. No, he took his own time about things and now, a year after beginning, with a good bit of progress made, he still saw things not exactly as he wished them to be. This was not the first shithole he had cleaned up and he knew that over time hidden garbage seeped up from the ground and leaves decomposed exposing that which one had missed the first time around. His attention to the detail was borne less from a fastidious nature and more from a desire to lead by example. If the future renters saw even remnants of the past renter's momentous garbage, they might be tempted to be less than tidy their own-selves. This theory was flawed of course by the fact that the past renter had been given a pretty clean property to begin with and had over the course of many years just added a junk car here, a bass boat full of beer cans there.
Well, he was going to be more careful and attentive this time around. He would not go 14 years without taking so much as a peek at the property. Fourteen years, my God, what had he been doing that was so important he couldn't glance in once in awhile? He started thinking about it and it seemed that past happy times were getting squashed by the unhappy ones and that apparently he was even judging as premium the harsher experiences, possibly based on the simple fact that he had survived them and survival was something deemed universally good. Or was he just distrustful of happiness? Anyhow, it seemed a tricky business this judging the value of days spent and this defining of happiness, so he just stopped thinking about it. There had to be a limit to introspection, didn't there? But he couldn't just shut it off entirely so he imagined one last thing on the subject and that was an imaginary tombstone (although he had just sold off to a brother for $500 dollars his rights to a family burial plot) which read--I cried, I laughed, I cried again, and then I died. But that had his life summed up by crying twice as much as he laughed and that seemed wrong, and he began remembering his laughter, and it seemed more than sufficient. So he made in his mind a new tombstone which read--My laughter was sufficient, my crying necessary, may I now please rest in peace. Or--I cried until I laughed and some years later I died. As for my accomplishments, think of me when you dust.
He had come inside to do all this thinking. After putting into the blender a half cup of frozen blueberries, and slicing into pieces one frozen banana, and 4 large frozen strawberries and adding some apple juice and blending it all up. He looked back out that window, which was so clean now after having been for so long coated with oily cooking grime, and looking back out to that spot where he had been working it looked, again, cool and clean and green. But he knew that only the green part was accurate and just as surely he knew that he wouldn't go back out there until later, when the sun was getting very low in the sky and casting beams through the trees, which would make his life seem more like a well directed film than a haphazardly shot home movie. He would against his will spray his body with chemical repellant and make another go at it and be happy about the lighting if not the chore and the smell of his skin. He would accomplish this one little thing today while spying all about him so many other things that needed doing. He would treat the chores as equals until they were done and then he would find something else to do, somewhere else.
On the edge of the deep woods he bent forward at the waist and crushed with his palm the swollen mosquito feeding on his shinbone. Then he ran a dirty fingernail across the bone, etching a white line in his freckled, marginally tan skin. There was a bite on his right index finger as well, and one on his calf and one on the other shinbone and... the itching seemed to spread, he was after-all on the edge of the deep woods. From the recently cleaned kitchen window these woods looked so enticingly green and cool and inviting but up close the garbage still peeked out from under dry leaves and the bugs bit and the snakes alerted by his rake slowly slithered under twigs and leaves. The finely woven spider webs stretched across impossible distances, visible only when the sun hit them just so, and these he swiped away when they limited his progress, wondering to which part of his body the spider escaped while he picked the webbing from his eyelashes.
It was not wrong what some said, that he could have cleaned up this property in a day, surely he could have with more money and manpower and tow trucks and blow torches. And a burn pile four stories high. And a work ethic not so limited as was his by daydreaming. No, he took his own time about things and now, a year after beginning, with a good bit of progress made, he still saw things not exactly as he wished them to be. This was not the first shithole he had cleaned up and he knew that over time hidden garbage seeped up from the ground and leaves decomposed exposing that which one had missed the first time around. His attention to the detail was borne less from a fastidious nature and more from a desire to lead by example. If the future renters saw even remnants of the past renter's momentous garbage, they might be tempted to be less than tidy their own-selves. This theory was flawed of course by the fact that the past renter had been given a pretty clean property to begin with and had over the course of many years just added a junk car here, a bass boat full of beer cans there.
Well, he was going to be more careful and attentive this time around. He would not go 14 years without taking so much as a peek at the property. Fourteen years, my God, what had he been doing that was so important he couldn't glance in once in awhile? He started thinking about it and it seemed that past happy times were getting squashed by the unhappy ones and that apparently he was even judging as premium the harsher experiences, possibly based on the simple fact that he had survived them and survival was something deemed universally good. Or was he just distrustful of happiness? Anyhow, it seemed a tricky business this judging the value of days spent and this defining of happiness, so he just stopped thinking about it. There had to be a limit to introspection, didn't there? But he couldn't just shut it off entirely so he imagined one last thing on the subject and that was an imaginary tombstone (although he had just sold off to a brother for $500 dollars his rights to a family burial plot) which read--I cried, I laughed, I cried again, and then I died. But that had his life summed up by crying twice as much as he laughed and that seemed wrong, and he began remembering his laughter, and it seemed more than sufficient. So he made in his mind a new tombstone which read--My laughter was sufficient, my crying necessary, may I now please rest in peace. Or--I cried until I laughed and some years later I died. As for my accomplishments, think of me when you dust.
He had come inside to do all this thinking. After putting into the blender a half cup of frozen blueberries, and slicing into pieces one frozen banana, and 4 large frozen strawberries and adding some apple juice and blending it all up. He looked back out that window, which was so clean now after having been for so long coated with oily cooking grime, and looking back out to that spot where he had been working it looked, again, cool and clean and green. But he knew that only the green part was accurate and just as surely he knew that he wouldn't go back out there until later, when the sun was getting very low in the sky and casting beams through the trees, which would make his life seem more like a well directed film than a haphazardly shot home movie. He would against his will spray his body with chemical repellant and make another go at it and be happy about the lighting if not the chore and the smell of his skin. He would accomplish this one little thing today while spying all about him so many other things that needed doing. He would treat the chores as equals until they were done and then he would find something else to do, somewhere else.
The Ballad Of Timmy Meecum
Said Jolene, "no silly, while that dog vomit may be disgusting, it's no fungus."
"Is it physarum polycephalum?" exploded Ramen with querulous excitement.
"And yet 'fungus-like' surely you must admit," asserted Bill Macy, ignoring the patently absurd Ramen.
Squinting, with one eye closed and the other looking sideways at Bill Macy, Ramen shot back, "I think it's physarum polycephalum, don't you Jolene?"
"More likely fuligo septica. I mean texturally speaking it's not really a question, although I will grant to an untrained casual observer it might be mistaken for a polycephalum." For Bill Macy, taunting Ramen was not so much a sport but a child's game. Tiddlywinks if he were forced to put a name to it.
"Heh, she said 'dog vomit,'" snorted Timmy Meecum from the back row.
Said Jolene, "no silly, while that dog vomit may be disgusting, it's no fungus."
"Is it physarum polycephalum?" exploded Ramen with querulous excitement.
"And yet 'fungus-like' surely you must admit," asserted Bill Macy, ignoring the patently absurd Ramen.
Squinting, with one eye closed and the other looking sideways at Bill Macy, Ramen shot back, "I think it's physarum polycephalum, don't you Jolene?"
"More likely fuligo septica. I mean texturally speaking it's not really a question, although I will grant to an untrained casual observer it might be mistaken for a polycephalum." For Bill Macy, taunting Ramen was not so much a sport but a child's game. Tiddlywinks if he were forced to put a name to it.
"Heh, she said 'dog vomit,'" snorted Timmy Meecum from the back row.
The Comfort Of An Acronym
I looked out just now and all I could see was a little baby rabbit under the pine tree, hopping out towards the hay fields. I did not see the other thing but know it is out there. It was in the front yard this morning walking in circles and except for emaciation and rib protrusion was showing most all the signs of a progressive neurological disease, although one not yet reported in this state. I took some up close photos and it's not pretty. And it wouldn't run away which was perhaps the scariest thing. Wild animals should run away when you get close. I didn't get too close though, that's what the zoom lens is for. After I got a local government official on the phone, who gave me a number for a wildlife biologist I might like to call on Monday, and told me also that there was up to this point in time not a single reported case of CWD in Virginia, I felt a little better. But not that much better because something is very wrong with that deer. I got up enough courage to blow up the photos a little and it could be that the deer was shot in the face and is just suffering from that. There is though so much to look at in the photos that it's hard to tell. The head is coated with flies, as is the left flank. The ears are thickly dotted with both flies and swollen ticks. I have a gun and could kill the deer and take it to the burn pile and set it all on fire but without a front end loader the scooping up of a potentially diseased deer is difficult. On farms, when large livestock dies and burning is impractical the front end loader is also useful for digging the hole to bury the dead animal. I've seen a pickup truck drag a dead cow with a heavy chain around its neck down a gravel road in Texas to...I'm not sure where he was taking it but what he was doing, unpleasant though it may seem, was taking care of business.
Well, just in case it is CWD the state requests that you do nothing until you contact them to check it out. They don't want you to kill it. Which lets me off that hook, I'm frankly not keen on killing, although as I understand it, you can develop a knack for it.
What are the chances that during those hours I wasn't paying attention, between the time when I saw it this late morning, acting in erratic fashion, and this early evening when I noticed all my roses eaten, that it had come within five feet of my living space and munched and drooled and pissed and left behind a few flies and tics? I would say about 93 percent.
Really, is it any wonder people have nightmares? I've been wondering lately about post traumatic stress disorder. Partly about how nice it is to have a name for something which on the surface might appear, to the casual observer, as simply bad manners, and partly wondering how many people could be suffering from it just by nature of their environment? Worldwide for sure but I'm mostly meaning in these United States.
Deer and Elk have the acronym CWD to cover them in the event they start acting really weird. The downside to some of the acronyms is that they lead to slow and horrible death. Oh, I should have told you this by now that CWD stands for Chronic Wasting Disease. It would appear there is no sensitivity training for the disease naming committees of non-sentient creatures.
I don't know what else to tell you. I've brought my cat inside and locked up her cat window. I've washed my feet and (dammit to hell) put on shoes when I leave the house. I extracted that deer tick a few minutes ago and am feeling fine about it. The thing about nature is that while it is sometimes pretty, it is also sometimes not. Not pretty can be good though, we would have no extraordinary art and literature without it, so in the end what we have, what we always have, is win win. Does this screen look blurry to you?
I looked out just now and all I could see was a little baby rabbit under the pine tree, hopping out towards the hay fields. I did not see the other thing but know it is out there. It was in the front yard this morning walking in circles and except for emaciation and rib protrusion was showing most all the signs of a progressive neurological disease, although one not yet reported in this state. I took some up close photos and it's not pretty. And it wouldn't run away which was perhaps the scariest thing. Wild animals should run away when you get close. I didn't get too close though, that's what the zoom lens is for. After I got a local government official on the phone, who gave me a number for a wildlife biologist I might like to call on Monday, and told me also that there was up to this point in time not a single reported case of CWD in Virginia, I felt a little better. But not that much better because something is very wrong with that deer. I got up enough courage to blow up the photos a little and it could be that the deer was shot in the face and is just suffering from that. There is though so much to look at in the photos that it's hard to tell. The head is coated with flies, as is the left flank. The ears are thickly dotted with both flies and swollen ticks. I have a gun and could kill the deer and take it to the burn pile and set it all on fire but without a front end loader the scooping up of a potentially diseased deer is difficult. On farms, when large livestock dies and burning is impractical the front end loader is also useful for digging the hole to bury the dead animal. I've seen a pickup truck drag a dead cow with a heavy chain around its neck down a gravel road in Texas to...I'm not sure where he was taking it but what he was doing, unpleasant though it may seem, was taking care of business.
Well, just in case it is CWD the state requests that you do nothing until you contact them to check it out. They don't want you to kill it. Which lets me off that hook, I'm frankly not keen on killing, although as I understand it, you can develop a knack for it.
What are the chances that during those hours I wasn't paying attention, between the time when I saw it this late morning, acting in erratic fashion, and this early evening when I noticed all my roses eaten, that it had come within five feet of my living space and munched and drooled and pissed and left behind a few flies and tics? I would say about 93 percent.
Really, is it any wonder people have nightmares? I've been wondering lately about post traumatic stress disorder. Partly about how nice it is to have a name for something which on the surface might appear, to the casual observer, as simply bad manners, and partly wondering how many people could be suffering from it just by nature of their environment? Worldwide for sure but I'm mostly meaning in these United States.
Deer and Elk have the acronym CWD to cover them in the event they start acting really weird. The downside to some of the acronyms is that they lead to slow and horrible death. Oh, I should have told you this by now that CWD stands for Chronic Wasting Disease. It would appear there is no sensitivity training for the disease naming committees of non-sentient creatures.
I don't know what else to tell you. I've brought my cat inside and locked up her cat window. I've washed my feet and (dammit to hell) put on shoes when I leave the house. I extracted that deer tick a few minutes ago and am feeling fine about it. The thing about nature is that while it is sometimes pretty, it is also sometimes not. Not pretty can be good though, we would have no extraordinary art and literature without it, so in the end what we have, what we always have, is win win. Does this screen look blurry to you?
The Lacking Of Probability
After driving the 950 miles northeast he was still in the South, but a cooler, breezier, more mountainous and decidedly more rural South. There were fewer sidewalks here and they were not coated with black dots of gum or broken glass or steaming gobs of spit. Having made the drive in one sprint he was not so removed from that former place as the mileage would suggest and in his mind the two places clashed as he made the turn into the long gravel driveway. He drove uphill past the pond and surveyed the 40 acres that would constitute his new territory. A crooked smile replaced what had been the firm cast of his mouth and he heard from afar a cackling, hysterical laughter. It seemed to be coming from the lush green foothills which surrounded him on all sides. It closed in too quickly though and he realized the laughter was his own, and, not particularly comfortable with the sound, he shut himself up.
But the former place was less a memory than part of his makeup so that over the first few months on the hill, while sitting on the back porch of the bighouse enjoying the gentle breezes, or floating in the cold swimming pool, or hiking in purest isolation the nearby mountain trails, he found himself transported back, way down the hill, all the way back to that thick heat and dark night where he had spent his last ten years.
That first Fall on the hill was hideously beautiful as the leaves on the trees all around him burst forth those vibrant colors which precede death and became like snapshots from a perfect life; postcards he would speak of but not send because he could never find a stamp.
After the leaves fell he found a replacement to look after the two houses and loaded up a few tools and his shotgun and drove back down to finish what he had started, his own porch, on his tenth of an acre, which looked out over a cracked driveway more dirt and grass than concrete and beyond that a buckled sidewalk and potholed street and the ramshackle abode with no electricity occupied by mostly agreeable but still practicing drug addicts (his own home had been just like it a few years previous). And next to that the sculptors' residence and next to that the perpetual work in progress, the chauffeur's home.
He found it highly illogical that his house, left untended, had not been breached in his absence, not a single broken window, no floorboards pushed up from the crawl space, no walls stripped of sheetrock for the valuable copper wire and pipe inside. All the appliances were still in the kitchen. The temporary electrical pole which powered up the place not just during construction but during his illegal lodging the previous few years still had its meter, another valuable commodity on the local black market. Even as his life here was one of lowest profile, avoiding to the best of his ability the exposure which welcomed racial slurs from passing teenagers and even though on foot he could not leave his house at night to walk two blocks to the nearest store because of a prevalent criminal intent among some of the town's youth, he still knew and felt deeply that he lived a blessed life. And while the thick humid air allowed deep breathing only at risk of drowning, he still sucked it in with great satisfaction. We are all drug addicts in one fashion or another and for him the addiction was perhaps the rather obvious thrill of surviving a single day in this environment, but he knew he was addicted to something less describable than that, and after each abysmal attempt at speaking out what that was, he willed himself silent on the subject, imagining against all probability that he would succeed.
After driving the 950 miles northeast he was still in the South, but a cooler, breezier, more mountainous and decidedly more rural South. There were fewer sidewalks here and they were not coated with black dots of gum or broken glass or steaming gobs of spit. Having made the drive in one sprint he was not so removed from that former place as the mileage would suggest and in his mind the two places clashed as he made the turn into the long gravel driveway. He drove uphill past the pond and surveyed the 40 acres that would constitute his new territory. A crooked smile replaced what had been the firm cast of his mouth and he heard from afar a cackling, hysterical laughter. It seemed to be coming from the lush green foothills which surrounded him on all sides. It closed in too quickly though and he realized the laughter was his own, and, not particularly comfortable with the sound, he shut himself up.
But the former place was less a memory than part of his makeup so that over the first few months on the hill, while sitting on the back porch of the bighouse enjoying the gentle breezes, or floating in the cold swimming pool, or hiking in purest isolation the nearby mountain trails, he found himself transported back, way down the hill, all the way back to that thick heat and dark night where he had spent his last ten years.
That first Fall on the hill was hideously beautiful as the leaves on the trees all around him burst forth those vibrant colors which precede death and became like snapshots from a perfect life; postcards he would speak of but not send because he could never find a stamp.
After the leaves fell he found a replacement to look after the two houses and loaded up a few tools and his shotgun and drove back down to finish what he had started, his own porch, on his tenth of an acre, which looked out over a cracked driveway more dirt and grass than concrete and beyond that a buckled sidewalk and potholed street and the ramshackle abode with no electricity occupied by mostly agreeable but still practicing drug addicts (his own home had been just like it a few years previous). And next to that the sculptors' residence and next to that the perpetual work in progress, the chauffeur's home.
He found it highly illogical that his house, left untended, had not been breached in his absence, not a single broken window, no floorboards pushed up from the crawl space, no walls stripped of sheetrock for the valuable copper wire and pipe inside. All the appliances were still in the kitchen. The temporary electrical pole which powered up the place not just during construction but during his illegal lodging the previous few years still had its meter, another valuable commodity on the local black market. Even as his life here was one of lowest profile, avoiding to the best of his ability the exposure which welcomed racial slurs from passing teenagers and even though on foot he could not leave his house at night to walk two blocks to the nearest store because of a prevalent criminal intent among some of the town's youth, he still knew and felt deeply that he lived a blessed life. And while the thick humid air allowed deep breathing only at risk of drowning, he still sucked it in with great satisfaction. We are all drug addicts in one fashion or another and for him the addiction was perhaps the rather obvious thrill of surviving a single day in this environment, but he knew he was addicted to something less describable than that, and after each abysmal attempt at speaking out what that was, he willed himself silent on the subject, imagining against all probability that he would succeed.
Where Are The Bees, Wait...
I Cannot Remember
I cannot remember now what they were asking. Was it a more cheerful rendition or something less vague, less query inducing, a world populated not so much by retired DEA agents and multi-lingual computer savvy FBI agents but instead petite Chinese ballerinas dancing on their knees across the knots of our backs? I kept offering them fresh over priced chunks of watermelon and was mostly met with disdainful indifference so it must not be organic produce they were hoping me to deliver.
Does anybody really care about my bountiful needs? Do they care that heading that list is an airy and creamy delicious pistachio cupcake which now sits inches away from me in its tissue paper lingerie giving me on an empty stomach all that come-hither I know I'm bad for you but you want me anyway noise. How loud is a cupcake? I have never seen it listed on a decibel count with those other standards--the crowded football stadium, a jet plane taking off, or your neighbor's stereo at three in the morning. I would tell that cupcake to shut up but then I would have to listen to more noise, about what a misogynistic bastard I am, how I would never talk to a cheeseburger that way.
It was only after he had left, and after I had exchanged email addresses with the friendly professor at the nearly empty bar in a semi-remote tropical mountainous region of Puerto Rico, that the bartender told Bernadette and I the recently exited "professor" was really a retired FBI agent of 32 years, who spoke five languages (including Arabic) and had a computer room at his house resembling a miniature version of a NASA control room or NORAD command post. And while the bartender mumbled Say-EE-Ah under his breath I said, gee that sounds more like CIA to me. That in profile I may look like an Arab terrorist expertly disguised as an aging beach hippie is perhaps, in this case, or all cases, unfortunate, but on the other hand, what kind of self respecting Spook would pretend to be an FBI agent pretending to be a college math/physics professor? This is all just another one of those enigmas inside a conundrum inside a pretty pickle.
I remember now, it was some fleshing out, a bit more clarity that was requested. Well I'm sorry, there is none of that. There is now only the one tissue wrapped wax paper panty wearing cupcake on the counter.
I cannot remember now what they were asking. Was it a more cheerful rendition or something less vague, less query inducing, a world populated not so much by retired DEA agents and multi-lingual computer savvy FBI agents but instead petite Chinese ballerinas dancing on their knees across the knots of our backs? I kept offering them fresh over priced chunks of watermelon and was mostly met with disdainful indifference so it must not be organic produce they were hoping me to deliver.
Does anybody really care about my bountiful needs? Do they care that heading that list is an airy and creamy delicious pistachio cupcake which now sits inches away from me in its tissue paper lingerie giving me on an empty stomach all that come-hither I know I'm bad for you but you want me anyway noise. How loud is a cupcake? I have never seen it listed on a decibel count with those other standards--the crowded football stadium, a jet plane taking off, or your neighbor's stereo at three in the morning. I would tell that cupcake to shut up but then I would have to listen to more noise, about what a misogynistic bastard I am, how I would never talk to a cheeseburger that way.
It was only after he had left, and after I had exchanged email addresses with the friendly professor at the nearly empty bar in a semi-remote tropical mountainous region of Puerto Rico, that the bartender told Bernadette and I the recently exited "professor" was really a retired FBI agent of 32 years, who spoke five languages (including Arabic) and had a computer room at his house resembling a miniature version of a NASA control room or NORAD command post. And while the bartender mumbled Say-EE-Ah under his breath I said, gee that sounds more like CIA to me. That in profile I may look like an Arab terrorist expertly disguised as an aging beach hippie is perhaps, in this case, or all cases, unfortunate, but on the other hand, what kind of self respecting Spook would pretend to be an FBI agent pretending to be a college math/physics professor? This is all just another one of those enigmas inside a conundrum inside a pretty pickle.
I remember now, it was some fleshing out, a bit more clarity that was requested. Well I'm sorry, there is none of that. There is now only the one tissue wrapped wax paper panty wearing cupcake on the counter.
Fish Eating Bats
When I learned we weren't going to Mexico and were heading instead for Puerto Rico I dispensed with even the pretense of learning more Spanish. Or adding to the three page internal phrase book that best describes my understanding of the Spanish language. Also I gave up on good manners, positive attitude, belief in an afterlife and that right wins over wrong and that some fish can fly and that some bats do eat fish.
In the Aguadilla Airport the taxi drivers hanging by the baggage carrousel all hawked their services eagerly in English. And the young woman behind the rental counter also spoke perfect English and I would guess Spanish as well, although there is some doubt as to whether she was aware of the fish eating bats from Isla Mona. No extra nada I said and got assigned a Kia Rio at the cheapest price possible, a white one, and after signing and initialing and receiving back my paperwork I headed off with Bernadette into the early morning heat of Puerto Rico. The wheels of my carry on luggage clicking over the pavement made enough noise that Bernadette commented on it. That's on account of I have the all terrain wheels I explained to her. This baby can go anywhere, through sand or mud or wet concrete.
The rental car parking lot was small so we were not immediately concerned that we had forgotten the rental woman's exact directions. We both knew she said fourth row after the guard booth but whether left or right after that....?, we really could not say with any amount of certainty. No matter really, the car was not anywhere. This we verified after three young guys, from three different car rental agencies, none of whom spoke English by the way and made me regret the careless abandonment of my studies, searched the lot for us. No big deal. The one youngster loaded up our luggage and drove us the short drive back to the terminal and we tried again. This time the woman gave us a car that had not even been checked in properly, and was right outside the door in a much smaller lot, and this one also a Kia Rio compact, but a blue one. She even told us exactly what slot (number 8) the car would be in.
But getting the hang of things now, we took no time at all to come to the conclusion, all by ourselves, that the blue Kia was not around either. There were no Kias at all in this lot so when I saw a car of similar size, a Mazda 3, arguably an upgrade, but as it and the Kia both only have four tires I could not see that it was a huge upgrade, I suggested to Bernadette that while she waited in the not exactly sweltering heat, I would copy the license number and see if we could just take the Mazda. I did not, but thought about saying, but hey, you keep an eye on this one.
Walking up to the counter and trying my best not to project a frustration which I truly did not feel, I apologized to the woman with two words in Spanish (from page one of the internal phrase book), and then continued in English to explain that the blue Kia was also absent. I felt not happy to be the one bringing to attention that many of their cars were seemingly disappearing into thin air.
I tried to joke with the woman a little and after signing and initialing all the forms for a third time, and after which she made her own little joke by saying--we'll try not to charge you three times, I smiled, said see you in two weeks, and then Bernadette and I drove off in the Mazda, only briefly concerning ourselves with the ramifications inherent to the fact that because we were taking the car from the unofficial lot, we were therefore not exiting through a guard booth, so that our papers could be checked. Also, although the license on this car matched the one on the paperwork, the color listed was gold. I cannot really describe what the color of the Mazda is (if forced I would say green) except to say that it is not gold.
After finding this place on the beach and realizing that the waves were crashing barely a hundred feet behind the comfortably sized backyard, we entered the house with the key a trusting owner had left under the mat, rifled through our bags and after quickly putting on our bathing suits, jumped into the ocean.
The unhappy ending to this day was that later in the evening, pulling shit out of a musty and polluted thin air, an air that was also possibly inhabited with a slew of missing rental cars, I started and then continued to carry on a nasty fight with Bernadette. It took me awhile, too long for sure, but I did eventually come to the conclusion that on this particular occasion I was, rare as it might seem, completely wrong, about everything, and this morning after finding not one single blunt and rusty machete wedged into my flesh, I felt fairly certain that possibly I had been forgiven, and so today was a new day.
When I learned we weren't going to Mexico and were heading instead for Puerto Rico I dispensed with even the pretense of learning more Spanish. Or adding to the three page internal phrase book that best describes my understanding of the Spanish language. Also I gave up on good manners, positive attitude, belief in an afterlife and that right wins over wrong and that some fish can fly and that some bats do eat fish.
In the Aguadilla Airport the taxi drivers hanging by the baggage carrousel all hawked their services eagerly in English. And the young woman behind the rental counter also spoke perfect English and I would guess Spanish as well, although there is some doubt as to whether she was aware of the fish eating bats from Isla Mona. No extra nada I said and got assigned a Kia Rio at the cheapest price possible, a white one, and after signing and initialing and receiving back my paperwork I headed off with Bernadette into the early morning heat of Puerto Rico. The wheels of my carry on luggage clicking over the pavement made enough noise that Bernadette commented on it. That's on account of I have the all terrain wheels I explained to her. This baby can go anywhere, through sand or mud or wet concrete.
The rental car parking lot was small so we were not immediately concerned that we had forgotten the rental woman's exact directions. We both knew she said fourth row after the guard booth but whether left or right after that....?, we really could not say with any amount of certainty. No matter really, the car was not anywhere. This we verified after three young guys, from three different car rental agencies, none of whom spoke English by the way and made me regret the careless abandonment of my studies, searched the lot for us. No big deal. The one youngster loaded up our luggage and drove us the short drive back to the terminal and we tried again. This time the woman gave us a car that had not even been checked in properly, and was right outside the door in a much smaller lot, and this one also a Kia Rio compact, but a blue one. She even told us exactly what slot (number 8) the car would be in.
But getting the hang of things now, we took no time at all to come to the conclusion, all by ourselves, that the blue Kia was not around either. There were no Kias at all in this lot so when I saw a car of similar size, a Mazda 3, arguably an upgrade, but as it and the Kia both only have four tires I could not see that it was a huge upgrade, I suggested to Bernadette that while she waited in the not exactly sweltering heat, I would copy the license number and see if we could just take the Mazda. I did not, but thought about saying, but hey, you keep an eye on this one.
Walking up to the counter and trying my best not to project a frustration which I truly did not feel, I apologized to the woman with two words in Spanish (from page one of the internal phrase book), and then continued in English to explain that the blue Kia was also absent. I felt not happy to be the one bringing to attention that many of their cars were seemingly disappearing into thin air.
I tried to joke with the woman a little and after signing and initialing all the forms for a third time, and after which she made her own little joke by saying--we'll try not to charge you three times, I smiled, said see you in two weeks, and then Bernadette and I drove off in the Mazda, only briefly concerning ourselves with the ramifications inherent to the fact that because we were taking the car from the unofficial lot, we were therefore not exiting through a guard booth, so that our papers could be checked. Also, although the license on this car matched the one on the paperwork, the color listed was gold. I cannot really describe what the color of the Mazda is (if forced I would say green) except to say that it is not gold.
After finding this place on the beach and realizing that the waves were crashing barely a hundred feet behind the comfortably sized backyard, we entered the house with the key a trusting owner had left under the mat, rifled through our bags and after quickly putting on our bathing suits, jumped into the ocean.
The unhappy ending to this day was that later in the evening, pulling shit out of a musty and polluted thin air, an air that was also possibly inhabited with a slew of missing rental cars, I started and then continued to carry on a nasty fight with Bernadette. It took me awhile, too long for sure, but I did eventually come to the conclusion that on this particular occasion I was, rare as it might seem, completely wrong, about everything, and this morning after finding not one single blunt and rusty machete wedged into my flesh, I felt fairly certain that possibly I had been forgiven, and so today was a new day.