Monday, September 10, 2012
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Ho Ho Home.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
I'ds of March
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
From Masturbation to Defenestration - A Love Story
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Penultimate Decision
Financial districts have a very distinct caste system, and of all the castes, messenger is the absolute lowest. It didn't take long to realize this. Drivers on the road hated you for weaving in and out of traffic and generally causing a vehicular ruckus. Office building folks hated you because by and large most messengers look like they are extras from the movie road warrior. One fellow I met looked rather normal. He had a baseball hat with longish hair coming out of it. Thing was, his head was shaved shiny all around the top, right where the rim of the hat began. His thing was that every time he would make a delivery, as he was leaving, he would tip his hat to the receptionist and wish her a nice day, leaving always a rather stunned expression in his wake. He was also known to write obtuse messages on his dome from time to time. The sheer creativity expressed in the diversity of shenannigans lead me to believe that this might be a culture in which I could thrive. But it was a closed culture, and I needed I guide to show me the underside of these invisible people. That person turned out to be Mike Mowhawk. He was named such because well, his name was mike and he had a bright blue mowhawk. We hit it off immediately. And slowly over time, he revealed many secrets of the downtown pariah.
Since most of the messengers lived in squats and such, most of them had no bank accounts, so being paid by check presented a problem. Mike showed me the Korean liquor store that almost all the messengers went to cash their checks on payday. Payday was once a week, and so this little hole in the wall turned into quite the circus every seven days. Now there are many Korean and Vietnamese liquor stores in SF, who will bend all sorts of rules so I always wondered why this one was the chosen one for nearly all the vagrant messengers. Once I had put some time in, and folks figured I "was ok", I was allowed to find out why. A half block down from this particular store was a large sheet metal fence. The fence could be peeled back giving enough room for a person and a bike. Behind the fence was a large empty lot surrounded by tall windowless buildings on the three other sides. This was messenger party town, and every payday, flush with the cash for their vice of choice, the messengers would party down. I was young, but still I thought I had seen a few things in my time, but this... this was something else. I can remember just staring, soaking it all in, this hidden world that I had somehow found my way into. It left an impression.
Now just like that fellow with the baseball cap and the semi shaved head, I began to learn that most everyone had a "thing". For some, like Mike, it was his bright blue hair do. For others it was more complex games - like taking a huge hit of weed right before entering a building and elevator and trying to hold it in until no smoke came out. Most of the larger buildings had separate elevators for pond scum like us, so it wasnt that big a deal, but did hear tales of messengers pulling it off in the main lobby elevators as well. These stories were carried like trophies, with everyone trying to out crazy the others. Keying cars while in motion. Throwing AA batteries at cars that cut you off or curse you. Now I was young, and not up to any of these potentially litigous antics, but still... I wanted a "thing" of my own. A game I could play throughout the day, something that amused me.
It started accidentally. Every receptionist must sign for a received or picked up package. I would then have to make my own initials on the form. Once I had a woman sign, and then found myself without a pen. I asked to borrow hers, made my initials and then unthinkingly left with her pen. I didn't even realize it until I was out of the building. Thing was, it was a really nice pen - Parker medium ballpoint black, if memory serves. As I clicked the pen, it clicked in my head, for reasons that make no sense at all. I would try to see how many pens I could get a day. Absurd? Yes. But mostly harmless, and it gave me something to think about whilst dueling with the three mortal enemies of all bicyclists: rail car tracks, wet bald, and drivers that have no idea you are there. I had found my zen by collecting pens.
And I was good at it too, maybe 10-20 a day, all shapes, sizes and colors. I would sometimes pass Mike and he would shout "How many?" as a greeting. I would always reply "Six!", or wherever I was in my count, as a response. I kept them in a big box at home for reasons that were entirely unclear to me. I mean, this ink armada was way beyond what an average person could use in a lifetime. Still, I got this odd sense of satisfaction out of that box of ill gotten writing implements. Was it the minor transgression? Was it a developing obsession? Is this how the concept of "hobbies" came to be a part of the human mental landscape? A minor amusement slowly creeps into the grey area bordering the realm of sanity? How many other aspects of my life have yet and since followed this slow winding path from pass-time to albatross?
As the box filled up, I began to worry. Its as if I could see the writing on the wall in a thousand different color inks. I could see myself sitting in that back lot with my head shaved into a reverse hare krishna, mumbling incoherencies and non-sequetors between gulps from my Mad Dog 20/20, celebrating yet another meager payday. But I had found some friends, outcast and odd though they may have been, and had carved out my own peculiar little identity as the guy you went to if you ever needed a pen. I was the pen kid, and god knows why, I kinda liked it.
I still had three weeks before I was to return to Santa Barbara for my second year of college, so I knew this mental mobius strip of mental hopscotch had a punctuation mark. This was a fact I never divulged to my fellow riders... I wanted to be the pen kid, not the college boy. But my box was nearly full, and when I considered starting a second - I wondered if I would even make it three weeks. I was addicted to the thrill of riding fast through the streets. I was enamored of the underdog access that being an accepted member of the pariah class afforded. And I liked stealing pens. My friends, I was at a crossroads.
And I was literally at a crossroads, 5th and Market, I believe, when my path was decided. The radios are set up so everyone can hear everyone else. This allows for the en route transfer of documents from messenger to messenger, and we were constantly handing things off. I was on a corner, waiting to meet another messenger to pick up some archetecht blueprint something or others, so I was monitoring my radio. On it, Mike was confirming a pick up and heading out for a delivery. Mid-sentence there was a horrible crashing screaching sound, and then total silence. The dispatcher then asked Mike what the hell was that but got no response. And again. No response. A little while later, I found that my friend Mike had been hit and crushed by a muni bus and killed. I had quite literally just heard someone, someone I knew, die on the air. It was the jolt that shook me from my obsession. It was payday, and I went and turned in my radio and id, collected my last check and never looked back. I never even went to the back lot payday party. My career, sanity lay elsewhere.
And to this day, if I find myself in possession of a pen that is unfamiliar, I often imagine Mike up there somewhere with a bright blue halo saying "Only one? Weak!"
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Incandescent Monsters
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Memories of the Afterlife
On my ninth birthday, I got presents and cake, and my father got the flu. My father wasn't a lot of things. He wasn't very reliable, he wasn't a hard worker, nor a very good provider. He was however one thing - a very very funny charming man. A conversation with him always ended in laughter. He was also a prankster, April fools day being a national holiday for him. He was always up to something. Legend had it that in high school, an older gentleman across the street was pegged as to his schedule, and always parked in the same spot. So my father and his friends, having no wheels of their own, would simply "borrow" the car every night, and made sure to return it at the appropriate hour with the appropriate amount of gas in the tank. He never grew out of behavior like that, so to a nine year old, he was a god. Sounds stupid, but at that age, sneaking an entire pizza into a movie under his jacket was often more fun than the movie itself. I loved him very much - but I guess that goes without saying.
So after my party, the cake had been eaten. And after a week, the new toys had been played with and were gone in their newness, but my father's flu did not go away, rather, it had grown quite worse. Many trips to the doctor, and a few trips down misdirected medical avenues later, he finally had his firm diagnosis: cancer of the bile duct. He was hospitalized for exploratory surgery. Trips to the hospital were surreal for a child my age, and I don't remember much. I remember playing pool with relatives. I remember the shock of seeing him with all those tubes and machines. I remember the grave concern and gathering of family when it came to be the day of his surgery. I remember laying my head in my grandmother's lap for what seemed an eternity in the cold steel waiting room. I remember my mother attacking the poor doctor physically when he gave us all the bad news: the cancer had gone too far, and the prognosis was grim. There were things that they could try, but we shouldn't hold out much hope.
And so the medical staff tried those things, and so did my family. In my father's mother's case, this included lutheran priests, which my father did not cotton to all that well. In my mother's case this involved bringing in shamans and healers of various stripes to lay on hands and cleanse auras. My poor father did not cotton well to those either. He was born a cynic and would likely die one as well. I can remember him in a n argument with my mother regarding these healers saying "Hey, you bring these weirdos in and then leave with them… I have to *stay* here with the whole staff snickering behind my back!"
Ultimately, it was clear no amount of science, god or new age shenanigans was going to do the trick, and my father resigned himself to prepare to die. I remember the conversation he had with me, telling me no matter what happened that he would always love me. I guess I kind of understood what he was saying, but he still had that twinkle in his eye, so to my small self, some how it just wasn't real. Though i did not know it at the time, my father was adamant about dying at home, and an epic battle had been initiated to try to accomplish just that. Though I did not know it at the time, it seems that once one is in a hospital, it is very hard to leave unless one is either healthy or dead. I do not know the mechanics of it all, but somehow he arrange to have hospice care at home. And so, home he came, with a plethora of equipment and care nurses of various stripes.
The next couple months, as my father got sicker and sicker, was a parade of old friends and distant relatives. Seems there were always many extra people in the house, which was good in that it distracted me, but bad in that t distracted me. My father was visibly sick now. His skin and the whites of his eyes were a ghostly yellow color. He had lost a ton of weight. I still remember the shock of finding out he was wearing diapers. My rock, my world, my hero was being eaten alive before me and my reaction was at best described as having the dear on the headlights look. As he got even sicker still, people came around less. People could barely even face me, with a few exceptions.
Finally, he was what could be described as semi comatose. He would be out for long stretches, and then come back. I guess you could call it sleep, but it was something else, really. When he was lucid, my mother, younger sister and I would sit with him. And he would talk. And what he would talk about was this on going series of dreams, the narrative of which went something like this…
He had been flying in a plane with his "friend" (I will use the name) Jon Smith, someone that none of us recognized. Jon had been teasing him to learn to fly, but my father was reluctant to try. Then there were several flying lesson dreams about how awesome it was. Then there was a dream where my father had tried to fly his first time, and had, it seems, managed to crash and become stuck in a rock. He was ready to quit flying forever, but jon over the course of dreams, convinced him that not only was it wrong to quit, but that he should just get right back in the plane, and in fact try to fly solo for the first time. After a a few more dreams, my father relented and actually became excited about his "first solo flight". Even at nine I had a vague inkling of what this was all about. I remember the tears as he asked his wife and children to accompany him on this great new achievement. I remember the tears as my mother said no, that this was something he had to do himself, but that she loved him and was very proud of him. After that exchange, he slipped into a coma and never was lucid again.
His condition worsened, and everybody knew that the end was very close. One evening I was told that my father was "probably not going to make it through the night, and that if I had anything I wanted to say to him, now was the time - he couldn't talk back but he could hear me". I was then placed in the room with him alone and the doors were closed. This then is a moment that has shaped my life since. The dim yellow light. The shadows. My frail father, weighing maybe 80 pounds. The diaper clinging to his skeleton. The IV making its drip drip drip, ticking off the last minutes of his days like a timer. What the fuck was I supposed to say? This is not hollywood. I couldn't ask for a line. I stood there frozen, overwhelmed with grief and anxiety. And shame! I was supposed to be making the most of my last night with my father, and I was told that he could hear me, so I imagined him waiting for my final words, and being disappointed in my silence. In my final moments with him I was failing. But I couldn't help it. His twinkle was gone and replaced with the jaundiced haze of the almost dead. I actually remember feeling that this wasn't even my real father, although part of me knew it was. This moment, as I type this, I wish I could have done it different, but for the life of me, I cant figure out what I could have done. I was only nine. I didn't stand a chance. I left the room without saying a word and that is a burden that I have carried with me to this day. I left, went in to the room and went to bed.
That night I awoke with a start. I was half asleep but had this strange awareness, a presence if you will. I looked through the dark at the opened doorway to the hall and thats when I saw it. Now I am not a superstitious guy, I inherited my father cynicism and it runs through my very DNA. But I know what I saw and I know what I felt. I saw a disturbance in the air, like heat waves in the dark, pass through the hall across my doorway. It was vaguely man shaped and seemed to float. It crossed the doorway, paused briefly in the opening, and then left my field of view. When it paused, I felt something, like a familiar presence. It was a very strong feeling of love, of sadness. It is so hard to explain the experience. It was as if it was only barely there, and lasted only seconds. I lay back down and eventually got back to sleep. When I awoke the next morning, I was informed that my father had died in the night.
I would be remiss if I did not mention the wake, which was quite the affair. Having grown up in my father's mother's house, a neighborhood kid of many generations, simply everyone of every stripe appeared. It was my father's wishes that we have a blow out party and just really cut loose. And cut loose we did! My mother, who lived upstairs, was with all the beat hippy types, smoking weed and getting bleary and teary. The pile of seventies weed on the dining room table was like a small hill. Downstairs, in the inlaw apartment when my grandmother lived, the hi-balls were clinking and all the lode more conservative folks were getting tanked. And we, the children navigated the stairs, trying to avoid the hugs and slurred condolences. The downstairs people bitched about the drug use upstairs, and the upstairs bitched about the alcoholics downstairs, but really the bitching wasn't so intense, it was just something to talk about that wasn't sad.
At some point in the evening, my mother related the story about the flying lesson coma dreams to a man named Freddy Norman. Freddy was a giant bear of a man and had grown up in the neighborhood and gone to school with my father. And even though he capped of the evening by falling down the front stairs, the memory of that story must have stuck in his stoned drunken mind. It was about a week or two later when he burst into ow house shouting "You're never going to believe this!"
Apparently the name 'Jon Smith' had rung a bell for him, but he couldn't place it at the time, but eventually he did. Turns out that this fellow had played third base on my father's high school base ball team. He was curious, he said, why it was him, Jon Smith, that my father had named, as they hadn't really even been friends or acquaintances - just merely teammates. Freddy had done some research to try to find him, to tell him about these dreams and what he had found alarmed him. Seems Jon had gone on to be a commercial airline pilot and died in a plane crash the year before.
So. There's that. I'll just pause and let that sink in for a sec.
To this day I wonder. Was this some sort of paranormal experience laid bare by circumstance. I mean I did have some sort of experience the night my father died that was certainly not "normal". Or. Or was this one last practical joke my father had left us with. Did he somehow know about the fate of Jon Smith and concoct one last ruse to leave us all hanging with as his final calling card. Truth is, I will never know. At this point either seems as plausible as the other. Personally, I am burdened that now I will have to come up with something even more extraordinary for my own death, I mean, it seems that it s one of the few family traditions we Cross' have, eh? And man o' man, my father is, as he always was, one tough act to follow.