Steve Powers (aka Espo of graffiti fame), proves that home really is where the heart is, when he unveiled his ambitious mural project “A Love Letter For You” to his native city of Philadelphia this past Fall. Through countless hours of community outreach, meetings, and social networking, Powers has brought together hundreds of West Philly residents to shape this project with through their artistic skills, insights on love, and thoughts on what their neighborhood means to them. The end result is a series of beautiful & inspiring murals spanning close to 50 walls, rooftops, and billboards along the Market Street El. The narrative unfolds in the style of old Burma Shave ads as riders travel between 46th and 63rd Streets.

For more information on this project, stop by the official website at www.aloveletterforyou.com

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In the contemporary media climate – overwrought with tweets and live-feeds, links and newsflashes – oil painting can seem anachronistic, a simultaneously quaint and frivolous throwback to a former era of static imagery. The work of Aaron M Brown openly challenges that assumption, using traditional media to speak directly to the complex visual realities of today. In his layered body of work, painting becomes a language that is evolving with technology. Brown’s latest series confronts the realities of viewing in a digital era, but -beyond that- it attests to the continued alchemical power of images.

The paintings are photo-referent, but not dependant on the camera’s monocular viewpoint. Rather than concealing their means of illusion, they reveal tools of digital manipulation: cropping shields, transparencies, fills and filters. Seemingly disparate layers of visual imagery are hierarchically sorted and formally arranged. In this multifaceted work, simultaneity does not dilute the impact of images; it decants it. By arresting the movement of visual stimuli into concrete compositions, Aaron M Brown offers a respite for contemplation and connection. It is a rare chance to process.

In the theatrical painting ‘Borderland: Revisited,’ a vaguely academic room houses family heirlooms, tagged for resale. Two children gesture towards the center of the space, the boy’s countenance both framed and obscured by a semi-opaque rectangle. The exterior of a non-descript building is reflected in the surface of the painting, along with the face of a viewer that is not our own. In the midst of this dense, untenable environment, runs a figure first depicted by Eadweard Muybridge in the 1880s.

The suspended man is a product of Muybridge’s (then revolutionary) photographic technique of freezing motion. Now thawed and recast as a contemplative artifact of visual history, the man runs in a liminal space between seeing and recalling. The black-and-white figure is a fitting signifier of the on-going pursuit of ‘capturing’ an image, his perpetual effort embodying both the futility and the nobility of the artistic practice. In this painting, history is both reflection and projection.

The flattened geography of Aaron M Brown’s parallel world is ultimately asynchronous. Past, present, and future exist concurrently and create an archive of interconnected narratives. As viewers, we are left to excavate the layers and decipher their relational meaning; it is a process that invites self-examination, akin to analyzing the fragments of a particularly lucid dream.

Aaron M Brown’s paintings remind us that active viewing is always an interactive experience. They call upon fundamentally human forms of processing, exposing the fallibility and wonder of our corrupted memories and fragmented drives.

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Ducts Art Gallery’s interview series continues with printmaker/artist, Hoang Pham in conversation with Brooklyn-based performance artists, Holly Faurot and Sarah H Paulson. She communicates with them via email from her studio in Richmond, Virginia.

Hoang: I’d like to start off by talking a little bit about your relationship. I know you two have been together for some time now–the baby years going back to college. Something that has mostly eluded me as an artist is this role of the collaborator. How are each of you posited in this relationship? What characters do you work through?

Sarah: Oddly enough, I’ve always viewed Holly and myself as extremely independent artists. Then I realize that we’ve been working together for the whole of our professional careers. I must admit, that each time I think about my relationship to Holly and our work, I’m amazed. There’s a running joke that people must think we’re secretly a couple. But in all seriousness, I think for anyone to work together in such a close way, there has to be a connection that is so strong and natural that there is an equal and tremendous amount of room for time and space.
About seven years ago, we thought it would be interesting to do something together—to merge our interests in performance in some way. We did a performance called In/on strap[ing] in our Brooklyn loft. We brought in about 8 performers (dancers and non-dancers), many of whom my sister Susie drove in from the SUNY Purchase Dance Dept., to improvise with movement. Meanwhile, we had also just met Joel Mellin via an ad we had posted on Craigslist for a sound artist; he played an electronic musical score for the piece. The part of this piece, which would set the stage for a series of about 5 more future performances, were these elastic strap-like components which were attached to the performers in various ways, holding them back from full freedom of movement.
After about 5 or 6 of these, we stopped working in this way. The pieces were too perfect. We got exactly what we were looking for. Something was missing, so we brought back the things we did in our individual performance work and the components that characterized our individual works from those baby years. From there, and from the beginning, we melded into whatever it is we are today.
When we’re preparing for a piece we sit around in the studio talking and waiting for something to happen. We have what we’ve described as a “net”. We’re collecting tons of stuff in there…from our jobs, from our personal relationships, from our joint experiences, from our walks on the streets…everywhere. It all goes in the net, and that’s what we have to work from. Then we start stripping it down. Even though all the components might not be in the final piece, they’re all there. It’s collective, honest, and natural. I can’t think of another place from which we could work. The work is about our collaboration and our friendship and our individual relationships to the world. It’s autobiographical, but the finished product ends up being something more expansive.

Holly : For some reason, this may be cheesy, but I always think of the life’s work of Bob Dylan. One year it was bluegrass folk, the next rock n’ roll, the next country, the next jazzy-swing, but all along you always can hear his true voice in the music. I think Sarah and I work in the same way. Sometimes I am electrician, sometimes Sarah is webmaster, but all along we can see both our voices in the work.

Hoang: Time, as it has passed, as it is happening, as it is coming back around again, how do you deal with this in your work? Are you conscious of an audience dealing with this in your work?

Sarah: I would say that time is one of the main components of our work. In preparing for a piece, we wait. We’ve become aware of time in a way that isn’t focused so much on hours or days, but on a certain feeling or period that evolves between the time that we begin working and the time that we complete a work session. We’ve become conscious of when we will get somewhere and when we will not. Sometimes the timing is wrong…Things don’t match or feel right. There’s no reason to force it. But if it’s right, sometimes we’ll have to work all night long. I’ve often been a little envious of artists or choreographers who work in a studio during designated hours.
During the performances, I believe it takes a certain amount of time to really get into something—to drop one’s insecurities and become a part of the system of the performance. With each new work, I’ve found that it takes me less and less time to really find this space. If I had to give a guess, though, I’d say I need at least 15 minutes to begin to feel the right intensity or to feel fully immersed. That’s just the first stage, though. Different levels of immersion happen throughout the work. At the same time, our performances seem to want to get longer.

Hoang: Can you elaborate on what this means?

Sarah: I mean that it becomes obvious during the performance that time helps us to get deeper into something. It sort of works that way with anything—reading, working, being in a relationship, learning something new, learning something for the millionth time, etc. You learn that what you thought you knew as the deepest place might just be getting under the surface. You can always get in there further, so to speak.

Holly: With the performances, ultimately we want to cover the same ‘conceptional’ ground whether it is a 7-minute or a 12-hour piece. We could use a tortoise and hare analogy here and say that “slow and steady wins the race.” But with our work there isn’t necessarily a race to be won, there isn’t any “prize” at the finish line. My yoga teacher says very often in class “the more gradual you move, the further you’ll be able to get.” Once you get to one “finish line” you see that there is actually another one down the road. And this isn’t frustrating. It is in fact motivating. Long performances force me to see with honesty everything I’m experiencing– whether it is boredom, self-consciousness, intense focus, poignancy, joy, etc.

Hoang: Are you conscious of an audience dealing with this time in your work?

Sarah: I feel like I am beginning to come to terms with my relationship with people coming to see our work. I used to want to jump out of a 2-hour piece and say, “Don’t worry; you don’t need to stay the whole time. It’s okay if you leave.” Many of our works are made so audience members can enter and exit the viewing space any time. We’ve wanted people to feel comfortable, to be able to talk, and to be able to take away something totally different than the next person. We’ve wanted people to feel comfortable in what can be a potentially uncomfortable environment due to the duration, lack of seating, etc. At this point, though, I’m realizing that all my concern about the audience’s ability to feel free to do as it pleases, could actually be pushing people away. In the last year or so, I’ve learned to trust that the audience can deal with the endurance factor on its own. People often stay the entire time and are silent. I am learning that they are going through something between the beginning and end of the piece. They are finding a certain zone, as well. Of course, this is the point, but I’m finally beginning to trust it. Holly recently said her yoga teacher told her to trust that certain things are universal. That really hit me; I think it is a good lesson for us.

Holly: Making art is very personal; so much of one’s life is exposed and brought to the surface whether directly or indirectly. I don’t always like to admit to that part of the creative process, but it is true. With that in mind, Sarah and I can’t hide from each other in the process of making a performance, and therefore neither of us can hide from the audience.

Hoang: You’ve just been to Beijing for the Open Performance Festival, Sarah physically and Holly virtually (www.open10.com). Can you tell us about the piece you performed there? How was it received, how did it translate?

Sarah: We presented a new piece, Us, the Divine, and the Homeless, during the 5th week of the 10th anniversary of the OPEN Performance Art Festival. Each week was curated by a different international curator. Our week was curated by Jill McDermid, Director of Grace Exhibition Space (Brooklyn, NY).
It was a really interesting experience to work in the festival environment in the Beijing 798 Art District, because we’re not used to moving our work around. We typically make performances for specific spaces, and obviously we weren’t able to see the space beforehand. However, the help and assistance that we received from the Open Art Gallery really blew me away.

Holly: I wasn’t there for the performance in Beijing, but I was in the video that served (as all our videos do), as a “director” of the performance. Performer, Anthony A. Austin, directed me in the making of the video through having me copy, to the best of my ability, a series of improvised movements that he executed.

Sarah: I was in the piece with Anthony and 3 other volunteers who were working for the festival. During the piece, I took movement cues from Holly, and Anthony took cues from me. Therefore, there was this component of translation, and the movements sort of came full circle. As in most of our work, the subject of translation through different media was absolutely present, but being in China where I did not speak the same language as many of the viewers, this topic of translation was especially apparent.
I think it went over really well, and the reaction was similar to the reaction we receive at home. Some people had no idea what to make of it, and others had very complex interpretations, which I was able to hear via translators. Of course, that was quite fascinating to me because the original message always goes through some kind of filter, so I was in a similar position as the audience. It was a beautiful coupling of performance and environment.
The 3 other performers, Lisa Bauer, Li Linxuan, and Zhang Rui really jumped right into it. I loved that and am grateful for their willingness to do something that must have seemed pretty absurd, since they didn’t know our work. That issue of universality seems to apply to this situation as well.

Hoang: Yes, it comes up again. You seem to be drawn to this idea of the universal. Is it easy to put into words what certain things might be universal in your work? Does it vary from piece to piece, are there certain things that are constantly universal?
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Sarah: I’ve only consciously thought about the idea of the universal for a short time, even though it has always been in our work. Holly has been giving these teachings to me as practice for her yoga studies. The messages and anecdotes that she uses shed a lot of light on certain aspects of our performances and our collaboration. This is good for me, because it forces me out of this ambiguous language that Holly and I often use with one another for work that is actually quite specific. I believe that language is the closest thing we have that makes us human. There is great failure in this, but we all give it our best shot. Within this concept, I feel like performance, or movement or the body, is the closest mechanism we can use to match the intentions of language. In folding this idea in on itself, using the body in performance is the closest thing to what it means to be human. How can the universal not be present?

Holly: I would say that by using and presenting our bodies as part of our work, this makes it universal. Everyone knows what it is like to have a body, to feel its fragility and vulnerability. The physicality of the body doesn’t always have to be exploited and pushed for this to be evident. Like, water is water-whether it is a leaky faucet, or Niagara Falls.

Hoang: Did this physical separation have an effect on how the piece was developed and consequently performed?

Holly: Maybe you have someone in your life that you see here and there and you always wait for him or her to say “hi” to you first before you acknowledge them? In a sense this was like us saying “hi” first, and for the first time, to the possibility of something larger in our work, to it being able to carry and hold not just us.

Sarah: I agree with Holly about this separation opening up the possibility for something larger. It was indeed hard for me to be in Beijing without Holly, but the difficulty was more emotional than based in the execution of the work. Of course, I was nervous about making certain decisions, and found myself consulting Holly in my head, but for the most part, I just missed her and the security of our relationship. Though I’m sure the piece would have been different if we were physically there together, the difference is insignificant in the end. It is like wondering if the video component would have been different if I directed Holly’s movements. We began this piece before I left for Beijing, so it was just a matter of filtering information and working with the materials that were available. The physical part is the easy part.

I think we’ve been asking for this ability to be in multiple places at one time, and the Beijing piece was the first step. It really expands the potential of our work and prohibits us from being on top of it—suffocating it. I want the performances to be able to breathe. I still want to be able to breathe into them, but I want them to take in new air at the same time.

Holly: Knowing that we would be apart, when I made the video with Anthony, my intention was to be as clear with my body as possible. And by clear, I mean honest in the hopes that this would lend firm support to Sarah. Honest in how I interpreted and translated Anthony’s movements, which meant completely surrendering to him and his instruction. It’s funny, because this always comes so naturally to me when we’re working on a project—I don’t even think about it. It was interesting to actually be literal with myself about my intention. I knew that any hesitancy or possessiveness on my part would come through. But, this ended up being so easy—to surrender and be honest, and I think the video captured this.

Hoang: I am a voyeur. I can’t help suspecting that you both might be as well when I think of your work. There is something performative about being voyeuristic. Do you find any inspiration in this sort of practice?

Sarah : Looking, observing, following, controlling, triggering, and mimicking are all within our work. We can’t avoid it. It’s around us in our day-to-day lives, and so we’ve magnified this in our performances. Holly and I have accumulated a large collection of surveillance cameras, multi-channel surveillance systems, live video feeds, and other components which have an obvious connection to voyeurism.
The audience also factors in to the elements of voyeurism. The performers and audience members are meeting one another at different points or levels. I like to avoid what I call the “infinite dancer’s gaze.” Instead, I like to make eye contact with audience members and with other performers. It allows for exchange rather than a simple presentation, and often these moments of watching beyond the confines of the performance space are the moments that I remember most. I think this applies to so many aspects of living.

Hoang: Do you see your work having any connection to the more literal meaning of voyeurism? That is, a fascinated observer of the body and/or bodily acts, often doing this in secret.

Holly: Well, I looked up voyeur in the dictionary because I was wondering what the actual literal written definition is, and most if not all had to do with taking pleasure in watching others engage in sex acts. I think that this applies. Not that we’re watching other people have sex, but there is such intimacy in how another person moves and relates to their own body. Our working process always begins with making videos where someone is copying the movements of another. In this process, you are humbly tapping into an aspect of another person that is incredibly private and intimate.

Sarah: Sure, we’re all looking at things in secret. We often do certain minimal gestures or movements that we’ve seen people do on the subway or in the office. We collect these little bits of information and make them public. It’s celebratory. We can put these simple acts on a pedestal and frame them. The private is significant and special.

Hoang: Yes, yes. I really appreciate that last statement as a point of closure to our conversation, “the private is significant and special”. It is fitting that this should illustrate your work, as so much of it is a celebration of things private and otherwise unshared. In turn, I thank the both of you for sharing with us.

Editor’s Note: Please join us next issue for a continuation of this series, when Holly Faurot and Sarah H. Paulson conduct the interview.

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In the days before universal air conditioning, a mountain cottage was a blessed escape from the steaming asphalt pavement and the stuffy railroad flats of the hot and humid city. The mountain air was dry and you could count on a cool breeze almost every night. It was a paradise for my brother and me. We spent the summer exploring the woods, playing softball, wading in the local streams, swimming in cool lakes and hotel pools. There was little public transportation and cars were rare because of gas rationing. No one thought twice about hitchhiking from place to place; the only other alternative was walking. Even though I was only eleven years old my usually protective mother was unconcerned about my accepting rides from strangers.

The virulent terror that hovered over every family with children that summer was polio, infantile paralysis, the crippling disease that had hobbled President Roosevelt and now waited menacingly in every swimming pool, poised to strike down my contemporaries and me without warning.

The scourge hit close to home one afternoon as we watched a friend on a gurney being wheeled into an ambulance. The day before, the ironically named Lucky and I had been target shooting with his BB gun. Rumors circulated that he was being kept alive inside a nightmarish mechanical iron lung; the summer would end without his return. Conventional wisdom blamed swimming pools, probably with some justification, for the spread of the infection and, for the rest of that summer, we shunned the pool at the nearby hotel and cooled off in local lakes and streams.

There were twenty cottages in Stuzins Bungalow colony. The units were arranged in a circle around the large central field that served as our softball diamond. Each identical cottage housed two families, most with two or more pre-adolescent kids. Fathers appeared on Fridays before sundown and left on Sundays.

Summer jobs were easy to find and I worked every morning selling papers for a man named John Katzenbach who was the primary distributor of New York City newspapers to the resort hotels in that part of the Catskills. He hired boys and an occasional girl from the Bungalow colonies. There were scores of hotels in the area, ranging from small ones with as few as 40 guests to well known resorts that boasted 18 hole golf courses, lakes, swimming pools, tennis courts and playhouses called “Casinos.” Several afternoons a week, I also worked as a caddy at the nearby Concord Hotel, the exclusive top of the resort pyramid. It boasted two 18 hole PGA golf courses and had a resident orchestra with live entertainment every night.

Shortly after dawn each morning, John would pick us up, put us in the back of his old panel truck and drop us at the hotels that were the start of our routes. Some of these routes, the ones with large, upscale Catskill Tudor style hotels like the Windsor or the Ratner (later the Raleigh) on them, were the plums, doled out on the basis of seniority because they consisted of just one or two stops. Other routes consisted of as many as six or seven small hotels and even some larger bungalow colonies. On those routes, we had to walk from one to the next, sometimes several miles with a heavy load of papers.

As soon as I arrived at my first hotel, I would set up close to the entrance of the dining room arranging the papers so the guests going in for breakfast could see the headlines. The papers ran the gamut from the Daily News, the Mirror, the Times, the Herald Tribune to The World Telegram, The Sun, The Journal American, and The Morning Telegraph. Then there were the Yiddish papers; the Forward, The Morning Journal and der Tag. There was a steady demand for the Daily Racing Form. I also carried the weekly German refugee papers like der Aufbau and der Staadt Zeitung, and for the unreconstructed radical lefties, the Daily Worker.

Prices were flexible; at upscale hotels, a nickel paper sold for a quarter. The same paper at a bungalow colony on my way home would go for a dime. There were always tips when I saved papers for regular customers, or sympathy tips when I would tell stories about how poor my family was, that I was a recent refugee or trying to save money for college. Because I spoke German, I got along well in Yiddish, which was already dying out among my contemporaries.

I was soon rolling in money, and no matter how many nickels I dropped into the pinball machines that I was addicted to, I was still bringing home $4 to $5 a day and as much as $10 on a Sunday. When my father came up on Friday night he would give me my weekly allowance of fifty cents. At the hotels, I would trade a newspaper for breakfast, the high point of the Jewish Resort Hotel experience: herring, kippers, fresh bagels with cream cheese and lox, rugelach, bialys, onion rolls, and, although I avoided them, the omnipresent stewed prunes. Often, I got a ride to the next hotel from a hotel chauffeur in return for another paper.

Usually, I was done by 11:00 am and would hitchhike back to our colony for a day of caddying, swimming, hiking, softball or exploring. Hitchhiking was safe, but there were occasional adventures. The sun was hot, and because of the war, cars were few and far between, so there wasn’t much choice of rides. Most of the rides were with farmers and local deliverymen, though sometimes you’d get a ride in a limousine. These prewar long, black Caddies and Lincolns often were long distance taxis carrying families to bungalow colonies or hotels. On Fridays, the limousines would bring up the fathers and on Sundays they’d take them back. The drivers were self-employed and they would pick us up to distribute their business cards to a very competitive industry. They were very enterprising; late one morning, a limousine full of male passengers picked me up. There were seven incredibly dirty, smelly, disoriented derelicts in the back and jump seat, but there was room for me in the front. The driver made several stops, dropping off two or three of his charges at the kitchen doors of hotels. It turned out that this was a kind of migrant labor force delivery service. The men were from the streets of the Bowery, the home of the homeless; they were shanghaied to work as dishwashers in the hotel kitchens. They would be put up in bunkhouses and paid a few bucks a day. Payday was once a month and most of them would take a Trailways bus back to the Thunderbird-fueled lives. Those were the good old days before dish washing machines ended this triangle trade. While in the mountains, they cleaned up and dried out. At the end of the summer, some shipped south to Florida for the winter resort season in Miami. The remainder found their way back to the Uncle Sam hotels and the sidewalk grates of the Bowery. Today’s “homeless problem” is partially due to technological advances.

I had my own bizarre hitch hiking adventure. One late morning, an old station wagon stopped for me. There were eight people in the back, foreign looking men and women, speaking a strange Slavic sounding language that I couldn’t identify. I had a creepy feeling but I was stuck squeezed into a seat. The car pulled up to one of the Italian resort hotels and everybody got out. They seemed to be a troupe of jugglers and sidewalk entertainers. They moved around the grounds of the hotel dancing, juggling, singing, banging on drums and cymbals and doing small magic tricks. Without asking, they handed me an old top hat and had me to go around to collect tips from the hotel guests. It was a frenetic scene, a sort of poor man’s three-ring circus. When the hat got heavy with coins, the leader would tip it into a leather satchel and send me around again. I felt really weird as they finished the performance and shepherded me back into the station wagon. They drove to another hotel and repeated the performance. Meanwhile, I was getting really spooked because they were now heading away from my bungalow colony and I had somehow joined their group. At the fourth stop, I really freaked; were the Gypsies about to kidnap me? When I saw an opportunity, I dropped the hat on a bench and ducked into the hotel’s casino where I knew I would find a pinball machine to hide behind. I listened to the hubbub outside as they performed their madcap act. Finally, I saw the station wagon drive away and I breathed a sigh of relief. I walked the more than four miles home looking behind me all the way.

Our colony was less than a quarter of a mile from Ratners Hotel where we were allowed to use the pool whenever there was no polio scare. Across the road from the hotel, on the crest of a hill was a beautifully manicured estate, a palatial white, colonnaded plantation house that dominated the countryside and served as the topic of endless gossip. It was always empty and ghostly quiet; over several summers we never saw anyone there.

The mansion supposedly belonged to Louis Lepke Buckhalter, a Jewish gangster of exceptional notoriety. He had been the head of Murder Inc., a novel criminal organization that performed murder for other gangsters. But Prohibition had ended a few years before and the bottom had fallen out of the contract extermination industry. Sensing political advantage, the NYC District Attorney, Thomas Dewey, dogged Lepke for his business excesses and put him on death row in Sing Sing. Dewey parlayed his gang-busting chops into the Governorship of New York and a memorable late inning losing run for President against Harry S Truman.

There was a babbling brook that ran through the bungalow colony and to the unguarded rear of Lepke’s deserted homestead. We spent many fantasy-filled hours exploring that hidden part of the property, looking for bodies, buried treasure, bleached bones, abandoned weapons or anything else our active pre-adolescent brains could conjure up. J. Edgar Hoover’s men must have been there first because we never found a thing.

I sold papers all summer long. This was my second summer in the business and I had a fairly good route and did very well. On the morning of August 11th I sold out every paper in under fifteen minutes. John came around with an additional supply and they sold out just as fast. The headlines that day read:

“US DROPS ATOMIC BOMB ON HIROSHIMA – CITY OF 200,000 TOTALLY OBLITERATED!”

Over the next few days, the headlines screamed out the news of the bombing of Nagasaki and then, finally, the signing of the unconditional Japanese surrender aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Harbor.

The war was finally over, Lepke had sat down on Old Sparky, and we returned to a different city where the lights had all come on and, for the first time in my life, for a short while, the world fell into peace.

I see someone way down the street, still just a speck, but I know it is her. My heart leaps. It is not easy to get to see my mother—a bit like getting in to see the Queen. My mother has always been fiercely independent, and more so since she got sick—the opposite of what people expect from a Jewish mother, nudging her kids to visit.  It is my sister and I who are always calling her, asking if we can come to the house, offering to go with her to doctors. Every once in a while, she’ll surprise us by letting us come, and we drop everything to meet her.

When I called last week she said she wanted my sister and me to come with her to a meeting with a social worker at a place called “Dying with Dignity.” I didn’t ask questions because I was afraid she might get flustered and tell me not to come. I’d learned as a girl that my mother didn’t like questions. She liked clean, and she liked order. She liked to iron. A question was the same as leaving my toys in the middle of the floor. It was a burden. It unsettled her. I think it is because she felt such pressure to have the right answer. A question knocked her off balance. It was a mess she had to clean up.

I, on the other hand, am a bit of a slob. My roommate said to me in college that I always looked like I just rolled out of bed, but had had a good time. At forty, I am still very casual. I keep my hair long and let the curls dry naturally and haphazardly. I don’t own a brush. I’m always asking questions, thinking out loud, reading self-help books and Eastern philosophy, trying to understand things that can’t be explained. With my mother, I know that unless we are having an especially good moment, unless she is extremely relaxed, I have to contain myself. She may answer, “I don’t know, Jen,” a seemingly neutral statement to the untrained ear, but I hear the sigh of exasperation in her voice that warns, like thunder before rain, of the tension about to descend between us, that could last—especially if we are in a car—the rest of the day.

My mother is closer now. I stand up and wave my arms back and forth, but she doesn’t see me yet. She looks beautiful, dressed to the nines, which is something she’s been doing since she got sick. Her hair has grown back. It’s not the glamorous straight auburn hair from her pre-cancer life. It’s grown back curly, and is still short, which she told me she thinks makes her look butch. The last time I saw her it was grey, but now she’s colored it brown. She is wearing an exquisite bright pink suit with gorgeous suede pumps she must have bought in Italy. She sees me now, and her face lights up. She looks like a movie star. I have seen pictures of her when she was in a ballet and young, with false eyelashes and thick eyeliner extending past the lid, and now her eyes look the same. She is so good with make-up. The mascara brings out her already huge green eyes, and her skin is glowing. I have told her many times that she looks so healthy that, “If I didn’t know, I wouldn’t know.”

We embrace. Her back feels tiny. I admire her jacket and ask, “Is this the Herrarah? She has told me about the Herrarah — a very expensive designer outfit she bought when visiting her friend Berta in Beverly Hills. She would have never spent that kind of money when she was well.

“Noooo, I wore the “Herr-rar-aaah” — my mother over enunciates the word to mock her extravagance, “to the opera last night.” She had bought herself a full season at The Met this year, also something she wouldn’t have done before. She likes to get all dressed up and go by herself. She also has been wearing her best jewelry, as she says, “saving nothing for good.”

My sister walks up from behind my mother. As always, she is stylish and feminine, in a pink cashmere sweater, grey slacks, and a French manicure, but her eyes look glassy and tired. She hugs my mother and then me, and we file into the heavily air conditioned building, where the doorman directs us to the elevator. The attendant slides the door closed and pulls the lever, bringing us upstairs.

I expected an office, but my mother, my sister, and I are standing in the foyer of a quintessential Upper West Side apartment. Everything is big–the tremendous open kitchen to one side of us, the living room with a grand piano on the other, the exotic dog barking at us — and Judy the social worker—tall and expansive with shoulder length frizzy hair, and a loose fitting suit. Judy shakes my mother’s hand, and I bend down to pet the dog. I can tell my mother is nervous because she is talking to Judy in a singsong voice she uses when she is self-conscious with strangers, and for some reason when ordering at Chinese restaurants. I go to her, and she puts her arms around me and my sister, “These are my daughters.” I love when she introduces me as her daughter. She always sounds so proud. I shake Judy’s hand and say, I’m Jennifer, and this is Rachel.” Judy asks who is older. I think part of what throws people, besides us being close in age, is we look so different. Rachel has a cherub face, straight hair she colors blonde, and usually wears in a bun. I have more angular features, like my father. Growing up, I was always jealous of my sister for being the pretty one. My mother put it diplomatically once when she said that it was just that I had more awkward years. But Rachel has always been jealous of me for being thin. I tell Judy, “I am two years older.”
The doorbell rings, and the dog starts barking all over again. A man, bald, very well-dressed in a Brooks Brothers sort of way, mid-fifties, obviously gay, comes in and hugs my mother. I remember now that my mother told me that it was a man in AA who told her about Judy, but it didn’t occur to me that he would be here. My mother introduces John to me and my sister, and we all stand in the hallway and chat—about the dog (Judy tells us it’s an Afghan hound), the apartment (it was the terrace that sold her) and like all good New Yorkers, about whether we think real estate in the city will go up or down.

Then Judy says, “Let’s go inside.” While my sister and John use the bathroom before we start, my mother and I follow Judy into the living room. I sit on a small couch, expecting my mother will sit next to me, but she sits on an antique wooden chair on the other side of the room.

I say, “Mom, why don’t you sit here with me? I think it’s more comfortable.”

“No hon. I’m fine.” Her eyes well up. Judy sits on a big leather chair in front of the French doors that open out to her terrace. Rachel comes in and sits on a wingback chair next to Judy, takes her giant Filofax out of her bag, and turns to a section with paper. She has been taking notes whenever we go to doctors with my mother. Afterwards she goes home and looks everything up on the internet, and calls me with statistics on how long our mother is likely to survive. John sits slumped on an easy chair, and drapes one leg over the side, which I think is odd.

Judy begins by asking, “So girls, what do you think of your mother’s situation?” What a bizarre question! My mother has cancer in both lungs, her bones, and her brain. The laser brain surgery has failed, so the last resort is full brain radiation, which at best will shrink the tumors for a few months, but there is a great risk of my mother losing her mind. Gee, Judy. So glad you asked. We think it’s swell.

I say, “I don’t know how to respond to that.” We are all silent. The dog walks into the room and flops down by Judy’s chair. Judy says, “All we do is provide information that is available all over the internet. It is perfectly legal.”

Again we are all quiet. I am lost. Then she says almost casually, like we are chatting over tea, “Have you been following the Terri Schiavo case? I just read in The Times that there is good chance her parents will win the appeal.”

Oh! Like a light switched on, I get it. “Dying with Dignity.” I just assumed we were going to discuss how to help my mother die in the most humane way possible. I thought it was a patients advocate group, something like hospice. But Judy must be talking about a Do-Not-Resuscitate order or making sure my mother doesn’t wind up chained to a machine. I say, “My sister and I want to support my mother in whatever she wants us to.”

Judy turns to my mother, “Susan, what is your prognosis after the procedure?”

“I expect there will be a process of diminishing cognition.”

“Then you won’t want to be having fancy conversations with doctors.” She leans back in her chair. “There are directions for making gas machines on the internet. But the best, and by far the simplest method is Seconal.”

Slowly, I grasp what is happening, and wonder why my mother didn’t warn me.

My sister looks up from her writing, “What is Seconal?”

“It is a sleep medication. Pills. Susan, you should get the prescription right away. There is a limit on how much a doctor can legally prescribe, so you will need three different scripts. You’ll have to tell the doctor you are having trouble sleeping. He’ll try to give you Ambien. You tell him you’ve had this trouble in the past and Seconal was the only thing that helped. He’ll probably know what you’re up to, but if he’s sympathetic, he’ll cooperate. Are there three doctors you can ask?”

A tear is running down my mother’s cheek, but her voice is steady, “I have a cousin who is a physician.” Then she says to Rachel and me, “I don’t think Phyllis would do it.” Phyllis was my aunt’s best friend from childhood and a pediatrician. She took the limousine with us to my grandmother’s funeral a few weeks ago. My mother and she were talking about hospice. Phyllis said she was against it because she knew of many instances where the patient was unable to get enough pain medication. I wanted to say how my grandfather–my father’s father–had hospice in the house and it was fine, but I knew my mother would resent my interfering. She saw Phyllis as the expert, and would take it as my being controlling, imposing my view.

After a moment my mother says,” Yes, I think I’ll be able to get three prescriptions.”

“Good. There should be one other person involved. Susan, do you have a friend you can ask to help?”

My mother thinks out loud, “Not Whitney, she’s Catholic. She wouldn’t do it…Eileen. Yes, Eileen. She’s the one I’ve asked to tell me when my judgment starts to go. I don’t want the girls to have to do that.”

Judy starts to say how important it is that we not tell anyone else, but is interrupted by the noise of motorcycles going by outside. She waits for them to pass, but they just keep coming. I think it must be a group of Hells Angels. All of a sudden, Judy jumps up, mimes a machine gun with her hands, and intones the sound of bullets, “Eh-eh-eh-eh-eh–Don’t you just want to shoot ‘em?” John, who has been silent this whole time, laughs maniacally, and my sister and I lock eyes. I know we are thinking the same thing. She says it to me later in the restaurant, “Those people love death!”

When the motorcycles pass, Judy explains the procedure for giving my mother the pills. My mother will ask for them on three different occasions. The third time someone will need to crush the pills into a glass of water.

“Can’t I just swallow them?” Judy tells my mother, “No, there will be too many pills—hundreds. Susan, where do you plan to be?”

I don’t know what she means, but my mother says, “A hospital in New York. It will be easiest for the girls.”

I think it is Judy being there, knowing my mother won’t freak out in front of her that gives me the nerve to speak up, “Rachel and I don’t care about what is easiest for us.

I know what Phyllis said about problems with hospice not being able to get enough pain medication, but Grandpa Jack had hospice care in the house and it was fine.”

Judy says, “I have worked with hospice for many years. As long as the nurses order the morphine on time there will be plenty, and it will be a lot easier to give you Seconal at home. They don’t do autopsies on hospice patients.”

“Mom, I’m not telling you what to do. I’m just saying that I think you should stay home, because it is what I’d want for myself.”

Judy asks, “Susan, where are you most comfortable?”

“My home. Definitely.”

My mother gets up, walks over to the couch, and sits next to me. I rest my hand on the back of the couch behind her.  It is very delicate with my mother. I don’t know how she’ll react if I put my arm around her shoulder, if it will be too much. I leave my arm on the couch like that the rest of the time we are there.

The next day there is voice-mail from my mother. She says, “I would want to know you. I would love you, even if you weren’t my daughter. I am so grateful you were there.”

I save that message on my answering machine for a very long time.

Next thing I knew I was in jail.

This all started on April 14, 2005. I guess it had started many years before but this was the worst of it. I hope. It was like any other day. I went to work. I work as a union plumber in Los Angeles. I spent eight hours, forty stories up while working on a new high rise in Century City. I ate my three roast beef sandwiches for lunch. I had my three liters of water. It was an abnormally humid day in southern California. I drove my white truck with the Harley bumper stickers home. I walked in my front door. I kissed my wife. I kissed my two daughters. Sophia is seven. Isabelle is four. I tossed them around. I took a shower. I sat in front of the television. The phone rang. It was my friend next door. We talked a bit and he asked me if I could score him some stuff. I hadn’t done drugs in two years but I knew where to get him some. He asked for something I had never tried. He called it ice. I said ok. I hung up the phone. I made a call. It was only a minute long conversation. The voice on the other end knew me well. We had a history. I hung up the phone. It was only a few more minutes later when the stuff arrived.

“A drug dealer who delivers?” My cousin from New Jersey asks me this as I tell him the story while we have dinner in a worn-out Mexican restaurant around the corner from my house. The place is empty.

“I guess if you’ve known him since you were 20,” I say.

“I guess that would do it.”

My long-time friend pulled up in a Honda CRX. We say hello. He has on a USC cap and an Adidas t-shirt. He is white and has short brown hair. He doesn’t get out of the car as he hands me the package. I give him thirty dollars. He says goodbye and pulls away. I walk across my yard. I walk across the street. I knock on the door and my friend invites me in. I see toys in the living room. He is married with a son. No one is home. He is in his pajamas. It is 7:00 p.m. He goes to work at four in the morning. He is a parking attendant. He is Persian. He has black hair and a goatee. I hand him the package. He gives me thirty dollars. He starts to open the package. He pulls out what looks like one of those sticks with candy on it. I ask the question.

“What is this stuff?”

“It’s crystal methamphetamine. It’s a different form of speed.” I say I had tried speed before, twenty years ago in San Diego.

“This is a lot different than twenty years ago. Want to try some.” I have never said no. He breaks a piece off the stick. He hands it to me. I hold it. It feels like a piece of hard candy.

We do it. I do it.  My heart rate goes from 80 to 300 instantly and I’m out of control.

I don’t go home. I don’t remember where I went. When I came home I was still high. I didn’t know what time it was. My wife saw me. I know that. That was on April 14, 2005.  On April 15, she was gone with our two kids. I was still high. I was still out of control. I did it seven straight days. I kept calling my friend in the Honda CRX. I was out of control, looking for my wife and kids.  I beat the shit out of anyone I could find. I was walking, driving my white truck with my hands and knuckles a bloody mess. I was looking for them. I thought everyone had them. I thought I saw them everywhere. I was hallucinating. That’s what the doctors told me later.

“What happened with your neighbor?” my cousin asks. “What happened with the car?” The salsa music is playing in the restaurant. It’s not loud enough. I need everything loud now, everything blaring, erasing everything.

“I came back later, told him I was sorry and gave him $3,000 cash for the damage. He is the nicest guy, too. A quiet, big, old boy from Kansas City.”

It was on April 15, 2005 when I trashed his car because I thought I saw my wife and daughter go in his house and I’m still not sure. I walked over. The back of his house faced mine. It was dirty yellow. I tried to look through the screen but it was so full of grime that I cut it open. I heard my neighbor inside. I said are my wife and daughters in there? I think I saw them go in. He said there is no one here. I said then could you bring them to the door and show me them so I know it’s not them. He said I can’t do that. That’s when I destroyed his car. I got a brick from my house. I smashed everything. He called the police. That’s first time I went to jail that week. I would go in another five times in seven days. I also busted doors down. I smashed computers and televisions. My doctor told me if a person not on drugs goes without food and sleep for two days they will start to hallucinate. I went without food and sleep for seven days. I was released from jail the first time and in an hour was put back in after I beat someone so hard his teeth got stuck in my elbow. After the fourth time, my mother wouldn’t take my calls from jail anymore. She told me to stay in there and sober up. Her lawyer wouldn’t take my calls, either. I fought every day in jail. Every one wanted a piece of the big white guy. It would be two and three guys at a time, every black and Spanish guy took their turn. I kept calling. No answer. Another black guy. Another call. No answer. Another Spanish guy. I was a mess. My body was shot to hell.  Finally my mother’s lawyer took my call. He got me out. I walked straight to rehab. I had never been this out control. It got so bad so fast that I started to smoke the crystal methamphetamine. I had done crack and cocaine before, but this took control of my soul.  On my first day in rehab, my wife filed for a legal separation. I didn’t know she did. It was the hardest thing I’d ever done to stop this drug. But I knew I would die. I couldn’t take it anymore. I saw jail. I saw death. I saw my bail go from 5,000 to 50,000 dollars. I guess I saw God ‘cause I saw all those things. That will make you see God real quick. I had stopped for seven days. I walked out of rehab. It wasn’t much but it was something. On this day, my wife took her stuff and left. I came home. I saw the empty house. I saw the new floors I put in were empty. The furniture in the kids’ rooms was gone. I flipped out. I went through every room. I looked everywhere. I stumble across some ice on the top of my bookcase. I smoked it. My blood pressure went wild again. I was hallucinating again. I started looking again. I was looking for my wife and kids. I thought they were everywhere. I thought everyone had them. I smashed doors. I smashed computers again. I smashed furniture. I was so high I hallucinated my wife was everywhere. I saw her face. One time I mixed crack and ice and was still high after twelve hours. I was hallucinating scenes. People. Streets. I was looking for her everywhere. Twelve hours and I was still high. I hallucinated there was surveillance equipment in all my wife’s new computer equipment she got from work to watch me. That’s why I smashed them. I hallucinated that my sister-in-law placed cameras in my house to watch me. I smashed the walls. I hallucinated about where my wife was. I hallucinated everything. Except I knew exactly where I threw out my drugs when I was hallucinating. I knew the bush. I knew the size. I knew the color. I knew the street. I found it and did it again. I started looking for my family again. My wife and kids were at my mother’s. I smashed everything in sight looking for them. My family was at my mother’s. My mother had gone away on a trip. My wife used a spare key to get in, walked right in.

I’ll never do drugs again. I can’t. I will die. If my parents didn’t have money I would be in jail for good already. If they didn’t have money I would be dead already. It’s my fault. I say that but then I start with the excuses. What I am about to say is a cliché but it’s true. I’m afraid. I’m afraid to feel.  I know it’s bullshit, self-pitying crap, but it’s the truth. It’s a cliché. But sometimes they’re true. I have a lot of feelings and I hate them all. The only thing I was ever good at was getting high. I’ll never be a normal person. I’ll never be someone who can be loaded every once in a while. That kills me. I will miss that. I wish I could do that. I have so much shit in front me. I have to take care of my dying wife. Yes. She has cancer. She found out after she left. I’ll take care of her. I’ll take care of my kids. I’ll have to work every day. I’m fucking scared. I don’t think I can do it.

We’re eating and I’m starting to cry over this shitty quesadilla. My cousin tells me 99 percent of the people in this world have to do those things. They work and take care of their family. He’s right. But I keep crying over my quesadillas. It’s pathetic, I know. I look around.

The only thing I was ever good at was getting high. I would come to this restaurant with my wife all the time. When it was slow, my dog Samson would go into kitchen and the cooks would feed him chicken and beef. He is a big black Rottweiler. I sleep with him.

We sip our iced teas with lemon. I walk outside now. I have done this every two minutes since we’ve sat down. I see my cousin through the glass. He sees me and I wonder what he sees. I see myself in the window.

I have to start being honest with myself. If I am, I am forty-five and starting to look like a drug addict. I always could hide it well, but now I’m getting that skinny look. I am six foot three and I’ve always been big and wide with broad shoulders. I’m starting to look worn. My father abused himself with alcohol from the time he was a kid and lived until he was 77. I have strong genes but I don’t like this. My clothes are thrown on me. I have on a black biker tank top tucked into a pair of tan shorts with a belt on. The belt is pulled tight to keep my pants up. Everything is loose. I look dirty even after I’ve taken a shower.

I finish my cigarette. I go back in. I take a drink and a large bit of salsa and quesadilla. I can’t do anything halfway. I’ve gone through four bowls of salsa and hot sauce. I pour it all over the quesadillas, spilling everywhere. I eat too much. I get extra bowls of sour cream. I load it on.

“My wife wants someone solid as rock,’’ I say.

“I think she just wants you without the drugs.”

I tell him I’ve been clean for four months. But he sees me with my tequila after work. I tell him my wife’s left breast exploded today because of a massive infection after her lumpectomy. It’s leaking puss and fluid. My doctors have told her she needs to go to the emergency room for treatment. She won’t go to mine and her doctors won’t send her in. She has cancer. She has a fifty percent chance of living. I need the drink. The only thing I was ever good at was getting high.

“Sounds like another excuse to drink.”

“Fuck you. She won’t come home She’s rented her own house. I try to be nice. I take the kids from Friday to Monday. She can barely lift them already. I invite her over to my mother’s for dinner. She comes but she’s nasty to me. I want her to come home. I don’t get any love.”

“You have to be the most selfish person on earth. What do you want her to do? You’ve been doing drugs, getting thrown in jail, driving while you’re high, beating people up, endangering the kids and she’s dying. And you want love. Four months is nothing. And you want love. And you’re still fucking drinking.”

Before I did speed, I would get high about eight times a year. I would lock myself in our bedroom and wait to come down. She has a right not to come home. The truth is this is the first time I’ve been near my house in three weeks. I’ve been sleeping in my mother’s long-time friend Amy’s room. She died a few months ago. I tell my cousin my mother is alone now and she needs me. I said my mother took Amy’s death hard. She has lost weight. She looks too thin. She needs me. But the truth is I need her more

“It feels like there is a black cloud over your mother’s house. There is a lot of death and depression looming over there.”

The house does carry a history. The bedroom up from Katie’s to the right is where my father slept. He died about five years ago. My mom and dad tried to get divorced several times but the lawyers were taking everything. So they decided to live together but not together. In the end, he destroyed himself so much with alcohol he couldn’t make it to the bathroom without shitting on the floor. My mother would clean it up. Imagine cleaning the shit up of someone you can’t stand. Then there was a fire in the house and everyone got out, but they forgot my father was up there. Maybe they didn’t. He got smoke inhalation. He was in the hospital for weeks. When he was there they discovered he had cancer. He died soon after. Then there is my youngest brother William. He lives in the front apartment. He suffers from depression. He spends his days smoking weed and his nights watching television. My cousin says it’s awful, that William had a full time job for eight years. He’s only thirty-eight. What is he, retired now? We just look at each other. My older brother Jimmy lived in that front apartment as well and is an alcoholic. He has been clean for years, though. I have three sisters. My sister Lizzie, who is two years younger than me, got me into pot when she was twelve. She is still smoking every day. My older sister Tracy is hooked on Prozac. My youngest sister, Lori, is a doctor and runs every day. How does that happen? Where one can avoid all of those things that have affected the rest of the family? I can’t end up like my father. I am outside the restaurant again. I look through the glass again. I take a drag of my cigarette. I get scared. I am starting to look my dad. I am an aging alcoholic with a bony body and weak legs. I can’t end up like my father. I am scared. I take another drag. This started before April 14, 2005. When my sister got me into pot, I did it for two years but didn’t really like it much. Then I met Courtney. She got me into coke. We fell in love. I loved her so much I would always give her the last hit.  She left me for a dealer. I stopped doing drugs for four years in college. I went to Long Beach State. I had an A- average. When I graduated, I started dealing out of my apartment. I was connected. I did crack with Keith Richards. I did coke with Mick Jagger. I did six months in jail. In San Diego, I met my first wife because she was dealing speed at the time. She came over with a friend who wanted to buy some other stuff. We had a threesome. We got married soon after. Like I said, this started before April 14, 2005.

I put out my cigarette on my shoe. I go back in the restaurant. I sit down. The waiter comes. He has our enchiladas. I have beef and chicken. My cousin has chicken. I tell the waiter all the bowls of salsa, hot sauce, and sour cream have to be refilled. I shovel the food in with tortillas. I shovel and shovel. I shovel beans and cheese and beef and chicken and lettuce and more beans and chicken and beef. I go through four tortillas. I ask for more. My cousin is only on his first tortilla. I tell him he eats like a girl. The table is a mess. I can never slow down. I can see my cousin is uncomfortable. I know how I may look. He says I look like I could snap at any moment. That’s it. Like I could flip a switch and throw the table over. That’s it. Then the next moment I’m crying when he puts a hand on my shoulder. Rage and fear. Rage and fear covered by drugs. We eat and keep talking.

“I love my wife but I don’t know if I can take it if she is bald and has one breast. She gave me some sex before she had to go into surgery. When she had both breasts. Before her body had scars all over it.” She said she wanted to have sex as a whole person for one last time. I ask him again if he wants to go out tonight and find some girls. I have bothered him into going out so I can get laid. I can’t take it anymore.

“There is a 25-year-old girl at my office that would go out with me.” Every time I tell him, he tells me to take the high road. Live your life with a clear conscience, he says. I tell him my wife said I could do whatever I want. He just gives me that look, the little fuck.

I tell him she will come back if I give her thirty percent of the house. I could cut off her insurance. I could bankrupt her, I say. He gives that look.

“Fuck you.” We finish. We go to my house around the corner. I take Samson out back for a walk. He misses the house. He loves it here. So do I. I put the music on and turn it up louder than hell. Then I turn it up some more. We can’t hear anything.

“Turn it down,” my cousin says. “It sounds chaotic in here.”  I turn it down. I don’t know why I do these things. I take him through the house. I put an addition on the house. I did all of the work. I did the woodwork. I did the tile. I put up a wall. I made a pit grill from scratch. I put in the kitchen. I put in the bathroom. There is a floor to ceiling shower. There is a Jacuzzi tub. There is a walk-in closet. I did the shelving. I did the woodwork on each shelf. I put in the master bedroom. I custom-made the bay doors to open out so they didn’t crowd the room. They open out to the tile stairway I put in, which leads to the patio and brick grill that I put in. I made an office for my wife in the back of the house. She loved it. I made a little deck in the backyard for my weights. I put in a new garage. I converted the old one into a living room with high ceilings and a sunken entranceway. My wife loved it all.  She loved what I did.

I tell my cousin all of this. I show him all of it. We go through each room. I explain each thing. We look around. He looks at me.

“Drugs aren’t the only thing you’re good at, Jeff.”

Vik spun around.

“You’re welcome to leave at any time, Arun!” he scolded.

Is there anything worse than someone who begins a story with something like “Sometimes life throws you curveballs…” or “Sometimes life gives you lemons…” or “Sometimes life deals you a bad hand…”? No. There isn’t.

But seriously, sometimes life throws you curve balls. And when you get such a pitch, the best thing to do is wait for the ball to break over the plate. I think. I don’t remember how to play baseball. I wasn’t good at it and I was fat and the uniform was always too tight. But maybe I should have practiced or something, because I had never been prepared for any of life’s curve balls, lemons, bad hands, headlocks, etc.

****

Like any reasonable person, I blamed my parents. At some crucial point in my intellectual/emotional development, they did me the grave disservice of trumpeting persistence and hard work as the keys to success. The poor fools probably didn’t have screenwriting in mind, but I planned to write for the silver screen or die trying. And so I moved from New York City to Los Angeles to fulfill my destiny of ultimate show business success.

A few months after the big move, my mother died suddenly. No one loved me more than my mother. The loss was devastating. My hope and confidence turned to despair, and for the next year and a half, I clung desperately to my dreams while making minimal efforts to realistically fulfill them. I wrote very little and yet remained completely surprised when I failed to achieve the astonishing overnight Hollywood triumph that I had promised myself. Unable to try, destined to disappoint, all of the confidence and hope I had in myself and the world drained out of me. I would never amount to anything of value to anyone.

Completely deflated and utterly alone, I did the unthinkable – I moved into my childhood home in New Jersey with my father. A self-declared failure at just twenty-eight years old, I only knew that one day I, and everyone I loved, would die, and that all that was left for me to do was organize my iTunes library.

Completely hidden from society and avoiding all human contact, I spent the next few months doing just that in my pajamas in the room of my adolescence. I couldn’t think of a better way to forget all of the ways in which my life had gone wrong. I struggled with my organizational philosophy. Should Run DMC be Rap or Hip-Hop? I asked myself. Who even said “Rap” anymore? Do I have to refer to the Smashing Pumpkins as “Alternative”? I don’t know what that meant in the 90’s and I still don’t. Are the Killers “Indie Rock” or “Pop”? Should I categorize classical music by composer or by artist? Could my life at this point be described as vaguely “Pathetic” or explicitly “Finished”?

All this organizing led to less self worth, more depression and zero money. I had to find work. Perhaps there was a job that would pay me to get up at noon, be desperately sad, and then go to sleep at 4 a.m.

Eventually, I registered with a local temporary employment agency, which brought me closer to my goal of having money, but dragged me away from my goal of never receiving phone calls and talking to people.

The phone only brought sorrow, with callers reminding me of what had been done to me and what I was doing to myself. I screened everything from friends and family, people trying to “reach out” to me, who couldn’t realize that I was going to be like this forever and nothing could stop it.

One day, a “Restricted” call came in. The worst kind of call. Do not pick up, I told myself. That could be anyone.

“Hello?” I answered. Dammit!

“Hi, Arun, it’s Jenny from Personal Personnel. Are you available for work?”

Jesus, no, I’m not available, Jenny. It will probably take me another 5 to 10 years to pull myself out of this emotional black hole…

“Sure, Jenny.” Dammit!

She bombarded me with details. A cosmetics company… Industrial Chemical Department… $14 an hour… data entry… Vik (that’s what we’ll call him) is the supervisor… 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.… at least three months….

On my first day, I entered the building, which sat in the particularly depressing industrial area just off the Garden State Parkway (don’t ask me what exit – I don’t like that game).

I met Vik, the large-headed Indian department manager with a manic, toothy grin and a strong-accented monotone with the somnolent effects of a babbling brook. He led me through the chemical-mixing area filled with large metal tubs and vats. The stench was unbearable. A sharp, rubbing alcohol musk mixed with whatever final defeat smells like. And the mixing was loud. Loud like the sound of doves crying, screaming, begging to die. I was tempted to throw myself into one of the vats and not drag this whole thing out, but Vik kept the tour moving.

Maybe I’ve seen too many movies (or too few) but I assumed everyone working at the plant to be homicidal Norma Rae-types. They wore lab coats and hair nets and goggles and looks of quiet rage. And yet I was certain they were happier than me. As far as I knew, they understood who they were and where they were going and I envied them.

Please let this horror show lead to an office where I’ll be sitting alone at a computer and typing letters and numbers into a spreadsheet while I listen to music and check my e-mail. Please.

Vik sat me down in a conference room to go over my duties. Despite my years raised by an Indian immigrant father, I was unprepared for the slow, heavy accent and English-as-a-second-language that confounded and overwhelmed me when Vik launched into an overly complicated explanation of the chemical receiving and testing system.

“… Here Industrial Chemical System…We receive ithhh the law matelial in valehouse and entel indo system…lab in test thhhhen and….”

I started to nod off, then snapped myself awake as the instruction continued in the warehouse receiving office.

“… YA code hele notice…um, thaaaaat is um…Celtificate of Analysis extremely important…keep track…batch numbel…lot numbel….”

After absorbing very little information, I was escorted to the lab and introduced to the senior chemist – I’ll call him Kiran – a stern, middle-aged Indian man, who tilted his head upward and looked down when he spoke, as if always delivering a lecture. I was to report to him in the mornings for laboratorial duties.

Kiran, I would learn, had come to America years ago, studied, became a chemist and built a life for himself in New Jersey. He was divorced and had a teenage son. And he was fairly religious, maybe not in a fundamentalist way, though I have only a vague idea of what fundamentalist Hindus believe. I wasn’t sure if he drank alcohol or ate beef, but he did frequent his Hindu temple/community center, which seemed to be his main source of extracurricular activity.

His lab partner was Lili, a pretty, middle-aged Iranian woman. She seemed to have the calm confidence of someone who had escaped the Shah in the 70s and refused to be unhappy about anything, though I was probably reading too much into her with the overanalysis of someone who’s never had to escape a Shah and refuses to be happy about anything.

Kiran had been surly and cold while Vik introduced me, but after the boss was gone, his mood lifted. He sat me down in front of the computer in the warehouse receiving office, and asked me what I knew. I tried to repeat what Vik had explained to me.

“Forget everything he told you,” he interrupted. “Don’t make it hard on yourself. Life is hard enough.”

“But…”

“Hey,” he interrupted, and pointed to his name on a piece of paper. “Who’s that guy?”

“You?” I said.

“Right!” he said, and started to laugh. This man is clearly insane, I thought, as, with dramatic arm gestures, he placed pieces of paper in various files, slapping them onto the desk.

“This goes here, that goes there. Understand? Tell me. Understand? Good. You ask me if you have a question,” he said, then something seemed to dawn on him. “Everyone has questions for me. Who do I ask if I have a question?”

“Your God?” I said. Oh, Jesus, here it is. Here’s the firing moment. You can’t joke around with people like that. When are you going to learn that the things that enter your head should not be let out? When are you going to grow up?

“Good answer,” Kiran said.  Wow.

I lucked out. Kiran was a devout Hindu, so God was a pretty good answer for most things. Deity would sometimes come up as I walked into the lab from lunch.

“Are you still at lunch?” he’d say.

“What?” Is all this talking necessary? Don’t people hire temps so they don’t have to get to know them? Is there no way to be in the world and left totally alone?

“Are you still at lunch? Or are you working?”

I told him I was still at lunch.

“Okay. What do you think of homosexuality? Good or bad?” Uh-oh.

“I think whatever people do sexually is their own business.”

“But God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.”

“But you’re not Christian.”

“I am everything.”

“I see.”

“If you choose to be a homosexual, you are making God angry. He doesn’t want you to be a homosexual.”

“I’m not a homosexual.”

“You’re not?”

“No.”

“Yes, I know.”

“I don’t think sexual orientation is a choice. It’s biology.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Fair enough.”

“Okay. Back to work.”

That was the easiest workplace conversation I had ever had about homosexuality. Kiran didn’t seem to really hate gay people and he liked to talk so eventually I felt comfortable enough to open up about how tough I thought life had been for poor motherless, career-less, loveless me.

“Stop it!” he yelled one day. “The past is gone! If I thought about the past, I would collapse. When I left India, my father told me to become successful or not to come back. I had to walk three miles to the bus every day when I first came to US. Did I complain?”

“No?”

“That’s right! Accept everything. Never get angry.”

“What do I do instead?”

“Every day, I go home. I look at tree. I laugh,” he said.

I wanted to go home and do just that and suddenly feel lighter, freer. I wanted to learn this timely lesson. I wanted to be the kind of person who rolled with punches. I wanted to be someone else.

****

Kiran, understanding the dullness of the job, prescribed breaks.

“The company pays you to do something for them. If you are tired, you cannot do the job for them. So what are they paying you for? They want you to take breaks. Take breaks!”

For my daily break, I ate an apple in the hallway outside the lab door, which stood ten feet from the ladies’ locker room.

After a week of such breaks, Lili asked, “Arun, can you see into the ladies’ changing room from the hallway?” Here we go. Joke time…

“Not only can I see inside,” I said. “I take pictures.”

Lili didn’t laugh.

“And I post those pictures on the Internet!”

“Oh,” she said.

Later, Kiran pulled me aside. He told me that a woman had accused me of trying to get a peek at her goodies while she was changing.

“You don’t have anything to worry about,” he assured me.

“Okay,” I said.

“Were you peeping?” he asked.

“No.”

“Then you don’t have anything to worry about.”

A Human Resources representative, cleverly wearing a suit I couldn’t peep through, sat me down for an official inquiry.

Can this really be happening to me? I try to step back into the world and get accused of a sex crime? How long before I appear on some predator watch list? How long before I’m officially the neighborhood molester?!

“Have you been looking into the ladies’ locker room?” she asked.

“No,” I said.

“I didn’t think so.” She leaned in. “You’re not the peeping type.” Fooled her!

Apparently, the whistle-blower was an older woman who worked in the mixing area and was notorious for filing frivolous complaints against people for staring at her inappropriately.

“She likes the attention,” said the HR rep.

“And so what then?” Kiran later ranted. “We can’t stand outside the lab? When I walk outside the lab I have to keep my head down? Locker room door swings open and there is lady in bra. I have to close my eyes? Close my eyes and fall down stairs and break my neck?! No. God gave you eyes. Use them. Any of those ladies should be happy to have someone peeping at them!”

I wasn’t relieved exactly. I had already sunk so low and thought so little of myself that it almost didn’t matter. I probably didn’t want to go prison, but maybe house arrest wouldn’t have been so bad. With the Internet, every man could be an island… and a galaxy! Or something.

****

The part of my day spent with Kiran and his ravings made the day go by more quickly. Working with Vik was another story – a depressing story of micromanagement torture where the hero dies slowly, waterboarded into submission by constant phone calls and office visits.

Vik hated going down to the warehouse. He couldn’t communicate with the ornery union warehouse workers and they made it clear that they didn’t like him. And so he decided that I would serve as a liaison between the warehouse, where the raw chemicals were received, and the lab, where they were tested.

“Hello, Arun!” Vik would say far too excitedly every morning over the phone.

“Hello.”

“You have leceive it dthhhaaat celtificate of analysis come?”

What?

“Um…not yet?”

“Let me just…e-mail…I…one second…computer…hello…itchy….”

Minutes of silence passed as he tried to put his thoughts together.

“Vik? Hello?”

No response.

Suicide Note, Draft 1:

Dear Vik,

I thought I was better than this. Stronger. Of a higher calling and purpose in the world. But I was wrong, wasn’t I?

“Yes, hello, Arun…I…just….”

More silence.

Suicide Note, Draft 1 (cont’d):

You win, Vik. I give up. I’ll see you in he –

“Could you please follow up with that?” he would say.

“I’m sorry, follow up with what?”

“Just…let me….”

Even worse were the frequent visits I was forced to make to his tiny office.

“Hello, Arun!”

“Hello.”

“Hello.”

Long pause. Why are we just staring at each other? What is happening here?

“Have a seat,” he would say, pointing to the chair wedged between his desk and the front wall of his miniscule office.

“I prefer to stand,” I’d say, thinking of my knees jammed against his desk.

But then he would have me rearrange the chair so I sat in front of the door, where there was just a little more room. And no way out.

In case of fire, we are both doomed. This is how it ends. The final humiliation. A recently acquitted old-lady-peeper, trapped with a madman.

I waited…

“Are you leady to go?” he might ask.

Yes. I am ready to die.

“To go do what?”

More silence. No time for a note at this point. If I could move my legs, I would put myself through that window. Then…freedom.

Vik would start, “Okay, now I….” And then stop. “No, just…minute….”

****

“Does anyone like this guy?” I eventually asked Kiran. “Someone always likes someone, right?”

“Normally, I would say that nine out of ten don’t like someone. In this case, it is ten out of ten.”

“I almost feel sorry for him,” I said.

“I don’t feel sorry,” Kiran said. “If he dropped dead right in front of me, I would not care. If we were in the cafeteria, I would step right over him, and maybe drop my hot soup on him, so that he smelled like soup when he met his creator. Like soup!”

“Why?”

“I am betting that his creator hates the smell of soup.”

“No. Why don’t you feel sorry for him?”

“He chose his life. He’s cheap. Makes lots of money, does nothing. Takes no vacations. I can die tomorrow, because I have lived my life. I have taken cruises. I have been to Alaska. I am done. Take me when you like.”

****

As the liaison, I spent half my day in the warehouse. To be sure, a welcome break from Vik’s mind games, but not without its own complications.

One day, while attempting to operate the copy machine in the receiving office, I was approached by Marge, a 70-year-old forklift operator and raw materials handler. She had a strong New Jersey accent and a bit of a stutter that she offset with a mean temper. Nobody messed with Marge. She was built like wrestler and had a fierce sneer. Like some kind of short, 70 year old Andre the Giant with a George Washington powdered wig and much bigger arms.

“Arun, have you seen Chris?” she asked. “God, I have to get this paperwork done. That asshole upstairs (Vik!) is trying to make life difficult for me again.”

Like everyone else in the warehouse, Marge was not a Vik fan. While I tried to pass on his orders, she would say things like, “You tell his royal highness to come down here if he thinks he can do a better job. I don’t give a shit. Tell him to come down. I’ll show him.”

“Who’s Chris?” I asked.

“Chris. You know, with the chink eyes.”

She pointed at her own eyes and squinted. Chris, a warehouse supervisor, was Asian American.

“Orientals are Orientals,” she said, laughing.

“Orientals are Orientals”! Here we go. It’s racism-fighting time. But Marge sure is frightening, isn’t she? And her name’s Marge. You can’t tell someone named Marge not to be a racist. You don’t teach Marge. Marge teaches you. She learned fork-lift driving on the streets. A hard life in working class Jersey had left her old, wrinkled and squat. But probably fast and strong – she probably had to be, storming Iwo Jima with no weapons, using her bare hands to snap necks. The Cleaner, that’s probably what they called her. I can’t beat The Cleaner. Not today. Not with this hairnet on.

No, stop it! This racism is getting a middle class, liberal arts college knuckle sandwich.

“I don’t know where Chris is,” I said.

Goal!

Marge wasn’t alone in her “chink”-itude. Every day at noon, a warehouse denizen named, let’s say, Bill came into the receiving office and ordered what he referred to as “chink food” for lunch. “You know, chink food,” he’d say. What would Chris think of all this chink talk? Would his chink eyes see that there’s a problem here?

Bill hated to work and didn’t seem to care who knew it. Often, after a little chink food-ordering, he would corner his supervisor, Steve, for a one-sided rap session.

“So Huffman Koos is going out of business, right? And I go over there, and I’m looking for a fuckin’ TV stand, right? I see one. Tag says $200. For a TV stand?! I’m like, that’s why you’re going out of business.”

“Uh-huh,” Steve said, barely listening.

“Anyway, Steve, I can’t have my kids come over because I don’t have my own place. There’s some fuckin’ rule about me not being able to live with my mother if I want the kids to come over or something. And get this. My wife can refuse my request to see the kids.”

Who is worse off here? Bill or me?

“Jesus,” was all Steve could muster.

“Yeah. Meanwhile, I’ve got to fix this piece-of-shit couch I got. I’m thinking I’ll put a block underneath the motherfucker instead of buying a new leg. No one’s gonna fuckin’ notice it, right?”

“I guess.”

Good God, I probably can’t afford a new couch leg, either.

“So you know what I did yesterday? I had to go down to the police station to give my wife the check. Yeah, she don’t feel safe coming over to my mother’s place to get it. I don’t know if she’s afraid of me or my mother or what. I’m like, grow the fuck up, honey.”

“Jesus,” Steve said.

Bill has it pretty tough, I guess. Taking the child support check to the police station because his ex is too scared of him to conduct the transaction without the presence of men who can shoot him in case he tries to strangle her or something. Then again, at least Bill had been loved by a woman, who apparently also allowed him to put a child inside her. Yes. I would love to switch places with Bill.

****

Eventually, I decided to get around to signing up with a different temp agency, preferably in New York City. The idea gave me the confidence to feel like it was time to leave the Industrial Chemical Department. I visited Vik in his office, relishing his wide-eyed, open-mouthed look of blankness before I delivered the blow of a week’s notice. He looked so sad. So simple.

“Vik, I am giving you my notice,” I said. “I can no longer work for you.” Oh, how the tables have turned. Where are your certificates of analysis now?

“Please,” he said. “Sit.”

Fine. But this is the last time you squeeze me into your chair of ergonomic cruelty. Enjoy it, fiend!

“My last day will be Friday,” I said. “So…that’s a week….”

Silence.

I panicked. Does he know something I don’t? Are there temp work bi-laws that won’t allow me to quit? Oh, Jesus, what have I signed? What have I signed?!

“Please don’t go,” Vik said.

“Pardon?”

“We need you,” he pleaded, suddenly coherent. The accent was still there, but the struggle was gone. “This place will fall apart without you. I need you. I have no one here. No one is on my side. I am being pulled in several different directions and everyone hates me. I have no peace, Arun. I am a man with no peace.”

Oh, no…

I was softening.

No, stop. Remember the bad times! The hate!

“Well, the thing is, I want to work in New York,” I said. “I’m a writer.” “I’m a writer”? Who talks like that?

“You are so lucky, Arun. Your whole life is ahead of you. You’re not stuck working in a factory with…union workers…people who don’t respect you.”

“Um…thank you.”

Check, please!

“What’s your take on life, Arun?”

Oh, Vik, please don’t do this.

“Um, take it day by day?”

Touchdown!

“Stay. Please.” My God, he was serious. How could he – or anyone – need me this badly?

“Do you have another job?” he asked. Of course I have another job! Wait…
“Well, no.”

Whatever confidence I had in my plan was quickly fading away. I was leaving one job without another, which meant more time with iTunes, but it also meant no more money.

“Okay,” I said. I can work here while I find another temp job, right? I’ll have the confidence to leave at any time. This isn’t so bad. I’m in charge now. Me.

“Gleat!” Vik exclaimed, then started to transform. “Now…dtheeerrre is just…thing…one minute…I…okay…no…okay….”

What. Have. I. Done.

Days later, my mistake blew up in my face….

****

“You’re welcome to leave at any time, Arun!” Vik said sharply.

I felt myself starting to sweat. I can’t handle this. I don’t have any self esteem. Please don’t make me stand up for myself. I just can’t do it. I won’t do it! Oh, God, can everyone see me sweating? I have to say something.

So I said: “What?”

Home. Run.

“I need you to take this seriously.” I don’t take this seriously. I don’t take anything seriously. Except myself and my despair.

“I do take this seriously,” I said.

“Then why were you smirking?” Because I’m too smart for this. I’m too good for everything. I don’t even live in this world. I’m like a god, floating above you and everyone else, ineffectual and unaffected by your petty concerns. And useless.

“I didn’t realize I was smirking,” I said. “I’m sorry.” I’m sorry I’m so wrong about how the world works. I’m sorry I don’t know what I’m doing or who I am. I’m sorry my mother is dead. I’m so, so sorry.

****

The box of chemicals was eventually found and a week later, a clerical error on the part of my temp agency forced the company to let me go. After months of isolation, my re-entry into the working world had yielded a peeping charge and a stern berating and life was moving on, again, without my input.

As I hung up my white coat and hairnet and goggles for the last time, Vik stood by me solemnly.

“Are you going to call, let me know how you are doing?”

“Uh…sure,” I said. Are you insane?

“Stop by and say hello sometime.”

“Absolutely.” Every day! I’ll even invite you over to see my impressive digital music collection! Introduce you to my father! He’s depressed, too! We can all go to therapy together!

I shook Vik’s hand and walked away from the lab and the warehouse. I was moving forward. Not from any courage or skill on my part. There was just no other way to go. And it wasn’t bad and it wasn’t good.

“God has a plan for you,” Kiran told me once. “He doesn’t want you to waste away in your father’s house, doing nothing. Don’t betray God. He will be angry. Be responsible and you’ll be okay.”

I wasn’t sure about God, but there certainly was no plan. I pretended that, by “God,” Kiran meant my mother. No one had higher hopes for me, for my so-called potential. She wouldn’t accept the idea of her son burying himself in his childhood home, terrified of the world. Having always thought I’d make a wonderful lawyer, my mother probably wouldn’t have been impressed with yet another temp job. But it was something.

I could get through this, whatever this was. It wouldn’t kill me. Maybe I wasn’t ready to laugh at any trees, but at least I wouldn’t let the phone scare me.

Come on. Give me a call. I’m available.

It was miserable enough.  I had moved to this lovely town but three months earlier.  While folks were friendly enough, I hadn’t yet made any friends, save people that I worked with, and all of those seemed to have a full complement of friends and family, especially around the holidays.  I had moved west from my last job, which was already further west than most of my family – and this last move, I was well out of a day’s drive from any relation.  For the first Christmas season in my quarter century of life, I was truly going to be alone.

Work that Christmas Eve wrapped up early for the day – the boss chased us all out of the plant after lunch, and everyone headed for the loving warmth of their homes, surrounded by loved ones, good fellowship, twinkling lights, and Yule logs burning in the fireplace to hold the chill at bay.

I went home, such as it was, to my apartment.  It was an upstairs flat, complete with its 1960’s era six inch deep avocado green shag carpet.  It had a ceramic gas log “fireplace,” started by pressing a nearby button.  I had the same quality furnishings that one might find in any college student apartment, although a college student didn’t occupy this one.  Multi-print couches and chair, with worms eating the wooden legs.  A particle board side table, on which sat a lamp.  Stereo system on a steel utility shelf unit, beat up Montgomery Ward’s TV sitting on a footlocker in the corner.  It had a covered balcony porch, where I kept a small charcoal grill and a couple of folding chairs.

The complex was empty – it was located up the road from the state college, and the students who normally hung out there had all long since bolted for home and hearth.  Not all of that was bad – I managed to rescue a forgotten Christmas Tree, apparently removed by one of the vacationing students and leaned up against the dumpster.  I had brought it inside a few days earlier, stuck it in an old coffee can full of water, and decorated it with twisted strips of aluminum foil. I cut up Christmas Cards to form a holiday tableau.  The tree smelled pretty good, but it was browning fast.  I felt a little guilty about prolonging its suffering for my own artificial joy, especially when I couldn’t find much happiness, despite the tin-foil buffoonery and adornment.

I picked up the mail, and tossed the overdue credit card notices into the shopping bag full of other bills.  The holiday cards had come to an end, and at that, rather early.  The few friends I had from other parts had all lost track of me as I moved further west, and I hadn’t sent many cards out the year before.  It hadn’t mattered at the time, and it didn’t matter now.

I opened the fridge to survey the holiday meal I had planned: a canned ham of some unknown date, a bit of warmed over mac ’n cheese, and what was left of a twelve pack of beer.  I opened a beer, and walked onto the balcony.   The fog and the gloom were still there, so there wasn’t much to look at.  The view from the second floor balcony was of the roof of the laundry shed, and a few other smaller structures in the courtyard below. On the roof of one, the management had thoughtfully installed a plastic owl, in order to frighten off the pigeons.  The pigeons, of course, had responded by using the plastic owl as their own personal toilet, so the owl looked like he was capped with never melting snow.  The crap almost covered one plastic eye, so that the owl looked like Rocky after fifteen rounds with Apollo Creed.  A punch-drunk plastic owl, adorned in gloom, and decorated in pigeon shit.  That was my winter wonderland.

Looking around that 640 square feet of shag carpet covered Shangri-la, I realized there was no way that I was going to stay “home” for Christmas.  I pitched the beer over the balcony.

I was low. I was blue.  I was homesick for Christmas Eves I had never had. I had no place to turn and only one place to go.  I was miserable. I was alone.  But I had a plan.  I was going to go where all of God’s miserable souls went to celebrate a miserable and wretched Christmas. I was going to a place where the holiday lights shown bright. I was going to a place where the fellowship of man could be found.  I was going to the only place where I could find happiness. And if I couldn’t be happy, at least I could be a miserable wreck, and wallow in my own pity, and nobody would care.  I was going to the only place that would take someone like me.

I was going to Harrah’s Casino in South Lake Tahoe.

I threw on an old trench coat, and put on my “duck boots,” so called, as they had rubber soles, but canvas uppers. There’d be snow up there, so good footwear would be required.  I grabbed an old scarf, a felt hat, and with a spring in my step and a snarl in my heart, I slammed the door shut, and hurled myself into my car.

The car was a 1980 Ford Granada ESS four door sedan.  It was the kind of car that a blind man, with palsy, would probably mistake for a Mercedes Benz.  The midnight blue metallic paint had long since been destroyed by the previous Texas sun, so that the paint color and texture had become a dusty purple.  It saved me having to wash it, as the body was just gradually eroding over time.  The outside driver door handle had long since broken, so I had developed the technique of opening the rear passenger door, and hooking my arm around the pillar to open the driver’s door.  It was a trolley – the six-cylinder engine hadn’t used all six cylinders in some years, as five seem to be just fine, even if it would vibrate the floorboards a bit.  I could trust it to get me from point “A” to point “B,” as long as there were a couple of garages between “A” and “B,” and the distance involved wasn’t more than 10 miles between them.

I sank the key into the ignition, and the vacuum-induced “6-1” coughed to life as if Henry- Freaking-Ford was turning the crank.  I slammed it into gear, and peering through low hanging clouds, I headed up the road.  The bus station was only six miles away.   It was late in the afternoon.  I had a couple of hundred bucks in cash.  The weather stunk.  My mood was bad.  My life was awful.  I was good to go.

I bought a round-trip ticket at the bus station.  The bus would drop me at Truckee, and from there I’d pick up a local gambler’s special, that would drop me off at the door at Harrah’s.  I had no intention of driving.  I had no intention of being happy.  I fully intended on getting loaded, and deepening my bitterness, and pushing myself to win the Great Depression, as if that were some type of Olympic event.

The bus door opened, and I eyed the driver as I boarded.

“Merry Christmas.” he said, with no real merriment, and no real happiness.  That suited me just fine.

“And a happy new year, bud” I replied, snarling as I went past.  I found a seat, not that it was all that difficult. There weren’t more than a half dozen people on the bus, including the driver, and nobody looked all that freaking merry.  In a cloud of diesel exhaust, the bus left the lot, and slowly headed for the interstate. We gradually climbed out of the persistent fog, but the evening dusk in the foothills was only propping up another weather system, and halfway to Lake Tahoe the flurries started.  There were Christmas Carols playing on a boom box, sitting near the bus driver.  Nobody was singing along. I stared out the window as we drove past homes lit with holiday warmth.  I shivered a bit, and hunkered down in my coat, trying to sleep a little bit.

The three-hour trip to Truckee took four hours.  It was slow-going up the highway, and better late than dead, I suppose, although dead wasn’t much of a step down from my mood at the time.

The gambler’s special bus was waiting, at least.  The doors opened again, and this time a much happier driver was behind the wheel.  He looked pretty silly, sitting behind the wheel wearing a red Santa cap.  I hoped the ruddy glow in his cheeks and nose was from the crisp mountain air, and not from a bottle.

“Ho Ho Ho!” he chortled. “Welcome aboard, and Merry Christmas!  The name’s Otis,” he said, as he thrust out his hand.

That’s a pretty stupid name for a bus line, I thought.  I handed him my ticket, and I found another open seat.  We lurched down the road, heading south around the lake, to the South Shore.  As we moved past Zephyr Cove, I caught site of a very bright light to the east, probably a spotlight from one of the casinos.  The casinos wasted little time, but lots of energy, in guiding you to your destination.  The beacon in the night continued to blink on and off, and eventually we arrived at the doorway to the Happyless Place On Earth.

Harrah’s, for Christmas Eve, was surprisingly lively.  There wasn’t a floor show – the stages were closed – but the Casino was open.  There were no lockable doors on the casino, as it never closed for business.  24 hour-per-day gambling, seven days a week, 365 days per year.  I wasn’t much for card games, or dice.  If I was going to surrender my cash, I wanted to do it the modern way.  I wasn’t looking for any human interaction to warm my heart, and I wasn’t looking for any atmosphere. So I wandered a bit, until I came across an empty row of slot machines.  I went to the cashier’s cage, and got $50 worth of quarters. I went back over to the machines, loosened my coat, and sat down, slowly dropping in a quarter, and pulling the long arm of fate, watching the wheels spin by.

Soon enough, a waitress came by. She asked me what I wanted. I looked at her, and told her that I wanted whiskey, and that Rye, neat, would do just fine.  She returned in a few minutes, and brought me the first of what would be a few bolts of liquid lightning that I would consume that evening.  I downed the first, and sent her back for a second.  Really cheap Rye – and this was cheap in the sense that it wasn’t top shelf, bonded whiskey – has an electricity all of its own. It burns as it goes down your throat, and the heat that is created from the consumption doesn’t warm you; it singes your throat as if you were swallowing an acetylene torch in a circus act.  The first swallow is a convulsion. The second swallow is a reflex action from a muscle spasm, and at the third your tonsils have been cauterized. But the really good thing about cheap Rye is that those reactions are consistent.  It never gets better.  You never get used to it.  You never start to even understand the differences in the taste; after the third or fourth Rye, your taste is gone, anyhow, long surrendered like Frenchmen in the night.

The supply of quarters was slowly dwindling.  As the transfer of wealth was nearly complete, an abject jerk of the arm set off a small cacophony of bells, followed by the chug-chug-chug-chug clanging of change in the payout tray.  Somehow, I had hit a small jackpot payout of about $240.  In the television commercials, when the pretty young couples win a hand of blackjack, or hit the slot machine jackpot, you usually see the young couple jump up in the air, the teeth in their mouths shining as they smiling brightly, their eyes alight in anticipation, and hair bouncing just so.  Happy. Happy Times.  In reality, or at least that night, there was no jumping in the air.  I was a bit flabbergasted, and sincerely disconcerted because I felt it would take me forever to lose all of that, and winning in the casino wasn’t in the plan.  No beautiful young women came over and congratulated me.  No friends, old or new, came over to shake my hand and pound me on the back.  Nobody, especially me, jumped anywhere, at anytime.  I just wanted to be miserable, and nothing more.  Gambling, apparently, wasn’t going to help in that quest.

With a deep sigh, I filled three or four plastic buckets with my unwanted booty, and lugged them to the cashier.  I cashed them out for paper currency, and the soothing pictures of dead presidents, while not as weighty as the coins, were at least easier to handle.  The time for child’s play at the machines had come to end.  Crushing my hat down on my head, I slumped into my trench coat, and wandered off in search of a quiet casino lounge bar.  They weren’t hard to find – casino’s have plenty of bars, and plenty of tables, and plenty of slot machines.  But try to find one clock….

The bar only had a couple of patrons, and a young barmaid serving drinks.  She eyed me up as I approached.

“Why if it isn’t Phillip Marlowe,” she said.

“Marlowe is dead,” I said through half-lidded eyes.

“Ok, then, well, Ebenezer,” she replied. “What will you have?”

I ordered a beer.  I needed something familiar to extinguish the fire from the half a dozen Ryes that I had consumed, since the back of my throat felt like I’d been chewing on sandpaper.

As she pulled a draft beer, I surveyed my surroundings.  The bar was your typical casino variant, with a few video poker machines adjacent, a barmaid and bar-boy working in leafed blouse and vests, and a thousand ashtrays everywhere.

The barmaid returned with my beer.  She wasn’t hard on the eyes. She was pretty young, or seemed like she was younger than me. She reminded me a bit of Donna Reed from “It’s A Wonderful Life,” although that may have been the whiskey my eyes were swimming in.  I took a glimpse at her nametag. Her name was “Mary,” and it said her hometown was in the San Francisco bay area.

We bantered back and forth a bit.  My mood was still pretty bitter, and I wasn’t looking for much company.  I just wanted to drink, to numb myself like my hands in winter.  There was no warmth from me, and even the drink inside of me had turn gray and cold.

I kept ordering beers, and she kept bringing them to me.  I wasn’t downing them rapidly, but I wanted to develop a very slow buzz that wouldn’t fade quickly, and especially wouldn’t hurt hard the next day, whenever that was.  So the beer suited me.  It was nothing special, the usual watered down pilsner that is passed off as America’s best from Milwaukee or St. Louis.  But it didn’t have to be good.  I wasn’t there for the taste.

After a few hours, I was suddenly aware that I had company around me.  Three women had taken the stools right next to mine- a brunette, a redhead, and a stunning blonde.  The blonde sat closest to me, and I could smell her perfume, despite her cigarette, and I could see the small curled hairs at the nape of her neck, and I could admire the drape of her dress as it fell over geography heading south.  She was good looking.  Hell, she was gorgeous.  And it didn’t matter. As I studied her in clinical detachment, she did nothing to lift my mood.

The three of them, whom I had nicknamed Faith, Hope, and Chastity, were chatting away, and Chastity, the blonde, was paying more attention to me than a guy in a rumpled trench coat on Christmas Eve deserved.   I bought them a few drinks, just to be social, and expecting nor wanting anything in return.  They had pretty good taste, and soon they were eying up a bottle perched high on a shelf behind the bar, a bottle bathed in an eerie blue light, a bottle of VSOP Cognac.  They said it was $150 a shot, and while they had never seen a bottle of it before, nor tasted it, they had heard it was available in this bar.  They weren’t getting it from me, not at that price.  So we stared at the bottle bathed in the blue glow, braying at it like sheep seeing angels in the night.

In another hour, Chastity put her hand on my back, and her head on my shoulder, and asked that I should buy her another drink, a good drink, and maybe, a little more.

I missed the inference, as if I had brought the fog around me from the valley floor below.  I started chatting harmlessly to Chastity and the gals about how Mary the Barmaid was looking pretty cute, which brought a laugh from Faith, who said that I might as well romance a virgin as to hit on that barmaid, the “Virgin Mary” she said, crossing herself, and rolling her eyes.

Chastity leaned over and pressed her lips against my ear, and asked if she might tuck me in? And all for the price of a drop of cognac?  And did I have a room?

The fog around me started to clear, and I hastily went over to the bartender, at the other side of the bar, the virgin Mary having apparently been summoned elsewhere.

“Joseph! My good man!” I hollered.

The bartender looked at me like I was an idiot.  The badge on his vest said “Alex from Santa Fe.”  But tonight, I thought, it had to be Joseph.

“Joseph!  I’d like a glass of your finest cognac- the VSOP- to be poured for the wee lassie at the end of the bar” – and I gestured at Chastity with the jerk of my thumb, and looked over my shoulder at the Christmas present I suddenly wanted to unwrap.

And there was the Virgin Mary, saying something strident to the three women, and with a whish they were gone into the smoke-filled casino.  I looked back at Joseph and shook my head.

I walked back to my barstool, and Mary came back my way.  I had thought perhaps her intent was to rescue me, to save me for herself, a holiday treat of her own.  The look on her face said nothing, but her mouth said it all.

“Sorry, Scrooge. Those were working girls, as if you didn’t know- and they can’t do that work here- at least not in this lounge.”  And she picked up a glass, and began to polish it with a cloth.

“No big deal.” I said.  “This was my worse Christmas ever. I’m alone, I’ve got no family nearby. I live in a strange and unfamiliar town. My Christmas tree is decorated with aluminum foil—and it’s practically dead—and there’s no dose of Christmas cheer that I can find anywhere.  All I was hoping for from Chastity-“

“That’s not her name,” said Mary.

“I was trying to change it,” I said. “All I wanted was a little holiday warmth, and somebody to care about me, if only for a few minutes.  But that’s ok.  My life is pathetic enough, and I don’t need your help to make this day any worse.”

Mary rolled her eyes, and stopped polishing the glass, and with a sigh, she looked straight at me.

“Listen, pal.  Christmas doesn’t come from decorations, or from carols, or from cognac, or from cheap whores.  Christmas comes from within, from somewhere inside of each of us.”

She grabbed my shoulder, and twisted me on the stool so that I was looking at the bottle of cognac.

“Look at that, buddy, not the bottle, look at the mirror behind it.  Do you see yourself? Do you see your reflection?  Well, do you know how that reflection is created?  It comes from light.  Not the cheap lights that we have in the bar, not from the searchlights from outside- it comes from the light from within.  That light is inside of you. It’s a small flame burning now, and all of the drink in this bar isn’t enough to put it out.  You can try to freeze it, you can hide it, and you can try to stamp it out, but the embers of the Christmas spirit stay glowing inside of you. It’s a gift passed on to every child, and it’s a gift that started with one child, a long time ago.

“You’re a nice kid. You’re not nearly old enough to be hanging around in a trench coat and hat, and roaring about how you feel sorry for yourself.  You’ve still got some holiday spirit in you. I know you do. I can see your reflection.  Now get out of here, and go home and enjoy your holiday.  And Merry Christmas.”

And she leaned over, and kissed me on the cheek.

Stunned, I left the lounge, and wandered out of the casino.  I waited for the bus in the morning air. It was daylight, and still snowing outside.  The surrounding mountains would soon be full of skiers on holidays, and kids with new skis and skates.  As the bus pulled up, a gaggle of older women got off the bus.  They were all singing Christmas carols, and laughing and passing around tins of Christmas cookies.  I tried to pass by, and they reached out and pressed a few cookies into my hand.  I jammed them into my pockets, and tipped my cap and mumbled a “Merry Christmas” and clambered onto the bus, not daring to look to see if my reflection was in the mirror.

I made the transfer at Truckee, and rode the bus home quietly.  While the fog thickened as we banked back into the valley, the gloom that had pervaded my soul was quietly burning off.  I couldn’t even feel the buzz of the alcohol anymore, and the numbness in my hands was gone, and with it, the numbness in my heart.

I got home that afternoon, and put the ham in the oven, and warmed up the leftover mac ‘n cheese.  I fired up the gas log fireplace, and found a radio station playing Bing Crosby.  I brewed a pot of coffee, and sat out on the porch, thinking about the day. I reached into the pocket of my coat, and found a cookie from the bus ride that morning.  It was made of shortbread, star-shaped, with red and green sprinkles of sugar. It was light, and sweet, and brought back memories of other sweet things from another time, in another place.  And I shivered in the remembrance of that warmth, rekindled anew.

I slowly sipped my coffee, and watched the short evening sun slowly dim across the courtyard below.  As I looked about, I saw one last reflection from a plastic eye, in the owl.

“Merry Christmas, you owl.”

And to all, a good night.