No Sweat

This past summer, being both bored and relatively broke, my friend Brittany called me and asked if I would want to go see a movie with her. As I was in much the same situation, I agreed, and so I met her at her apartment. We stopped at a department store to pick up some snacks we could smuggle into the theater, and as we parked and got out of the car I commented on how hot the weather was.

“Can you believe this?” I said.

“Yeah,” Brittany said, grabbing from the backseat something black and shiny and what appeared to be about the size of an army-style duffel bag. “It’s crazy. Just last week it was, like, seventy degrees out.” She attributed the dramatic swings in temperature to global warming, and I, being neither a scientist nor very well-read on the subject, chose to agree. St. Louis, it seemed, had always been prone to extreme ends of the weather spectrum, but it was strange to go so quickly from an unseasonable cool to what now felt like standing five feet from the front gates of Hell.

Walking from the parking lot to the building left us drenched in sweat, and as we made our way over the hot asphalt, I looked over at Brittany and realized that the bag she was carrying was actually her purse. I wondered how she could manage to lug something so gigantic around in this kind of weather, and, more importantly, why she would want to do so. Getting from the car to the door seemed to be draining my energy, and as the entrance came closer my desire to be inside began to grow.

Normally, after years of walking into shopping malls, stores, and public places, one expects a feeling of relief, a rush of cool air to beat back the heat hanging outside. The experience is not unlike stepping in front of a large air conditioning vent: an immediate and overwhelming drop in temperature, followed by the sensation that one has been transported, as if by magic, to one of the Earth’s polar regions. After a quick shiver, I’m left wondering if I’m the only person questioning my decision to wear short sleeves instead of a parka in the middle of July.

But when Brittany and I crossed through the door, the wash of cold air I’d expected didn’t come. I wanted what would amount to a bucket of ice cubes poured inside my pants, and instead all we got was a window fan set to low. It did feel good to be out of the sunlight, but as we dragged ourselves along I found myself looking at the floor and wondering how long the cool feeling would last if I were to collapse to the ground and press myself against the tiles.

In the candy aisle, we made our selections, measuring them against the size of Brittany’s purse to figure out if what we wanted would fit. As if there wouldn’t be enough room in that giant bag of hers. After we made our decisions, we went to the cashiers at the front of the store and bought the candy.

Back outside in the heat, I saw a man mowing grass along the outside of the parking lot, on the little concrete median that divided the parking lot from the road that led to the highway. Immediately I felt sorry for him. He made me think of myself, growing up, when I, too, had had to step outside and, under the intense stare of the sun, cut the lawn.

When I was eleven or twelve, my parents had the brilliant idea of making me work outdoors. I don’t know if they thought this would help turn me into a more well-rounded person or if they had more practical considerations — maybe they saw me stumbling one day into construction work or felling trees as a lumberjack — but I begged them to reconsider. Maybe they just thought I was lazy and needed a kick in the pants, but being lazy was fine with me, and so I instead suggested that I try to better my work ethic indoors, preferably washing dishes or dusting, where the closest I got to direct sunlight was next to the kitchen or living room windows.

“You can’t sit inside all the time,” my mother said, standing over me as I lay sprawled out on the couch, craning my neck to see the television behind her.

From his recliner my dad spoke up. “You really need to get outside and learn how to cut the grass.”

“But my allergies,” I said. “I can’t breathe when I’m out there. How can I do it when I can’t go five minutes without sneezing?” And I wasn’t making this up. On weekdays during the spring and summer when my mother would push me outside along with the daycare kids she watched, I would play around for maybe twenty minutes before the smell of freshly cut grass or wildflowers started getting to me. My nose would run and my eyes would start to water, making it appear as if, in the midst of the worst sneezing fit of my life, I had just watched my cat get run over.

The discussion was over, though, when my mother returned home one Saturday afternoon from a trip to the drugstore and handed me a paper cup of water and a tiny white pill. “It’s for your allergies,” she said, and after I choked it down my father led me outside to the little white shed in our backyard. The day was a warm one, and I felt myself growing nervous and riddled with anxiety as my heavy jeans weighed me down and I worried about getting my shoes dirty.

Inside the shed, I was sweating already, and as I gazed at the various tools shoved on my dad’s crude workbench and heaped on naked wooden shelves built up in the roof’s exposed crossbeams, I realized how seldom I had actually been in here. The smell of sawdust tickled my nose as a bead of sweat stung my eye, and the various devices hanging from the walls were reminiscent of the late-night horror movies of which I was so fond. Here was a dusty shovel like a hockey-masked serial killer might use to decapitate his victim. Next to it, leaning against a vice, lay a chainsaw nearly identical to one that killed a teenager in a wheelchair under a blackened Texas sky. Above me hung the sinister J of a hook, while beneath my feet dried blood from a now-absent deer carcass made a crude circle in the dirt floor. I jumped away from the stain, more scared than ever, as my dad pulled a plastic tarp off of the lawnmower. He dragged it outside to show me how it worked, and then left it running so that I could begin. But while I was glad to be out of the shed, I wasn’t sure which situation was worse.

Getting started, the first few minutes weren’t so bad. Sure, it was warm, but it didn’t seem like anything I hadn’t experienced before. And, in a way I suppose it wasn’t. But this time, there was no option to run inside to splash cold water on my face or sit in front of my oscillating fan for the better part of an hour. I tried to make the best of it, though. I would cut little designs like concentric rectangles into the backyard or make zigzag paths in between the swing set seats. The fun lasted until I realized my hair was a slick dark sheet against my forehead, and after that I started to notice just how hot it was.

When I’m tired or uncomfortable I tend to let people know it, and so once I got past the twenty minute mark and saw that I’d only gotten half of the backyard done, I started pouting and pushing the mower like it were a mythical boulder I had to roll up a hill only to watch it tumble back down again and again. Shoving it forward and then dragging it back, I felt my legs begin to burn. My eyes ached from their exposure to the bright sunlight, but still I kept glaring at the kitchen window looking out over my progress, hoping that maybe my mother would see the pain I was in and come rescue me.

Maybe I’ll just die out here, I thought. That’ll teach them a lesson.

Finally, when I was done, I pushed the mower back into the shed and shut its heavy white door. It was a full hour and a half later, and I went to my room and collapsed on my bed.

I felt the same way before falling into the passenger seat of Brittany’s car. The heat had taken away my strength and, it seemed, my desire to go on living. The scene felt reminiscent, like from a movie where the supporting character, exhausted and unable to continue, says, “Leave me behind. I can’t make it.” I could imagine myself, lying on the hot asphalt, crawling a few final inches before nobly giving up the ghost and baking in the sun.

Even with the windows down, the car had heated up since we had gone inside, and as we pulled out I was grateful for the breeze that come with driving. With no air conditioning, sitting still could be deadly, and so I prayed that we would either miss the red lights or Brittany would have the good sense to gun the engine to make it through before they turned.

The department store must have been a fluke, I thought as we drove along. “Why wouldn’t they have had their air on higher?” I asked.

“Probably the economy,” Brittany said. “It’s too expensive to keep the air running on high.”

Again, I agreed. I hadn’t thought of that. Or maybe I had and just couldn’t remember it now. My head felt light. And had the temperature dropped, or was I starting to get sunstroke?

The theater appeared in the distance, and I went through the list of deities in my head, thanking them all. Surely it would be air conditioned, cooler than the department store had been. I was eager to park, and so I kept pointing out spots. It was a matinee show, and so the parking lot was pretty close to deserted, but I wanted to make sure that we got as close to the front doors as possible. The thought of another trek away from the car was almost too much to bear in this heat, and as my strength felt like it was slowly draining away I pushed out of the car as soon as we were stopped.

“Hey,” Brittany called out. “Wait for me.”

She was barely out of the car, but I was already lumbering towards the building like a character in his final moments, reaching as a boy finished with his day’s work might for the knob of the back door and the promise it holds for just a little time out of the summer sun.

Geography

The class was supposed to be a “blow-off,” the kind you barely attend but still get an “A” because the material is so basic. Of course I got more than I bargained for. That’s pretty much the theme running through my life.

The class was taught by a middle-aged professor, I wish I could remember his name but frankly, he wasn’t a tenured instructor and his name wasn’t even printed on my schedule. He was what’s known as a “neo-hippy.” Unlike most Geography teachers, he’d actually been all over the world and was full of interesting anecdotes about the various places we studied that semester.

Of course, this was Community (aka “Junior”) College so somebody had to ask the question that was on all of our minds.

“Why are you in a wheelchair?”

I remember cringing and staring down at my desktop. I’ve only been to a few Community Colleges, but they seemed to be filled with the absolute dumbest people on the planet. The people just smart enough to maybe attend college—but dumb enough to not realize that they had a choice in the matter. Most of them acted like they were still in High School, which is why I wasn’t too surprised when someone blurted such a sensitive question.

I mean, what did it matter why the dude was in a chair? It’s not like it had ANY BEARING at ALL on our class. But ask they did, on the very first day of class. Thinking back on it, I guess he brought it upon himself when he finished going over the syllabus and asked the class if anyone had any questions.

I expected him to comment on how utterly rude the question was, but he didn’t. Like all people with a major physical difference he’d no doubt developed pretty thick skin about his condition. So, after we’d discussed the syllabus and the textbook we’d be using—our teacher told us the story of how he became a paraplegic.

Apparently he went swimming at a lake and dove head-first into water that was a bit too shallow. He broke his neck and severed his spine. I can still see his eyes shinning as he told us the story. Here I was at my first day of class and I was watching a (disabled) person I didn’t even know fight back tears.

This children, is the very definition of awkward.

Now, if I suddenly became disabled, I’d be one unhappy person. But this guy, my Geography teacher, wasn’t like that at all. He was very upbeat, almost to the point of nausea. A product of the 1960’s counter-culture, this guy had a philosophy towards life that frankly, shocked the hell out of me.



See, I don’t still remember this guy because he broke his neck and taught class sitting down—no, this guy is forever seared into my brain because he was bat-shit crazy. About a week into the class, he just stopped mid-lecture and looked at us (most of us were asleep) and started telling us all to drop-out.

Not just out of his class mind you, but college in general.

“If I was your age, I’d just pack a bag and go explore the world,” he said. “Believe me, we’ll be here waiting for you when you come back.”

By “we’ll be here” he meant school/college. Now that I’m a little older and more settled (read: fucking trapped in my life) I realize that this was actually good advice. But at the time I was just trying to get my Associate’s Degree so I could move out of my parent’s basement. I didn’t want to drop out of school. I didn’t want to back-pack across Europe (isn’t that how one falls prey to werewolf attacks?).

This advice, though sound, was actually a pretty stupid thing for him to say. After all, didn’t his job depend on us being there? And yet he stood (sat) there and was telling us all to ditch school in favor of adventure and excitement. Maps, he liked to remind us, were created by people who’d actually BEEN there. But why should we just take there word for it? Though he never said he had a “motto” per say, I think that if he had one it would be simply “GO.”

I can dig this sentiment of “see if yourself,” because of an odd quirk of mine. You see, I suffer from what I can only describe as severe case of skepticism/narcissism.

I only really believe in the things that are immediately around me.

Every since I was a child, I’ve been fascinated by time and space NOT involving myself. For example, the class room where I can Geography still exists. This room may look a little different than the way I remember it, but for the most part it’s the same room. Right now at this second, as I write this.

And yet I am not at this room.

New York. Tokyo. London. These places all exist despite the fact that I’m not there (probably will NEVER be there). Beyond that, these cities exist AND are full of people. People who have no idea that I even exist. People who run along on their own merry little way, with their own merry little problems and triumphs.

I understand that I am not the center of the Universe. There is (or so I’m told) an infinite amount of space stretching in all directions, and it existed before I was born and will continue to do so long after I am dead.

And yet, a large part of me denies this because, how can that be?

Sitting in Geography class you can see Tokyo, Japan on a map. You can see pictures and video, but unless you actually GO there—how can one truly know that Tokyo exists? I think that there is a true version of this world/universe, but I don’t think it’s possible to experience it. Everyone experiences the world a little differently.

Just like no two witnesses tell the exact same story, I think there are probably 9 billion interpretations of Earth and the things on it. That’s kinda what my Geography teacher was saying, I think. People should get out and see the world, instead of taking it for granted that it’s there.

Big Spender

It’s not a recent occurrence, but money, much like boyfriends or good hair, never has a way of sticking with me. I’ve never been able to hold onto a bill of currency for more than a week — and that’s if my internet’s out or I’m in a coma — because once I have my hands on it, I start thinking about all the things that I’d like to have.

The list of offenses is a long one. If these things were necessities, then, sure, I’d say, why not? But as it turns out, each time I get a craving it’s for something that I neither need nor have any real use for: the new leather laptop bag for when I take my trips to nowhere; the full-sized digital piano awaiting the day it plays an entire song. Some of the lesser examples include armies of barely-used computer mice, each one just a little more stylish or feature-laden than the one before.

Ever since I was small, I’ve been prone to this kind of thing. I’ve always liked the rush of buying, the feeling of trading in those raggedy dollars for something new and shiny. And still, even now that the pocket-wrinkled bills of my youth have been replaced by little plastic cards, the desire remains the same. At the age of seven, I remember, I pleaded with my mother for the go-ahead to buy a Spider-Man action figure. “But I really want it,” I said, tugging at her hand as she tried to pull me out of the store.

“Don’t you already have one like that?” she asked.

I did. Wanting another didn’t make sense, but the six dollar bills in my pocket were screaming at me, a far cry from the earlier whispers that had first given me the idea. I’d gotten the bills from little chores done around my great-grandparents’ house, and though not inherently sentimental, the money, my mother thought, should have been kept and used for something like, I don’t know, feeding starving children or starting my own college fund.

In the end, though, facing a teary, blubbering child and store clerks rolling their eyes at a scene they’d witnessed more times than they could remember, she relented, and the elation I felt on the way home, tearing open the packaging like a starving man might rip through a sandwich wrapper, gave way three days later to the wish that I had some money for a new toy, a better toy. Something that would kick these twin Spider-Men’s ass.

When my brother, Matt, grew to be the age where he could start wanting things, I thought that together we might be unstoppable. The combined power of our desire to buy would overwhelm our mother’s defenses and render her powerless against us. Much to my surprise and dismay, I discovered that my brother was, in fact, a saver, the equivalent of a safety deposit box guarding its money, while I was a broken automated teller machine belching out dollar bills.

Long before he was able to get a job my brother would stash away his weekly allowances and the random, generous spurts of income our grandmother would grant us. Surely my parents, my mother in particular, thought this was spectacular. Finally! she must have thought, sighing as if heaving a heavy burden from her shoulders. Gruesome fears of taking me into a toy store gave way to dreams of Matt someday becoming an investor, of playing the stock market twenty or thirty years down the road from the stashes of dollars and change he kept beneath his bed or in his closet. “That’s good,” I would hear her coo when Matt told her about wanting to save up to buy something big. “Or I’ll just keep it,” he would sometimes say, “for later.” And I would watch as my mother melted.

To this day, my brother has an uncanny ability to keep himself from splurging, whereas I will find myself willingly setting down a much-needed tube of toothpaste in favor of a set of collectible Japanese Domo-kun figurines or a rhyming dictionary for when I one day pick up writing poetry. I can say, though it shames me, that I have gone without deodorant for the sake of a DVD box set.

There would be times, growing up, when I would look at Matt and wonder why he was saving up. Was it for the latest game console? No, he’d gotten that for Christmas. Was it a new TV? No, the one he had was fine. Was it some upcoming financial disaster I knew nothing about? Maybe, though it seemed both unlikely and unsettling that no one would have told me. Not knowing drove me insane, and so I began plotting ways to beat him at his own game.

In my college years I discovered the trojan horse of credit cards. It was nice being approved with my virgin credit ratings for what seemed like an instant surplus, a savings without the pesky detail of having to deprive myself. Three years later, under a mountain of debt and with nothing much to show for it aside from a pair of stonewashed Ralph Lauren jeans and a cozy country-style bedspread, I watched as my brother used cash to buy his own computer. Then, later, his new twenty-six inch flat-screen TV arrived, a nice addition to a bedroom already accented with video game systems bearing brands like Microsoft and Sony. As month by month I chipped away at the bills coming to our house like letters from an obsessive fan, I grew to envy him and the seeming ease with which he had it all.

When he was away at work or school, I would ransack his room, overturning his mattress and rifling through his desk drawers, looking like a madman for his cache of wealth.

It has to be here, I thought. Where is he keeping all of it?

I didn’t know what I would do if I found anything, though I was fairly certain I just wanted to see his money, to find out if he really was saving or if it was through some kind of magic that he was able to get all of this stuff. But, after what felt like hours of searching, I found nothing. In my mind I saw his wallet, then, stuffed beyond its capacity, his back pocket bulging like a tumor. Of course he would keep it on him. Angry and bitter, I returned to my room to tally up how many payments I had left before my seldom-used stereo system and the notebook computer with the failing keys were paid off. The answer was months, and I wondered how many other things my brother would be able to buy before I was able to scrape up enough dough just to put my car through a much-needed oil change.

By the time I was free from my debts, my brother was swimming in money, spending sixty dollars a pop on video games and, a few towns over, singlehandedly keeping a small paintball gun shop in business, while my car stubbornly refused to start on most days and I was forced to take out a loan to get a new one.

On the way home from the dealership, the weight of my financial responsibilities just starting to sink in, I rode with my father in silence. We had exhausted talk of the new car’s details — gas mileage, style, its little features — and now we concentrated on our respective roles: my father focusing on the road, and me thinking, How the hell am I going to pay for this? I might be able to turn tricks downtown if I were just a little more in shape, I considered, watching a string of fast food restaurants pass by. My stomach rumbled, but I told myself the hunger wasn’t there. Besides, the sooner I was out of the car, any car, the better.

At home, back in my room, I sat surrounded by the things that were finally, truly mine. I listened to the sound of my brother playing his video games, and as the sound of explosions rattled my walls, I took out a piece of notebook paper and jotted down the amount of the loan. Making note of my income felt like admitting I had some terrible illness; it left me feeling hopeless and, worse, poor.

Sitting there, portioning away paychecks I’d not yet received, I had to consider my ways: the gratuitous spending, the petty need to compete, and the consuming jealousy blinding me to everything I did have. I pushed back from my desk and looked around. Could this be enough? I wondered. And I told myself it was. If my bank account was any indicator, it would have to be.

A (Not) Ghost Story

The more enlightened our houses are, the more their walls ooze ghosts—ITALO CALVINO

In between graduating from High School and graduating from college I worked the graveyard shift. I did this for two and a half years—eleven o’clock at night to seven o’clock in the morning, five days a week. Though I frequently griped about it, I actually sought this schedule out. The reason being is: at night there is simply nothing going on and you don’t have to deal with people.

Working an overnight shift as a security guard in the lonely streets of downtown Kansas City was both horrific and wondrous. The big, vacant office buildings and rusty industrial complexes seemed ripped from Hollywood horror flicks—and yet the closest thing I have to a ghost story from this period of my life happened one morning after I’d gotten off work.

When the sun came up, I’d go home, say goodbye to my family as they left for work—eat a quick bite and then go to bed until later that afternoon. Then I’d get up and go back to work or I’d go to night school, depending on what day of the week it was.

My one “ghost story” occurred after a particularly rousing after-shift meal of microwaveable mini-cheese burgers (with spicy Chipotle mayo). Upon finishing my greasy breakfast, I decided to take a leak and hit the sack. Instead of pissing downstairs in the basement, where my bedroom/bathroom was, I decided to stagger upstairs and use the houses “common” bathroom shared by all.

Hanging over the toilet was a little wooden shelf/cabinet-thingy. It was here that my sisters kept their girly make-up and a variety of gaudy plastic hair clasps. Also, sitting on one of the shelves was a candle in a frosted glass jar and one of those special “long barrel” lighters. As I stood there peeing into the bowl, the lower shelf was about at eye level.

Now, after being up all night one does get a little “punch drunk,” and sometimes a person in this loopy condition will do or say things that even they themselves cannot fully explain. I didn’t set out to commit a mysterious act, or cause any trouble. It wasn’t a mischievous scheme that I’d concocted that night while I stared blankly up at the square metal roof of the security booth that I lived in at the edge of the empty parking lot that I guarded. There was no malice or forethought involved—all I did, I did because I was trying not to fall asleep while taking a piss.

What I did: I reached out with my free hand and picked up the lighter. I flicked the flame on a few times, and then I lit the candle. Without a second thought I zipped up and headed downstairs where my bed laying waiting.



Nine hours later I woke up and found my house embroiled in controversy.

My mother and my father were having a heated exchange. Though I was still groggy, I was able to make out that one of my sisters had done something bad. At least, that’s what my Mom thought.

“I don’t know which one of them did it,” she told my Dad—who was leaning against the counter with a look that told me he was patiently waiting for her to finish ranting.

“But one of those girls did it, and I’m going to figure it out…”

When she was done, my father calmly told her who he suspected had perpetrated the mysterious ill-deed: “I think it was the ghost.”

Sitting down at the dinner table, I prepared myself for the fireworks. My parents were on opposite ends when it came to our house’s “ghost.” Every since we’d moved, my Dad had harbored suspicion that whenever anything went missing it was “taken” by a mischievous spiritual entity that craved familial discord. All sorts of things went missing—shoes, keys, important documents, and things that one rarely used on a daily basis but would need at odd/unexpected moments. Of course, the reason we could never find these things was twofold:

1. My sisters and I were not big on putting things away exactly as we’d found them.

And

2. My father, a compulsive-cleaner, would often scoop things up and put them away without really heeding what went where.

My mother, a realist not prone to the same flights of fancy as my father, wasn’t convinced that our house was haunted. As I sat there, listening to them bicker, I became curious as to what had happened. My sister Amber showed up and loudly proclaimed her innocence in a way that suggested she’d done so many, many times that day.

“Ugh, I didn’t DO IT!”

“Do what?” I asked impishly, glad for once that I wasn’t the one that had caused any trouble.

“Well,” my mother said with a shrug, “maybe it was Lindsey?”

Lindsey? This was too good!

Lindsey, my younger sister, never did anything that got my parents so riled up (to this day, I’ve never heard her swear—even though I’ve offered her a LITERAL cash bribe to say “ass” or “shit”). I was literally bursting to find out what she’d done, but I decided to play it cool. Sometimes when my Mom or Dad noticed how excited I was when one of my sisters got in trouble, they would shift some of their anger my way.

I wasn’t keen on catching any of this heat—so I waited. Finally, when I could stand it no longer, I once again asked what had happened.

“When I got home this afternoon I found a candle burning in the hallway bathroom,” my mother told me.

“I’m telling you,” my Dad said. “It was the ghost…”

My heart skipped a beat. Wait a minute…candle? Hadn’t I lit the candle this morning, when I was taking a leak? At first, I nearly confessed to the crime, and then I thought about it. Leaving an open flame burning while I slept downstairs wasn’t just dangerous, it was downright stupid. Admitting that I’d lit a candle, and then passed out from exhaustion was like saying “I’m a total idiot.”

Besides, for some reason I wasn’t even being considered a suspect—which meant that all I had to do was keep my mouth shut and I’d get away scot-free! On top of that, the sheer amount of vitriol being bandied about by all parties—both the accused and the accusers—was downright frightening. More so than any spook or specter could ever hope to be!

I decided to admit nothing.

When asked if I knew anything about the mysterious candle, and rather than lie, I gave a non-committal shrug. My baby sister came inside from playing for the night and whined that she too was innocent.

My mother later confided in me that she thought it was her anyway, and that she was angry that Lindsey had “fibbed.” Hearing this made my insides churn and provided me with an interesting mix of guilt and indigestion, yet I kept my silence. When I’d awoke that evening I entered a strange, new world where my parents household was split, divided like in the Civil War—between those who thought a ghost had magically lit a candle…and those who were pretty sure it was Lindsey.

Or maybe Amber…Amber might had done it, too.

I waited a for a few years to pass, and for the controversy to subside before confessing that I had, in fact, left the candle burning. The first person I told was Amber, my closest confidant. I expected her to laugh or shrug it off like it was no big deal.

Instead she twisted her face into a mask of angered-shock.

“Nu-uh! It was you?” she shrieked. “I’m telling Mom…”

My confession did more than get my sisters off the hook, however—it also killed my father’s greatest proof that a ghost really was pestering our household. Luckily for me, the statute of limitations on impersonating the undead is only six months...

Singing Lessons

It was in the fifth grade that I became a singer. Everything started when I was chosen to perform at the annual Brighton Elementary Christmas Pageant, a decision that filled me with excitement but which, I later realized, should have been terror. I’d never sang publicly before but the notion of all that attention was too good to resist. I liked feeling special, and at eight years old I didn’t have many other options beside, say, learning the provinces of China for an appearance on the Tonight Show. Our school music teacher, Mrs. Alexander, picked me seemingly at random from the twenty or so children in her class, and I was to work with her after school to prepare. I have no idea how she settled on me, as I’m sure there must have been better singers there; perhaps it was because she felt sorry for the round child sitting at the back of the class, belting out songs from Mary Poppins as if his life depended on it.

Mrs. Alexander was a short, thin woman wrinkled and dry from sun exposure and cigarettes, with skin that bordered more or less on the likeness of beef jerky. As I would stand there before her, inside a building that felt abandoned in its silence, I could smell the tobacco clinging to her as if she had been sneaking drags in between classes. During our sessions together, she would sit at an aging upright piano the color of lacquered almonds and I would stand a few feet from her, at a music stand displaying the lyrics to “Silent Night.” My shyness and the pressure to do well made my voice come out raspy and faint, as if I were singing through a tube. Finally in November, just as the last of the leaves were falling away from the trees outside her window, she sighed and stood up from the piano to put her hand on my chest.

If being touched by a teacher is awkward, more disconcerting still is when one caresses you with a hand that smells of Marlboros and looks vaguely like a preserved monkey’s paw.

I stiffened up, suddenly unable to breathe.

Mrs. Alexander, with her scratchy voice, said, “You’re singing from up here.” Her hand traveled from my chest downward, and in the few seconds it took for her hand to reach its destination, my mind stopped working. I had flashes of talks my parents had given me about strangers and how you should scream if someone touched you somewhere uncomfortable. Mrs. Alexander wasn’t a stranger, but this was odd enough. Before I could yell for help though, she stopped at my stomach, pressing her fingers into my belly. “You need to be singing from down here,” she said, pushing a little harder as if to punctuate her advice. That, or threaten me of her growing impatience and that I needed to sing, and sing well.

A month later, after our practices had ended and the big day arrived, my parents brought my three-year-old brother and me to the high school where my classmates and I would perform. My memories of the place make it seem impossibly busy, the gym booming with adult voices as the cafeteria filled with children clamoring over each other as teachers tried to settle them down. We were packed like animals before a traveling circus show, and as my dad took my brother to find seats, my mother helped me get ready, straightening my clip-on tie and running a lint roller over the white button-down shirt she’d insisted I wear.

I felt nervous, probably more so because of the other kids, and had I known then about drugs and the wonderful skills they possess, I might’ve asked my mother for something to settle my nerves. One by one, each class left the room, and as the cafeteria grew quieter my fear began to mount. Finally, my class was called, and everyone but me filed out to perform a three- or four-minute song and dance number about the joys of Christmas — namely family and friends, though most of us kids felt all the worthwhile parts were wrapped in decorative paper and accented with shiny bows. My solo would be the second part of the fifth grade performance, and much to my dismay, my mother left me there to go join my father and brother. She wished me luck, told me she loved me, and then, smiling, abandoned me.

In the minutes between watching my friends exit the room and my own call to action, I wondered if I might be able to throw up on command. I thought that maybe if I were sick, my portion of the evening would be canceled and things would simply move along without me. But no matter how much I thought about it, or how much I wished for something to interrupt the show, nothing came up. I reconsidered the singular desire for attention I’d had back at the beginning, when the idea of singing before an audience was a mere glimmer, a pesky detail to be addressed later. How, I wondered, could I have been so foolish? But before I could answer, it was time to go.

The gym, I remember, was an overwhelming sight for an eight-year-old. Rows upon rows upon rows of parents ran down both sides of the room, and to me it seemed like thousands of adults were there, though it must’ve only been somewhere in the ballpark of eight hundred. Still, that’s pretty intimidating, especially when you’ve just mastered basic multiplication and your knowledge of history goes back about four summers. I drifted out to my spot at the center of the room, taking my place before the music stand. The lyrics I had known so well abandoned me there, and as I stood looking down at the sheets of lyrics so did my ability to read. As she took her seat at the piano next to me, Mrs. Alexander flashed me a smile that in my anxiety read, simply, Don’t fuck this up.

The opening notes of “Silent Night” lifted into the air as the voices of the parents and their elf- and reindeer-dressed children fell quiet. I started to sing, then, but to my surprise things went smoothly. By the end of the song, I had forgotten about where I was, the music having taken over me. The rise of applause drew me back, and I remembered being afraid as if it were something from long ago. I searched the bleachers for my parents, but the faces were distant and blurred together like a watercolor painting dropped in a puddle.

I took my seat next to my class so that I could enjoy the rest of the show, but I didn’t pay much attention to what was going on. Maybe singing wasn’t for me, I considered. I couldn’t stop thinking about all I’d gone through to perform that single song: the jangled nerves, the stench of cigarettes in a grade school classroom, the presence of a teacher’s leathery hand upon my chest. All things that, if told in the right way to the right people, might bring me all the attention I could ever hope for.

A Lesson In Hate: The California Pizza Kitchen Incident

Growing up white, and in the suburbs, one tends to miss out on a few things. Like racism and discrimination. In school you learn about Jim Crow and the Civil Rights movement of the 1950’s and 1960’s, but these topics are presented in a “Long Time Ago, In a Galaxy Far, Far Away…” type narrative that misleads the young and impressionable into thinking that ethnic and religious groups now blend seamlessly together.

I think there were four of five black kids in my High School class. I don’t know the exact figures, but it was abysmally low. So much for desegregation. Once I started working and went off to college I met all sorts of people (read: “Not Whitey”). People with diverse backgrounds that all told me the same thing—shit in this country hasn’t changed very much since Dr. King first had his famous “dream.”

As a young person (who looks a bit like a drug mule), I have faced some…shall we say “extra scrutiny” in shopping malls and at the airport. But nothing like some of the stories I’ve been told by friends not lucky enough to be born “white.” Recently I was chatting with a guy who told me about how he caught a prospective employer throwing away his application TWO SECONDS AFTER HE TURNED IT IN.

What happened was, he turned it to a secretary then left—on his way to his car he thought of something he wanted to add to application. So he goes inside and asks for his application back. The lady says she can’t find it, which is strange because he just gave it to her. So he goes and sits down in the lobby, and while he nervously staring at his shoes—he sees his application TORN IN HALF sitting atop the secretary’s trashcan.

If this happened to me I’d think “Gee, they must really not like the looks of me,” it’s different when you’re black. Whereas I would have gotten really pissed, this guy just shrugged and took it in stride—he said he was “used to it.” To me that’s the worst part of the story. Whereas I would have been filled with rage, this poor guy just shrugged and took it in stride—because it was normal for him.

I think that blatant sort of discrimination/racism is tough to fight—but what’s tougher is the more passive forms of hate. There is application-ripping, bed-sheet-wearing hate…but there is also a more nefarious, subtle bit of hate. Hate/hate-speech is ingrained in American life and can sometimes slip past even the most sensitive liberal-hippies.

In High School the “cool” way to put a person, idea, or thing down was to call it “gay.” It got to the point where even I was saying it. Without even thinking about it I would proclaim my hatred for Geometry by saying, “Geometry is gay.”

No. Geometry is fucking difficult, boring, and utterly useless to me…but it’s not going around sleeping with like-sexed schools of math. Does that even make any sense? No, no it does not. You can’t even try to use reason on the sentence “Geometry is gay.” It defies reason.

So I’ve lived a charmed life being the same color as a loaf of Wonder Bread. But as I grew older and began mixing with other types of people I witnessed a few instances of discrimination.

I speak of course about the infamous “California Pizza Kitchen Incident.”

My wife Leah is white like me, but unlike me she’s Jewish. Before meeting her, all I knew about Jews I gleaned from Jerry Seinfeld and SHINDLER’S LIST. The only Jewish person I’d ever really met was this mousy-girl that sat adjacent to me in a community college composition class. Leah being Jewish didn’t and does not bother me. But it has opened up my eyes to a few things…

“The California Pizza Kitchen Incident”

One time, Leah and I went to California Pizza Kitchen—which by the way is a fucking awful pizza place. I don’t want to totally derail myself here, but I feel like I need to let the world know that though his story occurred at California Pizza Kitchen, I think it’s terrible and I don’t normally eat there.

Interlude: California Pizza Kitchen Sucks

My reasoning is this: Pizza is an eastern thing. Chicago. New York. Those places are “back East,” where Pizza SHOULD come from. The only way that California is “back East” is if you somehow circumnavigate the globe, so that by going East you end up going West…

Look, the Earth is round. I wish I could explain all that better…but I fucking flunked geometry (twice) so I have only a rudimentary understanding of globes and such. Anyway, California isn’t known for FANTASTIC piazza.

California Pizza Kitchen also sucks because it’s one of those restaurants that try to take a “low-brow” or “everyman” food item and make it “high-brow” and a “pinkies-out” kind of dinning experience. Look, when I eat pizza, I want either an animatronic bear (singing about how good the pizza is) OR I want paper napkins. CPK has neither of these things—therefore it sucks.

End of Interlude

So Leah drags me to this place, and everything is going as good as it can go (in a pizza place with no singing bear or paper napkins), when we finish our meal and we get the check. Like most young people, Leah pays with a debit card. Our waiter, a young twenty-something who looks like he stepped out of an Abercrombie & Fitch catalogue (not that I look at those), has been polite and done a decent enough job waiting on us.

After he runs Leah’s debit card he gives her that little leather booklet-thing they give you in fancy (“pinkies-out”) restaurants that holds the credit slip. She opens it and asks for a pen (so she can finish paying).

Our waiter reaches into his kangaroo apron/pouch and pulls out a pen and hands it to her says (of the pen):

“Sure, here you go…just don’t Jew it.”

Then he turns and walks away.

Leah looks at me and I look at Leah. A few seconds tick by, then we both kinda ask each other at the same time—“Did he just say what I think he just said?”

As a gentile, I didn’t even fucking understand what that was supposed to me. My immediate reaction wasn’t so much “I want to punch this guy’s lights out,” so much as ask him what he hell he meant by that. Was he referring to her tipping?

Leah didn’t think so; she thought he meant stealing his pen.

Not used to these hurtful/embarrassing situations, I looked to Leah for what to do. She decided to leave a nasty note on the receipt. What else could we do? It wasn’t like we were going to walk up to they guy and ask what he meant by his anti-Semitic slur. I mean, I couldn’t ask a question like that. Not without tearing out his throat with my bare hands.

I’m just not built that way.

So we left a note (and I’m sure Leah tipped him, though it was a really small tip).

End of "The California Pizza Kitchen Incident"

The weird part was, a few days (weeks?) later this douche-bag contacted Leah on Facebook and tried to apologize (which tells me he probably didn’t mean anything by it). He tried to pass his comments off as a misunderstanding, and that he just didn’t want her to steal his pen.

This guy went to Fontbonne University (a school out here in St. Louis) and his Facebook page made me wish I had punched him. Of course he had SHINDLER’S LIST down as one of his favorite movies…which Leah thinks he added to appear like less of a d-bag.

What’s messed up is, this guy might have just been honestly misheard by Leah and myself. Maybe he didn’t say “Jew” maybe he said something else. Maybe this guy truly does LOVE JEWS and was just using “jew” in a pejorative fashion in the same way that I used to use “gay” in High School.

The sad part is, we just don’t know.

We all have these negative attitudes and prejudices inside us—and I think one of the lasting legacy’s of hate is that people see it sometimes when it might not actually be there.