Trans/plant/portation

Crazy right-wingers have to ask themselves: bang the birther drum or change rules to let guvenator run for prez. decisions, decisions.

Clearly, Arizona and Virginia are in a thumb-wrestling match for Biggest Assclown State.

Sometimes I just have to throw up my hands and ask why. Today’s pats of butter: http://wp.me/pQHmS-DE

@gwenners but he was an episcopalian minister! they’re out of their gourd to call him evil.

Sherman Alexie makes a joke about pooping his pants and everyone laughs. I make a joke and get called Mr. TMI. Damn you, Sherman Alexie!

cheesy grits, wilted spinach with garlic, and pan-seared pork chops; I’d say we’re over the stomach flu around here.

@snarkysmachine that’s why I own a Cup-a-cake. www.cupacake.com/

@snarkysmachine mmm, cupcakes.

damn, if Sandra Bullock can hide a black baby adoption for 4 months, maybe they need her in Wash, DC, to tell them how to kill leaks.

I am a stickler for cleanliness in food preparation. I actively think about cross-contamination, heating temperatures and holding temperatures, the timing of separate dishes, and the kinds of food that go well in one’s stomach and not just with one’s taste buds. I dedicate myself to these tiny causes as if I were wielding a neon green small plastic fork, usually only suitable for battles with tasteless green olives before they are drowned in a sea of gin and tonic. My persistence comes not because I was scared into it by countless local news broadcasts, but because I have intersected salmonella before, and have vowed to avoid it from here on out if at all possible. And I certainly, most definitely, to the nth degree do not want to unleash that kind of hell onto anyone else.

Especially my wife.

To say I was upset that she was ill would be an understatement, but whatever it was, her emotions regarding her sudden lack of stomach control were probably more intense.

We presumed something had gone off the rails with regard to the chicken I’d made Friday night. I was just fine and she was the keeling over canary in the mine. Perhaps the bacteria party had only made a scene on one chicken breast and not the other.

Saturday and Sunday she struggled through, mostly sleeping, and me mostly writing downstairs, venturing out to the supermarket a couple of times for electrolyte-rich liquids. By Sunday evening she was mostly repaired.

I was excited to start my Census training the next day, on Monday. Well, excited might be a bit of an overstatement. I was happy to get back to work, and interested in knowing where they’d send me and what my door-knocking experience would be like. I had a little stack of items the recruiter had said I’d need, a little bundle of my personal identifying information or PII as the government calls it. The government has never met an acronym it didn’t like. TGHNMAAIDL. Well, maybe that one.

Monday morning, I felt oddly sluggish, and not entirely myself. Having no direct recall of being anyone else, I couldn’t name who else I felt like, so I just took the 70 percent that was me and sat up. This turned out to be a bad idea. I bolted to the bathroom and threw up the little that was in my stomach after 8 hours of sleep. While this might seem fortunate—generally, people don’t like the experience of vomiting, after all—what it really meant was that the material that had moved on past my stomach was just looking for the next nearest exit, which as anyone who’s ever flown a plane knows, may be behind you.

I was supposed to report to my swearing in at 9:00. It was 7:50. This was not good.

I showered briefly, cursing my alimentary canal for the Judas it was, and I crept back into bed for I don’t know what reason. Susanne pet my head.

And then she acknowledged that perhaps I hadn’t made her sick. I groaned in response.

I figured if I didn’t eat anything and didn’t drink anything, I could make it through the so-called “administration day.” I’d have to swear to protect the Constitution, which I’ve done before and having seen a good number of inaugurations, am pretty sure how it goes. I’d get fingerprinted, and fill out lots of paperwork.

Question: How long could that take?

Answer: Long enough to have to run to the men’s room and heave a few times.

The Census staff were nice enough, but the problem was that these trainings—even for the rote paperwork chicken scratching—are designed for inattentive or otherwise unfocused people. Every direction is read three times, using slightly different words. One would think this would be a helpful device, but it’s not, because those inattentive and otherwise unfocused people, or IOUPs, as they’re known in this blog, get all caught up on those differences.

“Wait a minute,” said one young fellow looking at the tax withholding form, “how do I know if I’m exempt from taxes?”

“Well, let me read you the definition,” said the crew chief. Because most people are exempt due to the fact that they’re retired and on Social Security, the chief knew this guy didn’t fit the criteria already, but he read it anyway.

And still, my young friend did not understand. Now he was getting confused between excluded from taxpaying and withholding allowances, like for head of household or the Duggans’ 20 dependents.

Five minutes later the crew chief was back on track and I had forged ahead with my paperwork, my hands neatly folded in front of me.

I held myself back from taking hold of any of the bottles of water in the room. Oh, water, I thought. I love you so much. You are a part of me. I am sorry for our recent misfortune. I don’t want to be like those leaky-from-the-mouth water people on that recent episode of Doctor Who. I just want to drink you. I am Alice in wonderland, okay?

I made it through the fingerprinting and had finished all but one of my forms and saw, to my horror, that I had been there for two and a half hours. I asked the assistant crew chief how much longer we’d be today.

“Oh, we’ll go to 4 or 4:30,” she said cheerily.

I stabbed my eyes out with my pencil. At least, I thought hard about doing that but realized it wouldn’t actual help me with anything. I really just wanted to drink some water. In my mind I saw water fountains, bursting faucets, twirling bottles of Evian. My stomach lurched and I felt unsteady and shaky. I hadn’t eaten or drunk in 16 hours.

“I’m sorry, I have to go,” I told the crew chief, who seemed to recognize that I was a cesspool of virus strands. I was Patient Zero.

He looked to see what else I had to complete and told me if I could bring it back in later today, I could come back for the start of training tomorrow. I nodded and thanked him.

The rest of my day was a feverish blur. I froze under a thick woolen blanket on the couch and slept, and Susanne sweetly delivered my signed papers to him. But Tuesday morning I was no better, the thermometer reading 100.6. I was now holding down liquid, but I’d lost 8 pounds, I guessed all in water.

I blew my opportunity to work for Census, although they’d said I could do another training in May. Given that we’re heading out of town at the end of May, it doesn’t seem worth it to me or my friend the government. Susanne summed it up for me in a way that made me laugh out loud in one duck honk:

“I feel like your blog is all about the stuff you’re about to do but that doesn’t somehow work out for you.”

Touche, darling. Touche.

This is cross-posted from an article I wrote for I Fry Mine in Butter, a terrific popular culture blog.

In thinking about the anti-immigrant it’s-okay-to-use-racial-profiling law that passed in Arizona last week, my mind flashed back to V, all the way back to 1983. Knowing that it’s only a matter of time before the Gestapo, I mean, the Visitors, come to take them away for being illegal, I mean, scientists, they ask their former landscaper, Sancho, to get them over the border. Though this storyline and plot moment is fraught with all kinds of stereotypes about Latinos, Jews, police, and the power dynamics between these, it’s still written from the point of view of the smuggler as hero. Of the Latino smuggler as hero, no less. I can wrack my brain (okay, I have wracked my brain, through a nasty course of stomach flu, in fact) and I cannot come up with another instance in the last 40 years in which a mainstream television show or movie depicted illegal immigration by Latinos in this way. (To see the clip, start watching about a minute into the segment below.)

I can, however, come up with dozens of positive depictions of other people fleeing across borders illegally and/or without proper documentation, including, but certainly not limited to:

The Sound of Music

Holocaust (American mini series, 1978)

The Terminal

In America

The Visitor

Gotcha

There are also films too numerous to count with positive depictions of legal Latino immigrants in the United States. So why the gap? Wasn’t the U.S. founded by . . . uh, wait a minute. I suppose the U.S. was invaded, after all, over a course of hundreds of years, mostly by Europeans. So perhaps it doesn’t bother us to cheer for people who are emigrates from say, Austria to Switzerland. We can identify with wanting to leave the Continent, is that it? Those countries are so small anyway, it’s like you could sneeze from one sovereign nation to another, so it’s okay if you know, you happen to be on one side of the border, because it’s so likely it would like, be a total accident. Sure. We can get behind that.

Many of these positive narratives spend quality time explaining the circumstances that drove the characters to seek refuge in another country without proper paperwork, in fact, they justify why documentation wasn’t possible under the circumstances. Hell, Clan of the Von Trapps don’t skirt across the Alps until the last 20 seconds of the movie, and that shit is 3 hours long. So, for fascist governments, real or pretend, fleeing is okay. Emphasis on fleeing, as in leaving. Neither the Von Trapps nor the scientists in V are entering the USA.

The Arizona law also fascinates me because we’ve just passed the 10th anniversary of the Elian Gonzalez fiasco, in which his mother and he set out for the US, leaving behind Cuba and his father. His mother died en route, his relatives in Miami laid claim to him, as he was, after all, fleeing a Communist nation we would accept him once he set foot on U.S. soil. He was 6 at the time. The legal battle that ensued, the taking of Elian by gunpoint from his quiet Florida bedroom, those were shocking images at the time. But we were happy to have him here, even though he didn’t have a stitch of paperwork on him. He was fleeing from forces that weren’t his own making. He was running to a better life.

I think perhaps that’s where we all get caught up. It’s this idea of a better life that is possible here, and not in say, Canada. Mind you, tons of people immigrate to Canada every  year, but we don’t pay that much heed. We’ve got the damn melting pot. Those Canucks, as they told us last Olympic Games, have the tapestry. Whatever. My point is, we’re not paying attention to the circumstances of immigrants—legal or otherwise—when we talk about neo-fascist laws like this one in Arizona. We’re only debating the effects of the law. Immigrants in this polarized, often reductive debate get reduced merely to some monolithic infiltrator: they’re coming here, they want something from us. Maybe we don’t have enough melting pot goodness to go around, and they are looking hungry for s’mores.

It doesn’t suit hegemonic ideas about what the U.S. stands for to say this immigrant is not equal to my grandparents who were immigrants, because every new wave and new region of immigrants has received its due course of stigma in this country. But culturally speaking, as narratives go, the idea that new bodies are in our midst who want our jobs gets a lot more air time, and with the fear that Latinos will be in majority in just the next 20 years, well, that gets some English-only speakers a bit nervous, perhaps. Here, of course, jobs are watered-down as well, not the focus of the conversation, because once you get into which jobs we’re talking about, the hate-mongering around undocumented workers makes no sense. Are we really afraid that there won’t be enough migrant farm worker jobs? Or other poorly paid, under-the-minimum-wage jobs?

Maybe we could use some more narratives, some more instances to humanize the humans who are here with us. It would have to be better than nothing. I’m not suggesting that art and narrative changes culture, but I think the time has passed where we can continue to frame immigration from Latin America as a wave of less-than people coming to take something that isn’t theirs, when that isn’t the case and when that wasn’t the criteria for our Founding Fathers.

I’ve written about the Census here and there, in part because the idea of really being able to count everyone in a country as big as this is next to impossible, and I’m extremely curious about the actual logistics involved in knocking on every single household’s door. I’ve worked with the Census before, though not in the enumerating capacity. It’s one thing to sit in a meeting in a run-down basement conference room on Census’ campus, the distant but distinct sound of water dripping through pipes like a kind of static behind the droning conversation about boring (but politically loaded) words like imputation, matching algorithms, and so on, the voices starting to sound like the tuba-speak of adults in the Peanuts comic. Wa waaah wa waht waaaaah waa.

The reality of walking around a neighborhood must be different, if only for the absence of GS-11 level and above staff. It’s just a temporary employee with a badge and a clipboard, and oh, reliable transportation. They are really insistent about the reliable transportation, having asked me, at this point, no fewer than five times if I have it. I would get a tattoo of my VIN on my forehead if I thought it would silence the question, but that’s no good over the phone.

So the Census has asked me to be an enumerator for them, meaning, walk around and knock on doors. I said okay, sure, I’ll take the $11.75 an hour, happy to have a job offer from anyone after 19 months of no real income. The $30 for doing the reading at the Roadshow last week was great because it was money from writing, but one dinner in downtown Walla Walla and I was back to having $5 in my wallet. (Still, it was great to take Susanne out to dinner again, I’ve missed that little grace.)

I reminded them about my amazing aluminum steed, so very reliable, and confirmed that I do not speak a lick of Spanish. If I were dropped out of a time machine—hot tub or otherwise—into 1984, the one thing I would change would be to sign up for Spanish, not French, classes. I mean, French is useful for reading Derrida and Lacan, and possibly for my citizenship test for Canada, should I some day apply, but wow, that’s about it in this lifetime.

Between my lack of Spanish and the Census’ map of the area’s initial response rates to the census form, I am betting I’ll be asked to go to Waitsburg, two towns east of Wallyworld. I don’t think I’ll be knocking on doors near the prison, but who knows?

Waitsburg is the cute town with the anti-abortion protesters, the very ones that I flipped off last winter for holding up pictures of completely inviable fetuses. They were not what I saw as an appropriate welcoming committee.

That said, I know I can be an impartial counter. I am cheery and I have nice penmanship. I may try to see if different facial hair styles has an effect on people’s response to me, because hey, you never know. Maybe they’ll cover this in training. I’ll find out tomorrow, when I show them my passport and press my fingers into their background checking machine. I suppose I’ll come up in the system, since I used to work for Social Security. It’ll be like deja vu, surely, only this time my background check and training will come on the other side of the country, in a Mormon-owned building. So sure, it’s just like the same thing as the west side of Baltimore. I could see the Wire from my window.

So this job, temporary though it may be, shall be interesting. More interesting than basement conference room, more interesting than watching yet another NCIS or SVU episode while I try to focus on writing a new story. Less interesting than writing a new story, but, and this is a big but, great fodder for an as-yet unthought idea for a new story. And I’m all about the new stories.

Waitsburg, here I come. I promise to keep my middle fingers to myself.

Walla Walla was a blur of activity this weekend, what with a memorial for the lovely Mary Hanna, who passed away last month and whose illness I wrote about a couple of times, the short-lived attempt to hunt wild turkeys, and a party on Friday night, which was the setting upon which I agreed to wake before dawn to watch someone shoot at birds. But Saturday night wasn’t the terminus of our weekend plans. Sunday brought with it the Tranny Roadshow, also previously mentioned in this blog.

I was happy to provide an interview to the local paper. Well, I was happy and not a little trepidatious. A lot trepidatious, but who’s measuring? Turns out that the article was pretty well done, even if the editor did miss a typo in the first paragraph.

I prepped food for an after-party event at our house, and wandered over to the venue for the sound check an hour before the start time. Meeting the lead organizer as I walked in, he told me that they’d just had the fastest sound check ever and they were done already, two minutes in. And now I wasn’t sure what to do with myself. Ooh, new transpeople. I should talk to them. And then I remembered.

My experience with a lot of transfolk is that when we get into large enough groups, it starts feeling like it’s and after school special of Who’s Too Cool for School? Everyone gets dressed in extremely hip ways—they’re wearing ironic clothing, like shirts with religious overtones, or they’re sporting working class wear, like gas attendant jumpsuits or trucker hats, or they’re Goth, or something that makes it very clear they are not here for a wine tour. The next aspect of WTCfS is that everyone knows each other but not you, so for me, I get stuck standing a little outside their conversation circle, trying to find an in or at least hear what they’re discussing, but this is difficult for all of the inside jokes that I have previously not been privy. The only other option here is not an attractive one: I can try to jump in and say something, but I risk either being completely ignored, which makes me feel like a braces-wearing, pimply 8th grader all over again (and puberty twice is really enough), or I may get the quick, “uh huh,” said with a condescending jerk of the head before their previous line of conversation resumes. There is a very low chance that they may find me charming enough to step aside seven inches so that I’m not stuck outside the circle like some uninvited electron.

Trust me, these things have happened to me. I had been so excited for them to come to little Walla Walla, and I figured it would be a show some people in town really needed to see, but looking at the troupe I was worried, like I’d been sitting down with the Union-Bulletin reporter. Why should they have my best interest at heart? I wasn’t a hip, urban transman from DC anymore. I was some guy with neckwear from a tiny city in the middle of nowhere.

Okay, way to make it be all about me, I told myself, thus ensuring it was all about me, at least for the time it took my dendrites to send that message across my synapses. Just relax. Ask how their trip has been so far.

We made a little small talk. Some of the performers introduced themselves. They seemed friendly enough, if not way, way cooler than me. I watched as people made their way into the room, finding seats and getting comfortable. I wasn’t nervous to read in the slightest, but I was aware that I’d been alotted 10–12 minutes. I didn’t want to read too fast, but I didn’t want to go over my time, either.

Two older ladies sat right in the front, smiling broadly. I’d said in the article that the show was reminiscent of old Vaudeville. Were they here thinking they’d get Benny Goodman and Laurel and Hardy? Oh, crap.

A man came in with his mother, who appeared to be in her 70s. He asked Susanne, the faculty adviser for the event, if he could get coffee and bring it in here. She said sure. He looked uncomfortable through the whole show, but his mom had a blast.

Then there was an older couple who looked like two hippies from back in the day, him still sporting a long ponytail of now-white hair, she in a flowing flowery blouse. Directly behind them was The Knitter, who I recognize now from bleeding heart liberal events I’ve attended all over North America. There is always a knitter, as if there’s an underground knitting community who scour the notices about local events so that at least one of them will be in attendance at each. Because we have to remember that knitting is important. Or something. I suppose I do admire someone who can watch the stage and not drop a stitch. That’s real multitasking.

Red Durkin, comedienne extraordinaire

The show began, with a comedienne, who made us all laugh, repeatedly, the whole time she was on stage, which is what is supposed to happen, so I gather. I’ve watched enough unfunny comics to wonder why the industry isn’t afraid we consumers will sue them for false advertising. But she was the real deal.

Second performer picked up a guitar and sang, self-created songs except for one Sarah Harmer cover, which he did well.

My turn. The “local performer.” I approached the stage, which uh, didn’t have a step, even though it was at least 26 inches off the floor. I was certain I would wipe out before I’d even made it up there.

I was not graceful, but I made it. Ha! I was triumphant. My knees were intact, sturdy, even. I remembered I was supposed to read something. Good thing it was in my hand.

“This is a story about Becky and Bertha,” I said, “who were the names of my breasts when I still had breasts, that is.”

And we were off to the races. I got a lot of laughs and even a guffaw or two. I might have sped up toward the end a little, still worrying about my time limit, as if Jim Lehrer were there to call time.

The rest of the show was fun, with another musician—she broke out a ukelele—a juggler, a couple of spoken word performers. The audience gave us more applause, and suddenly, we were done, sans big bows from the troupe, which I thought was a little unorthodox. But what about this wasn’t orthodox?

I dashed home while Susanne helped them pack up their things, as it was my job to set out the spread for the party. They weren’t ready for our hospitality, but they were happy for it, and we met up with a few students who had brought them to campus. The conversation was great, we focused on what we had in common, and I worried no longer that I didn’t fit in. It was a long, long breath of fresh air. And it made me want to make Walla Walla a more diverse place.

Over on I Fry Mine in Butter, I ponder the strangulation of journalism:

What does it mean if cost-cutting winds up costing us quality reporting? If all we see are shots of Paris Hilton crying on her way to jail, reports about some celebrity’s rehab attempt, the fear-mongering that Mexican citizens are infiltrating our country? If swine flu, volcanic ash, doomsday earthquakes, political scandals, global warming, health care socialism, and rogue uranium crowd out the airwaves and news Web sites? What are we not hearing?

Archie’s comic, still in existence, features its first gay character:

I know some of you fellow Archie aficionados might be saying, “But Richard, isn’t Jughead kind of gay too?” And yes, you’d be right. Though the comics do sort of vacillate between a Forsyth P. Jones who is a rabid misogynist and a Jughead who is just sort of shy around girls, the Jughead Is Gay read is a respected one in certain Archie circles. But this Kevin character is the real deal. Like an actual homosexual who says it out loud.

Tasha Fierce’s tour de force about the dearth of black plus size models in the fashion industry:

A popular (white) misconception is that fat is more acceptable in the black community. This is patently untrue. Hip-hop culture is often pointed to when one is making this argument. If you watch any hip-hop music videos at all, it’s clear to see that the fat on the women featured is in specific places. Booty, hips, tits. As the inimitable Sir Mix-A-Lot stated, “When a girl walks in with an itty-bitty waist and a round thing [booty] in your face, you get sprung.” (emphasis supplied)

The Washington Post looks at who’s been behind the hilarious interviews with the teabaggers:

A quick look at the rest of New Left Media’s videos produces a trove of similar material — open-ended questions, attempts to drill down into activists’ thinking, and inclusion of answers that are … less than eloquent. Sometimes, the subjects acquit themselves well and give answers that simply don’t satisfy liberals. Other times, they’re made to look like fools.

Also, coming up soon, like later this week or early next week:

• Another interview with local restaurant owners in Walla Walla
• A recap of the very amusing Tranny Roadshow
• The next installment of Aliens on Parade
• Any and all chuckles from my contact with those intrepid literary agents

As Martha Stewart would say, good things!

This is cross-posted over at I Fry Mine in Butter.

Once upon a time, I balked at the prices of toiletries marketed to women. Just the sticker shock from the tampons alone! What the hell? Little cardboard or plastic tubes of fabric cost how much? I did a quick calculation: a woman in the US with an average number of total monthly cycles could expect to shell out something around $40,000 to $50,000 in her lifetime for these damn things, and that’s not adjusted for inflation. It’s not as bad as the cost of a carton of cigarettes, so good thing I wasn’t shoving those into my own private Idaho. But where was my tax write off? If this shit happened to men, they’d have a tax shelter for it, I figured.

Everything else related to my personal hygiene was overpriced, too. This would have been somewhat more tolerable if the products themselves had decent quality. Not even great quality, just decent, as in don’t take a half-inch strip of my skin as a token of my esteem when I’m just trying to shave my legs. I let the stubble get longer and longer between shaves because I just wanted to avoid the pain of my shaving gel mixing with my fresh-oozing bloodstream. Ankles, it would seem, are not designed for flat, sharp pieces of metal to be dragged directly over them.

Nair was even worse. I might as well have poured gasoline on my legs and lit them on fire—the torured sinuses would have been the same, at least.

Why was I doing this? It didn’t make any sense. Except I saw how other girls in school were ridiculed for not being as feminine as possible, and I bought all the messages that were sent my way: to be beautiful, one must be hairless, wear makeup, be submissive, pretend to be dumber than the men one encounters. I wanted to be liked, and so I sold my soul to the culture for the price of my allowance.

Finally, 15 years and one sex change later I have no more relationship with women-marketed products. Bam, just like that. Okay, not really. And it’s not really full circle, but I’ve come around enough that I need to deal with shaving again, this time on my face. Men aren’t expected to rid themselves of hair anywhere else, right? Right?

Something shifted in that decade and a half. Gillette, Philips Norelco, and friends decided to go after the male consumer. But to do this they had to motivate men into buying increasingly expensive products where before a $2 can of Barbasol and a straight razor—totally reusable—would do the trick. They couldn’t have men thinking these new products would adversely impact their machismo, of course, because 1.) they really like traditional masculinity just as it is, and 2.) gay men are like beach front condos, they sell themselves. Or rather, gay men will buy all kinds of cosmetic products because they already have a solid interest in grooming, it’s like, totally part of the stereotype, all right? Geez!

So what was poor, lonely Philips Norelco going to do to shift the frame enough that men would show up at their product party? They’re going to come up with the Bodygroom. Sounds like a helpful friend, right? Or a protector! Hey, men can be groomed too, and still be manly masculine men. It’s brilliant. In fact, if we posit them as better than the men we used to say were perfectly fine being unkempt sweat hogs, it’ll be even more brilliant. It’s not that it’s manly enough to shave off or shave down your man hair, it’s that it’s super manly! Go you, super man!

All you need is the Bodygroom. “With a hair-free back, well groomed shoulders, and an extra optical inch on my *bleep*, well, let’s just say life has gotten pretty darn cozy.” Or so says the actor in a white robe similar to the one my mother stole in 1998 from The Four Seasons in New York.

So shaving makes one’s junk look bigger? That’s the selling point. I recognize that the messaging is slightly tongue in cheek [sic], but it seems perfectly fine playing to mainstream masculinity even as it opens up a little more room in the concept, just so it can sell more products.

I’m not just harping on Philips Norelco—there is now a whole slew of products out there for men’s grooming since the Bodygroom came on the market a few years ago. And they all sell the idea that men will be more sexually appealing and don’t have to lose an inch [sic again] of their egos in the process or take on the metrosexual label. Dove, Aveda, Nivea, and other companies that have traditionally marketed to women now have products, all clearly and loudly labeled for men. And there are a whole host of products made for men that don’t use a brand name ever associated with women, that sound just like a guy’s best friend, like Jack Black, Molton Brown, and John Allen. The Molton Brown face scrub (yes, facial scrub) sells for $30.

Razors keep adding blades in some bizarro world’s version of the grooming arms race. I remain content with my junior varsity three-bladed razor, and it still costs me $25 for a box of four razors. If I were to add up all of the prices I would have to procure just to shave my face with these high-end things, it looks like this:

Gillette Quattro razor: $30

True Gentleman pre-shave oil: $18

Jack Black shaving cream: $20

Nivea for Men after-shave lotion: $15

Total: $83

Of course Barbasol and disposable razors are still available, and you could get them both for about $10. But they’re not in this marketing push. If I want “the best shave,” “the closest shave,” and more importantly, the chicks (even though I’m married I’m supposed to want chicks, right?), I need to pay to play. And God forbid I grow shoulder hair because I’ll need to plunk down $70 for the Bodygroom. Friendship does not come cheap.

When I was hoping hegemonic masculinity would change, it wasn’t like this. And it sure wasn’t for shaving. I suppose I could go all Mountain Man and grow a beard.

And women will still have to pay way more for feminine hygiene products. Nothing like a captive audience.

Tiffany Cain and David Christensen represent a new generation of restaurant owners in Walla Walla. I’ve been curious about the people behind the newer eateries in downtown, so I decided to ask a few of them to give interviews about their lives as business owners, gourmands, and as part of a revitalized, local food community here. Taking over the Colville Street Patisserie in 2008, Cain and Christensen quietly began updating the items in the shop, giving the windows a new look, and making the place their own. David previously was the pastry chef at Whitehouse Crawford and Tiffany was the owner of The Weinhard Cafe east of town, in Dayton. I sat down with them last week to talk about their adventures in cooking, or more precisely, baking. French style.

EM: Talk about how you found your way into the kitchen.

DC: I started cooking just to feed myself. I’ve had a lot of fast food jobs, since I was 14. Diners, French fry stands, other places. Then I moved to Walla Walla. Cooking was something I turned out to enjoy. My mom cooked a lot when we were kids. It was all pretty good. She definitely made an effort to teach each of us how to do it.

TC: It was really a calculated move for me. I don’t like offices. I first started out baking. My mom was really strict with our diets, so I really was excited about making desserts! So that’s how I learned to cook. I just really love being around food.

EM: Tell us the difference between a patisserie and a bakery.

DC: A patisserie is a pastry shop. The emphasis is more on dessert, whether it be cookies, tarts, baked goods that aren’t breads. They definitely have a French technique, but my spin is that there’s no point in just replication.

EM: What is your typical baking day like?

TC: The sobbing starts.

DC: I try to get here at 4:30. Start the ovens, start with things that aren’t yeasted, like the macaroons, the paris brist, then the things like croissants go in around 7. By the afternoon we’re making ice creams and doing assembly for things like the individual tarts, mousse, and other fillings.

EM: I kind of want to know how much butter you go through.

DC: You want to know?

EM: Yes.

DC: It’s 24–30 pounds of butter for the croissants, and 30–50 pounds for everything else.

EM: Where do you go for inspiration?

DC: Part of it is just having a fairly good understanding of what the classics are and how I can duplicate the spirit of it with a twist. Like the chocolate filled congolais. That’s not how it is classically made.

TC: It makes sense, though. Mounds bar.

EM: Maybe you could put an almond in the middle, too.

TC: He was able to do things like this when he was a sous chef at Whitehouse Crawford.

EM: Tell us what you’re going to bring to the case this summer that we haven’t seen before.

DC: More big, fruity desserts. Crunchy, more crumbly pastry shells. More melon, some other fruits.We’ve also been thinking about a fancy but low-brow s’mores idea, with homemade marshmallows and the macaroon cookie. And we use the blow torch, like for the crème brulée.

EM: Oh?

TC: We had some lemon marshmallows left over one day and we heated them with the blow torch, melting the outside but leaving the middle solid. And we tried them and said, oh wow, that’s good!

EM: What flavors or ingredients are you most excited about using?

DC: This time of year I’m really excited about strawberries. I’m really tired of using apples all winter. Welcome Table Farm has an early berry coming out soon. So does Klicker’s. Actually they have strawberries all summer long.

TC: I think we’re also excited to be making all of the gelato out of local milk from Pure Eire.

DC: They’re the only grass fed raw and fresh pasteurized milk producer around here.

TC: We can’t use the raw milk for the gelato. It’s flash pasteurized. And it’s really good.

EM: I see people bring their goods into the shop. Talk about the environment here for food producers, growers, and restauranteurs.

TC: It’s really changed in the time I’ve been here, about 15 years. The farmer’s market downtown was really small. Now there are lots of young couples in their 30s who own little farms. That’s really changed in the last 5 years here. You don’t have to look hard for them because it’s obvious they’re here. So 15 years ago people moved here or moved back. Back then there was My Grandmother’s Garden, that’s always been here, and they had herbs and other produce. Now there are a lot of places to go, and a nice camaraderie of owners here.

EM: What would you tell others who are interested in doing what you do?

TC: Idiots! No, no. If you want fame but not fortune, do it.

DC: Go find a place you like, bug them until they let you work, for free if you have to. You don’t have to go to culinary school to get started.

TC: Yes, find out if you like it before you make an investment.

DC: It’s good to familiarize yourself with how kitchens and restaurants work.

TC: I’m always a fan of the shortcut.

EM: As long as there’s chocolate inside.

TC: Yes!

The Colville Street Patisserie is located at the corner of Alder and Colville Streets. For hours, check their Web site.

My godfather took me out to hunt deer when I was 12 or 13, I really can’t remember. I was some shade of newly pubescent, because I was getting a bit moody in those days. I knew he had a big freezer filled with venison, which always made me wonder why people changed the name of the animal when it was just the animal’s meat. Steer, beef. Sheep, mutton. Deer, venison. Some animals don’t get that distinction, like rabbit or duck or buffalo. What’s up with that?

Traipsing as quietly through the woods of Clinton, New Jersey, which yes, Jersey has woods and mountains, in fact, which is what we were on, the side of, more precisely, we each had a rifle. I have no earthy idea what kind of rifle, because I know absolutely nothing about guns. I know more about quantum mechanics than I know about guns, and I know shit about quantum mechanics. There are quarks and there are bullets. Until popular opinion decides to call the Bullets the Wizards and turn them into the crappiest team in the NBA, but I digress.

We were walking to my godfather’s hunting bluff and I started having flashbacks of Bambi, and promptly began crying. I didn’t want to kill Bambi’s mother. I just couldn’t be that guy. Godfather Henry inquired into the cause of my blubbering, and I admitted I was chickening out. Quietly, he took my rifle and handed me instead a camera. Maybe I could just shoot pictures, that could be fun too. He didn’t mock me, didn’t tell me I was a wimp, didn’t embarrass me in any way, and I am eternally grateful for that. So thank you, Uncle Henry. He built his house with his own hands, hewing rough logs and giving up his own blood in the process. He was not, for all of his masculine endeavors, a macho man. He had a sensitivity for creatures, as when he brought home a rescue dog, a Golden Retriever named Rugby who was the happiest dog until you wore gloves, and then he’d back into the nearest corner, growling and whimpering. So Uncle Henry gently reminded everyone to take their gloves off before coming inside. He wasn’t gruff about it, he wasn’t righteous about it. He just had a dog who got upset about gloves, so he requested no gloves on his dog’s behalf.

He was quite happy for me to take pictures. We brought home no venison that day. If it frustrated him I didn’t know it.

I have fired a gun in my life, but not in the last score of years. I remember being in camp and having rifle practice, using little brass-like bullets that popped more than they boomed, surprising me with their light sound the first time I heard it. We learned to fire from different positions: standing, kneeling with one leg in front like we were proposing to the targets, and lying on our stomachs. I considered it fun enough but liked horseback riding and tubing down the Delaware River much more. It was, as an activity, way more fun than calisthenics. Nothing sucked more than calisthenics, and nothing was more 70s.

Truth be told, I don’t really like guns, and I don’t get gun collecting, but I don’t understand collecting in general, unless the objects under collectment have value only as a collection, like say, the full run of mint-condition Sandman comic books, or  have utilitarian use, as in place settings made from pottery. But to collect for the sake of collecting, well, I for one keep that thing to a minimum. So I really can’t wrap my brain around the difference between collecting guns and stockpiling weapons, but I don’t have a love of guns. Perhaps the distinction is there.

At a party last night, I had the chance to commiserate with a member of the faculty at my wife’s college who is a hunter. Turkey season just opened two days ago, he was telling me, and he hadn’t bagged one yet. Sure, there were several wild turkeys running around town, half a dozen in another colleague’s back yard, in fact, but there is not hunting allowed within Walla Walla proper. How unexpectedly restrictive of them. That crazy government control! Couldn’t this guy head over to that guy’s house with a net and get a couple of turkeys, take them out to the county line, set them free and shoot them? He looked at me witheringly. What a sap I was. No no, he knew of a place where they run around, where there are plenty of them, and he was planning on going before dawn the next morning.

And then, he invited me to come along. Of course he figured I’d laugh him off and decline somewhat politely, but I said sure! Turkey shoot! Let’s do it, man! Really, he asked. Oh yeah! I was full of exclamation marks!! I’d love to! It’ll be 5 in the morning, he said. I’m a morning person! Awesome, dude!!! I just walked into Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure! Gnarly!

Throughout the rest of the evening, he dropped me details about The Hunting, and I only got more revved up. Wear green or camouflage. Well, I had green clothes, sure. I pointed to my green hounds tooth sweater vest. Get ready to lie on my stomach for a while. Oh, I was a prince at lying down! I could lie so well, especially after tripping and falling! Perfect! He asked me to bring a camera. He was only allowed to kill one turkey. Hunters, as they pay for the privilege to kill an animal before the hunting season begins, really are motivated to get something killed. And at $60 for the hunting license, that is one expensive turkey. I didn’t point out that my grass-fed, all-organic, free range, 16-pound turkey of a few years ago only cost me $50. This was going to be a gamy, thin, unknown-thing-eating turkey dumbass enough to get shot by two big men wearing green and lying on the ground. That did not sound like a good deal to me.

So perhaps it was in the experience. The overall, big picture. I would soon find out! We left the party at 11PM, and my friend had negotiated me down to a 4:30AM start time. I had to get to bed! Okay sleep, I thought, rush over me, take me away! Any time now! Wow, I’m really going hunting! You’d have thought I was a starlet the night before the Oscars. This really didn’t require such a level of revved up-ness, did it?

I dreamed about turkeys. And shooting them dead, hearing a gobble cut off mid-gob. I dreamed about what I would select out of my wardrobe for the hunt. Green things, warm things, things that can get dirty, things you say on the $60,000 Pyramid. I dreamed about putting on my cargo pants. Oh, maybe I could put ammo in them. I dreamed about words like ammo.

At 3:50, I could sleep no longer. I switched off the alarm and began getting dressed. I was going hunting. I pulled on my favorite cargo pants only to find out that the last trip through the wash had shorn off the button. I grabbed a safety pin, made it through one layer of fabric, and stabbed myself deep in my index finger. I yelped and cursed, all in one sound formation. Trying a couple of times more, I struggled and gave up and then rummaged through my clothes for another pair of cargos. Socks. Brown shoes with good grips. Thermal shirt. Sweatshirt. Half gloves that had no finger coverings. Camera, wallet, phone set on vibrate, keys. I was set. I poured a bowl of Cheerios and saw that it was the end of the cereal, so I left it for Susanne. I found some other food in the kitchen and checked the time, and went outside to wait for my rendezvous partner.

He didn’t show. I played with my phone, sending texts to people three hours ahead who were up with their children already. I needed to do something as I waited. 4:47. Maybe he thought we stuck with 5AM as our meeting time. I could see the sky lightening up and agreed that the 4:30 start was a better time. Maybe now I’ll always equate 4:30 with The Time When Turkeys Are Sleeping. 4:50. I went inside, brushing off tree debris from my ass before I crossed the threshold. I opened up my laptop and checked my email. The downstairs lights were on and I listened for the noise of a truck engine. Heck, I listened for a Prius engine, too, anything motorized. Maybe he’d be arriving by lawnmower.

At 5:10 I climbed upstairs and settled back into bed. I might have to slap him upside the head with a rotisserie chicken the next time I see him.

I did, however, get a good chance to look at the stars. The stars, at 4:30 in the morning were so bright I couldn’t tell which was Venus. So if all of this was for star gazing, then I’ll take it. No stars, or turkeys, were killed or hurt in the making of this blog post.

ADDENDUM: Coming out of my house later today, I discovered the following note:

(6:55am)

Dear Ev—I am soooo sorry and feel woooo woefully inadequate as a friend! Over –> Bad planning. A worse alarm plan. Alcohol. Please let me know if you would like to try again tomorrow.

Sherman Alexie, writer of War Dances and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian and many other books of every writing style out there, came to Walla Walla last night. I hadn’t seen an Indian perform in oh, a year or so, not since Tomson Highway came to town, singing and telling stories. Actually, with so many native folks around here, it’s interesting that I don’t see them more often, not that I expect them to have neon signs over their heads, blinking “I’m an Indian!” That’s only for my fellow middle easterners, because we’re the terror threat. So Alexie came to town.

He’s self-deprecating, earnest, childlike, but also a touch cynical, down to earth, pretentious (admittedly so), and very literary. He’s also really prolific, having authored something like 628 distinct works of writing. Okay, it’s not that many, but it’s a lot. Every time I’ve seen him he’s been dressed like an absent-minded English professor, slightly worn sports jacket, dress shirt, open at the collar, jeans, khakis or some neutral chino trousers, and no tie. Tonight he had on a tie and a velvet smoking jacket, and all I could think was, I’ve never seen him in a tie. Won’t he get hot in that jacket?

I convinced Susanne to leave early because even though this reading would be taking place in the largest auditorium on campus, it was going to be packed. It’s not like Walla Walla also had a jazzfest, an opera, two staged plays and one movie on the green to compete with. And people absolutely revere Alexie, as well they should. She gave me one of her “Ev’s being funny again” looks and we left with 15 minutes to go to the performance. This was probably okay, as everyone in Walla Walla is late to everything. It’s as if everyone gets a 10-minute grace period. The only time this rule isn’t in play is when approaching an intersection with a yellow and sometimes even red, traffic light. At that point, grace periods are not in play and one must proceed to move as quickly as possible, through said intersection.

So we walked the block from our house to the lecture hall, and really, there was a stream of other people walking from all directions, direct to the hall. We were suddenly book zombies, being called by our leader to watch him turn printed pages and move his mouth with sound coming out. Susanne noted all of the others going to see him and told me I was right, to which she quickly added, “in this one instance.”

We got pretty good seats, smack in the middle of the room, roughly halfway back from the stage, and I was pleased as punch with myself (and actually, I don’t know what that means), until two others came and sat next to us, absolutely reeking of cigarette smoke. Cigarettes are bad enough, but when the smoke gets stale, like beer that’s been left to soak into a carpet for a week, it is gut-wrenching. A few minutes into sitting there, and we both had headaches, although I suspect it was just me with the bad college flashbacks. There was an open seat one chair away, so we moved over, hoping not to cause any drama.

He started off by reading some of his poetry, which I can appreciate but not replicate in any meaningful fashion. I like some repetition, I love the idea that poets could sit for days and weeks trying to isolate that one exact word that would perfectionize the poem. I don’t have any time for that nonsense, honestly. I love rewriting and I love craft, and I genuinely want to play with phrasing and word choice and meter, and I aim to do those things, but I can’t just suffer the slings and arrows while scrambling in my dictionary for perfection. I want my writing imperfect. I’m imperfect. But I do appreciate poets, and Alexie is a very good very good poet. He’s good enough to stop time for the duration of one small poem.

He pauses after a poem and begins this cycle of self-ridicule that is really a critique of white America. Why is he in a tie, he asks. Indians don’t wear ties, right? I tell myself I noticed the tie for different reasons, due to context and my own experience standing under stage lights. I wouldn’t wear one by choice. I tune back into him because he’s turned to another poem.

He stops to tell a story. He feels like he’s home, because he too is from eastern Washington. I suspect his eastern Washington isn’t going to make it to the cover of Wine Enthusiast anytime soon. He tells us what he likes about farm girls, including their calloused hands. He reads a poem about a farm girl he liked, and he clearly revels in the memory of it, or maybe that’s just for show. It’s hard to tell.

He tells us about a time when he crapped in his pants, as an adult, no less. This is because he couldn’t get everyone to raise their hands and admit they poop. So in true Alexie fashion he goes straight to the worst imaginable poop story in his personal experience, which is a little like the Jesus narrative if it was a lot more excretable. Or about excrement. I pooped for your poop, perhaps. He is raising his hand for all of us.

He tells the college students they’re smart, like every reader I’ve seen here tell them, but he quick fires straight away that they have massive amounts of privilege. They’ve probably heard that, too, and they laugh about it like people do when they’re embarrassed but not about to change their behavior. The most magnificent moment of the night, however, came after he was supposedly done reading, during what was a laughable Q&A. You’ve got Sherman Freaking Alexie on your stage, on your campus, and you can ask him anything.

And, silence. Then, out of the ruffling of the crowd, a frat boy-type shouts, “I love you, man!” Alexie looked at him, and in the quiet I felt his message: That is the stupiest thing you could say right now, man.

“I . . . love you too,” he said, raising his voice ever so slightly, as if the possibility of a interrogative would serve to call the entire exchange into question.

Then, another voice, this time rising out of the nervous chuckling making its way through the audience. It took me some effort to attach the voice to a person, but I found her, speaking in a crescendo as she tried to find a volume that would be heard by Alexie.

“Mr. Alexie, I have come all the way from [I couldn’t make out the name of the place] to see you. Your poems mean to much to me. You have saved my life.”

Again, he spent a few seconds taking in all of her and what she had said. He put his hands together and bowed, and then read the poem When Asked What I Think About Indian Reservations, I Remember a Deer Story. He read it to her, just for her.