Trans/plant/portation

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.

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.

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.

I’ve got a reading coming up Sunday evening as a local performer in the Tranny Roadshow, and thus I wasn’t terribly surprised when the Union-Bulletin, the local rag here in town, contacted me for an interview. I mean, it would never have happened had I remained in DC, unless one counts the Mirror company as a reputable newspaper. As it is, the “U-B” as people (affectionately) call it, is a bit more than a stone’s throw from being a paper that one retrieves gratis from the brightly colored  bins that litter the sidewalk like plasticized hawkers near a carnival. Apartment Guide! Great Jobs Listing! FREE Yellow Pages!!

It’s not that I have anything against the U-B, it’s that people I like have things against the U-B. Their Web site needs an overhaul, for one, with a one-inch column in the middle for the actual article content, and a thick bar at the right advertising things I will never buy, even if I live for 100 more years. I just can’t get worried enough about my nonexistent prostate, and I am not going to learn some random mom’s secret for white teeth. I suspect malware is part of her solution, see. But really, my indifference to the U-B is that there doesn’t seem to be any real reason to get a copy. I hear everything I need to from word of mouth or my news feeds. I know when the WW Balloon Stampede is coming, and I’ll be there. The rodeo happens the same Labor Day weekend every summer. If a resident of Walla Walla knows more than 5 people in town, then she probably will hear about every event for the next upcoming weekend that she cares about. If I wanted to know what the Elks Lodge is up to, I need only walk three blocks over and ask them. It’s just not that big a town. And I’m sure they know that’s a stumbling block to keeping revenue up.

So maybe I’ve been missing out by not procuring the U-B regularly, and now that one can’t read their articles online anymore without subscribing (even the New York Times is cheaper), perhaps I’m too cut off from the goings-on in my own city. After all, Walla Walla is light years away from having any interest in a Wallist-type blog.

The other thing that concerned me when I got the reporter’s email was that my bleeding heart liberal friends tell me the U-B is unflinchingly conservative. Now, I don’t care what they do in their own home, but I don’t want that stuff shoved in my face, know what I mean? Just what kinds of questions were they going to put to me regarding something called the Tranny Roadshow? On the other hand, I’m the one peddling my sex change memoir to every agent I can Google, so I’m not exactly hiding in a cave.

I thought about her offer, and talked to a few people, and said okay, let’s meet up. We agreed to meet at Cafe Perk, in the middle of downtown, which granted, is two blocks wide by six blocks long, but it has a heart, damn it. I tend to go to this place only when I’m having a meet up with someone, because the Patisserie has too many people I know in it, and I don’t want to blow the feeling of just rightness that I have when I’m trying to bang out another chapter or short story with memories of invasive questions and avoidant answers, the kind of repartee that Sarah Palin wishes she had with Katie Couric.

I got there a little early on Monday morning, and ordered a nonfat chai. I forgot to specify a vanilla chai, since out here in the Pacific Northwest, “chai” means “burn your mouth out” and true to form, I felt the tastebuds on my tongue sizzle and die. For some reason this made it a little difficult to speak, like I’d experienced when I’d gotten my tongue pierced at 28 and the thing had blown up to twice its normal size. Three days later I was fine, I swear, but in the meantime I sounded like I was wearing vampire teeth. Great. Maybe my mouth would settle down in the next 8 minutes.

It did not.

She seemed extremely young, like 4, so maybe she was a prodigy or maybe she would just ask softball questions, not wanting to get into the nitty gritty of What It Means To Be Transgendererer. I smiled. She looked like she was from Minnesota. Very Nordic. I guessed her father’s name was Thor.

Gosh, she was just so excited to write this article, to run in Thursday’s edition. Usually she got to write about things she knew. I could picture the small and worn-out newsroom: buzzing fluorescent lights in the ceiling, desk calendars filled with notes (buy ham) and doodles (Obama with horns on his head) dotting the desks, a ripped section of carpet fixed unceremoniously with duct tape, and one very tired entertainment editor contemplating retirement as he reads the press release that just came over the fax machine. Trans what? Give it to the pre-schooler, I’m not handling this.

I decided to give her a break. If I was the first trans person she’d ever met, maybe I shouldn’t be a total card.

We talked about how I’d come to know the Roadshow even existed. It’s not a very interesting story, and hopefully it will be revealed in tomorrow’s paper. It’s true that I met my future wife there, but it wasn’t our first date. I was still in the wake of a crappy breakup with a crappy person who’d spent two plus years being crappy to me, but I noticed that there was a cute, smart woman at the show. So what if our first date wasn’t until 10 months later? When she asked me why I thought people should go to the show, I had regular, plain, somewhat accurate things to say, but I did flippantly include the “you never know, you could meet your future partner there” line. I’m curious to see if that made it in there.

She didn’t ask either of the two worst questions to ask a trans person, which, for everyone’s edification, are:

1. What was your name before?

2. Can you come to the ladies room and drop your pants so I can see your hee haw?

Both of these have been asked of me, one on many occasions. I won’t say which.

She did ask, however, how I identified, and I didn’t want to answer that one, mostly because I didn’t think it was relevant to the article—it would be like asking the bronco riders how they identified as rodeo participants—but also because I didn’t want to be pinned down for all of my fellow residents to read, at least, not until they all jump on some list that gets hung on Main Street listing their most embarrassing moment, because that seems about equal to me. But her manner of asking was nice, almost apologetic. So I said that these terms are in contestation within the trans community and that they have different meaning in mainstream culture, and I didn’t want to take all of that on in this one article as my personal legacy.

See? I should go be a politician. We moved on to the show and I said it would be a lot of fun, tickets aren’t usually free, and people should check it out. She asked why I’d pointed the show organizers to the local liberal arts college. The smart ass in me wanted to reply that I thought it better than sending them to the local Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints church. But honestly, I don’t know about venues in town outside of the college. The Fairgrounds seem a skosh too big.

The reporter was nice, nodded a lot, didn’t seem to want to make me out to be a laughing stock—which we all know I do quite well enough on my own—and I felt pretty good after it was over. Now we’ll see, tomorrow, what the editors have done to the story. And come Sunday night, I’ll know how much of a success it was. For all of the LGBT folks in town who don’t get a lot of open air gay time, I think this will be a good thing.

And yes, I’ll pick up a copy of the U-B tomorrow. It’ll be the first one I’ve bought.

I spent a lot of time thinking about what I should do, occupation wise, when I grew up. I had a poster of a smiling Smurfette sliding down a powerfully bright rainbow, exhorting that girls can do anything. Being a precocious 8-year-old, I aimed straight for the top, Icarus or no Icarus, and settled on POTUS. Why not president, after all? After a time I saw reason, and selected doctor instead. This wasn’t as big a leap as it might seem, since I spent a good amount of time as a child in hospitals and medical offices, and doctor clearly equaled boss. Which is who I was. I was boss, at least until I stepped out of the house to wait for the bus and came into uncomfortable proximity with the bullies from my neighborhood, and at that point I was pretty much clear that they weren’t responding to my personal sense of leadership.

For a decade, I had picked physician, and it’s difficult for me to explain why I was quite so attached to the concept for so long. I was a kid who thought that there would come a point in my life during which I would have learned everything there is to learn. I hadn’t thought about the progress of humans, clearly, but I also hadn’t given any quality thinking time to the space after I’d absorbed it all. What would I do then? Reread it all? Become a globe of light?

Someone at some moment exposed me to the idea of histology, and my dreams of Dr. Maroon evaporated. That just seemed too hard. I went with the wave of young women giving up, perched as we were, at the precipice over the ocean, quietly taking our turns leaping in. So willing, those lemmings. My friends had gone from talking about fighting fires and scuba diving to find new marine life to being secretaries and nurses. Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with office employment or nursing. There is something wrong, in my book, with giving up on one major life goal due to insecurity, but to add the arbitrary nonsense of insecurity from one’s gender, race, or ethnicity, and the world starts to go off the rails a little.

And yet, even as I write this, there are four women in orbit around Planet Earth. Clearly the confines of the 1970s have relaxed quite a bit. I only had the Space Camp movie and Sally Ride as models and hell, I was a long in the tooth teenager by then, my fate already sealed. Okay, of course it wasn’t but I also believed, having not yet acquired a distrust of stupid talking people, everything adults said to me, even when they were clearly incorrect or limited statements. For example, upon graduating high school after 12 years of Catholic education, I honestly believed that people were only ever one of the following:

• Catholic
• Jewish
• Protestors

I have no explanation; we all had to take world religions our third year of high school. I read about Confucius and Hinduism and the Qaran, but I didn’t see those kids in my world, so they must not have been in the United States, or at least, New Jersey. But these contradictions didn’t worry me one bit; I bought what was told to me soup to nuts, and trusted that I was not science-y enough to be a physician. I did get praise, however, for my writing.

Writer, however, was not a word that instilled happiness in my parents. It sounded to them like a straight shot to poverty and narcissistic delusion. Before I could blink my mother whisked me off to Philadelphia to take a battery of tests otherwise known as career counseling. I sat in a wooden chair for 6 hours filling out Myers-Briggs questions, a Stanford Binet IQ test, ink blot and other occupation-oriented tests. And voila, a couple of weeks later, a lovely letter came in the mail with the answer, as if a civil servant and a carnival fortune-teller had a love child with a fixation on material wealth.

I was strongest in expressing myself, I had a genius ability to handle spatial relations, and I was scraping genius on verbal ability, with an exceptionally average ability at math. So of course they decided I should be a lemon grower. Okay, they didn’t say lemon grower. And sadly, there is no Lego Building major at our institutions of higher education, anywhere. The letter said I’d be good at mass communication, journalism, writing, and oh gosh, this was probably the worst news for my parents. And now they were out $400 to boot.

I considered a career as a book editor. That was steady salary and I still got to play with books and words. And suddenly, it was my career path, until I realized that I could easily lose my mind doing such a thing.

I hit college and realized I’d been letting everyone else make my decisions for me, however well intentioned they’d been. I took classes in television writing and directing, only to learn that collaborative writing entails other writers, who are sometimes burned out, sycophants to someone else, or mind-numbingly closed off to learning new stories. One workshop had Sally Field’s son in it, and he was a good writer, but the professor couldn’t do enough to rave on and on about every word he farted out of his ass. For what it’s worth, I thought his work in the workshop was boring and a little too misanthropic for me, but hey, we were all there to learn and grow, right? Over time the prof started showing up drunk, and then he stopped coming altogether. Word in the Hall of Languages was that he was going through a divorce. I just wanted feedback on my story, or for some of his colleagues to help him out. Neither happened.

I realized the end of my college career was fast approaching, so I did what any reasonable person would do, I took the Graduate Record Exam and went straight into graduate school. Even deferring the real world for two years was better than nothing, and when that was over, I looked at my 24-year-old self and still wasn’t sure what the hell to do with my life. I knew I was tired of living on a $9,000 stipend, but I didn’t—still—feel any confidence in my skill set. So I puttered around my college town for a few years and finally took a job selling and buying books down in the nation’s capitol.

It was a terrible, painful, unproductive job, with overworked staff who wanted to know why the boss had hired outside of them, who the fat white girl was, and how long I would last. Anyone who’d placed a bet on less than a calendar year, I hope you made some good money off of me. Ten months later I was out the door, scrambling to find anything in the very-more-expensive-than-upstate-New-York city. Four months into my search—it was well before the tech bubble burst—I found a job as a publications coordinator. This started me down a waterslide of jobs into the heart of information technology, and 8 years later, I was pretty much at the top of the technical ladder. None of this had come from an ink blot.

Moving out to Walla Walla, the people who read this blog regularly already know, has been a helluva big adjustment, and not just because I haven’t found a single decent job lead since we moved. But I do think that it’s given me some things I haven’t had before: time to write and work on my craft, a sense that I can really sit back and think about my next career move, absent the kind of heart-pounding pressure I’ve felt before, and an opportunity to re-evaluate self-evaluation. Maybe I am not my career. Maybe I don’t have to take job names: usability specialist, bookseller, writer, and pretend they are all I am. Those are good things.

I’m not sure what my next move is, although I did get a call from the Census (two, actually, which makes me wonder how many people they’re actually about to hire this spring) to do enumeration for the next ten weeks, and I may have a job with Microsoft, which up until this move has been like spokesperson for Satan. And yet I know that if I go with either of these options, I don’t have to make them about me. I can just be me.

Smurfette taught me I can be anything, after all. And while I didn’t really take any vocational advice from her, that rainbow in the picture? It made me kind of gay.

Freecyle in Wallyworld has been interesting of late. One person is currently looking for free “horse, unicorn, and pig decor.” Um, decor? Really? I mean, there is pig kitsch out there, there are tons of plastic horses and ceramic unicorns, I know, because I had them all over my bedroom when I was 9. But decor? I don’t think anything related to any of those beasts could be classified as interior design accessories. And I can only see powerfully bad installations of said horse, unicorn, and pig-related objects. Add to this that the same person is also looking for chicken feed and a working VHS recorder, and I really start to get nervous.

Superior Court for the County of Walla Walla is going to get X-rated as a two-day trial begins on some wretch/letch accused of owning child pornography. I am morbidly fascinated, and I think I may head over there to see how Walla Wallans define such things. I’m not aiming to be the next Truman Capote or Dominick Dunne, but I think it will be interesting also to see what kind of coverage the trial gets here.

Speaking of local coverage, I’m giving a short interview on Monday morning to a reporter from the Union-Bulletin, in advance of the Tranny Road Show coming to town next weekend. I’ll be a local reader, pulling something from my memoir, most likely. I’ll also be interested to see what angles the reporter takes on the show, and if there’s any way to create an article about the event without it becoming a Trans 101 lecture. I’ll be careful with my quotes, I promise.

Finally, the SuperNanny is coming to Walla Walla! Or more precisely, the SuperNanny producers are actively looking for a family in the area so they can do a show here. I’m not sure why they’d pick Walla Walla, of all places. It won’t be easy to get all of their equipment here. But I’ll keep a lookout for the London taxi, cuz of course I’ll be snapping pictures of JoJo and Company if I see them.

A guy, his wife, his mother, and 25 million frozen sperm go for a road trip to Portland. No, it’s not the beginning of a joke. I took a road trip to Portland with my wife, my mother, and a million frozen sperm. Just for kicks, really. Okay, not for kicks. If it could have been avoided I would have, trust me, avoided it like the plague, like . . . oh, forget it. Who would wish such an event on themselves? But I’ll at least start at the beginning.

Some gentle readers may recall that we’ve tried this whole conception thing before, specifically last fall. It did not take, so we’re trying again, many months and lab results and sonograms later. Whereas the delivery fella from FedEx was uncomfortably cavalier the first time, on this occasion he was terse, almost gruff. It seemed he was frustrated with our incapacity to already be pregnant so he didn’t have to haul the 22-pound thermos to our doorstep.

“Good morning,” he said to me, loudly, with twelve minutes left before post meridian would take over. I’m glad he wished me a good 12 minutes. It was almost like he was casting his bet to Drew Carey from Contestant’s Row, but with no enthusiasm.

I didn’t really know what to say back to him, so I kind of nodded and kind of grunted a salutation.

“Guess I’m back here again,” he said, relishing in my humiliation, or something. I could have told him he was being redundant, throwing the shame of the moment onto him, but I was more interested in just completing our little transaction and having a door between us, as it was meant to be.

I hauled the plastic container inside. My mother, who was visiting us, took one look at it and suddenly seemed touched.

“Aw, it’s like a little robot,” she said.

I rolled my eyes at her, even as I appreciated her support.

Truth be told, our little million friends were joining us late; they were supposed to arrive the previous Saturday, but the bank in San Francisco hadn’t sent them out, and were horrified on Monday morning when I called to inquire. In their haste to make things right they reversed all of the shipping charges, which trust me, were plenty expensive, and promised we’d have them on Tuesday morning. So with a dozen minutes remaining, we had just gotten our guaranteed delivery.

I had disclosed to my mother earlier about our attempts at creating what Susanne still called a “parasitic fetus,” changing this to “baby” when I communicated with Mom so that she wouldn’t worry about our hearts being in the right place about this. Mom was on board and excited, as was Susanne’s mother when she was told of our plans. I actually wonder if there isn’t a room in her house, back in the Midwest, where all sorts of toys and clothing and supplies are piling up in expectation of our announcement that we’re having a child, because she seems that thrilled about it. But as we’re 2,600 miles away, we’re not privy to any potential hoarding, and we’re not about to ask.

Also, we considered it bad timing that my Mom’s visit was coinciding with the probable ovulation date, but I at least was willing to stick my fingers in my ears and shout, “blah blah blah” to pretend there weren’t any strange boundaries being crossed. Mom and Susanne really just seemed to prefer that I not discuss the issue with either of them.

So there we were, all standing around in the foyer, looking at our friend the robot with his little stash of swimming life-bearers. Should all sperm feel so attended to. Or not.

An ultrasound the day before this delivery indicated that we should attempt to knock Susanne up at precisely 11AM on Wednesday. This was not convenient news, as my Mom’s flight back home was scheduled for 12:15PM on Wednesday, out of Portland Airport, 3 and a half hours’ drive from here. So our options went from uncomfortable to awful to worse. We could, it appeared, pick from the following:

1. I could take Mom out to Portland and Susanne could do the whole kit and kaboodle herself, back at home. That was a non-starter.

2. I could take Mom out to Portland really super early and speed right back and do the deed. Grossly unrealistic, and risky, in terms of my driving at the end of the 8-hour round trip, and then being able to see my hands in front of me to know what I was doing back in Walla Walla.

3. We could take the robot and entrails along with us to Portland, stay the night, take Mom to the airport, and attempt to conceive in the hotel room.

We picked the last option, feeling like the first two were really just red herrings.

I broke the news to Mom, who was fine with it. “Well, you have to do what you have to do,” she said. I figured no matter the situation, it was pretty much always a little weird anyway.

Susanne had taken to calling it the Bargain Baby, because it was half off with the free shipping and all. That would be her kind of baby. I told her we couldn’t ever tell a child we’d called it that. She questioned my commitment to frugality. I attempted to reassure her.

Receipt of robot completed, our plan swung into action. I had already loaded up the car with everything else—foodstuffs for the trip, our suitcases, laptop computers, a pillow, and an updated iPod. Down Route 12 we traveled, out to the gorge west of Walla Walla, Lowden, and Touchet, along the banks of the Columbia, the deep blue water coursing through red rock covered in sage brush that stretched to the cloudless sky. It was a nice farewell to my mother’s visit, direct from Washington State, the Pretend Evergreen State. Mom oohed and ahed at the landscape but noted how lonely it looked out here. I agreed.

Susanne, for her part, slept almost the whole trip, until we pulled over at Mulnomah Falls just outside Portland. We walked around, and I tried not to think about everything in the trunk. Of the car, that is.

We’d driven so long, and not eaten much, so by the time we made it from our airport hotel to an Italian eatery in the Hollywood neighborhood, everything tasted like heaven. I nearly ate the table, just for the fiber.

“Oh, isn’t this marinara sauce wonderful,” asked my mother.

“It really is,” said Susanne, agreeing exuberantly. Jesus, we were eating cheese toast with red sauce. You’d have thought it was black truffle on top of foie gras and drizzled with saffron oil and Beluga caviar. But wow did it taste good.

Coming back to our hotel we settled in for some laptopping and crossword puzzling time. We slept like rocks until, at 5:30, with the sky still in stubborn nightfall, there came a great rumbling from the room above. Smash, went the ceiling. Pound, pound, pound, pound, said the heavy-footed occupant upstairs. It was like an elephant practicing her catwalk. Back and forth, back and forth. My mother sent me to the front desk. I looked a sight, with dark bags under my eyes, my face somewhat puffy, dried drool on my cheek, and my hair pointing in so many directions I looked like that guy from She Blinded Me with Science.

“Hi,” I announced. This is where telepathy would have been handy, but darn it, I had to use words.

“Hi,” he said. I could only guess at his expectation for why I was standing in front of him with an inside-out t-shirt and dingy Old Navy pajama pants.

“The person in the room above us is very loud, and has woken up my mother. Next my wife will be up. Please help.”

I probably should have explained my predicament in a different, better way, but he seemed to understand enough.

“Are you sure it’s the room directly above you?”

This was not a question I’d anticipated. I didn’t really even understand it, come to think of it. “What other room would it be?”

“You know, maybe it’s to one side or the other.”

Well, screw me for not memorizing the building blueprints before selecting this gem of a hotel on Priceline. I thought about the pounding noises.

“No, it was directly above us, right in front of where the beds would be.”

“Okay, I’ll take care of it,” he assured me.

I reported back to my bunkmates. There was hardly any way our circumstances could have been more awkward.

Susanne, who was of course awake after all of this, remarked that no way would the front desk knock on the door of the prancing pounder. She had worked at a hotel, and no way would she ever have checked on someone in a room unless she heard screams of bloody murder. But lo and behold, a few minutes later, the pacing ceased, and we went back to sleep for a time.

And then we needed to get Mom to the airport, which was around a corner, down a street, next to a highway, make another turn, and voila! Kisses and hugs goodbye, chirps of “what a wonderful visit” and “good luck with robot,” and then we were back in the car, making our way, making our way, making, our, uh oh, we missed a turn. And then another turn. And somehow we were at IKEA, and wow, 4 grand, 64 indecipherable instruction sheets, 2,387 tiny screws and dowels, and 28,291 swear words later, I hate IKEA. Especially when I’m trying to get to the frigging airport hotel so I can impregnate my wife. This is exactly when I am seriously not interested in buying an $89 POANG chair.

We needed to admit we were stressing out. Susanne gruffly suggested I call 411 and get directions from the airport to the airport hotel. Who was I to argue?

Finally, we pulled into the parking spot we’d left earlier that morning. Eleven o’clock was our time to trot, and it was 10:49. We raced back to the room, and I took off my shoes, because of course shoes would inhibit bargain baby robot creation. Susanne pointed to the storage container. Almost invisible, hanging loosely around the metal clasp, reveling in its securityness, was a thin plastic cuff. We had remembered to bring oven mitts to get at the vial in the frozen nitrogen—not wanting to sacrifice fingers to the cause—but we’d forgotten scissors. I scratched at it with a key.

I might as well have been trying to scratch my way out of Alcatraz. This was not the Shawshank Redemption.

I returned to the front desk. There was a new employee there, a young woman. Maybe I would impress her with my street clothes, since I’d changed out of my sleep wear.

She was reticent to lend me scissors, but I must have looked just pleading and pathetic enough. I went back upstairs and cut the plastic. Victory! I turned back to the door.

“Wait, there’s another one.”

Thank goodness one of us had some intelligence. I cut the second cuff. Back downstairs, return the scissors, back upstairs, sweating and really not in the mood for any of this nonsense anymore. I donned the mitts and opened the tank inside and pulled out the vial holder thingy, and . . . .

THERE WAS NO VIAL.

Now then, at this point, to say we were on our last nerve would be a bit of an understatement. I believe I screamed, and I believe I heard Susanne take in such a quantity of air as to resemble any kind of animal that has great lung capacity, and no, I would never call my lovely wife a whale. But a large lobed lungfish, maybe.

I plunged my mitt in again and pulled out the whole canister, and dumped it upside down on the desk, freezing the fake leather blotter, as the vial tumbled out. Screw you anyway, fake leather blotter. I put all the robot bits back and let the vial thaw on the desk. It was 11:06.

Finally, we were back on the road home, having made our checkout time of noon, and we enjoyed the sun and the light traffic as we sped through the rainforest side of Oregon.

We like the trees.