Trans/plant/portation

In 2003, I volunteered at DC’s gay film festival, which meant working with some very nice people and a few overly controlling people, but I was willing to take the long view and deal with challenging personalities in order to get passes to other movies for free. One of the films I went to see was Drag Nuns in Tinseltown (rereleased in 2006 as The LA Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence), a documentary about the antics and charity work of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. Some of the Sisters attended the screening, laughing along with us and hosting a Q&A afterward.

Unlike other drag performers I’d seen before, the Sisters don’t eschew things like facial hair (a Ru Paul no-no) or insist on lip synching to women-sung songs, but instead will occasionally take on tenor or other “male range” compositions, singing in their own voices.

They also have a tendency to rework lyrics to songs we’d otherwise be able to belt out with them, in order to make a point. I’d forgotten that little bit of Sis-trivia until last night.

Susanne and I trekked to the Tri-Cities yesterday with a few colleagues from the college to see the Seattle chapter of the Sisters host a fundraiser for Walla Walla’s Blue Mountain Heart to Heart organization, a non-profit direct service charity for people with HIV, AIDS, and Hepatitis C. Heart to Heart is, in fact, the only direct service charity of its kind in southeast Washington state, and Franklin County, which it also serves, has the highest HIV infection rate outside of Seattle, so their work is rather desperately needed here. I would have gone to see the Sisters in any case, but knowing it was a fundraiser for Heart to Heart only solidified my commitment to making the 60-mile trip.

We found our way to the only gay bar in these parts which, on the inside, was a series of differently shaped rooms and a hell of a lot of seating: booths, high tables and stools, plain diner tables that looked like they’d been purchased from a going out of business sale from the empinada counter around the corner. A room in the front boasted a stage and short catwalk where the Sisters and local performers belted out everything from Xanadu’s I’m Alive (unfortunately not performed on 70s-style roller skates) to Bjork to School House Rock, Electrify, and some strange German song about genitalia that left me covering my face because I was there with a student from the college. Talk about awkward! Thank goodness there’s no sexual harassment policy at Susanne’s school. (Ironic, I’m being ironic.)

As the performances rolled on, audience members left their seats to slip money into the contribution basket at the end of the catwalk. Here’s where I was reminded of the unofficial rules about gay bars:

1. No matter how gay the bar is, there will always be a creepy straight guy trying to strut his stuff or hook up with some random lesbian. Persistence of said creepy guy is in an inverse proportion to his level of attractiveness. And creepy guys tend toward creepy props/dress, like a pipe or opened up dress shirt.
2. As soon as a couple first hooks up, they must stand in a corner or against a wall, making out. It helps if they’re anywhere near a heavily trafficked area, so that more people will notice their coupled upness.
3. Older couples should feel free to bicker in the bar or stand apart from each other, at turns looking cold or hurt.
4. There will be an overworked, overtired lesbian bussing tables and shooting daggers out of her eyes at the careless customers who spill their drinks for her to clean up.
5. Even if the gay bar is occupied by 95 percent gay men and < 5 percent lesbians (the other 1 percent straight allies, transgender people, and lost people who haven’t realized they’re not in a straight bar yet), there will still be a long line for the women’s rest room.
6. A small group of depressed looking older men will be quietly sitting around a video monitor of gay porn.
7. A few young or questioning people will be in the bar on any given weekend night, looking astonished at the naughty humor and antics of the other people there.

All of these I saw with my own eyes last night, and nearly 20 years after walking into my first gay bar, I smiled a little to myself, because no matter what else changes, these dynamics are the same. Not that I don’t want all of those to stay the same, certainly not. But it’s kind of like I haven’t aged.

Who’s up for Gay Bar Time Machine? Or the Curious Case of Benjamin Buttman? We can make it happen, people. Actually, maybe I should do an Internet search and see if they’ve been filmed already.

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.

I’m sure we’ve all heard the narrative a hundred times over: I’ve been a writer since I first held writing implement to fingers. And my Mom loves my stories, and all my friends say my book is a bestseller. And then we’re supposed to laugh condescendingly, because this little intrepid person is so clueless, clearly, about the publishing industry. Oh, if they knew about the publishing industry, we think smugly to ourselves, they’d know that Mom’s opinion doesn’t matter, and all their friends are wrong.

Just to give this some dimension, the US published 172,000 books in 2005, according to the geeks who count such things. Of these, let’s be generous and say that 200 of them counted as “best seller” status. (Anyone remember French Women Don’t Get Fat?) That’s one tenth of one percent of everything published that year. Of course, most of these books don’t even dream of topping any list: Unsolved Problems of Noise and Fluctuations, a fantastic tome on physics, probably didn’t make it to people’s holiday wish lists. But even taking just the fiction, memoir, poetry, and narrative nonfiction into account, the likelihood is very, very low, trust me.

This isn’t to say people shouldn’t write down their stories, or whatever things they have cavorting around in their heads. It just means that most stuff goes nowhere, but on a page, in a notebook, or onto the hard drive of a computer. And that’s really okay, because the vast majority of our human endeavor to create the amazing is actually quite awful. Total drivel. Buzzard crap, or that Canada geese shit that turns everything green and stinks of high heaven—hey, it was a life experience I won’t ever forget.

So why write, even? If it all sucks, why bother?

My answer is my answer alone. I write because it gets better when I rewrite it. The third time around, it starts to sound nuanced. The fourth revision I’m making specific language choices, listening to the rhythm of the words, the believability of the dialogue. The fifth time through I may do something drastic, like change the tense, cut the first 7 pages and have the narrative begin at a new point. Actually, I usually chop out my beginnings, trusting that the quotation I heard a long time ago is true: One should start a story like one would pick up a puppy, a little behind the front. I have no idea anymore who said it, maybe St. Vincent Millay or Doris Lessing or Eudora Welty. Now that woman wrote a lot.

By the time I get around to the tenth revision, I’m just nitpicking words and it’s more like talking about nothing at the end of a coffee date than actual editing. I just need to declare it’s over, we’ll meet again someday. At this point I’ve cleaned it up, swept out excessive prepositional phrases, changed sentence structure, evaluated my tone, simplified, simplified, simplified, and attempted to really cast a light on my characters without overwriting them. I like it when readers pick up different aspects of my protagonists, when they almost like the foils to those protagonists, but for the fact that they’re really despicable.

If enough time goes by, my relation to my stories changes. I used to think of this as watching the story fall behind me as I charged ahead, a steam engine train of a person. I now see that we’re both moving, in some kind of random, and certainly unpredictable direction from each other. Sometimes we swing back around, like a comet passing through a solar system every 76.2 years, and old ideas make a new kind of sense to us. But sometimes we never occupy the same space again. Maybe that was the story best understood by my 17-year-old self, and my 39-year-old brain simply doesn’t want to hang onto it anymore. Or maybe I’ll enjoy seeing where I once was in capability, craft, and idea, even as I acknowledge that I’m in a new place.

In any case, I’m glad I’ve written down as much as I have. And while I would be thrilled, say, with an appearance on Ellen, I’m not presuming anything I write would be a bestseller. It’s true that after years of messing around with fiction, with literary analysis, and the reading of thousands of books, I really needed to write a memoir about my transition.

I really haven’t talked about why with anyone except my writing coach, Lea, who has more than one hand on the pulse of the universe and who I see as a really friendly, astute guide through this whole publishing rigamarole. First, I had some demons to exorcise, and writing was the best way to do that. A lot of that writing was just for me, not for any book, and most certainly not for anyone else’s retinas. But it did let some of the experience percolate and then steep, and gave me a blueprint for organizing the past 6 years into a sturdy narrative. There was some motivation stemming from my “mentoring” of a young female-to-male transsexual who was asking many of the same questions I’d pondered at the start of my experience. I’ve spent copious hours online, asking and later, answering the strangely narrow-banded litany of inquiries people have about transitioning: will my family hate me forever? Will my partner desert me? Am I just disfiguring myself? These are really all smaller branch questions that have popped out from one solid root question:

Am I crazy?

The answer none of us wants to admit is, maybe. Maybe we/you/they are crazy. But we’re probably not crazy, because crazy people don’t formulate questions on the Internet, research their options in a rational way, get opinions, sift through information, try different methods of managing what turns out to be an illness—crazy people behave less from a place of information gathering, and more from a place of irrational. Crazy people respond differently to the therapies around gender identity dysphoria. Transsexual people see their happiness and sense of well being increase dramatically after even the most mundane or simple changes to their sex and gender identity.

Could a memoir bring these points across? I thought so. Could I tell a story in which a fairly ordinary person realizes something extraordinary? And has the daring to see it through? Could I make getting a sex change seem like the right notion for a protagonist? I thought about it and decided yes. I don’t think I’m the trans Messiah; this isn’t an especially rare narrative, even as it’s certainly a twist on the boy meets girl tale.

And heck, in this memoir, there is boy-meets-girl, if readers are okay with boy-who-used-to-be-girl-meets-girl-who-usually-likes-other-girls.

Perhaps agents think the concept is too out there, and that’s why I’ve had trouble selling this. But I believe in this story and this project. I know that there are thousands of people who would guffaw at the hilarity I’ve lived through, and fret through the hard parts, and have questions like I’ve had, about medical services and people’s judgment and how strange it is to see the world through completely new lenses. I have faith in this book, and I just have to keep pitching it, even as I work on other stories that want their 15 minutes of fame on my keyboard.

I used to spend a lot of time getting stuck as a writer, but then I pushed through on the memoir project and now everything I bottled up wants to come out to play. And that’s how I know the memoir is a story that needs telling. And though we may cross each other in space at some point, hurtling in new directions, it will retain at least a core of interest for me, and hopefully for some agent and publisher out there.

And hey, my sister thinks it’s great.

Maybe it’s cheating a little bit, but here’s a re-post of a restaurant review I wrote a couple of years back (well, 18 months anyway) of a hamburger joint on Capitol Hill in DC. Once people can make it outside their homes and restaurants begin receiving supplies again, feel free to avoid this place.

So we went to check out Spike’s new burger restaurant in Capitol Hill, the Good Stuff Eatery, and the vague name should tell patrons something before they even cross the threshold. For those of you who don’t know who Spike is, I’m not talking about Spike Lee, I’m talking about the former Top Chef contestant from a couple seasons ago who always wore a hat and made it pretty far to the end. He was kind of a card, as portrayed in the show. We were curious to see how his new venture was going, and a little dumbfounded as to why he’d open up a burger joint in a town already replete with them (thinking of the fabulous local 5 Guys chain, Booeymonger, Tonic locations, etc.).

I crutched up to the street with Susanne at about 7 p.m. on a Monday evening. There was a line of about oh, 8-10 people snaking down the sidewalk. Really? I don’t think I’ve seen that in DC except for one truly amazing Mexican place in Adams Morgan, but okay. Come to find out, as we cross the street and head over, there’s actually an Ombudsman standing outside guarding the door. You can see inside the place that there’s plenty of space for us to stand inside (where we will later freeze our asses off), but he’s got us out here. Where everyone can see how “jumping” the place is, we presume. Well, clearly Spike’s got the skill of spinning his reality down pat already, giving evidence that anyone can acclimate to DC standards.

I found a chair at an unused outside table (if it’s so busy, how is it that there are free tables), and sat down, letting the others hold my place in line. About 8 minutes later (oh, counting the minutes, I later realized, would get me nowhere), we were let in to Studio 54 — I mean, to the Good Stuff Eatery. We’d had time to peruse the menu so we knew what we wanted to order. A somewhat eclectic mix of burgers, wedge salads (how strangely out of place for a burger joint), three different styles of fries (featuring the Spike™ name), some milkshake options that looked interesting, and assorted beverages. Yuengling and Blue Moon beer were on tap. We should have, however, stored our selections in long term memory, as we saw that there were 30 or so people ahead of us in line. There were a lot of lines in this place. In solidarity, the lines on my forehead decided to join in, furrowing themselves more permanently onto my face.

I realized I wasn’t going to be able to stand for this whole line, so I asked Susanne to order for me and made my way up the inaccessible stairs to get a table. Because surely with these many people here I’d need to also queue up for a table, right?

Nope. Sure there were people upstairs, but there were tables free. It had the same layout as the Cosi next door, which serves people with much more efficiency and much less fanfare from its staff. Susanne remarked that putting the tables over the frying surfaces downstairs caused the eaters upstairs to start to take on the smell and appearance of fried foods, and she had a point. But I’ll add that with the perfectly frigid temperaturs (I mean seriously, the place wasn’t warmer than 63 degrees), the lipids in the air start to harden and condense, giving everyone the appearance of waxed mannequins, as if Madame Tussaud’s had decided to move 20 blocks over to get a little closer to those other waxed celebrities, I mean, our elected members of Congress, excuse me.

So I waited upstairs for the food to arrive. And waited. And waited. And….

WAITED. No sooner than 48 minutes after we entered the place, Susanne came up with the burgers and fries. I was somewhat astounded. They better be slaughtering steer in the back alley. They better be the best burgers I’ve ever eaten, thick as my ass and juicy, layered with truffle shavings, some kind of nearly extinct mushroom, and quail eggs.

Wait for it.

I had ordered a turkey burger, thinking back to the three burgers I’d had earlier in the week. One was an undercooked beef burger from Mr. Henry’s (I mean, I don’t expect much from them, so no biggie), one was from a Wendy’s drivethrough (see above), and one was up in Baltimore for lunch at Pebble’s Diner. Surely this burger, this 48-minutes-in-preparation burger would put all of them to shame.

Mushy bun that had done its best to soak up the bloody juices from the half-cooked, thin-as-a-wafer meat (I mean, it looked a little Jennie-O to me), mushy avocado that probably would have been excellent the day before, limp and mushy lettuce, and a variety of sauces that seemed to act as a pre-stomach-acid food liquification system, which served to make the texture of the experience particularly disgusting. The fries, on the other hand, were terrific until they cooled down, and then I realized they were over-spiced. The shake was great, little hints of caramel and malt that made my tongue decide mutiny after the burger experience wasn’t really necessary.

Susanne reported that they were charging a 25-cent fee on every order for “environmental processing.” She asked the cashier what this was for. He reported that it was because you know, like, they pay someone to go through their trash to make sure nothing recyclable is being thrown out, and that’s expensive. My god THAT job has to suck nails! She found this an interesting rationale, given that practically everything they handed to us was unrecyclable plastic, and that they didn’t have a “is it for here or take out” option so that folks eating in the restaurant could get reusable utensils or napkins. And at the end of the meal, which was like a blessing from God (that it was over, I mean), a busboy took out trays and dumped everything — including two glass bottles — into the trash can. Good thing someone’s going to comb through it later looking for those bottles! That’s like letting your cat catch the fake mouse every so often so he stays motivated to keep trying. If they’re so into the environment, couldn’t they have at least a couple containers for recycling?

So, all that said, I can’t really recommend the place. If you want an $8 burger, go to a steakhouse and get one. If you want a thinner burger for a better price, stick to the places in town that know how to make them that I mentioned earlier.

Thank God he didn’t win Top Chef.

We are vacationing this holiday season-come-semester break at Susanne’s parents house in the “southern thumb” of Michigan. Yes, when you ask a Michigander (it just keeps getting better, doesn’t it) where they’re from, they’ll hold up their hand and point. It’s actually pretty handy [sic]. Every state should look like a limb one could hold up and point to. “I live in the adrenal gland portion of the kidney,” say. Okay, maybe that’s not the best idea ever, especially given Manhattan’s geography.

Anyway, if they’re from somewhere in the vicinity of Detroit, the state’s most populous city, they may say something like “11 Mile,” referring to the regular spate of roads that run parallel to the north boundary, further and further to the top of the hand. Eminem made his 8 Mile movie, everyone already knows, about the area where the suburbs take over—but as far as I know, there are no plans for a “40 Mile” sequel, all about the drama of car parts factories on the outskirts of the dying automobile center. No wait, that was Roger and Me.

After a few days of meals at home, we descended on a local eatery, the Raiders Coney Island. By “we,” I mean me, Susanne, her mom, two brothers, sister-in-law, and their four kids, ranging in age from 2 to 17. It was a little Jon and Kate Plus 8 meets a Top Chef challenge—the elimination kind, not the simple quickfires, either. Taking up three booths in the small eatery, the waitress was a little overwhelmed.

Upon seeing customers who needed her service, she probably would have drawn a sharp intake of breath on a good day, but on this day she had no backup help, either, it being two days after Christmas and the other staff not having the same level of commitment to the family establishment that she did, since it was clearly her family’s establishment. But my immediate concern wasn’t for her ability to take our drink order, it was for the obvious extreme edema she had in her ankles. It was so bad I wasn’t sure how she’d managed to get her feet into her sneakers. My next worry was if her apparently chronic swelling had anything to do with the food in this place. Perhaps I could suck on a gratis lollypop and call that supper.

She slowly made her way to each table, starting with the ones who were already seated before we’d gotten there. Well, slowly isn’t really the right word. She was hurrying in a way that did little to increase her speed in any measurable fashion. Perhaps in an alternate universe we’d eaten already.

Finally she plunked down our menus, and the “raider” concept hit me. They had a knight on a horse, holding a spear, with a weiner at the end. This was the graphical fusion, I supposed, of the raider and Coney Island. Someone should tell the restaurant owners that Coney Island is about to be bulldozed into a suburban-like subdevelopment a la the Goonies. Only instead of pirate treasure maps we have the near-total collapse of the global economy. That’ll slow ’em down. The raider, however, was smiling, so excited about the opportunity for a hot dog that he was obliquely unaware of the doom awaiting the old amusement park.

“Hey, isn’t that the mascot for your old high school,” I asked Susanne. She nodded. “Well, kind of. The real mascot looked more serious.” She paused.

“And there’s no hot dog in the real logo,” she added, just in case I leave this experience wondering why the superintendent of schools thinks it’s okay for the local high school to model such poor food choices to its impressionable students.

I appreciated that they hadn’t stolen the licensed image from the high school, even as they were clearly looking to it as their reference point. I later learned that they regularly give money to the high school, so I suppose they should go ahead an name themselves after the mascot—they’ve earned it.

“So was your school color orange,” I asked, looking at the menu cover. I went to Syracuse University for college, so I’m familiar with the futility of trying to work school-licensed clothes into one’s general wardrobe.

“Orange and black,” she said, knowing full well I’d be shocked. They were always ready for Halloween, I guess.

“My high school was brown and gold,” I said, “so I never thought I’d hear of worse colors than that.” I made famous a short story from my graduation, when one of the girls asked me why the women wore white graduation caps and gowns instead of gold, since the men were wearing chocolate brown, to which I’d remarked, “because they don’t want it to look like a lot of shit and piss out there.”

There is no restaurant, nice or not, in Hamilton, New Jersey, that has my old high school logo on it. Just saying.

The menu was a strange blend of Greek culinary tradition, pub fare, and Johnny Rockets diner food. I still don’t see my beloved pizzaburger outside New Jersey, but I won’t hold it against them. I tried to order the chicken kabobs.

“We don’t have those made up yet,” the salt-retaining waitress told me, as if any minute now, chicken kabobs would be good to go. “But this other chicken meal is the same thing, just not cut up.”

Wondering why cutting the chicken into smaller pieces would mean it would somehow take longer to cook, I saw that this other dinner also came smothered in green peppers, mushrooms, and provolone cheese, most of which are not to be found on Greek-style kabobs. So okay, I went with that, with a little hesitation about when any of this was going to take to arrive at our tables. Every so often she would call out to her mother for help, and I started to wonder if she wasn’t talking to a ghost or an imaginary friend. But finally, Mom showed up, agreeing to help make the four smoothies and milkshakes the kids had ordered. One look at the mother and I was certain their was some family illness with water retention going on here. Why had no one told them to seek medical help for their obvious swelling problems?

The cooks in the back were doing their best impressions of Wilson from Home Improvement, so I couldn’t analyze whether the male members of the family were afflicted with the same disease, but they put the food up on the counter when it was ready and voila, cheese and fungus-covered chicken was at my table. Susanne and I had finished an impromptu game of dots, with her finding the one and two box spots and me mis-selecting a long chain of 16 boxes for her to label. Damn dots game—you always make me pay for slow diner service by showing me what an awful player I am. Maybe I shouldn’t carry a pen with me wherever I go.

Half our orders were wrong—the mother made milkshakes instead of slurpies, which, 50 minutes after walking in, we were happy to drink anyway. Yes, they needed more serving staff. The food was fine though, and cheap, and finally we were back in the car, heading through the Christmas Week night and jazzed up to play some head-to-head solitaire. Maybe, I thought, we should just cook at home.

Driving up to the Tri-Cities to pick cherries last month, I got pulled over for driving 70 in a 60 zone. Cursed lead right foot of mine, I tend to speed on the same section of Route 12 because I want to put the stench from the Bad Broccoli Plant behind me as quickly as possible. I hadn’t spent time thinking that on Sunday evenings, the cops are out, hunting out-of-town speeders who’ve come to Walla Walla for a wine weekend and who are heading back to Seattle before the work week begins. I was driving right through ambush territory.

I looked at the ticket and saw that the fine was $144. Ouch. Certainly, it was less than a similar violation in say, the money-grubbing jurisdiction of Washington, DC, but as I’m not bringing in any income to the household right now, I was offended that I’d caused us money. I told Susanne I would go to court to see if I could get it reduced at all. After all, I have the time.

I showed up about 20 minutes before the court session of 9:00 a.m., signed in, and sat down in the empty courtroom. About five minutes later, a group of people began amassing outside the courtroom door, over in the county office. They huddled around their lawyer, apparently going over the audible plays for the day. Next another group of people walked in, shuffling quickly by the first group. Each camped out on opposite ends of the galley, making me think there was some drama between them. I presumed it would be interesting.

The clerk of the court walked in, and she looked just like a woman from Minnesota who had a crush on Susanne, never verbalized. This woman dislikes me, presumably because I’m Susanne’s partner, so the clerk, wholly unrelated to Unrequited Crush Woman, unnerved me a little. I kept expecting daggers to shoot out of her eyes, but no projectiles were thrown my way through the whole event of the morning, as it turns out.

Anyway, the clerk unlocked a door to the parking lot that had a WARNING: Do Not Open This Door message on it, making me concerned for all of us. What was the point of the message if they were just going to ignore it this way? And clearly the clerk, with her nonchalant manner, had unlocked this door many, many times before. Who was over seeing the overseers here, exactly?

In walked a prisoner and a sherrif’s deputy, doing their best to look the part. The prisoner could only be described as disheveled, wearing orange crocs and a black and white striped prison uniform straight out of The Shawshank Redemption. When was the last time Walla Walla bought new prison clothes, 1947? He sat down next to the shaved head guard, who stood in rigid position, and honestly, the guard scared me a lot more than the prisoner did. I know which one I’d rather see in a dark alley, and it wasn’t Mr. White Pride in Uniform.

Then it was the Arrval of the Attorneys — both in slightly ill-fitting pinstriped suits, as if each had bought them one dress size ago. Each also had a 6-inch thick stack of files that they barely touched through the proceedings, making me wonder why on earth anyone would carry around 40 pounds of paper if they didn’t have to. Perhaps it’s something I’d understand if I’d gone to law school. Maybe they were print outs of the US Constitution.

The judge entered, and we rose to acknowledge his presence. He looked a bit like Wilford Brimley’s younger, more dashing brother, and it was nice not to hear him say the word, “diabeetus.” I really hate those commercials. I kept looking for the cop who’d written me the ticket. Back in New York, they have to show up as witnesses or the judge dismisses the ticket. This makes traffic court in New York awful because all kinds of folks show up hoping to get out of paying.

The prisoner went first. A translator sprang up from out of nowhere. His was a sad story. Caught driving under the influence, the officer learned that he was an undocumented worker, and he had six weeks until deportation. County officials need to close out his case, however, so they still want to proceed with prosecuting him for the DUI. I don’t understand the law here, of course, but I felt for him, who obviously regretted getting in the car that fateful evening. He shuffled away and back out to the parking lot after conferring with the defense pinstriped guy.

Next up were the Hatfields and the McCoys, otherwise known as Feuding Families from College Place. Whatever originally irked one party is no longer understandable by human beings, though perhaps humpback whales can wrap their brains around it. Party A was looking for a permanent restraining order against Party B, their neighbors from across the street and one house over. Heck, they didn’t even live next door to each other? They wanted Party B’s surveillance cameras taken down because they were pointing at their livingroom, they intimated that Party B had poisoned and killed one of their dogs, and they feared for their safety. Well, holy crap. So much for the sweet 7th Day Adventist town. Party B maintained that since they installed the cameras, no dogs had urinated on their lawn, or knocked over their trash, or otherwise defaced their property. Party B’s main complaint was that Party A’s massive pickup truck and towed boat, when parked in front of Party A’s house, blocked Party B’s ability to get in and out of their driveway, which brought up two questions for me: 1., what an eyesore for the neighborhood, and 2., with all the cheap expanses of land out here, why didn’t the town build wider frigging roads?

The judge looked at them with a jaded eye. He’s seen it all, I imagined. Twenty minutes later, he reached his decision, a compromise between what both sides wanted.

Next up were the speeding infractions. My kind of people. Here’s what I had come to address, myself. One by one the judge called them up. I learned then that in Washington State, unlike in New York, the affidavit written by the ticketing officer serves as the witness for the state, so no wonder my cop wasn’t there. No easy dismissals here. As it was, each leadfooted driver sounded more ridiculous than the previous person. Oh, I never speed, Your Honor, I just was doing 66 in a 60 zone. That counts as speeding, ma’am. One declared that the cop had set a trap. Yup, that’s what they do, ma’am. But although none of these folks got off scott free, he did reduce their ticket amount to $90, a $64 “discount,” in other words. But I was happy, anticipating that as soon as I got called up, I’d look like an ass for a short bit and get some fine knocked off as well.

They didn’t call me up.

Next the judge called up a woman who had another sad story. She had to come to the court every couple of months to prove she was still sober and in alcohol counseling and AA. Apparently she also had a probation officer. I guessed something had gone horribly wrong in her life for all of this monitoring. She’d missed her appointment in July and was here on a bench warrant. The judge looked at her and calmly told her that saying she hadn’t gotten anything in the mail telling her to show up wasn’t an excuse, that she knows this is the arrangement, and needs to call the court if she doesn’t hear from them, and then at some point, they’ll let her out of making all these visits. She nodded, got her paperwork, and left with her mother. I felt for her, and the prisoner who had left earlier. I complain about not finding a job in Walla Walla, but I should remember to be thankful, too, that my life is full of blessings and good people who love me and who I, for my part, adore.

The prosecuting pinstripe headed back to me in the galley, now sitting by myself.

“So uh, what’s your last name,” he asked me. He had on light brown shoes with a navy suit, but I decided I’d answer him anyway.

“Maroon, Everett Maroon,” I said, wanting to bonk myself for mimicing the great James Bond, albeit unintentionally.

The judge asked me to come forward.

“Mr. Maroon, I don’t know why I don’t have your paperwork. Give me just a second here, please.”

“Yes, Your Honor,” I said. And then I added, as if my mouth had decided to make noise without consulting my brain, “I would just like to note for the Court that I was the first one here today.”

I’d been there for two hours at this point. The courtroom staff laughed, including the judge.

He looked at me.

“You know, I could just print out this affidavit off the Internet and proceed,” he began, “but you’ve sat here patiently all morning, so I’m just going to dismiss this infraction.”

“Thanks, Your Honor,” I said, nearly leaping up from my chair.

$144 I don’t have to pay now. I wonder what that will buy me on the cruise to Alaska next week….

Recent flashback in the woods:

It was our second day of hiking in Glacier National Park. In the morning we’d tooled around the west side, what I like to call the “smooth stone side” of the tectonic plate collision. Much of this was on a raised, wooden platform that curled through enormous cedar trees. We had a wonderful time taking pictures of tree roots, the top of the canopy, the still waters and rushing slivers of waterfalls. My knee held up pretty well, and I thought if this was hiking, I could go for miles.

St. Mary Lake, Montana

The east side of the park, which I named “jagged slice-y stone side,” was much less forgiving, but held jaw-dropping vistas for one’s trouble. After clambering up a rocky hillside, we could look over the top of the cliff and see crystalline water—St. Mary Lake. There we spent several minutes taking in the view and examining how different the eastern plate was from the geology just a few miles west. We scrambled back down the hill and started walking down a thin trail along the water.

My knee started complaining from the uneven terrain. Where were the nice wooden platforms? Couldn’t we outfit every national park in the country with raised wooden hiking platforms for the cost of half of one missile? Perhaps hikers actually liked hiking, I guessed. But still, my leg wasn’t holding up after a couple miles of walking. That was frustrating.

Susanne took a look at the park map to see the easiest way back to the car, other than going back to where we’d started.

“Hey, if you just continue on this way,” she said, pointing at the print out, “it’s really short to the road. Then Kurt and I can go back over here, get the car, and pick you up.”

That sounded like a plan. She reminded me to make some noise so I would keep any nearby bears away. Fortunately, the three of us walking together made quite a bit of ruckus, so we hadn’t been too concerned. But with me by myself, I needed to remember to talk, or sing. I gave her a peck of a kiss, noted the direction I was to travel, and heading off, sang that I was King Henry the VIII.

No sooner were they out of earshot of me than I turned a corner and stopped. The trail traced up the side of a very steep, very long hill. I considered my options, now on fourth verse, same as the first. Going all the way back was too long, and the car would be gone by the time I got there. I probably wasn’t fast enough to catch up to Kurt and Susanne, so following  where they went probably wouldn’t work, either. I didn’t have the map. So I had to traverse this . . . this mini-mountain. I took a deep breath, and plunged forward.

Up, up, up I climbed. King Henry fell by the way side, as simple breathing became priority. I sucked in liters of air, holding on to a tree for support, no longer worrying about making enough noise.

HEAVE, exhale, HEAVE, exhale, HEAVE!!!! Who the hell climbs mountains for fun? Masochists who want to suffer outside, that’s who. I put one foot in front of the other, thankful I’d been working out my quads in the gym as part of rehab. Every ligament south of my waist made its voice known. I grabbed at small tree trunks on the side of the pebbles in front of me, hoping my feet would stay put.

HEAVE, HEAVE, exhale. . . Susanne’s map sucks! The trail rounded a corner, and it was another mountain. I was climbing Machu Pichu. Sweat rolled in sheets down my temples, making my shirt wet. I cursed the sweatshirt I was wearing.

All around me, wildlife fled. Including the bears. I think they thought, “whoa, that is some big bear coming this way! Quck, get up a tree!”

I saw an archway. A bridge. It signalled that I had reached the road. I felt like I had been alone for hours. I clambered up one last incline, then sat down, still panting heavily, on the side of the bridge. A few cars had parked in the pullout, and looked at me with fear. Who was this single very large man who came out of the woods? I’d probably left a few bodies behind me.

Susanne and Kurt pulled up in the car ten minutes later, by which time I’d resolved most of my sweatballness.

“There’s another trail up to a waterfall over there, honey,” Susanne said innocently. “Wanna go?”

“No,” I said, and rather quickly, so that she took notice. “I’ll just wait in the car,” I added, trying to sound laissez faire about it. It was too late to cover, however.

“Are you okay?” She looked concerned.

“I’m fine,” I said. I gave a tight smile. “That path went up a big hill.”

“Oh honey, I’m sorry,” Susanne said, touching my knee, which was on its way to inflating like the hot air balloons I saw in May. Maybe I would start floating in another 15 minutes.

I reassured her, and they went up what turned out to be a 50-foot incline to a trickling waterfall. I knew the hiking was worth it, but I was done for the day. I’ll go back to Glacier in a few years when I have a more solid set of legs and a screaming toddler. Surely that will be easier!

Driving from the east coast to Walla Walla, we stayed in all manner of hotel accommodations. The overdone casino hotel on the reservation in Niagara Falls to the bare but tidy room in Weyburn, Saskatchewan, we had pretty much seen it all, or so we thought. Spending one night in the lodge on McDonald Lake in Glacier National Park, we drove down and under the park, coming out on the other side in East Glacier, Montana.

The innkeeper was decidedly pessimistic about the likeliehood we would keep our reservation.

“We’re just opening up for the season, so we don’t have the cable TV working yet,” she said. “It’s okay if you want to stay somewhere else.”

That would have sounded self-sacrificing if it weren’t for the fact that there were no other hotels open that weekend in East Glacier, and that she had left out one little issue that was actually much more important than the lack of television.

The entire town was under a boiling water ordinance because there was too much particulate matter in the water. Apparently it was safe to shower in and brush our teeth. But who wanted to chance that? I lied under the top sheet later that night, trying not to think about the water the linens had been washed in, and how many microbes were immune to the heat of the dryer, and now staking land claims on my skin. Helpfully, exhaustion from hiking set in, and I slept soundly on the listing mattress, and then we were off to Canada, the next morning. O, Canada!

We had time to look around a little while we traveled. Our favorite (?) parts of Montana, other than the truly majestic beauty of the park, were the town of Hungry Horse and the “Bear Safari” west of the park. It is one thing to name one’s town after emaciated livestock, but quite another to use the town name in logos for local businesses. It just didn’t have quite the same cache as say, fat pandas do for Chinese restaurants. Nobody in our party wanted to eat at any grill featuring horses with exaggerated rib cages.

The Bear Safari was a wild idea, the Wild West’s version of an alligator park, I presume. The idea was you drive through an enclosed area where someone has purposefully placed some number and variety of bears. Real bears. The tagline, “Your Car Is Your Cage,” did not instill us with a sense of comfort. Perhaps if we had been driving a Hummer. And even then, I still wouldn’t drive into that. I should see how long this place has been around, or stake out the opposite side of the street to observe which crazy people actually pay admission to this thing.