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Summer, 2001.
NOTE: My Downtown Year was written in 2004. I will be using excerpts from My Downtown Year in a book about San Diego that I’m currently writing. For more context on its serial presentation on this blog, click here.
Day 6: There are places in the Free World where you can buy a 13 year-old boy as a sexual servant. The people saw it on Dateline and cried, “Outrage!” Less than 300 years ago, 13 year-old girls purchased as sexual servants were known as wives. Four generations prior to ours, the practice was legal in the United States under the guise of slavery. In all that time the practice of men paying women for sex and vice versa has occurred the world over. But now, now we’re talking about little boys being anally assaulted by dirty old men who look like grandpa. And PFLAG shouted, “Homophobes!” Thank you for flying United Flight 11 from Boston to New York City, and enjoy your stay in the United States of America.
Day 7: There was a man named Youandi who played the lottery religiously. From the day he turned 18, he bought a ticket for every drawing held. Every time, he would choose his own numbers. He did not have a specific set of numbers that he chose, but rather chose numbers that had been of some significance to him during the week.
One day, Youandi’s wife of 27 years, Faith, left him for a woman she met at the gas station. Both were complaining about high gas prices and hit it off. Faith had long had sexual desires for women, but considered them evidence of her being free and enlightened in her sexuality. Faith’s new lover, Chance, was a lifetime lesbian who had been sexually abused as a child. It was during a drunken “girls’ night out” that Faith and Chance had first sexually consummated their relationship. It was the infidelity that weighed heavily on Faith, and she did not sleep. In the morning, she went home and told her husband everything. She told him how she had met Chance, what happened, and that she was very sorry, but she had to leave him. She had been happy with Youandi, but could never be as happy again. She had found what had always been missing.
Youandi listened to every word. He was rent with grief, but remained stone-faced and silent. He left her where she stood and went to the store and bought his lottery ticket, as he always did. The numbers he picked were all directly related to the day’s earlier trauma, a scrambled sampling of digits from his and Faith’s anniversary, her birth date and the price of a gallon of gasoline. That night, as he mourned his misfortune, the television announced the evening’s winning lottery numbers. As the winning numbers were drawn, Youandi began to realize they had already drawn four of his own numbers. As a fifth numbered ball rolled down the shoot, Youandi found himself one stroke of incomparable luck away from the night’s 125 million dollar jackpot. When the sixth and final number was drawn Youandi was suddenly holding a slip of paper redeemable for 125 million dollars (paid in 26 annual installments).
Youandi was ecstatic. For a moment, he forgot about the immense pain of losing the woman he had loved for so long. The juxtaposition of such extreme emotions was overwhelming. He hid the ticket in a small box safe in his closet, took two Valiums and went to sleep. While he was asleep, a nuclear weapon exploded in Haifa, Israel.
When Youandi awoke in the morning, gas prices had skyrocketed to 27 dollars per gallon. All of this was still unknown to Youandi as he headed to his car to go claim his winnings. Months later, an investigation found that the police car that jumped the curb and killed Youandi was traveling over eighty miles per hour, on a suburban side street, en route to quell a riot at a local gas station, one of many gas station riots that day. And so it is that we are all prisoners of Fortuna’s Wheel.
Summer, 2008.
You say tomato...
Inside its plastic sheath writhes fifty pounds of shit. The plastic warps as my fingers burrow for grip, threatening to tear and spill its contents prematurely. I grunt and strain and heave the bag of manure on top of two more just like it.
“Stuff smells like shit!” I look at Andrea and smile as I wipe my hands on the legs of my jeans.
“So do you!” She smiles back from on her knees in the loose soil.
I run to her and grab her by the hips and rub my face into the crook of her neck. She laughs and pushes me away, and I laugh and tousle her hair.
“Eeew!”
“Shush! You better get used to bein’ dirty, sweetheart!” I shoot her a grin.
“You’re dirty enough for the both of us!”
“That may be, that may be, but we both gotta spread this shit around.” I pick up the top bag again, set it on end, and tear a hole in the plastic along the bag’s top seam. ”Look out!” With the bag under my right arm, I start sifting forth its contents onto the churned soil. ”You did good baby,” I say, “this looks well broken up.”
“It should, I clawed the crap out of it!” She holds up her hand rake, tines towards me, “Rawwrr,” she says, clawing the air like a jungle cat.
“Rawwr.” I grin, dumping a fine layer of manure over her handiwork.
“Should I start spreading it out?”
“Sure, just don’t spread it too thin.”
“Make sure you dump enough out for me then.”
I empty the first bag, and open the second. Andrea grabs the larger rake and follows behind me, sweeping my scattered leavings into a consistent layer.
“Seeds?”
“Seeds!” Andrea runs into the house and emerges with the seed packets. She fans them out in front of me. ”What you want boo? I got tomato, I got corn, I got lettuce, I got eggplants, what you want?”
I grab the pack of heirloom tomato seeds. ”Tomatoes first.” I tear the top off the paper packet. I empty half the contents into my left hand, and the other half into Andrea’s. I kneel in the ripe top soil. With my index finger, in the corner of the yard closest to the house, where the shade of the eaves will fall near midday, I make a small divot in the layer of manure, in the firmer tilled soil underneath. I wiggle my finger in a small circle, widening my hole slightly. I drop the first tomato seed in the divot.
“How big do you think they’ll get?” Andrea asks.
“How big?”
“Yeah, how big?”
“I dunno, softball size? If we’re lucky…”
“That seems a little big.”
“Maybe baseball size?”
“I’d be happy with that.”
“I’m happy now.”
“You know what I meant.”
“I know.” I put my arm around her waist, and pull her close. She lays her head against my chest and I kiss the crown of her head. ”Let’s plant these seeds baby, it’s gonna get dark soon.”
She lifts her head from my chest and looks at me. ”I love you,” she says.
“I love you too.”
January 27, 2009
I lean my bike against the house and walk in through the sliding glass door. I pant for breath and my stomach churns. A dull ache goes through my teeth each time I inhale. My face is cold and wind stung, my back is sticky with sweat. I walk through the kitchen into the living room and see the back of Andrea’s head over the top of the couch. She’s petting the dog. Iggy stares into the orange glow of the directional space heater, obsessed. I toss my backpack on the scuffed hardwood floor. Thud. Andrea turns around.
“Hey baby!”
“Hey.”
I take the full ashtray from the black coffee table at Andrea’s knees and walk to the kitchen to empty it. The trash can is already overflowing with coffee grounds and pizza boxes and vegetable scraps.
“Fucking bullshit.” I growl.
“What’s wrong baby?” Andrea calls from the other room.
“Nothing.” I reply, “I swear to God, I’m the only person who ever does a God damned thing in this house.”
“Come here baby, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” I plop into the couch. ”I’m sorry, I’m just tired. Long day. That’s all.”
“Oh baby…” she massages my left shoulder with her right hand.
“I’m so sick of my job. I’m ready to leave. It’s the same thing, every day, I hate it. I hate all the idiots that eat there.”
She switches to my left thigh. “I know baby, but it’s almost done, one more month.”
“I know, I know. It’s so frustrating though. I just don’t care about any of these people I see all day.”
”Babe… You don’t have to be their friend or anything.”
“I know. I can’t even be polite anymore though. It’s getting bad. I feel like an asshole.”
“What did you do?”
”Nothing. Stupid shit, this guy was taking forever to choose a flavor, so I gave him like half scoops in his waffle cone. Not saying “goodnight” to people. Just snarky bullshit. But I hate people right now. I hate it.”
She smiles reproachingly. ”You gave him little tiny scoops?”
I smile guiltily.
”Baby…”
“I just feel so… Un-empathetic. I feel disconnected.”
“Baby, come here, come here.” She puts her right arm around me and gently pulls my head to her decolletage. With my left ear pressed warmly and comfortably into her sternum, she runs her fingers through my hair. ”I’m sorry you had a hard day baby. Just relax, let me pet you. We’ll get you some food, and something to drink… maybe a beer? Huh? And we’ll snuggle up in front of the heater with the pug and watch a funny movie, and I’ll rub your sexy little head. Ok?”
I exhale the day. ”Ok.”
“Ok. Now let mama get up so I can get you some food.” She lifts my head from her chest and kisses it: “Mwah!”
I lean back and close my eyes as she walks away. ”Baby…”
“Yes sweetheart?”
“Thank you.”
She laughs, “For what sweetie?”
“I dunno. For making me feel better. For taking care of me.”
“Oh baby.” She dismisses me with a wave of her hand, “I love you.”
January 12, 2009
love and hate and taste and crudity and the continental drift of dying empires and the perils of success and our hopeful efforts to outwit biology. On my own vanity and creeping awareness of the inherent ambivalence of the natural law. On the societal implications of that ambivalence. On the difficulty of marriage, of any human union, on the sad wisdom of the Buddhist. On Derrida and Dante (one of whose names elicits a scolding red squiggle). On the boundary between kindness and self-preservation, between heaven and hell, between wealth and dearth, between aware and deceived. On the reach of technology. On double-edged swords. On who we really are, on the things that really scare us. On the worst thing someone could say to you.
January 12, 2009
