LOVE AMONG THE RUINS

We’ve all heard that kind of story before. Or seen it, in a hundred chick-flicks or old black-and-white Audrey Hepburn movies. We meet a girl, a young woman really, who either a) is hopelessly plain, and suffering from low self esteem, b) has just been left at the altar or is about to marry the wrong man, or c) is totally hot but is just now realizing she forgot to fall in love as she climbed to the top. She takes off, somewhere old, somewhere romantic, someplace brimming with  either covered bridges, crumbling Corinthian columns, or smoky cafés which serve impossibly strong coffee. There she stumbles haphazardly into the man of her dreams, who is inevitably shirtless and glistening unnaturally, and after some resistance they both fall in love and spend a brief weekend, or week, or month, or whatever, together in bliss, living on espresso and crusty bread and making love for hours as either the daffodils bloom and fill the world with hope, or the autumn leaves turn brilliant as a reminder that all beauty fades. But the affair is doomed before it begins, and soon the two lovers must return to their lives, she as either a successful neurosurgeon and entrepreneur, or celebrated model who would rather read books; and he to his fishing boats, his horses, or his wife and kids. A bittersweet goodbye, some tears, and a scene involving a longing gaze out of the window of a train or a taxicab heading to parts unknown.
The thing is that I had an affair like that once.
Except that I was already married. Mark was actually with me at the time. And the glistening stranger wasn’t a man but a dog.
We were on vacation in Athens, Greece. It was the late 1990s, some time before the Euro because they were still using Drachmas back then. I thought it was cool that we were using a unit of currency that had been around since before the time of Jesus. And you could tell, too, because one Drachma was worth practically nothing. A Coca-Cola at the time probably cost like 30,000 Drachmas.
Anyway, Athens certainly has no shortage of crumbling columns, and we had already spent a few days exploring the ruins, the Acropolis, the Plaka and the Old City.
It was actually our last day there. The next day we were heading out to see some of the beautiful blue and white islands of the Adriatic. The whole time we had been in Athens, Mount Lycavittos had been there, beckoning, crying out to be explored. Mount Lycavittos sits in the middle of Athens, rising out of the urban clutter like a single giant boob on a giant one-boobed Hollywood starlet. The legend says that at one time, Athena kept the future king Erichthonius in a small box. One day she went off to fetch a mountain to bring back to use at the Acropolis. She left the box containing Erichthonius with the daughters of the king and told them they must not open it. Of course, overcome with curiosity, they opened the box. A crow witnessed the event, and flew off to tell Athena, who was so enraged when she heard the crow that she dropped the mountain she had been carrying. And that is how it looks, like somebody just sort of plopped a mountain down in the middle of Athens.
So, that day, Mark and I decided that we would explore Mount Lycavittos. We walked from our hotel, winding through the ancient, cluttered streets of the city, until we found ourselves at the base of the mountain. We found a small paved path, which soon disappeared into dirt and brush, and with no small effort, we climbed our way to the peak, just under 900 feet. At its peak, winded and windswept, we found spectacular views of the city, and a small but charming 18th-century Greek Orthodox chapel, the simple, whitewashed Byzantine style which is as plentiful in Greece as taco stands are in Texas. At its door sat the prerequisite old Greek yaya, in her widow’s weeds, complete with black shawl, black babushka, a wart or two, three teeth and a working cell phone. There is one of those at the door of every chapel in Greece. The funny thing is, that probably less than twenty years before, they had all looked like Melina Kanakaredes, all statuesque and beautiful with long henna ringlets and perfect noses. Something horrible happens to Greek women after 45. Maybe it’s all the Ouzo and the olive oil. But, I digress.
The inside of the chapel flickered with the dancing light of dozens of candles, lit by unseen pilgrims, as it bounced and played off the gold and silver of the revered icons, mysterious and inscrutable to me as the Buddhas of Angkor Wat. Outside the chapel were commanding views of the ancient city of Athens, which sprawls out for miles in all directions, an unending sea of Mediterranean terra cotta and Greek whitewash. There is also a restaurant. It is one of those “eat at the top of the (mountain/skyscraper/canyon)” type of places, with walls of windows and plates of greasy spaghetti Bolognese, which seem to sprout as naturally in those environments as edelweiss in the Alps. 
The restaurant was open, although inexplicably empty. Apparently no one else had felt the urge to climb Mount Lycavittos that afternoon. We had lunch there, served by an older man, a gentleman who did his job with the grace and dignity reserved for those of the Old School. A napkin over the forearm, a bow tie and just the slightest bow, regardless of the mediocre fare.
We discovered that the top of the mountain was serviced by a funicular, a peculiar type of railway car which is pulled up and down the steep mountainside using cables and counterbalances. After lunch, we rode the funicular back down to the bottom, sharing the car with a handful of local men, older guys, probably heading home for the typical Mediterranean mid-afternoon siesta, bantering with one another in Greek, probably talking about how ugly each other’s wives were or kvetching about politics, which haven’t changed much in Greece since the days of Troy vs. Sparta. Hearing them reminded me of being in a barbershop sometimes, when all the men are talking about sports. It’s all very manly and slaps on the back, and I’m just sitting there listening, with no idea what the hell anyone is talking about.
At the bottom of the mountain, the funicular left us off in the fashionable Kolonaki district of Athens. We wandered the streets for a while, and somewhere near the Presidential Palace was where we met Buster.
Now, I had heard that the city of Athens made an effort in 2004 to clean the streets of the thousands of stray dogs and cats which plagued the city. What methods they may have employed, I shudder to think. But this was long before 2004, and the “problem” of strays was still pretty bad. For the cats, it didn’t seem quite as brutal: they would make their homes in the ancient sites, out of the way of the insane Athenian traffic; and often kindly women from the neighborhood would take it upon themselves to look after the cats, leaving food out and caring for the sick ones, that sort of thing. The dogs had it much harder, wandering the mean streets, hungry and desperate, struggling to survive day to day. The fact that the people of Athens regarded them as dirty, diseased public nuisances did little to make their lives any easier. A swift kick was easier to find than a kind smile.
Mark and I aren’t from Athens, though, and we couldn’t help ourselves from saying hi to the dogs who came our way, and from offering a kind word and a little scratch behind the ears, regardless how matted or unkempt they may have been. So, when a floppy-eared, sandy colored mutt came our way, all smiles and wagging tail, we stopped and said hello. We let him sniff our fingertips, gave him a little pat on the head, and went along our way.
He followed us.
For about ten or fifteen minutes, the little mutt would shadow our moves, never losing sight of us through the crowded city sidewalk. At one point, Mark said to me, “Let’s see if he’s really following us.” So, a block or two later, we stopped, and sort of hid against a wall. The little dog walked by. But, a few moments later, when he realized he couldn’t see us ahead of him, he started sniffing the air, and when he caught our scent, he came running over to us as if to say, “Hey! I almost lost you guys!”
“I guess we have a friend,” I said. We named him Buster. It was a name that had come to me in a dream a few months before, and eventually it would be what we came to name our dog back home.
The three of us walked together the rest of that afternoon, Mark, me and Buster. At one point, we were strolling through the National Gardens, and we came to rest on a park bench. As we sat, Buster gave us a little bark and a little wag of the tail, as if to say, “Wait here- I’ll be right back,” and he took off into the woods. Mark and I wondered for a moment whether that would be the last we would see of our little friend.
A few minutes later, though, we heard an excited barking, and out from the woods came that sandy colored mutt, barking happily and smiling from ear to ear, and with him he had brought at least ten or fifteen of his buddies from the park. He was leading the pack, a pack of raggedy, unloved, lovable misfits of every conceivable size, shape, and color; from precious little lap dogs to giant, slobbery hounds, and they were heading right for us.
For a moment it was a little unnerving. Here we were, sitting targets for a pack of wild dogs who were running straight towards us at full throttle with teeth bared. It was too late to get away, so Mark and I climbed up atop the back of the bench in an attempt to at least keep our vital parts out of reach while we assessed the situation. 
What a sight it must have been. There was no need for fear. Picture Mark and me, perched on the back of that park bench, surrounded on all sides by a pack of dogs, barking happily and trying to jump up and be the next one to get a kiss. Buster was standing there beaming, his doggy heart was bursting at the seams with love and happiness. I felt like one of those kids they tend to feature in Estée Lauder perfume commercials, a tiny little boy being mobbed by a litter of love-hungry puppies. Meanwhile, the Athenians who were passing by couldn’t help but stop and stare, they shook their heads but they couldn’t help but smile a little at the two crazy Americans being attacked by a pack of filthy strays. I, myself, was laughing.
This has become one of the most precious memories of my entire life.
After a while, though, it was time to say goodbye to the pack. Buster continued to walk with us for the rest of the day, waiting for us if we stopped into a shop or a gyro stand, without benefit of a leash. Before long, people began to look at him as if he was not a stray, but as if he was our dog, and suddenly this dirty little public menace was just somebody’s nice dog. And I think he began to feel the shift in himself, as well.
Before long, the sun began to dip in the late-Spring Athenian sky, and we had to make our way back to the hotel. Mark and I both wondered what would happen once we got there, but neither of us had an answer that we liked, so we just let the moments pass and enjoyed our time together with the scrappy dog. More than once, my heart skipped a beat as he made his way through the city with us, narrowly being missed by buzzing Vespas, belching noxious exhaust and their drivers’ fists raised in ire.
But soon we found our way to the relative quiet of our hotel’s neighborhood, and to the front door. I could see the desk clerk peering out at us, one eyebrow raised as if to say, “You’re not bringing that filthy animal in here.” But we knew that already. I think all three of us knew.
So, we took a few minutes and sat with our little friend. We told him that he was a good boy, and that if we could have brought him home with us at that moment, we would have. It wasn’t that easy though, and after a while we had to say goodbye, and I hugged him and told him I hope he had a good life. The sad part was that a part of me knew that his life probably wasn’t going to be that good. That’s the part of me which aches a little bit every time I think of this story; the part that’s aching a lot right now as I write it all down.
We walked in to the hotel, the desk clerk eyeing us suspiciously as we made our way up to our room.
Buster the dog laid down in front of our hotel and cried. We heard him from our room, that mournful, whimpering cry of a dog whose heart might just be breaking. We were boarding a plane the next morning, though, heading for Mykonos. There was nothing to be done. My heart might just be breaking as well, and all I could think was equal parts of “I’m sorry” and “Thank you.”
Soon, the cries died down, and the next morning as we lugged our bags to the curb, he was gone. A part of me was glad about that, but a part of me looked up and down the block, secretly hoping to see him running towards me.
This is where the film ends, with me in a taxicab, looking through the window as we drove through the orange-tinted mist of an early morning in Athens, silently saying goodbye to my Greek love affair. We broke each other’s hearts.

ONE IMAGE - ONE HUNDRED VOICES

I submitted a piece to this project. "Flash Fiction" ("a style of fictional literature or fiction of extreme brevity") - limited to 250 words. I'm not known for my brevity. Deadline is 12/7/13 with posts appearing after 12/9.

oneimage-onehundredvoices.com

 

 



True Colors

To my gay and lesbian brothers and sisters: Maybe we've been told for much of our lives that we are dirty, shameful, somehow less than everyone else; that our love isn't really love but sin. Maybe we've had to hide, maybe we've had to hope that we would blend in to the background and not be noticed.

But you know something? All that is wrong.

We are beautiful and we have no reason to hide.

 

 

 

Q&A

Cape Codder asks: Do women pee in the shower too?
Dear Cape- My first reaction was, “Why the hell would anyone ask a question like that?” Then, the right side of my brain kicked in with its own question: Has it been established that men pee in the shower? I mean, unless you’ve been asking around, perhaps you are the only person who pees in the shower at all.
Nevertheless, in my effort to answer each and every question posed to me, no matter how absurd, obtuse, or distasteful (well, if not “answer” every question, at least “reply” to every question), I shall attempt a reply to this one.
First of all, this is a subject on which I am singularly unqualified. My mother was the only female with whom I have shared living quarters in my entire life, for one thing. I never even saw my mother naked, for heaven’s sake, much less asked her whether or not she peed in the shower. Even if I did live with women, even if it was just me in a whole houseful of women, I doubt that I would have ever found a way to introduce the topic into a conversation. Unless maybe it was like 3am and everyone was really buzzed on Zima and playing Truth or Dare in the rumpus room.
However, my female friends on Facebook have assured me that women do, indeed, pee in the shower. At least some of them.
Upon further consideration, though, it seems to me that it would actually be more remarkable if someone actually did not pee in the shower. Ponder this: Classic comedian Buddy Hackett had a line which went like this, “He’s the sort of guy who steps out of the shower to take a leak.”
Food for thought.

Uncle Fuzzy writes: Why do men exaggerate?
Dear Fuzz- First of all, let me say that this was absolutely the most interesting and the very very hardest question that anyone has ever asked me, ever ever ever. I thought about it for like a million years, and it consumed me so much that I could not think about anything else at all the whole entire time.
However, after all that contemplation, I could not find even one tiny, miniscule shred of evidence that men exaggerate at all. Well, maybe one out of 200 million men might exaggerate a little bit about his enormous income or how miserable his head cold is, but other than that, I don’t know any guys at all who exaggerate. But thank you so much for asking, I really appreciate it, more than anything else in the whole entire world.

Kurious in Killeen writes: What do you dream?
Dear Kurious- First of all, I recognized you right away as the same writer who asked the question “Why?” a couple of months ago. I am beginning to learn that you like to ask the very difficult, extremely profound questions. None of these questions like, “What is your favorite brand of jarred spaghetti sauce?” or, “Coke or Pepsi?” You want to get the biggest bang for your question-asking buck, so to speak.
Of course, your question itself could have many different meanings. I noticed that you did not ask “What do you dream of?” or “What do you dream about?”, but simply, “What do you dream?” So, it makes me think that it’s not so much about the nightly visions we all share, the nonsensical stories we weave for ourselves out of disjointed images of the day’s events, beautiful bodies and gorillas playing saxophones, but more about the bigger dreams, about a life well-lived and the world around us.
I still allow myself the larks: the dreams that the Prize Patrol will come knocking on my door one day with a whole bunch of roses and a gigantic check made out to me for twenty million dollars. But I also dream about what is much more likely: of being able to grow old and live in a comfortable home with my husband without having to worry about money. I dream about that one all the time.
I dream that one day, someone will stumble across my blog and offer me a contract.
I have a very real dream right now of walking the Camino de Santiago in Spain. It is an 800km (about 500 miles) journey from the French Pyrenees to Santiago, Spain. I am planning to walk it in 2018, have felt called to walk it, actually. I think about it quite often, but don’t really discuss it much with others. 2018 is a long way off and most people really don’t get it, anyway. But I dream about it.
I want to say, as well, that many of the big dreams I had when I was younger have actually come true, which is pretty awesome. I have found True Love, which I always believed in. I live in my own home and it even has a white picket fence. I have seen the world (although there’s a lot left to see.) So, my list of Big Dreams seems to be dwindling. I think that’s a good thing.

The Good Husband asks: What is love?
Dear Husband- I see that this is the week for unanswerable questions.
Of course, my very first thought upon reading your question is the 1993 hit by Haddaway, “What is Love (Baby Don’t Hurt Me)”. Thank you very much, now I’ll never get that song out of my head.
For this question, I believe it is our language itself which falls short. Love is so many different things, it is nearly incalculable. The Eskimos have like a hundred words for snow, tribal cultures in Africa have fifty ways to say “that sand is fucking hot”, and yet we only have one word for love.
The problem is that the word has become cheap. How can you say that love is what happened when you looked at your baby daughter’s face for the very first time, and then turn around and say, “I love “Duck Dynasty”!”
People can spend their whole lives on a quest for Love, and yet they claim that they “love that new Geico commercial”. The word seems to have lost its value.
So, my friend, I am afraid I cannot really answer your question. I do suspect, however, that whatever you give away, in terms of love, pretty much determines what you will receive.
For now, let’s groove!



Kapa’a Mama writes: Have you read the new Pratchett book yet? Seen any good movies lately?
Aloha Mama- It certainly is refreshing to get a good old, down-to-earth, plain, honest question for a change. The sort of question that friends might ask one another over a Fribble and a SuperMelt at Friendly’s. And a two-for-one, at that! The downside is that the answer to both of those questions is ‘no’. Cue pregnant silence and a slurp of your Fribble.
I am currently on my local library’s waiting list for “Raising Steam”, which is the new Discworld novel. Apparently, this one entails the introduction of the first steam engine to the great city of Ankh-Morpork. Could be interesting. The last Pratchett book I read was “Dodger”, which wasn’t a Discworld novel but Sir Terry’s spin on Dickens and Victorian London. It was good: classic Pratchett.
I should take this opportunity to proselytize a bit for Sir Terry Pratchett and the Discworld books. Certainly one of my favorite, if not my favorite, authors of all time, Sir Terry has a huge following in the UK, but unfortunately hasn’t “raised much steam” here in America (see what I did there?). He has written and co-written dozens of books; the new release marking #39 or 40 in the Discworld series alone.
It is impossible to categorize or classify the Discworld books. Fantasy, certainly, but it’s not all Sorcerers and Faeries. Literary satire (“Eric” is a carefully crafted send-up of “Faust”), hilarious social satire, to be sure. It is as if he has held a mirror up to our society- a carnival fun-house mirror, that is.
This is what I would recommend. Go to your library, or B&N, or wherever you download your so-called “E-books”, and do a search for “Discworld”. Scan the list of titles. Pick a title that looks good to you. Do not read a description, do not read the flaps or anything else. Simply start reading on page 1. Within 50 pages you will be hooked, and most likely laughing out loud to yourself on the bus so that people are looking at you funny and sort of moving away. The Discworld books can be read in any order, but the themes tend to become more complex as they come out.
For my fellow fans, here are my thoughts:
First book read: “The Truth” - hooked by page 3
Favorite book(s): a tie between “Carpe Jugulum” and “Thief of Time”
Favorite character(s): Gaspode the talking dog, and any of the Igors
Favorite “series”: the witches
(would love to hear from you on your list…)
AS for the movies, I haven’t really seen anything remarkable in a long time. I’ve seen some decent movies, sure; at least it’s better than television and worth $1.25 at the Red Box. But I haven’t been really blown away since I saw “Cloud Atlas”, and that was months and months ago.
The last four movies which really blew me away, and all for different reasons, were “Cloud Atlas”, “Life of Pi”, “Best Exotic Marigold Hotel”, and “The Way”.

Windsor Wife wonders: Where did the term "not one red cent" originate from?
Dear Wife- The difficulty here is not in answering your question. The difficulty is in making the answer even vaguely entertaining. I don’t think it can be done. I thought about making something up, but I couldn’t come up with anything. I thought about answering your question in the form of a story, which I sometimes do. But the story would have to involve hoop dresses and old money and possibly the burning of Atlanta, and I don’t think I have the time or patience for an undertaking like that today. So, I suppose my only option is to simply answer the question.
Back when pennies were made from pure copper, they had a much redder hue than pennies today do, particularly after having been circulated for a while and handled a bit. This was long before ordinary people got involved in stocks, bonds, derivatives, mortgages, 401(k)s, and all the other financial instruments which have turned money today into little more than a shell game, so the closest thing most people had to “worthless money” was a penny. So, to say that something was not worth “a red cent” was to say that it was worth so little as to be worthless.
It pains me to write such a boring response.

Trippy!

Q&A

Cape Counselor wonders: Is there a reality beyond here?

Dear Counselor- Absolutely.
Sometimes, when I read these questions, I find myself picking apart every word, not unlike politicians who labor over every bit of language in a bill or in a constitutional amendment. If I’m not careful, I can soon overthink a question so much that it becomes unanswerable; again, not unlike Capitol Hill. The word in your question which concerned me the most is the word “beyond”. To me, that sounds as if we have this reality, here, now; and there is another reality or multiple realities waiting sequentially, afterward. There are actually a myriad of different realities which exist all at the same time. There are both Big Reasons and Small Reasons for that.
The Big Reasons for the existence of multiple realities is that we don’t actually live in a Universe, but a Multiverse. One of my favorite authors of all time, Sir Terry Pratchett, writes about the concept often, and refers to it as the “pants-leg” theory of reality. The idea is that in the Multiverse, every possibility of every day, every action, reaction made or taken, consciously or unconsciously, plays out in its own universe, each one splitting off of the other like the legs on a pair of trousers.
For example, when you were at the Shop-Rite last week and the guy behind the deli counter asked you if you wanted Boar’s Head or Shop-Rite brand cold cuts, you answered him “Boar’s Head” even though you wanted the cheaper brand, because there were people standing around and you were afraid you’d look like a cheapskate. Well, at the very same time, you also answered “store brand, please”, and that version of you split off into an entirely different universe, a universe where you saved 14¢ a pound on low-sodium ham.
So imagine, all these realities, each one playing out and splitting apart into infinitely more realities, all coexisting and getting along just fine. We just sort of pick a path to follow along the way.
The Small Reasons mostly stem from the fact that the concept of “reality” itself is flawed. What we think of as “reality” is completely subjective, something we make up for ourselves day after day in order to make sense and order out of the world around us.
Take, for example, the recent World Series. Imagine two fans at the ball park that night: a Red Sox fan, and a Cardinals fan.
Red Sox win. The crowd goes crazy. A historic night in Beantown.
Now ask the two fans to describe the night. You will get two radically different answers, and both of them would be 100% accurate. The Red Sox fan will undoubtedly use a lot of words like “awesome” and “amazing” and “wicked pissah”, while the Cardinals fan will use words like “disappointing”, “humiliating”, and “nearly got beat up in the parking lot”.
Two realities existing side by side.
So, you see, there do exist other realities “beyond” our own. But just remember, in another dimension, quite nearby, I answered your question with an “Absolutely not.”

Big Lil writes: I would like to hear your thoughts and memories on the first sisters in the name of love!!!
Dear Lil- Wow, now that was a long, long, time ago. If I remember correctly, it was probably around 1989 or 1990, before AIDS really received much in the way of funding. What is now the AIDS Support Group of Cape Cod was then the Provincetown AIDS Support Group, and they helped people with AIDS and what we then called ARC with medical support, food, “buddies”, and other staples of human dignity. It was pretty much up to us as a community to fund the Support Group, and in Provincetown in the early 1990s that could only mean one thing: throw on a dress and put on a show! So that’s what we did.
The theme that night was self-explanatory: “Sisters are Doin’ It for Themselves”. The venue was set: the Post Office Cabaret. The core group was myself and the other ScreamGirls, Lila and Svetlana, and Dixie and Blanche and the Reverend Brooks; and of course yourself, my dear, our illustrious Mistress of Ceremonies.
We put out feelers among all the waiters, bartenders, shopgirls, and other riff-raff of Provincetown to come on down and do a number. It was so long ago, they had to bring their music on a cassette! It’s been so long, it’s hard to remember everyone who performed, but aside from the people I’ve mentioned, I seem to remember Eve, (yes, that Eve) doing a number, along with Kevin Driskell (aka Baby Strange), Queen Marcia and others. I seem to remember that there was no dressing room, (or if there was it was all yours), so all the queens were changing in the back of the room between their various numbers, right behind the back row of the audience.
The crowd went wild that night. Here were the rank-and-file, the heavy lifters of the Provincetown economy, even back then. The people who showed up for work every day, ran up and down those stairs at the Lobster Pot, blended those Strawberry Margaritas at Café Blasé. They were up on the stage, in a dress two sizes too small which they had just bought at the thrift store earlier that day; and they were in the audience, giving away hundreds of hard-earned dollars to the cause, one dollar tip at a time. It was awesome.
I don’t remember how much money we raised that night. Probably less than $2000. Of course, $2000 went a lot further back then. But it was something. We were doing what we could. We were Doing Good and Looking Fabulous. Sisters. In the Name of Love.


　
Manhattan Minister’s Wife asks: If you could be any animal what would it be?
Dear Manhattan- This seems like it would be an easy question to answer, but in fact it is not. This is probably due, at least partially, to my tendency to overthink these things sometimes. But the truth is, I’m am really not sure what type of animal I would prefer to be. There are up-sides and down-sides to every answer.
At first, I thought about the Koala. Mark and I went to a Koala preserve near Melbourne when we were in Australia. They are unbelievably cute and cuddly-looking. They also sleep 20 hours a day, which is something I’ve aspired to for most of my life. But then I remembered that they ate only one food their entire life: eucalyptus. I tried hard to imagine my entire lifetime eating nothing other than leaves that taste like cough drops. So I guess Koala is out.
It seems rather unimaginative, but I’m going to have to go with what I know on this one, and answer “a dog”. They are the animal with which I have the most empathy and the closest relationships. But even this answer comes with qualifications. I’ve always said that dogs either have it really good in this world, or really bad. I’ve seen the numerous strays on the streets of places like Athens and Puerto Rico, and their lives are hard, hungry, and mostly short. So, I would like to narrow my answer down somewhat.
I would like to be a dog. Preferably a mutt. I want to have floppy ears and a dopey grin. I want to live with a family who loves me. Families can consist of just one human or many. I want to spend most of my day napping on a couch or in a sunny spot just below the picture window. I want there to be at least one member of my human circle who lets me get away with almost anything. I want to be fed and kept warm in the winter. I will work for my keep, even if working means pulling a sled through hundreds of miles in the snow, or if it only means loving you and protecting you from the mailman.
Yeah, that sounds good.

Golden Oldie wonders: Fleetwood Mac or Peter Frampton?
Dear Golden- Interesting question. Somewhat thought-provoking, as it is somewhat out of context. I mean, Fleetwood Mac or Peter Frampton what, exactly? Which one would I rather have playing a Bar Mitzvah? (Fleetwood Mac) Or a “Happy Divorce!” party for a 50-something woman? (Peter Frampton)
Or possibly, who would win in a Celebrity Death Match? Clearly Fleetwood Mac would win, not only because they totally outnumber Frampton, but they have Stevie Nicks, who wears boots all summer long. She can stand on Frampton’s head and spin around in those boots, all the while chanting a very potent Welsh Wiccan curse upon him. Sayonara, Peter Frampton.
But, let’s narrow it down to one album apiece in order to level the playing field.
Frampton has “Frampton Comes Alive”, which must have been in the collection of every teenager alive in 1976. I remember two things about that album. One thing was that because of the stage lighting, the picture of Peter Frampton on the cover looked like he had pink hair. The other thing was that my brother liked to play his stereo in the morning when he was getting ready for school. So every once in a while I would be woken up to Peter Frampton talking into his guitar strings on “Do You Feel Like We Do” or “Show Me the Way”, and at the time this was not an experience which I enjoyed.
Fleetwood Mac gets “Rumours”, which is clearly one of the classic albums of all time. There is arguably not a bad song on the entire album, and every single track has gone on to be a classic or a hit. My memories of “Rumours” stem from my earliest days on my own, when I had my first real apartment. I left the nest quite young, I was barely 18 which would have made it about 1980. I remember listening to “Rumours” on cassette on my Walkman, riding the bus from my job in Harborplace to my apartment on University Parkway in Baltimore. I remember listening to “Second Hand News” - “won’t you lay me down in the tall grass and let me do my stuff?” - with the volume turned way up so it sounded as if Fleetwood Mac was playing right inside my head. Back then, the music leaked out of those old headphones like crazy, so I’m sure the entire bus was listening to it, too. I enjoyed it, anyway.
Plus, they have Stevie Nicks, who wears boots all summer long.
So, based on all that, my answer is Fleetwood Mac.

Shark with a Shield asks: Vanilla or chocolate?
Dear Shield- No contest here. Chocolate.
Anyone who knows me knows that I am the textbook Chocoholic. I love just about anything sweet, but chocolate, well, takes the cake, as it were.
My earliest memories of chocolate are of Nestle’s Quik, in powder form. It was the only way Mom could get me to drink milk, and I still don’t like drinking white milk to this day. I have sunken to the depths of choco-addiction depravity. More than once I devoured an entire bag of Reese’s Cups Minis on the walk home from the bars at DuPont Circle to my apartment in Logan Circle in DC, a fifteen minute walk. The entire bag. And I could do it today. For much of the wretched six months I spent living in Key West, I was so broke that a Snickers Bar qualified as one meal of the day. Chocolate has seen me through good times, bad times, ups, downs, you name it.
I could quit at any time, I just don’t want to quit. So don’t ask me to, OK, man?
I’ll be fine. After a RingDing.

Cuz in Charlestown asks: If you could pluck a persons eyes out, turn the eyeballs 180 degrees and plunk them back in, would they view everything upside down?
Dear Cuz- Really?
More than anything, your question disturbs me. This is the scene which it evokes:
A seedy bar. A crappy old tube television plays the Weather Channel at one end of the bar with the sound off. An unused dart board hangs askew on one wall, and the harsh fluorescent light hanging over the pool table proclaims Miller the “champagne of beers”. Two men approach. One of them is short, unwashed, and fidgety, like a 4’11” Steve Buscemi with eyes bulging out of his head. The other is big, muscle-bound, and slow. He is both stupid and inexplicably hostile, a bad combination. He steps up to you, well inside your personal comfort zone, and as he does, you notice the food stains on his shirt and his breath smells like he hasn’t brushed his teeth in a month.
“Hey,” he says in a thick, thick-headed Cockney accent. You feel tiny drops of tobacco-colored spit hitting you in the face. “I’m gonna pluck out yer feckin’ eyeballs, turn ‘em around, and stick ‘em back into your feckin’ head!”
The little ferret-faced one laughs, a short burst of sound like a machine gun or an over-excited chipmunk. “Hey, Larry!” he says, sounding even more like Steve Buscemi than he looks. “Do ya suppose he’d see everything upside down? Huh? Huh? Do ya?” He laughs again, nervous squirrel.
What happens next?

Pensive in Provincetown asks: How are we remembered, and do we make a difference?
Dear Pensive- This is a very deep question. Two deep questions, actually, but it seems to me that the answer to both of them is the same, and that is that it is up to us. It is up to us how we are remembered, and it is up to us whether we make a difference.
Perhaps it would be a good exercise for all of us, some day when we are alone with our thoughts, one of those days when we’re feeling courageous enough to really look at our own lives for a few minutes, to ask ourselves that question. When you are safely ensconced in your pine box or your decorative urn, and people are sitting around drinking coffee out of paper cups and commenting on how moist the chicken salad is, what kind of stories do you want them to be telling about you? That you were an amazing mom? That you had the best music collection? That you overcame adversity with grace and humor? That you were smart, that you were funny, that you were fearless?
However you answer that question to yourself, then that’s probably where you need to be focusing your energy; a signpost on how you should probably be living your life.
As far as whether we make a difference, it is not so much up to us whether we make a difference as it is what kind of a difference we make. Our very existence in this world has already made a million differences in a million uncountable ways. (See “Butterfly Effect”) We can choose to make a difference for the better or for the worse by deciding, quite simply, to do the Right Thing or not to, whenever presented with the choice.
To me, it’s all about what I call Legacy. Legacy can be great wealth or great fame, but it doesn’t have to be. Whatever the humblest of us leaves behind is our Legacy. The way people remember you, or don’t; the difference you made, or didn’t; all those things. Your family, your Art, your footprint on the world. All these things are your Legacy, and it is never too soon to start working on leaving a good one.

　

Goodbye Dad

John T. "Jack" Halley

October 7, 1930 - October 18, 2013

 

 

Here is a link to Dad's obituary

 

Q&A

Singin’ in San Diego asks: If I said you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me?
Dear Singin’: Okay, okay, I see what you did there. That’s what they call good old “double entendre”, defined as “a remark that is ambiguous and often suggestive”. This is the very same method often used by fancy lawyers to trip up witnesses or defendants in court, by reporters interviewing politicians on TV news shows, or by late-night talk show hosts on pretty but dim-witted starlets. So, in order to foil your attempt to trip me up, I will answer your question on all its levels.
No.
1) “would you hold it against me?” meaning: “would it piss you off?”
No! Why would someone telling me I have a beautiful body piss me off? The only person who has uttered anything even close to that in the past ten years is my husband, and that was back in 2009, when he said something like, “I had a dream last night that you had a body like that guy Wolverine in that movie.”
2) “would you hold it against me?” meaning: “would you press your hot Wolverine body up against mine?”
No. In the first place, I am married, and that gives me automatic right of refusal to hold my body up against anyone. In the second place, your signature leads me to believe that you are out in San Diego. I, as you must know, am way across the country in Cape Cod. You can compliment my beautiful body all you like, but it will take more than that to get me on a plane out west just for a little cuddle.
To be fair, there is always an exception. I would, indeed, hold my body against you if you were my beautiful blond cousin from California, and we were dancing at a wedding; or if we were in a honky-tonk bar in Laredo, with sawdust on the floor and peanuts on the bar, and a great song by the Bellamy brothers came on the jukebox. We would have to dance.

Hungry from south of Harwich wonders: Does glow in the dark food glow in your stomach?
Dear Hungry: Well, the first thing that comes to mind when I read your question was “who the hell ever heard of glow in the dark food?”. Wherever you are dining out or buying your groceries, I suggest that you make other arrangements, as quickly as possible.
But, assuming that there actually is such a thing as glow in the dark food, and assuming that you have been able to consume it without any ill effects, I am forced to consider whether it would actually glow in your stomach. At this point, the question becomes rather like the one about the tree falling in the forest with no one around to hear it. But, every time I allowed myself to contemplate it, all I could see in my mind was a bunch of glowing bits of lunch or dinner bouncing around in your stomach, like glow-sticks at some kind of Digestive Tract Rave. It was all just too disturbing.
So, in a last-ditch effort to leave no stone unturned in seeking an answer to a question, I turned to one much wiser than myself for help: The Magic 8-Ball.
Here is your answer:
Reply Hazy Try Again

Curious on Conwell writes: Why did that old woman throw her purse at you?
Dear Curious: Now, what we have here is a classic case of jumping to conclusions, as you did not have enough of the facts to realize exactly what was going on.
The “old woman” is actually my maiden aunt, Aunt Frigidia. She was not throwing her purse at me, she was throwing her purse to me. And her “purse” was not a purse, but actually one of those velvet bags from an old Crown Royal bottle, which contained an old bowling trophy which we were pretending was a fertility idol.
What you failed to notice was that I was on a unicyle, and Aunt Frigidia was riding a Vespa, and the entire thing was being filmed by my 12 year-old nephew Colin, who was standing across the street with a camcorder. We were making an audition tape for the upcoming season of “The Amazing Race”.
So, I hope you see now how you should have all the facts before you draw any conclusions. I hope this satisfies your curiosity.

Homo in Harlem wonders: When did you first know that you were gay?
Dear Homo: This was a very serious question and gave me great reason for introspection. When, indeed?
It’s hard to say when I “knew” I was gay. In my worldview, that would be like “knowing” that you’re right-handed, or that you don’t like reading Anne Rice novels. You don’t really “know” it, that’s just sort of the way it is. Everyone else seemed to know I was gay long before I even knew what gay was, because they were calling me “faggot” starting in the first grade. And if my parents didn’t realize I was gay when I started hanging pictures of Bobby Sherman and David Cassidy with his shirt off up on my bedroom wall, then maybe they weren’t as bright as I give them credit for. At that point, though, I didn’t even realize or “know” that I was gay, I just thought I really, really liked the Partridge family.
There was an “a-ha” moment, though, when it all became clear to me, and maybe even got a name. I was somewhere between 10 and 12 years old, which would have made it the early ‘70s. I came across an article in one of my mother’s issues of “Cosmopolitan”. It’s hard to think of my mom as a “Cosmo Girl”, but there it is. Anyway, it was an exposé of sorts, with a title like “The Secret World of the Homos” or something like that. It was full of all kinds of sordid, tawdry details which I found absolutely delightful. At least I never had to be one of those poor kids who actually thinks that they are the only person in the world who has these feelings.
Anyway, after that, it was just a matter of the usual phases, in denial, out of denial, I’m gay, I’m not gay, I’m bi, all that nonsense, until I finally “came out” for good around age 17.

Furloughed in Falmouth writes: What are the house republicans thinking?
Dear Furloughed: You may remember a question, not long ago, about Duke the cat. I enlisted the services of Madame DeVille, Pet Psychic, in order to answer it. After reading your question, I called Madame DeVille, and I asked her if she could recommend a psychic who could read the minds of an entire Capitol building full of politicians. She referred me to one Madam Krakpotski.
I sat with Madam Krakpotski for over an hour as she read the minds of members of Congress on both sides of the aisle. She sounded as if someone were constantly turning the dial on an FM radio as she channeled their thoughts, her psychic powers jumping from one mind to the next. Here is just a tiny sample of what I heard:
“Did I leave the iron on?”
“Oh my god, who just farted?”.”
“Holy shit, did I just sext my mother-in-law?”
“How long until lunch? I hope they have the pastrami again. I like the pastrami.”
“Look how pretty the floor is in here.”
“Holy crap, is Boehner crying again?”
“                       “
“Where’s Jerry? He’ll know if there’s pastrami today.”
And on and on. 435 representatives and 100 senators, and not a single thought worth having in the entire bunch.

Scared Witless writes: How the #%&+ am I going to PAY for college?
Dear Witless: It is alarming to note that a four year college education can cost the average American family upwards of $200,000. That means that even if your child gets a job immediately upon graduating, at a modest starting salary of $20-$30,000 per year, and even if they put every single cent they earned towards paying for their education, they could be working for more than ten years without even being able to buy you a Mother’s day card. Kids today should start investing heavily into very aggressive money market accounts and derivative funds at age 6 to 10 in order to have enough money saved to pay for one of their future children’s college education.
So, when it comes to paying for college, it would seem that the parent today must really learn to think out of the box. Here are some suggestions you may not have considered.
Game Shows - if you and your family go on “Family Feud”, for instance, and win Fast Money every day for five days, you will have half of a college education paid for, plus a brand new car for your kid to drive to college in!
Win a Nobel Prize - current winners are awarded nearly 1.5 million dollars. That will pay for college plus a nice new home in the Caymans.
Start a Ponzi Scheme - it worked for Bernie Madoff for decades. You only have to get away with it for four years.
Extreme Couponing - if you can hoard enough food that you can survive for four years on dried pasta and club-sized containers of soup and jarred pepperoncini, you might be able to save enough at the grocery store to offset the cost of higher education.
These are just a handful of ideas. I’m sure there are many other ideas like these, which are all just as helpful. I hope this has put you in the right mindset of “thinking outside the box”, and I’m certain you will find a way to finance your child’s future.

High in Low Country asks: How much is that doggie in the window?
Hear High in Low: Well, sir, that particular “doggie” is a 19^th century Staffordshire dog figurine, fully marked, in beautiful condition and rare because of the green color of the collar. If it were a pair, they would be worth $650 - $700, but since it is missing its mate, I’m asking $300 for it.

Contemplative on the Cape writes: If you were another person, who you know intimately, who would you like to be?
Dear Cape: Wow, another thought-provoking question.
At first, I approached it from a place of envy. Was there anyone whose life I would want over my own? Anyone who lives in a castle with a 24 karat toilet and a trampoline? No. Most people who I know intimately are pretty much in the same boat as I am: a slave to the time clock and just happy to get a week at the shore once a year.
So, then I approached the question from a place of admiration. If I’m going to be someone other than myself, I might as well be someone that I admire. Looking at it this way, I would have to answer: my brother.
Now, my brother certainly doesn’t have a gold-plated toilet or a trampoline. In fact, there are aspects of my brother’s life which I wouldn’t trade with him for all the onion soup in Paris. But, the person my brother has become, the person he is, now, is certainly someone I wouldn’t mind being.
Hope I didn’t embarrass anyone.

　

FAVORITE LINES

I recently finished a book called Amy Falls Down, by Jincy Willett. The main character in the book, Amy, is a writer. She carries around a notebook, as many writers do (not me, I "dog-write"); and every so often she will jot down a word or phrase which she might encounter during her day, which she thinks of as a great title for a story. She uses the list both as an inspiration and a reminder of her own creative thought process.
In that spirit, I have decided to create a space here, for the lines in my own work which I like the best.
In almost any piece of writing I've done, there has been at least one sentence or paragraph which makes me smile quietly to myself and think, "That was a good one." Here they are:

From "Little Green Men":
 I have learned that if you’re at a cocktail party, for instance, and you start a story, “I once woke up in an ATM in Mount Vernon after we went to a Grace Jones concert and bought a whole bunch of ‘ludes from this guy named Disco Donny,” people will laugh and think you’re urbane and sophisticated. But if you start a story by saying, “I saw a UFO once,” people will just think you’re crazy or some kind of conspiracy theorist.

From "Mission: H2O" (an essay about being sick with the flu):
Things which were of monumental importance to you yesterday will vanish completely from your priorities. Gotta get those whites washed? Ha! Need to check those spreadsheets on the Henderson account? Fuck the Hendersons. At this point, the world is lucky if you can stand up long enough to crank the thermostat up to 80°.

From: "Black & White":
 So, I’m mentally naming the navy blue of her suit “Mediocrity” when she drops the folder on my desk and says, “Goth!”

From: "Adrift":
I had just killed Aleksandr, the marsupial demi-god who was worshipped by the little Estonian circus cult I had found myself in. Now what do I do?
and
The only German I can speak is “Sprechen-zie Deutsche?”, which means “Do you speak German?”, which is a completely useless phrase to know when you are actually in a German city.

From: "Leap of Faith":
And when the nuns were singing “How do you solve a problem like Maria?” I always imagined that was how the Sisters were talking about me when I wasn’t around; that although I seemed shy and plain and boring to everyone around me, in reality I was something special and ethereal like a moonbeam. 
and
Anyway, St. Kwiatoslaw is something like 98% Polish. That’s OK with me, I don’t have anything against Polish people, except maybe their last names, which are all really long and full of too many z’s and k’s and y’s and things. Like if I was Polish, my name Smyth would be spelled Sczmythczkie or something.

From "Class of '84":
“Here you go, sweet heart,” she said. Mrs. Thornton always said “sweetheart” as if it were two words.

From "Dear John":
I mean, it’s weird: sometimes time seems to be crawling by at a snail’s pace, like on Monday morning it seems like Friday afternoon is forever away. But then before you know it, five years have flown by, and then ten, or fifteen, and it feels like you spent the whole time just trying to pay the bills and keep the living room vacuumed.

From "In-Laws, Squared":
The town where Bill grew up is called Cabot Cove, just like the one on “Murder, She Wrote.” It’s not so much a town, from what I could see, as it is a quantity of space between some stop signs, although I did see a fire hydrant and a mailbox.

From "The Raven & The Writing Desk":
She looked more as if someone had chopped off Liz Taylor’s head (fat, old, over-the-hill Liz, that is) and stuck it on a stake, like they used to do in medieval London, and then hung a Chanel suit over the stake. Her hair was enormous and exactly the color of a nice Napa Valley Merlot. Her face looked as if she had gotten a good old-fashioned facelift back in the 1970s and simply let it go since then, so she has actually had the chance to grow old and wrinkly twice.

From: "Untitled, or First Train Out of Toyland":
I never really understood what people meant when they said things like somebody “looks Jewish.” I mean, how do you look like a religion? But when I met Mary Margaret, I finally understood, because Mary Margaret looks about as un-Jewish as anyone can look.
and
People realized that it’s not always the words and the prayers that are important, it’s everybody being together and seeing each other through all the different stages in their lives, and laughing at the stuff that's actually funny, even if it is inside a church or a synagogue or whatever.

From: "Independence Day":
We started out having the kinds of conversations, in German, which only people in second-language classes have:
“Hello, Mrs. Kaufmann”
“Hello, Mr. Stubbs.”
“How are you?”
“Fine, thank you. How are you?”
“I am fine. The weather is good.”
“It is warm today.”
Then, I would say something like, “Thank you for asking me to your typewriter.”

From a Facebook status:  I noticed that she smelled heavenly, sort of like warm vanilla or freshly baked Madeleines. I later learned it was some sort of orthopedic skin cream for the chronically desiccated that she was wearing, formulated by the very same Biochemical Engineer responsible for Cher's remarkable state of mummification. 


 

EXTEMPORANEOUS WRITING - "Independence Day"

First comment: a phobia - Kevin Doherty: Agoraphobia
Second comment: a television show which is no longer on - Michael Bunn: I Dream of Jeannie
Third comment: a foreign language - Diana Back: German
Fourth comment: a U.S. city - Christopher DeBoard: Paducah
Fifth comment: when I think of the city above (#4), I think of ____ - Scott Barnett: Inbred hillbillies

　

I was almost finished with my first cup of coffee before I realized that it was the Fourth of July. The store was closed and technically I didn’t even have to be out of bed. But, by then it was too late, there was no turning back. It didn’t really make that much difference, anyway. The grocery business means early mornings, and I’ve been getting up early for so long that I tend to wake up by 7 or 8 in the morning anyway, even without an alarm.

I work for Higgledy Piggledy, not to be confused with Piggly Wiggly, which is a huge grocery market chain in the South. Higgledy Piggledy is a small, mom-and-pop chain of markets, if you can call three stores a chain. Two of the stores are in Coonskin Falls, Alabama, which is where I’m from, and one store is in Paducah, Kentucky, which is where I am now.

Coonskin Falls is a pretty small town, just a few miles away from Rogersville off of Route 72. I had been working for Higgledy Piggledy ever since I got out of high school, and I had been supervising the front end for a while, auditing the cash drawers and making sure the baggers weren’t out back drinking beer or smoking weed in their cars. One afternoon I got called upstairs to the office, to see Mr. Perry, the general manager of the store. The whole way up the stairs, I was wracking my brain, trying to figure out what I had done wrong. When I got to his office, he just smiled at me and motioned for me to take a seat. I tried to sneak a look at his desk to figure out what was going on, but the only thing there was an unopened, blank, manila folder.

“We’ve been watching you, Jacob,” he said.

At that point all I could hear was the blood rushing through my ears as my heart started pounding, and I’m sure my face was turning bright red. Classic fight-or-flee response. I’ve never dealt well with stressful situations.

But then I realized that he was saying things like, “...like what we see,” and “opportunity for advancement,” and the pounding in my ears started to subside.

“The company has acquired another outlet,” he was saying, “In Paducah, Kentucky.”

“Hillbillies,” was the first thought which popped into my head. “Oh my god, they’re shipping me off to work with the hillbillies.”

Mr. Perry said, “Now I know what you must be thinking, Jake. You’re thinking: ‘What the hell is there out in Paducah? A bunch of inbred hillbillies?’”

I shook my head and tried to look incredulous, as if that hadn’t been at all what I was thinking. “No…” I said.

“Nevertheless, that’s not the case at all. Paducah is as vibrant and exciting a place as Coonskin Falls, or even Rogersville. It is two states away, though, Jake. So if you did take this job, you’d be pretty much on your own out there.”

He explained that I would be moved out to Paducah, and that the company would hook me up with a place to live and all that. He told me to take the rest of the day and night to think it over.

“Sleep on it,” he said, and I promised that I would.

So, I thought about it, of course. I thought about it a lot. I never went to college, so I knew it was a good idea for me to grab at advancement, whenever it came my way. The money sounded pretty good, too; it was way more than what I was already making. And getting out of Coonskin Falls didn’t sound too bad, even if it was to someplace like Paducah.

The truth is, there really wasn’t anything keeping me in Coonskin Falls. I had been born and raised there, and lived there every one of my 28 years. But I was an only child, and Mom and Dad had moved to Florida a few years earlier, after Dad retired. I have some cousins who are really nice, but they live way down near Mobile and I really only ever see them at weddings and funerals.

I really had no friends at all in Coonskin Falls. This was not a revelation to me, in fact, it had been something that I’ve been trying to work on for quite a while. I suffer from extreme shyness. Even though I am able to interact with people normally at work and out in the world and stuff like that, when it comes to opening up and revealing the real Me to other people, I have a really hard time. This kind of makes it hard to make real friends. Truth is, though, that I would really rather be alone during my off time than be in the company of other people. But, as the years go by, I realize that this is something that is getting in the way of a lot of things, things like overall Happiness, Fulfillment, and Afternoons Watching Old Movies With Friends.

So, that night, I decided that I would make the move. I decided to come here to Paducah. But I also decided that if I was going to be making this fresh start, that I was going to try to start improving myself, too, by making an effort to reach out more to the people around me. So, the next day, I went in to Mr. Perry’s office and told him that I would take the job.

Six weeks later, there I was, standing at the end of a long walkway, and looking up at the pretty Victorian house I was to call home, as the movers hauled my belongings up the two flights of stairs to my apartment. The company had gotten me a one-bedroom apartment on the top floor of this house. The landlord was a little old lady who lived on the first floor, and the second floor was rented to some guy who I just prayed was quiet and didn’t smoke clove cigarettes.

In the foyer, as I made my way up for the first time, I noticed the names on the mailboxes. “Mrs. K. Kaufmann” said one. “D. Murphy” said the other. Someone had recently added “J. Stubbs” to my box, on paper, in that fancy, European-style script. I thought that was nice.

Up the stairs I went, and I walked into my apartment for the first time. Even with boxes everywhere and everything in complete disarray, I liked it right away. It’s a nice-sized one-bedroom, with windows on all four sides, and a decent kitchen and bathroom. It looks pretty much the way you’d expect the top floor of an 1880s Queen Anne Victorian to look: full of crazy little nooks and odd crannies, not one thing in the whole place level or plumb. It was much better than the cookie-cutter, concrete box garden apartment I had been living in back in Coonskin Falls.

A few hours later, the movers had left and I was puttering around the apartment, trying to get things livable. I had gotten the bed put together, and the stereo hooked up. The TV was plugged in, but the cable hadn’t been turned on yet, so that would have to wait. I was trying to think of things that would make my morning a little easier, because there was no time to waste, I had to be at the store at 7am the very next day. I got a shower curtain hung in the bathroom, and at least got my toothpaste and shampoo put out where I could get at them. I moved into the kitchen, and got the toaster oven and the microwave plugged in, and got some dishes and some silverware put away and somewhat organized. I got the coffee maker set up, too. I have one of those programmable coffee makers that will have your coffee all hot and ready for you as soon as you get out of bed, as long as you remember to get it set up the night before. So, I got the coffee ready for the next morning, and got the cup set out and the spoon and the non-dairy creamer, and that’s when I realized that I didn’t have any sugar. Now, I can live without a lot of things in my coffee. I can survive without my International Delight Hazelnut creamer, I can even do without milk or half and half altogether. But I can not drink my coffee without sugar. And there’s no way I was going to make it for Opening Day at the Paducah Higgledy Piggledy without coffee.

“A cup of sugar? Really?” I thought to myself, as I made my way downstairs. “They’re just gonna think I’m some kind of psychopath, with a line like that.”

Nevertheless, I found myself a few moments later on the second floor, knocking on the door of D. Murphy. Part of me, the part that finds it hard to let go of old, deep-seated assumptions and stereotypes, half expected to be greeted by a snake-handling, toothless hillbilly. Would he be like Jethro Bodine? Or more like Uncle Jed? Instead, D. Murphy looked pretty normal, at least the half of him that I could see behind the three inches of open door which the security chain would allow. Behind him I could see a small hall stand, with a vase and a small bowl which contained a stack of business cards.

“Hi, I’m Jake,” I said through the three inches. “I just moved in upstairs. Believe it or not, I need to borrow a cup of sugar.” I held my empty sugar bowl up as proof.

“Really?” he said.

“Yeah, really,” I answered.

“Look, I’m sorry, Jake. I can’t really help you. This might sound strange, but could I ask you to call me? On the phone?” He turned, and took a business card off of the pile on the table. Apparently, this was something he did a lot. He handed the card to me through the half-open door. “I’ll explain everything then.”
“Umm, okay, I guess,” I said.

“Okay. Cool,” he said, and he closed the door gently.

I looked down at the card. It just had his name, Douglas Murphy, along with a phone number and an email address, and what I recognized was the address of this house. “Strange,” I thought to myself.

I put the card in my pocket and brought my sugar bowl down to the first floor to try my luck with the landlady.

I knocked on her door. A short time later, the door was answered by what I can only describe as an adorable little old lady. This was not the sort of old lady who looks as though she could shatter at any moment like a fine Meissen figurine. Nor did she look like the sort of ornery old lady who would come out with a cane in one hand and a shotgun in the other, screaming, “Get the hell off of my sidewalk!” No, this little old lady looked right out of Central Casting. She was plump, but not fat; her grey hair pulled into a neat chignon. Her cheeks showed just a hint of pink, and her brown eyes seemed deep and wise, but mostly merry. When the door opened, the air smelled like a curious mixture of musty upholstery and rosewater perfume.

“Mrs. Kaufmann?” I said. She nodded.

“Hi, I’m Jacob Stubbs. I just moved in upstairs.” I offered my hand, which she took and shook warmly. “I wonder,” I asked, “if you have some sugar I might borrow?”

She stood there, smiling, staring at me blankly.

“Umm, Mrs. Kaufmann?” I said.

“Sorry,” she said, in a thick accent of some kind. “No English. Deutsche.”

Deutsche. I knew that meant German.

“German?” I said.

“Ja! Cherman! Ja, ja!” said Mrs. Kaufmann, her German accent thick as a Bock Beer at Oktoberfest.

I know maybe five words in German, and most of those I learned from watching reruns of “Hogan’s Heroes”. I did take two years of Spanish in high school back in Coonskin Falls. My teacher, Mr. Burnside, had such a thick Alabama drawl, I kept expecting him to say “y’all” after every sentence. “Buenas dias, y’all! ¿Cómo está todo, y‘all?”

“No comprende Deutsche,” I said, stupidly. She just smiled at me.

I thought for a moment. Then, I started an elaborate pantomime. I pretended to be bleary-eyed and drowsy, yawning and stretching, then making coffee, breathing in the aroma and licking my lips in anticipation. She was smiling and giggling a little at my performance. Then, I pointed at my empty sugar bowl and made a sad face that Marcel Marceau himself would have been proud of.

Her face lit up. “Zucker!” she exclaimed.

I was a bit taken aback. What had she just said?

She grabbed the sugar bowl from my hand. “Zucker!” she said again, and I realized that must be the German word for ‘sugar’. She disappeared into her apartment and came back a short while later with the bowl full.

“Danke schön,” I said, showing off some of my Hogan’s Heroes German. She smiled when I said that.

“Willkommen, Jacob, willkommen,” she said, taking my hand. I knew that meant ‘welcome’.

“Gracias,” I said, and went back upstairs.

Later that night, I had eaten some dinner and gotten some more things put away. I didn’t have TV, so I decided to get ready for bed even though it was only like 8:00 at night. As I emptied my pockets, I found the card that my neighbor, Douglas Murphy, had given me. Ordinarily, I would have thrown a card like that onto my dresser, and there it would sit, gathering dust before finally being thrown away months later. But I had made a decision, when I left Coonskin Falls, to start reaching out more to people around me.

No time like the present, I figured. So I got into my PJs, made a drink, and called the number on the card.

“Hello?” came the voice on the other end.

“Hi, Douglas?” I said.

“Yes.”
“It’s Jake. Jacob Stubbs. From upstairs. We just met. You, uh, you said I should call you.”

“Oh, Jake! Hi, How are you, man?” he said, as if we were old friends.

“I’m good, I guess,” I answered. “Moving is kind of a drag.”

“Yeah, for sure. For sure,” he said. “Me, I haven’t moved since I moved in here, and that was in like 2005.”

“Listen, Jake,” he went on. “I don’t want to sound like I’m blurting all this out, or like I’m laying all this on you at once. And it’s not something I would ordinarily do-”

I was getting curious now. I took a sip of my drink.

“-but since you’re going to be living here, in this house… Well, I figured it would be easier just to lay all my cards out on the table from the beginning. The reason I couldn’t really help you tonight, why I couldn’t open the door for you- well, among other things, I have agoraphobia.”

“Well, okay, but, I don’t really understand. What does an irrational fear of spiders have to do with it?”

“No, no,” he said, and I could tell he was chuckling a little. “That’s arachnophobia. Agoraphobia is a fear of open places, of the outside world, of being anywhere that you can have a panic attack. For me, that’s pretty much anywhere outside my apartment.”

“Now you know why I haven’t had to move since 2005,” he said.

I don’t know, but for a guy who hasn’t left his house in eight years, he sounded pretty normal to me. Nice, even.

We talked on the phone for a while longer. I told him about my move here with the grocery store and he told me a little bit about living here in Paducah. Once he had told me about his agoraphobia, I think we both kind of agreed not to talk about it for a while, until we could both get used to the idea.

After I hung up the phone with Douglas, I put some soft music on the stereo and sat for a while, finishing my drink. My mind was awash with all kinds of thoughts: a new job, a new home, a new town; and about three people living in one house. We were all prisoners, in a way. One, a prisoner of loneliness, one of shyness, and one of fear. I decided, as part of the New Me, my fresh start, to reach out to these two people. Maybe we could help free one another from our various bonds.

The next morning, my coffee was hot and ready for me when I woke up. As I spooned the sugar into my cup, I thought about Mrs. Kaufmann. What could I do to reach out to someone when we didn’t even speak the same language? The answer was clear: I would have to learn German.

The store opened that day, and so began the day-to-day grind of my job at the Higgledy Piggledy. The company had found an apartment that was literally a stone’s throw from the store. All I had to do was walk out of my front door, turn left, pass two houses and a dry cleaner’s, and I was there, in like two minutes.

After I made my two minute commute home a few days later and I was walking in the front door of the house, I saw a woman letting herself out of Mrs. Kaufmann’s apartment. I introduced myself, and she told me that her name was Nancy, and that she used to live in my apartment. She had grown fond of Mrs. Kaufmann and stopped by to check in and say hello every once in a while.

“She has no one,” Nancy told me.

She told me that Mrs. Kaufmann and her husband had moved here from Germany in 2004, to live with their son, who was raising a family here in Kentucky. Her husband ended up dropping dead of a heart attack two months after they moved here; and then her son and his entire family were all killed in a horrible traffic accident six days after that.

“It’s unimaginable, what that lady’s been through,” she said. “I think she’s been kind of frozen since then. She hardly ever leaves the house, and she doesn’t really know anyone here, except maybe for me and one or two people at her church. I hope you’ll keep an eye on her for me.”

I told her I would and we exchanged telephone numbers. I went straight upstairs after that, got on my computer and ordered Rosetta Stone. In German.

Over the next few days, I called Douglas a couple of times. The calls were pretty quick and mostly just small talk. I talked about work and we complained about the weather, that sort of thing. But it sounded like he was glad to have the conversation, and little by little the calls started to get a bit longer. One night, just before we hung up, he said to me, “You’re gonna have to come down, Jake. Take a look at my apartment.”

“That sounds awesome, Douglas,” I said. “We definitely have to do that.”
I hung up the phone, feeling like I was making some sort of progress.

My Rosetta Stone German lessons had arrived after a few days, and I jumped right in. At first I felt kind of stupid, sitting there with a headset on, talking to my laptop in German. But after a while, I actually started to get the hang of it, and it felt like I was making pretty good progress.

One morning, I ran into Mrs. Kaufmann in the foyer as I was leaving for work.
“Guten Morgen, Frau Kaufmann,” I said.


She did a double-take, surprised and tickled at my German greeting. “Guten Morgen, Herr Stubbs. Es ist ein schöner Tag, ja?”

I knew what she meant. She meant, “Isn’t it a lovely day?” It was pouring rain outside.

“Ja, sehr schön,” I said. Yes, very lovely.

Mrs. Kaufmann just stood there for a moment, her hands clasped across her bosom and smiling broadly. “Ja. Sehr, sehr schön.” It was a lovely day, even if it was raining.

That very night, there was a message on my answering machine when I came home. It was Douglas.

“Hey, Jake, it’s Douglas, from downstairs,” he said. He sounded nervous. “Listen, if you feel like it, maybe you’d like to come down tonight after you get home. You know, hang out for a while. Just, knock on the door if you feel like it, okay? Cool. See ya later.”

Amazing! Of course, I decided to go. So I ate a quick dinner, grabbed a six-pack out of the fridge and went downstairs to Douglas’ apartment. I knocked on the door. It opened, all the way this time.

There stood Douglas Murphy, who I was seeing for the first time, even though we had been living in the same house for almost three months. If I thought there would be something about him which said “Agoraphobe”, there wasn’t. He just looked like any normal, ordinary guy, maybe a little skinny and pale, and in need of a haircut, but normal.

“Come in,” he said. “Come on in, Jake.”

I really wasn’t sure what to expect, walking into the home of an agoraphobic. I suppose I expected a cluttered, oppressive place, like one of those houses on “Hoarders”; or else a Paranoid’s Command Center, like a wall full of computer monitors and radar screens and things, designed to keep Government Gamma Rays at bay. What I found, instead, was a perfectly tidy, perfectly neat little mid-century room, filled with clean, spindly, blond wood furniture and just enough wood paneling to make it look like an apartment right out of a 1968 edition of “Better Homes & Gardens”.

“Very nice!” I said, looking around and handing Douglas the six-pack. “I like it.”

“Thanks,” said Douglas, as he placed the beers in the fridge. He brought back two bottles for us.

I sat down on the couch and Douglas turned the TV on. We just talked for a while, small talk mostly, drinking our beers, but as we did, I kept looking around the apartment. There was something about it, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. But somehow or other, the room looked really familiar to me, as if I had somehow seen it before.

After a while, I said, “Douglas, I’m having the strongest sense of déjà vû right now. Do you believe in that sort of thing?”
“What do you mean?” he said.

“I could swear I’ve been in your apartment before. And I know that I haven’t.”

Douglas’ face broke into a huge grin. “Really?” he said. “It’s not déjà vû, Jake. But you have seen this apartment before.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.

Douglas just folded his arms across his chest and blinked hard. He was looking at me as if I were supposed to react.

He blinked again. I had no idea what was going on. Maybe this was some sort of OCD thing that agoraphobics have.

Douglas looked exasperated, like there was some sort of joke that I just wasn’t getting. “C’mere,” he said, finally.

He led me down to the end of the hallway, where he opened a closed door and turned on the light. I looked inside.

I could not believe my eyes. I saw a room, wallpapered in a purple metallic paper decorated with elaborate Moorish designs. I saw a couch, a circular couch, filling nearly the entire room, upholstered in purple velvet and piled high with pillows of all different colors. I was looking at the inside of Jeannie’s bottle, from “I Dream of Jeannie”.

“Oh, my god,” I said. “That is awesome.”
Then I realized why it had all seemed so familiar. Douglas had turned his apartment into Major Nelson’s house in Cocoa Beach.

“Remember that first night when you called,” Douglas said, “and I told you that I have agoraphobia, “among other things”? Well, one of the “other things” is this, this little “obsession” I have with ‘I Dream of Jeannie’”.

“So I see,” I said, as I flopped down onto Jeannie’s purple couch. “So I see.”

“When I was little,” he told me, “I wished I could be like Jeannie. I wished that I could just blink my eyes and blink away all the bad things; that I could just blink and everything would be different, everything would be okay. Over the years, I guess, it sort of turned into this.” He gestured to the room around him.

“Well, I love it,” I told him. “I think it’s fantastic. I could live in this room.”

Douglas seemed relieved in a way, that I actually kind of admired his obsession. And I did. I mean, it was cool, and funky. Weird and obsessive, yes, but still cool and funky. Most of the cool and funky people I’ve met in my life also turned out to be sort of weird and obsessive anyway, so it was kind of no big deal.
So, we hung out there in Jeannie’s bottle for a while, drinking beer and talking about old TV shows and stuff. We argued for a while over who would win in a fight: Jeannie or Samantha Stevens from “Bewitched”? We settled on Jeannie because Douglas would never be satisfied otherwise, and I thought it best not to upset an agoraphobic.

As we finished the last of our beers, Douglas began to open up a little about his phobia. His entire world had basically become the inside of this apartment. Once a night, after he was sure everyone else was asleep, he would screw up the courage he needed to tiptoe down the stairs and get his mail, and once a month he would slip his rent check underneath Mrs. Kaufmann’s door. “I’ve never even met her, Jake,” he said, “and I’ve lived here for eight years.”

I told him the little I knew about Mrs. Kaufmann, and he looked positively wounded as he contemplated her sorrow. He sat for a while, quiet, and then he said, “You know, Jake, I need to meet her, face to face. Sometime soon, some time when I’m ready, do you think you could take me to meet her?”
“Sure, Douglas. Sure I could. That would be nice,” I said.

Soon after that I said that I had to be at work in the morning and that I needed to get going. I turned as I left the apartment, and Douglas and I regarded one another for a moment. We were both smiling. Douglas took a single step out of his apartment.

He grabbed my hand and shook it. “I’m really glad you moved in here, Jake,” he said to me. “And I’m really glad that you’ve become my, well, my friend. I feel like my world is opening up a little bit.”
“Thanks, Douglas,” I said. “So do I.”
He closed his door and I went upstairs to my apartment. I began to get an idea, about widening Douglas’ world. I mean, if we started with his apartment and occasionally the foyer and the mailboxes, maybe I could talk him into trying out the rest of the house. My apartment, maybe Mrs. Kaufmann’s apartment, eventually his world could include the entire house, and from there, who knows?

I started working really hard on my German lessons, and calling Douglas every day, and even dropped by on the weekend when we watched the ball game sitting on Jeannie’s purple round couch.

A few days later, Mrs. Kaufmann came out of her door when I got home from work, as if she had been waiting for me.

“Herr Stubbs!” she said. “Möchten Sie zum Essen kommen?”

She was inviting me to dinner. I think she was trying very hard to speak slowly and clearly and in easy Beginner German.

“Ja, sehr gut!” I answered, accepting with enthusiasm.

Dinner at Mrs. Kaufmann’s was delightful. Sitting in her apartment was like sitting in a stage set for “Arsenic and Old Lace” or “The Whales of August”. It looked like Grandmother’s house because that’s exactly what it was. The furniture was all old and soft and comfortable, well worn but never threadbare, upholstered in warm burgundy velvets. There were fade marks on the arms of the sofa where the sun had hit it in the same place day after day. Lace curtains on the windows, lace doilies on the armchairs, and black and white photographs of stern-looking Edwardian ancestors lined the walls. The food she served was delicious and plentiful, and it seemed to me that she missed cooking for someone else. I think it pleased her that I asked for second helpings of everything, including dessert.

We started out having the kinds of conversations, in German, which only people in second-language classes have:
“Hello, Mrs. Kaufmann”
“Hello, Mr. Stubbs.”
“How are you?”
“Fine, thank you. How are you?”
“I am fine. The weather is good.”
“It is warm today.”
Then, I would say something like, “Thank you for asking me to your typewriter.”

She would laugh, and eventually I’d catch my mistake. Soon, though, I began to feel more comfortable, and even though our conversations were simple and kind of superficial, we managed to actually communicate with one another. I told her about my home town and my family, and she told me that she had been a teacher back in Germany. That explains why she was able to communicate with me so easily as if I were a dim-witted little German child.

Before the meal ended, we talked a little bit about Douglas. I tried to explain his agoraphobia to her as best I could in my halting German. She is not a stupid woman, and I think she understands pretty well. I asked her how she felt about meeting him, and she said, I think, that it would be lovely.

I tried to tell Mrs. Kaufmann how much I enjoyed the evening as well as I could with my broken German, and she told me that she enjoyed having me very much. I kissed her gently on the cheek before I left.

“Gute Nacht, liebe Dame,” I said. Good night, dear lady.

“Gute Nacht, lieber Freund,” she answered. She had called me a “dear friend”.

Over the next couple of weeks, things started to happen more quickly. I was continuing my German lessons on Rosetta Stone, and a few times a week, I would stop in to Mrs. Kaufmann’s apartment and we would have tea and work on conjugating my verbs and stuff like that. I started seeing her in the store now and then, and I would help her find things when she was having trouble; and before long I saw her smiling at the other patrons and cooing over babies, that sort of thing.

I managed to get Douglas to come up to my apartment one night for pizza. Mrs. Kaufmann and I had to promise to stay behind closed doors, and he found the strength to leave his apartment and climb the stairs up to my door. When he knocked, I opened the door and found him there, pale and sweating, and gnawing the fingernails on his left hand. In his right hand he held a six-pack of beer, which I knew must have been piss warm, because I know for a fact that it had taken him nearly 45 minutes to get from his apartment to mine. I could hear the sound of his jacket as he tried to slide his way up the stairs with his back pressed up against the wall, and every few minutes I could hear him hyperventilating, probably sitting on the steps.

“Hi Jake,” he said, forcing a smile and trying to appear nonchalant. “Thanks for inviting me over.”
I asked him to come in and he did, although I could tell it wasn’t easy at all for him. I just acted like everything was completely normal and everyday, and once Douglas got settled in the living room and we started talking and watching TV and stuff, he started to relax.

After a while, I could tell that Douglas wasn’t looking at the TV at all. He was just looking around himself, at my apartment, and the view through my windows and things like that. My apartment is nothing special, it’s not so much ‘decorated’ as it is ‘furnished’. I’ve always called my style “Early Salvation Army”. But it dawned on me that Douglas hadn’t seen anything, really, beyond his own four walls, in eight years. He seemed to be drinking it all in, letting it wash over him, the newness, the tiny taste of the outside world.

At the end of the night, I heard him fairly skipping down the steps in one shot. It took him about 30 seconds, and I think he was humming the whole time.

Two days later, when I came home from work, I came across Douglas, standing by his mailbox in the foyer, leafing through that day’s mail. It was like 6 o’clock, the sun was still up, and everyone in the house was, presumably, awake.

He glanced in my direction when he heard me come in. “Oh, hi Jake,” he said, as if this were nothing at all remarkable. “What’s up?”
“Nothing much,” I answered. “Same shit, different day.”
“Mmm-hmm,” he muttered.

I breezed past him and went upstairs to my apartment. Same shit, different day, I thought. Hardly.

That weekend, Mrs. Kaufmann invited us both to her apartment for dinner. Douglas and I both wore jackets and ties, and Mrs. Kaufmann put on a beautiful dress that made her look fifty years younger in the soft light.

Mrs. Kaufmann and I had to promise to be safely ensconced in her apartment before Douglas could come out and make his way downstairs. He seemed to come down pretty quickly, though. I think he spent more time at the door of Mrs. Kaufmann’s apartment, stressing out and hyperventilating about actually knocking.

He did knock, eventually, though, and when he did, the rapport between the two of them was instantaneous. He treated her as if she were visiting royalty, and she treated him like a long-lost nephew. I was able to act as translator, but before long, the three of us found a rhythm in our conversation which made it very easy for all of us to understand what was being said, and for all of us to contribute.

After another one of Mrs. Kaufmann’s amazing meals, we all went in to the parlor for some strong German coffee. She put an old classical record on the record player, and the three of us just sat there for a while, sipping our coffee as the music played, saying absolutely nothing. And it was okay. I think sometimes it’s harder to be quiet around people than it is to make constant chatter. But the three of us had begun to feel comfortable around one another, like a little family.

All three of our worlds were expanding.

And soon it was the Fourth of July. We made plans to have a good old-fashioned Independence Day picnic in the backyard. This would be a big deal for Mrs. Kaufmann, who has never had a Fourth of July anything, and an even bigger deal for Douglas. He had gotten pretty comfortable within the confines of the house; he could move pretty freely among all three apartments, even when Mrs. Kaufmann and I were still around. But he still hadn’t stepped outside. He only agreed to even think about it because the back yard is enclosed by a huge high hedge all around, and there is a door to the back yard only feet away from the stairs back up to his apartment.

So, after getting up early for no reason on that day, I put together the classic Fourth of July Picnic for my little dysfunctional Paducah family. I made potato salad, cheeseburgers, hot dogs, corn on the cob, cole slaw, baked beans, jello, a cake with red white and blue sprinkles, and s’mores. There was enough food for about fifty people, even though I knew there was only three of us.

Mrs. Kaufmann and I were waiting for Douglas in the back yard. It was just getting dark. He had been wrestling with his demons for quite a while just within earshot. When he finally appeared in the doorway to the house, he was waving a tiny American flag in one hand. “Happy Independence Day, y’all,” he said.

Mrs. Kaufmann walked over to him slowly. He took a few, tentative steps outside the house and froze. When Mrs. Kaufmann reached him, she simply enveloped him in her arms, embracing him as if she were embracing her whole, lost family. They stood there for a moment, and then she led him over to the picnic table.

“Hi, Jake,” he said.

“Hey, Douglas. Beer?”
He nodded yes, and I walked over to the cooler. Just then, the first of the fireworks started over the river. We could see them between the two old oaks at the far end of the yard. As I walked over toward my friends, my family, I watched them as they looked up towards the sky and smiled, and laughed.

I began to realize how much I had done for myself, for them- how much anyone can do, by reaching out. We’re all a little happier.