undercover

I have to make this quick. Tom and my brother, David, have left so I can get some work done, and of course, I want to work but the pull of the internet has me in its bosom. The picture you see to the left is Tom and myself last weekend when my other brother, Ben and his soon-to-be wife, Anna, came to visit and we went for a walk on Riverside Park. I always feel kick ass in these sunglasses I'm wearing, and I think I particularly look like someone undercover, roaming the streets looking for trouble, etc.

I'm feeling a little more than a person looking for trouble right now. I think I may have found it. It's a rather boring story but the gist of it is that a certain person who teaches at Valhalla has used me one too many times as her little go-fer. Today she called me and wanted my lesson materials from the last two weeks, because she was busy revising a part of a book that an agent wanted to look at. This is after I taught her group for two weeks in a row, not to mention those little tiny requests this entire semester that are, if looked at separately, not that big a deal but end up becoming a big deal because they keep coming. To top it off, when I told her nicely that I too had a lot of pressure on me with my work and didn't even know where the material was at the moment, she kept insinuating that because of her book contract possibility she was more important and I should scurry around and find it.

So, I found some of the material (not all, because I felt vindictive), sent it to her with a nice little email attached:

I honestly felt manipulated during our conversation tonight. Whether you meant to be so or not I'm not sure--obviously I'd like to be on the "not" side.

At any rate, though I recognize your crazy schedule and your worries about your manuscript, I felt that you belittled my own crazy schedule and deadlines. And though I know that you are having difficulties with your medication and so on, I too have many medical issues (a brain tumor that causes seizures which led to brain surgery and the loss of my left eye, two fingers amputated this summer, an ongoing struggle with a bone-related syndrome which is the cause of the above situations). This may be that "I've got more scratches than you" game, but I just wanted you to know that I empathize with your situation.

I feel that you have somewhat used me these past few weeks: asking me to take care of your class two weeks in a row and then expecting me to give my plans and materials to you because you are too busy--plans that are not difficult to create. In the time it took for our conversation to take place you could have found at least 20 pictures from the internet, and I'm not a computer savvy person either.

You have a possible book deal--I applaud you for that. And hope someday I'll be in the same boat. I have deadlines and responsibilites too that you know nothing about, but I take the extra time out of that schedule to create something small and hope the women take just a tiny bit out of it. If you feel that you can't do this, then I recommend you refrain from doing this during spring semester.

We are all stressed out people with a lot of work ahead of us. I'm not going to deny that. Everyone has things to do and needs help once in a while. But I feel I have been called to do too many things lately. You may be upset with me for writing these things, but I felt that I







wasn't being heard during our conversation earlier. If you want to talk about it during lunch tomorrow with Regina I'm all for it.

I found some of the pictures on my computer--I have not been able to find the hard copies I made for my class; they have wafted away to the Great Unknown--the rest must be on my SLC account; I have attached the ones from my computer. Hopefully they will help! jdp

I feel it was nice and to the point but still firm. Tom was pissed hearing just my end of the conversation on the phone. He says that he's learned from his work at the LESHRC that it's not the participants you want to kick, it's the people you work with. And I think it's true: I figure that the women at Valhalla won't let me down easy--but anyone who has enough money to go to SLC and spend all her time writing should know how to take care of things.

boys in the westchester hood

I don't know what's the matter with me and making trains, but for the second time in a row I nearly missed the train to school on Tuesday. This time the bus was the culprit--one didn't arrive at the stop until 2:15 or so, and because it was such a late bus there were a lot of people at every stop between 139th and 125th. Usually I don't think this, but I was glad there were no wheelchair bound folks that got on or off. I know, I'm a hideous person. Well, finally it arrived at 125th at 2:23; the train was due to arrive at 2:33, so I literally hightailed it, dodging traffic but not running (the sidewalks are hideous there--one more thing the city does to give a finger to the black and latino/a community). I had to buy a ticket yet. (I had this premonition on Monday when I came home and was out of punches on my 10-ride pass but didn't stop to get one.) Luckily there wasn't a line. I managed to get to the platform at 2:30. Yea for me! But at the Botanical Gardens stop about a million teenage boys got on the train and swarmed the entire car. These all were white prep school boys, going home I suppose to their comfy mansions in Fleetwood, Bronxville, Scarsdale (I've been told that Scarsdale makes Bronxville look like a ghetto.), etc. They mainly congregated right where I was sitting, which was at the back of the car, since no one but little me was sitting there. I usually choose this area if I can because sometimes the conductor doesn't see me behind the pane of glass, and I get a free ride. They were fencing with unbrellas and arguing, of all things, about which day of the week it was best to have a birthday on.

I think that Tuesday's best, one said.

No way. Tuesday sucks! said another. You have to be in school. Saturday's the best.

Sunday's definately the worse. Because school's the next day. There was a general murmur of agreement at this statement.

How old are you now? someone asked the boy sitting next to me.

Fifteen.

Fifteen! This boy was born when I was twelve years old and babysitting, I thought. I felt old at that moment.

I don't think they knew what to do with me. People sometimes have a hard time placing my age. (I have had people think I'm in high school and others think I am close to thirty--this one said it wasn't looks but my behavior. I'm still not sure how to take that one.) I had pulled out a big, fat literature book and pretended to ignore them. So they ignored me.

I wasn't sure how I was going to get off the train unless they got out en masse (I think that is the correct usage.) at Bronxville. There were so many of them. I've had to push my way through teenagers enough in the city to know it may involve cursing. But when I said, Excuse me, it was like the parting of the waters.

They were still young boys, I figured, and not city kids. I've heard city kids (black and white) as young as ten call someone a ho-bitch. And throngs of boys is never a good sign. Someone who'll let a woman get on the bus first will hoot at you when his friends are around.

jesus and me

My desk has officially become a disaster area. It has become covered to the point where little of the desk so lovingly bought at Ikea shows any longer. Unpaid bills, books that are either overdue or unread or borrowed, a pair of elephants, boxes of cards I like too dearly to send to anyone, a lamp that has, more or less, survived my various trundlings across this continent since I was eleven--though the lamp shade was broken in its most recent move and is now sporting a more modern glass--a Buddha meant to be a planter but a holder of jewelry, these are the things it now sports. Not to mention the space around the desk, filled with boxes of stories that need revision, receipts for meds, credit card statements and rent, lesson plans for Valhalla and a mound of recycled paper. I tell myself I need to fix this, organize and the like, but I don't listen. My excuse is that all the supplies I need to organize are downtown and I don't feel like lugging them around. A good but lazy excuse. This may be heresy and/or another excuse, but I feel like Jesus: I don't see through the messiness of people but the organized messiness of my little domain in the corner of our little apartment.

personality vs. person

Yesterday I ventured up to SLC on a non-class day to hear Jonathan Lethem read and have an after-the-big-read dinner with nine other SLC grad students. Getting to the reading was an adventure in itself. I almost missed the train, which proceeded to move very slowly and when it arrived in Bronxville it was already 6:20 (arrival time was scheduled for 6:13). Because it was dark with little sidewalks to speak of and late (the reading was at 6:30), I opted for a car service by the station, only to find there was only one car available with several people waiting. Finally one of the drivers took two townies and two SLC people (myself included), and instead of taking the nearest people first (the campus is barely a mile away), we were careening around Richville, getting on the Bronx River Express and winding around here and there. I sat fuming but helpless, hoping this driver wasn't going to charge me for the extra time--he didn't, thank the heavens. Finally I was deposited at the school's newest ugliest building, Heimbolt (there is a Barbara Walters wing to this building) at 6:43. Things always start late at this place, but not that late, so there was no seating on the ground floor, so I was relegated to the balcony.

I was immediately unsure about the situation, thinking I'd happened upon another reading, because the man reading looked nothing like the photo on the back of my copy of The Fortress of Solitude, which I'd actually remembered, unlike the reading featuring Tobias Wolff (I had a nice used copy of the novel Old School). Instead of the awkward, short haired, who-let-this-photo-in-this-book (he's sitting with his legs up so his crotch is center stage) young man, there was this suave, winged haired, dark rimmed glass'd, blazer wearing fellow. But as he read, I recognized his voice in the work and the fact that the narrator was named Lethem (he is, as he's admitted or so I've heard, self-obsessed) settled in to listen. It was hard at first, since all my preconceived ideas had been smashed. The geek I'd intended to love had disappeared into thin air. I was also disconcerted about the way he was reading. He attached verbal voices to the various characters, and waved his arms to describe the story. Now I am uncomfortable with writers that are awkward in their reading (I was once at one where the writer kept interrupting herself and laughing painfully), but I feel that the writing should speak for itself. After all, while reading The Fortress of Solitude I don't have a personal J.L. acting out the story for me. But after awhile I could ignore it and appreciate the narrative itself.

The Q&A session is always embarrassing for me, since people often ask stupid questions, but the questions were mostly good, and I warmed up to him quickly. At the dinner itself I was able to see him as he truly was: the glasses had been removed, I noticed his jeans were slightly high-waters, etc. I could see some of the geekiness seep through.

There was this one chick sitting next to him, her bosoms generously present, who often hijacked the conversation. One time she totally cut off one woman with some girly comment. She batted her eyelashes and looked at him with slitted, sex-bound eyes. I found myself more and more disgusted with her. I had a question myself, but I never found the right time. I don't like too much fawning on visiting writers and trying to be witty so somehow they'll remember me and help me to stardom.

I've had too many failed attempts myself.

But it was a good experience altogether, and more than worth the fifteen bucks I spent to get there.

a star in our midst

Tom was interviewed by a WNYC reporter on his Narcan trainings last week, and the story aired on Sunday. He sounds so grown up and official. I could say what exactly Narcan is, but I don't want to steal his thunder. He has been in print with the Village Voice, will be on the big TV screen with Channel 11 news at the end of the month and now this--all about Narcan. So, now all he has to do is figure out how to make money off of it and we're set.

valhalla blues II

Today at Valhalla I found out that the woman who had gotten out (the one who said she knew what she was doing when she stepped out the door) died of an overdose (the one who told me suspects it was heroin or a combo of some kind) less than 24 hours after she was released. I'm still not truly believing it.

Before I left last week I told her as she shook my hand: Behave yourself.

She laughed.

I know it is not my fault at all--that there was nothing I could do about it--that drugs are a hard thing to shake--but I wish I had said something more protective to her, like If you're gonna use, don't use the amount you did before you came here. Your body can't handle it. I wish I had told her to go to a needle exchange; to go to LESHRC; to see Tom. But we're told (by the Powers That Be at Valhalla) we can't share too much about ourselves. Not that I expect she would ever have hurt me, but users, Tom says, will do about anything to get what they want. They can't help it.

But none of this explains how I'm feeling at the moment. I don't know what I feel. I just feel this empty pit that gnaws and gnaws and I wonder when I'm going to feel something more concrete.

shouting in the streets

There's some kind of commotion going outside that I can't see out of our window. Someone's shouting into a microphone (I just made out the words Go! Go! Go!) but I haven't been able to hear the exact words to figure out what they're all shouting about. At first I thought it to be a kind of evangelical stunt--there's too many Baptist churches around here to shake a stick at--but the echoed music doesn't sound so Christian. This is another thing you'd never cross in our old neighborhood: people shouting in the streets and such things. Yesterday people were cruising the streets in minivans and megaphones encouraging people to vote (mayoral elections are Tuesday). Maybe it's political. Or a basketball tournament. Or really is a call to soul-savin'. It's funny how it could be any of those and more I haven't thought of. These are the things people need to shout in the streets about.

Interestingly enough, I have heard more than one helicopter fly low over here. Wonder what that says.

that couple

A good friend came to visit last week and I mentioned that we are having not only my brothers and Anna over for Thanksgiving, we are having some friends of mine from Sarah Lawrence who are originally from California for the big meal.

You're becoming That Couple! he exclaimed.

What?

You're becoming That Couple who takes in people for the holidays. The couple who supports the vagrant friends. You've already begun mailing Christmas cards!

I guess he's right. I don't know what I think about it. I mean, I like having people over, I always have. But I guess it's more grown up when you're taking in friends too far from home for holidays rather than going to your own parents'.

It's never been my intention to become That Couple. And how this particular instance came about is this: we always have the whole "who's parents are we seeing for [insert major holiday here] this year" problem. Though it's fun to see people it always costs money we don't necessarily have though the ever present Credit Card Will Take Care of That looms. So, this T-day we aren't going anywhere. We're letting family and/or friends come to us in that whole Over the River and Through the Woods thing.

Yes, we have become That Couple, I suppose. But don't think this will be your usual Grandmother's holiday--when three writers, a philosopher, a needle exchange worker, a Ph.D. candidate in Geography and an Acquisitions Editor for inflammatory social issues get together don't think we'll be drinking weak tea and playing scrabble. No, it will be cheap Papio wine (there are monkeys on the label, which is the wine's only real selling point) and dominos.

a long november

A long December and there's reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last
I can't remember the last thing that you said as you were leavin'
Now the days go by so fast

…

The smell of hospitals in winter
And the feeling that it's all a lot of oysters, but no pearls
All at once you look across a crowded room
To see the way that light attaches to a girl

…

Drove up to Hillside Manor sometime after two a.m.
And talked a little while about the year
I guess the winter makes you laugh a little slower,
Makes you talk a little lower about the things you could not show her

And it's been a long December and there's reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last
I can't remember all the times I tried to tell myself
To hold on to these moments as they pass

And it's one more day up in the canyon
And it's one more night in Hollywood
It's been so long since I've seen the ocean...I guess I should

Now, it ain’t December (and Tom hates this band but I’ve always been a loyal follower of Counting Crows with their whining lead), but I’m getting that feeling I feel when December is crowding close. It’s that sense that the year is about to end and where did I think I’d be by this time, and where the hell was I a year ago, anyway?

I do recall living in Menno House with the specter of moving looming, and Tom and I were looking at this place in Harlem and I didn’t want to go because I couldn’t imagine living anywhere but around this part of the East Side but it was cheap and I did a brash thing and suggested to my brother (who lives in Ventura, CA) that he go to dinner with the sister (who lives in Worchester, MA) of my dear friend and he did and…

Now I’m living in a Manhattan-large studio in Harlem with a giant picture window when I swore I’d never live in a house with a picture window but maybe an apartment in Harlem is different and a while ago as I walked my old neighborhood for the first time I felt separated from it, like merely an observer of the woman always walking her three dogs and the priest who ignores my smiles and I’m trying to finish this darn MFA and my brother is getting married to said sister of said friend…

This is what I’m trying to get at but it’s not at the same time. I used to dislike Christmas, but now it’s grown on me—not the day or the demand for shopping but the build up to it: the Taize services, the old hymns, that part of me ignores my jaded self and still believes the miracle of the Nativity. That I actually walked those dirty, crowded streets that are called holy and I believe they are holy not because of what is said to have happened but because the spirit of the ancient poetry and the prosaic sense of sad reality. The dirtiness of the place comes to mind now when singing Lo, How a Rose 'er Blooming, not the praised to the skies purity.

valhalla blues

Ah, Halloween has come again. As the Sarah Lawrence van slipped from the confines of the Westchester County prison in Valhalla, I looked upon the scurrying cars, the turning leaves and listened to my fellow teachers’ conversation about how women seem to use this holiday as a reason to get sluttish (oh so true), I thought about how lonely that prison was. How isolated the reality is for those who must stay there day in and out. How our judicial system does nothing to really help these women change their lives. (One inmate is getting out tomorrow, and she joked about what she was going to do the minute she left—get high. And how she will get the money for this is of course…) How this system uses Sarah Lawrence’s Right to Write program as a bandage rather than having practical skills like harm reduction (gasp!), getting a job, finding health care—these are the things these women need. Not some ill-trained undergrad and grad students bumbling their love of language upon this unsuspecting population.

Frankly, I’ve been disheartened by this whole experience. The classes are mandatory, which sets up the whole thing for failure. Women whose lives are already so regulated have to sit and listen to me babble on about abstractism vs. concretism and “micro fiction” and what the author really is saying when she sets up a dysfunctional black family watching The Brady Bunch. Not that they’re not smart enough to grasp the concepts—two or three women in my group had very wise things to say—one woman wrote a prose poem titled “Valhalla Blues” that spoke to the loneliness of that place—they just seem tired of being herded from one thing to the next. So they are much more inclined to write letters with paper and pens that is begged off my person and read magazines or just gossip. I am just a blip on the screen of their reality. A reality I’ll never exist in.

One of the new women came up to talk to me when class ended. She was this tiny little thing with tracks on her hands and wrists and she asked me why we came here. I said the usual things I usually say: a way to get involved in the community, teaching experience and the like. But I don’t really know why. I feel like I’m that silly little boy sticking his finger in the dam to keep the flood out—only the dam has already broken and I just don’t know what else to do, if that makes any sense.