The Voice of Treason

Famous people seem to die in groups. I always heard they died in threes, and this theory seems to hold water. Two died yesterday, one might die this week, another will probably die soon. When someone’s life ends, it’s interesting to look at their accomplishments and contributions and how they conducted themselves. Was it time well spent? Did they make a difference? Will their departure be noteworthy?

Richard Pryor died yesterday. On the surface, he was a black comedian who made some movies and had some issues with drugs. But his life was even more colorful than the language he used onstage. He was born in Peoria, Illinois - Middle America - and was raised in his grandmother’s brothel. His mother worked as a prostitute, but Richard admits that the family business was lucrative. Think what an interesting environment this was for a youngster.

Richard was molested in an alley when he was a kid, but he also - at age seven - was sitting in with a night-club band and meeting jazz greats like Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong and Count Basie. He performed in school plays, held a variety of jobs as a teenager, then went to Germany during a stint in the Army.

He started his comedy career when he got back to the states and appeared on American television at a time when most people had black and white sets. He had a successful stand-up career, he wrote scripts and starred in films, and he was beloved by others in the business. He was a comedian who could also act.

And he had some serious drug problems. But after he set himself on fire and almost died, he incorporated the experience into his comedy routine and made people laugh. He had health problems, too, heart disease and MS. Relationships were a challenge: he was married seven times, to five women, and he had seven children.

He once said:

“I live in racist America and I’m uneducated, yet a lot of people love me and like what I do, and I can make a living from it. You can’t do much better than that.”

He lived sixty-five years.

Eugene McCarthy was eighty-nine when he died in his sleep in an assisted living community. I’m not sure how many people recognize the name, but I remember him and I know a lot of people were influenced by him. He ran for president several times and lost; I would hope, knowing what I do about the man, that he did not consider that a failure.

McCarthy, like Pryor, lived an interesting life. He would have ended up in the Church, but he chose to marry instead. He and Abigail were wed in 1945 and had a son and three daughters. When asked in 1968 “How is the Senator this morning?,” McCarthy’s daughter Mary replied, “Oh! Alienated as usual!,” He taught, he wrote; he was intellectual, poetic, extremely witty, and eloquent. He had class. He was an oddball in the world of politics.

That didn’t go unnoticed. An exasperated aide once remarked: “Sometimes I wonder whether he’s running for the Presidency or from it.” Even today politicians and Hollywood stars claim that Eugene McCarthy was their hero and they modeled themselves after the man. Odd, because I just can’t see the resemblance.

And speaking of class, Maggie Thatcher is gravely ill. She had recorded her tribute to Ronald Reagan long before his death because she wanted to be sure it was done before she was. I’m bracing myself for the inevitable.

And then there’s Tookie. The Governator’s dragging his feet, but he’ll have to make a decision very soon. No doubt he anticipates rioting and repercussions, but he has to do what he feels is right. Bianca Jagger feels that Tookie’s life should be spared because he is a victim of racism. Again, what’s ignored are the victims of Tookie.

Richard Pryor could have been a victim of racism, too. He began his career in insensitive times. Any anger and aggression he felt, he chose to turn on himself. His weapon was humor.

I was having a cup of coffee and flipping through the new Bas Bleu catalogue when I saw a book called Shelf Life: Romance, Mystery, Drama, and Other Page-Turning Adventures from a Year in a Bookstore by Suzanne Strempek Shea. It caught my eye because it sounded like a book I could have written after my stint in the weird world of bookselling. In a nutshell, the author was recovering from breast cancer and just couldn’t get back into writing; just then the owner of her favorite bookstore mentioned that she needed some part-time help. I read on and was amused to find that her experience was so similar to mine. I especially liked: “Shea quickly learned to…answer often-cryptic inquiries, such as ‘I’m looking for a book. I don’t know the title. I don’t have the author’s name. I know that it’s about a woman…And it’s fiction…Would you have it?’”

I laughed aloud then heard a crash and a moan and something heavy hitting the floor. Turns out T was looking for some reading material, too, saw one of my books on the wall unit in the bedroom, reached for it, and turned into the wall, fracturing his nose. This is a shame because he has, perhaps, the most perfect nose on the planet. He hasn’t gone to a doctor, but based on the sound it made and the swelling and pain, he thinks it’s fractured, but will eventually heal by itself. Yeah, I’d thought the same thing when I blew out my left knee.

Over the years I’ve considered going back to work with books - dangerous as they can be - but it’s just not practical. I have a mortgage and two geriatric dogs. A few years ago, I went to a local psychic. I remember the first time I’d done that: my mother, sister, and I drove to some place on El Camino Real - think it was past Palo Alto, maybe Menlo Park…maybe even Burlingame or Redwood City - and we each had a reading done. My mother’s was right on the money. It’s as if this gypsy-looking woman had known our mother all her life. Then me. I was getting ready to leave for college and she told me about this wonderful trip to Europe I was going to have but didn’t. Some things rang true, others…well, no, not really. Then my sister’s turn. She didn’t say one thing that even sounded close. She obviously had trouble reading this misanthrope, then she finally told her that she was going to get married and have eight children. Whoops, wrong sister, sister. Now I think about it and wonder if she had seen my sister’s future and just chose not to tell her.

But this last one I went to was dead on about most things, including a minor medical issue. But what stood out, other than I should leave this state as soon as possible, was that she said I would go back to doing something that I’d stopped doing but had been very good at for my future career.

Six or seven years have passed and I still don’t know what the hell she was talking about. Teaching maybe? Ick. I admit it crosses my mind occasionally, but then I remember what my year of student-teaching was like and I immediately talk myself out of it. Or I’ll hear someone else, and the result will be the same. Like today when I caught Frank McCourt on C-SPAN2. He was at a bookstore discussing his new book Teacher Man and then he did a live call-in Q & A.

Mr. McCourt and I would be at odds politically, but I do enjoy listening to him. His description of teaching in a public high school brought back memories of my experience and I know that nothing has changed in all these years. I listened to McCourt talk about teaching and I agreed with much of what he said, but where I had to part ways was when he said that politicians need to back off. They don’t burst into operating rooms and tell doctors what they have to do; they don’t go into the courtrooms and tell lawyers their business; and they don’t muck around with engineers, either. What gives them the right to tell professional teachers how to do their jobs?

Easy, Frank. Public school teachers are government employees. Tax dollars pay their salaries. They work in government buildings. Private or religious schools? A different story. But as long as there are public schools, government will run them, and they will be mediocre at best.

Frank McCourt was probably a fine instructor and he can romanticize the profession ’til the cows come home. But Thomas Sowell is right. Public education is broken. If more private schools could open and be independent, we’d be better off. One school just opened locally - it’s a specialized school that focuses on computers and technology. Cool. There’s a school that advertises in National Review that focuses on reading the “great books of the Western tradition” because all you need to know can be learned from great books. A student starts with the Greeks as a freshman, then reads through the centuries, all the way to the 21st during the senior year.

Private institutions are the way to go. Would some Republican please remember that we used to talk a lot about school vouchers? As long as we continue to push these kids through the public system, we’re failing them. A few will learn despite the system, but others will just be ruined by it.

What a waste.

T and I have become full-time caregivers. We take turns, now, leaving the house. Tonight we did something rare: we both went out to meet up with a few friends for an early dinner. And we worried and kept an eye on the time. Finally, our inner alarms sounded and we said we had to go.

One of our friends pointed out that our lives were being run by our diabetic dog. She thought back about all the dogs she had known who lived and died and realized that many of them probably had had serious medical conditions that hadn’t been addressed.

“They lived, they died; that’s how we did things back then.”

True, it seems that our pets’ lives have become more complicated. They seem to be living longer and have more options than they used to. So many varieties of food and specialized, prescription diets. A friend’s Pomeranian was having some health issues. Every time it defecated, it would scream. This was unsettling, believe me. The vet ordered a change in diet; now the dog eats a green organic yogurt based concoction that looks like guacamole. He has stopped screaming.

My sister just sent me an article: “Scientists Decipher DNA of Dogs.” A female Boxer named Tasha has given researchers hope that not only can they begin pinpointing the genes that cause cancers, heart disease, cataracts, epilepsy, blindness, and deafness in canines, but they can also start locating them in humans. Why? Because dogs and humans are closer genetically than previously thought. So when someone says “That dog’s almost human!,” they’re not that far off.

The irony, of course, is that T and I believed we were clever when we made the decision not to breed. (I had made that decision when I was four, but it took more than twenty-five years to find someone who had made the identical decision.) No sleepless nights, no pacing the floors, no added expense of child-rearing and medical bills. Ha. We could have put a kid through Yale, considering how expensive these thirty-five dollar puppies have become.

It’s a gamble. We’re taking time away from work to look after the dog. Our fear is the money we’ve put aside will run out and we’ll have to go back to work and when we do we’ll come home to find the dog dead on the floor. That’s precisely what we’re trying to avoid.

But it’s just a dog, people say.

No, he’s not. He’s a perfect little angel and we’ve made the commitment to take care of this innocent creature in the best manner possible. When I went to Walgreens to pick up his insulin, the pharmacist told me about a family who had a dog that stopped eating and was getting thinner everyday. They’d had the dog for years, but they just didn’t want to deal with the hassle of trying to figure out what was wrong with it. So they brought this eight year-old dog to the pound and said goodbye. It was determined that all the dog needed was thyroid medication and he was good as new. Last I heard they were looking for a family to adopt him.

Our dog is also on thyroid medication. Happily, that’s the least expensive of his prescriptions.

So, at this point, our professional lives are on hold. See, years ago I read an article about the actor William Hickey. He died back in 1997 and was probably best known for his role in Prizzi’s Honor. But his career was actually long and impressive. He was in A Hatful of Rain in the fifties, The Producers in the sixties, and worked steadily in TV and film in interesting character roles up to his death. He’d been a child actor, debuted on Broadway in Saint Joan, taught for many years at the HB Studio, and was a part of the golden age of television. But most people hadn’t really noticed him until Prizzi’s Honor.

What was most intriguing about the man is that he took time away from his career just as he was really going somewhere. His mother was ill, and he moved into her one-bedroom Brooklyn apartment and slept on the floor near her bed every night for over eleven years.

I’ve never stopped thinking about that. Our dog is nine. At least I know I won’t be doing this for eleven years. The question, though, is how long will it be?

We’ll see.

Do you remember where you were when JFK was shot? When John Lennon was shot? I do. When the former Beatle was murdered, I was in my artsy studio in the redwoods, drawing to fulfill an assignment for an Art class. I had the TV on when the story broke.

It was like the time I was sitting with a group of people on my university’s campus. I was 17 and there for the first time for orientation. Someone walked up to us and said: “Did you hear? Elvis is dead.”

No one asked, “Elvis who?” We knew who Elvis was, but we didn’t believe that he was dead. What we knew was that somehow the world as we knew it had changed. September 11, 2001. I watched planes fly into the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Same feeling. The world had been forever altered.

There was much to like about John Lennon, but there was probably even more to dislike. What cannot be debated, however, is the impact The Beatles had on our world. It’s odd that four young men from Liverpool could turn the planet upside down, but all these years later we’re still feeling the effects of a British Invasion.

There are people this week who feel bad — and they were born after 1980. Boomers feel bad because they’re reminded of what they were doing twenty-five years ago and how quickly time passes. We Boomers have seen a lot of our “heroes” croak prematurely. I remember when Keith Moon and John Entwistle died. Freddie Mercury. Jimi, Janis, and Jim kinda set that whole early death thing in motion, and rock stars were dropping like flies for awhile. Kudos to the Stones for just looking dead.

I am not here to criticize anyone for wringing his hands over the death of a Beatle. Everyone’s death holds special significance and should be honored. I remember the day Ted Bundy was executed. I heard the news early in the morning when my clock radio came on. It was still dark, but when I heard that Ted was dead, I leapt out of bed and danced. That was a good day.

I’m not always that cheerful to hear someone has assumed room temperature. In fact, I have a long list of celebrities whose deaths I will dread. A few off the top of my head? Charles Krauthammer. Peter O’Toole. Ann-Margret. John - not William - Hurt. George and Barbara Bush. Bill Buckley. William Daniels. Jeane Kirkpatrick. Brit Hume. Dave Barry. Gary Larsen. Giancarlo Giannini. Florence King.

Maybe Stephen Sondheim.

Every now and then I’ll hear that someone has passed and I’ll be filled with sorrow. No matter who he is or what he did, every person has the right to leave the world and leave those still in it devastated, sad, or even elated.

For me, I’ll just think about my mother bringing those first Beatles records home for us, off the restaurant’s jukebox.

Diabetic dog had a restless night so I was up early and caught FOX & Friends when Barney Cam - A Very Beazley Christmas - made its debut. If you haven’t seen it, I urge you to click on the POTUS link, conveniently provided on this page, and watch. It’s just charming.

As soon as it was over, however, FOX & Friends co-host E.D. Hill commented that the White House Christmas card doesn’t say “Merry Christmas” inside. It says “With best wishes for a holiday season of hope and happiness.” Oh, Jesus Christ, I said, here it comes.

Christmas comes but once a year, now could everyone just shut the f*ck up? I do believe that Christians are under attack, but there are a few Christians out there that I’m ready to attack myself. It appears that the far right is offended by the Bush card.

“See? This is proof that he’s an impostor. George W. Bush isn’t really a Christian Conservative. If he was, the card would say ‘Merry Christmas.’”

First of all, The White House cards never say “Merry Christmas.” Um, did anyone notice there was a psalm inside the card?

“The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusted in Him, and I am helped: therefore my heart greatly rejoiceth; and with my song will I praise Him. (Psalms 28:7)”

The theme of the season this year at the White House? “All Things Bright and Beautiful.”

All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small;
All things wise and wonderful, the Lord God made them all.

Lyrics from a traditional Christian hymn. But this still has Christian Conservatives bristling. I’m cutting the Prez some slack here. As I said, this is typical of the White House holiday greeting - doesn’t matter which president or which party is in the White House. I’m just happy to see Willie the cat and the two Bush terriers on the card.

If it had said “Merry Christmas,” the other side would be complaining that it was too exclusive and that taxpayer dollars paid for the card: where’s the separation of Church and State? (Actually, some locals who received the card, which has a thirty-seven cent stamp on it and a Crawford, TX postmark, wonder if the Bushes paid for the mailing of 1.4 million cards. Don’t know, don’t care.)

My point is that it’s appropriate for the card to avoid specifying Christmas and to wish everyone a happy and hopeful holiday season. This year especially, because Hanukkah falls on Christmas. Kwanzaa’s in there, too, and so is the New Year. My God, even if you’re an atheist, you’re probably getting at least one day off from work. And any day off is a reason to celebrate - a holiday. A holy day.

But allow me to further illustrate why this card’s greeting makes sense. The doorbell rang today. T looked through the peephole and said: “It has to be for you. There’s a giant plant out there.” What he saw was the wreath I’d put on the door. But I opened the door anyway and saw the neighbor kids out there. This was probably the first time they’d seen my shaved head and they’re unusually well-bred and polite so they didn’t say anything or gasp. The little girl, Hayley, pointed out that there was a black Lab in front of our house.

Horrors. This means that there’s a dog out there who has strayed from home and the temperatures will drop into the single digits tonight. These kids are the ones with the Boxer cross and two other dogs, and we have two dogs. None of our pets would welcome this Lab. I had to go out to see it. An older female. Overweight. Moving slow. No collar.

“She hasn’t been spayed,” Hayley says. “She shouldn’t be out running around this neighborhood when there could be unneutered males here.” The kid is very young, but very sharp. She could have figured that I would take on the responsibility and she could go back into her warm house, but she stayed there with me. I hate when this happens. Why do all the stray pets come to me?

I tried to think if there were any black Labs in the hood. A few doors down, there’s Annie. But Annie is an indoor dog - she’s never out unsupervised and there’s no way she’d get away from her home. And this dog was heavier. And didn’t respond to “Annie.” But I was desperate. Annie’s parents and T and I aren’t on the best terms because the dog has been off leash in their front yard and has made aggressive moves towards our dogs when we’ve passed their house. T has no patience with dog owners who do not obey the leash law. Words have been exchanged.

This is unfortunate because these are people I could like. They’re the ones whose balcony faces the entrance to the neighborhood - the balcony that can be seen clearly from the main drag. The balcony that had an enormous illuminated Bush-Cheney 2004 sign on it. I loved that sign.

Anyway, I was desperate, so I went down the hill and rang their doorbell. Then I noticed the enormous terra cotta plaque on the brick wall outside the front door. A Hebrew blessing to all those who enter their home. “Oh my God, Annie’s parents are Jews.” Then the door opened and Annie was right there - as I’d suspected.

I went back up the hill and Hayley and I stood with the dog. “What are the chances that the owners are out looking for her and will appear at any moment?” She didn’t look like she’d been abandoned because she was well-fed and was obviously an indoor dog. You can pet a dog and know instantly if it’s an outside dog or inside dog. This Lab, with her glossy coat, was an inside dog.

Then I saw it. A GMC truck was moving up our hill very slowly. “Please God.” I saw the driver - his head was shaved. A kindred spirit. I motioned to the dog and he nodded, then pulled over. That was Dallas, but her son Tucker was gone, too. To make a long story shorter, the owner and his family were moving into the neighborhood and the dogs took off. Happens all the time, but this time there was a happy ending. Both Dallas and Tucker were found and went back to a warm home. The guy thanked me and wanted contact info so he could give me a reward. “The reward is hers,” and I pointed to Hayley.

What a f*cking relief. There is a God. And there are Jewish Republicans. I’m almost certain Annie’s parents got a card from the Bush Family this year (I suspect they’ve written some checks to the RNC), and it was probably a good thing that it wasn’t Christmas specific. Annie’s parents know the President is a Christian, but they voted for him. They’re Jewish, and their card wishes them a happy, hopeful holiday.

Works for me.

I’ve heard that a lot of public schools are phasing out the teaching of the American Revolution because there just isn’t enough time to squeeze everything in and, after all, that war happened such a long time ago - so many important things have happened since that we should be focusing on those.

Um, are we also phasing out World Wars I and II? The reason I ask is that I was channel surfing this week and stopped on that horrible channel that runs old game shows around the clock. It was that Regis Philbin show, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, and the question was something like:

“Who was U.S. president at the beginning of World War II?”

The contestant had four presidents to choose from:

A. Herbert Hoover
B. Franklin Delano Roosevelt
C. Harry S. Truman
D. Dwight D. Eisenhower

Easy, right? Or so I’d thought. The contestant sat quietly with a pained expression on his face. To be fair, he knew that FDR was president during the war, but he wasn’t sure if he’d been in the job at the beginning of the war.

What do you do in a case like this? You eliminate the answers that can’t possibly be correct. Eisenhower. Think: “I Like Ike” buttons and his VP, Richard Nixon. Nixon ran for the top job against John Kennedy, but because the camera liked JFK more than it liked Dick, well… the rest is history. History that occurred after the war. Ike had been a general and led the allied forces in Europe, but was not the president.

Hoover. One of those really unlucky Republicans. Think Hoover, think Great Depression, think soup lines, think anything good the man ever did in office was wiped out by a stock market crash. And that was before WW II. He ran again and lost to the Democrat, FDR. (There’s a hint.)

Harry Truman. He was FDR’s VP. Then he became president. Eisenhower followed. Truman became president in 1945. In August of that year, the U.S. dropped a couple really big bombs on Japan (they were some of the bad guys then) and the next month, Japan surrendered. End of war.

So…that leaves the correct answer: FDR. Think: “A date which will live in infamy.” That would be the day the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. I know about Pearl Harbor because I worked for a Japanese company for many years. I used to mark the day, December 7, on my calendar.

But look at Japan today. Look at the PM. Look at the Japanese troops in Iraq. Like Tony Blair, Junichiro Koizumi is getting a lot of bad press over his decision to support the U.S. But he’s keeping the troops there.

My hope is that one day we’ll need powerful allies and Iraq will be there with Britain, Australia, and Japan, steadfast.

This week Hillary was speaking at an event in her hometown of Chicago and a group of hecklers did what hecklers do. They heckled her. Now this was a news story for several reasons. One, Hillary is a prominent politician and we all know she’s running for president. Just about anything she does will get media attention. Second, it’s rare for the beloved Hillary to be heckled. If someone said Ann Coulter was trying to speak and she was heckled, it wouldn’t be newsworthy. Ann gets heckled wherever she goes. It’s not unusual for an Ann Coulter or David Horowitz or Bill Bennett to be heckled. Why? Because they lean to the right politically. That gives the Left every right to suppress their free speech.

But when someone on the Left gets heckled…well, that is newsworthy. Why? Because we on the Right just don’t show up and cause scenes. Our theory is that people paid to hear someone speak, people died so that person could speak, people died so others could assemble and hear that person speak, so who are we to be so rude and disrupt that scenario?

So what does this mean, then, that Hillary was heckled? On the surface, it means that she is too “right” for the Left. We on the Right find this laughable. Picture the following:

Hillary was onstage for only a few seconds when the crowd erupted with shouts of “Troops out now! Troops out now!” Then anti-war leaflets poured from one balcony, and umbrellas were unfurled from another displaying the message “Out of Iraq.”

Hillary tried the diplomatic, appeaser, let’s-be-nice approach. “Give me a chance and I’ll address that if you’ll then be quiet.”

“I disagree with those who believe we should immediately pull out, and I disagree with those who say we should stay there forever.” (Oooh, now there’s a position. So, if you disagree with these two positions, what position do you agree with?)

Then, looking pained and closing her eyes, Hillary said: “It would be wonderful if we could turn the clock back - but we cannot.”

Ah! Now that’s something we on the Right can agree with. Eight long years of a Clinton presidency. If only…if only.

Now I realize this sounds like a vast right wing conspiracy, but when I saw the coverage of the hecklers and Hillary, the very first thought in my head was: “This was staged.” Sorry, but it just smelled. After eight years of Clinton choreography and theatrics, I just have to be suspicious. It’s a trust thing.

Speaking of which, John Kerry (who lost the last election because people didn’t trust him, either) was out this week talking about the troops again. He used “troops” and “terrorizing” in the same sentence in such a way that it could be interpreted as “our troops are terrorists.” (But we Democrats support the troops. The terrorist bastards.)

I know John is nuanced, but there’s just no way to make his statement not sound like American troops are terrorizing Iraqi women and children. Why? Because that’s what he said.

“There is no reason, Bob, that young American soldiers need to be going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children, you know, women, breaking sort of the customs of the-of-the historical customs, religious customs.”

Then we have the leader of the Democratic Party, Dr. Dean, with the following:

“The idea that we’re going to win the war in Iraq is just plain wrong.”

Now, to be fair to Howard, there is some truth in that statement. Sort of. Not so long ago, George Bush made a similar statement and the media was all over it like a cheap suit. How could the president say such a thing? How could he say we can’t win?

He’d been trying to make a point, but not everyone got it. So, on the surface, you can say Howard Dean was trying to make the same point, but like Bush he failed. I clearly remember the administration explaining that the war on terror was going to be different than any other war. And it wasn’t going to end any time soon. No one was going to surrender and terror attacks would continue. We could win the battles, but the war wasn’t going to be won easily. In other words, buckle your seat belts - this is going to be a bumpy century.

Personally, I don’t believe we can win in the traditional sense. If we can just stay ahead of them and make their world harder, fine. But we will never go back to the way it was. Could someone get Benjamin Netanyahu out here to explain this again, slowly, to the American people? There will always be terror. All we can do is try to turn terrorist regions around, one at a time. That’s what we’re trying to do in Iraq. But that’s not quite what Howard Dean was saying.

Elections are coming soon. Let’s all just shut the hell up and wait to see what happens.

I guess it was because I was thinking about Jack and the garlicky squid at the Greek festival. I was thinking about the Gilroy Garlic Festival, too. Gilroy, California. We’d drive through there and I’d roll down the windows and inhale.

I thought all garlic - except for the stuff my mother grew in the front yard under the roses - came from Gilroy. Then I saw the news story. Christopher Ranch is hurting. Production’s way down and they’ve let a lot of employees go. How can this be? I eat enough garlic to keep at least half their staff gainfully employed.

The answer is China. Boats up in Oakland are filled with Chinese garlic. Yikes. I ran to my refrigerator and grabbed the vat of chopped garlic. No indication of its origin. Good Lord. I’m probably eating Chinese garlic.

When I see it, I pick up the Gilroy product, but lately it’s been less obvious on the store shelf. I’ll make it a point now to buy the California variety. I saw the cherry orchards disappear in Sunnyvale and the apricots disappear in Mountain View. I’d hate to think that the fields of garlic in Gilroy will someday be replaced. Growth is fine, but California must hold on to what’s left of its agriculture!

To hell with Tookie - save Gilroy’s garlic!

Yeah I don’t want no bald headed woman,
It’ll make me mean yeah lord it’ll make me mean,
Yeah I don’t want no bald headed woman,
It’ll make me mean yeah lord it’ll make me mean.

Don’t want no bald headed woman baby,
Yeah gonna make me mean, make me mean,
I don’t want no bald headed woman,
That’s gonna gonna make me mean make me mean now.

Our friend Bob from the Bay Area called the other day. Bob has been struggling with male pattern baldness for years and lately he’s been keeping what hair he has left very closely cropped. When he called I told him:

“Solidarity, bro!”

“Hmmmm. What are you saying?”

“I shaved my head this week!”

“You going through that ‘gay man trapped in a woman’s body’ thing again?”

“Nope. I was thinking of coloring it and T said he’d shave it off if I was up for it. I always wanted to do it, so we went ahead and did it.”

“Hmmmmm. Idle hands. That’s all I’m saying. Idle hands.”

Bob was just promoted to management and he’s concerned that T and I are taking a sabbatical from the corporate life. Essentially, “idle hands” means “you people need to get jobs - now.” Well, hell! I can’t go job-hunting now - I’m bald! Who’d hire me?

T has pointed out that my eyelashes are now longer than the hairs on my head. I’m reminded of the day my sister took her two St.Newfs - Kate and Gwen - to be groomed. When these two were six months old they each weighed more than 150 pounds. Enormous heads. And for some reason, after grooming, the groomer felt that it was necessary to put tiny bows on them. Little green ones. The dogs were in the back seat of my sister’s metallic blue AMC Hornet station wagon. We were in the front and the four of us were going down El Camino Real in rush hour traffic. Then I realized that my sister and I were wearing the identical eyeglass frames. The ginormous, bright red Liz Claibornes.

“Do you have any idea how ridiculous this must look?”

We were stopped at a light and she noticed people in the other cars were staring. The moment was priceless.

My sister and I had always talked about shaving our heads, but she knew she’d never do it because she suspected odd things were going on under her hair. And she had the best hair in the family. My father’s hair: fine, silky, shiny. I have, as my mother explained, the dago hair. No, it’s not wild, curly, or kinky. It’s just deceptive. In junior high school the black girls, who were bused in from East Palo Alto, always wanted to play with it. It was long, honey-colored, and thick. Didn’t look that thick, but it was.

This has been a terrible problem. People who have cut my hair have underestimated the intensity of the stuff. I always hear the same thing. “My. Your hair is thick, isn’t it?” and “You do have a lot of hair, don’t you?” When I was thirteen I went to get a perm. The girl started working on my hair just after the store opened in the morning. When it closed, she was still working on my hair, in tears. I finally told her she could stop, and she wouldn’t accept a tip. My hair was ruined, but I felt so bad for her that I went back the next day with a large tip, forced it on her, and told her boss that it wasn’t her fault.

I never had much luck with cuts and perms. A friend recommended someone once. I went to her and told her what I wanted. Short. Very short. She refused to cut it. I was wearing those big red Liz Claiborne frames that day. She explained:

“My haircuts are my calling card. If I cut your hair and you go out wearing those glasses, you’ll look ridiculous. I don’t want my haircut looking ridiculous.”

Ouch. I did finally find someone who isn’t intimidated by my hair. She’s chatty and likes to talk, so she doesn’t mind spending a lot of time on my head. She gets to tell me all about her life while she hacks away. When I worked at the non-profit, I stopped going to her and let my hair grow because I didn’t want to spend the money. When I left and figured I needed “interview hair” I went back to her. It had been a few years but she remembered me and my retractable hair. Cut it and more suddenly appears.

When T started shaving my head, Supertramp’s Breakfast In America had just started on the bathroom boombox. The CD ended and T was still shaving. “You have some thick hair.”

And now here I am, without hair. T says I look like a hedgehog. Flatterer! But there is definitely a bristly thing happening. Like our friend Robert. He’s Hispanic and has black, shiny, silky hair. For years, he’s worn it in an almost-to-his-waist braid. I always thought it would be fine, on the thin side. He recently decided to make some changes in his life, concentrate on single parenthood, give up drinking, and start running marathons. He cut off the braid. He, too, looks like a hedgehog.

So I sorta got this Lori Petty big-eyed Roswellian thing happening. Or maybe I just look like one of her self-portraits. That’s sobering. You see, years ago - maybe when I was in college - I read an article in one of those women’s magazines. The writer had just turned fifty and went to her hairdresser and asked her to cut it all off, leaving only an inch. Then she wrote about how it completely changed her life. Well, I’m not fifty and I don’t even have an inch now, but I’ve finally done what I’d always fantasized about doing.

T and I just don’t understand those makeover shows when a woman is getting a couple inches of dead frizzy Brillo pad snipped off and she bursts into tears. For Christ’s sake. It’s just hair. It grows back. Doesn’t it?

Oh - and I remember growing up with my mother. We’d be out and she’d elbow me.

“See that child?”

“Yeah. What about it?”

“Lazy mother.”

“Huh?”

“That poor baby has a lazy mother. See how squished that baby’s head is?”

“Um…”

“You have to turn a baby in its crib while it sleeps. You rotate it so it doesn’t end up with one of those squished heads. You kids have nice round heads. I made sure of that.”

I can see now what she was talking about. I should be thankful that Mom had us on a crib rotisserie. No squished head here. Speaking of my mother, she was wondering what T thought of the new look.

“Just as long as he doesn’t trade you in for a girl.”

Ha! Senile, but still has her sense of humor. I tell you, it’s liberating. I can wash my hair at night and I don’t wake up with wet hair. It dries so fast! If only it looked as great as it felt. Oh, well. Ah, but my mother noted something else.

“Did you know how dark your hair was?”

Actually no. I’d always wondered what color it would be if I took off all the gold and red strands. Natural highlights, hair faded by age and sun. I now know the truth. I am a brunette. And I look like my brother in his old Air Force photos. Yes, I look ridiculous. And it might have made more sense if I’d done this during the summer.

It’s surprisingly cold outside. A hat would be smart.

The other day I’d written that National AIDS Day was coming up and I was reminded of my old friend Jack. Well, it’s not National AIDS Day - it’s World AIDS Day. I’m just so out of the loop, I tell ya. (I went back and made the correction.) You know, I wasn’t even aware that I could get on the World AIDS Day website and shop for cool merchandise. There’s even information there about pairs of customized Doc Martens that are available on eBay. That’s what I need. A pair of Doc Martens designed by Elton John.

I don’t mean to be insensitive, really I don’t. But to be fair, people have been making snide remarks about Jerry’s kids for years, and if you can mock a kid with Muscular Dystrophy, why should someone with AIDS get any kind of break?

Talk about hot button issues. I clearly remember my introduction to the disease in the early eighties. I was fresh out of college and had put my life on hold because my exasperated sister begged me to come home and put up with my mother so she could get a break. My stepfather had just died in December, and my mother was expecting my sister, the misanthrope, to fill in. Since I’d given up any plans to teach, I took a job in a Bay Area bookstore. (My sister was thrilled because I kept her supplied with reading material.)

There’s something about people who work in bookstores. I don’t know if it’s true today, but it was definitely true then. The majority of the employees were gay and I was the token heterosexual. There were actually a couple others…but only a couple and they never stayed around long.

I’d been in a relationship and was, technically, engaged. My coworkers were determined to talk me out of it and convert me. I got dragged to every gay bar from San Jose to South San Francisco. Well, okay, not every one. But a lot of them. I got on the floor and danced with women and generally had a pretty swell time.

Our store was in a strip mall owned by an Italian family, and they operated a restaurant/bar a few doors down. A couple good-looking brothers, one a real skirt chaser. I loved to go into that place for lunch. I spent a lot of time there because my coworkers always had relationship issues and needed someone to talk to. I was always that person, so we’d go have a couple pitchers of beer and they’d cry on my shoulder.

I’d listen and offer advice, then tell them that they were doing a crappy job of selling me on the whole gay thing. Their relationships were in no better shape than the ones my heterosexual friends were having. What the hell, then, I asked them, was the advantage?

What I finally decided was that they had the same problems - the only difference, really, is that they had sex with people who had the same genitalia. A common complaint from heterosexuals was that the homosexuals seemed to be sex-obsessed. Store managers grew the gay books section in their stores, ignoring the fact that other books - especially romances - sold better. Gay employees checked out everyone who walked into the place and placed bets on who was and who wasn’t.

One who was was Frank, and he managed the Cupertino store. He was tall, and well-groomed with cropped hair and a neat moustache. Quiet, polite, conservatively dressed. He wore slacks. Loafers. Crisp button down shirts and wonderful wool pullovers. And he was such a slut. Somehow, after a long day at work, he’d manage to drive up to the bath houses in San Francisco, and the next day I’d have to hear all about it. How he could have intimate contact with thirty to forty strangers in one evening was appalling to me. I don’t even want to be in a room with that many people.

One day he came by our store and took me out for a pitcher of beer. He looked tired and I could tell he didn’t feel good. He complained of a strange lump in his neck that was getting larger. He thought he was seeing patches on his skin. Discolorations. Pardon the Kaposi’s sarcasm, I said, but aren’t you a little concerned about AIDS? He wasn’t. And as much as I fretted about his health, he continued to frequent the bath houses.

Yes, the employees there were all sex-obsessed but, to be fair, they were all in their twenties. Aren’t all young people sex-obsessed? The only difference I could see is that my heterosexual friends weren’t getting enough sex, and my homosexual ones were getting too much. In either case, no one was content, everyone was miserable. And the straight employees were starting to have issues. One district manager’s wife criticized him for sitting on their couch with his legs crossed. Next thing, he was bedding any straight woman in the company. When one nineteen year-old committed suicide over him, I decided it was time to leave the company. Things were getting too weird.

So I started a new job and made a new friend. Jack. He was smart, funny, talented, outrageous. Always sensitive about his weight, Jack was a very large guy. Strong as an ox, too. If you ever needed someone to move a refrigerator, Jack was your man. He worked like a dog for our company but management treated him shabbily. He could be loud and obnoxious and in your face, and when other employees complained that he was too “out there,” he just became even more outrageous. I befriended him, defended him, and, as a result, started to be treated differently. I remember one Halloween he showed up to worked dressed as a geisha. My manager didn’t recognize him at first, but once he realized who was there in a kimono and kabuki makeup, he disappeared into his office and didn’t come out the rest of the day.

Sometimes Jack would cross the line and I’d ask him if I was going to have to slap him. Don’t threaten me with a good time, he’d always say. Jack just made some people uncomfortable. He was brassy and extroverted, but also deeply religious. He didn’t make a lot of money, but he made sure he gave a generous portion of his pay to his church. He had a big heart and he was always fun to be around.

We went to the Greek festival in the Bay Area and dragged my mother along. We ate our way from one end of the place to the other; and when he scored a platter of garlicky squid, he told me I just had to taste it. Without hesitation, I took a mouthful off his fork. Then I saw the look on my mother’s face. She was worried.

Because Jack was also a slut. The problem was that he really liked leather. We’d go to the mall and he’d grab my hand and pull me into a Wilson’s: “Inhale! Isn’t it fabulous!” Our shopping trips to Castro Street were always an adventure. He liked leather, yes, but he was also very fond of whips and chains. It was like Frank. I fretted. He was allowing strangers to tie him up and abuse him. It wasn’t prudent. But he’d always tell me the same thing: “Don’t worry about me. I’m careful.”

At one point I told him that he was just too conflicted. He was Martha Stewart. So talented, so creative, so domestic. Jack, I’d tell him, you’re going to make a wonderful wife one day. That day came when he got involved with a divorced coworker with two kids. He was crazy about those kids and the situation would have worked except that their mother was simply the wrong woman.

He was happiest when he was cooking and baking and decorating and entertaining kids.
The whole S & M thing was a terrible distraction. Finally he decided to leave the Bay Area and move to a small town in Oregon. We kept in touch for a long time and then we lost contact. I think about him and I still worry and wonder.

I’ve known men who have known AIDS. I know those who suffer with complications and have good days and bad. They get angry when they hear that it’s a disease that’s over-funded because it’s preventable. I get angry because I also have loved ones who suffer with Alzheimer’s, MS, cancer, heart disease, and diabetes. And sometimes I resent that AIDS gets so much attention. I’d heard that 15,798 Americans died from AIDS last year. All but a thousand were in the “high risk” group. The flu killed 65,000.

Yes, there are places like Africa where AIDS is devastating. The first step in solving the problem there is solving the problem here. Africa has excuses like education, culture. We know about safe sex and dirty needles. So what the hell is America’s excuse?